Michael Jackson to ride an elephant leading panthers and parrots

Plans for MJ's upcoming London residency have been powerfully noted with just one sentence: Michael Jackson is to ride an elephant on stage.

If all goes according to plan, Jackson's run of 50 (!) shows at London's 02 Arena beginning in July may well be the greatest event in the history of the the universe.

UK paper The Daily Mirror has printed an article detailing some of the singer's plans. (Bear in mind that this is the same paper that printed a story on saying the Stone Roses were reforming. Which was bullshit). The Mirror quotes a source who may or may not be someone yelling out of a taxi outside the pub, but we don't care. It's tremendous.

A source told Britain's Daily Mirror newspaper: "He hopes to make it the most spectacular show ever. For the jungle section, he wants to ride out on an African elephant with panthers led on gold chains. Parrots and other birds will fly behind him. If it goes to plan it will look incredible."

What is easily missed in the above description - aside from Michael riding an African elephant leading panthers on golden chains as parrots swarm around him obediently shepherding their great king damaged captor - is that this is a "section" of the show. The "jungle section".

"As well as dozens of animals, Michael also wants to hire 100 Masai warriors for the 50-date extravaganza."

Someone, somewhere right now is in the troubled employ of the touched singer, facing a War Room wall of schematics, diagrams, colour swatches and chinagraph marks. Like a Magic Eye poster that never reveals, said employee is desperately trying to calculate a seemingly impossible outcome; how to green light the Jungle Section? While he tearfully brushes aside a table of palm fronds, giant cooking pots and plastic piranhas, another lackey trundles down the hallway outside taping laminated signs to the endless row of doors: 'Science Fiction Section'. 'Ancient Pyramid Section'. 'Personal Economic Recovery Plan Section'. 'Sodomised by Flotilla of Apes Section'.

I have to see this. Fifty shows?! This, friends, is the perfect storm. One where the fading king of a once unstoppable popular culture collides with a world flushed with new modernity and hemorrhaging funds. There will never be anything like this again in the history of humankind.

For good reason