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laiq.shahid
The Super Geek
Joined: 27 May 2009
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 Posted: Jul 04, 2009 Topic Views : 3252 Post subject: Michael Jackson's Empty Fantasy |
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Michael Jackson's Empty Fantasy
Gone is the zoo with its elephants, tigers and giraffe. The exotic snakes have long since slithered away, and the amusement rides have been dismantled.
The gates to Michael Jackson's fabled Neverland Ranch swung open yesterday to reveal a shell of the fantasy the boy-man had created when he was the King of Pop.
Place of fantasy: Rays of light from inside Neverland Ranch shine among the stars in the early morning darkness yesterday
A ring of fresh white roses encircles a the front gate of the Neverland Ranch as millions mourn Jackson's death
In the days since Jackson's death on June 25 thousands of fans - and some of the biggest names in U.S. television - have descended on the ranch.
The gates have become a makeshift shrine, adorned with handwritten notes, flowers, photos and other tributes.
The front of the main house at Neverland Ranch
Hundreds of parked cars have lined both sides of the two-lane road leading to the ranch. About two hundred people crowded outside the estate, their view of Jackson's English-style manor and other Neverland fixtures obscured by a slope of golden brown hills dotted with oak trees.
Looking down on the main entrance to the ranch
Inside the fantasy: The main room at the ranch. The door to the right leads to the kitchen
Neverland employee Erma Baron dries dishes in the kitchen of the main house yesterday
But inside the five-bedroom house, with its gigantic kitchen and media room where Jackson liked to screen his beloved Disney films, was nearly empty. His big-screen TV was gone, only a mounting bracket remained.
There were some traces of the playland that the place had been in its glory days, when Jackson opened it to neighbourhood children by the thousands and presided over the ensuing parties as the lord of the manor.
In its empty game room, for example, the door knobs shaped like miniature basketballs, baseballs and soccer balls remained. In a closet in the pool house, sandwiched between the pool and the tennis court, was a bucket of tennis balls.
The master bedroom in the main house that was once used by Michael Jackson
The master bathroom, complete with giant bathtub and French doors
A hallway lined with windows leads away from the master bedroom of the main house
And on a hill overlooking the house stood the fabled train station - a near replica of the one at Disneyland with its huge floral clock. It was still a stunning site from Jackson's front yard, although the railroad tracks behind were overgrown with weeds.
In the station lobby was a snack bar, and above that, accessible by only the smallest of spiral staircases, was a crow's nest of sorts with a fireplace. There, presumably, Jackson must have stood and watched his trains fill up with children taking trips around his 2,500-acre (1,000-hectare) estate.
But the ranch is not entirely the land of innocence that Jackson wanted it to be. It is also the site where authorities alleged that the singer had sexually molested a boy.
The interior of the ranch's poolhouse. When Jackson lived at the ranch, it was full of arcade games
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laiq.shahid
The Super Geek
Joined: 27 May 2009
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| Posted: Jul 04, 2009 Post subject: |
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The wine cellar under the poolhouse
He was acquitted in 2005 - but the scandal nearly ruined him, driving him from Neverland forever. Over the last four years, the property fell into disrepair, and at one point it was weeks from being sold at a public auction.
After his acquittal in 2005, Jackson moved to Bahrain. The following year, he dismissed many of the Neverland staff after agreeing to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in back wages to avoid a lawsuit by state labour officials.
Left largely untended, the once manicured grounds grew wild and the train and carnival rides gathered dust. Eventually, much of it was removed.
The darkness of the accusations seemed to echo through the empty, silent rooms.
Visitors wandered through the first-floor, back bedroom where authorities said the incident occurred.
A spiral staircase leading to a loft and an overlook room in the train station
The famous train station at the ranch yesterday, with its Neverland clock
Train tracks are seen from an upper window of the train station
Jackson once acknowledged in a television interview that he sometimes let children sleep with him in his bed. He called them innocent sleepovers.
