Here it is, my obligatory Michael Jackson post. I can't overlook his death on Marathon Pundit forever--I'm a Chicago area blogger and Jackson, who was born in Gary, Indiana in 1958, is one of the most famous people ever to emerge from the Chicago sprawl.The Jacksons left Gary for good when Michael was eleven, and for the most part they kept the struggling Northwest Indiana city in their family rear view mirror.
Although the Jackson 5 did talk about Gary a lot on their short-lived Saturday morning cartoon show.
But Joe Jackson, the family patriarch, visited the steel hub last year to discuss building a Jackson museum that would incorporate the family's tiny one-time home.
That house is being renovated, which brought Tito and Marlon Jackson back to Gary--for the first time in forty years.
Michael Jackson last visited Gary in 2003, plans for a Gary theme park he would finance fell through.
The day after the King of Pop's death, Gary Mayor Rudy Clay suggested that Jackson's final resting place should be in the dunes of Gary.
Not a good idea. Clay has dollar signs in his eyes, and using last-resting places as a tourist draw usually doesn't work out.
I can offer you as evidence Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania, where of course sports legend Thorpe is buried, and Golden, Colorado, where the inglorious grave of Buffalo Bill Cody can be found.
As for my own reflections on Jackson, I was never a huge fan, but I remember the anticipation awaiting the debut of The Thriller video in 1983 while slamming beers in a friend's apartment in Champaign, Illinois. It was an exciting night, and Jackson didn't disappoint.
A decade later he was Jacko...but that's a story you know already.
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