Remembering Michael Jackson: by making sweet, sweet money

OK, so hopefully everybody’s got the “too soon” out of their systems, because boy oh, after having to read a week and a half’s worth of news stories in which some local politician once met Michael Jackson this one time and the Jackson 5 on the muzak in every store and sincere testimonies about how it’s just like a friend dying, I just want to kick everyone’s ass around me and then kick my own ass.

I was born in 1984, the year Jackson won eight Grammys. I know in an intellectual sense that he was enormous, the biggest star ever, all that, but I just can’t muster the same feeling that seems to be affecting people. By the time I knew who Jackson was, he was already in the fourth-rhinoplasty, pet-chimp-having, Neverland-building stage, and soon to enter the accusations-of-pedophilia stage. My memories of him as a kid were mostly kind of sad, along the lines of “Something terrible happened to that guy when he was little.”

I think it’s pretty obvious, at least from the images people have chosen to put on T-shirts and the songs people scream for at dance parties, that everyone wants to remember Jackson as the cute kid from the Jackson 5 or as a young man circa Thriller and Billie Jean.

So people, I guess about 28 and under, who don’t remember Jackson from the Jackson 5 or Thriller because they weren’t alive: If all your nostalgia-type memories of Jackson are of him in his sad, crazy stage, where’s this personal identification coming from? I’m curious! Tell me!

But anyway, let’s get to the awful merch!

So let’s start locally! We’ve got the original Print Liberation shirt, which they were able to put out the day after Jackson’s death:

Print Liberation, $16.

And then the hideous, hideous replacement shirt, because they evidently got in trouble with Sony for… well, yeah, clearly just taking the cover of Thriller and putting words on it:

Print Liberation, $16.

Side note: How weird must it be to be the guys at Sony whose job it is to track down unauthorized Jackson memorial T-shirts?

September 11, 2001, I was in high school English class in northern Virginia, in a burb where a looooot of people who work at the Pentagon go to sleep. Therefore, I have seen shirts, posters and all sorts of other merch with an eagle crying, the Statue of Liberty crying, George Washington crying, the figure of Justice crying… I have seen tears poorly photoshopped onto just about every piece of Americana imaginable. And now:

Tears of a hat bag, $25.15.

I do not quite understand why this next designer did not realize that this looks as if young MJ has just fellated Papa Smurf, or if he or she did, why this shirt exists. Well, the etsy shop selling this is located in Thailand; maybe they don’t have Smurfs there.

Worldpant, $15.

And here we are in Rittenhouse, which is clearly a great place to buy quality art, meeting Perry Milou’s painting “the Elvis Jackson.” Oh god oh god oh god.

Hi, sorry, I just have to show you the accompanying text with this video, which is on the official Perry Milou youtube account:

A CONTEMPORARY YET VISIONARY MASTERWORK BY THE EMERGING POP ARTIST PERRY MILOU DEPICTS A PORTRIAT FUSION OF AMERICAN ICONS ELVIS PRESELY AND MICHAEL JACKSON.

PAINTING IN 1995 AFTER THE MARRIAGE OF JACKSON TO LISA MARIE PRESLEY , MILOU EASILY RECOGNIZED THE INSPIRATION OF PRESLEY LIFE ON HIS OWN.

STATES THE ARTIST; ‘ELVIS GRAB HIS CROTCH FIRST AND GRINDED HIS PELVIS, HIS COSTUMES AND FLARE TRANSCENDING JACKSON IN MANY WAYS, AND JACKSONS TRAGIC DEATH ALMOST SEEMS DESTINED TO LINK HIM TO PRESLEY ALONG WITH MONROE AND DEAN.THE NOW FOUR ICONS COMPLETE AN AMERICAN RUSHMORE TO LIVE ON FOREVER!

OL ON CANVAS 48/ 48 INCHES

Well, I’m actually fairly confident that in the next few years MJ will become a cultural thing like Elvis, with reported sightings in Burger Kings across the land. But I can think of no better way to end this post than “OL ON CANVAS” and this video: