See Ya at What Gets Me Hot

August 17, 2009

It would not be impossible to call a book The Cunt. Indeed, a book called Cunt was published...

In English, that word is “cunt”, which probably derives from Enthusiasm, a Greek goddess of fertility. Then again the Sanskrit word is auntie, which is the name of an Indian goddess. And among the ancient Romans, a woman of easy virtue, a veteran or a public prostitute, was called a “Cunard”.

It would not be impossible to call a book The Cunt. Indeed, a book called Cunt was published by Inga Muscat in 1998. However, this was a feminist track not intended for a general readership. In the revered British Library in London, any book with the word “cunt” in the title is destined for the infamous “closed cupboard”. Books kept there can be read only by acknowledged scholars sitting at designated desks.

What Links Nicholas Cage, Queen Victoria, The White House And Elizabeth Matthews? - Authors OnLine - Article: Mar 16th 2008

What links Nicholas Cage, Queen Victoria, The White House and Elizabeth Matthews?
Mar 16th 2008

Anyone reading Elizabeth Matthews' excellent novel based around the real life ship 'HMS Resolute', which was abandoned in 1852 whilst trying to explore the infamous and elusive NW passage, might like to know that the desk currently used by the President of the United States in the Oval Office was made from her timbers. The ship was rescued by the Americans in 1955 but later broken up in 1879. Queen Victoria had the desk made and then presented it to President Hayes; it has been in the White House ever since.

The story however does not end there and one of Hollywood's latest movies, 'National Treasure' staring Nicholas Cage, features yet another piece of furniture, a writing desk, also made from the timbers of HMS Resolute, which was used by Queen Victoria on board the Royal Yacht. The writing desk in the film's plot was shown as being at Buckingham Palace, but in reality it's actually in the Naval Museum in Portsmouth's Historic Dockyard.

To mark both the occasion of the Disney film and the launch of Elizabeth's book, the museum held various events on the 23rd February, including a talk by the author about the ship and a book signing using the very desk in question. (See pictures left)

Elizabeth is acknowledged as, 'the authority' on HMS Resolute and the fascinating truth behind the ship's colouful life.

"Elizabeth, an American writer, knows more about the history of HMS RESOLUTE, and the complicated political background which threatened war between Great Britain and the USA, than anyone else."

--Mr. Michael Phillips--

Leading British maritime and Naval Historian

Authors OnLine - Article: Mar 16th 2008 - What Links Nicholas Cage, Queen Victoria, The White House And Elizabeth Matthews?

Sample of Sample E-Book: The Quim: “Ah, Kwaumuti. This is good. Your daughter’s vagina is fine." by E-author: Nigel Cawthorne on E-Book Website Authors OnLine

The Quim

by Nigel Cawthorne

Sample of Sample E-Book: The Quim: “Ah, Kwaumuti. This is good. Your daughter’s vagina is fine." by E-author: Nigel Cawthorne on E-Book Website Authors OnLine

Sample

There must have been cunts around since the beginning of the human race. After all, with the exception of those delivered by caesarean section, we were all born from a vagina. And, with the exception of test tube babies, each of us was conceived in one. However, there is no mention of the appearance of the first cunt in the Judaeo-Christian creation myth. In Genesis, woman was merely created for the “comfort” of man. But what could be more comforting than a vulva? At first Adam and Eve were naked, so Adam would have glimpsed Eve’s sexual parts. But it was only after the incident with the serpent and the apple that he “knew” her.

The Indians of the Brazilian rain forests are not so coy about the creation of the vulva. According to the Mehinaku’s creation myth, the great god Kwaumuti looked down on mankind and said: “Ah, poor men! They have no one to have sex with.”

So he made woman.

First he made the vagina from the fruit of the buriti palm, a foul-smelling, inedible, banana-shaped fruit. Then he called to a man named Armadillo: “Come try out sex with my daughter.”

Armadillo did. But from the smell everyone knew that Armadillo had had sex. So Kwaumuti threw away the fruit vagina, and made one from the soft tissue of a clam. Then he called to Armadillo again: “Come Armadillo, try this one out. Have sex with my daughter.”

Afterwards Armadillo said: “Ah, Kwaumuti. This is good. Your daughter’s vagina is fine. It does not smell. Make all the women’s vaginas like this, including those of the Brazilian women.”

But the goddess Mawari, looked at the women’s genitals and shook her head.

