AVENGERS vs PEPSI vs MICHAEL JACKSON?? Star forced to continue dancing after his death??!!

Okay so on this big AVENGERS day, what could bump the AVENGERS from the top spot on my blog? Would you believe a dead Michael Jackson?

Okay it has recently been announced that Pepsi bought the use of Michael Jackson’s image from his estate.

It reads:

“On Thursday [3 May 2012], Pepsi announced a deal with the late King of Pop’s estate that allows the brand to use his image for its new global marketing push.

READ: Will Michael Jackson Be Back in Hologram Form?

According to PepsiCo, the nature of the promotion will vary by country, but will include a TV ad, special-edition Pepsi cans featuring Jackson’s image and chances to download remixes of his biggest hits.

Pepsi’s chief creative officer, Brad Jakeman, said the broader Live for Now campaign took 10 months to develop and its aim is to amplify the company’s strong ties with pop culture.”— Eonline

I am not a fan of Pepsi to begin with, high-fructose corn syrup filled muck, but this… this is something scummy… even for them. It’s like the John Wayne and Fred Astaire commercials. Or the recent CASABLANCA footage, co-opted into an ad… it’s an abomination and a violation.

An image isn’t something like a car or a house, like talent it is not something that can or should be bequeathed from or to someone else, not something to be sold.

His estate sold his image???

An image, like talent, is not the estate’s to sell. And it is not Pepsi’s to buy.

If at any time you had called yourself a fan of Michael Jackson, either the boy star, or the teen phenomenon, or the young adult superstar, or even the confused/tragic/and beleaguered but no less talented Hughsian adult he left this world as, then honor him by letting Pepsi know your displeasure with their 21st century digital slavery plans.

How do you let a multi-billion dollar company know you’re not happy? You cut into their bottom line.

You stop giving them money.

In Pepsi’s case it means finding alternatives to the following:

Pepsi-co Assets:

Frito-Lay
Gatorade
Quaker Oats
Tropicana
Elma Chips (Brazil)

Products[1]

Breakfast Bars
Quaker Chewy Granola Bars
Quaker Chewy Granola Cocoa Bars
Quaker Dipps Granola Bars
Quaker Fruit & Oatmeal Bars
Quaker Life Bar
Quaker Oatmeal to Go Bars
Coffee Drinks
Seattle’s Best Coffee
Starbucks DoubleShot
Starbucks Frappuccino
Starbucks Iced Coffee
Dr. Pepper Snapple Group
Dr. Pepper
7up
Squirt
A&W Root Beer
Canada Dry
Crush
Hawaiian Punch
Deja Blue
Diet Rite
Country Time (Under license from Kraft Foods)
Gini
Hires
IBC Root Beer
Orangina (Only owned by Pepsico everywhere else Suntory owns it)
Welch’s (Under license from Welch’s)
Peñafiel
Margaritaville
Mistic
Mr. & Ms. T
Mott’s
Nantucket Nectars
Nehi
RC Cola
ReaLemon
Rose’s Lime Juice
Schweppes
Snapple
Stewart’s Fountain Classics
Sun Drop
Tahitian Treat
Venom Energy Drink
Vernors
Yoo-hoo
Energy Drinks
AMP Energy
No Fear Energy Drinks
Rockstar Energy
SoBe Energy Drinks
Cap’n Crunch Cereal
King Vitaman Cereal
Kretschmer Toasted Wheat Germ

