As shocking and sad as Michael Jackson’s death obviously was, at least one good thing has emerged from it.

Joe Jackson. Barmy old mad-eyed Joe Jackson. He’s just exceptional value as a human being. Whether he’s skulking around in the immediate aftermath of Michael Jackson’s death trying to promote CDs to the nearest camera crew or claiming that Michael’s estate needs to pay him $20,000 a month to cover his food and rent outgoings, Joe Jackson has been nothing less than a shining model of everything that’s brilliant about humanity.

Obviously since there’s just over a week to go until the first anniversary of Michael Jackson’s death, Joe Jackson will no doubt keep himself to himself for the foreseeable… oh, no, our mistake – he’s just said that Michael’s death was all the fault of his wife Katherine Jackson. Whoops.

Since Michael Jackson died last year, the message from the Jackson camp has been constant and clear – it was Dr Conrad Murray‘s fault. It was he, they say, who injected Michael with the fatal dose of industrial anaesthetic. Never mind that he was carrying out Michael’s wishes, or that someone else would have done it if he had refused, or that Michael Jackson’s drug use had been a barely-kept secret for years – Dr Conrad Murray killed Michael Jackson and that was that.

Which is great, except that Michael Jackson’s dear old dad Joe Jackson – the same Joe Jackson, incidentally, who Michael Jackson accused of child abuse and then cut out of his will – has decided to break ranks and blame it on Michael’s mother. He really is a very wonderful man, you know. EW reports:

Joe Jackson alleges that his son’s death was a result of his wife Katherine’s inaction. “I said, ‘If you had listened to me, Michael would be living now!’ I kept thinking about the times I had stood in front of her saying something was wrong. Katherine didn’t say a word. I had to get away from her. If she’d done what I asked, Michael would be here today. I am incensed with her.”

Finally! Someone’s found the balls to step forward and blame someone else for notoing  dsomething that they themselves were perfectly capable of doing whenever they wanted. Joe Jackson, you’re our hero. Someone should build a statue of you. Made of gold. That rotates so it always faces the sun. And, yes, we are saying that so you don’t beat us up, you ridiculous octogenarian bellend.

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Burying Michael Jackson isn’t like burying a normal person. It’s fraught with numerous difficulties.

For example, there’s the brain issue. Buried with, or buried without? And the location of the burial needs to somewhere where the coachloads of weeping one-gloved disturbo-fans won’t bother too many people. And, as the Thriller video manfully demonstrated, there’s not much stopping Michael Jackson from popping out of the ground and doing a little jig after he’s been buried and filled in.

But those issues seem to have been remedied, because today is the day when Michael Jackson will officially be buried. Probably. Almost probably.

It’s been a long time – 70 days, in fact – since Michael Jackson died, and a lot of water has passed under the bridge since then. We’ve discovered, for instance, that Michael Jackson liked nothing more than being pumped full of wildly dangerous medical anaesthetic on a regular basis. We’ve also been told that the biological parents of his children might have all been childstars, and that they’re all fairly lucky that Diana Ross isn’t bringing them up. Oh, and that Michael Jackson isn’t dead and there definitely aren’t any butter sculptures of him anywhere.

But that’s all in the past now. Despite mounting evidence that he wasn’t a particularly brilliant person, Michael Jackson was a human being and therefore deserves a proper send-off. Not a gaudy golden-coffined memorial service starring that oddly confident boy from Britain’s Got Talent and the world’s most detailed anecdote about chicken – a real, intimate funeral far removed from the corrosive glare of the media. Just Michael Jackson, his siblings, his mother, the father he deliberately cut of his will for beating him up all the time and, oh, Gladys Knight.

And that’s what is reportedly taking place today, at the Forest Lawn cemetery in Glendale, California. Because it’s a family-only affair, details of the burial are vague – in fact it’s still only an educated guess that he’s being buried today at all – but at least CNN has discovered what sort of artwork you’ll be able to find in the cemetery’s mausoleum:

The Forest Lawn Web site boasts that the mausoleum, “has been called the “New World’s Westminster Abbey” by Time Magazine. Visitors will see “exact replicas of Michelangelo’s greatest works such as David, Moses, and La Pieta” and “Leonardo da Vinci’s immortal Last Supper re-created in brilliant stained glass; two of the world’s largest paintings.”

So a few soulless copies of famous artworks that are supposedly better because they’re bigger and less old. We have a feeling that Michael Jackson is going to feel right at home there.

But still, at least this means that it’s time to say goodbye and let Michael Jackson rest in peace for good. Until, you know, his big tribute concert in a couple of weeks. And that film that’s coming out next month. And the deluxe remastered versions of all his albums that are no doubt being worked on as we speak.

And the extra-deluxe remastered versions of all his albums with extra material that’ll probably be released on the first anniversary of his death.

And all the other songs he recorded before he died.

And Uri Geller banging on about him all the time.

And everything else.

Oh.

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Michael Jackson’s death is such a drag. True, he’s have a huge tribute show in September and a film out in October.

