Michael Jackson: Europe or Bust
If the French love Jerry Lewis, and David Hasselhoff is huge in Germany, where does that leave Michael Jackson?

A spokeswoman for the onetime King of Pop announced Tuesday that Jackson is tying up loose business ends and is planning a move to Europe to reignite a music career that has been languishing at the shallow end of the buzz pool.

"He's just decided that with all of the projects he's going to be involved with and all of the people he's beginning to work with in the music industry, it's easier [to live in Europe]," Jackson's rep, Raymone Bain, told Reuters. "He'll be going back and forth to Bahrain but Europe will be his principal residence."

This transcontinental shift is apparently only part of Jackson's plan to get back on his pioneering feet. He also has reshuffled his entourage, appointing Bain as general manager of the Michael Jackson Co. (which replaces MJJ Productions) and hiring L. Londell McMillan at the New York-based McMillan Firm to oversee his business-related legal matters. In the process, the Thriller singer cut ties with longtime accountants and business managers Bernstein, Fox, Whitman, Goldman & Sloan.

"He is very serious about his music," Bain told the Associated Press. "When you are a creative person and the creative juices are flowing again and you're about to embark upon new projects, you want to make sure your organization is running smoothly."

Also out of the fold are Jackson's Bahraini attorneys Qays Zu'bi and Grahame Nelson and Gut Records Chairman Guy Holmes, whom Jackson was supposedly going to make his next album with. Now, "he is reviewing numerous offers to tour musically, which he plans to embark upon within the next several months," Bain said in a statement.

Presumably to get back into the swing of things, Jackson appeared at MTV Japan's Video Music Awards in May to accept a Legends Award, where he thanked his fans for sticking by him through (many, many) times of trouble.

According to Jackson's new GM, he's currently traveling in Ireland (checking out real estate, perhaps?) and recently made a trip to Disneyland Paris with his two children. His itinerary also includes "a number of meetings charting out his musical future and his career," Bain told Reuters.

It certainly might take a whole lot of meetings to figure out what Jackson should do next. Despite the appearance that he can move about as he pleases, reports that the 47-year-old pop star is on the verge of bankruptcy trail him wherever he goes.

He averted such a crisis for the time being in April, when his former lawyers in Bahrain announced that Jackson had brokered a $325 million debt refinancing plan that required him to relinquish another hefty portion of the hit-filled Sony ATV music catalog he has had in his possession since 1985. (He sold half of the catalog to Sony for $100 million in 1998.)

With all of this European hullabaloo, Jackson obviously didn't block out time on his schedule to fly to Santa Monica, where jury selection is scheduled to begin Wednesday in a $3.8 million civil lawsuit filed against him by a former business associate.

F. Marc Schaffel is claiming that Jackson borrowed hundreds of thousands of dollars from him to, among other things, work on a charity record and two TV specials to improve his tarnished reputation in the wake of child-molestation charges, and to buy jewelry for Elizabeth Taylor.

Well, what man hasn't taken out a loan to buy baubles for Liz?

Schaffel's attorney, Howard King, alleged in the suit that Jackson is an incurable shopaholic, incapable of taking prudent advice from financial advisers.

Jackson then countersued in October, stating that Schaffel defrauded Jackson, didn't inform Jackson of his shady past as a pornographer and really owes Jackson hundreds of thousands of dollars, and that the lawsuit directed against him is a "fantastical tale."

While Jackson is not expected to appear in court, Schaffel's lawyers did take a deposition from him in which the singer said that he earned spending money by leasing land at Neverland Ranch for cattle grazing.

Per the Los Angeles Times, King asked Jackson: "So all your cash, whenever you need cash to shop or whatever, comes from the cows?"

And Jackson said: "Yes, believe it or not."

It's possible, especially considering not much else is going on there right now. Jackson was forced to close down the main house of his 2,800-acre fantastical spread in Santa Ynez, California, and "reduce his workforce." The downsizing came after he was ordered to pay more than $300,000 in back wages to a number of employees who had been shortchanged.

Although it's not all fun and games over at Neverland anymore, Bain said that Jackson has no plans to sell the estate.

"He still owns Neverland and he's still providing the funding for its upkeep," she said. "I'm sure at some point in time he will move back to Neverland, that's not out of the question. It's not in the immediate future but it's not farfetched."

But first, Jackson will try his luck in Europe. Somewhere.