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Even as the Las Vegas, NV home and offices of the incompetent, asleep at the swtich Dr. Conrad Murray were being raided,  I was having a very interesting conversation with some medical colleagues of Dr. Steven Hoefflin who did (most of) Michael Jackson’s plastic surgeries, including his first or second nose job, depending on who you believe. 

Apparently loving the limelight that he got from being associated with celebrities — and Michael certainly wasn’t the only one — Dr. Hoefflin ran afoul of some of his medical associates and staff members, who claimed the doctor liked to look under the sheets of anesthetized patients like Sylvester Stallone and Elizabeth Taylor, who never sued because they didn’t want the publicity, and say and do weird things. (The California State Medical Board found no evidence of wrongdoing, however.)

One of his nurses–we’ll call her Nurse A, left the practice as a result and joined up with another plastic surgeon, who was not only a colleague of Hoefflin’s, but a friend.  But when this doctor — we’ll call him Dr. Z. — hired the nurse, that ended their friendship.

Nurse A had first met Michael Jackson in the late 70s, and actually attended to him during the surgery on his scalp after his hair caught on fire during the Pepsi commercial in 1984.  She said that Michael was initially taken to Cedars-Sinai but that Hoefflin didn’t have hospital privileges there, so that’s why he ended up at Brotman in Culver City.  The surgery was actually performed the morning after the accident, and Nurse A. was stuck in morning rush hour traffic freaking out while listening to reports on the radio. (Jackson later donated the settlement he got from Pepsi to Brotman’s burn center, later renamed the Michael Jackson Burn Center.)

Nurse A., an attractive blonde, got very friendly with Jackson and spent time at Neverland Ranch, riding horses with him on the trails there. She also would often pick him up and take him out in LA to different places.  She said he preferred to be with her in just her regular vehicle than a car that would attract attention and that he was often in disguise.  She said he was very, very generous, although noting that she herself never got any money from him,  but, like so many others have said, that the people around them always had their hands out.  She said Michael often visited sick children in the hospital as well as friends who were hospitalized.

He invited her to attend the taping of the “Smooth Criminal” video at Universal and she said she was thrilled to witness it, and hang out in his trailer with him during breaks in the shoot, which went until 4 a.m. She said he was very soft-spoken on set and all the dancers loved him. Nurse A. said she has many, many fond memories of Michael– but that when she was around Joe Jackson, she wanted to take a Brillo pad to herself.

Meanwhile, Doctor Z. estimated that Michael had at least 50 surgeries on his nose and said the singer, whom he also knew, was a sociopath when it came to plastic surgery, a misguided soul who did not know when to stop — – and no one ever really told him to.

OK, the president said it: the Cambridge, Mass. police department acted “stupidly” in arresting Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates at his own home. Since then, Obama has backpedaled, but the controversy has only heated up. On the surface, it certainly seems like a case of racial profiling: neighbors call the cops when they see two black men apparently trying to break into a house. It turns out the good professor lived in that house–obviously the cop-calling neighbors didn’t know or recognize him–and lost his keys after returning from a trip abroad. His beefy limo driver helped him jimmy the door.

Then the cop came a-calling, and I must digress. My dad taught me how to deal with police officers: respectfully but firmly. Due to this training, I’ve only gotten one ticket in my entire life, despite having been pulled over numerous times. All the while knowing this: if I was a black man driving a nice car, I’m sure there would have been at least one incident of being handcuffed face down on the pavement, for DWB. It’s happened to many men I know, although thankfully, not recently.

But Gates apparently went off on the Sgt. James Crowley, rightly or wrongly, and instead of keeping a lid on it, Crowley whipped out the ‘cuffs and the arrest soon escalated to epic proportions, although the disorderly conduct charges against Gates were quickly dropped. Crowley, wrongly, stood his ground, refusing to apologize. In the course of what agenda, I’m not sure. No crime was committed, no physical assault was underway and there was no real reason to arrest Gates, despite his hot temper, which is not a criminal act. You may have expected more restraint on both sides, but you would have been very wrong. And now, Gates–after backing off from initially threatening to sue the PD– has accepted Obama’s invite (they’re actually friends, so not a big stretch) to come to the White House and have a beer with Crowley. We’ll see if the sergeant can man up, see the larger picture and make things right. They both should. And then maybe we work on the real issue of race relations between law enforcement, and law-abiding citizens.

Although it’s hard to watch, it’s good that the footage of the fire during the Pepsi commercial that burned Michael Jackson’s scalp has come to light. Brings up interesting questions, though–who had it under lock and key for so long, and how much did US Weekly, that paragon of investigative journalistic reporting, pay for it?

Now, one of the two LA city fire inspectors that was on set is also speaking out, saying the director, Bob Giraldi, purposefully put Jackson in danger in order to get a better shot. “Making him look more majestic,” is how it was put–convincing Jackson on the sixth take to stand right under sparks from the pyrotechnics that lit his hair ablaze. But it seems to me these fire guys weren’t really doing their jobs in ensuring the safety of the performers, were they, if they didn’t step in to tell the director and Jackson they couldn’t do that. Take a look at what Giraldi told Playboy about a year after the ’84 accident:

Playboy: No one has ever heard your side of the story regarding the ill-fated Pepsi commercial in which Michael’s hair caught fire. You were directing. What went through your mind?

