You’ve certainly seen it by now.

More times than you probably ever wanted to.

I’m talking about the footage of a Pepsi commercial shoot in which Michael Jackson’s hair catches on fire.  The accident occurred back in 1984.  I was a freshman in high school in ‘84.

It’s inconceivable to me that in this day and age, it actually took 25 years for this footage to have made its way to the public.  It must have been one of the best-kept video secrets of the century.

Us magazine released the footage, but is refusing to reveal where it came from.  They could have done this years ago, if the person who posessed it had released it sooner.  If they paid for the footage — and I’d be shocked if they didn’t — they could have purchased it sooner.

Even if Jackson himself didn’t want the video released, it would certainly have made him a more sympathetic character after people saw the extent of the accident.  He’d have probably liked to have had that kind of sympathy back in 2003, when he released a video statement in which he discussed his addiction to pain pills that began with the injuries from that shoot.

It’s hard to imagine this kind of footage of that kind of celebrity actually sitting on a shelf for that long in this invasive Information Age of ours.

But it’s also sad that they’ve wasted so little time in releasing it after Jackson’s death.