But what about August? We demand more! We pay Michael Jackson’s wages, after all! Entertain us, Michael Jackson! And we don’t mean by the ongoing investigation into your allegedly unlawful death, either! We mean something fun! Something like a private burial on what would have been your 51st birthday! Really? That’s what your family is organising? Fine, you’re forgiven. Oh, we could never stay mad at you, you big lug.

Wait, Michael Jackson hasn’t been buried yet? Ugh.

It would have been Michael Jackson’s 51st birthday on August 29. And, the man of simple pleasures that he was, he didn’t want much in the way of gifts. Maybe some Jesus Juice, or a bunch of arbitrary crap with his own face drawn on it, or enough industrial-strength medical anaesthetic to put him into a coma for a couple of days. Like we said, simple pleasures.

But oh no. Instead of giving Michael Jackson what he wants for his birthday, his family has decided to put him in the ground instead. Literally in the ground – he’s being buried and stuff at the Forest Lawn Memorial-Park in Glendale. The Los Angeles Times reports:

Jackson will be interred Aug. 29, which would have been his 51st birthday, in an intimate morning service for family and friends in the expansive cemetery’s Great Mausoleum, according to a statement from the family publicist. The pop singer’s remains will be placed in a crypt in the Holly Terrace section of the mausoleum.

Who will Michael Jackson be sharing the mausoleum with? Why, the likes of Clark Gable and Jean Harlow, who we’re sure will be thrilled at all the constant intrusion from all the boggle-eyed Michael Jackson fans who keep breaking in to try and touch their hero at night.

But it doesn’t really matter where Michael Jackson will be buried. He’s already received the send-off he deserved and, unless they ferry in Usher and that kid from Britain’s Got Talent to stand in the doorway of the mausoleum and bellow spooky versions of Don’t Stop Till You Get Enough at the mourners, this burial is bound to be an anti-climax, at least in terms of spectacle.

Anyway, Michael Jackson has been dead for almost two months now, so his burial is well deserved. Although there must be a small part of Michael Jackson’s family that wants to hold off for a little while longer. After all, Jermaine Jackson is organising that big tribute concert to Michael in Vienna next month, and that’d be much more of a draw if Michael’s body was lowered down on wires and made to sway backwards and forwards during the big singalong finish of We Are The World, wouldn’t it?

And by burying him now, Michael’s not really making himself available for the chat show circuit to promote his new movie, is he? Selfish, that’s what he is.

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In his lifetime, Michael Jackson flourished in all mediums – music, films about gay-looking scarecrows.

Really long, slightly tedious music videos. All of them. But what about horrifying, legacy-destroying, drug-addled posthumous 3D tour rehearsal movies? Michael Jackson rules at those, too – Sony will apparently buy the rights to Michael Jackson’s final rehearsal footage, and the High School Musical director will release it before Christmas.

That’s if he can animate the six-foot dancing Plasticine rabbit in time, because a Michael Jackson movie without a Plasticine rabbit is like a Michael Jackson story without a shoehorned-in reference to Jesus Juice – weird and incomplete.

Michael Jackson may have died, but he hasn’t left us. Every time someone breaks free of the shackles of normality and bursts into dance, he’s still with us. Every time someone sings with a passion that defies their slight frame, he’s still with us. Every time someone loads up on a dangerous amount of medical anaesthetic and locks themselves away in their heavily fortified bedroom with an uncomfortable number of children, he’s still with us.

And for those of us without the imagination to remember Michael Jackson that way, there’s always the upcoming Michael Jackson concert rehearsal movie to fall back on. True, from what we’ve seen of it, you’ll be remembering a frail-looking man with an upsettingly disfigured face who halfheartedly paces through a number of dance moves that he clearly has no intention of ever performing in public, but whatever.

And you won’t have long to wait to see it, either – according to reports, Sony is about to buy 80 hours of rehearsal footage from AEG for $50 million, and it’ll be turned into a movie by High School Musical director Kenny Ortega by the end of the year.

There’s nothing wrong with that, of course – it’s not like one of the last things that Michael Jackson did before he died was record a career-tarnishing new version of the iconic Thriller video in 3D so that audiences could use it to see exactly how much he’d squandered his life on drugs and needless cosmetic surgery procedures. Was it? Was it, Variety?

Sony Pictures is close to a deal to make a feature film on Michael Jackson drawing on the 80 hours of rehearsal footage filmed for concerts Jackson was preparing to perform in London. The film will feature at least three videos, including an alternative version of Jackson’s “Thriller,” which were shot to be interstitial programming during the concerts. The footage was meant to play in 3-D.

Oh.

Anyway, it’ll be interesting to see how else Sony manages to beef up this final Michael Jackson movie. If you ask us, there should definitely be a bit in it where Lando Calrissian tells Whoopi Goldberg what a blast it’d be to dance for Michael Jackson.

What? That’s already been done? Son of a bitch.

