Goodbye, Michael Jackson...Hello, Miko Brando!!!

Though we've recently lost pop-sensation Michael Jackson, we have gained a new celebrity: Miko Brando. Every time I turned on the TV last week Miko Brando was on Larry King Live wearing a different colored Hawaiian shirt. I'm sort of as stunned by Miko Brando's existence as I was by Michael Jackson's death. Actually, that's not true. When my friend M called to tell me Michael Jackson died I thought, "Oh, yeah, well, that kind of makes sense." Not that I wanted Michael to die or was pleased to hear of his death but it just kind of made sense from an objective/biographical stand-point (I mean, this is a guy whose public persona had gotten so out-of-control and unpredictable that he, really, could have done anything and it would have finally seemed somewhat normal in the overall narrative of "Michael Jackson").

But, nothing could have prepared me for the emergence of Miko Brando. My first thought was: "What? This guy looks like a Pacific Islander who just returned to port from a twenty year bender at sea (and who was maybe raised by a coconut)." But, that being said, he seems like a really sweet guy. Listening to him talk about his intimate, decades-long relationship with Michael, I started thinking about the world of celebrity children who are members of the world's uber-elite thanks to their parent's immense wealth, connections etc. I mean, what has Miko Brando's life been like? I could be totally wrong but I imagined him losing his virginity at age 9 (to neighbor/family-friend Liza Minelli), drug-addiction at age 10, a garage-full of multi-colored Lamborghinis at age 11, man-slaughter charges (acquitted) involving aforementioned Lamborghinis, thanksgiving dinners with Liberace, hot air balloon day-trips with Eddie Muprhy, etc. He's so rich he can go on live feeds of CNN unshaven/wearing super-expensive beach-comber/drop-out/drug addict clothing and then, not only did no one question his character, etc., but he was the main character witness guy!!! This obviously speaks to Michael Jackson's day-to-day life and just how kooky it got. Actually, I can't think of one person who took to the airwaves to speak a word about the passing of Michael Jackson who wasn't just entirely unreal and/or entirely improbable. I mean, when Charlie Rose called Quincy Jones at his home in Brussels (!?!) he sounded as if he were on his 80,000th martini/xanax/marijuana cocktail, thank you very much.

Digression: If we start counting several weeks prior to Michael Jackson there have been a string of celebrity deaths unseen in my 33 years, completely obliterating the long-held urban myth that celebrities die in 3's. Let's make a list: David Carradine, Ed Macmahon, Farrah Fawcett, Michael Jackson, Pina Bausch, pitchman Billy Mayes (just two days after his appearance on Conan), Steve McNair, boxer Arturo Gatti (not a household name, I know), and just yesterday
Walter Cronkite. I have a theory: This is the new norm. We've reached a particular population density which includes a rapidly growing celebrity-to-non-celebrity ratio in which it will now become normal for a "famous" person to die every day. And soon, several celebrities will be dying each hour and then, not long after that, there will be dozens of celebrity deaths per minute making it perfectly reasonable to start up a 24-hour Celebrity Obituary Cable channel complete with up-to-the-minute scrolling celebrity deaths at the bottom of the screen, a channel (and accompanying website) dedicated entirely to looking back on all those wondrous highlights that made that person's life special (actually, this seems like a perfectly reasonable cable channel). UPDATE: As if to prove my point, these celebrities have passed away since I first wrote this post: Robert McNamara, Frank McCourt, Merce Cunningham, Budd Schulberg, John Hughes, Eunice Kennedy Shriver.

In any case, I have a feeling we'll be seeing a lot more of Miko Brando in the near future. At the very least, he should release a line of Miko Brando Hawaiian shirts (I'm good for like a half-a-dozen). But perhaps the most significant shift that occured because of Michael Jackson's death and the rise of Miko Brando is that not one person has mentioned father Marlon - and may never again. Someday, kids will be saying: "Have you seen Apocolypse Now? I heard Miko Brando's dad was in that."