Michael Jackson Dies of Cardiac Arrest

TMZ was the first to break the story; Michael Jackson had a heart attack today while preparing for a comeback tour. What an eccentric, brilliant, and troubled life!...I'm thinking of the Jackson 5 Cartoon, and the Grammy's performances; the first extended length video, and the dancing! The childhood forever, and the children that he sucked into his own madness. And his children with various mothers...the mothers of those children surrendering them to him...the veils and disguises and toys...and Neverland Ranch, forever blemished by the pedophilia charges....
His music wasn't much my thing, but it was on my periphery for as long as I can remember....and I think that we all can say that to one extent or another.



He was just a kid when I first saw him, half crouching on the edge of the balcony of Studio 54 watching the choreography of the theater lights being raised and lowered by techies pulling ropes; the snow machine and the half moon prop swinging out from stage left to meet the coke spoon swinging out stage right. There was this little black kid with a 'fro, doing what I liked to do, which was to watch the specter of it all, and how it all came off every night like a Broadway show. And for those of us that worked there, it was a Broadway show, and 4AM brought the cleaning crew and another day of preparing for the next show.



I loved those catwalks and how I knew by heart the height of the tunnels in the basement so I could get anywhere quickly, and the smells and lights and craziness that you could creep around the edges of and try not to get caught up in. Later we had dinners with a military garbed Michael arriving with Brooke Shields on his arm, looking frail always and very sweet and private. By the time we brought in a huge screen to watch him perform at the Grammys from theater seating, he was a huge star already and as when I was little, watching the Jacksons on TV, his dancing was breathtaking.

I didn't know him besides to just say hi on the phone when he called the boss of that club, and he came in alot, hiding in the shadows for the most part; appearing only for charity or big deal events. I don't now really know what to think of him, but he was a big piece of my pop culture childhood, and man, what a talent he was!

Among my son's crowd, his name is synonymous with pedophilia and crude jokes, and who knows whatever happened with him; he was definitely inappropriate and confused. He was looking for love and seemingly had weak boundaries and too much money.
His kids?....well, what a mess that is.

So, the couple of police cars at the hospital with a straggler or two, have mushroomed into a huge, huge crowd....and this is apparently pretty big. I dont know if its Princess Diana big, but its pretty big. What a day!

RIP Michael Jackson and RIP Farrah Fawcett, both groudbreaking culture changers in different ways, but they both will be missed...for the drama if for nothing else!



Brilliant at Breakfast

Kodak Takes Our Kodachrome Away

The Kodak Co. announced today that they will be discontinuing production of Kodachrome film. This marks the end of an era for not only many of us who lived in the innocent days of being able to think that all the world could be a sunny day, but the end of an art form that deserves to be preserved somehow. There is nothing like film photography, and doing away with the tools involved in that is akin to getting rid of paint brushes. Still, you cant keep a company from discontinuing a product that doesn't sell well; I just hope that a specialty market will emerge for this vital medium; and there will still be other types of film available. Its just that Kodak was the ground breaker in this, and the quality has been unsurpassed in history.

Check out some of the pictures here from the 1940's if you want an example of how well this stuff holds up. There are endless examples out there on the Google machine.....and here's a big hat tip to Rhymin'Simon, who sure did his part to add to sales of what has become a true American icon. For more information on this check out the Kodachrome Project Forums, which covers just about every aspect this film.