Randy Phillips takes the stand

UNDER OATH : Randy Phillips' lips were moving today, and you know what that means. The AEG Live chief took the stand in the interminable Michael Jackson wrongful-death trial, charging that the suit was an act of extortion by the singer's family; he replied "yes" when his own attorney, Marvin Putnam, asked if he indeed considered it a "shakedown," as Phillips had previously alleged. He spent much of the time responding to Jackson family attorney Brian Panish's questions about emails he'd written to fellow execs Paul Gongaware, Tim Leiweke and others about Jackson, and disclosed that his own attorneys had advised the AEG brass not to review old emails, presumably to strengthen the credibility of their "I don't recall" answers. Phillips told jurors it was a "miracle" the artist had appeared at a press conference to announce the planned This Is It tour in 2009. "You have no idea what this is like," Phillips wrote in one of the messages. "He [Jackson] is a self-loathing, emotionally paralyzed mess." It's unclear how the presentation of the artist as broken and miserable helps deflect claims that AEG paid a disgraced doctor to prop him up, and today's report that Jackson's daughter Paris had attempted suicide (see our post, below) adds further tragedy to the jury's view of the Jackson family. But Phillips is clearly in his wheelhouse on the stand; stay tuned. (6/5p)