Editor's Note: Mr. Worley has a long-standing $1 bet on the conviction and incarceration of Michael Jackson on the most grievous charges the pop singer is facing.

In the early days of my infatuation with pop music, Michael Jackson was pretty much the first superstar I loved--although I certainly did have a large crush on Olivia Newton-John. MJ came around to my consciousness a year or so after my official introduction to music on the radio.

I've said this many times, but I never knew there was music on the radio until my family moved to Clovis, New Mexico. When we lived in Kansas City, I thought radio was for talk and baseball games. It was all my dad listened to, so that's all I heard, too.

But there was no talk radio station in Clovis, so we began to hear songs amid the wacky morning antics of the regional DJs. My brothers and I were addicted faster than crackheads. We began using our excess cash to buy LPs. Vinyl was still king, although it was about to be crushed by CDs.

We listened to Thriller so much, we wore out the grooves on our first copy. Eventually, we purchased three vinyl copies of the album. If that album comes on now (and it does at many parties--sometimes ironically), I know all the words. And I haven't listened to it all the way through for about twenty years.

My older brother tried out for a production of The King and I while singing one of MJ's songs. While we could approximate the moonwalk on occasion, our voices--still unchanged by the sands of time--were perfectly suited to singing like Jackson. Maybe this should have been a sign, but, c'mon, almost all pop stars have high "child-like" voices.

The infatuation with Michael Jackson was over within two years of the release of Thriller. I went on to loving Duran Duran, then Van Halen, then Bon Jovi and on and on. As I got older, the music began to get a little bit heavier. I still like pop music--I am, in no way, an underground music head. I could probably name a hundred bands I listen to that most don't know, but it's still pop music to me. I stood watching and banging my head to young pop punks Sum 41 on Friday night, so the pop has never been far from my mind.

But as with a lot of pop music, trends come and go. Sometimes it comes back around--Green Day is suddenly the most important rock band in the world, years after everyone said they were finished. I never thought Michael Jackson was more important than he was during the Thriller phenomenon. It's all been downhill from there.

I could go on and on about all the weirdness of this "man." Everyone knows this stuff, though. All you have to do is look at him when he was hanging out at Studio 54 in the late 70s and look at him now. I think he's trying to look like Cher now. Or maybe Cher's son from that movie Mask.

There are tons of apologists for this freak of a man, but I'm not one of them. I thought, in the early 90s, that something was seriously wrong with the guy. His obsession with children was the creepiest of them all. Even if he hadn't redone his face and hair and whatever else, it would still be creepy the way he wants to frolic with the kids.

Close friends, like Quincy Jones--who produced Thriller--say they told Michael to lay off the kid thing. That it was just going to get him in trouble. When this kind of thing happens, you know there's something wrong. Jackson is in his late 40s, right? He has kids of his own (or at least I think they're his kids), so why does he feel he needs to "adopt" tons of other kids? Why can't he just be satisfied with raising his own children? Many celebrities are notoriously horrible parents, but usually they stick to only screwing up their own offspring.

I go to shows where tons of teens frolic in the heat of adolescence, but I stay a healthy distance away from them. I certainly don't invite them to come back to my place and play on my trampoline.

The jury is still out on Michael Jackson. It's been out for about a week now, deliberating all the ins and outs of this trial. On Friday, I read the odds are about even on a conviction. This is down from the at least 2-1 acquittal prediction happening when MJ's lawyers were presenting their case against the prosecution. I made my bet awhile back, based more on wishes than any actual facts. I don't want to come off as some vigilante character, but I think Jackson needs a reality check. And maybe becoming a "man" in prison will help. Of course, it might kill him. For being "Invincible" and "Bad," the man seems to be about the most fragile person on the face of this earth.

We'll all find out this week, I'd guess. It'll probably be a sad end to what seems like a classically tragic story of misspent money and stardom. But most of these stories have to end this way, right? I look at Diamond Dave today and wonder why they couldn't freeze his essence back in 1985. But Dave being busted for pot in Central Park is a much nicer sign of decline than MJ's hands getting caught in the kiddie cookie jar.

Matt Worley doesn't want to be young again, but he wouldn't mind having a little bit of that excess energy from time to time.