WE LOVE YOU MICHAEL!

Thinking about you today and everyday

So far today has been a good day. I am happy about that. Thank you God.


Michael,

As always, I am thinking of you and missing you and loving you as well as your family. I hope that you know that. I am so anxious to get to California, trying to find the part that is just right is difficult. There are so many things that need to be done and I have so many ideas of ways that I want to help people. I can never stop thinking about. So many things that I want to do. Maybe I should narrow my list down, but then wouldn't that be limiting myself on dreams. I should pursue all my dreams, right? I think so. I don't know. The information that I found out about the California LOSP really has me excited. I have always wanted to pursue this career path. I think that it is the perfect one for me. What do you think? Well anway, I am so thankful to have been born in a lifetime that you are a part. I REALLY LOVE YOU!

Another liar surfaces claiming to be Michael's child

Michael,

Everyday there is a new plot, a new scheme concocted by someone that nobody has ever heard of... sometimes concocted  by those who allege that they were your friend... I pray that they leave you alone and stop finding ways through you to try and be a millionaire. Like you said in your song Money. "If you want it, you earn it, with dignity".

Michael loved all children, therefore he claimed all the children of the world as his own and he even said that we all should do the same, even of his own biological children he said that he doesn't like to call them "his" children, because he believes that children are everyone's children. Michael isn't territorial like that.

Maybe this latest liar claiming to be a product of Michael Jackson and Barbara Ross (Diana Ross's sister) misinterpreted what Michael meant by that statement and felt that he was telling everyone in the world that we are his biological children... or maybe she is just a got damned liar like the rest of these vultures.

Where have I been and where am I going?

Well have you heard of the movie Unnecessary Roughness? Well, myself and a couple friends have been through some UNNECESSARY DRAMA brought on by an alleged Michael Jackson fan, whom we later found is not even really a fan at all. Merely a woman who seeks to become famous and is using the Justice for Michael campaign as her platform to reach her own celebrity. Such a despicable thing.

But I will not dwell on that issue because the person nor their misdeeds are worth my time nor energy. This is all about Michael and all about loving Michael.

While I have been away, I started up a group called THE MICHAEL JACKSON JUSTICE BANNER & SPECIAL PROJECTS group on Facebook. This is an article that I submitted to a Michael Jackson newsletter showcasing M.J. justice groups. The article piece is in purple.

"The Michael Jackson Justice Banner Fund & Special Projects" Facebook group all started with an idea that I had to fly an aerial banner in support of Justice for Michael Jackson and on March 28, 2010 I put that idea into action by creating a Facebook group. We were able to fly the banner that was overhead at the courthouse in Los Angeles, CA on April 5, 2010 from 1pm-2pm that read, "WE DEMAND JUSTICE FOR MICHAEL JACKSON". We are able to fly our banners because of our fellow Michael Jackson fans generous donations. We will also be flying an aerial banner on the upcoming June 14, 2010 court date and on all future court dates as well.

The purpose of our group is to make a statement that Michael Jackson's fans really do care about him and his family and we demand justice for what happened to him. We want to get the message across to not only Michael Jackson fans and family as a show of support but to anyone who has the ability to see the banner in the sky. We want to raise awareness for people who may have forgotten what has happened or pushed it to the back of their minds. We do not want anyone to forget that an injustice has been done.

We also carry out special projects as well. Right now, we are creating a video from the fans that will given to the parents and siblings of Michael Jackson. In the past we have raised funds for special gifts for some members of the Jackson Family. Expect many more projects from us in the future involving justice and love.

Thanks to everyone for their wonderful support of Michael Jackson and to my 3 great group administrators for all their hard work!

The second banner on June 14, 2010 read JUSTICE FOR MICHAEL! OUR VOICE WILL BE HEARD!!

We there will no longer be aerial banners for the court dates due to the fact that we do not wish to be repetitious and have the meanings behind the banner lost in its repetitiveness. We also were able to bring delight to Katherine Jackson and Paris Jackson and the boys through the purchase of some very special things which were hand delivered to them via an admin of our group. And the most recent project was a video called From the FANS: with LOVE, in which we received self made videos from fans in order to construct a video that will be given to the Jackson family.

