Bargains galore and mountains of bad taste in the Michael Jackson auction catalogues. The pop superstar’s money problems brought his stash to the brink.
Alas, those of you hoping to walk away with a genuine painting of Michael as 16th century monarch are going to have to wait. Jackson’s managers staved off the sheriff. Still, this website has his worldly goods for your perusing pleasure.
Jackson possesses a disturbing collection of sculptures and paintings of little children. And ephebe youths.
There is no way you could look at all that lladro and not question the man’s…taste.
An undistinguished collection of art. Some of the antiques are nice, but the juxtaposition of Americana, Baroque, Neo-Classical, Victorian, Edwardian, 19th century Chinese, and Disneyana…holy cow.
The only painting I recognized is the 19th century Cleopatra by D. Pauvert. I have the Sotheby’s catalogue in which it was originally offered for sale.
Missing from the auction, conservatively estimated at $1.5 million to $3 million, are two paintings by the highly rated 19th-century French artist William-Adolphe Bouguereau, which Jackson bought in New York in 2002 for $1.34 million. Jackson did not pay for them (a spokesman at the time said that the reason was that the paintings “no longer fit” into the pop star’s collection), so Sotheby’s had to file a suit for damages.
There are a few fine genre landscapes and faux Norman Rockwells, inexpensive reproductions of nostalgic paintings of rural children.
Don’t miss this distillation of the weird. This blogger took some snaps of the collection of Michael memorabilia, and if you have never even imagined a monumental triptych of Michael Jackson as a reigning monarch crowning and knighting himself in two separate panels, well, now you don’t have to. Someone painted it for you.
Thanks to Scribbler (Sarah Beach) for the links. Sarah guest blogged about screenwriting and comics here.
And our thanks to Arlnee (Arlene Harris, who guest blogged about the whitewashing of Avatar: The Last Airbender).
She has alerted us to the return of the Russet Noon Lady, the rather forward fan who decided to take it upon herself to write a Stephenie Meyers Twilight sequel. And sell it.
For one brief shining moment, it seemed that the Russet Noon writer had come to her senses, as her book was pulled and her website taken down. But the Lady of the Sparkling Vampire Potato had a change of wank and decided to give it all another go, declaring:
Characters don’t belong to authors. Authors don’t create characters. They merely channel them. Characters are recurring universal archetypes. The only thing that changes is their names and identities, but their essence is always the same.
And then came the sound of Joseph Campbell spinning in his grave.
I’ve met some professional authors who say the same things about characters-and-archetypes-and-everything-is-beautiful to their public.
Because they are pandering.
It makes people feel warm and fuzzy to believe we are part of the Hive Mind, and if we could just learn the secret code, then we too could become best selling authors.
Yet I’ve never met an author who espoused this who wouldn’t sue the shit out of anyone who violated their copyright, or their publisher who didn’t pay the royalties. And I’ve yet to meet a bestselling author who was willing to put that Hive Mind love to the test by letting any of their best selling works go into the public domain.
Hive Mind is all well and good for other people.
When my Hive Mind taps the well, baby, I’m staking my claim to that gusher. There’s no Kumbaya in my copyright.
Massive wank-a-licious follow ups at Fandom Wank, where the Lady of the Sparking Vampire Potato responds to her critics, writes letters of fan martyrdom, engages in sockpuppetry, invoketh the teal deer, and makes with the massive attention whoring, which I am aiding and abetting here because I like to study TEH CRAZY so as to better spot it and avoid in future.
Holy Massive Spud-a-licious-Vampires Batman! Comics scribe Peter David is organizing a POTATO MOON parody project to benefit The Comic Book Legal Defense fund! Count me in!
Would it totally freak people out to know that I have been considering that Edward Cullen would SO make a better boyfriend than Sandman’s Morpheus?
Moving along, Val Trullinger puts the smackdown on some weirdo who shows up at her blog to mark territory with anonymous hate.
I have never seen some of those words in my life.
My guess: the abuser is a woman. What do you all think?
I blogged Debbie Schlussel’s psychological break over Watchmen (still haven’t seen it myself. My car has no engine.)
Over at Acephalous, another look into the dark heart of Schlussel.
Acephalous blogged about Watchmen far more intelligently than I did. He also gets far more interesting trolls. Smart people can be scary, I guess.
But I can’t find the exact links to the weird trolldom, so just read the smart posts about Watchmen, the movie I still haven’t seen.
Have fun.
UPDATED! Oh wait, one more for the road. Rus Wornom points to this: Could The Girls From Planet 5 Be The Best Novel ever? I dunno, but one of those covers looks like it was painted by Frank Kelly Freas. Cooked Timber goes deeper into this glorious tome.
A flying saucer full of beautiful female aliens has landed, wiping out Alexandria, VA by accident. But they are apparently friendly. These seductive Lyru are welcomed in ‘Biddyland’, as the Texans now refer to North America outside of Texas. (They haven’t actually seceded, but they’ve basically severed social and cultural contact with the rest of the country. Oh, and you have to be able to rope a steer in order to vote. It’s sort of Cowship Troopers, that way.) But all is not well …
Wow! Awesome! Must read!
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It’s all YOUR fault, Colleen! I spent FOUR hours (or more, God only knows, it’s nearly 3 in the morning now!) reading that Fandom Wank thread you linked to! YOUR fault! I couldn’t stop!
*sobs*
I gave up two pages short of the current end of that thread.
On the other hand, VT’s post was also very witty! yay.
And I’m going to give up for the night now. Good thing I’m not currently employed and have to be somewhere in the morning.
