I was reading this blog entry and everything there just cracked me up: http://lacienegasmiled.wordpress.com/2010/08/17/cute-michael-jackson-stories/
...especially when it got to David Gest's part. I did a search and didn't find these posted here yet. So..enjoy!
The bit that cracked me up the most, making me cry with laughter for ages, was the bit about the woman at church falling on Michael's crotch.
There are a lot of other stories at that blog so check out the link- I only posted David's section.
...especially when it got to David Gest's part. I did a search and didn't find these posted here yet. So..enjoy!
Stories from David Gest’s autobio “Simply the Gest”
On Michael’s own money, he and I flew to Nashville and rented a car. He drove. I soon set about driving him mad, just totally bonkers.
In Nashville we were booked into a really nice hotel, Spence Manor. We pulled up alongside an intercom system you had to get past to get to go through the main gates. Michael didn’t know Nasville, so I sensed an opportunity to have some fun.
I told him that because we were in the self styled “Music City” we had to abide by one of the local traditions.
“Michael, you have to sing into the intercom,” I said.
“Sing what?”
“You have to sing ‘It’s Music City and I am here. I’m Mike McDonald so let’s raise a cheer.’ Otherwise they won’t let you in. You have to do it,” I told him.
He gave me a puzzled look but went along with it. The guy on the end of the intercom came on and said in his southern accent, “How can I help you?”
Michael began to sing and the voice on the intercom replied, “Sorry, we don’t let weirdos in here.”
They wouldn’t open the gates. I was laughing so hard I was on the floor. Michael didn’t quite get it for a moment but as soon as he did he nearly peed his pants too. He couldn’t believe he had been such an idiot as to do that.
[...]
Michael and I used to have so much fun playing jokes on each other. My favourite prank was to put on another voice and pretend to be someone else – I loved to do voices. In the early days of working together, Michael went to stay at a hotel in Little Rock, Arkansas. He loved to eat. He had just arrived and I knew the first thing he would do was order food from room service. So I beat him to the punch. As soon as he got to his room, I rang him up, putting on a woman’s voice, and said, “Honey, do you want to order room service?”
“Oh yes, baby, I’ll have a hamburger,” he said. He always called people sweetheart or baby.
“Ok, darling,” I replied.
“I would like some mustard and ketchup.”
“Baby, we have no mustard and ketchup.”
“None?” he asked.
“None. We just ran out and our shipment is two days late,” I replied.
“Ok, I will have some relish.”
“Honey, we’re all out of relish. We just got rid of the last of it.”
“Ok, I’ll have mayonaise.”
“No mayonaise.”
“Cheese and lettuce?”
“No cheese or lettuce.”
“Fries?”
“No fries.”
“Well, just put some butter and tomato in the bun.”
“Honey, we have no buns, just toast.”
By this point he had enough, so he just started screaming, “You have no mustard, you have no ketchup, you have no fries, you have no buns. What kind of restaurant is this?”
I started cracking up. It was then that I realized I had him. I did exactly the same thing to him 25 years later. We weren’t working together then but I knew where he was staying.
[...]
Michael used to love calling people up. He would do it when he came over to my house. He would just pick up the phone, dial a random number and start horsing around.
The person at the other end would pick up the phone and Michael would say, “Who’s this?”
They would reply something like, “It’s Lenore.”
He would go, “Oh, Lenore, listen, we’re going to have to get a divorce. I can’t carry on like this.”
“She would go, “No, no, you have the wrong…”
Michael would interrupt and say, “No, Lenore, don’t even try that on me. I’ve just had it with you. We’ll divide the property evenly and everything but it’s got to be this way.”
Then he would hang up, leaving the person on the other end of the line wondering what the hell had just happened.
(1978)
Michael was staying at my place on Dohney and was happy to come along. He really respected Burt (Bacharach) but wondered, as we all did, what made him tick.
Burt had ordered a bottle of expensive French red wine, which he, Carole (Bayer Sager) and I were drinking. Michael never drank but that night he got interested in wine. Unbelievably; he didn’t even know what wine was.