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When people talk about Michael Jackson now, it tends to be about boring stuff like the well-being of his children.

BORING. We don’t want to think of Michael Jackson as a corpse with a complex legacy. We want to remember Michael Jackson as he was in his prime. On, say, January 27th 1984 – the day that Michael Jackson was caught in an explosion on a Pepsi commercial and suffered horrific burns to his face and scalp.

Well, thanks to a video by Us Weekly, we can all relive that harrowing moment time and time again. Thanks Us Weekly! You’re the best!

The Michael Jackson toxicology tests haven’t come back yet, so we can’t be sure of exactly how many different kinds of industrial-strength painkillers he was on. But it seems fairly certain that the man had an addiction, and the addiction is what killed him.

If we want to properly understand Michael Jackson’s painkiller dependence, however, we need to trace it back to its genesis. And that would appear to have begun directly after his 1984 Pepsi commercial, which Michael Jackson fans will remember as the moment when a set of mistimed stage explosions left Michael with second and third degree burns across his scalp and body.

That moment didn’t just mark the start of Michael Jackson’s addiction to the painkillers that would ultimately kill him, but it was also thought to be the birthing point of the plastic surgery obsession that would slowly transform Jackson into the washed-out, hollow-eyed freakshow that he sadly became in later life. So, really, the Pepsi commercial accident marked the precise moment when Michael Jackson’s life started spiralling out of control. Not to be too melodramatic, but when he was caught in that explosion, Michael Jackson began to die.

Luckily, no video has ever been released of the accident, sparing us all from the torturous experience of watching the crystallised moment when Michael Jackson’s life began to nosedive into oblivion. Wait, what’s that? Us Weekly has got a video of Michael Jackson’s accident? You mean we can really see Michael Jackson flailing around in agony with his head on fire? In slow motion? With a morally-questionable soundtrack of needlessly doomy music? AWESOME.

Here it is. Be warned, though – it’s a little bit grim, and just as tasteless…

We think we speak for everyone here when we say “euch”. Our only real regret is that we weren’t present in the Us Weekly meeting when they decided exactly when would be the appropriate time to show a video of Michael Jackson thrashing around on fire and experiencing the worst pain of his entire life. Straight after his death? No, too soon. Two months after his death? No, too late. Exactly three weeks after he died? Yes! Perfect! Bingo! This distressing video is going to make us rich! Rich!

Actually, we sort of hope that this tactic of crystallising the exact moment that led to a celebrity’s death is one that Us Weekly continues in the future. Maybe next week it’ll run an exclusive video of the first time Heath Ledger had trouble falling asleep at night or – better yet – never-before-seen footage of David Carradine walking into his first cupboard and realising that it had given him an erection.

Yes, there’d be nothing wrong with that at all.

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He’s died, had his brain lopped off and been sung at by a 12-year-old, but it’s hard to let Michael Jackson go.

But we might not need to. In a way, Michael Jackson will live on forever. Not in his music or the way we’ll always be reminded of his spirit and generosity whenever we catch sight of a rainbow – that’d be creepy – but in the way that the custody battle over children is never ever going to ever end. Ever.

Especially not now that Debbie Rowe has decided to get involved. Seriously, where’s Jeremy Kyle when you need him?

Michael Jackson hasn’t even been dead for a month yet, but already the tussle over his children is starting to spiral out of control. This is partly Michael Jackson’s fault – it’s becoming clear that, genetically speaking, he had zero in common with any of them and his entire paternal process seemed to involve dangling a number of them from balconies and keeping all the ones ones that didn’t slip out of his hands – but he’s not the only character involved in this mess. The others are:

1 – Katherine Jackson, Michael Jackson’s 79-year-old mother who is temporarily caring for the children.

2 – Diana Ross, the woman who Michael Jackson inexplicably chose to care for his kids in the event of his death, even though she can’t even kick a football properly.

3 – Dr Arnold Klein, the man who might be the father of Michael Jackson’s children but probably isn’t. But he might be. But he probably isn’t. Maybe.

4 – Everyone else on Earth, because at this rate it’s only a matter of time before we all end up getting named as the mother or father of at least one of Michael Jackson’s kids.

And then there’s Debbie Rowe, the woman who married Michael Jackson and then gave birth to either one, two or none of his children, but decided six years ago that she’d rather have a crapload of money than any contact with any of them whatsoever. Rowe’s been keeping herself to herself since Michael Jackson died, but that’s all going to change next week – she’s decided that she’s going to rock up to the custody hearing. People reports:

Now that a hearing has been scheduled at Los Angeles Superior Court on July 20 for temporary guardianship of the children, Rowe plans to be seen. “[Debbie] says that she will definitely be at the custody hearing,” says Marc Schaffel, a former business partner of Jackson’s and a close friend of Rowe’s.

Brilliant. This can only be good for the kids. After all, in times of crisis children need their mothers most of all. Even when their mothers have already accepted a large payment to never see or speak to any of them ever again. And statistically are fairly unlikely to be the biological mother of any of them. And seem a bit weird and creepy most of the time.

