Back for the first time...

What's up, welcome to my latest attempt at blogging.

I officially retired my previous blog last week after not really touching it for a two or three months.

You can find it here.

It's worth going back and reading some of the old entries, there was some pretty decent material on there, if I do say so myself.

So, expect this blog to be anywhere from 75 to 90 per cent music writing, with the remainder being anything else that pops in my head. It could sports, movies, politics, TV, fashion, monkeys, porn, books, whatever. Don't expect this to be one of those blogs with a lot of personal introspection, I'm not really interesting enough to merit that. And I promise it won't turn into on of those blogs with tons of photos of food. I never really understood that phenomenon.

If you're wondering, the title of the blog comes from an old Beastie Boys song called "Mark on the Bus" off of Check Your Head. I realize now that people will probably click on it thinking I write about public transit issues, but what are you going to do?

I was actually going to start this puppy up on Thursday or Friday, but I felt I'd be obliged to write extensively on Micheal Jackson. The thing is, I didn't really know what to say.

I mean, on one hand, he may well have been the most gifted entertainer of the last fifty or so years. He changed popular music, dance, and music videos for the better. The MJ topic came up when I was out at a bar on Saturday night, and I was able to name ten of his number one hits in fifteen seconds. I'm not sure there's another artist that I could do that for.

On the other hand, he was an immensely fucked up person. Even if you believe that he wasn't a child molester, it's almost impossible to deny that he had immensely poor judgment when it came to children, particularly when we talk about things like his famous "sleepovers." Add to that his reclusive nature, his self addiction to plastic surgery, his two failed marriages, and his battles with prescription drug abuse, and what you have is a picture of a man broken by a history of abuse and a life under an unrelentingly harsh spotlight.

So, how do you sum it all up? According to the mainstream media, you conveniently forget the ugly, messy , disturbing parts of the man, and focus only on his artistic brilliance. I realize no one wants to speak ill of the dead, but it all rings a little false to me. After all, weren't the mainstream media the ones who coined the loving nickname "Wacko Jacko" and covered his legal troubles more diligently than they cover most elections? And now they just want pretend none of that happened?

Personally, I call bullshit on all that. If we want to celebrate MJ's brilliance, then we also have to talk about everything that was wrong with him. Not just the sexual stuff, but the surgery, the drugs, and the massive psychological wounds that, according to those close to him, never really healed.

If you look at great artists throughout history, you'll see that a disproportionate number of them had some really dark shit going on. If you want to appreciate their work, you're going to have to force yourself to separate the art from the artist to a certain extent, but that doesn't mean you can't also talk about the madness that drove them.

I'm actually a little MJed out right now, so I'm going to end this inaugural post with a rather MJ-esque Justin Timberlake video instead.

Just remember kids, if there was no MJ, then there would be no JT, no Usher, no Chris Brown, no Kanye.