‘What’s it made of?’ he asked me.
‘Grapes’, I said.
‘I like grapes,’ Michael said. ‘I think I’ll try some.’
So we poured Michael a glass and he drank it. He obviously liked it because he drank another one. We were drinking a 1982 Pomerol that tasted like candy, so he was bound to like it.
By this time, we all had a glass or two and the bottle was finished. So Burt ordered a second bottle. This time, Michael drank virtually the whole bottle. He had really aquired a taste for wine, fine wine at that, and was guzzling the stuff down.
So we ordered a third bottle and Michael drank most of that as well. That’s when I knew we were going to have a problem that night.
The evening came to an end and I drove Michael back to my place. He was, understandbly, happy. In fact, he was flying high, very high. In the car he was talking and laughing. He was singing ‘I Want To Be Where You Are’ and ‘Never Can Say Goodbye’.
Then he started singing more of his hit songs like ‘Ben’. He was giggling away all the time.
‘You’re going to be in trouble,’ he said. ‘I’m going to tell Joesph what you did.’
I wasn’t taking the bait. ‘I didn’t do it, you did,’ I said.
It took us a few minutes to get back to my place. The minute I parked the car and opened the door for him, Michael leaned out and threw up all over the place. He spent the rest of the night hanging over the toilet. He was as sick as a dog. I was up all night with him.
He kept saying, ‘I’m going to tell Joe you corrupted me,’ I was kinda worried he would but he never did.
It was his first taste of wine, something he would come to love a little too much in later years. I always felt bad about that night but it sure was funny!
(Al Green’s church, 1978)
When it came time to head for the party, Michael cried off. He had the worst case of crotch rot from wearing his underwear too tight. He couldn’t move. The sides of his legs were all sore and had broken out in a rash.
We went to Al Green’s church the next day, even though Michael was still in a lot of pain. The rash had spread all over his legs and he couldn’t walk properly.
When we arrived, Al was singing the Curtis Mayfield classic, “People Get Ready.” He still had the most amazing effect on people, only now it was a more religious thing.
This woman who was sitting next to us suddenly started hyperventilating, like a lot of Southern African American women do when they go to church. She started speaking in tongues and jumping up and down. Then she fell right into Michael’s crotch.
I will never forget the look on Michael’s face. It was pure horror.
He just sat there, frozen, obviously in terrible pain, whispering, “Help me, help me.”
I just smiled at him and said, “What am I going to do? I’m not going to get her off your penis. You will have to play with your own organ today!”
That woman lay there for ten minutes. It was only when Al Green ushered Michael up to sing with him that we were able to remove her from Michael’s crotch.
[...]
We would go to Disneyland. We both loved rollercoasters. Sometimes we would go on them twenty times in a row.
Often, Michael would wear disguises. Once, he was a sheikh and I was his translator. We would go into a place called Carnation Restaurant in Disneyland where they served great tuna salad and sandwiches. Michael was eating organic food only, although, at that time, he had a rather strange idea of what organic was. We would go to KFC, Michael reckoned if you took off the skin it became organic.
Anyhow, at Carnation on this particular day, there were two elderly women and a gentleman in their eighties from Croydon. We started talking in our mock Arabic to each other.
When the two ladies looked over, I turned to one of them and explained, “The Sheikh Majolini wanted me to tell you that you are a beautiful woman and so is your friend,” I said.
These two ladies probably hadn’t been paid a compliment like that in the last couple of decades so they started smiling. We then got talking. They asked what the Sheikh was doing here and I said he had just got divorced from his 97th wife and was now on his 154th child.
“He has 154 children?” they asked, looking shocked.
“That he knows of,” I said. “He has had 97 wives…” and I started naming them, “Jada, Jami, Shakira, Vera…” with Michael saying them in mock Arabic.
There was nothing malacious in it. In fact, Michael picked up their bill. He was like that, always pulling practical jokes on people.
