Michael Jackson

The woman with the electric guitar has played this song before. It's a Michael Jackson ballad, and the young guitarist is named Orianthi, who leans back now to unfurl a solo of smoldering melody before stepping up to the microphone to sing some torrid lyrics: "Love is a feeling / give it when I want it / 'cause I'm on fire / quench my desire. . . ." Orianthi's eyes are closed beneath her blond bangs as she wails "Give In to Me" in a North Hollywood rehearsal studio, her four-piece rock band swaying behind her. The 1991 song (co-authored by Bill Bottrell)

Almost everyone has their own Michael Jackson moment. Mine came when I was lucky enough to see what was probably the most important live performance of his career, the night he caused the world to stop and gasp. It was five minutes that broadened his reach from pop star to entertainment icon at a level that nobody had seen before and which hasn't been matched since. On March 25, 1983, Motown threw itself a self-congratulatory showcase, a multi-act fundraiser to fight sickle cell disease.

In "Michael Jackson's This Is It," moviegoers will not see the elaborate costumes created for the tour that never was, bedazzled with 4 million Swarovski crystals and lighted up using LED technology. Those are on display at the O2 Arena in London, where the engagement had been scheduled to begin in July, and will go on to New York and Tokyo. But what they will see, in addition to tough and tender moments that humanize the pop singer, and one hell of a music and dance show, is an amazing array of designer outfits Jackson wore to rehearsals.

Michael Jackson and his attorney, Mark Geragos, were surreptitiously taped on the private jet that carried the singer from Las Vegas to Santa Barbara for his surrender to face child molestation charges last week, representatives for Jackson and the jet company said Monday.

There's a sweet personal exchange near the end of "Michael Jackson's This Is It," the new concert film assembled from footage of the rehearsals for the London performances nullified by his death in June. Jackson is working out a dance sequence with Kenny Ortega, the director of the ill-fated concerts and of this documentary. Ortega lovingly mimics Jackson, overplaying his signature big hand gestures, and the superstar laughs. "I love how the stewardesses do it," he says. "I love it!"

The gates of Neverland Ranch. The crystal right-hand glove worn in the video for "Billie Jean." An arcade's worth of video games and a small army of fiberglass butlers and other figures once scattered about to make the mansion feel less lonely. These are just a few of the 1,390 lots of Michael Jackson's belongings now on the auction block in Beverly Hills.

In graphic testimony Thursday, a former security guard at Michael Jackson's Neverland ranch described watching the pop star kiss, caress and perform a sex act on a nude young boy after the pair had showered together. Ralph Chacon's abuse allegation was the most vivid to emerge in the pop star's child-molestation trial, which had focused largely on claims that Jackson groped and masturbated young boys in darkened rooms or under covers. Jackson attorney Thomas A. Mesereau Jr.

Michael Jackson was fascinated by celebrity tragedy. He had a statue of Marilyn Monroe in his home and studied the sad Hollywood exile of Charlie Chaplin. He married the daughter of Elvis Presley. Jackson met his own untimely death Thursday at age 50, and more than any of those past icons, he left a complicated legacy.

The surge in sales of Michael Jackson's music catalog continued Wednesday with the announcement that his recordings dominated the pop charts for the third consecutive week, and a source told The Times that more than 9 million of Jackson's albums have been sold worldwide since his death June 25. Nielsen SoundScan said Jackson's albums sold 1.1 million copies over the last seven days and had combined to sell an impressive 2.3 million in the U.S. in the nearly three weeks since he died.

Michael Jackson spent his final night alive in his favorite spot on Earth: the stage. At Staples Center on Wednesday night, the performer did a full run-through of his planned comeback concert. He and his company -- dancers, musicians, singers, aerial performers, choreographers and costumers -- planned to fly to England early next week for dress rehearsals at London's O2 Arena, the site of the superstar's 50-night sold-out run. By lunchtime Thursday, Jackson was in cardiac arrest.

In the first Grammy Awards since his death last June, Michael Jackson was saluted in an elaborate tribute that mixed 3-D technology, a rousing all-star chorus and a poignant appearance by two of his children. After an introduction from Lionel Richie, television viewers and the Staples Center audience were instructed to put on 3-D glasses and view footage for a film originally produced for Jackson's comeback concerts. The film showed a little girl in an ecological paradise that is destroyed by bulldozers.