Yes, Debbie Rowe is exactly what those children need. This custody battle is going to be fun.

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While the authorities try to untangle Michael Jackson’s mess of finances and genetics, one question remains.

What killed Michael Jackson? In fairness, that’ll be answered soon enough as his toxicology results are returned. But that hasn’t stopped Michael Jackson’s dad Joe Jackson from speaking out now – he says that he suspects ‘foul play’.

Oh Joe, don’t do yourself down. True, you stole Michael Jackson’s childhood and have admitted to mercilessly beating him, and you’ve made a career of leeching off his success – but that hardly constitutes foul play. Oh, you were talking about someone else. Oh. Well this is awkward.

Thanks to all the other berserk details that have emerged in the wake of Michael Jackson’s death – apparently he was a bald anorexic with a body full of needle holes and a set of kids who weren’t even slightly his, for example – nobody has really had time to focus on Michael’s dad Joe Jackson very much.

And in a way, that’s the right thing to do. After all, Joe Jackson has just lost a child, and that’s obviously an unbearably sad thing for any parent to be put through – not least when your relationship with your son had become so fractured that he conspicuously left you out of his will – so keeping a respectful distance in his time of bereavement seemed like the decent thing to do.

But screw that, says Joe Jackson. When else is he going to get the chance to be on television this much? When Marlon dies? Be serious. Joe Jackson is the head of the Jackson family, and as such it’s his duty to drag his weirdly Fritzl-esque face in front of as many cameras as possible to speak on behalf of everyone. Or on behalf of those who believe that Michael Jackson’s death was the result of some sort of high-level conspiracy, at least. Yesterday, Joe Jackson told ABC News:

“I just couldn’t believe what was happening to Michael. I do believe it was foul play. I do believe that. Yes.”

Unbelievable, isn’t it? Joe Jackson actually went 21 entire words without trying to hype up his record label, or his Blu-Ray DVDs, or his shoes, or anything else that would have made him infinitesimally richer. That might just be a record. Congratulations, Joe Jackson. You’re a keeper.

The whole foul play angle is interesting, though, isn’t it? Is Joe Jackson trying to state that someone physically murdered Michael Jackson? Or is he claiming that some of Michael Jackson’s associates had realised that Michael was worth more dead than alive and had slyly encouraged his drug use in the knowledge that it could finish him off?

Or does Joe Jackson mean that Michael Jackson grew up to be a painfully fragile drug addict recluse with an uncomfortable child fixation because his dad couldn’t stop compulsively shilling him out to the world of showbusiness for financial gain when Michael was a boy, beating him when he didn’t perform exactly as ordered?

Or does he mean that chickens killed Michael Jackson? In which case he probably meant ‘fowl play’ and we’d thank him for making that distinction clearer next time. Some people, eh?

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If there’s one lesson to take from Michael Jackson’s death, it’s this – never tell your dermatologist anything.

And, you know, don’t give booze to children. But mainly the dermatologist thing. Say a word about your private life to a dermatologist and the instant you bite it he’ll be popping up on TV shows everywhere blabbing on about what a massive drug addict you were, how messed up your face was and how he might be the father of your children although he probably isn’t.

So take a bow, Michael Jackson’s dermatologist Dr Arnold Klein. You’ve done the dermatological community proud.

As most people know, it’s hard to console the bereaved. The sheer magnitude of their loss is such that nothing you can ever say or do will ever help to fill the gaping chasm in their heart. But God bless Michael Jackson’s long-time dermatologist Dr Arnold Klein for trying to console young Paris Jackson after she broke down in tears at the Michael Jackson memorial show this week.

Now, admittedly, the way that Dr Arnold Klein tried to console Paris Jackson was to go on Larry King hours after the memorial service and announce to the entire planet that he doesn’t think that he’s Paris Jackson’s real father but he can’t be entirely sure, which does seem like a fairly unconventional way to comfort someone in the wake of their father’s untimely death. Paris would have probably preferred a teddy bear or something.

And, yes, as an aside it is weird that Michael Jackson had a dermatologist. Because we always assumed that you’d only hire a dermatologist if you actually had any human skin on your body. Surely if you’d been coated in a bleached-white nylon-based polymer, which we always assumed was the case with Michael Jackson, then you’d be better off with a lab technician or something.

But anyway, back to Dr Arnold Klein. He didn’t appear on Larry King to loudly inform Michael Jackson’s kids that they’re probably not in any way genetically related to the man they thought was their father. No, that would be unbelievably crass so soon after Michael Jackson’s death. That information was weedled out of him by the sharpened journalistic skills of the host.

