I have been sitting in this car park now for 22 hours and 11 minutes. It’s a strange sort of car park: there are few cars in this car park; there are many people.
There are trucks in this car park, but they are unusual trucks. These trucks have huge poles sprouting out of their roofs, pointing into the sky. On top of the poles, about seven metres in the air, cameras perch, pointing down at the car park that has no cars.
Other vans sport large dishes. In the backs of the vans, people squat, hunched over banks of tatty electronics. Wires trail out of the vans, joining other wires to create a river of purple, black and yellow cables snaking along the tarmac of the car park. Some of the wires disappear into yet more banks of electronics; others simply disappear.
The people wait. They stand; they sit — some on the kerb, the more organised in their own chairs. They talk; they shoot the breeze: baseball, property prices, food, swimming pool maintenance — no topic is left unturned.
Some have theories. Some suspect they may be unwitting characters in a Beckett play. On Thursday the local newspaper quotedWaiting for Godot on its front page.
Walkie-talkies squawk. People want to borrow my newspaper. I don’t have a newspaper, but people keep asking. To those who ask, I distribute the newspaper lying on the dusty ground.
PJ, Jackson fan in chief, appears in the media pool. Wearing a bejewelled glove, he appears anxious and nervous, not the strident insult dog we hear every day from the other side of the barricades.
Welcome to day five of jury deliberation in the trial of the century, the race to judgement on the King of Pop. But the race has turned to a crawl. The euphoria and the frenetic state of anticipation of the first two days have turned to boredom, frustration and irritation. The fact and order of the daily courtroom ritual have given way to the ennui and uncertainty of ordinary life.
Every day, shortly before 8.30am, we watch the jury arrive in two white vans; every day, at 2.30pm, we watch the jury leave in two white vans. Every day the Rev Jesse Jackson turns up to tell the world’s media about the spiritual advice and solace he is offering his friend Michael; every day Michael’s spokesperson, Raymone Bain, tells the world’s media whatever is in her head. Every day the world’s media learns very little.
But today is different: today there is no Jesse Jackson. The flame of celebrity that drew him to the trial has been snuffed out by the singer’s attorney, who issued a statement insisting that nobody had been authorised to speak on his behalf. Today there is no Raymone Bain.
And today there is a change that we find impossible to assimilate: the jury goes home early. Today is a day that could make even the most jaundiced observer have pity for the epic mass of dysfunction that is Michael Jackson.
The jury has cut short its deliberations for the day so that it can attend the local high school graduation day. The delivery of rosettes to the little ones is more important than the attempt to decide whether Jackson should go to prison.
On the dot of 11am, the jury troops out. I have now been sitting in the car park for 22 hours and 54 minutes.
”We got the call,” says Peter, the media coordinator. ”The jurors are boarding their vans and are ready to leave.”
The media stand around like confused cattle, unable to comprehend a change to their routine. Every day we sit in this car park until 2.30pm. How can we leave at 11am? Where do we go? What do normal people — the people who don’t stand around in car parks interviewing each other — do at 11 in the morning?
”Really, folks, it’s over,” says Peter. ”You can go. There are lots of good restaurants for lunch. Go find them.” We stand around some more, chewing the cud. – Guardian Unlimited Â