While aerial banners will no longer be flown by us, I will continue my support of the Jackson family and the fight for Justice for Michael. Justice for Michael not only means justice against what happened on that awful day in June, But justice for each and every wrong that has been committed against Michael. I wish to right every wrong that I possibly can that was ever committed against Michael Jackson.

Thanks to everyone who has supported the aerial banners and the other special projects that we have done.

God Bless,

Theronda (4TheLoveofMichael)

Interview about Michael on KPFA 94.1 FM 3/14/10

Click this link to listen to this interview about Michael

The rundown:
Carol Johnston, "Thriller" dance teacher opens the program,
@ 32:50, trumpeter Morty Okin from the 14 piece Michael jackson Tribute band Foreverland,
@ 59:00, Carmen Mauk, Executive Director of Burners Without Borders with volunteer Kathy Curran
on Burners Without Borders work in Haiti,
@ 2:07:35, journalist Charles Thomson on Media coverage of Michael Jackson.

Biggie meets Michael

By the way, to elaborate a bit on the Notorious B.I.G. session, it was kinda like this. Michael used to call people to ask them to participate on albums. It was interesting knowing that nearly anyone on the planet would come to the phone if it were Michael calling. Anyway, I heard rumors that B.I.G. was going to come, and I was excited about that! I knew that I would be the one to record that, as I had recorded nearly all of that tune, "This Time Around".

So, Dallas and I were expecting him any minute, and pretty much on time, Notorious strolls in. He was quite an imposing figure when he walked in, as he was quite popular at the time. I had no idea what to expect from him in terms of attitude, but he seemed nice when he walked in. No problem. But almost immediately, he blurted out, "Yo, Dallas, can I meet Mike?" To which, Dallas replied that he thought so. Biggie went on to talk about how much this opportunity meant to him, as Michael was his hero. Anyway, Dallas tells him that we're going to lay down the rap first, so Biggie heads in the booth, we get some headphone levels and get ready to start recording.

So, we hit the big red button (on a Sony 3348 machine), and away we go. During his first take, Dallas and I looked at each other, because it was spot on. wow. I was impressed, and so was Dallas. We listened back, and Dallas was like, "Wow, I think we got it". As I recall, we took another take for good measure, but I'm fairly certain that we ended up using the first take. So, Notorious comes in, and asks if he can meet Michael now. We sent word to the back room where Michael was working that Biggie was finished and wanted to meet him.

Simply for security, Michael's security would enter and make sure that no one was in the room that shouldn't be, and once that was confirmed (it was just me, Biggie and Dallas), Michael came in. Biggie nearly broke out in tears...I could tell how much this meant to him. Well, Michael could have this effect on anyone, even the most hardcore rappers! Biggie was tripping up on his words, bowing down and telling Michael how much his music had meant to him in his life. Michael was, as always, very humble and kept smiling while Biggie just went on and on how much he loved Michael. I watched Biggie just become this big butterball of a man, and it was really very sweet to witness. After all, we are all just people.

Michael finally asked to hear what we had done, and we popped it up on the big speakers and let her go. Michael LOVED it and was excited to tell Biggie that! "Oh, let's hear it again", I recall Michael saying, and we listened again. Michael just loved it...and thanked Biggie for coming all the way from Philadelphia. Biggie asked rather sheepishly whether he could get a photo, and Michael agreed. A shot was taken, we listened again, and Michael thanked Biggie. Michael said goodbye and stepped out, leaving Biggie standing there looking completely stunned.

Michael Jackson:It's time for Outlets to take responsibility in covering the RockStar by Charles Thomson

Last week Michael Jackson's guitarist discredited widely reported allegations about the star's behaviour on the road. So why is the media refusing to publish her comments? British writer Charles Thomson explores media bias against black music's biggest star.

