Michael Jackson, You Were So Damn Happy

I'm not at all embarrassed to admit that I love Michael Jackson's music--especially now. Hey, I don't care if you like the guy, but you've got to admit, when you look past all the weird plastic surgery business and dangling poor baby Blanket out of a window, he made some damn good music. I think that the best way anyone could ever describe it is HAPPY--in all capital letters with an exclamation point or two!!! I don't think that there's any possible way to feel depressed while listening to MJ, and I would venture to say that the intro to "The Way You Make Me Feel" would crack a smile in even the hardest of hearts, like the Grinch or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Suffice to say, there have been times in my life when I was so low that I put my Michael Jackson Number Ones CD on repeat, cranked up the volume and danced around my apartment because the only alternative was to take a bottle of wine into the shower and cry. I'm not going to get all dramatic here and say that he was my hero or that "Thriller" saved my life or any such nonsense, but at least it gave me an alternative to losing myself in pity or, worse, alcohol and pills. As reports come out that a possible addiction to and overdose of Demerol may have caused MJ's death, it strikes me as extremely sad that the man responsible for bestowing all this HAPPINESS (!!) upon the world didn't have anywhere to turn for his own.