Entertainment For Lively Minds
Where there's a will there's a relative
Posted by David Hepworth on 30 June 2009 - 8:24am.
Interesting, aparently well-informed piece in the Wall Street Journal about a will made by Michael Jackson in 2002 in which he leaves everything to his children and his mother but not his father, who's currently doing all the talking. It also includes a good summary of his likely worth, based on the fact that nearly all his assets had been mortgaged in order to finance his spending. Oh, and AEG say if you want to hang on to your O2 ticket as a souvenir, they have no problem with that. Long as you don't want your money back, of course.
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minor point...
...have the tickets been sent out yet? I read that article as 'they'll refund your money *or* send you a ticket as a souvenir' - apols if I'm a meringue.
Tickets
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8125515.stm
The BBC story says that that they have not. You can either have the money back or receive a piece of paper with a 'lenticular image' for your 80 odd quid. Of course, everything is collectable mow so if few enough people take the tickets they'll become collectible and possibly more valuable than the refund. If all 800,000 end up on eBay they'll be worth precisely as much as any other random piece of paper with a 'lenticular image'.
and
what's to stop the vendor off-loading the uncollected tickets the same way?
It's started already
http://bit.ly/2AhFaX
His father
really is a piece of work, isn't he? Touting a new record label whilst his son is not yet buried...
Hmmm
Has anyone told him about the state of the record industry?
My favourite piece of work so far
Someone has been reported as saying that AEG Live owes him $300,000 for breach of contract, to cover loss of earnings over the period when the O2 shows should have been happening.
Who? Conrad Murray, M.D., that's who.
Add 3 more zeroes
$300,000,000 is what AEG will lose apparently. They couldn't get insurance for more than 10 or 20 of the 50 dates, so decided to take a risk and self insure the rest. Apparently normal concert insurance doesn't cover the artist's non appearence through "shuffling off" and so they will lose it all.
As the Kaiser Chiefs so nearly said - "I Predict A Writ".
In fact I think we should have a small vote on who will have sued whom within the next 12 months. I'll start with AEG against the MJ estate, along with MJ's lovely dad against the Doctor.
I don't understand this thing with the tickets
You have to send them back or don't get refund. Aren't they the sort you have to print yourself?
Tickets
No tickets were sent out. Purchasers are being offered a) a refund, or b) "the option to be sent the actual tickets they would have received to attend the shows in lieu of the full refunds which are being offered".
Good God.
So instead of it being an "I was there" moment it becomes an "I would have been there" moment. Unsavoury doesn't cover it, neither does ridiculous.
I thought AEG
Were among other things an insurer. How come they couldnt therefore insure? It explains one thing though - if they were daft enough to think that the 50 gigs would ever have taken place at all you can easily understand why they nearly went to the wall last year.Who on earth is running these corporations?
AEG = Brewing and entertainment
Not sure if the businesses have been divested though. AIG are the insurance company. With less money than AEG currently.
And I once had a very fine AEG cooker, but that was a different bunch.
How long do you think it will be before the public remembers
why they stopped buying Michael Jackson's music in the first place?
I'm surprised that the press are persevering with the 'little boy lost' line. Jackson could be shrewd and ruthless when necessary. Plenty of people remember him for doing the dirty on Paul McCartney, when Jackson gazumped him for the rights to his own songs. Jackson appears to have spent the past ten years spending other people's money, without getting his legs broken.
And I read that he left his children 200 original unpublished songs which, crucially, are beyond the reach of his creditors. Prince is giving his music away; Jackson calculated that his music would be worth a thousand times more after his death.
I wouldn't describe the second half of Jackson's life as eccentric. I suspect that some of it was downright nasty. Perhaps the truth will come out now. Should those songs need a little something extra, it will be interesting to see if any of today's talent will get into bed with his estate.