binkywood: Star of the Day: Michael Jackson

Birthdate: August 29, 1958

Birthplace: Gary, Indiana

Soundbyte: "If you enter this world knowing you are loved and you leave this world knowing the same, then everything that happens in between can be dealt with."

It's Michael Jackson's fiftieth birthday today, y'all. Seems like it was only yesterday he was running across the stage in a zippered red leather jacket, white glove sparkling, Jheri Curl hair blowing in the wind behind him...

When I was a kid, Michael Jackson was The Shit. Those were his Thriller days, the days where it really was Michael Jackson's world and we were just living in it. There was this one kid at my school who showed up every day in a red leather jacket and a white glove on one hand, just like Michael and everyone - EVERYONE - wanted to be seen with him. He totally ruled the playground. Ah, those were the days when Michael truly was a trendsetter...

Fast-forward a few years; I was in grade four, I think, when Bad came out; I remember watching the video for that song on Video Hits. Two thoughts ran through my mind as I watched it: 1) Holy crap, how long is this freakin' video?, and 2) Wow, Michael looks a lot...whiter, and his nose looks...pointier. I was comforted by the the fact that Michael was still wearing leather jackets with lots of zippers (and belts and buckles and straps), but still - dude looked different in a way that my fourth grade brain couldn't figure out.

But his jams were so fresh, yo! Because I'm bad, I'm bad, shamon! Hoo! I'm not going to lie, I loved Bad. Michael was BAD. In a good way.

As the years wore on, however, things with Michael got stranger and stranger - far, FAR stranger than his relationship with Bubbles the Chimp.

Though Michael's lightened skin tone was eventually attributed to vitiligo, the way his face started to change erred more on the side of WTF? than anything else.

Pretty soon, Michael Jackson wound up looking completely different - almost unrecognizable - and there was always some scandalous headline attached to his name; if it wasn't him almost losing his Neverland Ranch then it was his interest in little boys (up to and including Macaulay Culkin) - and don't forget about the time he dangled his shrouded infant son off of a balcony...

In the fifty years he's been on this wonderful green earth, Michael Jackson has changed the face of music, bringing us some of the best tunes in history of music - Billie Jean, Smooth Criminal, Thriller, Beat It - and also providing us with some of the best (and most f*cked up) gossip fodder in the history of the world.