I suppose I should lay down some snark about Michael Jackson, who like many an entertainer before him danced down that yellow-brick road only to discover that the Emerald City was an MGM sound stage in Culver City, California, a far cry indeed from the Merry Old Land of Oz.

Unlike the rest of the universe, I never cared for Jackson’s music, unless a stripper was dancing to it. If I remember correctly, which is unlikely given the circumstances, when the fabled El Rancho Delux Welcome Back Summer Party in Denver one year relied heavily upon “Thriller” to undermine the morals of the women in attendance, I was appalled; I either ate a bunch of acid and retired to the top of a tractor-trailer parked nearby to meditate on the pure white light of stupidity, or went to sleep under my truck. Those parties tend to blur together in what remains of my mind.

To me, Motown meant Marvin Gaye, the Temptations, The Four Tops, Smokey Robinson, The Supremes, Martha and the Vandellas, Stevie Wonder and Gladys Knight and the Pips. Michael Jackson and his doppelgänger Elizabeth Taylor, on the other hand, defined talent squandered in the pursuit of celebrity.

A casual glance around the Internet indicates that the seriously disturbed artist who segued raggedly from King of Pop to Wacko Jacko donated heavily to various charities when he wasn’t throwing away millions on silly-ass bullshit, feeding an endlessly rotating nest of traveling vampires who are much more deserving of our scorn than was the young black man turned old white woman. But who among us has the wherewithal to tell a clanging cash register to shut the fuck up, even when it rings off key?

And anyway, what the hell? The millions were Jackson’s to piss away in any direction he cared to aim, and that some of his income went to worthy causes instead of his own private Disneyland, facial reconstruction and lawyers is to be honored and remembered.

Jackson famously outbid all comers to land the rights to a ton of Beatles songs, but he apparently failed to learn anything from one of the simplest of them — “Money Can’t Buy Me Love.” He died more than $400 million in debt, according to the Los Angeles Times. Isn’t it a pity?

• Late update: Herself asked if I’d mentioned the passing of Farrah Fawcett in this diatribe. I have now.

Man, it seems as though every time I turn around, somebody is chiseling away at something around here — soiled tile, spoiled carpet, damp drywall, violated vinyl.

Right now it’s the refrigerator, which has an unspecified “defrost problem.” * Earlier today it was my left cheek, which lost a chunk of what Herself’s dermatologist described as a seborrheic keratosis. Think of it as a mole designed by committee.

The doc didn’t seem to think it was anything special, but she’s shipping it off for analysis, just in case. Maybe they’ll find Amelia Earhart in there, or Jimmy Hoffa. That gram of marching powder I misplaced in the Eighties. All that free time I used to have.

Nah. They’ll probably just find a bunch of money in it. Why else would you go about mining people’s faces, if not for gold?

Meanwhile, I have a bandage the size of a quarter on my cheek, right about where my helmet straps meet, so it looks like I’ll be afoot for a couple days. How novel — for once, a pain in a cheek that isn’t part of my ass.

* Turns out the defrost timer had croaked. The good news is, says the fridge tech, is that at this point he’s replaced pretty much everything in the sonofabitch except the compressor — and when that goes, it’s time for a new fridge.

Herself has returned from an extended visit to the mysterious East (the DeeCee-Maryland clusterplex) and so things are back to what passes for normal around the DogHaus. Rise and shine way too early, prepare breakfast, commit a little journalism, send her off to work. Someone in this family has to earn an honest dollar, and the cats don’t have much in the way of résumés. (“Eat, shit, sleep. References upon request.”)

In other news, I see Ed McMahon has gone to join Johnny Carson at the Big Talk Show In the Sky. Before he spent some 30 years sitting on that couch, laughing at Carson’s gags, he was a Marine fighter pilot who flew 85 combat missions in Korea. Who knew?

According to The New York Times, Big Ed also shined shoes, sold newspapers and peanuts, dug ditches, worked as an usher and as a traveling bingo announcer in New England, sold stainless-steel cookware door to door, and pitched a gadget called the Morris Metric Slicer to tourists on the Atlantic City Boardwalk and in Times Square. His first gigs on TV were as a clown and the host of a cooking show.

Ah, Eddie, we hardly knew ye.

The mom-in-law (a.k.a. Herself v1.0) is getting set to jet home after visiting for the past few days, and how do she and Herself v2.0 spend the morning? Watching coverage of the disappearance of Air France Flight 477. This strikes me as not unlike preparing for surgery by reading stories about doctors absentmindedly leaving gloves and/or tools in body cavities or sawing off the wrong bits.

I hate to fly, myself. I’m not frightened by air travel — I just despise the procedure, which is reminiscent of a bad day at the Murmansk DMV. Take this off and that out, then sit down and shut up. We’ve oversold your flight, so you may be napping in the concourse for the next few days, and if we do have a seat for you you’ll find it and your plane at Gate X99. This is Gate A1. Run, you fat bastard, it’s wheels up in 30 seconds. Either that or we’ll be leaving when we’re good and ready. Have a peanut. That’ll be five bucks. Perhaps I was a feedlot cow in a previous life, being prodded down the long, shit-stained feedlot chute that eventually leads to McDonalds.

Whew. Long day in the old velo-barrel today. It was an even longer day for the Astana boys, who missed out on a stage win and lost more time to the heavy hitters in the Giro d’Italia. But the longest day of all may be the one spent in uniform, far from friends and family, in the company of hostile strangers. Thus we’ll raise a glass to the men and women of the U.S. armed forces tonight. May you all return safely and honorably to the Land of the Big PX. Your kittens must miss you.