Back To The Shoe-ture

The Back to the Future movies were awesome. And who doesn't like Michael J Fox? It was that second Back to the Future movie that had all of the cool stuff that we've been waiting for that has never materialized. (I'm talking hoverboards!) Well, until now. The Michael J Fox Foundation, eBay and Nike have all teamed up to sell those cool Nike sneakers that Marty McFly wore in Back to the Future II. The ones that lace up automatically! They're auctioning off 150 pairs of these shoes (one pair a day on eBay) per day until September 18. All of the money goes to help try to find a cure for Parkinson's. And the co-founder of the Google, Sergey Brin, will be matching all bids/donations up to a total of $50 million. Now don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that you're going to be able to afford any of these shoes. The bids start at $1,000. And from what I can tell from completed auctions, the average price per pair seems to be between $4,000 and $5,000. But it's still a good cause. (And unlike pasting some ambiguous status update on Facebook to give a false sense of raising awareness about something, this actually does raise awareness.) And again, who doesn't like Michael J Fox?

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Funding Burials Through eBay

In case you haven't heard, Corey Haim is dead. In case you were like me and already thought that he was dead, he wasn't. He is now, but it's new dead, not old dead. But dead is dead. And drug addicts are drug addicts. A lot of them end up in that dead is dead category. What are you going to do? (Uhhh....stop doing drugs? Now there's an idea!)

Apparently, Mr. Haim's situation was that, because he was a difficult drug addict to work with (hard to do good work when you're not there, so I've heard) he didn't have a lot of offers pouring in. And without offers, you're without work. And when you're without work, you're without money. Now, when you die, as crazy as this may seem, folks want you to pay money to them in order to bury you. That's hard to do when you don't have any money. And it's really hard to do when you're dead. That's why the whole 'paying for your funeral thing' is left up to those who didn't ruin their lives by ingesting so many drugs that it eventually and likely played a part in their demise in a downtown LA apartment building when they were 38. (By the way, a bit of useless trivia for you: Singer and woman kidnapper Rick James died in the same apartment building whenever it was that he met his predictable demise.)

Turns out, however, that Corey Haim's mother didn't have any money either. She has apparently been battling cancer. Cancer makes it hard to work. I don't have a problem with that. (Nice job, Corey. Couldn't curtail your drug usage to the point where you wouldn't have croaked and where your cancer riddled mother wouldn't have had to deal with the death of her son. Man, Corey Feldman was right. You were just a stand up guy.) What I have a problem with is how she was raising money for her son's funeral. I mean, maybe there's something that is not weird about selling your son's belongings on eBay for funeral change, but I don't know what that something would be.

That's right. She was selling his belongings on eBay. According to the folks over there at Associated Content (they're "The people's media company" doncha know?) "...most of Haim's personal belongings are being sold on eBay in order to raise money for the funeral." Now, I don't know if I was just late to the party or what, but I while there were plenty of Corey Haim items for sale on eBay (mostly autographed photos and the odd, odd memorial T-shirts that you can whip up 45 seconds after someone dies), I didn't find a lot that were his personal belongings. I did find this lovely dress shirt which sold for $99. Behold!

And I also found this Corey Haim toothbrush with a certificate of authenticity! So that's something! Behold!

Huh. The toothbrush, to my surprise, actually has one bid in on it and the bid is for $250! Who buys Corey Haim's toothbrush for $250? What are you going to do with that? See, I get buying memorabilia, but I prefer it to be relevant to the person that owned it. I mean, I would totally buy Elvis Presley's empty prescription drug bottles. Now THAT is memorabilia. I wouldn't go as seedy as to buy Bill Clinton's cigar box or anything like that. But I'd buy Whitney Houston's crack pipe. That'd be somethin'! David Carradine's belt? Sold! What can I say? I like a good conversation piece.

Side note: The personal items like the shirt are being auctioned off by a one Scott Schwartz. Apparently, the family gave the items to him to put on eBay, so it's not like he's doing it just to make money off of Corey Haim's boxer shorts or anything like that. He was a friend of Corey's. And if the name doesn't ring a bell, perhaps when I mention that he was the kid in the movie A Christmas Story who got his tongue frozen stuck on the flagpole. There's a claim to fame for you! You're known as "Tongue on the Flagpole" guy AND the merchant auctioning off Corey's Haim's dress pants on eBay. That's a job title if I've ever heard of one.