Aging glam-rocker Gene Simmons made international headlines last month when he claimed to know that Michael Jackson had molested children. In an interview with Classic Rock, Simmons alleged that Jackson was on tape ordering alcohol for children and that during the star's 2005 trial a travel agent had testified to importing Brazilian boys for Jackson's amusement. He also claimed that a musician friend had quit a Jackson tour after seeing 'boys coming out of the hotel rooms.'
What followed was a classic example of copy and paste journalism. Within hours the story had been duplicated by hundreds of blogs, forums and news websites from Australia to India to the USA. None of them had fact-checked the story before they re-hosted it. Jackson was never on tape ordering alcohol for children. There was never any testimony during his trial about young Brazilian boys. Both of these claims were easily disproven by trial transcripts.
As a relative Jackson expert, I was also unaware of any musician ever leaving one of the singer's tours midway through. So when I sat down a fortnight ago for an interview with Jackson's long serving tour guitarist Jennifer Batten, I ran the story by her.
She told me that no musician had ever quit a Jackson tour. Two musicians had been fired but both were let go before the show hit the road, so they couldn't possibly have witnessed anything going on inside hotels.
When Sawf News published Batten's rebuttal I observed an all too familiar phenomenon. Although the story appeared on Google News and was picked up fairly swiftly by the Examiner, nobody else seemed willing to touch it. Whilst Simmons's speculative and ultimately baseless accusations had been reproduced the world over, Batten's expert rebuttal was being suppressed.
I soon began receiving emails from Jackson's fans telling me that they were sending the story to every celebrity news outlet they could think of, including several of those which published Simmons's initial allegations.
But more than 48 hours later, typing an exact quote from Simmons's rant into a search engine produced almost 350 webpages. The number of news outlets hosting Batten's rebuttal? Three.
This was not the first time I'd had a Jackson story suppressed. After Evan Chandler's suicide in November 2009 I was contacted by the Sun and asked to supply information about the 1993 allegations. I spent quite some time compiling my research, advising the newspaper of common myths and how to avoid them, being careful to source all of my facts from legal documents and audio/visual evidence.
When I read the finished article I was stunned to find that all of my information had been discarded and replaced with the very myths I had advised them to avoid. I alerted staff to the inaccuracies but my emails were not replied. The same inaccuracies appeared in every single article I read about the suicide.
The same bias manifested itself the following month when Jackson's FBI file was released. Across more than 300 pages of information there was not one piece of incriminating evidence -- but that's not the way the media told it.
A videotape seized at customs in West Palm Beach and analysed for child pornography was repeatedly referred to as belonging to Jackson. In actuality, files stated merely that the tape was 'connected' to Jackson and that connection appeared simply to be that somebody had written his name on the sticky label.
In another document the FBI logged a telephone call from a tipster claiming that the bureau had investigated Jackson during the 1980s for molesting two Mexican boys. The files made no other mention of the supposed investigation and the claim was ascribed no validity -- the call was merely noted. But the media persistently referred to the anonymous tipster's unsupported allegations as the FBI's own conclusions.
Jackson's FBI file overwhelmingly supported his innocence but its contents were routinely manipulated to give the opposite impression.
Many are quick to scoff when Jackson's fans speak of a media conspiracy to destroy the star's reputation and I used to scoff with them. As a member of the industry I prefer not to think of it as sinister and conspiratorial, but I find it increasingly difficult to explain away the bias with which Jackson is treated.
I wonder whether the problem is pride. When the 1993 allegations broke, the vast majority of information available was released, either officially or unofficially, by the prosecution. Jackson, meanwhile, remained characteristically silent.
Perhaps because the prosecution's version of events went almost completely unchallenged (although I imagine that drama and selling newspapers had something to do with it, too), the media primarily chose to portray Jackson as guilty.
But as the facts started to trickle out it became increasingly apparent that the case was full of holes. The allegations had been instigated not by the boy but by his father, who had demanded a scriptwriting deal from Jackson before he went to the police. He was on tape plotting to destroy Jackson's career and dismissing his son's wellbeing as 'irrelevant'. Then the boy told cops that Jackson was circumcised, but a police body search concluded that he was not.
Although Jackson's innocence looked increasingly likely, most news outlets had made their bed and to this day they seem unwilling to do anything but lie in it.
Whatever the motivation, be it pride, profit or plain old racism, the bias against Jackson is undeniable. The suppression of Batten's comments proves once more than when it comes to Jackson the media is interested not in fact or reason but negativity and sensationalism. Batten accompanied Jackson on all three of his world tours and was known for a decade as his 'right hand woman'. But Simmons -- who self-confessedly did not know Jackson -- has been given over 100 times more media coverage for his inaccurate ranting than Batten has for her firsthand experience.
It is time for outlets to assume responsibility for their own content. Websites should not re-host other publishers' stories unless they can be completely certain that the content is factual. Even if the media refuses to print the truth about Jackson, they should compromise by not printing the lies either. At least that way he can rest in peace.

