Sheep and Goats

Category: celebrities

  • The Serena Williams Child Does Not Do Birthdays. Part 2

    No sooner did I liken Serena Williams to Queen Esther for her possible future role of exposing the evildoers, than someone said: “Um, she’s not exactly Queen Esther, you know. Didn’t she appear bare-naked, unmarried, and pregnant on that Vanity Fair cover? And you know that birth is not like the one of Mary.”

    Well, I actually hadn’t thought of that, if I ever knew it in the first place. Still, it changes nothing. She openly acknowledges she likes the faith but has not practiced it. Now she means to. Is it a bad thing when she has, in the past, called herself a Jehovah’s Witness?

    You know, ordinarily, yes. But in this case, not necessarily. People love celebrities and will usually concede that they live in a world of their own, facing unique pressures.

    For better or for worse, nobody makes a big deal of sex before marriage anymore. I don't even think the news writer of the article that her child won’t do birthdays thought to mention it, or maybe she did and it didn’t register. That people do not make a big deal of it is 'for worse,' usually, because Word says that they should, the but in this case, it is 'for better.'

    Totally without evidence, based only upon a feel for the way people are, I think her vehement critics are ones who dislike Jehovah’s Witnesses, who spot the disparity of conduct and want to slam us with it. Besides these ones are many Witnesses themselves, who also spot it. Few others care.

    Has she lived up to the faith in the past? She says very openly that she has not. Now she reaches a point where she says she will. I think it is a very good thing. Okay, okay, so she is no Queen Esther. Call her the Samaritan woman by the well, a women who carried on more than Serena ever did off the court, yet lived to be a powerful witness for the Lord.

    Do we have a woman who is a mixed bag, having done things good and bad, and who now wants to make them all good? I'll take it every time. it is in the spirit of Jesus, I think, who came to save persons ill who had become aware of their spiritual need. She will straighten out all those things before baptism, of course, should she continue on the path she now says she was to pursue more single-mindedly. Love hopes all things and believes all things. Sometimes it is even proved wrong. But it keeps hoping and believing

    Moreover, to go back to the original point of my post, part one, this Reddit group has done Witnesses huge mischief. The Philly reporter used it as his source to write four incendiary anti-JW articles in a row to present a seeming scandal without the context that illuminates it.

    This group is trying with all its might to equate Jehovah's Witnesses with the sins of the Catholic church. It is a stretch, because abusers in the Church are clergy. Even after making adjustments for size, if you want to get the same 'catch' among Jehovah's people, you must broaden your net to include, not just 'clergy,' but everybody. That doesn't mean that some are not diligently trying to do it, and equate some 'non-reporting to authorities' in previous years to being actual incubators of child abuse. They are up to no good, and the alleged sin in such cases is generally  'failing to go beyond the law' in reporting such cases to police. I continually make the point that if it is so crucial to 'go beyond the law' then that should become the law, the same point that Geoffrey Jackson, a member of the Witnesses’ Governing Body, made to a recent inquiry.

    If Serena was to prompt her husband, the Reddit founder, to weigh in on that group in our favor and expose them for what they are (see upcoming Part 3), I believe she would be forgiven 'a multitude of sins,' even if she never did manage to get it all together in her own life, as she seems to want to do. In fact, in the event of that outcome, and to bring matters full circle, that would be an example of something else Mordecai said to his niece. If salvation does not come through spotless Esther, it will come from some other source. Either way, I’ll take it and say ‘thank you’ to the Lord and see if there is more ammunition lying around.


    80px-Williams_S._RG18_(17)_(41168711240)

  • The Serena Williams Child Doesn’t Do Birthdays. This Gets Interestinger and Interestinger

    Few things cause more distress in the world of celebrities than a neglected birthday celebration. Yet Serena Williams presented them exactly that scenario with regard to her baby daughter, soon to turn one. “Serena and husband Alexis Ohanian won’t be throwing an over-the-top birthday bash for their baby girl…In fact, they won’t be throwing a party at all,” reported Caitlyn Hitt for the DailyMail. Why?