Quaker Life Cereal

Mother’s Ready-to-Eat & Hot Cereals
Quaker Essentials
Quaker Grits
Quaker Instant Oatmeal
Quaker Natural Granola Cereal
Quaker Old Fashioned Oats
Quaker Oh!s Cereal
Quaker Puffed Rice
Quaker Shredded Wheat Cereal
Quaker Oatmeal Squares Cereal
Quisp Cereal
Other
AMP Energy Gum
Aunt Jemima Mixes & Syrups
Quaker Baking Mixes
Rice Snacks
Quaker Large Rice Cakes
Quaker Mini Delights
Quaker Quakes
Quaker Tortillaz
Side Dishes
Near East Side Dishes
Pasta Roni Side Dishes
Rice-A-Roni Side Dishes
Snacks
Baked! Cheetos Snacks
Baked! Doritos Tortilla Chips
Baked! Lay’s Potato Crisps
Baked! Ruffles Potato Chips
Baked! Tostitos Tortilla Chips
Baken-ets Pork Skins and Cracklins
Cheetos Cheese Flavored Snacks
Chester’s Flavored Fries
Chester’s Popcorn
Cracker Jack Candy Coated Popcorn
Doritos Tortilla Chips
El Isleno Plaintain CHips
Frito-Lay, Fritos, and Tostitos Dips & Salsas
Frito-Layngh Nuts & Seeds
Fritos Corn Chips
Funyons Onion Flavored Rings
Gamesa Cookies and Wafers
Grandma’s Cookies
Hickory Sticks
Hostess Potato Chips
Lay’s Kettle Cooked Potato Chips
Lay’s Potato Chips
Lay’s Stax Potato Crisps
Lay’s Wavy Potato Chips

Meat Snacks

Maui Style Potato Chips
Miss Vicky’s Potato Chips
Munchies Snack Crackers
Munchies Snack Mix
Munchos Potato Crisps
Natural Cheetos
Natural Lay’s
Natural Ruffles
Natural Tostitos
Nut Harvest Nuts
Rold Gold Pretzels
Ruffles Potato Chips
Sabritones Puffed Wheat Snacks
Santitas Tortille Chips
Smartfood Popcorn
Smartfood Popcorn Clusters
Spitz Seeds
Stacy’s Pita and Bagel Chips
SunChips Multigrain Snacks
Tostitos Artisan Recipes Tortilla Chips
Tostito’s Tortilla Chips
Soft Drinks (original Pepsi brands)
Diet Pepsi
Diet Mountain Dew
Diet Sierra Mist
Mountain Dew
Mug Soft Drinks
Pepsi
Pepsi Max
Mirinda
Sierra Mist Natural
Sports Nutrition
Gatorade G Series Prime 01
Gatorade Thirst Quencher – G Series Perform 02
Gatorade G Series Recover 03
Gatorade G2
Gatorade Natural
Gatoradgfne G2 Natural
Gatorade G Series FIT Prime 01 Pre-Workout Fuel
Gatorade G Series FIT Perform 02 Workout Hydration
Gatorade G Series FIT Recover 03 Post-Workout Recovery
Gatorade G Series PRO 01 Nutrition Shake
Gatorade G Series PRO 01 Nutrition Bar
Gatorade G Series PRO 01 Carbohydrate Energy Formula
Gatorade G Series PRO 02 Endurance Formula
Gatorade G Series PRO 02 Perform Gatorlytes
Gatorade G Series PRO 03 Protein Recovery Shake
Gatorade G Series PRO Prime +
Gatorade G Series PRO Recover +
Water Products
Aquafina
Aquafina FlavorSplash
Propel Zero
SoBe Lifewater

Long list, but considering I don’t eat corn chips or most corn based products or msg or any modified corn-starch laced products, or drink high-fructose filled beverages (ie stuff not known for its health benefits); it’s incredibly easy for me to avoid everything on this list.

Only stuff I was getting was occasionally Tropicana and Aquafina and now that I know they are owned by Pepsi, I can definitely do without them.

And no, I’m not suggesting this boycott of Pepsi because I’m a Michael Jackson fan. It’s about more than that.

I haven’t been a music follower for a while, or heard anything by Michael Jackson in a while, but I respect that a man’s image, not his likeness (ie caricature, or drawing, or performance) but a man’s actual image, is not something to be owned by another man. This country has an unresolved history with trying to own what is not theirs to own.

Utter nonsense, you say. Utter fiction.

