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In This Issue

• Toddler Sex Toy Secrets Revealed
• Belgian Makes Fun of Belgians
• Sobriety: Mardi Gras Withdrawal
• Letters to the Feditor
• John Ashcroft = Scary
• Marauding Interviewer: Ass Virginity En Masse
• Inside the Real ROTC
• Columbia's Just Being Nice to Get You into the Sack
• Unleash the Flood Waters
• Your Local Forecast
• Oompa-Loompas' Fingers Too Short for Shocker
• Portrait of the Masturbator as a Young Man
• And Now, the Fed Translates the Creepiest Ad Ever
• Jacko Makes Cocktail Party Chitchat
• Spring Fashion: Haute Couture in Haute Alert
• At Your Local Supermarket
• Ode d'Orange
• THEY Watch
• Wacky Fun Whitey Wets the Bed
• An Outdoor Conversation
• Roboninja
• Poor Orange
• The Staff

Ted Holden

Sadly, Bubbles' parents never got the Jewish wedding they'd hoped for.

When he first started screwing with his face, Michael Jackson was a lot like the Mona Lisa on the plastic surgery circuit: a real marvel, but something we all took for granted. Lately, though, he's transformed into the physical equivalent of The Exorcist: X-rated in several countries, capable of causing miscarriages, and dangerous to the faint of heart. But despite the fact that few celebrities have approached his degree of weirdness, he has never been more popular. Self-righteous parents declare, "I'd never let my child within sight distance of him," while souls of wit remark that Jacko has transformed from a poor black boy to a rich white woman. And yet even though he couldn't possibly shock us more (unless it were revealed posthumously he really did suffer from vitiligo), it appears the public prefers him as a self-mutilating, eccentric, pedophile than as a successful, glamorous pop star. After all, no less than three different specials on him have aired this month. Below the surface, there's something we love about the guy.

Maybe it's his sexuality. No other celebrity has been able to captivate, repulse, and then finally just confuse us like him. How many times can you wonder about Richard Gere's fondness for gerbils? And as frightening as it is, the image of Sting engaging in tantric sex won't hold the attention of the average pervert for more than a few minutes. Even speculating about the fact that Madonna is still helping to perpetuate the species has grown passé.

Michael's sexual status, on the other hand, provides hours of lively cocktail conversation. Those of us with the most prudish, vanilla sexual tastes get the chance to be just as voyeuristic as the old men who procure apartments outside the Quad to watch Barnard chicks undress. Is he heterosexual? Turned on by kids? Completely asexual? By his own admission, Jackson has gone from rejecting Tatum O'Neill's amorous advances to snuggling up with the Culkin kids. And then there's the troubling question of Bubbles, who was recently relegated to a wildlife preserve: merely too much trouble? Or perhaps it was just a convenient way of getting the chimp out of the picture so that he could be free to pursue his new loves.

Plus, there's the issue of his kids. Need a lively topic for the debate team? Just bring up the question: to whom do they all belong? All three appear to be lily-white--that is, when they're not being smothered in Taliban-esque masks. Jackson even has the nerve to declare in his interview that his youngest, Prince Michael II, was born to a black surrogate mother...less than an hour after stating that the child was the result of a romantic relationship with an unnamed woman. In retrospect, the lyrics: "...the kid is not my son" seem to be an eerie foreshadowing of the freakiness that was to come.

Or maybe it's because he's loaded... and perfectly willing to throw money away. If you know how to work him, you can come away with millions--or a few rides on one of his Ferris wheels at the very least. For example, if you're a low income parent who's wondering just how you're going to get your male (preferably prepubescent and Caucasian) child into an Ivy, just send your little sprite off to spend a night at Neverland Ranch. You'll be able to buy your way into any university you want--and hell, it doesn't end there. If he spends a night alone in a room with the king of cherry popping, your little boy will have earned the respect of all of his peers.

So before we write him off completely, why not give him a chance? With the two decades of bizarre behavior he's managed to accumulate, no other celebrity has been able to keep up with him. And if we're lucky, in a few more TV interviews, he just might cross the final frontier and admit to violating the Elephant Man's remains. Sure, it's tasteless and crude, but what else are you going to watch now that Joe Millionaire is over?