I have-a little bit more to say than that. Here we go again. Michael Jackson was born in august in 1959, so was I. Michael Jackson grew up in the suburbs of the Midwest. So did i. Michael Jackson had eight brothers and sisters. So do I. When Michael Jackson was 6,/he became a superstar and was perhaps the world s most beloved child. When I was six, my mother died. I think he got the shorter end of the stick. I never had a mother, but he never had a childhood. And when you never get to have something you become obsessed by it. I spent my childhood searching for my mother figures, sometimes/ I was successful. But how do you recreate your childhood/ when you are under/ the magnifying glass of the world for your entire life? There is no question that Michael Jackson was one of the greatest talents the world had ever knownThat when he sang a song at the ripe old age of 8, he could make you feel like an experienced adult was squeezing your heart/ with his words. That the way he moved had the elegance of Fred Astaire and packed the punch of Muhammad Ali-. That his music had an extra layer of inexplicable magic that didn tjust make you want to dance/ but actually made you believe that you could fly, dare to dream, be anything that you want to be. Because that/ is what heroes do/ and Michael Jackson was a hero. He performed/ in soccer stadium around the world/ he sold hundreds of millions of records. He dined with prime ministers and presidents. Girls fell in love with him; boys fell in love with him. Everyone wanted to dance like him. He seemed other worthy, but/ he was also/ a human being. Like most performers, he was shy and plagued with insecurities. Plague困扰I cant say we were great friends, but in 1991 I decided I wanted to try to get to know him better. I asked him out for dinner. I said,“my treat, I ll drive, just you and me”He agreed and showed up to my house without any bodyguards. We drove to the restaurant in my car. It was dark out, but he was still wearing sun glasses. I said “Michael , I feel like I am talking to a limousine, do you think you could take off those glasses? So I could see your eyes? ”He paused for a moment, then he tossed the glasses out the window, looked at me with a wink and a smile and said “ can you see me now, is that better?”In that moment, I could see both his vulnera bility and his charm. The rest of the dinner I was hell-bent on getting him to eat French fries, drink wine, have des sert and say bad words. Things he never seemed to allow himself to do. Later we went back to my house to watch a movie /and we sat on couch like two kids. And somewhere in the middle of the film, his hand snuck over /and held mine. Sneak. 鬼鬼祟祟的It felt like he was looking for a friend more than a romance and I was happy to oblige him. And in that moment, he didn t feel like a superstar, he felt like a human being. We went out a few more times together, and then for one reason or another we fell out of touch. Then, the witch hunt began, and it seemed one negative story after the other was coming out about Michael. I felt his pain, I know what it was like to walk down the street and feel like the whole world has turned against you. I know it s like to feel helpless and unable to defend yourself because the roar of the lynch mob is so loud that you are convinced that your voice can never be heard. But I had a childhood, and I was allowed to make mistakes and find my own way in the world without the glare of the spotlight. When I first heard that Michael died I was in London, days away from the opening of my tour. Micheal was going to perform in the same venue as me a week later. All I could think about in that moment was that I had abandoned him, that we had abandoned him. That we had allowed this magnificent creature that once set the world on fire to somehow slip through the cracks. While he was trying to build a family and rebuild his career we were all busy passing judgment. Most of us has turned our backs on him. In a desperate attempt to hold onto his memory, I went on to the internet to watch old clips of him dancing and singing on TV and on stage, and I thought, “ oh, my god, he was so unique, so original, so rare. And there will never be anyone like him again, he was a king ”But he was also a human being, and alas we were all human beings and sometimes we have to lose things before we can truly appreciate them. I want to end this on a positive note and say that my sons age 9 and 4 are obsessed with Micheal Jackson. There was a whole lot of crotch-grabbing, and moon walking going on in my house. And it seems like a whole new generation of kids has discovered his genius and was bringing him to life again. I hope /that whenever where micheal is now, he is smiling about this. Yes, Michael Jackson was a human being, a dammit, he was a king. Long live the king.