Today I went to a movie. It was a movie about a gentleman who has endured much throughout his life and exited our plane of consciousness a few short months ago. He was a tortured soul and many referred to him as the “King of Weird” even though he was probably the most amazing entertainer ever.

Michael Jackson  was the consummate  professional when it came to his music. His personal life… not so much. Now even I… a consummate professional in my own right (well… my own mind, anyway) cannot profess to having a perfect personal life. I burned a little ant once with a magnifying glass and to this day I shudder to think of it’s horrifying final seconds. But I never dangled any baby anythings over any balcony in any city. No matter what that stupid hobo may say who looks like some freaky monster.

“This is It” is a movie panned by the critics (except me… I can be as critical as the next guy. Especially when it comes to whack jobs who butcher their faces and dangle anything other than a good participle over some balcony) and as such I was tempted to not bother seeing it. After all, haven’t we seen just about enough of Michael Jackson over the last few years? At least enough of him as a miscreant. And he obviously had lost most of his music talent because he’d produced nothing musically for… like… ever. Well let me tell you. This is It was obviously produced to shine a somewhat glowing light on His Highness, the King of Pop. But it is undeniable the amount of energy, imagination, and effort that he was putting in to what was going to be his final flight. Had the concerts ever actually happened people would have lined up for years and offered to pay a grundle of dollars to get a single ticket to the concert. It would have been a concert like no other concert.

Ever.

My opinion of Jackson has changed dramatically. Rather than being a whack-job has-been, I now see him as a tortured genius, whose perspective of our planet caused him so much concern that he could no longer function in what we call “the norm.” The line between genius and insanity can be razor thin. His final concerts would have proven to the world that he was still a musical genius. The only thing that kept his 51 year old frame going was giving the audience the best performance they had ever seen. He was willing to burn a hole in the ground with his own flesh and blood to make sure that happened.

The fact that those concerts will never happen is a travesty that will take me a very long time to get over. Most of us have been guilty of “mailing in” a performance for our jobs once in a while. At 51 he was in no way mailing it in. And as such, I believe, he is owed a lot more than we have given him.

King of Weird aside.