I have two points with all of this. The first point goes back to the absolutely reprehensible Corey Feldman. Dude, if you knew that your friend died broke, what say you kick in a bit and make it so that it doesn't go public, all right? If he was "your friend" and you want him to be remembered as "a legend" (he wasn't a legend, by the way, so that was never going to happen, I was just saying), what say you see if you can scrounge up some cash for his funeral and his burial? What say you ask the addle brained Larry King (whose show you're always on when one of your past cohorts kicks it)? Why don't you ask him to pony up some cash for this guy's funeral? Why don't you do anything besides shoving your face behind every microphone out there and saying how much you loved him, while at the same time, someone is auctioning his tube socks on eBay? What is wrong with you?

And my second point is more of just a point of contention. I understand that caskets and burials are expensive. I know that very well. But you know, there is an option. There is cremation. And it's a heck of a lot cheaper. Don't get me wrong. If you are planning on just burying someone in a casket and then you find out you're going to be going to cremation route, it's a bit tough to swallow at first. I don't know why. They're just as dead either way. What I'm saying is that it's not like there aren't any options if you don't have the cash for a casket. When my Dad died, I had no idea he wanted to be cremated. And learning of that desire was not exactly the easiest thing I've ever had to swallow. But the cremation by the Neptune Society was about a thousand dollars (and I'm in the heart of ridiculously expensive Silicon Valley, so don't be giving me any crap about my location or anything like that). We put him in a beautiful cherry wood container with a coastal scene engraved on it along with his name and everything for another three hundred bucks. (There was no way I was going with the stock, flimsy, fake brass container for $35!) We bought a plot for cremains (yes, that's what they're called and it oogs me out, too) in an awesome little cemetery in a tiny coastal town with massive pine trees everywhere and a view of a small ravine for $750. AND you're allowed to stack FOUR cremains in that thing! So technically, his portion of the plot was only $187.50! My Dad loved a good deal. I'm sure he was happy with it all.

So there are options. For a little over two grand, my Dad got the best burial I could have wanted for him. But beforehand, I wouldn't have known that I would have wanted that. In the end, it's all the same. He's exactly where he would have been no matter how we did it. And now he's where he is at a fraction of the cost of a full on casketed burial. I guess I'm just a little irritated that Corey Haim being penniless at death means that there needs to be thousands and thousands (the family is estimating twenty grand, by the way) of dollars raised for his burial. That's not what needs to happen. People need to stop acting like it does.

I just got done looking at a bunch of photos on Corey Haim's website. (Yes! He had a website!) Most of them were of him looking gaunt and strung out. You know, like a drug addict. But there were a bunch of them from when he was younger and before the drugs either had grabbed hold of him or before they had taken their toll. And I realize that the guy in those photos is the son that his mother lost. I'm sarcastic, I'm not heartless. My sincere condolences go out to his mom. Outliving your child does not sound like anything that anyone should have to go through. If you have a problem with whatever substance you choose, do everyone a favor and get off your drugs, try thinking about someone other than yourself for a change and edge yourself closer to making sure that you don't put your parents in the position that Corey Haim put his parents.

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Gravy Train du Jour

So this is the third Michael Jackson post in just as many days. But look, I received more hits just from yesterday than I did from all last week. When I mentioned to a friend of mine that the blog was 'on fire' and she put it together that it was because of the current domination of Michael Jackson in the media. That's when she called me a whore. And be that as it may (I'm not very proud), I looked at this gravy train with biscuits for wheels and I'm riding it for a little while longer. And while I'm not apologizing, I will ask you (sort of in my defense), where else are you going to find angles like the ones that I pull out of thin air? Ah-HA! So there. Or something.

Clearly, since Thursday, Internet traffic has detoured itself largely toward one topic - the newly deceased Michael Jackson. In the second hour after his death was announced, I checked the semi-useful, often frustrating Google Trends to see how big this was going to be. Out of the Top 100 Trends, there were only five that were not Michael Jackson related. So which five topics were big enough to break through the Michael Jackson Death Trend Domination?

• Suzanne Saperstein (I didn't know who she was either. Apparently, she was married to some billionaire whom she divorced in 2006 and is now selling the house that she had built to be almost an exact replica of Château de Versailles. By the way, that sort of thing? Yeah, that's a sign you have too much money.)
  
  
• Farrah (also searched for as fara fossett and phara faucet. If you're one of those folks who is spelling her name like that, what in the hell are you even searching on her for? There's only ONE way to spell FARRAH FAWCETT and if you know who she is, you know how to spell it! What is wrong with people?)


• Vince Carter (Nets player. Was traded to the Magic on Thursday. There will always be sports.)
  
• Maria Belen Chapur photo (She is the Argentinian chiquita whom S.C. Gov. Mark Sanford is having an affair with. He disappeared last week and allegedly didn't tell any of his staff where he was going when he jetted off to see her. That prompted some to label him with the awesome nickname of Fled Sanford.


• Jeff Goldblum (This was before the "Harrison Ford is also dead" rumor had begun.)

Hey, wait a minute. What was with that whole "Jeff Goldblum/Harrison Ford/Joe Pesci is dead" rumor that folks tried to start in what has to be the most feeble and pathetic attempt at derailing publicity from something. Seriously, was that the best you could do? Jeff Goldblum? I mean, no offense to Jeff or anything, but it was Michael Jackson who died. I don't think that people are going to stop Googling Jacko and shriek "Oh, my God! Jeff Goldblum! Michael who?" Ain't happenin'.

What would it have take to get the Jacko story bumped off of the front page of every newspaper, the cover story of every magazine, the lead story of every newscast? Aside from having the President assassinated, unless Michelle was found on the grassy knoll, I don't even know if that would have done it. MAYBE if President Barry was mauled to death in the Rose Garden by Bo. That might be over the top enough. Jeff Goldblum dying isn't anywhere NEAR the top. (And people thought that Jacko was out of touch with reality. Sheesh.)

The graph of Michael Jackson searches over the 30 days before his death looks virtually the same for every region that is available on Google Trends. There's a long flat line for 29 days and then on the 30th day, ZOOM! Straight up! That was Thursday, of course. I'm writing this about 64 hours after Jackson went to the top of the charts for probably the last time. (When it's the top of the Google Trends chart, it's likely not going to be good for anyone in that position.) How long does it take to relinquish those 95 spots? Less than 64 hours, apparently. At midnight, Sunday, Michael Jackson related searches on Google Trends were the exact opposite of what they had been on Thursday. Five Trends related to Michael and ninety five Trends about something else. (Most often it's something that people have seen on a TV show that they are SO endlessly fascinated with that they start Googling that interest en masse. It's odd.) And I'm probably stretching it a bit on two of them.

Coming in at...

• 23 is michael jackson death photos
  
• 43 is michael jackson autopsy results
  
• 47 is dr. deepak chopra
  
• 69 is michael jackson children pictures
  
• 100 is jesse jackson (That's Jesse "Inject-Myself-Into-Every-Media-Story-Involving-A-Black-Person" Jackson, not some long lost brother of Michael's that we'd never heard about until now. But it wouldn't surprise me if he was. A death like this and they start crawling out of the woodwork.)

In those first few hours after the news broke (and we were subjected to non-stop commentary from people who probably weren't even qualified to offer commentary on their own lives) I hopped on eBay to see what was going to happen there. From what I could tell, the official time of death was 2:26pm and the next Michael Jackson item listed on eBay was done so at 2:54pm. 28 minutes later. So, what took y'all so long? Wow. And at the time, there were somewhere around 1,407 Michael Jackson items for sale. There are now 47,873. No s**t. One guy was selling car window decals for $2.99 each. All they said was simply "God Bless Michael Jackson". He sold over 100 of them in an hour. Then again, he was the only one who was selling something like that. There are currently 250 listings for Michael Jackson decals, so business dried up a little bit for that guy.

