Comments on Ambassador Watch: Thriller - the final note

I'm glad someone mentioned Farrah Fawcett on t...

2009-07-02T12:23:30.366+12:00

I'm glad someone mentioned Farrah Fawcett on the day Michael Jackson died. Otherwise, I suppose we wouldn't even remember her at all.

I didn't care much for Michael Jackson's music and what he did to his physical appearance is beyond my understanding.

Of the two, I'd miss Farrah Fawcett the most, that is, if I had actually known either one of them.

So many stars have passed away in my lifetime . . . sometimes I wonder if there are any of my old heroes left.

But, you know, outside of a star's actual talent, everything else about them is fake and a front and they are only human after all.

Some are maybe pretty good humans, as humans go and depending how you define good - nevertheless, they are famous while we are not.

When it's said done, what more can one say but good-by?

"You really have no clue what you are talking...

2009-07-01T08:45:30.043+12:00

"You really have no clue what you are talking about. Your sarcasm may be considered witty and insightful with this crowd but it is not based on fact."

Yeah, THAT'S a "liberal" attitude, all right.

I'm sorry, how is UCG different from the old church again? Because the attitude problems are an exact carbon copy, of what I remember.

Many of the UCG pastors have 2 or even 3 congregat...

2009-06-30T21:58:42.699+12:00

Many of the UCG pastors have 2 or even 3 congregations. Because of events such as bible studies or other congregational activities it is not always physically possible for them to be at all the congregations they are responsible for every week.

You really have no clue what you are talking about. Your sarcasm may be considered witty and insightful with this crowd but it is not based on fact.

"The Pastor apparently had a scheduled weeken...

2009-06-30T07:28:16.614+12:00

"The Pastor apparently had a scheduled weekend away. I don't have the schedule, but it happens about once a month."

Must be nice, the ministurds get a break from keeping the Sabbath. Pity the faithful members don't.

HWA must have heard "Helter Skelter" on ...

2009-06-29T09:02:16.648+12:00

HWA must have heard "Helter Skelter" on the news during the Charlie Manson era. That would explain how the Beatles crashed through HWA's alternative reality, and captured his attention, and it would also explain why he thought their music sounded like a bunch of barnyard roosters who had accidentally grazed in the marijuana patch. Or, he could have heard "Good Morning!"

Reality is, the Beatles were mostly noted for their ornate three part harmonies. Not so much with one another. But, the writer of the song would usually mix some tape loops of his own voice harmonizing with his vocals of the main melody. If you knew their voices by sound (what fan didn't?), you could tell which songs were the Lennon songs, which ones were the McCartney songs, and the somewhat rarer Harrison or Ringo songs. I lived next door to some roosters in California, and somehow there was no comparison with Beatle music.

GTA was much more open minded about music. I recall him relating in a sermon about how he and some of his friends had gone to see Jesus Christ Superstar when it was popular.

In WCG, whatever was the major influence of the day was considered to be of Satan. When I was at AC, this was psychedelic music, acid rock, or hard rock. The kids from a year or two ahead of me had heard Go Go music demonized, as that was the previous influence. An HWA cliche was, "It's not the thing, but the use of the thing which makes it good or evil!" Even back when I was an agnostic, I really enjoyed Norman Greenbaum's "Spirit in the Sky". That was about as acid rock as you could get! These days, I enjoy the over-saturated guitar solo in "Glory Glory, Hallelujah, He Reigns!" You people out there who are tuned in to Christian Radio and TBN know what I mean! HWA would probably turn over in his grave if he heard it! But, it's an awsome song!

BB

I suppose that all the crap is about to hit the pr...

2009-06-29T08:51:50.785+12:00

I suppose that all the crap is about to hit the proverbial fan. Think about it. All these icons (Michael Jackson, Farrah Fawcett, Ed McMahon, David Carradine) suddenly "taken from the evil to come..." Maybe the COGs were onto something...

