MICHAEL JACKSONS MEMORIAL SERVICE
Right now, news helicopters are hovering over our house which is near the Beverly Wilshire Hotel, where the Jackson family is convening after the amazing memorial service.
The saddest part: Paris Michael Katherine, 11, broke down in sobs and said "My daddy was the best father you could ever imagine..."
Jermaine Jackson touched me deeply, with his beautiful voice and quiet suffering, singing "Smile" by Charlie Chaplin, Michael's favorite song from "Modern Times."
I adore Jermaine, and got to introduce him on Dick Clark's Rockin' Eve. What a loving, gentle soul.
Brooke Shields was wonderful too.
To all the cynics who believe he was guilty: he was innocent. Not only was he found innocent by a jury of his peers, but at the deepest level he was the purest soul. he was COMPLETELY innocent of all charges, and I know it as I know my own children, as I know the sun will come up tomorrow.
People just can't understand a pure soul. If anything, Michael was asexual.
Rest in Peace, Michael.
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From 5pm, MTV News will be covering the event with a special 1 hour build -up to the show, followed by the full star-studded service which will include the likes of Mariah Carey, Jennifer Hudson, Usher and Stevie Wonder.
Also performing is 12-year-old Britain's Got Talent star Shaheen Jafargholi who will sing his rendition of Who's Lovin You.
The full line-up confirmed so far include Kobe Bryant, Mariah Carey, Berry Gordy, Jennifer Hudson, Magic Johnson, Martin Luther King III, Bernice A. King, John Mayer, Lionel Richie, Smokey Robinson, Rev. Al Sharpton, Brooke Shields, Usher, Shaheen Jafargholi and Stevie Wonder.
An estimated one billion viewers worldwide will watch today's event as mourners tune into Jackson's send-off at the Los Angeles stadium.
Look, I had nothing good to say about her during the disgusting election campaign — and was horrified that she used race-baiting and right-wing fringe-loony baiting, in saying President Obama was "paling around with terrorists". And at the time I judged her harshly and assumed she was a narcissist. Even now I have no idea if she's being authentic right now, but I suspect her heart has been damaged by the ugliness of politics. I actually think she is making the smartest decision for her family. Anyway, as Abraham Lincoln said: "A winner never quits and a quitter never wins." So she wouldn"t stand a chance winning the GOP nomination.
"It's so much easier to write a resume than to craft a spirit." - Anna Quindlen
I think maybe she woke up in the nick of time and realized her blind ambition was destroying her family.
I blinked and my kids were in puberty. I was too busy for a few minutes and they went from being sweet 10 and 11 year olds to obnoxious jerks!! I wish I had savored the sweet phase a little longer.
the graduation ceremony of an American university where she was awarded an
Honorary PhD.
Most brilliant, to the point speech to get all of us thinking....
"I'm a novelist. My work is human nature. Real life is all I know. Don't
ever confuse the two, your life and your work. You will walk out of here
this afternoon with only one thing that no one else has. There will be
hundreds of people out there with your same degree: there will be thousands
of people doing what you want to do for a living. But you will be the only
person alive who has sole custody of your life. Your particular life. Your
entire life. Not just your life at a desk or your life on a bus or in a car
or at the computer. Not just the life of your mind, but the life of your
heart. Not just your bank accounts but also your soul.
People don't talk about the soul very much anymore. It's so much easier to
write a resume than to craft a spirit. But a resume is cold comfort on a
winter' night, or when you're sad, or broke, or lonely, or when you've
received your test results and they're not so good.
Here is my resume: I am a good mother to three children. I have tried never
to let my work stand in the way of being a good parent. I no longer consider
myself the centre of the universe. I show up. I listen. I try to laugh. I am
a good friend to my husband. I have tried to make marriage vows mean what
they say. I am a good friend to my friends and them to me. Without them,
there would be nothing to say to you today, because I would be a cardboard
cut out. But I call them on the phone and I meet them for lunch. I would be
rotten, at best mediocre, at my job if those other things were not true.
You cannot be really first rate at your work if your work is all you are. So
here's what I wanted to tell you today: Get a life. A real life, not a manic
pursuit of the next promotion, the bigger pay cheque, the larger house. Do
yo think you'd care so very much about those things if you blew an aneurysm
one afternoon or found a lump in your breast?
Get a life in which you notice the smell of salt water pushing itself on a
breeze at the seaside, a life in which you stop and watch how a red-tailed
hawk circles over the water, or the way a baby scowls with concentration
when she tries to pick up a sweet with her thumb and first finger.
Get a life in which you are not alone. Find people you love, and who love
you. And remember that love is not leisure, it is work. Pick up the phone.
Send an email. Write a letter. Get a life in which you are generous. And
realize that life is the best thing ever, and that you have no business
taking it for granted. Care so deeply about its goodness that you want to
spread it around. Take money you would have spent on beer and give it to
charity. Work in a soup kitchen. Be a big brother or sister. All of you want
to do well. But if yo do not do good too, then doing well will never be
enough.
It is so easy to waste our lives, our days, our hours, and our minutes. It
is so easy to take for granted the colour of our kids' eyes, the way the
melody in a symphony rises and falls and disappears and rises again. It is
so easy to exist instead of to live.
I learned to live many years ago. I learned to love the journey, not the
destination. I learned that it is not a dress rehearsal, and that today is
the only guarantee you get. I learned to look at all the good in the world
and try to give some of it back because I believed in it, completely and
utterly. And I tried to do that, in part, by telling others what I had
learned. By telling them this: Consider the lilies of the field. Look at the
fuzz on a baby's ear. Read in the back yard with the sun on your face.
Learn to be happy. And think of life as a terminal illness, because if you
do, you will live it with joy an passion as it ought to be lived".
Here is a picture of Lake Geneva in Wisconsin, my son took this with his i-phone last week.