No. Dr Arnold Klein went on Larry King to declare what a massive, dribbly-mouthed, boogly-eyed nutjob drug addict Michael Jackson was. Which, we’re sure you’ll agree, is much better. CBS News reports:

“Michael at one time had an addiction,” Dr. Arnold Klein told King. “He went to England and withdrew from that addiction in a secure setting where he went off drugs all together.” Klein said that he knew that while Jackson was on tour in Germany, he was using Diprivan, with the help of an anesthesiologist, to go to sleep at night. “I told him he was absolutely insane,” Klein said. “This isn’t a drug you can repeatedly take.”

We have to say that we’re completely disgusted by the actions of Dr Arnold Klein here. Michael Jackson is barely dead, and there he is – a trusted professional – appearing on television to deliberately besmirch his character. It’s a total mistake – everyone knows that should be at home writing his character-besmirching cash-in biography of Michael Jackson instead, because that’s where the real money is.

And he’s got to get his out before Uri Geller publishes his. That’s absolutely key.

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When Princess Diana died, we did as many British things as we could to keep her memory alive.

So basically we drank a million cups of teas and then started a fight with a complete stranger.

But, following Michael Jackson‘s death, American’s haven’t been upholding the same tradition. As far as we can tell, there wasn’t a sudden rush on at McDonalds or a shortage of country and western music. However, you can get your hands on an exclusive range of Michael Jackson tat to relieve the pain. And don’t let us put any ideas into your head that people are exploiting his death to make money. Oh no.

So what items of Michael Jackson rubbish can you spend your hard-earned benefit money on? After gig promoters AEG realised there was going to be a tiny gap in their finances, they announced this – the Michael Jackson This Is It commemorative concert ticket. It’s a special ticket which has a hologram of Michael Jackson on it. Moving him really fast makes it look like he’s dancing! That’s worth the price of not seeing Michael Jackson in concert, isn’t it?

Now then, did you love Michael Jackson to the extent where a milky liquid exploded out of your penis? If so, then this item is the one for you and your favourite wall. A special Michael Jackson poster has been knocked up in Photoshop and printed out. You could do the same yourself, but why not waste some money on it. Behold! The Michael Jackson commemorative “loved poster”:

When you go out to buy essential goods such as toilet roll, beer and whipped cream, what do you use? Credit cards and paper money are correct answers, but coins have been used since the time of the dinosaurs. So why wouldn’t you want to get your very own Michael Jackson commemorative coin? Granted, you can’t exchange it for goods or services – unless the prostitute is badly out of it on dodgy cocaine, but who cares! With this coin, they’ll always be a twinkle in Michael’s eye. Until the shine rubs off:

The Penny Black is quite a rare stamp. It’s so rare that people paint everyday normal stamps to try and fool fellow collectors. We’d have thought that by now, The Queen would have got her arse off the throne and publicly announced the change of design from her face to Michael Jackson’s. Available in black or white. Until this happens you’ll have to do with these Michael Jackson commemorative stamps:

If you were going to one of Michael Jackson’s gigs, you should realise that it was bloody annoying for everyone else. At any given moment, someone somewhere would drop their petty fact in to a conversation. Now who’s laughing? Not those flying in from foreign lands and who booked hotels in London. However, you can still boast you we’re going to watch an ageing man walk around a stage whilst younger, happier, fitter and less drugged up people danced around him, albeit on a Michael Jackson commemorative keyfob:

As you’ll probably know from reading this article, Michael Jackson is dead. However, this doesn’t stop this next item refreshing people’s memory of him kicking the bucket. Imagine wearing the commemorative RIP Michael Jackson t-shirt. People might literally jump off bridges as they relive the tragic horrors of their Jesus Juice-loving pop star dying.

Finally, this isn’t a commemorative item, but it amuses us to think that you can scare people by pretending the zombie of Michael Jackson has risen from the grave:

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Didn’t get tickets to see Michael Jackson perform this summer? Never mind – the next best thing happens tomorrow.

Now, since Michael Jackson is dead, the next best thing clearly involves standing in a giant arena for hours at a time wedged between a hysterically weeping hermaphrodite with a sparkly glove fetish and someone dressed up as golden-era Bubbles while Michael Jackson’s coffin remains a speck on a stage several hundred feet away, but that doesn’t seem to have put people off.

Michael Jackson’s memorial service takes place at the Staples Centre tomorrow. And 1.6 million people have inexplicably registered for tickets.

Remember him for what he was, not what he became. That’s been the sort of unofficial mantra surrounding Michael Jackson’s death over this last week, and for good reason. Michael Jackson’s death is much sadder when you think of him as the artist behind, say, Don’t Stop Till You Get Enough rather than, say, the ghoul-faced drug addict who made children drink wine from baby bottles and lived in a nightmarish Scooby-Doo villain’s dilapidated fairground.

So don’t remember Michael Jackson for what he became. And since, in the last week, he’s become a funny-looking corpse in a box, that’s definitely not how you should remember him. But that hasn’t exactly stopped over one and a half million people from doing exactly that. Tomorrow, Michael Jackson’s public memorial service will take place at the Staples Centre in LA. And even though nobody really knows what form it’s going to take, organisers have been inundated with enquiries. EW reports:

The registration process for free tickets to Michael Jackson’s public memorial service has closed. Now AEG, the company behind the memorial, is charged with the unenviable task of sorting through 1.6 million registers, “scrubbing” all entries to eliminate duplicates and those suspected to have been made by auto-entry, and randomly drawing 8,750 tickets.

