Jacko's Neverland Ranch needs some TLC
These photos depict Michael Jackson's Neverland Ranch in a sorry state. The Daily Mail has a series of photos showing the neglected grounds, near Santa Barbara, California. Seen here at left is the ripped tent over the bumper car rink. At right is an animal enclosure for his once famous menagerie. Jackson has to pay off $25 million in debt by next week or Neverland will go on the auction block. According to the NME, two wealthy fans may bid on it in a last ditch effort to bail Jacko out. Link to The Daily Mail, Link to NME (Thanks, Vann Hall!)
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He still has fans?
Worldwide, he's still one of the most popular entertainers, maybe number one.
waaa. yiff in hell, has-been.
It's about time they are getting rid of this monument to child abuse. It's obvious that the rides/circus were used by Jacko to seduce the families and ultimately child. It's a really sick place when you think about it.
Check out details on the auction here.
The guy was a musical genius in his time and his album,Thriller, still stands strong. I really really have to wonder what his family life must have been like to make him end up as creepy as he did. One day that story will come out and I'm sure it will explain much.
This is really sad on so many levels.
yeah, well
"some are born to sweet delight, Some are born to endless night"
4. Really? I always thought it stood as a monument to a man who had a fucked up, nearly non-existent childhood. It seems to be to be a sad attempt at re-capturing his lost youth, not as a sinister trap for children.
wow. How scooby doo.
#8, agreed. It's quite sad that it ends up like that.
You people are horrible. He's the King of Pop!
I'm with Doomstalk. Jacko is a poor fucked-up soul who is eternally trying to recapture the childhood that was cruelly taken from him. I pity the guy.
#4 seems jealous that (s)he wasn't invited.
I'll pity the pedophile freak when he sells back the rights to the Beatles' songs. Back in the 80's, he swooped in, high on Thriller's profits, and outbid the combined effort of Paul, George, Ringo and Yoko to gain ownership of all their songs published under Northern Songs (all the pre-Apple songs) which they had been swindled out of due to the mismanagement of original manager Brian Epstein. Jacko had taken Paul McCartney's advice that the real money was in owning the rights to songs and applied that to The Beatles' works, which is why you hear them advertising for everything from Phillips to Ultra-brite. It wasn't enough to have his own material hawking Pepsi, I guess.
Yes, pity this plastic monster because he is an afterbirth of pop culture; because the most talent he ever had was when he was 6 years old. (Yes, Thriller sucked then and it sucks now. Just because you can have nostalgia for a thing doesn't mean it didn't or doesn't suck. Knock the dust off your shot-o-meter, please.) He could simply offer those songs up to the remaining surviving Beatles and their estates and he'd have his creepy escape-into-a-childhood-he-never-had/pedophile-boy-trap back right as Rain. They have made several more offers since Jocko fell into legal trouble but he has held onto them better than his offspring. I'm sorry to burst anybody's Neverland bubble, but you couldn't have a more freakish villain in a Tim Burton movie. When Johnny Depp lines up to play you, maybe your time is up...
Well of course you're entitled to your opinion of Thriller but you shouldn't be so easy on the other guys. Yoko didn't want to buy the rights and McCartney was just too..er..careful with his money to fork out (he does ok without them though, as he owns the copyright of hundreds of other peoples songs himself - including iirc some of Buddy Hollys).
The really sad thing is BoingBoing linking to a rightwing populist sensationalistic piece of shit tabloid newspaper like the DailyMail...
Besides that I don't give a rats ass about Michael Jackson...
Fontastique...
...somethings lose their power when said the wrong way. Now, go play nice with the other kiddies.
I agree,
Thats why I have no idea what your comment is about...
What's even more fun is that he's raised money on the future earnings of Northern Songs (the publishers of the Beatles' music) but now they're mortgaged off for another 20 years so he can't raise money on them again. Bowie did the same, but I think he's been a bit more circumspect.
@19 - Bowie did the sensible thing, and it was 10 years and $55million. I bet he invested it... Jacko probably frittered it away.
I wonder if these wealthy fans will manage to 'save' Neverland or not. Hopefully not.
Some of you clearly need a hug.
Well, it may be too late for him, but not the property. Discovery could shoot an episode of "The World Without Us" and then get it ready for "Extreme Makeover, Fallen Celebrity edition" to turn it into a retirement community for his fans.
Oh, come on. I think Jackson is a pedophile freak of nature (although his father and the Jehovah's Witnesses probably have to answer for at least some of that), but to say Thriller "sucks" just completely invalidates everything else you've said.
It's the common fate of visionary environments to fall into ruins. Few are saved, even in part.
Wow. You just made Michael Jackson sound like Ozymandias.
Extreme Makeover, Fallen Celebrity edition
One of the cable networks already did that. They tried to revive Vanilla Ice. The experiment failed.
that's why I sit around whittling memes. MY damage is going to be remembered.
I wish I had the dough to buy it. Just to watch it rot.
like the amusement park in Tekkonkinreet
Actually NedTrifle (#15), Yoko did go in with them in at least two of the rounds: The initial one and the most recent one, and Mr. McCartney just couldn't divest himself completely of all of his other holdings, if that's what you meant by his being 'too careful." Michael's assets were completely liquid since he was at the peak of his career with a multi-platinum album, so the combined Beatles' assets they could move just couldn't compete. And it is one thing to own someone's songs who can't possibly want them back and another to keep them from the artists who penned them (and to use Paul's advice against them.)
June (#23) Michael Jackson's sucking is entirely my opinion and has nothing to do with his ownership of Northern Songs, other than that, taken with the other behavioral symptoms well detailed in the tabloids, as well as his plastic surgery "augmentations" it seems to me to be further evidence that he is indeed a MONSTER. Now the creepy Neverland-falling-apart backdrop sets the perfect backdrop for whatever "Sunset Blvd. for the new millenium" antics we are in for next.
@#25: I like you. Do you have newsletter?