Thursday, May 12, 2005
MJ, Chappelle, Cobain and Lennon
Am I the only one sick of the Michael Jackson trial? But I guess I am not the one to ask as I didn’t even have any interest in the OJ trial, I just wanted justice and we all know what happened there. Anyway, MJ is on another level, he honestly doesn’t think what he has been doing is wrong. Now I don’t know what happened, nor do I claim to know all the facts, but I think that he slept with those kids in the way that every kid had a sleepover party when you were 10. MJ himself has the mentality of a 10 year old. I just read on Yahoo news that he is quoted as saying “Adults have let me down.” That’s all I am going to say about that, as it is just speculation.
Let’s talk Dave Chappelle for second. The guy is wildly successful (and damn funny I might add) and signs a huge contract extension with Comedy Central. Then he disappears, production is halted on the third season of his show, then he checks himself into a psych ward in South Africa. I ask myself why? What happened? I never understood the plight of celebrities with the ‘whoa is me’ thing, and the ‘you don’t understand the pressure.’ To me you’re getting paid obscenely so quit whining and produce what made you famous.
I stress this is what I USED to think. Recently I read the memoirs of one of my heroes, Kurt Cobain. Think what you want, but Cobain is to Generation X as John Lennon was to hippies in my opinion. He was our voice. Anyway, in his memoirs, the reader observes his decline and how all he really wanted to do was what he loved, write and play music. Sure, he signed the deal too and made records and millions of dollars; it was the American dream. But what no one thinks about, and I think he relayed it best, was how you overlook the fact that you can never look back. You can’t walk down the street anymore; you can’t hangout at a club with a few friends and suck back a few dozen beers. All that is gone and it can be a lot to deal with. You now have pressure to perform and paparazzi jumping out of bushes for a snapshot and digging through your trash. It happened to Kurt, and I think it has happened to Dave. I wish him well and hope the show will get back into production someday.
Let’s talk Dave Chappelle for second. The guy is wildly successful (and damn funny I might add) and signs a huge contract extension with Comedy Central. Then he disappears, production is halted on the third season of his show, then he checks himself into a psych ward in South Africa. I ask myself why? What happened? I never understood the plight of celebrities with the ‘whoa is me’ thing, and the ‘you don’t understand the pressure.’ To me you’re getting paid obscenely so quit whining and produce what made you famous.
I stress this is what I USED to think. Recently I read the memoirs of one of my heroes, Kurt Cobain. Think what you want, but Cobain is to Generation X as John Lennon was to hippies in my opinion. He was our voice. Anyway, in his memoirs, the reader observes his decline and how all he really wanted to do was what he loved, write and play music. Sure, he signed the deal too and made records and millions of dollars; it was the American dream. But what no one thinks about, and I think he relayed it best, was how you overlook the fact that you can never look back. You can’t walk down the street anymore; you can’t hangout at a club with a few friends and suck back a few dozen beers. All that is gone and it can be a lot to deal with. You now have pressure to perform and paparazzi jumping out of bushes for a snapshot and digging through your trash. It happened to Kurt, and I think it has happened to Dave. I wish him well and hope the show will get back into production someday.