Perhaps the above is merely an exercise of tongue in cheek, but each of these individuals was of immeasurably more worth to the human race than all of the COG "leaders" combined [past, present, future(?)], even if merely for their entertainment value, if for no other reason. I would rather pop in a Jackson CD and listen to "Billy Jean" until my ears bleed than to listen to 30 seconds of "The end is nigh" from any of the Armstrong torchbearers. Of course, 30 seconds of Armstrongist blather is about all it takes anymore before I sense the onset of an aneurism…

To Purple: Some smaller UCG congregations have un...

2009-06-29T08:16:12.465+12:00

To Purple:

Some smaller UCG congregations have unordained/lay members give sermonettes on a regular basis. They're on the schedule, in fact. That was the case here.

(This was also true with a smaller WCG congregation I attended in the 1980's -- as an unordained man who was an A.C. graduate would give sermonettes.)

The Pastor apparently had a scheduled weekend away. I don't have the schedule, but it happens about once a month.

About Lucy Martin: I took her Intro. to Music cou...

2009-06-29T06:09:12.577+12:00

About Lucy Martin: I took her Intro. to Music course (really, as someone else noted, a music appreciation course) during my freshman year. A lot of the students apparently found her course boring (and she was not the most exciting speaker/lecturer around), mainly because they were not interested in immersing themselves with classical music, which is what Ms. Martin taught about almost exclusively. She taught about what she knew, and it was considered essential to understand a bit about the history of western classical music. Some students avoided her course (it was required at that time) and took Music Appreciation at Pasadena Community College instead.

I had had a decade of piano lessons prior to AC. So I was familiar in certain ways with the main composers, and recognized their music, and played some of it. But my piano teacher hadn't really taught me the history. I didn't really know the cultural backgrounds of the barogue, "classical" and romantic/post-romantic periods. But Lucy Martin taught me that. And I heard some music in her class that I was unfamiliar with, but came to love. I quite enjoyed her class, and learned a great deal, which I value some 38 years later. Her weakest lecture was near the end of term, when she discussed modern pop/rock music. I knew much more about that then did she, and I chuckled a bit to myself that day with her struggle with the facts. But that class was really one of the most enjoyable ones I took at AC, and certainly one of the most valuable.

One comment I do remember her making. We had to do some of our own personal listening to classical music, with brief critiques. Ms. Martin asked us to "Please, don't write that this music or this composer is demon-possessed..." :-)

"In a sermonette today, a UCG lay member...&q...

2009-06-29T00:05:54.650+12:00

"In a sermonette today, a UCG lay member..."

Why was a lay member giving a sermonette? I am assuming you mean unordained by "lay member"? Deacons were allowed to give sermonettes, though, but they were considered lay MINISTRY, not "lay members".

"The Pastor was absent,"

Where was the pastor?

"I did gag a bit at the end when he talked about encouraging "normal" childhood."

Victor Kubik's tirade against "ungodly toys" also promulgates that "us and them" attitude, and pretty much reinforces the idea that UCG has NOT changed in any way significantly, from its precursor group, Worldwide.

Jackson's former financial adviser Alvin Malni...

2009-06-28T13:20:11.981+12:00

Jackson's former financial adviser Alvin Malnik said in 2006, "Millions of dollars annually were spent on plane charters, purchases of antiques and paintings."

Childhood success led to megastardom in the 1980s, when he was the biggest musical act in the world and "Thriller" alone made him $125 million.

In 1985, Jackson bought the Beatles back catalog for $47.5 million, beating out then-friend Paul McCartney, who never spoke to him again.

Merged with SONY in 1995, the company's song catalog generated up to $80 million a year. Jackson had a 50% stake, later reduced to 25%.

In the last 25 years, it is estimated he made more than $300 million from his own music royalties, and another $400 million from concerts and the Beatles catalog.

But his spending, which began to get surreal in the late 1980s, topped his income. By 1999, he was earning $11 million a year but spending $31 million.

He bought a 2,500-acre property near Santa Ynez, Calif. for $17 million in 1989, spending millions more to turn it into a fantasyland he called the Neverland Ranch. He installed a zoo, an amusement park, a movie theater and a miniature train system. It cost him $5 million a year to staff and maintain.

