Brandon's Buzz

Via a horrifyingly eloquent IM Friday afternoon, the beautifully intuitive Sherry Ann — on whom you can always count to keep things in measured perspective — made the following boldly blunt proclamation: “We have arrived at that point in our lives where the people we adored as children are going to start dropping dead. I am NOT ready to deal with that!”

And so it goes.

Like most of the world over 72 hours after the fact, I’m still struggling to comprehend what it means to draw breath in a world that no longer includes Michael Jackson. Having been all of six years old when Thriller broke, I literally can’t remember my life without Michael in it, and I spent the weekend operating in a strange, unrelenting daze. (Even though June 26 was Cliffhanger Friday and more than one soap is blowing and going at full steam heading into summer, and even though I already own the man’s whole video collection on DVD and can literally pull it out and watch it at will, I spent the lion’s share of the morning and afternoon transfixed by MTV, which jettisoned its entire regular schedule in favor of broadcasting and remembering Michael and his incomparable audio/visual oeuvre, a decision I found to be heartbreakingly poignant and perfectly fitting, considering the brilliantly symbiotic relationship the two entities shared in their parallel rises to global prominence: when MTV needed an ambassador with a tad more mainstream pop culture cachet than David Byrne and those fops from Devo to give the network a whiff of genuine relevance, Michael leapt into that role with both feet, and in kind, his constant and ingratiating presence on not only the channel but on the plethora of other video outlets that sprang up in its wake proved to flip the ignition switch on Jackson’s rocketship ride.)

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