All of Michael Jackson’s Neverland Ranch possessions (including even the gate, and creepy children lawn sculptures) are coming up for auction under the terms of an agreement that postpones imminent foreclosure, as the New York Times reports. My new buttmate in studio Amelia said something poignant like “If even Michael Jackson is getting foreclosed, the rest of us are fucked.” The auction exhibition includes so much crap (I mean “Jacksonia”) that it fills up the former Robinson May department store next to the Beverly Hills Hilton (coincidentally right across the street from the site of Eli Broad’s future vanity contemporary art museum, his second on Wilshire; which is also the site one of the UCLA studios is using this quarter). The Jackson auction show opens to the public today (for a $20 entry fee, of course). Despite the steep fee, this seems like a truly once-in-a-lifetime experience, so we’re organizing a “studio trip” to the exhibition.

The three items I’m most hoping an anonymous sugar daddy will step up and buy for me include:


Sweet shades

1. A golden military dictator-looking bust of MJ with aviators (note: all of the auction links have been very finicky; if you simply must view an item, keep clicking on the link until it loads correctly)




2. This amazing vitrine holding a cyber-MJ head from the Moonwalker movie, with a face that fragments and splits apart when you press a button (we want to pool our resources and buy this for Greg Lynn’s future Center for Misfit Robots - not sure there’s a more misfit robot than this one)


Cyberface...


...opens!


3. One of the more creepy (and of course amazing) items I found in the auction item list were these cast plaster hands, one painted silver, and the other with “flesh tone”, complete “with Jackson's signature white taped fingertips.”


This is a Need Not Want item


Beverly Hills has actually been redeeming its rep as a cultural destination (I still have to say that pretty tongue in cheek though - it's still Beverly Hills) for me in the past week; a few days ago I met some friends at the John Waters opening at Gagosian Gallery, which was jam-packed with hilarious people I would probably never see at the east side or even Culver City openings. As I made my way over to the bar a woman who could only have been a Bev Hills local walked up to a three foot tall plastic replica of a La Mer face cream jar and yelled over the crowd “Oh I know what THAT is” as if she was clinging to any familiar sign in Waters‘ dizzying world of smoking babies, gigantic roach traps, and a four foot long spilled poppers bottle. My art friends weren't impressed with the work, but it's John Waters - he could have just shit on the ground and I'd swoon. At one point we saw someone we knew across the room and waved, when I saw something weird out of the corner of my eye, which turned out to be Traci Lords and a blinding spotlight attached to a camera pointing past her straight at me. Amazing.


A sculptural rendition of what I assume to be Ike Turner suspending Tina with puppet strings at Waters' show

Michael Jackson and John Waters in Beverly Hills; yet another reason to love what Los Angeles has to offer - in terms of edge-of-apocalypse entertainment at least.

note: all images from Julien’s Auctions’ site, except the Ike and Tina image, by Sweet Lady Jane on Flickr.