Jennifer Batten Interview w/ Charles Thomson about Gene Simmons accusations

 Michael Jackson's long-serving tour guitarist Jennifer Batten has slammed Gene Simmons' recent allegations against the King of Pop.

Last week I sat down for an hour-long interview with Batten, who accompanied Jackson on all three of his world tours. During her decade of service she was also seen in the Dirty Diana music video, Jackson's feature film Moonwalker and the star's record breaking Superbowl performance, which was watched by more than a billion people.

During our interview, I took the opportunity to quiz Batten over allegations recently made by aging glam rocker Gene Simmons, who claimed in a Classic Rock interview that a musician friend of his had quit a Michael Jackson tour after 'seeing boys coming out of the hotel rooms'.
Was it true, I asked her, that a musician had quit one of Jackson's tours while on the road?

"Number one," said Batten, "there's no truth to it. Number two, I would guess that it was somebody who got fired. Somebody who was embarrassed that they got fired and made-up a story."

But did any musicians ever get fired mid-way through a tour?

"No. Nuh-uh. No, there were a couple of people who got fired like a week before we took out on the road."

So there you have it, folks. No musician ever left a Michael Jackson tour mid-way through. Some musicians were fired but before the tour even hit the road, meaning that they couldn't have seen anything going on inside any hotels.

Yet again, Simmons' ravings about Jackson have been entirely debunked.

Jennifer Batten Interview

I read this article a couple of days ago and I wanted to share it with all of you. THE TRUTH!

March 05, 2010, (Sawf News) - One year ago today Michael Jackson announced his 'This Is It' concert run in a press conference at London's O2 arena. To mark the anniversary, Charles Thomson sat down with Jackson's long-serving guitarist Jennifer Batten, who told us what it was really like behind the scenes on a Michael Jackson tour.
Jennifer Batten... It might not ring any bells at first, but you'd probably recognize her if you saw her. She's not really a household name but she's an icon nonetheless.
Throughout the eighties and nineties she played in sold out stadiums all around the world. Her image was beamed into sitting rooms to audiences totaling several billion. Young girls everywhere wanted to be Jennifer Batten.
If you ever went to a Michael Jackson concert, watched his performances on TV or bought a ticket for Moonwalker then you'll know Jennifer Batten. She's Jackson's tall, slender, arresting guitarist, perhaps best known for her enormous mane of bright white hair.
"It was Michael's idea to have my hair turned snow white and big," Batten once said. "Often all you can see in the photos is Michael Jackson and my hair!"
Batten was Jackson's lead guitarist for a decade, accompanying the star on all three of his record-breaking world tours. At 29 years old she was plucked by the King of Pop from complete obscurity. Despite announcing to her mother at age 12 that she would become a professional guitarist, before Batten joined Jackson her touring experience was limited almost exclusively to a brief spell with an Elvis impersonator.
"We played down in American Samoa of all places," she laughs. "He had a brother that was a missionary on the island, so he set up the gig. Then we did another stint in Colorado because he had a brother there too. That was it."
Inspired by blues legends like BB King and Brownie McGee, Batten began playing guitar at the tender age of eight. As a young woman she attended the Musicians Institute in Los Angeles.
"I was the only woman with 60 guys," she says. "I didn't have a problem with it. I could go practice in the bathroom because you get the natural reverb in there and I knew I wouldn't be bothered."

