Wow What a Week! Entertainment Edition Pt. 2

It's no secret that I'm a sports guy. It's not quite as well known that I'm also an entertainment guy. Well now you know. And now that you know you can probably figure out that for me it was quite the week. Pop culture nearly crashed its home in the Internet this week and if it was enough to do that you can imagine what happened to my little brain. First I'll recap the week that was, and then I'll go in depth about a few of the things.

Monday

Jon and Kate announce divorce

Greenville native Lucas Glover wins US Open

Chris Brown pleads guilty to assault on ex-girlfriend Rihanna

Perez Hilton and Will.I.am have Twitter feud

Ed McMahon, wing man to Johnny Carson, dies

Tuesday

SC Gov Mark Sanford announces affair with Argentinian woman

Wednesday

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen hits theaters

Thursday

Farrah Fawcett dies at 62 after long battle with cancer

Michael Jackson dies at 50 after going into cardiac arrest

NBA Draft

Friday and Saturday

Surprisingly quiet, thought maybe things had died down

Sunday

Billy Mays found dead in his home at the age of 50

(Note: This continues the Entertainment portion of the blog, if you're looking for Sports click the link to the right that says "Wow What a Week! Sports edition", and for Part 1 click here)

I left off Part 1 talking about the Wednesday Premiere of Transformers: The Revenge of the Fallen. Which of course leads me to Thursday where all hell broke loose, and the world of Entertainment lost not only two stars but two icons.

First was Farrah Fawcett. I'm far far too young to have been around in her prime as an actress but I've seen pictures and she was easily as beautiful as any actress is today. Fawcett starred in Charlie's Angels in the 70's and was the "it" girl of her time. Every boy had a poster of her on his wall. Except the ones that didn't. And they wanted one. She was a star amongst stars and an true icon in her day. However cancer is a disease that shows no mercy and it decided it was going to fight Charlie's favorite angel and the angel fought back. Fawcett fought her cancer bravely, going through round after round of chemotherapy documenting it all in a film she was producing called "Farrah's Fight" which I believe will eventually be shown on NBC. However as I said, cancer shows no mercy and eventually it won the fight and we lost Farrah Fawcett at the age of 62.

Later Thursday, as we were all still mourning the loss of one icon we lost another. First it was reported that Michael Jackson had collapsed in his home and was under cardiac arrest. Then TMZ reported he was dead however none of the major news sources could confirm it. They simply said that he was in a coma. Then, right as the 6:30 national newses all came on the air the LA Times confirmed that we had indeed lost The King of Pop.

To call Farrah Fawcett an icon and then to call Michael Jackson one is not fair to MJ. Farrah Fawcett was the prettiest among the unfathomably pretty world of Hollywood and thus she was an icon. Jackson was a true legend amongst legends and his impact is what sets him apart from any other entertainer the world has ever seen. The best way I can explain this is how I explained it to my kids. No I'm not a father but somewhere this summer in between being a DJ, a radio intern, and having the life of a 19 year old, I am also a camp counselor and Friday morning when I got to camp all anybody was talking about was MJ. Once again I'm too young to really comprehend MJ's reach because I wasn't alive during his prime, however I understand it far better than my campers and thus explained it to them this way.

I asked them who there favorite artists were today. I got varied responses from Carrie Underwood to Justin Timberlake to T.I. I then told them that all of them were affected by Michael Jackson. I singled out Carrie Underwood and talked about her music video for Before He Cheats. As is typical of music videos now she acts out the story of her song, smashing a car of a boy who's cheated on her to pieces. However this music video wouldn't have been that way if it wasn't for Jackson. He invented the modern music video. Another example I used of this was Timberlake's video for What Goes Around...Comes Around. The song and thus the video is over 7 minutes long and stars Timberlake along with Scarlett Johannson. She's a major motion picture actress, in a music video. The thought of a song as a movie originated with MJ and has continued to evolve.

Anyone who has seen JT perform also can point to Jackson as an influence in terms of his dancing and performance. Dancing and music have always gone hand in hand but MJ changed the way people danced and incorporated it into his performances, wowing crowds not only with his voice but with his moves. This has continued today with not only JT but Chris Brown, Ne-Yo, Ciara, and countless other dancing/singing dual threat artists.

Now of course the kids asked about the other stuff, and my answers were simple. Yes, he was a freak later in life. Yes, he went from a black boy to a white woman. No, that's not normal. Yes, he was missing a few screws and a nut. That being said you simply cannot deny the man's talent and his impact on the world. He was planning a 50 show comeback tour in London that sold out instantly which, in its own right shows that he still has the reach not to mention he nearly crashed the Internet when he died.

As usual I can't get through a blog without bringing up something I heard on the radio and this blog is no different. As I've said before there are no two bigger platforms in the world than sports and music. Simply put if Barack Obama died today, the Michael Jackson story is still bigger world wide. On this premise, Scott Van Pelt asked the question Friday who else in the world could die and have the same effect? Sports' MJ? Tiger Woods? Those are the two most logical answers and the two answers that came to mind for me but they would not have the impact this had. SVP did bring up one that I think would be close and that is Muhammad Ali. However Ali has been out of his prime longer than Jackson has been and has been living a far from normal life medically for years now so the shock factor would not be nearly as great. Simply put, nothing in the world could be a bigger story than what happened Thursday.

Friday and Saturday were recovery days and nothing major happened. I thought we were done. And then it happened. Today Billy Mays, the world's most famous and most successful pitchman, was found dead in his home. This was as unexpected as Jackson's death but to put the two in the same sentence is only OK because it happened in the same week. Like Jackson though, Mays was the best at what he did, so much so that he became a caricature of himself and even he knew it, mocking himself in a set of spots for ESPN360. However he paved the way for the Shamwow guy and whoever is next in the line of pitchmen and although I won't miss his commercials one bit, I do greatly respect what he did and how well he did it.

That's it for the entertainment world... I put an ellipses there because it's still only 5:30 on Sunday, that's a whole 6.5 hours for something else to go down. I'd say something sarcastically like a Brangelina break up but if it happened I'd feel bad. Or maybe Kate will have another kid. Just so she can have more than Octomom. Yay for Octomom jokes!