    Serena says: ‘We’re Jehovah’s Witnesses, so we don’t do that.’ She repeats the tactic that she took with President Obama, back when she was “excited to see Obama out there doing his thing….[but] I'm a Jehovah's Witness, so I don't get involved in politics. We stay neutral. We don't vote…so I'm not going to necessarily go out and vote for him. I would if it wasn't for my religion.'' Let me tell you that she took heat for it from people immersed in civic affairs, not to mention those who dislike Witnesses.

    Notwithstanding that the support organization of Jehovah’s Witnesses encourages congregation members to give reasons for their stands and not just say “I do it because I’m a Jehovah’s Witness,” there are times when the latter response is exactly the thing to say. The actual reason takes a while to explain and people don’t necessarily want to hear it. You have to know your audience. I begin to like Serena Williams more and more. She doesn’t buckle under pressure, mumbling something incomprehensible. No. She says "We don’t do that.” She reminds me very much of a sister named Jackie who was ribbed at school for her modest way of dress. She threw it right back at them. “I set the style,” she told the would-be bullies. “If you want to be cool, you dress like me.”

    Speaking of modest dress, Serena hasn’t exactly done that over the years on the tennis court. Even given that you want freedom of movement, every so often you will hear her criticized for that, primarily from people who think they can embarrass Jehovah’s Witnesses on that account. Outspokenly she has thanked Jehovah for her tennis victories, yet how does that work with the flag at the Olympics? Jehovah’s Witnesses are circumspect about the flag of any nation, declining to salute, not for any reason of protest, but because of the second of the Ten Commandments. And didn’t she cuss out that official at a certain match? Ah, well, athletes have been known to do that and people cut them slack. After all, if she was mild-mannered Clark Kent, she would find transition into Superwoman difficult.

    So she has sent mixed signals over the years. Why would that be? Ah, here it is in the Caitlyn Hitt article: Last year she told Vogue, “Being a Jehovah’s Witness is important to me, but I’ve never really practiced it and have been wanting to get into it.” Okay. She was brought up in the faith and has made part of it her own but not entirely. Apparently, she is not baptized, a big deal for Witnesses. Now, with the birth of a child, she means to change some things. The birth of a child will frequently trigger a shift in priorities. Likely, she is conscious of a spiritual need not completely attended to in her own case and she does not want the same for her daughter. Since Jehovah’s Witnesses call each other brother and sister and I am old enough to be her dad, I tweeted: ‘Knock it out of the park! You go, my daughter.' I’m sure she saw it out of the gazillion tweets she receives each day, many from JW detractors telling her that she is nuts.

    Her outspokenness served her well in another instance. When the man she was dating wished her a ‘Happy Birthday’ and she responded as she now does for her daughter, the man admired the courage. He “saw this gesture as Serena stepping outside her comfort zone for him and decided immediately that he wanted to marry her.”

    It only gets more interesting. He is Reddit founder Alexis Ohanian. He is not a Jehovah’s Witness, and was not raised with any religion at all, but is reportedly okay with Serena’s faith. Now, it turns out that Reddit is a huge online discussion forum in which topics are hosted for everything under the sun. One of those groups, with thousands of participants, is dedicated to bringing down the organization of Jehovah’s Witnesses. When Philadelphia Inquirer reporter David Gambacorta wrote (so far) four incendiary articles about Jehovah’s Witnesses, he used this group as his source of information and between articles checked in with them, as though Trump playing to his base.

    It therefore reminds – I mean, it is not a type/antitype kind of thing, but it sure does remind one of Jewish Queen Esther of long ago, married to the wealthy Persian King who had been maneuvered by enemies into decreeing that her people be destroyed, and the sentence surely would have been carried out but for Esther’s (putting her life at risk to do it) bold intervention. Yeah, why don't you go in there to Mr. Ohanian, you Reddit Witness haters, and tell him that his wife is crazy? That sounds like a brilliant plan to me. Tell him that Mr. Gambacorta is on your side. Just make sure that you read up on Haman before you do it. (See the entire short Book of Esther)

    Look, it is not parallel in all respects. Nobody is literally threatening to kill anyone, but they are threatening to kill the Christian organization that supports and coordinates the worldwide work that Jehovah’s Witnesses do, just as like-minded ones are now doing in Russia. Moreover, Mr. Ohanian cannot be expected to pull the group’s Reddit credentials; he runs a website dedicated to free speech. There is also a pro-JW group on the site, as well as a squirrelly in-between one, supposedly supportive of Witness teachings but unsupportive of the human leadership. Such will always be the sticking point in the divine/human interface. It was even true with Judas. He and God were tight. There were no problems there. But that yoyo claiming to represent him was just too much, not at all what Judas wanted to see. And those bumpkins he was attracting! Don’t even go there.