“Kwaumuti, you were not as smart as you think you are,” she said. “These are no good. You forgot to make a clitoris. For this reason, the inner and outer labia are not sensual enough.”

So Mawari made a clitoris.

“Do you see, Kwaumuti?” he asked. “The clitoris makes the man’s penis delicious to the woman. It is just like a penis. It grows erect and goes looking for its ‘sustenance’. The inner and outer labia, they do not grow erect. Only the clitoris, and that is what makes sex sensual.”

The Yanomamo of the Amazon basin have another tale. They believe that men were created when one of their ancestors shot the Moon in the belly. Where the Moon’s blood fell to Earth, the drops became men. But they were very fierce and fought until they were nearly extinct, so they need women to procreate with.

One day, when they were out collecting vines, a man found a newly open fruit called a “wabu”. It had eyes he thought it looked like a woman might look like. When he tossed it on the ground, it turned into a woman and developed a large, hairy vulva. The woman followed the men home. When they saw her vulva they were overcome with lust. They each had sex with her in turn. And when she gave birth to daughters, they all had sex with them too, until there were women in abundance.

But the Yanomamo have another story that speaks eloquently to men’s fears. One of the first women’s vulva turned into a mouth, complete with teeth, which bit off her partner’s penis. This myth of the vagina dentata appears in many cultures around the world.

The Masai believe that once men and women were both warriors. At that time, women did not have vulvas, just a tiny hole for them to pee through. But one night, when the two sexes sat around their separate camp fires, the young men crept up behind the women and pushed the sharp end of their bows into the women’s bodies, creating their vaginas. Then they made love to them. The next day they got married and women lost their bravery and became fertile.

People have certainly been interested in the vulva from Palaeolithic times. The earliest form of sexual graffiti were small, vertical gashes in the rock, surrounded by a slightly raised surface. Later Stone Age artists went on to carve the fully developed female form, which emphasised generous breasts and ample thighs. Although they depicted lush sexual zones, their legs were closed and the centre of focus became the pubic triangle.

The gradual concealment of the vulva followed human evolution. Our pre-human female ancestors went on all fours, leaving their vulvas exposed. But when humankind began walking upright, the female sexual parts were concealed between their legs. The large primate clitoris grew smaller. Instead women developed buttocks and breasts as powerful secondary sexual characteristics, while their sexual organs became hidden, mysterious and, consequently, sacred.

In the south of France, where some of the earliest European art has been found, there are many images of the sacred vulva. Some of these, in cave sanctuaries near Les Eyzies in the Dordogne, date back thirty thousand years. Archaeologists point out that the cave itself was symbolic of the Great Earth Mother’s womb and its entrance a symbol of the sacred portal or vaginal opening.

Later, the symbolic the vulva appeared in the work of Neolithic man. The dolman – a horizontal megalith resting on two vertical stones – is thought to symbolise the vulva. One of the most interesting is the dolman at Crucuno in France, where the sunlight on the autumn equinox creates a downward pointing “pubic” triangle. In past centuries, young women would lie naked on these so-called “hot stones” in the hope of finding the men of their dreams.

Many figurines of goddesses, excavated all over the ancient world, have highly emphasised vulvas, which seem to be of religious significance. In the Neolithic community of Lepenski Vir in the Iron Gate region of northern Yugoslavia, fifty-four red sandstone sculptures carved on oval boulders were found placed around vulva-shaped altars in shrines that were themselves in the shape of the pubic triangle. Dating back more than eight thousand years, some of these sculptures had the face of a goddess with V-shaped decorations pointing to the sacred vulva. Similarly, a group of goddess figures from Moldavia dating from about seven thousand years ago have highly stylised pubic triangles decorated with V-shaped chevrons.

A six-thousand-year-old goddess figure from Bulgaria, the throned “Lady of Pazardzik”, has her arms folded over her prominently etched vulva. Her sacred triangle is ornamented by a double spiral, an ancient symbol of regeneration. This is strikingly similar to a Japanese Jomon pottery goddess from the same era, which has a highly stylised pubic triangle.

By 2500 BC, a Cycladic platter from the Aegean shows the depiction of the vulva has become highly stylised. In other places, the vulva was represented by symbols from nature, such as a flower bud or a cowrie shell. In fact, cowrie shells were found among skeletons from more than twenty thousand years ago, indicating that the practice of placing these shells in burials as symbols of the female power of regeneration goes back to remote antiquity. The ancient Egyptians often decorated their sarcophagi with cowries.

