My favorite Michael Jackson moment was when I saw Moonwalker. I thought that was like the coolest thing ever.

*Can I also mention when I got my Beat It shirt. It was HELLA cool!*

I cant help it but everytime I think of Michael Jackson I think of Weird Al, doing " Iam Fat "

my best memories of him was when he was a young kid with the Jackson 5  "I'll Be There"

my favorite is Thriller, Dont stop till you get enough

What happened to all of the other posts?

Matt I can say I somewhat grew up with  MJ. I'm 48. I recall Michael when he was a kid and I was. I remember AM RADIO!  ha Seems it was mostly Rand B  and Soul music. It was a great day  and time.

Yes I think there seems to always be kids rivalry on who was better of the kids bands,..I guess no different than today . but those kids made the way for kids today to have what the have now a voice and recording  careers.  When I hear old Motown   Jackson 5 it takes me back to when I was a child riding my bike around town with an old transistor radio listening to them. As I grew up so did the Jackson 5. MJ grew up too,.and felt Quincy Jones could take him places he needed to go and sure enough he did! Off the wall was as  they say a perfect album as so it was!  Along the time Bad came along  the quality wasn't as perfect but  still not bad. by the time I was a casual watcher of the videos and not a MJ music buyer. shortly after became his ahem,... color change. My music style had changed more like your Matt. I went to a harder edge as a younger adult. I watch as a lot of people did  Facts of Life with Tooty raving about  MJ and him being her favorite of all time it was cute  to see a little girl  be that way with Michael.  Many girls were when I was a kid about MJ  I think back to when I had  friends around the corner. They were what seemed to me to be a multitude of kids  The Hughes kids. My best friend of Donald Hughes  and we all used to sing  a lot, J5 songs ,..everything when we were anywhere from 8 to 12. They moved away in 1973-74 as I recall.  I went back to Wisc. where they moved. I spent the summer with them and came home. I found as I got home  my best friend Donald had been hit and killed by a driver as Donald made his way down the side of the rode on his bike. When i think of the old hits of the Jackson's so do i remember Donald. The good time the sweetness of innocents.  So when I think of MJ I think of him when i was a kid. And when I was a grown man watching Michael making some interesting  and popular videos/music.  

As a side bar, I am hearing that MJ had broke the MTV  color barrier. I didn't know there was a color barrier with MTV. I just didn't think  MTV  played anything other that hard rock back in that day and it didn't fit the format. (MJ's Music) I don't think it was a case of  some kind of prejudice. 

Wasn't Michael in the news earlier  this week or last week? Something  about being sick?

Late has it  since his Dr.  was there (there conflicting stories that he wasn't)  He may have gave him a Demerol shot. There was concerns that he may have got back on pain killers and addicted to them. No one knows yet until the Autopsy is complete today.  Either way it's sad that he's dead and that  does take away from the pain the family will suffer

He had talent.  But would you have wanted your 10 year old son alone in a room with him?  Are we going to ignore the fact that he was a pedophile -- that he seduced little boys, innocent children -- are we to ignore that because he had talent?  And how does the African American community ignore the fact that Jackson tried to look white?  That he changed his nose and the color of his skin, I think that would be an affront to African Americans.

I just took a Facebook quiz that asks “Which Michael Jackson song are you?” The results?

Black or White!

All I have to say about that? Black OR white…. whichever Michael was your favorite, he is a worldwide musical phenomenon! He’s a legend. The King of Pop and we all have our Michael Jackson memories, whether we were fans or not!

I remember having a crush on a guy in 8th grade because he dressed like Micheal Jackson. He had the jacket with the zippers and white socks and the white glove and was a pretty good break dancer. LOL Did the moonwalk damned good too.

I dreamed that someday him and I would have little Michael Jackson looking babies! ha.

Then for a while there was a time when it wasn’t “cool” to like Michael. But everyone still did and just didn’t tell each other about it, I’m sure. I remember thinking, “For someone who doesn’t like Micheal, you sure know all his songs!” hahahah.. In the meantime, my side of the “wall” in the small bedroom I shared with my sister was COVERED in Micheal Jackson posters. I think I even have a picture of me floating around the house in front of all my posters. I’ll have to dig it out.

Michael had a rough childhood as a kid and I think he never quite really “grew up” and was a kid at heart.

And mentally.

He related more with kids than grown people and I think while he was maybe a little inappropriate in his relationships with them (sleepovers, sleeping in the same bed, etc) I can honestly say that I don’t believe he “molested” them. I just don’t think he had enough common sense to realize that was inappropriate behavior for a grown man.

He had the heart and soul of a child which is why he was so easily exploited by those around him ready for a handout and a quick buck.

Even all his legal problems have never been able to take away from his musical legacy. Musicians emulate him to this day and probably will from years to come.

Does anyone remember on the MTV Music Awards when he thought he was receiving the Artist of the Millenium Award but really , they were just wishing him a Happy Birthday. It messed up but it's kinda funny.

Donni, I totally remember that.

I wasn't sure which blog I was suppose to post my memories to...so, I decided to post my memories here too....