Sometimes though, the joke would be on us. The funniest thing that ever happened to us was when we went for pancakes one night. It was after 1am and our regular haunt, Dupars, was closed, so we went to another pancake house that we knew on Ventura Boulevard. There was only one couple in there; normally it held 150 people.
The waitress who served us was in her late sixties or early seventies. This was around 1979, when Off The Wall came out. Michael was the no. 1 artist in the world. She didn’t recognize him at all.
We got to the table and she come over and asked us what we wanted to order. I put on a Saudi accent and went “Yamaka fallesh.”
Michael started laughing. The waitress slapped him across the face with the back of her hand. She said, “This is not funny. Your friend is from a foreign country and you have respect for people from foreign countries.”
Michael got nervous. He wasn’t used to being treated like that in public. He slid further inside the booth so he couldn’t get slapped again.
I asked, “What is pancake? Explain please.”
The waitress started miming a pressing motion. She said, “It’s like a cake that you press down.”
Michael started to laugh again and she started to put her hand up again, so he slid further away.
She then said, “Ok, I’m going to take you back to the kitchen.” She and the cook showed us how to make pancakes. I ordered some.
When the pancakes came to our table, I took the syrup bottle and emptied the whole bottle all over the pancakes. She immediately slapped me across the face. It hurt.
“Not funny,” she said. Michael was laughing again.
She brought me a new batch and I ate them. When we left, Michael left her a $200 tip.
We were in the car park, heading back to Michael’s Rolls Royce, when the waitress came running after us.
“I’m not taking this. You boys are probably working your way through college and you need the money,” she said, not even noticing the car he was driving.
Michael insisted but she said, “No, I’m not taking it.” We couldn’t believe it.
[...]
We’d get in the car and sing songs together. He used to tell me I was the worst singer he’d ever heard! He always made me laugh. Michael had a great sense of humour which most people never saw. We loved to go antiquing for furniture and paintings as well as memorabilia. Our favourite thing to do was walk into a store and go, “Do you have any John LeCockah paintings?”
The antique dealer would respond, “We’ve just sold the last one for $100,000.” I’d say to Michael, “Oh no, he’s just sold the last John LeCockah painting.” We would plead for him to get another in and he’d respond, “They are just too hard to find.” We’d walk out and go, “We’ll never buy from that dealer because there’s no such painter!” Michael would be laughing so hard. He had a laugh that was like a cackle: Hhk hhk hhk hhk hhk.
We’d do very normal things. We’d go out for pancakes and French toast and I’d drive his Rolls-Royce. When we stopped for gas, I’d ask him to fill the tank. He’d say, “I’m the star here. I can’t believe you’re making me put gas in the car.” And I’d tell him, “When we’re together, there’s only one star.” That was the reason our friendship was so good. I never treated him like he was a big deal.
(at the 7th Annual American Cinema Awards where Michael was honoured, 1990)
When Michael Jackson came on stage to take his final bow at the end of the evening with Celia (Lipton Ferris – she was the executive producer of the show), she got even more excited. At one point, she wrapped herself around Michael shouting, ‘He’s the greatest, he’s the greatest!’ Finally the musical conductor danced with Celia and Michael could free himself. It was very funny. Even Michael enjoyed it.
[...]
I remember we once went to Disneyland. He was in disguise and we watched Captain EO, a Disney 3D movie which he starred in.
When we came out I said, ‘You were brilliant’ and he went, ‘Oh thanks, have you only just realised?’. Then when we got home I made him Moonwalk in my kitchen — then I tried it and fell flat on my face!?
The Michael Jackson I will remember was smart, articulate and made me laugh. His death was a huge shock but it brought back so many happy memories.
The bit that cracked me up the most, making me cry with laughter for ages, was the bit about the woman at church falling on Michael's crotch.
There are a lot of other stories at that blog so check out the link- I only posted David's section.
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I had read about the wine story before. The story with the waitress is so...random. :toofunny: She really slapped them? :bugeyed Thanks for sharing.