In Indian religious tradition, the female pubic triangle was viewed as the focus of divine energy. To this day it associated with what is called kundalini energy in tantric yoga. When awakened through the pleasures of sex, this energy rises through the body to bring about a state of ecstatic bliss. Indian worship of the divine vulva is graphically illustrated by a twelfth-century relief carved on the walls of a goddess temple in southern India which shows two holy men seated at the foot of a giant vulva, their hands raised in prayer.

In the West, however, the phallus began to take over as an object of veneration. As early as the Palaeolithic era, there are depictions of the union of the phallus and the vagina in Europe strongly reminiscent of the sacred yoni-lingam figures found in India. At Le Placard in France, archaeologists found a carved object they at first called a baton de commandment (stick of command), which upon closer examination turned out to be a highly stylised elongated phallus above a vagina. Such representations became more common during the Bronze Age.

At excavations in Savignano and Lake Trasimeno in northern Italy, archaeologists have found carvings that show, as the archaeologist Marija Gimbutas writes, “a fusion of the phallus with the divine body of the Goddess”. Another sculpture that suggests a phallus uniting with a highly stylised Goddess figurine was found in the Gaban cave, near Trento. A pair of crescent horns symbolise the male principle, and the vulva is represented as a flower.

However, the vulva itself had not been lost completely. In Ireland particularly – though also in England, Scotland and Germany – numerous sheela-na-gigs have been found. These crude female figurines, mostly cut from stone, are shown standing or squatting with their legs spread. They are thought to have been used for the meditation of the vulva and its place in the endless cycle of birth and death. Many have been found embedded in the walls of village churches and monasteries, though they were often disfigured by puritanical Christians. Although some were carved by bawdy stonemasons, most were taken from pagan places of worship and incorporated into the fabric of early Christian churches.

The Polynesians continued this tradition until the Europeans came. They covered rock surfaces with reliefs of the vulva and carried pebbles etched with vulva motifs. And the Incas in Peru made pots shaped like vulvas which they drank from.

Jacksons Number Ones

by Craig Halstead and Chris Cadman

Sample

The Jackson siblings have scored over 200 hits since November 1969, when the Jackson 5’s I Want You Back entered Billboard’s Hot 100 and R&B singles charts in the States.

I Want You Back went on to become the first Jackson no.1 – the first of 50! It is these chart toppers that form the backbone of this book – 20 by Janet, 20 by Michael, seven by the Jackson 5, two by Jermaine, one by the Jacksons, plus a further seven with a Jackson connection.

Introducing the Jacksons:

Joseph Walter Jackson married Katherine Esther Scruse on 5 November 1949. They bought a house in the all-black neighbourhood of Gary, Indiana – their new address, coincidentally, was 2300 Jackson Street. Joe and Katherine went on to have ten children:

Margaret Reilette – known as REBBIE.
Born: 29 May 1950.
First solo hit: Centipede (written/produced by Michael) in 1984.

Sigmund Esco – known as JACKIE (an abbreviation of ‘the Jackson boy’).
Born: 4 May 1951.
Member of the Jackson 5 and the Jacksons.
First solo hit: Stay in 1989.

Tariano Adaryll – known as TITO.
Born: 15 October 1953.
Member of the Jackson 5 and the Jacksons.
Tito has never released a solo single or album but his three sons have, as 3T.

JERMAINE LaJaun.
Born: 11 December 1954.
Member of the Jackson 5; member of the Jacksons from 1984 onwards,
including the VICTORY album and tour.
First solo hit: That’s How Love Goes in 1972.

LaTOYA Yvonne.
Born: 29 May 1956.
First solo hit: Night Time Lover (which she co-wrote with Michael,
who also contributed backing vocals) in 1980.

MARLON David.
Born: 12 March 1957.
Member of the Jackson 5 and Jacksons (up to and including the
VICTORY album and tour in 1984, after which he left his brothers to
go solo).
First solo hit: Don’t Go in 1987.

BRANDON.
Born: 12 March 1957.
Marlon’s twin – both were born prematurely, and sadly Brandon died a few hours after his birth.

MICHAEL Joseph.
Born: 29 August 1958.
Member of the Jackson 5 and the Jacksons (up to and including the
VICTORY album and tour in 1984, after which he left his brothers to
concentrate on his solo career).
First solo hit: Got To Be There in 1971.

