2008 has been a rough year for Katherine Jackson, matriarch of the (in)famous musical Jackson family.

Daughter Janet was released from the hospital this week (Sept 2008) after falling ill from vertigo shortly before a concert. (Janet "Ms. Jackson if you're nasty" is currently on her North American, “Rock Witchu” tour.)

This has been the latest in what appears to be hard times for the clan.  According to a New York Post Article earlier this spring, "...one of the brothers stocks groceries, another repairs cars and others live at home with parents, Joe and Katherine, who, themselves, are at risk of losing their five-acre mansion..."

Here's the short version:

• Marlon Jackson, 51, an original Jackson Five member who stocks shelves at a Vons supermarket in San Diego, had to temporarily move into an extended-stay hotel.

• Randy, 46, does odd jobs, including fixing cars in a Los Angeles garage owned by a family friend. He recently claimed Michael was going to give him $1.7 million - “a pipe dream,” said another brother last week.

• Jackie, 56, the oldest and most debonair of the brothers, is struggling to manage his son Siggy’s aspiring rap career after an Internet clothing business startup and attempts to produce music failed.

• Jermaine, 54, is unemployed and shuttles back and forth from his girlfriend’s home in Ventura County, Calif., to his parents’ mansion in Encino, where Jackie and Randy still bunk. He is recently divorced from his estranged wife, Alejandra, the mother of two of his eight children.  Alejandra has two teenage children from a previous marriage with Jermaine’s youngest brother Randy and she has ALSO been living with Jackson’s mother Katherine for quite sometime.

• Tito, 55, is the only brother still making music, but it’s a meager living. The guitarist fronts a blues and jazz band that plays small venues and nets him $500 and $1,500 per occasional gig - a far cry from the days when the Jacksons could pull in 50,000 people at $30 a ticket.

• Family patriarch Joseph Jackson, 79, spends most of his waking hours conjuring up schemes he hopes will replenish a bank account that once had more money than the FDIC cared to insure. Peddling musical girl groups in Las Vegas and a book about his family in Germany, Joseph, despite evidence to the contrary, is not convinced that time and the music industry have passed him by:    “We can get back out there and set the world on fire,” he told The Post. “If the Rolling Stones can still rake in the money, so, too, can my boys.”
  

And we thought OUR families had drama!  WHEW!!!