HEE-HEE! Shamone!

On June 22nd, humanitarian and doctor Patrick Treacy gave a moving speech in memory of Michael Jackson at Gardener Street Elementary School on Los Angeles, California. Gardener Street, the last public school attended by Michael as a child, is the site of the Michael Jackson Auditorium—as named in 1989, and then uncovered last year after seven years under cover.

Video and transcription follow.

Fifty three years ago, a young black boy was born in a small town in Indiana. This was a different time, a time when the African-American civil rights movement tried to gain freedom from oppression by white Americans.

It was also a time when the next generation of post-war Americans were growing up, the sons of soldiers who had freed prisoners from the tyranny of prison camps like Auswitch and Buchenwald, a time when all of Europe was filled with a profound and abiding gratitude to the American people.

As Elie Wiesel, a survivor of the Jewish Holocaust said in a speech to an important gathering of White House dignitaries in 1999, “Gratitude is what defines the humanity of the human being.”

And gratitude is what we should now have today for that young American black boy. His name was Michael Jackson, someone I am privileged to call my friend, somebody who often stood alone to fend for the children in the world, for the destitute, for the victims of disease and injustice.

Michael was very troubled by the suffering he saw in the world and even more to the indifference to it. His first words to me when we met were, “Thank you so much for helping the people of Africa.”

There were no airs and graces, no pomp and circumstance and his only concern was for the lives of other people who lived on a different continent than the one in which either of us were born.

I had been to Africa and seen the devastation of the plague of HIV at first hand and when we discussed it, there was tears in his eyes and he said we had to do something together for the people of Africa.

He planned to hold a great concert in Rwanda and we would fly there together in his private plane and then down to see his great friend, Nelson Mandela. Sadly, these events were not to happen and the world lost one of its great humanitarians.

In that speech, Elie Wiesel had also some words to say about indifference. He said, “To be indifferent to the suffering in the world is what makes the human being inhuman.”

For the person who is indifferent, his or her neighbour is of no consequence. Their lives are meaningless as indifference reduces the other to an abstraction. Indifference always benefits the aggressor—never his victim, whose pain is magnified when he or she feels forgotten.

Michael Jackson felt that pain, not just for the hungry children, but for himself when the people of America remained indifferent to the injustice that was perpetrated upon him making him a virtual prisoner in his own land, causing him to flee to the Middle East and eventually find solitude in Ireland, my home.

What an irony that someone who cared so much about the rest of humanity was rejected by his own. It was a pain he felt deeply and one that on occasion he discussed with me, but mostly he did not want to talk about it and I never opened those painful memories…being like him, exiles beyond the norm.

Michael Jackson was never indifferent. He brought light where there was darkness, hope where there was despair; he never turned away from cruelty when he could give compassion.

We have just started a new century, a new millennium. The first ten years have been some of the most brutal the planet has ever encountered. The century started with terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. These actions dragged this great nation into conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. There have been wars in over twenty countries, which cast a dark shadow over humanity: So much violence, so much pain…

If there is one thing to do today, to preserve Michael Jackson’s memory, that is not be remain indifferent to the suffering we see all around us in the World.

There are times when I feel God has abandoned this world, the terrible earthquake in Haiti where bodies were cut from building by hacksaw, the funeral undertakers in Zambia where the coffin-makers work banging nails in wood late into the night, the streets of Northern Ireland where throats are cut for pronouncing a word on a beer bottle with the wrong accent.

I have lived in Baghdad, I have been a prisoner of Saddam Hussein, I carry the war wounds of Northern Ireland and I say to you here today that there is a God who looks down on all of this wrong and he brought us Michael Jackson to help to solve it.

Over seventy years ago a ship with a human cargo of one thousand Jews was turned away from the port of St. Louis back to Nazi Germany. The ship, which was already on the shores of the United States, was sent back and the people left to the fate of the dictator.

This happened in America, a country with the greatest democracy, the most generous of all new nations in modern history. It is happening again today, with the bombing and terrorizing of innocent children on foreign shores. Don’t let it happen, stand up for the things Michael stood for, to wipe out injustice, to combat disease and try and save the planet we live in.

What will the legacy of Michael Jackson? How will he be remembered by generations as yet unborn?

Let’s be grateful to God that he sent us such an angel to live amongst us for a while and let us not be indifferent to the wrongs we see around us. If Michael ever wanted us to do one thing that would make him happy as he looks down over us today it would be not to turn away from the victims of oppression and aggression and if in doubt about ever knowing what how to act, just think: “What would Michael do?”