Steven Randall – known as RANDY.
Born: 31 October 1961.
Member of the Jacksons.
First solo hit: How Can I Be Sure in 1978.

JANET Damita Jo.
Born: 16 May 1966.
First solo hit: Young Love in 1982.

Michael Jackson The Early Years

by Craig Halstead and Chris Cadman

Sample

IN THE BEGINNING...

I don’t know where he got it from.
He was just so good, so young.
Some kids are special.
Michael was special.
Katherine Jackson

What parent doesn’t like to think their kids are special?
However, from the moment she watched her five year old perform Climb Ev’ry Mountain at school assembly, Katherine Jackson didn’t just think her son Michael really was special. She knew – but, to borrow a line from another song from The Sound Of Music, let’s start at the very beginning . . .
Michael’s father, Joseph Walter Jackson, was born on 26th July 1929 in Fountain Hill, Arkansas, to Samuel and Chrystal Jackson. The eldest of five children, teenage Joseph was taken to Oakland by his father when his parents separated and divorced.
But Samuel’s second marriage failed, too, and when his father took a third bride Joseph moved to East Chicago, Indiana, to live with his mother and sisters. Here, at a neighbourhood party, he met Katherine Esther Scruse.
Katherine was born on 4th May 1930 in Barbour County, not far from Russell County, Alabama. She was christened Kattie B. Scruse, after an aunt on her father Prince Albert Scruse’s side. Her mother Martha Upshaw gave birth to Kattie’s only sibling, her sister Hattie, in 1931.
In 1934, in search of work, Prince took his family to East Chicago but things didn’t work out. Divorce quickly followed and, when she eventually re-married, Martha signed an ‘Affidavit To Amend A Record Of Birth’, to change her name from Martha Upshaw to Martha Bridgett. At the same time, Kattie B. Scruse changed her name to Katherine Esther Scruse.
Katherine was smitten with Joseph from their first meeting, but she was also shy and introverted – a legacy of polio, which she had contracted as an eighteen month old baby.
Known in those days as Infantile Paralysis, polio is a crippling disease and, before an effective vaccine became available, many children lost their lives as a result of it. Joseph’s seven year old sister Verna numbered among them. Others, like Katherine, survived but were obliged to wear leg braces and use crutches throughout their childhood. Even as an adult, Katherine still walked with a slight, but noticeable, limp.
When she learned Joseph had married someone else, Katherine must have been devastated. But in less than a year the marriage failed and, following his divorce, Joseph returned to East Chicago. He started seeing Katherine again and before long the courting couple announced their engagement.
They were married on 5th November 1949 and, for the princely sum of $8,500, purchased a two bedroom house in the all-black neighbourhood of Gary, Indiana. Coincidentally, their new address was 2300 Jackson Street.
Katherine and Joseph’s first child, a daughter, was born on 29th May 1950. She was the first of ten children:

29th May 1950 Maureen Reilette – known as REBBIE
4th May 1951 Sigmund Esco – JACKIE
15th Oct 1953 Tariano Adaryll – TITO
11th Dec 1954 JERMAINE LaJaun
29th May 1956 LaTOYA Yvonne
12th Mar 1957 MARLON David & BRANDON
29th Aug 1958 MICHAEL Joseph
31st Oct 1961 Steven Randall – RANDY
16th May 1966 JANET Damita Jo