His shopping sprees became legendary: he thought nothing of dropping $150,000 in a few minutes at London's Harrods or $250,000 browsing for antiques in Beverly Hills.

He bought Rolls-Royces and Bentley and helicopters and jewelry for Elizabeth Taylor. There are stories of him flipping through high-end catalogs ordering every item on every page.

Then there was was the divorce settlement with Lisa Marie Presley, the $20 million he paid to make a child-molestation lawsuit go away, and a long series of lawsuits by assorted hangers-on.

And the repeated plastic surgeries, which must have cost him more millions.

By the late 1990s, Jackson was as much as $200 million in debt and the situation only got worse.

He closed Neverland in 2006 and took out a $270 million loan against his music publishing holdings. He took out a $23 million loan on Neverland but defaulted several times.

And still the lawsuits kept coming.

He was sued last year in London by a Bahraini sheik who claimed the pop singer owed him $7 million. Jackson said he thought the sheik was giving him gifts, the sheik said he thought he and Jackson were going into the songwriting business together. Jackson settled the suit.

The shows Jackson scheduled next month were expected to generate $100 million in ticket sales.

Stan

The UCG President's handling of Jackson's ...

2009-06-28T10:22:50.276+12:00

The UCG President's handling of Jackson's death certainly doesn't reflect everyone in the group.

In a sermonette today, a UCG lay member compared Jackson to Elvis Presley -- declaring both men "accepted Satan's ways" and were "not satisfied with themselves."

The Pastor was absent, and a Local Elder giving the sermon never brought Jackson up.

This just in..... Michael Jackson's autopsy r...

2009-06-28T05:22:03.806+12:00

This just in..... Michael Jackson's autopsy report! It turns out that not only was his nose plastic, but almost all of the rest of him was as well. Since he donated his body to science, it was decided to melt him down and make him into Leggos... that way kids could play with HIM for a change!

Tom Munson

It is amazing that the media is demonstrating it&#...

2009-06-28T04:17:45.368+12:00

It is amazing that the media is demonstrating it's schizophrenia.
Years ago Michael Jackson was labelled a pedophile weirdo. Now that he is dead the media touts him as a victim of circumstance and one of the "great" people of history.

The news media would make a perfect COG pastor; able to dictate what we should think on any given day, even if it contradicts what was said a year ago.

"But the concert happened and they played Cop...

2009-06-28T03:15:34.193+12:00

"But the concert happened and they played Copeland and HWA did not denounce it."

Here's a story told to me by a former WCG minister's wife, a woman with a lovely singing voice. When she was a student at Bricket Wood AC in the early 1960s, the music director asked her to prepare to sing a Copeland piece (I don't recall the name of it). She wasn't a trained musician, and found the music hard to learn (it wasn't melodic). Because she wasn't getting it down, the director complained to Mr. Armstrong, who often spent weeks or even months in residence there. He called the young woman in and expressed his disappointment in her and asked her to cooperate and learn the piece. She did. HWA was in the front row the night of the performance, writing furiously on his program. After the event was over and everyone gone, she saw that one program remained on the floor by Armstrong's chair. She picked it up. He'd written
"Demons" "Demons" "Demons" all over it. Shortly after that night, Armstrong called her to his home. When she arrived there were many ministers present, and Armstrong knelt down before her and asked her to forgive him for making her sing the piece. She told us that Armstrong's private "governing style" was so different from his public one that she felt many in the church didn't have a complete picture of the man. The belief that any music that didn't appeal to the taste of the WCG-indoctrinated listener was "demon-inspired" was an easy way out. Some ministers were willing to step outside their comfort zones a little and try to understand what the musician was trying to do.

Armstrong would have benefitted from a college education. Even a general ed course in Music Appreciation would have demystified many composers for him. The requiste WCG belief in demons created an easy way to explain things beyond his (and far too many of the ministers') knowledge.

