Michael Jackson was blasting on the streets of New York City last night, out of car windows, restaurants, bars, and radios set up next to makeshift fruit stands. People were paying their respects, but also up to something more. They were taking the first steps towards reclaiming his music, turning it on, turning it up, and finally, finally, beginning to jettison all the bad, heavy vibes his songs have accrued over the last 15 years.

In that time, we’ve all developed an awkward relationship with Jackson and his work. It’s not that the video for "Thriller" or the chorus to “Man In the Mirror” was any less awesome yesterday than it was today, but yesterday, it was still discomfiting. Yesterday, it still came with some really serious baggage, the before our eyes meltdown of a once supremely talented young man, who had, as Emily said, “so wholly turned himself into a freak.” I remember, years ago, watching an award show tribute to Jackson, in which a young performer (who may or may not have been Justin Timberlake, I can’t quite remember) praised Jackson’s talent and his influence. Jackson, of course, deserved the praise, but there was still a palpable dissonance between what the young performer was saying about him and the person standing up in the balcony, frail, pale, and gloved, looking on. Jacko was once great, but he was now ruined. It was impossible to forget either one of those things, and that took the joy out of not only that particular celebration, but everything related to Jackson.

Now the bad years, tragic as they were, right up to the end, are over, and we can start to appreciate the good ones, the ones when Jackson created more stupendous hit songs than most musicians could in many, many lifetimes. The weirdness still lingers, but it won't have pride of place for long. Watch, in a few decades, all the freakishness will be a footnote, and the kids will still be dancing to “Billie Jean” and trying to figure out how to moonwalk.

Tags: michael jackson, Music

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Tracking celebrities' final moments has become a kind of collective, Internet parlor game. The e-mails start flying: Who's getting the best scoop? Who can spot the first credible death announcement? I'm currently standing vigil over Michael Jackson's Wikipedia page, wondering if I can catch the moment when someone adds in a date of death and all the verbs fall, like dominoes, into the past tense. (Edit—it just happened, at exactly 6:30 p.m. Watching the text ripple when I hit "refresh" felt oddly final.)

I've often wondered: Is this ghoulish? Perverse? Or is the intense way we've all spent the last hour focused on Los Angeles a fitting homage to this strange, super-famous man, who lived his entire life dancing in and out of our view? One thing I can't get over: I simultaneously can't believe Jacko is dead, and can't believe he lived this long.

Photograph of Michael Jackson by Stan Honda/AFP/Getty Images.

Tags: michael jackson, wikipedia

There are some celebrities who are unimaginable old: James Dean, Marilyn Monroe, and now Michael Jackson. Others—Liz Taylor, Marlon Brando—you almost resent for getting old, for showing us the the blowsy, disabled reality of age instead of staying forever frozen in time. Jackson and Liz Taylor were at one time good friends. They must have bonded over understanding what it was like to be pushed on stage as a child, to be the talented gold mine for your family. So now we'll never have to watch an aged Jackson on the comeback trail, showing us that with his hip replacement he can moon walk again.

Has there ever been a major celebrity who so wholly turned himself into a freak? He destroyed his face (the tabloids loved to get photos of him sans surgical mask, a prothestic tip taped to the end of his ruined nose), he was involved in endless pedophillic scandals, and it was awful to think of him as a father. What happens now to his children, who have been trapped in his mansions, forced to live out his fantasy of the childhood he never had? And don't you just wish you could reach out to the beautiful, supremely talented boy he once was and make it all go another way?

Tags: michael jackson death

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I was 10 years old when Charlie’s Angels debuted in 1976. This is my school picture from that year, my aggravatingly straight and unstyleable hair awkwardly plastered into the style that was referred to, at least in Texas, as “wings.” Wearing your hair in wings, with a middle part and plenty of hairspray, was near-obligatory in the fifth grade at Helotes Elementary. Even the boys, at least those aspirationally cool enough to have left behind the childish mushroom bowl cut, feathered and sprayed their hair. When the girls played “Angels” at school or at each others’ houses (tossing our wings, pointing imaginary guns and shouting “Freeze!” in breathy voices), I usually took the part of Kate Jackson’s Bree. (She was the "brainy one.” Now there’s a low bar: The brainy Charlie’s Angel.) But the beautiful, athletic, popular girls, the ones who could run fast and had hair that feathered right (and who lacked the pink plastic glasses and epic overbite on view in this photo), got to be Farrah Fawcett's golden and gleaming Jill Munroe.

I can’t agree with Ellen that Farrah will be remembered only for her hairstyle. She did an admirable job of reinventing her career in midlife with the play and movie The Burning Bed, which brought a lot of attention to the domestic violence issues she advocated for later in life. And I’ve always been touched by her turbulent but enduring partnership with Ryan O’Neal, who was by her bedside when she died (and who told the press this week, heartbreakingly, that he’d finally ask her to marry him “when she’s able to say yes”). But since Farrah’s iconic legacy was her glorious, ridiculous, leonine mane (and the unfortunate imitations it inspired), I think it’s fitting that we mourn her with a photo gallery of attempted Farrah-dos gone by. Readers, please dig through your yellowing snapshots and contribute! Don’t leave Hanna and me alone in our winged shame! Send photos to doublex.slate+farrah@gmail.com.

Tags: farrah fawcett, feathers, look alike pics

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The Los Angeles Times confirms that Michael Jackson has died of cardiac arrest. Two pop icons down in a day, and to me their lives moved in opposite directions. After her flash appearance as a sex symbol, Fawcett spent the rest of her years backing away from that image, playing (and looking like) a battered spouse in the Apostle, making a video about her anal cancer, generally reminding us that body beautiful is fleeting, and we all go to dust in the end. Michael Jackson did the reverse. He started out as a beautiful innocent, and then slowly alienated himself from his audience, his family and himself, mostly by destroying his body with hair straightener, nose jobs, skin bleach and who knows what else.

