Ape Culture - Michael Jackson Celebrity Adventure

The album Bad takes you two years to record because the pressure after Thriller is so intense. How were you ever going to top it? You should have just recorded a jazz album and thumbed your nose at the entire brouhaha.

You try to start your own line of clothing based on your superior style of taste in adolescent space-fantasy-ware but the line fizzles because it takes you too long to get your act together and designer rip-offs hit the street before the real clothes do, quickly depleting the demand for Wacko-wannabies. Besides, who else but Corey Feldman wants to dress like you anyway?

You then try fragrances. Your signature fragrance is called 'Magic Beat.' Clearly you are gay. Do we need to draw you a diagram? The promoters of these products go bankrupt because you are too shy to actually promote the products. You keep your advances though.

Working with Francis Ford Coppola and a ten-year old co-star, you make Captain E.O. The kids think it’s cool and you are happy that you are finally an amusement attraction at Disney World. You develop a relationship with another amusement park named Elizabeth Taylor (soon to be a celebrity adventure). Innocent bystanders say that this relationship is nothing more than a sham, for the purposes of publicity only and that you never socialize with each other off-camera.

More facial surgery all around: all the Jacksons but Jackie have altered their faces. You get eyeliner permanently painted under your eyes. You snub Diana Ross’ umpeenth wedding and now she won’t narrate your upcoming Showtime biography. You retaliate by editing her parts out of the show. If you are this involved in the biography, how accurate can it be (see The Jacksons: An American Dream, which, years from now, will be produced by Jermaine)?

From a publicity standpoint, you become fascinated with the weirdnesses of Greta Garbo and Howard Hughes. You take to wearing a surgical mask in public like Hughes and occasionally you appear wheelchair-bound. You are going for that fragile, crazy persona. You feed a story to the press that claims you sleep in a hyperbaric chamber. Then you deny it…all for the controversy and free publicity. People are starting to get suspicious.

Either you are experiencing some real side effects from your mysterious whitening process or you are really suffering from a skin disorder that causes your skin to loose pigment. Latoya says you are bleaching your skin…she may be wacko #2 but at least she speaks coherently at press conferences and interviews. Maybe she's just milking the family name for cash.