Twins Marlon and Brandon were born two months premature and, sadly, Brandon died within eight hours of his birth.
By the time her eighth child was born, Katherine was fast running out of ideas for names, so she allowed her mother Martha to christen her sixth son. After rejecting first Ronald, then Roy, Katherine agreed to her mother’s third suggestion: Michael.
The Jackson family quickly outgrew their two bedroom home. ‘You could take five steps from the front door and you’d be out the back,’ Michael recalls. ‘It was really no bigger than a garage.’
But times were hard and, unable to afford to move to somewhere larger, the Jacksons somehow managed. Katherine and Joseph shared one bedroom, their sons had a triple bunk in the other.
Jackie, as the oldest and biggest, occupied the bottom bunk. Michael and Marlon shared the middle bunk, Jermaine and Tito the top bunk. Pillows at different ends of the bunks afforded what little privacy the younger boys had.
Sisters Rebbie and LaToya slept in the living room, on a sofa-bed. Randy, when he arrived on the scene, slept on a second sofa.
To support his family, Joseph worked as a crane operator for Inland Steel, normally on the 4.00pm to midnight shift. Hard, not always steady, work that earned him around $65 a week.
With a mortgage of $60 a month and an ever increasing number of mouths to feed, Joseph often supplemented his income by working days as well, as a welder at American Foundries. During lay-offs, he paid the bills by trudging fields with a sack, hand harvesting potatoes.
Katherine, for her part, dressed her children in clothes she had made herself, or had purchased from the local Salvation Army store.
Meals were simple but nutritious. Bacon and eggs. Egg sandwiches. Tomato soup. Fish croquettes with rice. And, of course, potatoes – baked, boiled, fried and stewed. Favourite desserts included fried apple pie, peach cobbler and sweet potato pie.
As Rebbie grew older, old enough to take some responsibility for chores and cooking, Katherine took a part-time job as a sales clerk at a local department store, Sears.
One of Michael’s earliest memories is being cradled in his mother’s arms, as she sang country western songs. Katherine grew up listening to the likes of Hank Williams and Ernest Tubbs on country western radio, and she also learned to play clarinet, guitar and piano.
Joseph was a great music fan, too – rhythm & blues, especially. Dissatisfied with his lot, he, his brother Luther and three friends formed a band called the Falcons (not the similarly named group Wilson Pickett joined in 1960). They played locals bars and clubs mostly, but their dream – to be ‘discovered’ – remained just that. When the Falcons disbanded, Joseph’s prized guitar was consigned to the bedroom closet.
Katherine, in her autobiography My Family, The Jacksons, traces the roots of the Jackson 5 back to 1955 and – a broken television! A Black & White Muntz. The television was duly fixed but, unable to pay him, Katherine repeatedly asked the repairman to hold on to the set.
Meanwhile, she entertained her small children by taking out her husband’s guitar and singing country western songs. Songs like Cotton Fields, The Great Speckled Bird, She’ll Be Coming Round The Mountain, Wabash Cannonball and You Are My Sunshine. Before very long, her children were harmonising with her.
In the early 1960s a new, vibrant sound hit the radio waves for the first time. A sound created by a black record company called Motown.
Jackie, Tito and Jermaine loved what they heard, loved to learn the words to the songs, to sing along to the radio in their bedroom. When their parents were out, they dared to take out their father’s prized guitar, taking turns to strum along. Michael and Marlon, still toddlers, for the moment were content to sit and watch.
‘I was strict,’ Katherine wrote in her autobiography. ‘Joe was stricter.’
Her husband was also, she goes on to admit, excitable. Sometimes, he hit their children too hard, or for too long. Whenever he felt they deserved it, he wouldn’t hesitate to strike out with his hands, or beat his kids with his belt or a switch (a long, flexible branch snapped off a tree).
Joseph was also anti-social and when, in 1963, Katherine became a Jehovah’s Witness, this further isolated the family – which suited Katherine and Joseph just fine. They lived in a tough neighbourhood, and anything that kept their offspring from joining the many gangs that roamed the streets of Gary was seen as a big plus.
Almost inevitably, Katherine caught her elder sons playing her husband’s guitar. Playing and singing. Joseph, she knew, had specifically prohibited the children from touching his guitar but, recognising her sons were using the instrument as was intended, and not as a toy, she chose to turn a blind eye. So the deception continued until, one fateful day, eight year old Tito accidentally broke one of the guitar strings.
Panic ensued.
Joseph was due home from work and there was no time to replace the guitar string – not that Tito or any of his brothers knew how to, anyway. Instead, they returned the instrument to the bedroom closet, and hoped against hope their father wouldn’t discover the damage or, that if he did, he would think the guitar string had somehow broken itself.
But Joseph did discover the damage, and it didn’t take him very long to find out who the culprit was. He whipped his son but afterwards, through his tears, Tito found the courage to proclaim, ‘I can play that thing! I really can . . . ’
Told to do so, Tito proved it. And, when Jackie and Jermaine started singing along, Joseph’s dream was re-kindled.
Soon after, he returned home from work one day with a surprise. A spanking new red electric guitar. For Tito, with the proviso that anyone else who wanted to practice on it, be allowed to do so.
Other musical instruments followed.
A bass guitar for Jermaine. Shakers for Jackie. Amplifiers. Microphones. Expenditure the family could ill afford.
‘We went overboard,’ Joseph later confessed. ‘My wife and I would fight, because I invested in new instruments that cost so much.’