Giraldi: Nothing. I was the only one who didn’t really know what was happening until people rushed onto the stage. I didn’t see it. I was off to the side, watching my black-and-white monitor. The fire looked like a special lighting effect on my screen. Suddenly, Michael was trying desperately to get his jacket off, thinking it was on fire. Like most accidents, it was over before it started. But the hysteria was there. He never seemed to be in danger. Then he was whisked off to the hospital and I saw him a couple of hours later. He was speaking despite the pain. It was an accident. To say any more about it is not very smart, because there will probably be a lawsuit.I have no bad feelings toward Michael, and I hope he doesn’t harbor any toward me. He is a brilliant performer, a genuine, shy, withdrawn young man. He and I worked together three times; we did fine work, had fun and made history. But our personal relationship is over–for the moment.

He’s gone on to do some very important stuff, and so have I.

———————Yeah, he owns a NY restaurant apparently, and for sure now he’ll be a pap target. Karma, as they say.

Interestingly, Pepsi apparently didn’t…um, pardon the expression, burn their bridges with Michael, as he went on to make another series of groundbreaking-at-the-time soda pop commercials for them in ’88. In recent weeks, the company ran a full-page ad in the LA Times (and possibly other major papers) honoring Jackson. Now faced with major PR damage control, I’m sure we’ll hear more about their do-gooding.

In a video of a song called ‘Give in to Me’ on the Dangerous album that didn’t get much airplay in the US, Jackson actually sings the line: “I’m on fire,” and there are pyrotechnics literally electrifying him (through the magic of special effects) in the stagecraft for this rock song with Slash. It’s become my new, favorite MJ “discovery” in the wake of his tragic death: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-CcqOe9WWU

Not since young JFK, Jr. saluted his slain father’s coffin has a child’s reaction to the loss of a parent so moved a global television audience.

Paris Michael Katherine Jackson’s spontaneous, heartfelt tribute to her father was the highly emotional capper to the public memorial service for Michael Jackson at Staples Center.

If you hadn’t choked back tears when Usher sang “Gone Too Soon,” taking off his sunglasses to gaze at the King of Pop’s rose-covered coffin, when Brooke Shields spoke lovingly of their bond as child stars and her fun moments with Michael or when brother Marlon asked him to give his twin Brandon a hug in heaven, you wept with the 11-year old girl as she took the microphone and said, “Ever since I was born, Daddy has been the best father you could ever imagine. And I just wanted to say, I love him so much,” before tearfully collapsing into the embrace of her aunt Janet and other family members. 

The clip has already played countless times, and is likely to become a turning point in the tenor of the media’s never-ending fixation on the man Motown founder Berry Gordy dubbed “the greatest entertainer that has ever lived”—at least until the autopsy results are revealed.

If there was a little bit of hyperbole there, it was understandable, coming from the man who launched the Jackson 5 and its wise-beyond-his-years lead singer into superstardom 40 years ago. Just about all the words spoken at the ceremony—from Queen Latifah reading Maya Angelou’s tribute poem to Magic Johnson’s memory of Michael eating Kentucky Fried Chicken–resonated within the auditorium and throughout the world, and although Mariah Carey criticized herself later for losing it during her rendition of “I’ll Be There,” it was hard to find fault with any of the performances during the nearly 2 ½ hour tribute.

Someone said Jackson not only raised the bar, he broke it. And so did the memorial, far exceeding the expectations of media pundits and fans alike who had been anticipating the event since it was announced just five days in advance.

There was plenty of drama in the lead-up, the babble from naysayers and haters who felt it was all too much, and a measure of dread—as voiced by the LAPD, sternly warning people who didn’t have a ticket not to come downtown—and that they would be thrown in jail if they attempted to scalp the coveted tickets.

It all, miraculously, went off without a hitch. It could not have been scripted better by an Oscar-winning screenwriter. Even the hastily-devised Internet lottery system of allocating and then distributing the tickets at Dodger stadium went smoothly. In a city where memories of the OJ Simpson car chase and the 1992 riots still loom large, there was a potential for some sort of disaster. At the very least, monster traffic jams tying up morning rush hour were a big concern. 

Expert planning by the CHP and the LAPD and personal attention from its chief Bill Bratton mitigated those logistical nightmares. And the only one remaining: who’s going to pick up the tab for all the police overtime–which was actually less than predicted? I vote for a) AEG and/or b) Sony Music, both of which will make untold boatloads of money on Jackson‘s legacy.

Seeing the Jackson family’s well-coordinated motorcade of Rolls-Royces, Range Rovers and Escalates depart from Forest Lawn Mortuary to Staples Center on closed freeways was dreamy, and dramatic.

There was a creepy rumor reported on one of the major broadcast networks that Michael Jackson’s body was not actually in the golden coffin being carried by the hearse. In the context of all the bizarre and eccentric aspects of the pop star’s life that have been reported over the last few decades, it was momentarily believable… until it was clearly apparent that it wasn’t, as his white sequin glove-clad brothers bore the casket into the auditorium.