Audition for Bad Tour

After the Elvis gigs she lived for several years in San Diego, playing in cover bands. But soon she grew restless so she upped sticks and moved to Los Angeles in search of success on the music scene. It wasn't long before she fell into teaching at her former school, the Musicians Institute, and it was there - on one fateful day in 1987 - that Michael Jackson's representatives called asking for musicians to attend tour auditions.
"They were auditioning about a hundred people so it was pretty intense," she recalls. "When I went, there was just a video camera, no band. The only guidance I was given was to play some funk rhythm stuff so I did that, then I finished off with the Beat It solo because I had been playing that for years in cover bands. I think ultimately that's what got me the gig."
Winning her place on Jackson's Bad Tour in 1987 changed her life, she says. "It was like a paid vacation. I had been teaching and gigging pretty much seven nights a week and all of a sudden I'm on the biggest tour in the world making ten times the money and only working two or three days a week!"

Bad Tour Rehearsal

Rehearsals began almost immediately and they were punishing; seven days a week for two solid months. For the first month the band, singers and dancers rehearsed separately. For the second they converged in a production studio, where every element of the show came together. It was here that Batten first met Michael Jackson.
"We heard that if he liked the music he'd start dancing and he did as soon as he walked through the door. We stopped and people who hadn't met him before were introduced to him. I remember seeing his manager Frank Dileo come in with the ponytail and the cigar. It was kind of surreal seeing the two of them together. I just remember Michael looked gorgeous close up. He was just beautiful.
"He was very much hands on and he was an extremely hard worker. By the end of rehearsals we were running the show a minimum of once a day, sometimes twice. I would say that's the number one thing I learned from him: the value of rehearsing that much and that intensely, because by the time we hit the stage everybody was relaxed."

Bad Tour

 

Opening night in Tokyo, she says, was 'very, very exciting'. "I'd never played for that many people before. On the road Michael took it up another notch. I mean, he was pretty full out at the last rehearsals anyway but that extra excitement of knowing there are people going nuts watching you... There's an extra amount of fire that you can feel onstage with everybody doing their best and trying to give 110%."
But soon after hitting the road, Batten discovered a more sinister side to working with Michael Jackson. "I was approached in the beginning by somebody who said I could make a lot of money by talking to the National Enquirer," she reveals. "I was just appalled. I thought 'that is just sick', you know? I just got this great gig. Why would I sabotage it like that? It seemed like a really evil thing to do."

Michael Jackson's Isolation

Batten grew to feel sorry for Jackson, who she says was trapped by his celebrity.
"If he wanted to go anywhere he had to alert the security and he had to really have it planned in advance. If he wanted to go to a store they would have to be called and shut it down for him. He was a prisoner of the hotel room, really."
Jackson compensated for this, she says, by treating himself and his entourage to special excursions. Sometimes he had theme parks closed to the public so that he and his team could enjoy them without being hounded.
"He did it first at the Tokyo Disneyland. That was just unbelievable. We would go on the rollercoaster rides and when we were done they would just ask us, 'Do you want to go around again?' We were very, very spoiled."

Post Bad Tour

The Bad Tour wound up in January 1989 and the group disbanded. In later years Sheryl Crow, a backing singer on the tour, would make several disparaging remarks about Jackson during interviews publicizing her own material. She said he was a diva, never bothering to learn people's names.
Batten refutes this. "I think singers in general are just nuts and ultra-sensitive. One night Michael called Sheryl 'Jennifer'," she giggles, "and I know that pissed her off. But it's like, so what? I mean, you got the biggest gig in the world and it's not like Michael was unaware of who was onstage with him. We were with him for a friggin' year and a half."
When the Bad Tour ended, Jackson retreated to the studio to begin work on the Dangerous album. Batten used this time to capitalize on the exposure that Jackson had given her, beginning work on her debut album.
Produced by Stevie Wonder alumnus Michael Sembello, 'Above, Below and Beyond' was released in 1992.