One pastor from the same AC era as the woman whose story I related above, told us that Lucy Martin, as a nonmember, was ignorant of the spiritual element. He took her music appreciation course at AC, and she assigned the class a paper about some composer, whose music didn't appeal to this student. His paper was a single sentence to the effect that the composer was demon-possessed. She awarded his "paper" an "F," which only served to reinforce his contempt for her ignorance. (This minister's wife told me that her husband had taught himself to deliver babies, so that if there were no midwives in the areas to which he was assigned, he could and did deliver the members' babies himself, rather than have women in his flock have to avail themselves of local MDs and hospitals.)

Re: Michael Jackson and John Lennon. Both men were exceptionally talented. I didn't like everything they did (which is true for me of most musicians), but what I liked, I liked very much. It's been a difficult thing for me to separate the private behavior of individuals, whether they are/were in the arts, politics, science or religion, from their work, but it's been necessary in order to have any kind of objective appreciation for what they've accomplished.

Explosive synergy as Quincy Jones' genius was ...

2009-06-27T19:07:43.976+12:00

Explosive synergy as Quincy Jones' genius was able to exploit Jackson's talents to great effect (like Hitchcock's brilliant use of Hollywood talent)

I was hoping a stop here would be a break from the...

2009-06-27T18:31:48.548+12:00

I was hoping a stop here would be a break from the wall to wall Jacko. Sigh.

HWA's little rant is rather illuminating. How small Lennon must have made him feel.

Shades of Elvis, this was posted on the Time Magazine website:

That physician — presumably Jackson's personal doctor, cardiologist Dr. Conrad Murray, who was called on Wednesday night when his patient complained of not feeling well — has disappeared. He left the car that he drove to Jackson's home, a silver BMW registered to an associate, in the driveway. Dr. Tohme Tohme, a Jackson associate who has served as a spokesman for him in the past, told the Los Angeles Times that Murray, who has filed for bankruptcy in the past and has financial problems, was hired by Jackson's concert promoter, AEG Live, to live with Jackson and care for him during his upcoming shows. Los Angeles law-enforcement authorities towed Murray's vehicle on Thursday night, saying the car could contain "medications pertinent to the investigation" into Jackson's death.

Looks like Jacko pulled a Howard Hughes/Elvis. Remind me never to be so rich that I can tell everyone in my life to pog off.

Mark Lax

Mary Lane mentioned insecurities in Jackson: I wo...

2009-06-27T17:18:28.303+12:00

Mary Lane mentioned insecurities in Jackson: I wonder if self-loathing might be more on the mark.

Consider the many contradictions of the man - agressive voice and military style clothing in many of his performances, against a faint and child-like voice when not performing. A man that gave himself a womans appearance. An adult that often tried to behave, or live, as a child. Cosmetic surgery that took away his negroid features. I'd say white skinned black man, but his skin color is something he may not have had control over.

He strikes me as someone not comfortable in his own skin, no pun intended, and thus never able to really be happy despite all the commercial success he had. It appears too, that he died surrounded by enablers and toadies, people that always said "yes" to him, no matter what the issue was. We all need trusted friends that will tell us when we're being fools and cut out the crap - we're no better than any other person.

Ironically, that's something that would have benefited Harmstrong too.

I never was a big MJ fan, but you have to admit the man was a prodigious talent.

P.S. On the news coverage of Jacko -- I'm a j...

2009-06-27T15:38:49.064+12:00

P.S. On the news coverage of Jacko -- I'm a journalist by trade, and I thought the U.S. broadcast networks went a bit overboard Friday night.

All three evening newscasts devoted three out of four blocks to Jacko -- leaving only about a minute for items such as Iran, Iraq and the German Chancellor's visit to D.C.

In the Atlanta WCG congregation I attended, they w...

2009-06-27T15:36:44.407+12:00

In the Atlanta WCG congregation I attended, they weren't afraid to play "Billie Jean" at a spring holy day dinner-dance.

In fact, the pastor liked the song well enough to dance to it. (And remember, Jacko denies in the song the child is his.)

