filipino inmates to redo jacko's thriller dance

tributes to the king of pop are now pouring in. npr radio ran a two-hour non-stop tribute to michael yesterday night and aired songs from his jackson 5 days to his thriller cd. today, 102.3fm in LA is devoting the day airing only michael jackson's songs. what a sad, sad event.

more tributes are being planned as i write this post.

fox will re-air its michael jackson week on american idol, which aired originally in march this year, on monday next week beginning at 8pm.

and in what is the most touching news today, filipino inmates from the southern city of cebu in the philippines, are planning to redo their youtube smash video "thriller" on saturday as a tribute to their idol. if you will recall, these inmates created a huge internet sensation when someone recorded their daily exercise to the tune of the singer's biggest dance hits last year. that spawned many imitators but theirs remain the best.

here's the full report from AFP

Philippine jailbirds reprise Jackson YouTube tribute

MANILA (AFP) – Philippine jailbirds who spawned a worldwide Internet hit with their version of Michael Jackson's "Thriller" video are to recreate their dance in tribute to the dead star, television reported Friday.

The performance will be held Saturday inside the provincial jail in Cebu, the country's second-biggest city, GMA television reported, quoting Cebu Provincial Detention and Rehabilitation Centre officials.

"Thriller", a global hit on the Internet video site YouTube, shows 1,400 inmates wearing saffron prison uniforms performing their own version of one of Jackson's most famous hits.

News of the megastar's death at the age of 50, apparently from a cardiac arrest at his Los Angeles home, is weighing heavily on the prison dancers, the station said on its website.

Crisanto Niere, a balding, gap-toothed drug dealer who impersonated Jackson in the YouTube dance, "is sad his idol died," the station quoted an unnamed prison official as saying.

"For now there?s no word yet how tomorrow?s performance will be affected" by the news of Jackson's death, the official reportedly added.

Cebu prison officials, who could not be reached by phone from Manila on Friday, introduced dances as a way of improving physical fitness and to relieve stress among inmates.

The four-minute video of the original prison dance has so far generated more than 23 million hits on YouTube.

In Manila, street entrepreneurs rushed out to market cotton T-shirts emblazoned with Michael Jackson's surgically altered face and the words "Thank You for the Music," AFP photographers saw.

Local radio stations played Michael Jackson tunes while Filipino Internet diarists paid tribute to the star. Some embedded Jackson song playlists on their weblogs.

"I just feel sad that my hazy childhood memories are so imprinted by his music," wrote "blogger Paulo".

"His songs were the first to teach me emotions that as a child I wasn't capable of understanding yet. I didn't even understand the words. I just felt," he added.