—Dr. Patrick Treacy; June 22nd, 2011

MICHAEL JACKSON’S NAME ON DISPLAY AGAIN AT GARDNER SCHOOL AUDITORIUM
Elementary School’s Most Famous Alum Recognized for His Musical Legacy

October 15, 2010

Los Angeles — The silver, foot-high letters gleam once again, proclaiming The Michael Jackson Auditorium at Gardner Street Elementary School in Hollywood. It is the last public school attended by Jackson—then an 11-year-old sixth grader—who was the lead in a singing group with his brothers. Three months after school started, Motown released their debut album “Diana Ross Presents the Jackson 5.” And, the young entertainer was on his way to becoming an international star.

“It’s important for the District to value the artistic impact and humanitarian contribution that will be the lasting legacy of Michael Jackson,” said Los Angeles School Board member Steven Zimmer. “I’m happy that we will be recognizing and appreciating Michael’s LAUSD moment.”

The sign was originally unveiled at the then newly-refurbished auditorium in 1989. However, when the King of Pop was charged with child molestation, the sign was covered with layered board. For the record, the entertainer was never convicted. After his death last year fans began a campaign to have his name revealed.

At the direction of Los Angeles Unified School District Superintendent Ramon C. Cortines, the tribute was uncovered today.

“In recognition of Michael Jackson’s musical legacy and contribution to modern culture I have directed our maintenance and operations department to remove the layered board covering the tribute to Mr. Jackson at Gardner Street Elementary School in Hollywood,” said LAUSD Superintendent Ramon Cortines.

Los Angeles Unified School District Press Release

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Wesley Snipes in the video for “Bad”, directed by Martin Scorsese (1987).

From an interview with Wesley Snipes
Originally published at Collider.com
Jordan Tubiolo
March 2, 2010

Q: While we have you alone for a few moments, did you know that they are turning a Brooklyn subway station into a tribute to Michael Jackson for the “Bad” video?

WS: I heard about that, through the grapevine, yeah. That’s cool. That would be cool.

Q: What are your memories of shooting that video in the subway station?

WS: That was…yeah…the amazing thing was that I was only supposed to be on the film, or project, for about 3 days, and it turned out to be 3 and a half weeks, almost a month, really. And the thing I took from it most was watching Michael Jackson perform, at performance level, in his rehearsals. I said, “Wow, that’s the consummate artist right there.” And that’s the pinnacle of where I’d like to go, and the kind of skill I would like to have as an artist. That I can come in at my rehearsals and treat them like performances. I took that from him, and that’s what I’ve been trying to do consistently in my work.

Q: What do you think about Jay-Z commenting that “We Are The World” should have been left alone because an icon did it, and it should not have been recreated?

WS: Well, I understand the motivation behind it, but I don’t really have a critical comment about it. I am more critical about how Michael was treated, more than anything else. I think that he was an angel sent to us, and I think that we might have to reflect on how well we took care of him. People like to say, “Oh, people around him were bad and they didn’t do right by him.” But I think this is collective too. Because I don’t know the last time, and I can’t remember any other artist that attracted that much energy and projected that much power. That was that creative, and affected so many people, and was such a diplomat for America, and a champion for American culture, and African-American people worldwide. People wanted to move to America because of Michael Jackson. Industry changed, the music industry changed, because of Michael Jackson. That’s a gift to us, and, you know, I am concerned that the Good Lord may not send another one because we did not take good care of [Michael Jackson].

Michael Jackson Really is Gone
Originally published at EURweb
By Steven Ivory
February 23, 2010

When I was a kid, I used to do something that I occasionally do today: I’d cast my eyes on something—a table lamp, a hillside, a wristwatch, jar of food, a collection of clouds in the sky, an automobile—it could be anything, really—and just stare at it for several minutes.

If you gaze at something long enough, with minimal blinking and trance-like concentration, it begins to appear surreal, as if otherworldly.

That’s what happened the other day when my eyes fell upon a commemorative Michael Jackson magazine lying on the floor of my office with the cover line, MICHAEL JACKSON, 1958-2009. I stared at that line, trying, as the phrase goes, to wrap my brain around the concept. The more I stared at those words and dates, the more freakish they appeared.

Almost a year after his death, I wrestle with the reality that Michael Jackson is no longer here. There are days when I accept it. Other times, the idea of his death seems like a Twilight Zone episode I can’t escape.

Michael Jackson dead? Really? It still just doesn’t seem true.

It’s not like I can’t handle death. When I lost my mother suddenly at age fifteen, the pain and sense of loss seemed unbearable. But I also remember that as a child, when mama was alive and well, I’d ask myself, “What if mama ever died?”

