This just in: Federer wins marathon fifth set to take Wimbledon for the record sixth time. But Roddick played his ass off. Film in between Michael Jackson news.

Four days of driving and five days of family...that's so last week. And skipping the columns after a week of death (everyone being on the road and all). What were we thinking with taking a vacation in the middle of the year?

Ed McMahon started it all off, and I almost forgot about him with all that came next.

Farrah Fawcett was the number one poster girl. But I had a Charlie's Angels poster with all three girls on it (was Farrah the blonde on mine or was it Cheryl Ladd? I can't remember now). I think I was a little too young for the wet swimsuit Fawcett.

And Michael Jackson was the number one album kid. We had, eventually, three copies of Thriller in our house. We wore down the grooves on the first one, so we got backups. The day after he died, vinyl copies were going for insane prices on eBay. I guess forgetting that 26 million copies of Thriller have been sold in the US, and most of them were on vinyl. He filled up the top sales spots on iTunes and Amazon. Somewhere there was a CD factory churning out thousands of copies of MJ gems. I bet there has been another million of Thriller sold (at least) over the last ten days.

I made an MJ sampler CD for the trip, but we didn't end up listening to it. There was a tribute show on SiriusXM Radio (rental cars provide this service sometimes), but they skipped a bunch of his best songs and blathered on and on rather than playing the music. And it was his music more than anything else that I remember from the early 80s.

Michael Jackson was my favorite music performer in 1983, supplanted by Duran Duran a year later. One tidbit I always remember: Dexy Midnight Runner's "Come On Eileen" was the song that broke up MJ #1's "Billie Jean" and "Beat It." Otherwise, he would have had the number one song for over ten weeks in a row.

"I didn't like his antics," my Grandma told me last week. "He was a pervert," others said. And these are not untrue statements. Even if he never did anything actually sexual with those boys, his own statements about how an adult conducts himself around children were disquieting to say the least.

But by that time, I was over Michael Jackson. And Farrah was never my favorite angel (I tended toward the brunettes). This doesn't diminish the day of death. Oh yeah and Karl Malden died a few days ago.

And Steve McNair was killed over the weekend. Gunshots. And a dead girl "friend."

Does it seem like we're all going a little nutty these days. There's something setting off a bunch of people in this country to do crazy shit.

More teabaggers in Albuquerque over the weekend. You know shit's going nutty when the suburbanites riot. And support armed uprising against the government. I kid you not--it was the big picture in the paper. Of course, none of them actually brought guns or clashed with police, just waved signs with bad puns and empty threats. It would be funny if these people actually did stage a coup. They don't like losing, do they?

And batshit crazy Palin quits--by saying she could take the easy way out and quit (by quitting she meant stay in office, which was kinda hard to understand in her ramble that also included how only dead fish swim with the current--and she's not a dead fish). But she won't, she's going to quit to help Alaska. And America. And the world. And the universe. She says she doesn't need a title. But in these times of economic woe, how is it you equate being a governor with a "title" and not, y'know, a "job"?

Palin's too big for Alaska. And a job. And, really, for the rest of us.

Or maybe she was showing the way for all the conservative Republicans out there: quit your job and collect unemployment. And bitch about how the government is spending too much money on everything.

Me? I'm gonna go get some beer for the post-Independence day BBQ and thank the heavens I'll have something to talk about other than how I hate the job I can't quit.

Matt Worley's favorite MJ song is "Beat It."