Your Guide to Today's Jacko Media Orgy

Surprisingly, the elephants entering Staples Center this morning aren’t there for the “Michael Jackson Memorial Orgy of Excess”—but for the circus, opening tomorrow. “That seems completely appropriate,” writes Lisa de Moraes for the Washington Post. As for today’s “freak show,” 16 TV outlets are planning live coverage. “Overwhelmed by the sheer number of Jackson death-march viewing options?” Let de Moraes guide you:

• On ABC, you can play the “Watch Bashir Make Michael Jackson’s Memorial All About Martin Bashir Drinking Game.”
• “CNBC will dip in and out of the service while spending the day discussing the financial aspects of Jackson's death, as in who stands to profit most—besides, of course, Martin Bashir.”
• Kathie Lee Gifford will not be covering the memorial for NBC, and “this is a shame, because we had a bet going on how fast Kathie Lee could get Cody into NBC’s memorial coverage, as in ‘I remember the first time Cody sang a Michael Jackson song.’”
• “CNN has recruited Anderson ‘Does This Jackson Memorial Make Me Look Fat?’ Cooper,” as well as “Larry King, who has been deemed sufficiently recovered from his shocking discovery last week that Neverland was a pretty place with a train.”
• “BET, meanwhile, felt compelled to recruit CNN’s Lola Ogunnaike and Inside Edition’s April Woodard to lend—I give up, legitimacy maybe?—to its coverage of the Jackson memorial.”

(More Michael Jackson stories.)