Tag Archives: media

A Broken Soul – The Death of MJ

By Ed Fladung | June 26, 2009

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Photo captions: On the left, is The King of Pop. On the right is your narrator in his younger years, looking a cross between MJ and a gay surf hell’s angel (this look is so ready to come back in style). White golf shoes with black fat laces, Lee jeans, cut-off rag tee, black leather MJ-wannabe zipper vest, black leather studded fingerless gloves, studded leather bracelet, black Loc wrap-around shades, cigarette and bowl cut hair (by mom). I’m dating this image at summer of 1985, Ocean City Maryland. Historical evidence. My dad posted this photo to his facebook account yesterday. Very timely…

This pretty much sums up my thoughts on the death of Michael Jackson:

“Yesterday was a sad and a bad day for me, because I think Michael Jackson died of a broken heart and a broken soul … It’s kind of haunting that these record companies wouldn’t give him the light of the day or these radio stations wouldn’t give him the light of the day over the last couple years, but now that he died everybody’s on his jock, so to speak. It makes me angry because in the end, no matter how much he messed with himself or his appearance, which to me didn’t mean anything to anybody when it came down to him wanting to entertain and just make people have a good time, I just thought all of that was irrelevant … I feel kind of crappy for the hypocrisy of this country and its coverage.” — Chuck D

I don’t know if MJ was actually a pedophile or not, but I do know he was a seriously troubled guy, who kinda regressed into being a 10 year old, in order to combat the stresses of his public persona and strange predilections. In the end, the pressure caught up with him. MJ carried a lot of pain with him and that’s a horrible place to be.

MJ made some freaking good music and was literally the soundtrack to a good portion of my childhood, so I look forward to washing away the memories of kooky MJ tabloid stories and being able to embrace his music again without all the saturated, media-hyped post-mortem eulogy and with a purposeful naivety.

Chuck D quote via this Vulture article.

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Bookmarks for June 19th

By Ed Fladung | June 19, 2009
  • I-Movix SprintCam v3 NAB 2009 showreel on Vimeo
    1000 frames per second video. ultra slow motion. skip to the 2 minute mark to see the block of jello bouncing (shot at 2500 fps). so amazing. I'd love to see this camera used on a fatty Teahupoo wave from inside the barrel.
  • Al Jazeera English – Focus – Iran on the brink?
    if there is only one article you read about what's happening inside iran right now, politically, read this one. amazing! Mark Levine walks through the different power structures in the government and the potential scenarios for dealing with the protests.
  • Food, Inc. Movie Site and Trailer – Hungry For Change?
    Great trailer, for what looks to be a great movie. That most people won't want to see, because the truth hurts too much. Incidentally, they used to say "you are what you eat". and us gutter punks would chime back "if you are what you eat, then we're all dead meat!" and stick up our two fingers and make the screw face like Sid Vicious and Johnny Rotten. The early 90s were a bright, young, innocent time. Now the refrain goes something like "if you are what you eat, than were all highly processed food products" or even "if you are what you eat, then we're all full of shit." that last one is more true than most people know.
  • Asia Times Online :: Divine assessment vs people power
    a huge article on the internal power struggle going on in Iran right now. This is just about election results. It's about a failed system of government and their attempts to stay in power: "As much as corporate media – from anywhere – has been rendered mostly irrelevant. Iranians are deploying an absolute non-stop, 24/7 thriller; a guerrilla communication redux, an ultra-raw version of history in the making via blogs – this is a nation of young bloggers – YouTube and Twitter, battling by all means necessary ultra-slow or shut down Internet, jammed phone lines going in and out, blocked chats, blocked SMS."
  • Nathan Bransford – Literary Agent: Query Letter Mad Lib
    This is an explicit how-to recipe on the proper way to put together a "query letter" for contacting potential literary agents. good advice, wish i found it first before sending out a bunch of queries. oops.
  • On Assignment: Covering Tehran – Lens Blog – NYTimes.com
    images from the Iran election protests taken by 28-year old Newsha Tavakolian, a Times freelanc photographer. These images have a very different feel from the ones we've been seeing from Getty and AP. much more intimate.
  • AgentQuery :: Find the Agent Who Will Find You a Publisher
    trying to find an literary agent to help you publish your blog book? this is a great resource.
  • Shane Lavalette: A Quiet Heaven in Vrindavan, India | GOOD
    beautiful photography by Shane Lavalette taken in India. very quiet photos. something not normally in unison with India. Shane is also the editor/curator of wicked zine Lay Flat.
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