It’s a complicated process – those selected to win tickets will be informed by email, then invited to a secret off-site location to pick the tickets up, provided that they remember the secret handshake, 25 of the 30 secret passwords and can convincingly perform a piece of shadow-puppetry based around the theme of solitude. They will then be blindfolded, driven to the middle of the desert and if they can make it back before the service starts, they’re in.

Don’t worry if you don’t get tickets for Michael Jackson’s memorial service because, as we’re sure you’ve already spotted, it’s been promoted by AEG. And since AEG is clearly desperate to recoup the millions in comeback money it lost when Michael Jackson died, we’re fairly sure that the memorial service will end up being released as a cash-in DVD, right between the cash-in DVD of Michael’s last rehearsal and the cash-in DVD that’s just a close-up of one of Michael Jackson’s shoes while a sad piano version of Man In The Mirror plays in the background.

Still, on the plus side at least this is it. After fans have been given the chance to say goodbye to Michael Jackson, the story will end and he can rest in peace. Obviously there’ll still be blanket coverage of his autopsy results, the drawn-out attempts to decipher his will, the endless squabbles over his desperate financial situation, the frighteningly complex custody battle for his kids and an increasing number of sensational tell-all interviews where people list all the awful things that Michael Jackson did during his life, but… oh, actually, never mind.

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The saddest thing about Michael Jackson’s death wasn’t the messy custody vacuum it left for his kids.

No. And it wasn’t the way that it’s still pretty much impossible to find a radio station that doesn’t only play Michael Jackson records, although that is very sad. The saddest thing about Michael Jackson’s death is that nobody will see what he was planning for his big comeback shows.

But that ends now – we’ve got video footage of Michael Jackson’s last rehearsal right here, and if you like watching middle-aged men walking around a stage very slowly, you’re in for a treat.

Now that the main focus of Michael Jackson’s death is the gargantuan tangle that he left his personal affairs in, it’s a relief to finally be able to shift away an concentrate on something he was actually good at. No, not being sued or dressing up as a lady or being accused of wanton cruelty to giraffes, we’re talking something that Michael Jackson was really good at – performing.

This summer, close to a million people were set to watch Michael Jackson’s glorious comeback at London’s O2. Or, if you want to be realistic about it, probably about 200,000 people were set to watch Michael Jackson’s glorious comeback at London’s O2, with all the others getting refunds when Michael inevitably started cancelling entire swathes of shows for no clear reason. But none of that matters now – he’s dead, so nobody’s going to see anything now.

Except they might. Earlier this week we reported that Concert promoters AEG had taped one of Michael Jackson’s last rehearsals in HD, and was planning to sell it to fans in a heartbreaking Bullseye-style ‘here’s what you could have won’ moment that wasn’t at all about cynically cashing in.

But having read some of the accounts of Michael Jackson’s last few days, that didn’t sound entirely appealing – who’d pay to see a bald, anorexic drug addict with half a face wheeze and shuffle along to watered-down karaoke version of his best-loved songs?

Happily, though, AEG has released a 90-second video of Michael Jackson’s final rehearsal proving that Michael Jackson still had a bit of life left in his tank. Here it is…

Yes, there are a lot of fairly depressing things about the video – such as the fact that Michael Jackson’s most elaborate dance move in the sequence involved sort of marching up and down the stage with his friends, the fact that he’s miming throughout, the fact that Michael Jackson and his choreographers still appear to think that it’s 1986 and the fact that, despite his enviable back catalogue, Michael Jackson was still planning to do They Don’t Care About Us – but at least the final footage of him alive shows him doing something he excelled at, rather than being another gruesome reminder of how rubbish everything else about his life was.

But don’t worry, we’ll get back to that next week. Diana Ross, for crying out loud. What was he thinking?

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Michael Jackson’s kids must be going through a horrific time at the moment – their dad has just died, after all.

Worse still, it looks like they’re going to be at the centre of a confusing, emotionally-exhausting custody battle. But maybe, just maybe, help is at hand. And it comes in the shining, mad-eyed, massively unsuitable form of Diana Ross.

That’s right. Michael Jackson stated in his will that if his mother is unable to look after his kids, then Diana Ross – his co-star in The Wiz – should. And if she can’t, then the giant plasticine rabbit from Moonwalker should. Probably.

Right, this is probably going to take some explaining. Michael Jackson is dead, this much we know. And, aside from massive debt and a robot version of his own head, Michael Jackson also left behind three young children. And that’s where things start to get confusing.

