When we were in sixth grade we got to school one day, and three periods in when it was our turn to give the in-depth presentation that we’d worked on for over a week – it wasn’t in our bag.

We turned our desk inside-out that day – but to no avail. We were crying at the window as our teacher wrote a big red F next to our name in his spiral grade-book, that’s when we saw it – Ed McMahon sprinting across the playground with our missing assignment in hand. He was more dragging it, actually. After all the thing was over 20 feet long.

We’d invented the Publisher’s Clearing House giant check printer. We would have gladly shared it with the world for free – but McMahon wouldn’t allow it. He patented the blue prints and made millions.

It doesn’t matter now though because it wasn’t enough – his house is going into foreclosure. That’s karma, Ed. You are just like China.

Perhaps some day soon Ed McMahon will go to his mailbox and find a letter from PETA, wherein it’s stated they’ll save his house if he’ll but throw away all his leather pajamas. Apparently PETA’s never worn leather pajamas – if they had they’d know such an offer was futile. Animal skin PJs are just so comfortable – especially when they’re fresh.

They tried something similar with Aretha Franklin, although we’re not sure if she took the bait. PETA offer or no, Ed McMahon is about to lose his house. Reuters will fill you in with the essentials:

“Ed McMahon, the longtime sidekick to U.S. talk show host Johnny Carson, is fighting to save his multimillion dollar Beverly Hills home from foreclosure, McMahon’s spokesman said on Wednesday…According to public records, McMahon was then about $644,000 in arrears on the mortgage for the six-bedroom, five-bathroom home in an exclusive area of Beverly Hills. The house has been on the market for about two years and the current asking price is $5.75 million.”

Further intense investigation on our part has revealed conclusively that McMahon’s current money-crunch started when he broke his neck and couldn’t work. We’d like to say we can relate, but our necks are all in perfect condition. Also we can’t relate because our mom has a really good job and can afford her home that we currently live in with three foreign exchange students and a fat pregnant bullmastiff.

Think of Michael Jackson and the first thing that springs to mind is the Neverland ranch.

Alright, that’s a lie – the Neverland ranch is probably near the bottom of the list, coming some way after his ghoulish facial surgery, the seemingly bizarre treatment of his children, his child molestation court case, the porn, the Jesus juice and that monkey he used to own – but it doesn’t matter. Michael Jackson has finally fought off foreclosure on Neverland, so it’s his forever.

Alright, that’s also a lie – by ‘his’ we mean it’s technically the property of the investment company who bought the loan that Michael Jackson took out to save Neverland, and by ‘forever’ we mean for about a fortnight until Michael Jackson gets behind on his repayments again – but that doesn’t really matter either. Probably.

Sorry friendless millionaire hermits, we’ve got some bad news. It looks as though you’ll have to build your own nightmarishly creepy fairground shrine to your lost childhood where you can get drunk and look at porn in now, because Neverland is off the market for good.

You’ll remember that earlier this year Michael Jackson’s Neverland ranch faced foreclosure after Michael defaulted on the $24 million property loan. Although Michael Jackson managed to wiggle out of the foreclosure by refinancing it with a big investment group, it was only a temporary solution – instead of cancelling the foreclosure auction outright, it was only postponed until today.

But, just in the nick of time, Michael Jackson has managed to avoid foreclosure for good and keep Neverland for himself by doing all sorts of complex financial maneuverings that don’t really seem to be all that clever or safe, as the Los Angeles Times reports:

Pop star Michael Jackson sidestepped a foreclosure auction of his Neverland Ranch after an investment company bought the loan on the troubled Los Olivos property, a spokeswoman said Sunday. The loan purchase by Colony Capital LLC was the latest deal to keep the 2,500-acre ranch from being sold off. In a statement released by a Jackson spokesman, who identified himself as B. Michael, the pop star said he was “pleased with recent developments involving Neverland” that would “allow me to focus on the future.”

Thank god – now that Neverland is safe Michael Jackson can now finally start focusing on the future. That’s important, because it’s difficult to plan to spend far beyond your means, consistently fail to record any new material and entangle yourself in a string of ever more complicated financial woes when a house you haven’t lived in for several years is up for sale.

Although out of the woods for the time being, Michael Jackson has such an ingrained history of failing to pay those he owes money to that it’s only a matter of time before he has to sell the loan of the loan of the loan on yet again to another investment firm with a set of even more unfavourable conditions, putting Neverland in danger once more.

We hope so, at least, because we’ve got plans to buy Neverland and convert it into a fancy hotel. Honestly, we think we can charge to dollar to let people sleep in rooms where it was once claimed that a frightmask-faced shell of a washed-up pop star wanked off a teenage cancer sufferer, especially if the rooms come with views overlooking a harrowing broken-down fairground.

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Michael Jackson gets to keep Neverland Ranch - LA Times