Here's to the MJ I knew

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qF0o-W5uu8o&w=425&h=344]Off the Wall was one of my favourite albums. Of course Thriller and Bad were up there, and they have some of my favourite MJ songs ("Man in the Mirror" would probably win the sweeps if I had to choose), but if you wanted me to tell you which one gave me the most joy, it'd be Off the Wall. It was the last one which had Michael Jackson looking the way God intended him to look -- like a damn cute black boy.Of course, when "Billie Jean" hit the charts, and Michael moonwalked across the stage, like virtually every other woman of colour that I knew (and men too), I leaped out of my seat and squealed. When he released  the "Thriller" video and the world fell for this cute black boy, we moonwalked across our floors.The whiter Michael got the further he got from me and from my friends. The more he assimilated, for whatever reason, the closer he came to yesterday. By the time his hair caught on fire on the Pepsi shoot, we'd determined that Michael, the Michael Jackson we'd grown up with, the singer of "Ben" and "Got to Be There" and "She's Out of My Life", was dead. All that was left was the clone.But here's to Michael -- to all the Michaels that he ever was -- the greatest performer I've ever seen.And I don't do starstruck.http://c.brightcove.com/services/viewer/federated_f9/25560314001?isVid=1&publisherID=1348423968