Because Michael Jackson almost certainly wasn’t the biological father of the children. And the woman who everyone thought was the biological mother of the children – the one who traded all form of parental access for cash three years ago – might not be the mother after all. And that’s why Michael Jackson has decided that the only person who could ever properly raise his kids is his mother Katherine – who you may remember as the woman who sold Michael Jackson’s childhood for a quick buck 40 years ago, ultimately setting him on the path that led to his death.

The problem with this is that Katherine Jackson is a 79-year-old women, and it doesn’t seem very practical for her to care for Michael Jackson’s kids. Not because the children will be freaked out by the prospect of living with a frail, gnarled old lady – because, come on, look at who their dad was – but because it’d obviously be quite exhausting for her. So, like the all-knowing figure of universal love that he was, Michael Jackson concocted a plan-B while writing his will.

That plan? Fobbing the kids off to Diana Ross. Seriously. AFP reports:

“I have intentionally omitted to provide my former wife, Deborah Jean Rowe Jackson,” Jackson stated in the will, which was dated July 7, 2002. “If any of my children are minors at the time of my death, I nominate my mother, Katherine Jackson as guardian … If Katherine Jackson fails to survive me, or is unable or unwilling to act as guardian, I nominate Diana Ross as guardian.”

Diana Ross. Diana Ross. How’s that going to make Debbie Rowe feel, for crying out loud? She can’t look after the children but Diana Ross – the notoriously cranky and apparently balding pensioner who was once arrested for allegedly fondling a security guard’s breasts at an airport and has spent time in rehab this decade dealing with her drug and alcohol problems – can? Talk about a kick in the teeth.

We feel for Michael Jackson’s kids, we really do. Imagine how they’ll feel, sitting down day after day to listen to another one of Auntie Diana’s interminable stories about what Gene Simmons‘ penis looks like. And they won’t even be able to go outside for a kickabout because Diana Ross is crap at that as well.

Still, it could be worse. It’s clear that Michael Jackson wanted his kids to be cared for by a star from one of his films, so those kids should probably be breathing a sigh of relief that they’re not currently on a minibus heading towards Joe Pesci‘s house. That’s something, right?

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Despite the whole event of Michael Jackson’s death being covered by every news agency and blog around the world, some people don’t think he died.

Apparently, it’s just one giant lie that has been cooked up to relieve the stress from his weak shoulders. Yes, we think it’s rubbish too, but we’re not ultrasensitive, arse-kissing, fanboy conspiracy nutjobs.

So, the big question has to be, is Michael Jackson dead? Or is he in a magical and mystical place full of fairies, gnomes and hobbits? It seems unlikely – he was hardly the master of disguise, was he? Just because you sometimes get pushed around in a wheelchair, it doesn’t automatically make you an evil genius.

Still, it hasn’t stopped bored internet users shitting out wild and wacky theories as to why Michael Jackson’s sudden death is nothing more than an elaborate, if somewhat untimely, April Fool’s joke. If his Twitter feed has been hijacked to say he’d kicked the bucket, we would have laughed off the idea. But having what with all the paramedics and 911 calls, it seems pretty serious. Unless someone made a prank call! The fiend!

Using our in-depth knowledge of Michael Jackson, we want to toss our own theories into the ring as to fully explain why the king of pop isn’t dead:

1) He’s a shape shifter. Think about it, one day he went from a badass black dude with slick dance moves to a wimpy white man. Jackson obviously has the ability to change his appearance and he became bored of being a frail middle-aged man. For all we know he could be a tree, park bench or even an ice-cream cone. You could have just licked his face. Ugh, you just licked Michael Jackson’s face.

2) Michael Jackson is off to find Bubbles. You may have noticed that, before he died, there was an American version of I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here. Monkeys, apes and chimps all belong in the jungle and that’s where Bubbles would have been sent to after he apparently started dry-humping people’s legs and pissing on carpets. Michael may have wanted to be reunited with his hairy ex-pal after being inspired by the jungle show.

3) He’s off to find the celebrity death island. When famous people die, they don’t go to heaven. Instead, they all wind up on a tiny island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean – this is what Lost is based on. After realising that Princess Diana, 2Pac, Biggie Smalls and Hitler would be there, perhaps he wanted to join the party early? Who wouldn’t when the dress code consists of nothing but brightly-coloured hula skirts?

4) He pocketed the money from the gigs in London he’ll never complete and plans to fly to the moon. This is Michael Jackson we’re talking about people; he was world famous for his moonwalk. Blasting off in a rocket ship to live there means he has his own unique paradise.

Some say he died due to the stress of rehearsing for his gigs and downing plenty of painkillers. But this is Michael Jackson we’re talking about. Anything he does has to be crazy and off the wall!

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This news just in: Michael Jackson is still dead. In other news, people still won’t shut up about it.

And why should they? Michael Jackson’s death was just the tip of a depressing iceberg that we’ll hear about for months – especially now that Michael Jackson’s will from 2002 has apparently turned up. It’ll take a while for the contents to be made public, but early reports suggest that Michael Jackson’s father Joe doesn’t even get a look in.

