What’s more I’m not even the slightest bit bitter when I think about the hundreds of millions of dollars that they earn, because really who am I to try and put a price tag on special? Such matter are best left in the hands of professionals like the RIAA or the MPAA. (What? Honestly my tongue was nowhere near my cheek when I said that…)

As usual, I digress.

The thing I love most about celebrities is how much of our collective time, money and energy gets spent on finding out all of the incredibly special things that are happening in their celebrity lives when they’re not doing the stuff that actually made them famous in the first place.

Inspired the hairstyles in Debbie does Dallas

You know the stuff I mean. Paris and her sex tapes, Tom and his crazy cult antics, Mel and his drunk driving ‘Jewmouth’ issues, Russell’s vicious phone beatings, Amy going to prison, Britney’s Taco habit and her giant razor-tooth vag, the latest addition to Madonna’s ethnic baby collection and that time Lindsay ate a whole packet of airline peanuts and didn’t throw up.

I believe one of the primary reasons behind the obsession our society has with these ‘larger than life’s’ stems from a need to identify with and relate with them on a mundane level so that we can imagine that all that really separates us from them is a few hundred million dollars, an army of consultants, coaches and assistants a small fleet of luxury vehicles and an extreme surgical makeover.

If you are a celebrity one of the most awesomely mundane things you can do to get people’s attention is dying. Michael Jackson demonstrated a textbook celebrity death on Friday the 26th. Tragically poised on the brink of a triumphant comeback tour, the mysterious cardiac arrest, the sketchy Demerol dispensing quack desperately trying to revive him.  This is the stuff of tabloid legends and I’ve no doubt that Elvis himself would sit up and applaud the effort – if he was actually dead of course.

Earlier in the week two other celebrities punched their tickets in failed attempts to garner media attention

Heeeere’s Cancer!

Ed McMahon the 86 year old long time co-host of the Tonight show, gave it up for bone cancer and other complications causing barely a stir.

Later in the week Farah Fawcett made it cancer 2 Celebs 0, however before anyone really had time to take notice of this Jackson trumped them both by loudly announcing ‘Who’s Dead?’

I’ve no doubt that the Jackson story will continue to unfold in the coming weeks as more dirt is dug up on Dr Demerol and we eagerly await the autopsy results, meanwhile over on e-Bay the price of Jackson memorabilia is climbing at a steady rate, with the Thriller item on the list being the domain name MichaelJacksonRIP.com, starting out at a price of (put your pinkies to your lips and say it like Dr Evil) one “million” dollars.