Colony Capital LLC, the Los Angeles firm that established a joint venture with Jackson to rescue Neverland from foreclosure last year, opened the home to scores of journalists yesterday after a non-stop barrage of requests for access after Jackson died.
Jackson drives a dodgem car while hosting a weekend party for underprivileged children at his Neverland ranch in 1994
The singer and ex-wife Lisa Marie Presley welcomed youngsters for World Childrens's Conference at Neverland in 1995
Colony has declined to say what it plans to do with the house, saying only that an answer would come 'in due time', and none of the handful of officials present would speak on the record.
There is speculation it could be turned into a tourist attraction celebrating the King of Pop, much like Elvis Presley's Graceland pays homage to the King of Rock and Roll.
But others ask if it may be restored for his heirs to use, or put on the market to cash in on the sudden interest in all things Jackson.
The interior of the small 'secret room' with three deadbolt locks used by Jackson to store valuable items
A door across from the main entrance in the main house overlooking the back grounds
Last night Jackson's brother Jermaine allowed CNN's Larry King to film inside the ranch.
'This is his creation. This is his wonder and his joy, his happiness, his peace. And I feel him everywhere. I feel him all around here,' Jermaine said.
'It's like he's never left. And to come here and to feel him here, I'm happy.'
He made it clear that the Jackson family still holds out hope that Californian officials will change the laws to allow Jackson to be laid to rest at Neverland.
Although California law is firm on the King of Pop having to be buried in a cemetery, Jermaine said: 'Yes, but as you know the ones who make the laws they can also change them, too. I would love to see him here.
'I really felt, and still feel, that this is where he should be rested, because it's just him.'
An upstairs room in the main house
Looking up directly underneath a chandelier hanging over a lofted main entrance of the main house
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laiq.shahid
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| Posted: Jul 04, 2009 Post subject: |
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Visitors were allowed to roam freely for the most part, as more than a dozen gardeners and maintenance workers went about their duties.
The two-story house has a number of maze-like hallways and stairways. A large copper bathtub sits in the middle of a hallway.
Across from the front door of the main home was the guest house where Jackson's friend Elizabeth Taylor stayed when she married Larry Fortensky in 1991, at a Neverland wedding briefly interrupted by a skydiving gate-crasher.
Off-limits yesterday was the estate's now-empty amusement park, where Jackson and others once rode bumper cars, a merry-go-round and a Ferris wheel.
'My kids used to go out there and they had a good old time,' Los Olivos resident Frank Palmer said earlier this week. 'He was just a big kid himself, was what they told me. Michael loved it when they'd crash the go-carts.'
A long banquet table stretches out under a tree in the grounds behind the main house
The driveway and grounds of the main house is seen from one of the upstairs windows
A bronze statue overlooks the road to the main house
Among other things, Jackson left behind dozens of metal sculptures of children in various states of play. They were scattered across the estate, some showing children in modern dress, others looking more like kids who stepped out of a Charles Dickens novel.
One was a kid climbing on monkey bars, another boy helped a girl reach a tree branch.
A slightly larger sculpture had the name Michael Jackson written beneath it. From a distance, it looked nothing like him.
The ranch was valued at $33 million in 2006, according to an accounting firm's report from 2007.
It's likely that property has dropped in value since then because of the housing market - but Jackson's death may change things.
'If they'd put it on the market right after the trial, I think it would have not been well received,' said Rick Goodwin, publisher of Ultimate Homes and its parent publication, Unique Homes. 'At that point in time, the dark cloud hung over that place.
'Death has a tendency to let people be more forgiving.'
Bronze statues line the drive leading to the front of the main house
A bronze statue of three children fishing in the creek behind the main house
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ksma
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| Posted: Jul 05, 2009 Post subject: |
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gr8 post Shahid...!!! 
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Armaan.khan
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| Posted: Jul 07, 2009 Post subject: |
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nice one bhiya
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admin
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| Posted: Oct 12, 2009 Post subject: |
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big post
good one
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