It’ll come as a painful shock to Joe Jackson – we heard that he really had his eye on Michael’s nightmarish abandoned fairground, too.

Getting named in Michael Jackson’s will has to be both a blessing and a curse. On one hand, you’ll know that during his lifetime Michael Jackson considered you to be enough of a friend to repay you for your loyalty after his death. But on the other hand, Jesus, what on Earth would you end up getting?

Did Michael Jackson like you enough to give you the golf buggy with a creepy painting of himself dressed as Peter Pan daubed across the bonnet? One of the beds that he slept with kids in? Perhaps if you were only an acquaintance you’d be slung a couple of half-empty bottles of Jesus Juice in a gift basket or something.

Just look at Michael Jackson’s mother Katherine, for God’s sake – she’s ended up with custody of Michael Jackson’s children, even though she technically shares about the same amount of DNA with them as she does with, say, a seagull. She can’t be happy about that at all. She’s a 79-year-old woman. She doesn’t want three strange little kids running around her house. She probably wanted the robot Michael Jackson head from Moonwalker. Everyone wants robot Michael Jackson head from Moonwalker.

But at least that’s more than Joe Jackson’s getting. According to early unconfirmed reports, Michael Jackson has cut his father – who he long accused of beating him – out of his will entirely. The Daily Mail reports:

The singer made no mention of Joe Jackson in a will drawn up in 2002. Now that signed document – the only one traced so far in a frantic scramble over Jacko’s estate – could be made legally binding if a later one fails to turn up. It would mean 80-year-old Joe Jackson, who publicly began cashing in on his son’s legacy within hours of his death, might not get a penny.

It’s a sad reflection of the broken relationship between Michael and Joe Jackson, and a stark warning to all the fathers of the world.

Admittedly that warning is ‘if you physically abuse your son and steal his childhood in order to vicariously snatch the fame and extraordinary wealth that you weren’t able to attain by yourself as a youth, then there’s a good chance that you won’t get to be embroiled in the headache-inducing legal complications that will inevitably follow his ghoulish, debt-ridden death’ – which actually makes the idea of beating your children sound quite appealing – but a warning’s a warning.

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This is getting ridiculous. Michael Jackson has dominated the news to such an extent that there’s no other news.

Honestly. No news. The Iranians have stopped demonstrating to do a mass moonwalk in honour of Michael Jackson, Bernie Madoff only got 150 years in jail to commemorate a dance remix of Smooth Criminal that runs at 150bpm and even climate change is too traumatised to kill any more polar bears this week.

So what news is there? Well, Britney Spears hasn’t died. Yes, it’s just like when Jeff Goldblum didn’t die on Friday but, well, about Britney Spears. It’s news, honest.

As shocking as Michael Jackson’s death was, it’s important to remember that he’s not the only person to have died recently. David Carradine snuffed it. Farrah Fawcett snuffed it. Ed McMahon snuffed it. Steven Wells snuffed it. Some beardy bloke from an infomercial snuffed it. Fred Travalena snuffed it. That’s how bad things are – even celebrities who we’ve never heard of have died.

Such a tsunami of celebrity death is bound to affect people in different ways. Some will cry, some will realise that they’d never actually met any of these people in real life and just get on with things, some – in particular anybody who’s ever even briefly been on television for more than five seconds within the last 20 years – will take to their panic rooms with stockpiles of tinned food and Tamiflu and stay there until all the famous people have stopped dying.

And some will do the decent thing and tell everyone that other celebrities have died.

It’s what happened last Friday when Jeff Goldblum had to politely remind the world that he was still alive after a hoax, and it’s what has happened to Britney Spears, after someone hacked into her Twitpic account and told everyone that she’d karked it too. NME reports:

The message read: “Britney has passed today. It is a sad day for everyone. More news to come.” The message was followed up with another Twitter posting saying, “Britney’s Twitter was just hacked. The last message is obviously not true. She is fine and dandy spending a quiet day at home relaxing.”

We’ve got mixed feelings about this turn of events, to be honest. Obviously we’re pleased that Britney Spears isn’t dead – simply because we probably wouldn’t be able to take five full days of radio stations playing nothing but I’m Not A Girl Not Yet A Woman directly after five full days of hearing radio stations playing nothing but Man In The Mirror – but ‘Britney has passed today’ just reeks of missed opportunity, doesn’t it?

The problem is that it’s not very realistic. Now, several close-together Twitpic updates reading ‘OMG, Britney’s got the scissors! Call for help!’, ‘No Britney, not the face! Not my precious face!’, ‘This is the voice of Britney’s vagina. I have overtaken her body and will use it for evil!’ and ‘No, my vagina, put the petrol can down! Stop it! Oh, it burns! Oh, I’m burning to death! Arrrghhh!’ would have been much more in keeping with Britney’s character, and it would have probably fooled a lot more people, too.

Oh well. Congratulations for not being dead anyway, Britney. Our records show that not dying yesterday was the greatest thing to happen to you for about 18 months. So, really, well done.

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