One of my biggest memories of Michael Jackson was watching the Thriller video for the first time. I can remember there was some sort of family celebration that day, and my ENTIRE family was at my grandparent's house. When it was time for the premire we all hudled into the living room and watched in amazement. Nobody had ever made a music video of this magnitude. The video set an unreachable goal for other music artist to try and top it. There has been many great atempts by others throughout the years to compete with the Thriller video, but none have came close. As soon as the video ended, my cousins and I immediately started to immitate his moves. I remember being proud of my Michael Jackson sticker collection I sported on my Trapper Keeper. And now I have a new memory to add to the mix...I had the GREATEST time dancing the night away at B Ryder's the Saturday after Michael Jackson's death.  DJ Mikey played an awesome megamix of Jackson's greatest.  And I have never seen so many people pack a dance floor like they did this night!  It was unbelieveable!!  You seen eveyone trying to imitate his most famous moves, people singing the lyrics as loud as they could, and most of all everyone was having a blast!!  I asked a friend, do you think this many people would've been on the dance floor if it was just a regular saturday night with a Michael Jackson song playing in a club?  It was obvious that all these people were out there dancing until there was sweat rolling down thier faces to pay tribute to a great, talented, and legendary man.  It's sad to look back at all the rumors, allegations and nonsense that followed his life. Jackson grew up not having a childhood, and that definitely damaged him and made him a little wierd, strange and odd. But doesn't everyone have some sort of oddity behind them? Maybe we don't wear it on our sleeve like MJ did, but it's there. I don't care how bizarre he was, I believe he earned the title of Legend. My heart goes out to his family, especially his 3 orphaned children. May he finally rest in peace and now live eternally in the childhood he never had but yearned so much for. "If You Wanna Make The World A Better Place, Take A Look At Yourself, And Then Make A Change"

Walter to be honest I was  molested by my half sister. So I don't trust anyone with my kid,.ANYONE. he's 12 and I still stand in a public restroom waiting for him to finished up. As I've gotten older I've come to realize something about MJ. He was never convicted, and where is the proof? Was it money hungry sick people wanting 22 million dollars to settle? I think so. NOW I do. yea.h I flip flop on the issue  like the movie Doubt. I think it was La Toya that told him looong before it all happened "Michael, you need  to stop having kids sleep in the bed with you or this or that, yeah he was  strange,..you bet!.  You have your childhood taken from you and become a business person at 10  you will get weird too.  I think the African Community loved him anyway, they KNEW he came from two black  parents and he was black no matter how much he bleached his skin.  Twinkie it's funny I didn't read your comments until after I wrote to this point ,..very similar ha Hell It's  very possible those two kids aren't even his,..the mother Roe,.is the mother but it might not be  him the fathered them,..Blanket is not either of theres that child was adopted. I think he might even be asexual,.I think he was strange but very child like.  I think the beginning of his bleaching and plastic surgery had a lot to do with the Pepsi Commercial  incident where he was burnt. I think he was  just trying to be normal again maybe? It may have disfigured him in a  way that he never felt like he looked right again.

I think we all have issues , and add to that allot of money and allot of fame and it makes the issues a million times worse.soooo they say that most people that make it big and become famous have that big drive to make it big and maybe with all that comes a weird ness I don't know look how many rich famous actors musicians athletes get into trouble for so many weird things . Michael wasn't  afraid of getting into trouble, they thought he was a pedophile so he always had kids around him. it just made him more famous, got him more publicity. we don't know if he was a pedophile or was just playing to the media so much that he built "Neverland" now we wont know cus he is gone

How did he turn white?

Gramps , maybe it was face paint?

Tragic that such a *great* talent was so twisted up psychologically and physiologically ... and ... now dead.  I'm amazed that even my high schoolers, who weren't even born during MJ's haydays are so involved in his music, dance, life and passing now.

... and let us *all* recognize that legal and scripted drugs have become ... and have been for awhile now ... among the most dangerous and lethal out there.

C'mon folks ... this should make society and law enforcement take notice ...

If these "dealers" were knocking off pharmacies to obtain opiate-based dope, we'd hear about every pharmacy in town being held up twenty times a day ... most opiate addicts (Oxy, Vicadin, etc) are up to a habit of approx 40 pills a day ... at about $2 a pill. 

Docs/physicians/MDs are writing the scripts and pushing this stuff ... naively, innocently, sympathetically, or out and out illegally ...

There's a big hole in the system somewhere that this is escaping attention ... and it's so easy to obtain these drugs. 

... take it from someone who's been there ... just as personally ... my natural mother threatened suicide in the 70s ... I flushed every pill she had in the house ... including her vitamins and estrogen ... I called the police to help me.  I even had her nonvoluntarily committed as a threat to herself at KMC ...

Within two hours of release she had every script refilled and had enough legal and lethal sh*t from several pharmacies to land her in the Tulare county hospital ... the sheriff's dept. called me to come ... and maybe she would still be alive when I got there.

And Kern County to this day worries more about medical marijuana ...

... yes, (collectively) you all can argue to me about meth and crank here now ...

... but, in my teaching tenure, the most serious abuse I've seen in my students is from scripted drugs ... not pot, meth, crank, alcohol combined.

Sorry for the rant ... but passionate about it.