The Real Michael Jackson Died Years Ago

It's now obvious to me: Michael Jackson is dead, and he has been for a very, very long time.

The music video debut of "Black or White" was the beginning of the end. It was the moment that the King of Pop finally crossed the Rubicon, the very time when those of us sitting in front of our television sets on that fateful day in 1991 were faced with an ugly truth: Michael Jackson had lost his fucking marbles.

If you ignore the ridiculous and possibly foreboding "street jamming" scene with a blinged-out Macaulay Culkin (or not), the first (and most widely seen) portion of the music video goes down in history as one of the most meaningful and ground-breaking in history. After all, it was the first time the world had seen the incredible HOLY CRAP THEY'RE MORPHING effect, and performed so well. Even now, it holds its own, especially when you consider the deluge of knockoffs which followed but paled in comparison.

No, dear reader, what I refer to is the sexually awkward, mindlessly violent freakshow that unfolded only seconds later. The last half of "Black or White" was subsequently removed from almost all broadcasts, but that October prime-time television event was unveiled to an audience which was about to become privy to a spectacle that was so mindbogglingly unbelievable, most of us chose to ignore it rather than dare admit to ourselves that we'd actually seen what we had just seen.

Just as we all thought it was over and we were ready to flip to the newest episode of In Living Color, it became apparent that the video wasn't coming to an end. What began as a strange black panther magically transforming into the Moonwalker himself quickly turned into something that glued our unwilling eyes to our T.V.s for four minutes of brain-raping that has since become a dark and repressed shadow of a memory, brought back to the surface only by the advents of both late-night television and the Internet.

I'm not sure if it was the moment he suddenly broke into an uncontrollable, music-less dance routine that just wouldn't stop, or if it was when he began relentlessly molesting himself in the middle of the road. Perhaps it was when he started convulsing on top of a steaming sewer grate and violatingly caressed his body with the emissions, or maybe it was when he leapt onto a car and mercelessly beat the Jesus out of it with a crowbar for absolutely no reason at all. At any rate, by the time he'd stopped grabbing at his jank long enough to zip his pants, smashed in the window of a local hotel with a tin trashcan and telekinetically exploded its neon rooftop sign, bringing it raining down in a spectacular electric shower, and -- finally -- collapsed into a dirty street puddle while ripping off his shirt, exposing his hairless, boy-like chest complete to the nipple and screaming "ho" at the top of his lungs, it was clear to those of us looking on in a mixture of confusion, disgust and bewilderment that Wacko Jacko, the plastic surgery poster boy who once claimed to sleep in a cryogenic chamber and told the press that he planned to buy the bones of the Elephant Man, had finally found Neverland.

Thus perished Captain EO.