But at the time Joseph was blinkered. He was so determined they would succeed where he had failed, he enforced a strict regime whereby his sons rehearsed for three hours a night, after school – longer at weekends.
By 1962, five year old Marlon had joined his brothers, playing bongos and singing backing vocals. Michael wanted to join the group, too, but whenever he asked his father and brothers refused to take him seriously. So far as they were concerned he was too young.
In August 1963 Michael turned five, too. Just a few weeks later, he got his chance to sing in public for the first time, at the morning assembly at his school, Garnett Elementary.
A cappella, he performed Climb Ev’ry Mountain, from the Julie Andrews musical The Sound Of Music. Katherine and her father-in-law, Samuel, were in the audience. Michael’s performance reduced them both to tears.
In his autobiography Moonwalk, Michael recalled, ‘the reaction in the auditorium overwhelmed me. The applause was thunderous and people were smiling; some of them were standing . . . It was such a great feeling.’
There was no denying young Michael any longer. The Jackson brothers, supposedly after a neighbour suggested it, became known as ‘The Jackson Five’.
In 1964, at a department store in Glen Park, Chicago, the Jackson Five performed Doin’ The Jerk (with Jermaine, not Michael, on lead vocals), which was a hit at the time for the Larks. Mother Katherine hand-made the costumes Michael and his brothers wore.
Joined by neighbours Reynaud Jones (on lead guitar) and Milford Hite (on drums), the group made their competition debut in 1965, when they performed My Girl and Barefootin’ at the annual Roosevelt High Talent Show. Despite tough competition, the Jackson Five took first place.
Michael maintains no one, other than their parents, discovered the Jackson Five. Certainly Diana Ross, for so long cited by Motown as ‘officially’ responsible for discovering the group, didn’t.
But nor can Joseph and Katherine take all the credit. They would have been the first to acknowledge they couldn’t possibly have taken the Jackson Five all the way to Motown, without any outside help. And the first outsider to recognise the raw talent the Jackson brothers possessed was a woman whom history appears to have all but forgotten: Shirley Cartman.
Shirley who?
Ms Cartman, in 1966, was a music teacher at Beckman Junior High School in Gary, Indiana. Among the students in her eighth grade orchestra class, one Tito Jackson. Through Tito, she learned of the Jackson Five and their ambitions. Ambitions, she was well aware, many of her students shared. Which is why Beckman’s annual talent show, an event Ms Cartman was responsible for organising, was such a good fundraiser for new musical instruments for the school’s orchestra.
The next contest was scheduled for mid-1967, towards the end of the school year. Tito was keen for the Jackson Five to enter but there was a problem. The show was to be staged during school hours. Michael, Marlon and Jermaine were still at Garnett Elementary School, and Jackie was at Roosevelt High.
Pestered by Tito, Mrs Cartman finally relented and spoke to Katherine and Joseph, who readily agreed their sons be excused from school, so that they could enter the contest.
That sorted, Mrs Cartman dropped by the Jacksons’ home to audition the Jackson Five – and was stunned by their performance. She entered the Jackson Five for the show and, once a professional entertainer herself, she wasn’t in the least surprised when they walked away with first place.
Gary’s Annual Talent Search came next and, his confidence growing all the time, Michael made his presence felt. During Barefootin’, he spontaneously kicked off his shoes, and danced barefoot around the stage!
The audience loved it. So did the judges. Once again, the Jackson Five swept to victory – and were rewarded with their first ever press write-up, in the local Gary Post-Tribune.
Joseph was happy, but not overjoyed. As yet, no one had paid a dime to see his sons perform. Winning talent shows was a fine start, but turning profession – getting a record deal – was the ultimate aim. Which, again, is where Shirley Cartman’s knowledge of the music business proved invaluable.
At her suggestion a Roosevelt High student, Johnny Jackson (no relation, despite what Motown would later claim), was added to the group as full-time drummer.
Promo photos were taken. Work was started on new songs, including originals Cartman had written herself. In her book A Teacher Remembers The Jacksons, she confirmed one such song was titled The Scrub. This, and several other songs, were actually recorded but to date the tapes have somehow escaped being issued.
Demos to send out to record companies were planned, and Joseph booked the Jackson Five and Johnny to appear at local bars and clubs. Earliest among them, a regular booking at Mister Lucky’s Lounge in Gary, for which the group were paid $15 a night.
A track the Jackson Five often performed was Joe Tex’s Skinny Legs. During it, young Michael would slide under tables and mischievously lift ladies skirts, before scurrying away. Light-hearted fun that prompted many in the audience to throw money on stage, so by the time the Jackson Five were through, their pockets were brimming with cash.
Not until she was certain they were ready did Shirley Cartman approach Gordon Keith, the owner of a local company Steeltown Records, to invite him to watch the Jackson Five and Johnny perform.
Sceptical, Keith was reluctant to waste his time on a bunch of kids, but nevertheless he agreed to sit in on one of their sessions. He kept his word and, knocked out by what he saw and heard, he immediately offered Joseph’s boys their first recording contract.
A six month contract was signed in November 1967, following which the Jackson Five and Johnny stepped into a recording studio for the first time. Over a period of months, a dozen or more songs were recorded, a mix of originals and cover versions. Steeltown released four of the songs on two singles.

