Ashleigh Banfield was just an hors d’oeuvre; now those of us looking for some heavy meat-and-potatoes farcical nourishment have the emergence of Joe Jackson to savor.

The man by all accounts beat his children with a creativity notable even by the standards of the day—Michael Jackson famously told Oprah that he could vomit with fear at the sound of his dad’s approach. And like most of the rest of the members of the family—Janet definitely and, I don’t know, Rebbe perhaps might be exceptions—he managed to get himself into embarrassing and grasping situations as he tried to make money off his most talented son’s popularity.

Anyway, you can get a sense of what we’re in for in the months to come with the appearance of Joseph Jackson and Al Sharpton in the press conference they held yesterday. The elder Jackson was apparently stung by criticism that he’d talked about his new record label at the BET Awards the previous night. So, on the occasion of his first oppotunity to address the world on the ocassion of his son’s death, he … talked some more about his record label: