A Full Frontal, Iconoclastic Week >>

Good morning, Charlie!

There are many posters in homage to the female form, but my favorite is that of Raquel Welch, emblazoned in a vintage-hazy movie poster while thinly clad in a mammoth skin two-piece as she stares vacantly in an upward direction, face open and gleaming like a saint in epiphany. This was the legendary poster for the 1 Million Years BC movie marquee. Not the most revealing of getups, nevertheless flawless feminine glory.

My runner up classic was Farrah Fawcett.

Farrah was always beaming, charming, clumsily happy, and carelessly radiant—not just pretty but uncommonly sweet. Neither of these women “revealed all the goods” in these photos, and yet they captured the imaginations of adolescents for a generation as the sweetheart pinups telling leery mothers that their little boys were growing up. For others, the faded laminate reminds them of classier times, when a full frontal had not yet replaced the kidhood dreams of longing, nor ousted the original “feminine mystique” that would forever elude a generation of combat boot-strapping femmenazis like Kate Millet. Farrah was one of many cougars that, in distant waking hours, still prowled my bachelor heart…now only in fleeting memory. Farewell, angel.

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In this trifecta of a week, another marine was ushered into the Elysian fields. Maybe Ed McMahon learned his classy sidekick demeanor from the years he served his country in our armed forces, yet another fighterpilot our nation’s electorate is so wont to reject. At any rate, his underappreciated straight-man countenance was a solid wall off which Johnny Carson could spring in his comedic antics. Serving for years as the Samwise to Carson’s Frodo, Ed McMahon defined the classy give-and-take of any professional relationship. I have yet to find a heteroplatonic manbuddy to fulfill me in that degree, but then again I possess a certain repugnant quality. But putting me aside, Ed will be greatly missed. Straight shooters don’t need or want long eulogies, so I will move on.

Now speaking of heteroplatonic manbuddies, there is still to mention the most enigmatic character to pass through the rod iron gates. Michael Jackson, the King of Pop, crowned prince of the moonwalk, the master of the anti-gravity dance tilt, and the most recognizable entertainer on the planet…died Thursday of cardiac arrest.

My initial reaction was oblivious to the death of a child rapist, if those charges were indeed true. Being a hawk, I have a kneejerk kink to pull out the baseball bat when it comes to reproof of deviance, and become Elliot Ness for as long as I need to be. But my compassion was piqued as I saw Michael, in many ways, as the tragic figure that he has been repeatedly deemed. Admittedly, he had no real childhood, and thus morphed into a man with a romantic and unhealthy desire to gain eternal youth. And for all of his demons, I cannot say which would be more illuminating; his physch eval or his toxicology report. Sadly, only one of those is now available, meaning that Michael Jackson’s death will leave more questions hanging in the breeze than the answers we seek to satisfy our voyeuristic sense of closure, especially for the life of a man who produced so much for us but remained such a mystery to all. The pop star’s death has already caused a reverberation across the Internet, the likes of which have never been seen before according to online companies like Wikipedia and Google, inadvertently crashing the worldwide web in a surreal way that the Lawnmower Man himself would envy.

What if…and I am going into a flight of fancy here so bear with me…what if MJ never molested anybody? What if sensuality, to him, was fearful and to be avoided like a trapping of greed, desire, and adulthood chest-beating? What if he just saw sex as mean and grown-up? And what if, at Neverland Ranch, he tucked those kids into bed and slumbered next to them, sincerely loving them for their innocence… and never going any further than that?  Either act is indefensibly obscene, but between the pedophilia charge and simply idealizing children, I just cannot say which thought saddens me more.

Since journalistic integrity now feeds out of an endless void of license described as “undisclosed sources,” I will do the same in recalling a conversation I had with a psychiatrist, who told me about the phenomenon of men, who after suffering the death of their wives, would order prostitutes to their bedrooms. According to the story, they would have them simply lay down next to them in the dark, not unlike that scene with Guy Pierce in the movie Memento. This scenario recalls the loving obsessions of William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily,” centered on a fervent and widely misunderstood victim of bereavement.  What little is clear is that Jackson ultimately wanted eternal youth, not eternal life, but was made to settle for a shoddy version of just one -- in the same way we all must.

Undoubtedly, an era of entertainment has boundingly passed away in this week of ours. And that is all I am going to say about that.

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Now for the important news:

• Congressman Henry Waxman told American companies to “beat it” with Cap-and-Trade.
• A community organizer said to millions of struggling Iranians: “It doesn’t matter who’s wrong or right,” instead of firmly stating: “you are not alone.”
• On QVC, Obama leveled with the American public about the missing 600 billion dollars in his proposed healthcare overhaul, leaving all options on the table and affirming Jackson’s cherished verse of “anything for money.”

Our nation was watching Transformers and autobots this Friday, and it was unbeknownst to us that our nation is being wrenchingly transformed. Sigh. At least Optimus Prime wouldn’t negotiate with emergent threats (I enjoyed the veiled swipe at the Obama Defense Department). But wait and see, folks. The sticker shock for this General Electric bonanza will be much greater than that of a father who looks at the packaged Megatron figurine on the toy store shelf. It will sink in. And when it does: HEYOOOO!!! >>