Many things fall out of closets – not least of which are skeletons and homophobic pastors. But in the case of Michael Jackson we are expecting a a piñata full of tightly wrapped craziness soon to hit the auction floor and explode.

The auction, set to be held on May 30 and 31, against the singer’s wishes, in — but how perfect — Las Vegas, will offer to the discerning connoisseur a lifetime’s accumulation of costumes, souvenirs and just plain shit.

And not your run-of-the mill shit. Fantabulous shit! World-class shit. High, high Kitsch-o-La.

This coming bonanza — an estimated $50 to $100 million worth of Jackson debris — brings to mind the famous lifesize ceramic at top: Michael Jackson and Bubbles by Jeff Koons.

The glassy figurine, with its casual equation of the pop idol to the languid, flower-strewn deities of Hindu worship, was the hit of Koon’s Banality show, but seems only an hors d’oeuvre for the real banality that is sure to pass beneath the gavel at the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino next week, courtesy of the actual, but for many years sadly monkey-less, Michael Jackson.

And it won’t be just garbargio, pumpkins. There’s a reason Michael tried to stop this auction. Also promised are certain, shall we say, toys , certain — to use the delicate phrase of the auctioneer — “salacious” artifacts.

When Michael threatened to block the auction, the CEO of Universal Express — a warehouse company that had become the default owners of the memorabilia due to a court settlement against the Jackson family and the bankruptcy of a former Jackson partner — decided to do some threatening of his own, bringing out the brass knuckles on the pages of the most powerful and notoriously no-holds-barred scandal sheet in America, Page Six of the New York Post.

E! Online reports:

Richard Altomare, CEO of Universal Express, … told the New York Post that if Jackson pressed his legal action, Altomare would include some potentially embarrassing memorabilia withheld from the auction, notably “salacious” artwork that could dredge up memories of the Moonwalker’s 2005 child-molestation trial, which ended in his acquittal.

“There are a couple of paintings Jackson made of children, of boys—naked. And there are some of his whitening creams, some sex aids…some of the old records in his sealed [sexual molestation] court case,” Altomare said.

“This is stuff we have kept from the auction out of respect to Mr. Jackson. The guy has troubles. We all have skeletons in the closet and, if Michael hadn’t put up a fuss, I might have quietly, discreetly, just given it to him. I’m a gentleman…but if he pisses me off, I may end up auctioning them.”

Last Friday, Jackson dropped his lawsuit, and so the auction will take place. As to whether the scandalous “artifacts” will now be excluded. Mr. Altomare, who has benefited enormously from the publicity, is not saying. So get your seats early, boys and girls.

Confirmed for sale are the usual gold records and stage outfits — including those little velveteen Nehru numbers from the Jackson Five days — and a a bulletproof vest Michael wore in the 1980’s when he started to get truly bizarre.

(But where oh where is the matching vest that must have been made for Bubbles? Father-son generalissimo uniforms were the order of the day for Mike and his monkey back then. Monkey disappeared when Michael’s own fairytale blond children were found under a cabbage leaf, but by then, Michael had moved his Hansel and Gretel into fantastic veils and facemasks, even head-to-toe burkahs — each child a tiny mirror of himself.)

None of the performance swag interests me, though. What I’m looking forward to is the vast collection of outlandish vases, figurines and cupid paintings that Michael purchased at extravagant Vegas import shops.

Veteran Nightcharm readers may recall my glee in detailing the singer’s unfailing eye for expensive kitsch in an essay I wrote about the infamous Martin Bashir documentary on Jackson that was to trigger so many of his later woes:

My favorite scene … [is] the dizzy shopping spree in Las Vegas. Michael, we learn, goes shopping in casinos for — of all things — objects d’art:

Sky-blue urns festooned in garlands of solid-gold acanthus. Apollos being bathed by nymphs. Chess sets in Napoleonic attire. Replicas of Tutankhamen’s sarcophagus in hammered bronze.

And it’s pandemonium in the store as the owner races about, clipboard in hand, while Michael shoots out his forefingers this way and that. “I want these…these…these. Yoohoo, is this on the list? Well, then I want it. And this desk…these…”

In under 20 minutes, Michael Jackson spends one million very silly dollars.

Actually, the whole Vegas section is pretty breathtaking.

An image I can not get out of my mind takes place outside his hotel, in an alley. Michael appears under the black umbrella that he always carries now to shield his fragile skin from the sun. He is being tugged along by his children, Prince Michael the First and Paris Michael, the girl child.

The children are particularly fantastical this day. In their big, black butterfly masks, they look like two purgatorial demons pulling Michael through a Bosch landscape of Nevada glare. The only thing missing is Vincent Price’s cackle from the Thriller video.

The pop star is now met by two fans, whom we see reflected in his mirrored aviators. They babble on about All Things Michael as he beams down from his umbrella.

Michael’s taste, the constant indulgence of it, no matter how childish, would not be possible without a fanbase that was as deranged as he. And truly, Michael Jackson is the patron saint of the unhinged.

But then Rock ‘n’ Roll has a long tradition of colorful nuts, of Little Richards and Elvis Presleys, hot-wired boys with no education and entirely too much taste. We like them that way. Makes them seem closer to the chaotic sex energy that courses through the propulsive music.

Yet somehow Michael has managed to surpass even Elvis Presley in the Craziness Sweepstakes. The tattooed eyeliner, the bleached skin, the false putty nose — the little boys!

It takes Michael way out into a parallel world of weirdness, a Bizarroland where his own know him well. And that is the most kitsch-o-rama thing about him: the fanatic nature of his following.

Michael Jackson has managed to have a death cult without actually having to die.