EARLY 1988. Hollywood, Calif. Hollywood Boulevard. Before noon.

The Boulevard had seen better days. What stood as the symbol of glamour and importance throughout the world was really nothing more than a collection of run down T-shirt shops, lingerie stores and pizza-by-the- slice joints.

A friend lived a couple blocks away on North Curson, above the Boulevard really the Hollywood Hills but still within walking distance of the Chinese Theater and several crazy nightclubs. During my many visits, I became familiar with the area and frequented a used- book store that at first glance reminded me of something from a Raymond Chandler novel. The kind of place where the proprietor would lead certain customers into a backroom stocked with dirty books wrapped in greasy brown paper bags.

I always noticed how little Sunset and Hollywood boulevards resembled what I imagined them to be. The stars embedded in the pavement were covered with grease, spittle and hard, flattened pieces of gum long ago discarded. In the era before cell phones, pay phones stood at every corner just as filthy, the booths smelly and dank. Tour buses would dump off loads of smiling visitors. They'd peruse the gift shops and buy maps to the stars' homes, ensconced in the hills or near the Pacific Ocean several miles farther west.

Actually, they weren't the real stars' homes, more like the homes of pseudo stars like Nipsey Russell or Dom Deluise. Of course, to visitors from North Platte in the 1980s, anyone on TV was a star.

Michael Jackson, on the other hand, was a superstar in early 1988. Not only in North Platte, but in Tokyo, Melbourne, New York and Los Angeles. Jackson was in the middle of his "Bad' tour, which began before 45,000 fans in Tokyo in September 1987 and ended in front of 18,000 at a sold-out Los Angeles Sports Arena in January 1989.

"Bad' was the long-anticipated follow-up to 1982's "Thriller.' Together the two albums sold 32 million copies worldwide. The music could be heard on radio, at discos or just wafting out the window of the car next to you on the San Bernardino (10) Freeway.

In January 1988, the tour was on a brief hiatus. Michael Jackson apparently spent some of his time off at his parents' home in Encino. In the late '80s, I had just become a father. But, I had no clue about responsibility and wandered happily and aimlessly around town when I wasn't working.

That was how I found the bookstore. It was different than other places on the boulevard. It seemed totally removed from the bizarre, strange and otherwise twisted world just beyond the huge plate-glass windows that faced south onto the boulevard. The bookstore always amazed me. The creaky floorboards; the smell of musty, unturned pages. There were many undiscovered worlds here. And, with a selection wider and somewhat more revered than that of the public library on Vine Street, it was a great place to explore on weekday mornings.

Plus, unlike the library, the bookstore didn't have homeless sleeping among the stacks.

It was one of those mid-winter days that draw Midwesterners to California like moths to an electrified blue light.

I'm alone in the bookstore. carefully going down the aisles, when suddenly I realize there's a guy sprawled out on the floor in front of me. Just as suddenly, two very large men appeared at either end of the aisle clearly blocking it off. The man on the floor was blissfully unaware of any of this.

I assumed he was homeless; when I got closer, it became clear. The homeless guy on the floor was Michael Jackson. He was reading a book about Disneyland. He stood up and asked me what I was looking for. I replied that I, too, was looking for a Disney book for my child. We exchanged small talk about my son, who at the time was still an infant. He asked if I had a picture. I said yes, and took out my wallet. Jackson gazed at portrait for a moment. He flipped it over, signed his name with a red pen and said, "Thank you for letting me see the picture.'

About that same time, the two bodyguards came over and led the superstar to the counter. He paid for the Disney book he was looking at and left in a small car that was parked out front. I spent the day and maybe the next week showing off the picture and autograph on the back.

I've since lost the signed picture. It disappeared in a move several years back. I haven't lost my memory of the day, and it's resonated in my mind since then (if for no other reason than the obvious Jackson's criminal court case on charges of child molestation and his acquittal Monday).

The world has changed many times over since the 1980s. Of course, my son has long since grown up. As for the big picture, the Soviet Union doesn't exist; neither do phone booths for that matter. Modern pseudo- stars don't have an eighth the talent of a Russell or a Deluise. Today they are carefully sculpted hot-bodies who have the time to humiliate themselves in psuedo-reality programs appealing to the lowest common denominator.

And, isn't that what Michael Jackson has become? Bad star of a reality show that has reached its "Thriller' of a conclusion?

One thing that probably hasn't changed is that book store. I imagine it's still there. Perhaps in a couple of years I'll return for a copy of the true crime book that tells the whole story.