The End Times: Part II

Ok, so remember last weekend when I went off about how bizarre it was that E! was airing a fully staged recreation each night of the daily court preceedings of the Michael Jackson Trial? (See post titled The End Times) I talked about how surreal it was and then decided that it made me sick to my stomach, and swore to never watch it again.

Well, I have a confession to make....

I watched it again.

It was accident. Really, I have no idea how it got on my TiVo. Honest.

So somehow I ended up watching the weekend wrap-up that they do every week, where they recap all the trial highlights from that week. Apparently at some point this week, Fritz Coleman, one of the prosecutor's witnesses, testified this week.

Now the name Fritz Coleman may not mean a lot to many of you. Allow me to elaborate on his identity. He is the weather man on the Los Angeles NBC 4 local affiliate station.



See, there's his headshot. So what the hell does my weather man have to do with the Michael Jackson Trial you might ask? This was fact which was quickly elucidated by his testimony, -sort of. It seems Coleman knew the victim and his family years before the recent accusations against Jackson surfaced. His testimony aimed to provide some background information on the family, including a sense of the hardships that they and the victim, who was battling cancer at the time, had faced.
The defense, however, made no bones about asking Coleman directly whether or not the victim's parents had ever solicited him for money, to which Coleman plainly asnwered, "No, never." Among Coleman's anecdotes, was a story about how he saved Christmas for the family, by surprising them on Christmas Eve with several hundred dollars worth of merchandise from Best Buy. Though the gesture of the gifts was obviously incredibly generous and kind on Fritz's behalf, somehow the producers at E! managed to make his story come off as arrogant and boastful. Blech.

I wish that I could fully articulate what a strange sensation it is to watch your local weatherman being portrayed by an actor, in a mock trial re-creation, of a court case that involves the pop icon Michael Jackson. Trippy does not even begin to sum it up.