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.

Body Worlds

Highly recommended. Combines grossness and kitsch to yield an aesthetic frisson unmatched since The Little Shop of Horrors. One "plastinated" man holds his own internal organs aloft like a trophy. Another has been sliced vertically into slabs, tattooed portraits of exotic women still fully legible on the ribbons of skin encircling the slabs (Damien H., eat your heart out). There's even a gigantic, half-dissected horse surmounted by a half-dissected human holding his own brain in one hand and the horse's in the other – if only it were their penises. The best pieces are displayed with metal plaques bearing the signature of the proud scientist/artist, Gunther von Hagens.

My boyfriend got dizzy after five minutes and hurried out; I felt strangely famished. More info at the Body Worlds site; here's Wikipedia's summary of certain controversies; and here's a page with a great pic of von Hagens with one of his creations (he's the one in the hat).