Sorry, Courtney, It’s the Day of the Jacko : The King of Pop’s escapades again dominate our annual year-end roundup of Dubious Distinctions.

My name is Michael Jackson, King of Pop:

Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!

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Apologies to Percy Bysshe Shelley, but that reworking of his “Ozymandias” might just as well have appeared at the base of the statue Jackson digitally constructed for the mind-boggling salute to his ego in the promo clip for his “HIStory” album.

And like ol’ Ozy, Michael ended up collapsed in a heap--in his case on the Beacon Theatre stage--his empire but a distant memory.

All hail the King of Plop.

The physical collapse, due to a variety of ailments, that caused cancellation of his HBO special was the perfect symbol for Jackson’s rather precipitous year, which included:

* The creepy ABC session in which he and wife Lisa Marie Presley-Jackson insisted to a fawning Diane Sawyer that, yes, they have had actual conjugal relations.

* The flap over the lines “Jew me, sue me / kick me, kike me” in Jackson’s song “They Don’t Care About Us,” which many of his Jewish associates defended as his supposed naivete, but which caused Steven Spielberg--horrified to see an old testimonial of his about Jackson in the album’s booklet--to issue a distancing press statement.

* Jackson’s genitals having to be digitally erased from a scene in the “You Are Not Alone” video where he and Lisa Marie are billing and cooing, clad in (apparently inadequate) towels.

But despite these and other media tricks as thick as the makeup paramedics found on Jackson at the Beacon, it can’t be hidden that “HIStory” sold a rather sluggish, by his standards, 1.7 million copies in the United States.

If the $30-million figure often reported as the promotional budget for the album is close to accurate, that means it cost more than $17 per album to promote it. For that kind of money, Jackson could have simply bought albums for most of the people who wanted them--and earned some much-needed goodwill in the process.

Instead he spent it all to build monuments to himself, only to see them crumble into sand.

But, for all that, Jackson does--for the second straight year--rule Pop Eye’s annual Dubious Distinctions round-up.

Other highlights:

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12-STEP BLUES: Forget the Betty Ford Clinic--the new hot-spot for dysfunctional musicians is anger management classes. Both rocker Courtney Love and rapper Tone Loc were sentenced to attend such sessions after being charged in public displays of temper.

In October, Tone was ordered to the class by an L.A. judge after a Wilshire District outburst over a pizza he didn’t like. Love’s sentence stemmed from her August punching (or “clocking,” as she likes to say it) of Bikini Kill’s Kathleen Hanna on the side of the stage during opening day of Lollapalooza ’95 at the Gorge Amphitheatre in Grant County, Wash.

Of course, it wasn’t the only court appearance for Courtney. In January she was arrested in Melbourne, Australia and charged with offensive behavior on a flight from Brisbane, during which she was said to have responded to an attendant’s request that she put her feet down from the cabin wall for landing with a stream of abusive language.

She rounded out her docket with a November court appearance in Orlando, Fla., where she was charged with assaulting two fans during a concert by her band, Hole.

On the first day of her trial, Love stirred things up when she turned toward the opposing legal team and loudly whispered: “Hey, prosecutors. Psssst. Are you the prosecutors? Can I be O.J. and you be Christopher Darden?”

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TRANSMISSION FROM A PARALLEL UNIVERSE: The day after President Clinton’s annual speech to Congress last January, National Public Radio reported that Elizabeth Arnold referred to the Capitol’s Statuary Hall as “the mosh pit of State of the Union spin control.”

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THE FLINTSTONE VERSES: A death sentence from Ayatollah Khomeini couldn’t get Salman Rushdie to change any of his writings, but a threatened lawsuit from Turner Broadcasting did. Rushdie has used lines from the theme to “The Flintstones,” which is owned by Turner, in a collection of short stories without permission.

Remarked an annoyed Rushdie: “If I quoted these lines, somebody would shoot Fred Flintstone?”

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TIE-DYE THIS: The Grateful Dead’s fans are known for being ultra-mellow, dude, but not their road crew. At least that’s what Salt Lake City deejay Crazy Dave Bentley found out when, hoping to talk with Jerry Garcia in February, he knocked on what he thought was the Grateful Dead leader’s hotel room at 8 a.m. and asked the man who answered if he was Garcia.

“[Expletive]! Do I look like Jerry Garcia?” responded William Grillo, who then allegedly punched Bentley in the jaw.

Grillo was cited for misdemeanor assault. Maybe he’ll be in anger class with Tone and Courtney.

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TRANSMISSION FROM A PARALLEL UNIVERSE: At the very same time that Love was being interviewed by Barbara Walters on ABC recently, MTV was airing Tabitha Soren’s chat with Yasser Arafat.

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LIKE THEY NEED THE MONEY: The dramatic rise in the value of the yen last spring made the Rolling Stones’ guaranteed payments for their tour of Japan jump in worth $2 million between the time the band signed the deal and the dates of the shows. Mick Jagger didn’t get a degree from the London School of Economics for nothing.

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MOGUL OF THE YEAR: While the music industry was a tumult of corporate wheeling and dealing, Neil Young dealt for some real wheels. The longtime model railroad fanatic led a group purchasing the Lionel Trains company. Now if he’d only take over L.A.’s beleaguered Metro Rail project.

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TRANSMISSION FROM A PARALLEL UNIVERSE: The establishment folks at Lollapalooza took the hard line with the rebels at the Richard Nixon Birthplace Museum & Library by forcing them to cease promoting the “Rockin’ the White House” exhibit of presidential pop music encounters as “Nixonpalooza.”

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BURN IT UP: Joey Lawrence, whose first album was a minor teen-throb hit, told the press at the American Music Awards that his second album would be “more rock ‘n’ roll--like Hall & Oates in the early ‘80s.”

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DISABLED LIST: Jeff Buckley had to cancel a show in the spring due to back strain caused by lifting an overstuffed laundry bag.

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ROCK ‘N’ JOCKS: We noticed a rock-oriented trend in selection of catchy names for minor league baseball teams. In honor of hometown hero Buddy Holly, the new Lubbock team of the Texas-Louisiana League was called the Crickets, while in the independent Northeast League, the Albany-Colonie entry took the name Diamond Dogs--though we’re not sure what the David Bowie connection is.