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I’m thinking about when Elvis died.  Some kid I knew (okay, fine, I had low standards—he was my best friend) told me about it and then added his commentary all about it having to do with Elvis still not being over his mother’s death . . . I just shook my head and tried not to roll my eyes.

I guess I should thank him, because when someone iconic dies you are required to have a story about where you were and what you were doing when you heard, and because of him I do.  When John Lennon was shot, my mother caught the tail-end of the news report and thought it was Jack Lemmon.   “Who’d want to kill Jack Lemmon?”

That is not a joke despite the fact that there was a comic who did a joke in her routine along those lines.  I guess my mom is not the only one who heard the report wrong.

Well, since I need a story, here it is.  I was on the phone with my cousin as I was walking to the store and she was looking something up online while we talked.  She saw the first report saying he was taken to the hospital because he wasn’t breathing.  She said “Who could breathe through that nose?”

I shopped, came home, logged on to check my e-mail and saw he was dead. 

On her blog, flurrious said this:

“I don’t have much to say about the passing of Michael Jackson, but I wanted to make some note of it. I grew up with his music, and even after it became apparent that his mind was doing terrible things to him, no one could deny his enormous talent. Scandal and strangeness aside, he’s always been a presence.”

I think that says it fairly well.  I don’t know who the person he became was, or what he did, but the kid he once was—he was really something.