It was one of those morbid, forbidden pubescent musings I’d privately dare consider, between wishing I owned an ice cream truck and imagining having the ability to fly. In retrospect, I believe thinking about mama’s death before it actually occurred in some way prepared me for the inconceivable. Because I’d thought about it, maybe her passing didn’t completely blindside my young emotions.

As late as a couple years ago, that kind of infrequent meditation of the unfathomable would prepare me for the unlikely death of Michael Jackson. Or so I thought. I used to wonder what it would be like if he went early—how he would go and what kind of reception the world would give his passing.

Ghoulishly, my friends and I would really go at it: if it ever happened, we asked, would Mike’s death and the public’s subsequent mourning outsize the world’s grief for, say, Elvis? Martin Luther King, Jr.? John Lennon? Lady Di?

It all depended, we concluded, on Michael’s impact and popularity as an entertainer at the time of his death vs. his assorted weirdness and damning court cases. Of course, now we know the truth—that for nearly a month after his death, Michael Jackson dominated the global media, if not the Earth’s collective consciousness.

Nevertheless, despite what he himself predicted would be a tragically early, sudden and clichéd death befitting cultural icons, I actually envisioned Michael Jackson living a long life. I imagined him existing in old age pretty much as he had in the years before his death, in relative seclusion.

I saw an elderly Michael publicly resembling his friend Elizabeth Taylor: proud, rickety and mostly good-natured, dressed up and made up, always looking, as his idol James Brown insisted a true star should, “like somebody people would pay money to see,” creating a paparazzi stir anytime he ventured out for something to eat or to shop.

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A Tale of Two Michaels
Originally published at Make-Up Artist Magazine
Michael R. Thomas
October 20, 2009

Editor’s note: This summer, make-up artist Michael Thomas and pop star Michael Jackson died within two months of each other (Thomas’ obituary is posted on our site). Here, Thomas, who was Jackson’s make-up artist for The Wiz, recalls some memorable experiences with Jackson on and off the set. Thomas’ wife, Christine Domaniecki, shared Thomas’ memories with us.

Wizardry Behind The Wiz

On The Wiz, we had Vac-u-Forms made from plaster life masks of each actor who appeared as a main character (including the Cowardly Lion, the Tin Man and the Scarecrow, played by Michael Jackson). They were made because every week or so, Stan Winston’s Los Angeles-based lab would ship a bunch of the actors’ freshly made foam-latex appliances to New York, where we shot the movie.

After I brought the Scarecrow appliances home, I would lightly attach the foam-latex pieces to the Vac-u-Form and pre-color them. It saved a lot of application time when we were in the make-up room at the Kaufman Astoria Studios. Keeping the foam-latex pieces on the form during pre-painting kept them in shape, the way a coat hanger keeps wrinkles out of a coat. On the inside of one of the forms, you can see a few color swatches. I duplicated the color of the Scarecrow’s greasepaint in artists’ acrylic. I put acrylic on the neck ruffle he wore as well, because if I used greasepaint, it would rub off onto his costume.

We were allowed to keep the forms at the end of the movie. I have about five.

Every morning I began Michael’s make-up by applying a bald cap to keep his hair, which was in very small braids, in place. Next I would apply the foam-latex pieces: a forehead piece, two cheek pieces, a nose piece (which was supposed to look like a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup wrapper), a chin piece and a neck ruffle. They went on in the morning and had to be maintained during the day.

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Michael Jackson’s personal artist shared pop king’s vision
Edna Gundersen, USA TODAY

SANTA FE — Artist David Nordahl was at home painting in February 1988 when the phone rang at midnight. A voice said, “This is Michael Jackson.”
Yeah, riiiight, he thought. But he quickly realized the call was no prank.

While visiting Steven Spielberg’s office, Jackson had admired one of Nordahl’s paintings of Army troops invading an Apache camp as a young corporal shielded two Indian children. Now the singer was reaching out to the painter. For art lessons.

“He asked if I taught drawing and painting,” says Nordahl, whose realist oils of 19th-century Apaches are highly prized. “I told him I didn’t, but that I’d think about it. I was really busy.”

Their hour-long conversation sparked a close friendship and working partnership that led Nordahl to abandon renown in the art world for a cloistered vocation as Jackson’s portraitist. From 1988 to 2005, Nordahl completed thousands of drawings and roughly a dozen epic commissions, seven of which were among 2,000 Jackson items in Julien’s authorized auction, which the singer sued to stop last spring.

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