scotty_kaye

  Son of a bitch, I never thought I would be affected by this.  I'm not sure that it ever crossed my mind as a possibility either.  Not that I'd react, but that he would die someday.  My brother was huge into him back in the eighties.  In fact, my aunt hired an impersonator to show up at his bar-mitzvah.  Everybody knew he was an impersonator except my brother.  I almost envied him for that.  
  Michael Jackson really pissed me off with all the crap about the rights to the Beatles songs.  I don't think anyone should own the rights to anything that they didn't create.  If an artist gets hired to create something for someone, they should always automatically have some right to decide what happens with it.  That's another tirade for another day.  When the Beatles songs started showing up in commercials, it usually pissed me off.  Although, a lot of the commercials I saw had the where-with-all to use them respectfully, which I didn't mind.  Really I was pissed off at how many artists were allegedly not allowed to record the songs because Michael turned down their requests.  That really sucks.  
   I used to have an ongoing debate with an old co-worker named Franklin about who was more popular, the Beatles or Michael Jackson.  We'd really get into it, screaming matches and jumping on desks and like that.  We never settled the debate, but I think it was too much fun to continue arguing about it.  There was a janitor named Phil who used to hear us going at it.  Phil was an old guy direct from Greece.  Heavy accent and all.  He used to sweep while Franklin and I argued.  One day, he comes up to me and says, really loud, "Micha' Jackson is-a ten times better than "Bit-ta-lis"!  
   Nope, I don't think that Michael Jackson will ever challenge the Beatles for my top spot, but still I'm sad he's gone.  I hope he finds peace and completion wherever he lands.  And thanks for the music!