But if you want to see some of the stupidest people on the planet at their prime, look through the things that are being offered for sale on eBay during "this troubled time" without Jacko. First of all, at least 300 auctions are for domain names. And most of them are really stupid sounding and most of them the folks want around half a mil for. Oh yeah, and most of these people have never sold ANYTHING on eBay before. And if someone has that kind of money that they want to spend on something that stupid, it kind of makes me wonder how they came to have that much money in the first place.

But then come the auctions that are one of two things and often a combination of both. They're either fraudulent/misrepresented/over-hyped items and/or they're ridiculously priced. If you're in the market to blow about two hundred grand on something and you'd like it to be something authentic, let me give you a few tips.

First tip: DON'T (I could stop here and feel pretty good about things, but I'll continue.)

Second tip: If it seems like something that everyone else has, even though the seller is insisting that it's "original" (you know, like the Thriller album. Come on! How many people have THAT?!?!), DON'T.

Third tip: If things are misspelled in a grotesque fashion, DON'T. (An example of 'grotesque fashion' would be: "This is the original 1982 copy of Michael Jackson's Thriller in almost new condition. We will pay for insured shipping to you. I only played it once to get Eddy Van Hallen with Michael Jackson on Beat It. Great for collecting. I got it to listen to Eddy Van Hallen play with Michael Jackson on Beat It. It has sat on a self since then. It even has the inside paper sleeve with lyrics. We will pay for insurance and shipping."

That bozo would like $100,000 for the album that everyone else already has. Or do we? Wait a minute! Eddy Van Hallen didn't play on MY copy of Thriller! Should I bid???? Ewww. Wait. I just read there that it had "sat on a self since then". Whose SELF? Ick.

Among some of the stranger Michael Jackson branded items for sale on eBay:

The Michael Jackson Fishing Lure. "While this lure was designed to be a GREAT GIFT it actually catches fish. It is effective on Bass, Pike, Musky/Muskie, Trout, Salmon, Stripers, Walleye, and many others. It may be especially effective on KING Salmon." (Uh-huh. You prove to me first that thing isn't going to scare all of the fish off and then we'll talk.)

The Michael Jackson Cross Stitch Kit. The Michael Jackson Dog Tag (that you can wear with your Admiral's jacket)
And what eBay auction list would be complete without the inclusion of the image of Michael Jackson on a piece of cake. Behold!

I'm pretty sure that the folks with some of these auctions on eBay are also the same folks who are kind enough to inform me that I've won the lottery in Nigeria AND they're willing to help me collect my winnings! So they MUST be good folks, right? Especially this one. This guy has outdone himself. His auction items include several things found outside of the home Jackson was renting in Hombly Hills:

A hamburger found outside the gates

A White glove found outside the gates

A bubble maker found in the bushes.

A penny found on the street.

What a maroon.

And since I'm still doing a Michael Jackson post because it's how people are finding this blog, I should mention some of the keywords that have been used for searching for particular information about Michael Jackson and all of the dying.

Why were Liza Minnelli and Usher together? (Ah-HA! I knew I wasn't the only one thinking, "WTH?"

Liza Minnelli high on Larry King Michael Jackson (Hasn't she been high since the 80s?)

List of words Michael Jackson made up (Um...Sha-moe?)

Inspiring words of Michael Jackson

say say say video michael jackson awful (And again I say Ah-HA!! I knew it was terrible

jacko means jocko chimp (What? You found this blog with that search? Wow. I love those Google boys.)

the words to sing i will be there by michael jacson (Huh. You wouldn't be able to figure out that there was a 'k' missing somewhere, eh?)

did michael jackson sing to his parrot (Why wouldn't he have? Because it would have been too strange? I don't think that's it.)

why doesn't michael jackson like speaking to adults (Do YOU like speaking to adults? I rest my case.)

what happened with michael jackson and the kid from home alone (Um, he was found 'not guilty'.)

how did he lose the neverland (Maybe it had something to with The Iraq and such as.)

And I shall wrap up this edition of the Michael Jackson Gravy Train Post Du Jour with some photos of Jacko's children because that's the other thing that folks are really flocking to when they stop by. The folks want to see pics of the kids. There's the youngest, little Blanket, and then the two older children, Pillowcase Prince Michael Jr and Dust Ruffle Paris Michael Katherine. Behold!

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