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Thursday, June 25, 2009

Music The King Is Dead. Long Live the King.

Posted by Erik Henriksen on Thu, Jun 25, 2009 at 3:21 PM

UPDATE, 3:25 pm: The LA Times has confirmed Jackson's death.

The Times is still saying that Michael Jackson has only been hospitalized, but TMZ's claiming he's officially dead. (As Ezra points out below, it'd be good to get some official confirmation on this from somebody that's not TMZ.)

Kind of weirdly, and kind of naturally, the Mercury offices are unexpectedly affected by the news. Everyone's kind of in shock. Patrick Coleman's muttering "I don't know what to do...", and I can't tell if he's being genuine or ironic, and Matt Davis, who was on a donut run at Voodoo when the TMZ story went up, called me to tell me the news. "Did you know Michael Jackson just died?" he said. "The owner of Voodoo just turned the music down and yelled it throughout the shop."

I'm just gonna spend the rest of the day here, if that's cool with everybody.

 

Comments (9) RSS

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1
I would not have expected to feel as sad as I do about this.

Major. Fucking. Bummer.
Posted by Alison Hallett on June 25, 2009 at 3:21 PM · Report
2
Work has stopped utterly in my office. Not a single person is doing their job. Everyone is trying to verify this death.
Kinda scary.
Posted by spartacus on June 25, 2009 at 3:37 PM · Report
3
A car in the parking lot next to my office is BLASTING "Man in the Mirror" right now, windows down.

It feels good.
Posted by Joneser on June 25, 2009 at 3:40 PM · Report
4
Everyone's beating on the TMZ, despite the fact that they also were 30 minutes ahead of everyone else on the heart attack itself. I guess that didn't buy them any cred on the second part of the story, which they also had 30 minutes before anyone else.

(Not that I love having to defend TMZ. But fair is fair. They beat everyone, *twice*, and no one will cred them for it.)
Posted by The One True b!X on June 25, 2009 at 3:42 PM · Report
5
I remember this being the complete talk amongst my 4th grade peers the day after it aired in 1983:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VASYhabHkM

Posted by humanclock on June 25, 2009 at 3:47 PM · Report
6
@ The One True b!X: I don't think anyone's denying TMZ had the story before anyone else--they're just acknowledging that, even if they were right on this one, TMZ isn't always a trustworthy source.
Posted by Erik Henriksen on June 25, 2009 at 3:52 PM · Report
7
I'm with Alison. Wouldn't have guessed that I'd be so upset about him dying.
Posted by nerdliness on June 25, 2009 at 3:56 PM · Report
8
Counterpoint: We shuffled some papers around at work.
Posted by NIG GER on June 25, 2009 at 4:05 PM · Report
9
Its just another dead guy for gods sake
Posted by WhoCares2 on June 26, 2009 at 3:36 PM · Report

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