Oh man, I can’t wait to wade through my morning work-related email and chores so I can sit down for a good long survey of Teh Crazy!
About my hatemail — pretty spiffy, wasn’t it? Glad you dug my response, Scribbler. On the weirdo’s gender: I’m curious to hear everyone’s takes. A friend who might easily be considered an expert on getting random anonymous hatemail thinks it’s a woman, and so do you. I’m still undecided.
In thinking about it VT, I’d agree it would have to be a woman. It would have to be a very, very uptight guy to complain about you “flaunting your cleavage” – and such a person is NOT going to use the “c”word (being uptight). But a woman? One who is envious, maybe, or terribly, terribly insecure – that I could see, especially since she seems to equate being comfortable with one’s endowment as being promiscuous.
I can’t decide whether or not to feel pity for the Russet Noon lady.
Then again, she seems to feed on attention. Well, here’s some more.
Her peak moment was when she wailed about how she couldn’t make money on Russet Noon and how unfair it was after all her hard work. Small violin.
VT, in all my years I have never gotten a letter like that. I’ve gotten some incredibly weird and disturbing ones, but nothing so…I dunno, anonymously vicious, and freaky, and direct.
I’ve had a few creepy people write some nasty stuff online, but every pro gets that. Part of the game.
The people who usually give me the same song and dance about using looks to get ahead and the unfairness of it all are women (not always, but usually.)
The only person who ever turned the issue into a profanity laden screed was a woman I had never met in person but had met online. I had the bad sense to take a liking to her and to give her my phone number, since she was a small press aspiring pro. Thought I could help her out.
Big mistake. She was wrapped in crazy. Not speculation. Found out much later she had a serious mental illness for which she does get treatment.
I will go to my grave remembering her screaming at me on the phone. About ten years ago. Scary weird. She sounded a lot like your online correspondent there.
At least she had the sense not to put it all in writing, but to this day, she writes crap about me on message boards, claiming we talked “many,many times,” which is just bonkers. I spoke to her maybe 10 times on the phone in two years, I guess. And for that, I get to cringe when she lies about what I said. Best thing I can do about it all is ignore the poor woman, who is clearly seriously ill.
This is the only person who has attacked me using uniquely filthy language.
So my vote is for jealous grrrl hate.
The Fandom Wank thread is like a train wreck I must tear myself away from if I’m to accomplish everything I need to, today. Potato Moon is a thing of brilliance.
For a brief moment, I wondered if it was Schlussel who wrote me the hate mail, but then remembered it wasn’t written in all caps.
LOL! And I must amend my post: “to this day” is not accurate.
The last time I saw some nonsense the unfortunate crazy lady wrote about me online was in January of last year. I don’t really think she is much about the business and never was, in my opinion. I don’t even know if she really makes a living in publishing or not. Her name rarely comes up, so whatever.
Fandom Wank is crack. Seriously, I used to think I had past problems in fandom. Forget it.
I’m a wank amateur.
I volunteered to contribute to “Potato Moon.” I’ve never tried anything quite like this before. If nothing else, it should be fun.
Go for it Bill! I thought about volunteering last night – and then had to remind myself it would only be an act of procrastination, as I should be working on other writing. But I do want to read it! Heh.
I’m still a bit confused by the discussion on Facebook that this post was some sort of referendum on Jackson’s child molestation trial.
Um…no, never mentioned it.
It’s my abject horror at Lladro sculpture more than anything else.
And the absolutely lousy management Michael Jackson must have. Seriously, someone needs to be fired.
Re: the Facebook discussion – yeah, a bit off track there, but she seemed a nice enough person otherwise, so I won’t drag on about it in public.
As for MJ’s “management” I totally agree. I really suspect that he has nobody around him who ever tells him “No.” How else is it possible to squander such a huge fortune in such comparatively small time? From what little I know of his background, because he was touring from such an early age, I suspect he’s had precious little schooling at all (and it makes me wonder if his own kids are getting any education either).
I’m not sure what it is about Lladro that doesn’t work for me. But there’s just a sort of “not quite there” thing about most of it, for me.
Agreed, I just wanted to make the point, in case it bothered anyone else.
This is really a referendum on how much I dislike Lladro figurines.
Jackson’s management: what are they thinking?
Their first thought should be for his reputation, so in making this stuff publicly available, they should have had the insight to consider how it would be received.
The kitsch could have been sold privately or donated to charity for the tax deduction.
Considering Jackson’s legal problems, the figurative sculptures (which are quite nice), would not have nearly the same context were they not juxtaposed with very bad paintings and sculptures of Thomas Kincaid Painter of Light quality work. It’s utterly perplexing.
I remember seeing that documentary where Jackson just walked about an antique shop saying “I’ll have that, and one of those…”
It looked very bad. There is no way a good manager would have let him behave in public with such poor judgement. While some fans will always be worshipful and see nothing wrong with that sort of thing, many others will be turned off by vulgar displays of wealth.
They must be completely out of touch not to understand how that comes across.
Part of it is circus, and the rest…really sad.
And BTW, there is someone out there who loves Lladro who hates my guts right about now, but if it makes you feel any better, I collect LOTR Weta sculptures.
Which are way more fun than Lladro.
“And BTW, there is someone out there who loves Lladro who hates my guts right about now, but if it makes you feel any better, I collect LOTR Weta sculptures.
Which are way more fun than Lladro.”
Hee hee hee.
Well, me, I collect dragons. And someday soon I hope to get a page up in the gallery on my website with pictures of my beasties. But I don’t like overly “cute” dragons. Because, dang nabit, they’re DRAGONS.