Dangerous Tour

 

In the same year, Batten was called back to work on Jackson's Dangerous Tour, giving her a perfect platform to market her solo work.
Despite widespread debate about his appearance and wellbeing, Batten says Jackson seemed like 'the same Michael', if slightly more fatigued.
"I noticed that he was busier and I remember that one time he came to rehearsals and just apologized for not having been there the last few days. He said, 'I was just showered with meetings' and he just repeated it with emotion, 'meeting after meeting after meeting'."
Jackson's heavy schedule dictated that he was 'limited in his rehearsal time', meaning that much of the set list was simply carried over from the Bad Tour. This was 'kind of disappointing' says Batten, because 'we all wanted to play the new stuff'. One of the few new tracks - Remember The Time - was cut from the show after a wardrobe malfunction.
"They had Egyptian costumes and the male dancers had these skirt kind of things. The first time we did it one of the dancers' costumes fell off," she cackles. "That was a little disturbing to Michael."
The wardrobe malfunctions weren't limited to rehearsals, either. On tour Batten would appear every night wearing an enormous fibre-optic headdress. "At the end of Beat It everybody would run out on the stage," she remembers. "Invariably, I would be running at full force and somebody would step on my fibre-optic cable - it would pretty much knock my head off. That was kind of a drag."
At the end of each show, Jackson would exit the stage on a jet pack, floating over the audience's heads.
"He wanted to come out with the biggest show on earth," says Batten. "He wanted it to be like Christmas for people. His imagination was like a creative tornado. He would come up with his wildest dreams and then hire people to carry it out. It was really amazing to be a part of that."

Super Bowl performance

 

In January 1993 Batten accompanied Jackson for his legendary Super Bowl performance, which was watched by 1.5 billion people.
"I'll tell you, it was the only time I ever saw Michael nervous. It's live and there's only the time of a couple of potato chip commercials to get the stage out into the field. There's one scene where I'm on the corner of the stage with Michael and there's so much fog coming out that we both get lost for a second, but that's the beauty of live gigs. You never know what's going to happen. That was one of my favorite times because it was a one-off special thing that will never be repeated."

Child Molestation Allegations

After the Super Bowl there was a long break before the second leg of the Dangerous Tour. Batten got antsy and left to pursue personal projects. It was during the second leg that allegations of child abuse were leveled at Jackson.
"I figured it was an extortion case, which I still figure it is," she says matter-of-factly. "Everybody was concerned about him. I think it pains all of us that he was so attacked and so unfairly. Most artists are sensitive and he was talented times ten, so ultra sensitive, and to be slung that kind of stuff... I mean, you can hear it in his lyrics. It's a real drag because you wonder what kind of music he would have come up with if people weren't attacking him like that."
The media, says Batten, has a lot to answer for over its coverage of the 1993 allegations.
"Honestly, I think it would have been considered uncool amongst the press to take Michael's side. I think it would take a brave soul to do that, which is really sad. Really pathetic. Even at the 2005 trial... I know people who were inside the courtroom and then they would watch the news at night and it was complete lies."

HIStory Tour

 

The case was settled in January 1994 and Jackson began work on his HIStory album. In 1996 Batten was brought back onboard for the accompanying HIStory Tour, although she recalls that it was 'very last minute':
"I got hired a week before I was supposed to start rehearsals, which was a real scramble. It was just nuts. I had to cancel some work."
The tour brought with it more costume problems for Batten, who describes her black latex get-up as 'just dreadful'.
"That mask I had to wear was just ugh... ghastly. Somebody had shown Michael an art book that was kind of S&M based and all the paintings looked really beautiful. So he had that in mind but when it came to real life it wasn't too beautiful anymore," she laughs. "I just had to remind myself that it was all about the theatre, you know? It's not just about the music."
Indeed, the tour provoked criticism from some fans who said that there was too much emphasis on theatre and not enough on the music, with much of each concert appearing to be lip-synched.
Fans' explanations have ranged from nodules to laryngitis, but while she won't be drawn on the subject of miming, Batten says she never heard anything about Jackson suffering from any throat problems.
"In fact," she adds, "every night he'd be warming up with his vocal coach. You could hear him doing arpeggios from his dressing room."