Unfortunately we live in a time, where technology is every day making of our fiction… facts.

This precedent set, can affect any actor, any person. Robert Downey Jr or Jeremy Renner or Samuel L. Jackson sold by their estates after their deaths; to speak lines or support causes or candidates they would have never done in their life.

Isn’t that a violation, for anyone?

For you, and you, and you over in the corner?

And because they are actors it should be no less a violation. You offer not your soul, when you offer a performance.

You do not lose… the rights of man.

Except Pepsi says… perhaps you do.

So Pepsi should be reminded of the… tactlessness of their plan.

The products above… stop purchasing them.

Ingredients wise, you’re not going to be missing much, as they are labeled junk food for a reason.

And I would love to know the money grubbing member of Jackson’s estate who got rich, selling the image, and no doubt if they could, the soul of Michael Jackson to the highest bidder.

Send a message, that there is such a thing… as decency, as propriety.

Send a tweet, or email (or whatever you kids do) to Pepsi, saying…”boycotting you because of Michael Jackson ad plans.”

Let them know.

Let them all know.

That there is such a thing, as the rights of man.

Michael Jackson, Alien Doors and Media Hypocrisy

A brief post.

I’m in a repair shop and watching the media feeding frenzy on Michael Jackson, in between digital drop-outs of the picture of course (this forced march to a digital spectrum, is yet another glaring robbery of the American people. With free Airwaves, Analog Airwaves GIVEN to big business and governmental interests. The FCC, joing the FDA, the FBI and every other governmental acronym in selling out America.); and I’m struck once again by the hypocrisy and mendacity of the Master Media.

A media that for decades has hounded and derided Michael Jackson, and not too long ago was dusting off a prison cell for him, and yet here they are, all those well paid talking heads, crying their crocodile tears, over the stopping of a man’s heart, that their medium had no little hand in trying to break. They didn’t literally drive him into a wall like the reporters did to Princess Di, but their harassment was no less designed to destroy.

You know that old joke about lawyers, I think it applies even more to Newspeople, to talking heads. What do you call a 1000 Newspeople at the bottom of the sea?

A good start.

I grew up on the music of the Jackson 5 and Michael Jackson. Don’t effing tell me about Michael Jackson, you don’t have the goddamn right. Michael Jackson was, to even say a great talent is to practice immense understatement, he was a wunderkind, a boy genius, A Mozart of his age.

And as such a talented boy, he was beloved. But as a burgeoning talented man, he met up with a medium, the unchecked press, that is adept at eating its young. And on top of that, as a man of color, in the heart of the nation that has always held itself the last, best hope for slavery, he came up against the destroying wall reserved for men of color. A wall that increasingly in this new 21st century has only 3 doors for men of color, the criminal system (as guard dog or guarded), the coffin, or the coffers of big business (as smiling fool or sexless token).

Throughout his brief life they tried to break Michael Jackson for all three doors, most notably the last, and most damagingly the last. We can see the impact the last had on his mind, and his flesh. A sensitive young man, perhaps no person of color best physically represented the pressures of being squeezed to fit such alien doors.

And now the media machine, and the pieces of offal that gleefully helped make of Michael Jackson’s life a joke, and a cautionary tale, have the temerity to have all their talking heads speak sweetly of that life? Spin their derision into accolades, now that he is beyond the hearing?

People wonder why I will never take sides against a Michael Vick, or and OJ Simpson, or a Marion Jones, or a Wesley Snipes, America has too much of its own sins not yet atoned for, to try and judge another man’s sins. Particularly a person of color. America lacks the moral high-ground to do that.

The media lacks the moral high-ground to do that.

I wish you… all media pundits, all talking heads, all pullers of strings; I wish you plague and death.

Plague and death.

“The only reason people are so upset when you die is because they haven’t finished using you yet.”
Jimi Hendrix

(Thanks to Taalam Acey for that quote- from his great CD… Blues Resurgence)