Fish and chips from Seafood Haven on 136th Street in Harlem. Florida, J.J., Michael, Thelma, Keith, Willona, and Penny moved out of the projects on final episode of Good Times. You Tube is my portal: Jimmy Carter was in office. Cynthia and I always waited for Rock With Youto get our groove on, and when Michael sang, Out on the floor/there's nobody there/but us., that's exactly what it felt like. Randy Taraborrelli, the same guy who later wrote an unauthorized MJ bio titled Michael Jackson: The Magic and the Madness - which published my first stories.

Cynthia pushed me to seek out a gig with Soul Magazine - edited thirty years ago by J. On Saturday nights, I was dancing the night away at Club Pegasus on 2nd Avenue and 64th Street, with my first love, Cynthia. Post Office on 33rd and 8th Avenue in New York City. In 1979, I was a 21- year-old clerk employed by the U.S. Logging onto You Tube - that HD'd, 4G time machine where the future of the past can be viewed in the present - I realize I can't deal with this finality, because I can't stop crying as I watch the video for Rock With You. But we are not happy, because this is truly fini in the three-act modern opera (or Pop'era, if you will) known as Michael Jackson Agonistes. This business was a means to an end, and that end was to entertain us. Whenever and wherever the maturation of Michael's business acuity, he knew this music bidness was not his friend. Or maybe it Michael Jackson stamping his Nijinsky onto Thriller - Michael's American Schereazade - where he retrofitted the ' epaulement, releve' and grand plie' into the Moonwalk's reverse ballet, on Motown 25. Or maybe it was on the Ed Sullivan Show, where a sunflower-Afro and bellbottom-jean-wearing Michael led The Jackson 5 through the paces of I Want You Back. I think a prescient Michael Jackson - the original Benjamin Button - heard the flap of vulture wings when he was just a ten-year-old charmer channeling James Brown and Jackie Wilson, gliding and soaring and singing in that audition with his brothers in Berry Gordy's mansion on Boston Street on Detroit's West Side. And yeah, I've heard the apologia: they only had three days to prepare, a minefield of combustible backstage politics, blah, blah, blah. Despite the powerful and moving words from Janet Jackson - Michael's beloved baby sister - and despite the best efforts of Ne-Yo, The OJays, Don Cornelius, Maxwell, New Edition, Tevin Campbell, Guy, Tyrese, Trey Songz, Monica, Keisha Cole, Jay Z, MC Lyte (the announcer), and Jamie Foxx as the host, the network (which some have caustically derided as Bamboozled Entertainment Television, a nod to Spike Lee's 2000 satirical masterpiece on the state of African American TV) simply dropped the ball. A week later, and I am scared to turn on my TV, and not only because of BET's dismal attempt at a Michael Jackson tribute during their annual awards show which aired the Sunday after his death. One-hundred-sixty-eight hours later into the twenty millionth rotation of a never ending news cycle - and to paraphrase a line from Joan Didion's Slouching To Bethlehem - my center is not holding.

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