Photograph of Michael Jackson by Dave Hogan/Getty Images.

Tags: celebrity death, farrah fawcett, michael jackson

This seems to be the week for obituary headlines I hope I never have. On the New York Times homepage now, Farrah Fawcett is called “A Sex Symbol Who Wanted to Be More.” Pretty pathetic, but not quite as bad as the treatment Ed McMahon got on the hompeage on Tuesday: “Quintessential sidekick.” (The headline on the article itself isn't much kinder, calling him the "top second banana.") Sidekick ... who wanted to be more? The headline didn’t specify, but one can only assume that "second banana" is not anyone’s first aspiration.

So in the spirit of Emily Yoffe's excellent poll on whether you'd rather be the wife of Sanford or Spitzer (which is generating some thoughtful replies in the comments section), I’ll offer another “which is worse”: Would you rather your obituary call you a sex symbol who wanted to be more, or a quintessential sidekick? Which ranks lower on the degrading scale? Now I'm wondering what they'll say about Michael Jackson, hopefully something a little less depressing. Place your vote in the comments section below.

Tags: ed mcmahon, farrah fawcett, obituary

In the wake of Farrah Fawcett's death this morning, thoughts turn to the superficial. Ellen has already focused on her hair—those "feathered bangs, feathered layers, feathers, feathers, feathers"—but what about her teeth? Those shiny, snow-white teeth? Or her endless, hairless legs? All of these assets were duly capitalized upon by America's beauty product industry, leading to a few spectacular TV ads from the '70s.

In this one for Ultra-Brite toothpaste, Farrah sits on a lawn and innocently recites her mother's advice—"sit up straight, eat all your vegetables, and stay out of small foreign cars"—before that sparkle in her eye turns mischevious and she turns to "Joey," who we now see is lying beside her, and tells him that her mother never told her about Ultra-Brite. The scene ends with Joey escorting Farrah to his hot red car, and kissing her on the cheek; she winks, then flashes an ultra-bright smile that is clearly too sexy for her own good.

In this ad for Noxzema shaving cream, a mini-Farrah dances suggestively in a giant male palm. Someone sprays shaving cream into the palm as she writhes to the chorus, "Great balls of comfort!"

That's downright tame, compared to this one, in which Farrah sings the jingle "Let Noxzema cream your face" while sensually applying shaving cream to NFL quarterback Joe Namath's chin. This clip begins with the soon-to-be-creamed Namath creepily exclaiming, "I'm so excited! I'm gonna get creamed!" and ends with him telling Farrah, "You've got a great pair of hands."

It's ironic that, in a contemporary advertising world that equates sandwiches to blow jobs, this 30-year-old commercial would probably be too much for American consumers to handle. But then, there's always been something about Farrah and her feathers ...

Tags: farrah fawcett, noxema, ultra-brite

Farrah Fawcett paid dearly for being a beauty queen with great hair and very white teeth. In the beginning it must have been fun to be a contestant on the Dating Game, marry a 6-million-dollar man, become an Angel (then an ex-angel), and have her own personal complicated love story with Oliver Barrett IV. But through it all, she was more of an image than a real person: a one-dimensional cover girl whose real life fell short in so many ways. Being a former sex symbol must have been difficult. Illness and addiction don’t have to follow, but objectification can’t be that great for the soul.

I see her great love, Ryan O’Neal was about to marry her before her death. He announced it to Barbara Walters on 20/20. How romantic. I bet the nuptials would have made the cover of People despite the editor Larry Hackett all but telling the New York Times recently the next Fawcett cover would merit a black border. I guess she ran out of time for a wedding but O’Neal honored her spirit in the end. He did what caring folks do when a loved one dies. He called a tabloid.

Tags: charlie's angels, farrah fawcett, ryan o'neal

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Have you ever feathered? Feathered extravagantly? Feathered desperately, in an effort to give off the Farrah-mone? If so, please e-mail photos of yourself to doublex.slate+farrah@gmail.com, and we will post the best ones on the blog. I’ll offer myself up first for ridicule. Here is me, on what must have been my 12th birthday (I believe there’s a Go-Go’s cassette in that stack). That poor sap with the 'fro is my older brother. Include your own Farrah memories. Here are mine.

When I was growing up in Jamaica, Queens, an immigrant ghetto if ever there was one, Farrah was America. My brother dated only Puerto Rican girls although he, too, had Farrah up on his wall. To me, personally, Farrah represented both liberation and frustration. My Israeli mother started blow-drying my hair when I was 5. (Watch this video for an explanation.) Feathering at least gave me a method to blow-dry my own way. But if you look closely, you can see it never really worked. With every rise in humidity, the Semitic curls betray me.

Tags: farrah fawcett, feathers, look alike pics

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I'd heard about The September Issue, a documentary that screened at Sundance, now slated for an August 28 release, that goes behind the scenes at Vogue and focuses in particular on editor-in-chief Anna Wintour, she of the unmessable bob. The trailer makes the film look better than I'd expected.

Following the Vogue team as they put together the September 2007 issue, the camera lens can't help but obsessively scrutinize Wintour, one of the the most powerful women—if not the most powerful—in American fashion. Why the September issue? "September is the January of fashion," one fashionista drawls. Thanks for clearing that up for me.

Throughout, Wintour skulks about, peering out from behind the curtain of her bob at those who dare stand in front of her, sneering at oversized cover type—"It looks like it's for blind people"—and annihilating opinions left and right. It's not exactly a flattering look, but there's something compelling about a subject who can kill with a stare.

Tags: Anna Wintour, the september issue, Vogue