Inside the Staples Center, it was a relief not to think about the stranger aspects of Michael Jackson’s life — until Al Sharpton brought them up.  If there was a low point, that was it–because for all we know, Michael Jackson’s children were so sheltered that they had no idea that the world thought their father might be a bit strange.  This certainly was not the time to inform them of that, Rev. Sharpton, or to use the occasion to bring up racial divides. Yet the media-loving reverend drove home a good point when he stated that Michael never gave up, and never stopped.

With the tantalizingly little bit we’ve seen of Jackson‘s rehearsals for the shows in London that were to open next week– and there are reportedly untold hours of tapes–that is certainly true. And it makes his passing, at what could have been a new pinnacle in his illustrious, iconic career, all the more tragic.          

The media madness surrounding the sudden death of Michael Jackson continues unabated, fueled by the public’s nearly insatiable decades-long appetite about the talented and troubled King of Pop.

One can get whiplash trying to keep up with all the latest developments.  The pop star will be buried at Neverland after a public viewing and private service.  No, he won’t be.  The former long-time nanny to his three children pumped his stomach regularly.  No, she didn’t.  Former wife Debbie Rowe could get custody of the children.  No, in his will, Mr. Jackson gave guardianship to his mother Katherine and secondarily to Motown legend Diana Ross.  Jackson had a fatal heart attack after being given a shot of Demerol by Dr. Conrad Murray. No, now there are reports he may have been given the powerful anesthetic Propofol intravenously.  Madonna will be part of a special tribute concert planned in London.  No, she will not. Michael Jackson did not “adopt” his three children.  No, he didn’t need to under California law.

That was just a short list of the facts, the half-truths and the complete distortions of the truth that have made headlines since the shocking news of the star’s death was first reported last Thursday afternoon. Celebrity tabloid website TMZ claimed to be first to break news of the heart attack and then the actual death—and whatever claim to fame that’s actually worth is debatable. (Apparently, UCLA has not rid itself of employees who sell tips about celebrities, even in the wake of the scandalous breach of Farrah Fawcett’s medical records.)

Debatable, especially since no one, meaning no one in mainstream media, believed the site as a source for the earth-shattering news that would rock the globe. The recognition of Michael Jackson’s death came only when it was blasted on the Los Angeles Times website a short time later. By then, the circus had come to town — to UCLA Medical Center, to Jackson’s rented mansion on Carolwood Drive and to the Jackson family home in Encino. It will not leave any time soon.

TMZ, run by my former colleague Harvey Levin, bowed to audience pressure to show some respect to the late performer, and the day after his death, changed all of its offensive mentions of  “Jacko” to “Jackson” or “MJ.” At last check, the New York Post and other tabloids were still seemingly glorying in using the distasteful nickname (shortened from “Wacko Jacko”) that Jackson himself told interviewers he found very hurtful. 

But the lowest point in the death coverage—aside from all the rumors that in the heat of the news moment turned out to be not true—was the close-up photograph of an apparently already dead Michael Jackson to which “Entertainment Tonight” and “The Insider” kept cutting. It was repulsive, completely unnecessary and just plain wrong. I’m having nightmares just thinking about its ghastliness—and the incredibly poor taste in running it, repeatedly, in prime time, or at any time. The photo belongs in a coroner’s file, not to be seen by the public. 

The coverage of the Jackson story proves there is still a line between tabloids and traditional news organizations, the line between class and crass. Although that line has become increasingly fuzzy, some of the old school journalists aren’t going down without (a bit of) a fight. Case in point: ABC News eminence grise Charles Gibson’s discomfort in interviewing “The Insider”’s Lara Spencer on set. This mash-up just wasn’t working, and ABC should have stuck with one of its “regular” news correspondents and left “The Insider” (and its anchor) segregated in its own time slot.

Meanwhile, the network played up clips from the 2003 documentary “Living with Michael Jackson,” during which “Nightline” co-anchor Martin Bashir said he spent eight months with the pop star. Given his role in the piece, Bashir found it understandably difficult at times to control his emotions during  2 ½ hours on air on the night of Jackson’s death. Yet his personal experience with Jackson—whether you think he made himself too much a part of the story or not–gave the coverage added resonance and depth.

It also gave viewers the chance to re-examine some of Jackson’s eccentricities up close, including his admission to Bashir that he found sharing his bed with children to be a loving thing to do, a shocking statement which ultimately led to the second, and like the first, unproven, child molestation charge against the singer. And then there was the jaw-popping shopping spree at a luxe store in which Jackson seemed to be buying up every ostentatious chess set, pair of candlesticks and antique lamp in sight, as Bashir trailed behind, astonished by the price tags, one of which was $85,000. 

ABC also dug up a telling Barbara Walters interview of Jackson and Lisa Marie Presley during their brief marriage in the mid-1990s, and let it play.

With the Jackson story being the lead on “Nightline” every night, the show spent one inside baseball lead story on the impact of TMZ, interviewing a harried Harvey Levin, who said he wasn’t getting much sleep since the story broke.

And thinking of that appalling death photograph that should have never aired, neither am I.