I Like MJ's Final Face

Here's the best collection I've seen lately of before-and-after pics; you also get good face in the documentary referred to in my previous post; and here's someone's idea of what he might have looked like if he'd left well enough alone.

I agree, he'd have been handsome without any surgery,etc.

But I also think the face he bought is cool.

The music was great, and he understood the importance of the visual. His face was another of his creations. It may have ended up half Phantom of the Opera; but I like it. And I can't think of many besides his final face that will remain more recognizable, or more interesting, longer.

His music video masterpiece, Thriller (embedded below), now seems prescient of both his and our realities.

PS: Apparently face et al. are destined for plastination à la von Hagens – the authorities' or someone's requirement for an autopsy kibboshed MJ's first choice, cryogenic freezing – more here.

UPDATE: Apparently not; MJ's body was buried, though sans his brain, which is still undergoing analysis re- drugs, etc.; more here.

Art Project: Purported Multiple, Deliberately-Induced Pregnancies & Abortions

"A Yale University art student duped the student newspaper with a story about inducing repeated abortions on herself and using the blood for her senior art project, the school said Thursday.

" . . . . The entire project is an art piece, a creative fiction designed to draw attention to the ambiguity surrounding form and function of a woman's body," said [a] Yale spokeswoman . . . .

"Shvarts' 'performance art' included visual representations, a news release and other narrative materials, Klasky said. When confronted by three senior Yale officials, including two deans, Shvarts acknowledged that she did not seek any abortions. . . .

"The newspaper's account detailed 'a nine-month process during which [Shvarts] artificially inseminated herself 'as often as possible' while periodically taking abortifacient drugs to induce miscarriages.'"

Personally, I don't consider an embryo with the I.Q. of a carrot to be a "person" entitled to Constitutional protection. On the other hand, chimps and gorillas can learn and even teach their kids language, but we don't protect them.

More here.

Body Worlds UPDATE

Re- my previous post . . . The Times reports that Gunther von Hagens, "sometimes dubbed Dr. Death," plans to put some 150,000 plastinated body parts on sale to the public.

"Dr. von Hagens says that he will not sell the body parts if it damages the dignity of the corpse.

"'That means forbidding the use of the body sections as, for example, placemats for cocktail glasses,' he says, 'and if the owner wants to get rid of the body bits he will be required to cremate them and not simply throw them in the bin.'

". . . . so far he has been promised 8,568 corpses and has 531 in stock, all swimming in baths of alcohol awaiting his chemical treatment" -- in addition to the hundreds already plastinated and in touring exhibits?