First we had Ed McMahon on 6/23. Ok, he was 86 years old, so nobody was too surprised. Everybody dies eventually, if they live long enough. America moved on before it even stopped to necessitate moving on.
But then, apparently-that-was-considered-hot-in-the-70's Charlie's Angels actress Farrah Fawcett died of cancer two days later, on 6/25. That one seemed to catch America off guard, although she'd been fighting cancer for a long time, so it wasn't entirely unexpected. What was unexpected, at least to me, was the collective mass disappointment that she never got to marry some guy I'd never heard of named Ryan O'Neal. Seriously, why are you people so emotionally involved in a total stranger's personal life? No wonder your own marriage is falling apart.
Not to be outdone, however, legendary freakshow and "King of Pop" Michael Jackson suddenly dropped dead mere hours after Fawcett, causing the entire world to exclaim, "Farrah who? Nevermind that drivel, someone important just died!" The entirety of Planet Earth reacted to the news as if every king, president, duke, and PM had just merged into one amazing superhuman demigod, and then imploded on itself, taking the sun, moon, and every firstborn male along with it. Lenin banged in vain on the sides of his glass coffin for attention, Eva Peron wondered why she got such a pauper's treatment, and Princess Diana still hasn't stopped pointing out the fact that a fake "king" gets more attention than a real duchess. Seven heads of state stepped down or killed themselves in acts of solidarity, and Ireland instituted a second potato famine as an expression of mourning. And all of this was seen as a right and proper response to such a tragedy.
The entire world was still in a state of mourning three days later (and now forgetting to even ask, Farrah who?), and it was just assumed that the Pope would fast-track Jackson to sainthood by the week's end. One man dared question the world's collective Jackomania, though, and that man was legendary infomercial yelling man Billy Mays. He knew what he had to do. On the morning of 6/28, Mays heroically died in a valiant effort to take the deadlebrity spotlight off of Michael Jackson, and thereby save humanity from itself. Unfortunately for humanity, though, Billy Mays' star power was not strong enough to distract a spiraling-to-the-depths mankind from its hopelessly mournful trajectory, and his untimely death proved to be in vain; he simply could not compete. It's exactly like when The Thirteenth Floor came out one month after The Matrix.
Needless to say, humanity remains on the fast track to Michael-Jackson-induced self-destruction, and I have no idea what can save her at this point. Even Billy Mays was powerlesss to stop it. I just hope it doesn't take an infomercial pitchman double whammy, because I really like this guy:
