The twittering, the facebook updating, the blogging, the youtube searching, the googling, it’s all been one giant Michael Jackson social networking fest. Three generations know who Michael Jackson is and his fame has such a global reach. I wonder how many people got a news update on their smart phones and learned of Michael’s death that way.

In the midst of this wall to wall coverage of his passing, some of my favorite things said have been from the facebook pages of friends, as opposed to journalists and people who were well acquainted with him. I am actually surprised by how much I felt affected on the news of his passing. I think that I feel the connection because we are the same age and traveled through life together and partly because he was a single parent and so am I (though the circumstances and situations are completely different). I can remember where I was when I saw him moonwalk on that Motown special, and who was with me when I ran to Tower on Sunset and bought Thriller (for Eddie Van Halen’s guitar parts, of course). It’s a lot of mixed emotion because he was loved, he was reviled and his persona was such a mystery, and his journey was so bizarre. If the music didn’t have the impact that it had, we would all have moved on long ago.

The business shakeout from all of this is going to be the real story. In terms of the canceled shows, I don’t know if AEG will get very many refund requests, as most people will probably be inclined to keep their tickets to the London shows as souvenirs. I wonder how much AEG had advanced him directly and how much they had expended on the show itself. And does Neverland Ranch now become a museum/amusement park site open to the public for a fee, like Graceland?

One can’t help but wonder what would have happened had these shows go on as planned…

The non stop analysis and commentary are overwhelming. I think I need to spend some time reflecting on this without the constant feedback.