COMEDY This is Your Life: The Grinch Explore the life of Dr. Seuss' classic Christmas curmudgeon at this laugh-filled comedy spoof. The green meanie (Hal Rudnick) is visited by various holiday icons, including Ralphie from "A Christmas Story," European Santa and Jesus. Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre, 5919 Franklin Ave., L.A. 8 p.m. $5. (323) 908-8702. losangeles.ucbtheatre.com. BOOKS Todd Gray Gray was Michael Jackson's personal photographer throughout the "Off the Wall" and "Thriller" periods, documenting the star-in-the-making with family, friends and fans, and in iconic career moments.

CalPERS investments: An article in Business on Wednesday about real estate investments by the California Public Employees' Retirement System said the value of those investments dropped 30% in the quarter ending Sept. 30. The losses occurred in the previous quarter, which ended June 30. The article also said that an investment in the Stuyvesant Town-Peter Cooper Village apartment complex in New York was threatened by a collapse of the residential property market and by the prospect of bankruptcy by CalPERS' partners in the venture, Blackrock Inc. and Tishman Speyer Properties.

"Lopez Tonight" is only a few weeks old, but host George Lopez and bandleader Michael Bearden already have their opening ritual down pat. As the Ese Vatos house band jams on War's "Low Rider," Lopez prowls the stage and struts through a frenzied studio audience, gradually working his way to Bearden for a celebratory fist pump. For Bearden, who spends the show planted behind a bank of keyboards, working on the TBS late-night talk show is more than a great gig. It has also served as an unexpected lifeline.

The cost of Michael Jackson's private funeral topped $1 million, with more than half that amount going to buy a crypt in a celebrity-studded Glendale mausoleum and $35,000 spent on clothes for the singer, according to court documents unsealed Tuesday. Jackson, who died in June, was interred at Forest Lawn Memorial-Park in September in a nighttime ceremony arranged by his family and paid for by his estate. The probate judge who signed off on those expenses made public the funeral costs at a hearing in which he also appointed two longtime Jackson associates, entertainment attorney John Branca and music executive John McClain, as executors of his estate.

"The Jacksons: A Family Dynasty," a six-hour reality series that will focus on the surviving members of the Jackson Five as they prepare for a reunion concert while coming to terms with the death of their brother Michael Jackson, will premiere Dec. 13 on A&E. The series, which will also show the brothers recording a new vocal for Michael Jackson's "This Is It" soundtrack and attending the premiere of the concert movie, will debut with two one-hour episodes...

Michael Jackson's father wants the late singer's estate to help him cover living expenses that exceed $20,000 a month, according to court papers filed Friday. The estate is already paying Jackson's mother a monthly allowance of $26,000 and an attorney for Joe Jackson, 81, wrote in the Los Angeles County Superior Court filing that the family patriarch was entitled to the "same manner" of support. In the papers, his lawyer wrote that Michael Jackson had footed his father's bills for decades.

On June 25, just hours after Michael Jackson died, Tim Patterson drove from his home in the Santa Clarita Valley to downtown Los Angeles with $60-million worth of film footage in his trunk. As he sped down Interstate 5 in his green Lexus convertible, Patterson carried virtually all of the 140 hours of rehearsal footage from the late singer's planned "This Is It" concert series that would eventually be whittled down to the 112-minute movie that opened last week to a decent $34.4 million domestically and a much stronger $69.5 million overseas through Sunday.

In "Michael Jackson's This Is It," moviegoers will not see the elaborate costumes created for the tour that never was, bedazzled with 4 million Swarovski crystals and lighted up using LED technology. Those are on display at the O2 Arena in London, where the engagement had been scheduled to begin in July, and will go on to New York and Tokyo. But what they will see, in addition to tough and tender moments that humanize the pop singer, and one hell of a music and dance show, is an amazing array of designer outfits Jackson wore to rehearsals.

You have only to hear the voice to recognize who owns those pipes: talk-show host Michael Jackson, the original issue, with more than half a century on the radio. During the BL era -- Before Limbaugh -- he reached millions of ears on several continents and was, for about three decades, the monarch of Los Angeles' AM talk radio. Jackson wears a coat and tie on the radio, in perfect keeping with the urbane, civil, informed discourse that earned him a place in the Radio Hall of Fame, an honor from the queen of England and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.