Hobbies & Interests

Hobbies & Interests

Interests & Hobbies: Reading, painting, martial arts, dancing, acting, drawing, animals, philanthropic and humanitarian causes, going to amusement parks, traveling, shopping, going to the movies, spending time with children (especially terminally ill and underprivileged children), collect paintings, sculptures, movie memorabilia and old costumes, investing

Best Friend: Elizabeth Taylor
Idols: Charlie Chaplin, Fred Astaire, Gene Kelley, Berry Gordy, Quincy Jones, Three Stooges, Walt Disney
Favorite Accessory: Black Fedora
Favorite Actor/Actress: Shirley Temple, Elizabeth Taylor, Katherine Hepburn, Morgan Freeman, Marlon Brando
Favorite Artists: Michaelangelo, Leonardo Da Vinci
Favourite Board Game: Monopoly
Favorite Books: 'Peter Pan' by James Matthew Barrie, 'Jonathan Livingstone Seagull' by Richard Bach, 'The Old Man And The Sea' by Ernest Hemingway
Favorite Classical Composers: Claude Debussy ('Afternoon of the Fawn'), Pjotr Iljitsch Tschaikowsky, Sergei Sergejewitsch Prokofjew
Favorite Colors: Red, black
Favorite Disney Characters: Mickey Mouse, Peter Pan, Pinocchio
Favorite Drink: mineral water (e.g. Evian, Perrier), fruit juice (orange), vegetable juice (carrot), Gatorade (during concerts)
Favorite Food: Mexican, exotic, spicy & vegetarian food, Sushi, pizza, chicken, fish, fresh fruits, popcorn, vanilla ice with cookie pieces, sunflower seeds, glazed doughnuts, frosted flakes with milk, M&Ms
Favorite Movies: 'Peter Pan', 'E.T.', 'Star Wars'
Favorite Singers: James Brown, Jackie Wilson, Smokey Robinson, Sammy Davis Jr., The Temptations, Diana Ross
Favorite Songs When He Was A Child: 'Tobacco Road', 'You Are My Sunshine', 'Cloud Nine' by The Temptations
Favorite TV Shows: Flip Wilson Show, Brady Bunch, Road Runner Show, The Simpsons

First Movie Debut: 'The Wiz' (1978)
First Record Ever Bought: 'Mickey's Monkey' by Smokey Robinson and Miracles
First Record Ever Made: 'Big Boy' (Steel Town Records)
Current Record Label: Epic Records (Sony Music)
Own Record Label: MJJ Music
Famous Duets: Paul McCartney, Stevie Wonder, Janet Jackson

Hobbies & Interests

Press Release On Michael's Health

Press Release On Michael's Health

(23-12-2008) Michael Jackson's official and sole spokesperson, Dr. Tohme Tohme, in response to recent rumors regarding Michael's alleged medical condition has issued the following statement.
The rumours were started by journalist Ian Halpern who is working on a book on Michael Jackson and afterwards picked up by media outlets worldwide:
"Concerning this author's allegations, we would hope in the future that legitimate media will not continue to be exploited by such an obvious attempt to promote this unauthorized 'biography.' The writer's wild allegations concerning Mr. Jackson's health are a total fabrication. Mr. Jackson is in fine health, and finalizing negotiations with a major entertainment company & television network for both a world tour and a series of specials and appearances."