Sporting a heavily bandaged left foot, Michael Jackson limped into a California court Tuesday to resume his testimony in the $21 million lawsuit against him that accuses him of failing to go through with two concerts.
According to Reuters, Jackson told reporters the crutches and incongruous white athletic sock he wore were due to a spider bite. He said he had awakened to find his foot so badly swollen that it could no longer fit inside a shoe.
“It’s a spider bite. It’s really bad,” Jackson said during a break in the proceedings. “If I showed it to you, you’d be shocked. It hurts very much right now as I speak.”
He did say he keeps tarantulas at his Neverland Valley ranch nearby but assured reporters it was an indigenous spider that bit him. “I love tarantulas,” he said. “This was a little one.”
Despite the injured foot, the entertainer seemed almost jovial, signing autographs for fans outside the courthouse. During lulls in the testimony, Jackson even made goofy faces at the photographers.
Still, if they got too close, Jackson protested and demanded his left foot not be photographed, according to AP. He told one camera crew “You’re too close,” and when the cameraman told him it was OK, Jackson responded, “Promise? Promise?”
The injury is the latest woe for Jackson, who incurred renewed curiosity about his appearance after courtroom photos showed his strangely collapsed nose, goatee and wiglike mane of hair, and recently caused a public relations calamity after dangling his infant child over a Berlin hotel balcony.
The erratic behavior didn’t stop there–the King of Pop himself told a German magazine he “didn’t like pop music” and showed up at a German zoo with his kids draped in veils.
Jackson is being sued by concert promoter Marcel Avram, who claims the singer backed out of performances in Sydney, Australia and Honolulu Dec. 31, 1999. Jackson, however, maintains it was Avram who canceled the shows because he didn’t think they would be profitable, the Associated Press reports.
Frustrated by Jackson‘s inability to remember important facts about the case, Avram’s attorney, Louis R. “Skip” Miller, repeatedly asked the singer questions to which Jackson replied, “I don’t recall.” At one point, Miller asked Jackson if he suffered from memory problems.
“Not that I can recall” was Jackson‘s response, prompting laughter from the courtroom.
The trial is scheduled to resume on Wednesday.