That pastor also surprised me a bit by sticking up for Liberace, when Spokesman Club members bashed him verbally upon his death.

But wow -- WCG anti-Tchaikovsky? Maybe that was because the "Nutcracker Suite" was somewhat Xmas-centered.

quote! "Once he dies, he doesn't have any...

2009-06-27T14:02:03.513+12:00

quote! "Once he dies, he doesn't have any obligation to perform."
jackson/armstrong!

I have the video "Thriller" posted over ...

2009-06-27T10:52:09.597+12:00

I have the video "Thriller" posted over at my site if anyone is interested.

"Thriller is the sixth studio album by American recording artist Michael Jackson and the best-selling album of all time."

I never was a big fan of Jackson, but he did have style. At least he lived well enough and did not die by "religion." But have no doubt. His years in his moms religion, the JW's did influence his life as did his abusive father.

Wiki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Jackson

Herbert Armstrong, like all megalomaniacs, was jea...

2009-06-27T10:44:31.358+12:00

Herbert Armstrong, like all megalomaniacs, was jealous when anyone in his flock of sheep expressed admiration/fanhood for someone other than himself. I expect that his real resentment toward John Lennon and the Beatles was that he must have known that many of the teens in the church loved the Beatles' music. And Lennon was in many ways the leader of the Beatles (at least until their last years as a band), and not only helped to drive the evolution of Beatles music, but of pop music generally in his time. HWA knew this, although that's really the only thing he knew or understood about the music of the Beatles. He considered the music to be "sqawks" and similar to the crowing of roosters. Well, even their most raucous rock was great music; and much of their repetoire, including that mainly composed by Lennon, had melodies and arrangements that approached or reached the sublime.

The main error that others made in protesting HWA's idiotic, uninformed rant was in naming "Michelle" and "Yestereday" as Lennon songs. While they are certainly credited to Lennon-McCartney, both of those songs were composed almost entirely by Paul McCartney. For some sweet Lennon-composed tunes, consider "If I Fell" and "In My Life". Also the paen to his dead mother, "Julia".

I was never much into Michael Jackson's music, although a number of the tunes I like well enough; and he truly was the "king of pop" in his heyday. For any COG monster/ministers who will be smugly discussing his untimely demise tomorrow in services--shame on you; may your karma be triply negatively charged.

Ignoramuses, hypocrites, shameful human creatures.

I recall back in the mid-Seventies that HWA showed...

2009-06-27T10:35:17.271+12:00

I recall back in the mid-Seventies that HWA showed up at Big Sandy for a concert. (One of the few times that I ever saw HWA on the Big Sandy campus.) I spoke with an AC grad that night in the Field House who was very concerned about the selection of the music that would be played. One selection was by Aaron Copeland and the grad told me that HWA would regard it as far too modernistic.

Antique Classical is what HWA went for. I am not sure why. If you look into the lives of some of the composers of this music, you will find stories as strange as anything having to do with John Lennon.

HWA seemed to think that anything old was good and anything new was bad. If you believe that society is gradually degenerating, you must believe that. But history is full of bad times and good times.

But the concert happened and they played Copeland and HWA did not denounce it.

I have never found M. Jackson entertaining but if he had given a big donation to the pre-1995 WCG, he would have been thought of as saint. Remember the lionization of Bobby Fisher. I think they even offered to procure AC girls for Fisher.

Like Dylan said "Money doesn't talk, it screams."

-- Neo

M.A.M.'s article and the KKK. True to the poi...

2009-06-27T10:07:03.136+12:00

M.A.M.'s article and the KKK.

True to the point, the article does show that the apostle was stuck in the time warp of his youth.

See an example of his writing's and compare them to this.

Anonymous said... "Maybe HWA was absolutel...

2009-06-27T09:53:03.092+12:00

Anonymous said...
"Maybe HWA was absolutely right. Maybe he was right all along.
Maybe those noisy Beatle Bugs did deliver Satan's master knockout blow
to the US and Britain."

Herbert loved and endorsed group's such as Led Zeppelin, calling it Melodic music. Need proof?