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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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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