* Michael Jackson is dead. I’ve been so busy today I’ve barely had time to process it, but is there any way to overstate the depth of the man’s genius and the tragedy of his decades-long demise? Just the other day I was watching the footage of the Motown anniversary concert where he debuted the moonwalk, and I got to thinking about how while it’s easy for people my age who’ve watched him and parodies of him all our lives to take for granted, this stuff didn’t come out of nowhere–this guy had to think all those moves up and then have the physical talent to do them. And that’s quite aside from his world-beating songwriting and singing gifts, and his ability to comport himself as probably the closest thing the world has actually produced to a Ziggy Stardust rock and roll messiah, and the fact that he accidentally became one of the most important figures in horror history, and on and on and on…and whatever the truth of his dealings with children, which I think were disturbing even in the best-case scenario, it’s also impossible to separate that, and him, from what was likely horrendous abuse at the hands of his loathsome father…and of course there’s no inherent reason that he couldn’t have kept producing worthwhile music for years to come if he could have mastered whatever it was that was so visibly tearing him apart….and, and, and. God, just such a complex, astonishing, tragic figure. Fuck, okay, now I’m getting upset about it. I loved you Michael Jackson.

* Coincidentally, Ta-Nehisi Coates, a blogger who’s getting so good I was already going to link to him today simply to say “Ta-Nehisi Coates is a really, really good blogger,” wrote two pieces on Michael just a couple of days ago that you should read. Andrew Sullivan’s post is just beautiful, too.

* While we’re at it, I’m still pretty proud of the essay I wrote about the influence of “Thriller.”

* Well this has got to be my favorite review of the month: Not Coming to a Theater Near You’s Adam Balz tackles The Running Man with an utterly straight face (“Richards is brought on stage, introduced to the live audience against a thunder of jeering – he is, after all, the Butcher of Bakersfield, a lie that is reinforced through doctored video of him firing on the unarmed crowd – and set down in a metal cart that will deliver him, at an unimaginable velocity, through underground tunnels, into the massive, 400-square-foot arena.”). I have seen The Running Man more than any other of the ’80s’ many ultraviolent sci-fi action movies, largely because it was the one I watched as a kid. Heck, it was all but designed for a kid, modeled as it was on the visual language of pro-wrestling–but with killing! So this review really has it all for me. There’s a list of the varied career paths of the many, many non-actors who star in the film (Family Feud host, titular member of Fleetwood Mac, son of Frank Zappa, future governor (twice!), football/lacrosse legend, etc etc etc), a tidbit about Stephen King/Richard Bachmann’s writing process, a leisurely stroll through a couple of the movie’s adorably gigantic plot holes, a Slavoj Zizek reference, a comparison to Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator, you name it. If any of that sounds appealing to you, please read it.

* Now, if you’d told me earlier that I’d find a review today that I’d actually like better than Jog’s take on Greg Rucka & J.H. Williams III’s Detective Comics debut, I wouldn’t have believed you. Funny world, innit? Still, this thing’s very good–better than the comic, I think. (Did anyone else think it was funny that between the main Backup story and the Question backup story, there were two virtually identical scenes of a lesbian crimefighter in her civvies walking into a room and chatting with her late-middle-aged sidekick as he works on the computer?)

* Over the past few years Fantagraphics has truly brought out the format geek in me; I think it was their amazing softcover digest-plus re-release of Love & Rockets that did it, but the design and format of their Jason books has been killer too. So it’s fascinating to me that they’re repackaging Jason’s black-and-white/two-color books (some for the third time!) in the hardcover format they did for Low Moon. I’m actually not 100% sure how I feel about this–part of the appeal of Jason’s stuff is just how damn many books he’s put out through Fanta and just how awesome all of them are, and when you boil them down to three or four volumes you lose that impact a bit–but I’m sure they’ll be gorgeous things, and of course the comics are among the best in the world.

* While promoting that longer-but-still-not-complete Watchmen Director’s Cut that will inevitably be supplanted by the actual full-fledged Director’s Cut that he’d been describing to anyone who’d listen for months before the release of the film, director Zack Snyder said that Frank Miller really is writing a sequel to 300. Fingers crossed!

* To distract its citizens from the ongoing protests, Iran is broadcasting…The Lord of the Rings?

* Topless Robot. Transformers 2. The magic happens tonight.

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