Michael's on stage appearances with children

Batten says that initially she was alarmed by Jackson's decision to end each concert flanked on either side by young children.
"At the end of the show he would disappear down an elevator in the stage with a little boy and a little girl. At first I thought, 'God, because of the allegations you'd think he wouldn't do that'. But then I thought, 'You know what, he hasn't done anything wrong so why the hell should he change his life?' I think that was a little bit of giving a finger to his critics."
The HIStory Tour lasted into the Summer of 1997 and would mark the end of the pair's working relationship, but Batten says she never felt disappointed that he didn't bring her back.
"I would just go off and work on my own career. If he calls, great, and if he doesn't, great. It's been a great ride with him anyway."

Michael's Death

Batten says she was out driving on June 25, 2009 when an acquaintance called to tell her about rumors of Jackson's death.
"I didn't really believe it when he told me because I had heard so many rumors about Michael over the years, false alarms about everything. I thought, 'Yea, right'. I saw it was true when I got home and I had mixed feelings. I was sad but in a way I thought power to him for going to the other side, because of all the torture that had come at him. I just can't imagine living with that."
In the weeks after Jackson's death Batten says she was unable to watch the media coverage, knowing how much of it was false.
"They were respectful for about two or three hours and then they turned it into a tabloid festival," she laments.
"I just couldn't watch it. There were a lot of specials on about him and once in a while I would turn one on and it was just sh*t. I guess it makes money to just bring up negativity and stir up controversy but it's pathetic and I just can't watch it. It's all about money now, not about truth. People can be very cold."

This Is It movie

But unlike some of Jackson's friends, Batten says she was able to bring herself to watch This Is It, even if she did have mixed feelings about it.
"I hadn't seen any video of him for years and just to see his talent, even when he wasn't going full out, the way he sang Human Nature was just chilling. The way his body moves - there was just no other dancer in the world that was like that. So I enjoyed it."
But thanks to a close friendship with Jackson's make-up artist Karen Faye, who worked with the star during his This Is It rehearsals, Batten says she's able to see the other side of the coin. Since Jackson's death Faye has written on her facebook page that Jackson was frail, cold to the touch and losing weight rapidly.
"She was closer to Michael than anyone," says Batten, "She warned people that he was not well but everybody ignored her. You didn't see it on the screen because they took every day that he rehearsed and pieced together the best bits. You didn't see him when he was struggling up a ramp because he didn't have any energy and he hadn't eaten for two days. They're not going to put that in the film. I mean, one of the songs he was wearing four different costumes. That just tells me that he never sang the song fully through."
Nowadays Batten is focusing on her own career. As well as writing new music ("I'm getting into acoustic stuff, which I haven't done since I was 14") she has spent much of 2010 touring the world with her pioneering one-woman multimedia show. Last month she performed all over the UK and she's currently on the road in Japan.

Batten post Michael Jackson

"I've been doing a multimedia tour for a couple of years now where all of my tracks are cut to film," she explains. "I thought about what it would take to get a band together and the expense involved. I thought, 'Well, there's got to be a way I can do this myself'. So I came up with the idea of film. If people want to just watch my fingers then fine but it's not all that entertaining for 90 minutes.
"I had four filmmakers contribute films and that's it. One of them showed me how to do it myself and now most of the films are ones that I've made. So I've been really obsessed with that part of it as well."
When she's not overseas Batten has taken to exploring territory closer to home. "I bought a motor home so I can travel around America doing my show," she says. "I've got 40,000 miles on it already and it's kind of cool to see my own country for a change.
"I'm just taking things into my own hands and not waiting for the phone to ring. I'm having a ball!"

I've physically been away but my love never left

I have not been updating and blogging as much for a number of reasons. Between the pain and grief of losing Michael and continuing to fight for justice and seek truth, I haven't been able to update as much like I was previously. But I am back! And the updates will be more frequent, just like they used to be.

Always ♥