    No, it is possibly not history repeating itself. Mark Twain [allegedly} said that does not happen. History does not repeat, he said, but it does rhyme a little.

    "I am stronger than you. I bless Heaven for it," said Miss Pross to the wicked foreign woman trying to destroy her Loved One, resisting her "with the vigorous tenacity of love, always so much stronger than hate." 

    455px-Serena_Williams_at_2013_US_Open

  • Mickey Would Love It

    I wrote the Mickey Spillane summit parody for Jane Spillane, who is re-releasing the Mike Hammer tough-guy series of late 1940's private eye books. It is a spoof on what if the President had handled Putin like Mike Hammer might handle a crime boss. She loved it. She said so on my FB and Twitter feed.
     
    I wrote it because Mickey Spillane later became one of Jehovah's Witnesses and his work changed a lot. That triggered my interest in his books. Now, Jane is not a Witness, probably has mixed feelings about them at best, and may feel they were responsible for 'sabatoging' his work, since his post-JW writings lose the excess sex and violence and thereby become less of what Mickey himself once said about Hemingway and the highbrow authors: "What those guys could never get is that you sell a lot more salted peanuts than cavier."
     
    Nonetheless, there is no way she could not have picked up on his enthusiasm for the truth, and probably concedes that that is what ensured he remained the upright man he always had been. Jane is intensely political, another reason for the theme of my post. She assures me that Mickey would have been a Trump-man, too. I have not the slightest doubt of it, with the exception that he would know how to keep political leaning its place, and not disturb the peace of the congregation with such matters. All human governments will drop the ball, usually it is a bowling ball, and the only open question is upon which toe will it land. As individuals ponder their own toes, some will favor the left and some the right.
     
    Anyhow, I said to Jane that we could help each other. I will use the story to hopefully (this is extremely hard to do) flag the attention of some high profile figures, and did she want to be tagged or not?. She did. Good. It's a win-win, potentially helping both our causes. Mine is to direct attention to this blog, the first thing that hits the eye is a link for my free ebook Dear Mr Putin – Jehovah's Witnesses Write Russia, which calls attention to the plight of our people there, (along with answering many a scurilous charge) and that goal motivates nearly everything I do these days. I draw some of my inspiration from Anton Chivchalov, who devotes his European days as "an observer of Jehovah's Witnesses persecution in Russia.' These days it is important to bring one's gift to the altar.
     
    Since the violence and sex is excessive in those pre-Witness days, it is easy to dismiss the novels as so much garbage. However, as to the writing itself, Ayn Rand (The Fountainhead, Atlas Shrugged) lavished high praise on them and compared them favorably to some elite authors of the day. Mickey's own dad, I think he was a bartender, called his writing "crud." Ayn Rand did not feel that way.
     
    Atlantic Magazine (I think it was) interviewed him in later years ('I may write one more Mike Hammer, but that's it. I can't sit eight hours in a chair anymore. My rear end gets sore.') and pointed out that his latter books were winning some critical acclaim. "To Mickey's disgust, one suspects," one suspects, the author adds. Come on! It is impossible not to love this guy. He had the combination of intense interest, yes, even love, of people, coupled with an absolute lack of pretence, and a willingness to go 'in your face,' traits that were a trademark of Witnesses of a certain generation.
     
    Jane herself, I am not sure that she realized it, give me the ultimate green light, when she said of my scheme: "Mickey would love it."
     
    Mickey_Spillane's_Mike_Hammer_Diamond_Studio_City_Walk_of_Fame

  • Showdown at the Summit

    Mickey Potus strode into the room and eyed his enemy. The crime boss was not so impressive in person as when he was pretending to be a tough guy on horseback. He sat in his tailored silk suit, hoping to bluster, trying to look like he didn’t have a care in the world, but Mickey knew his entrance had shaken him to the core. The puddle of piss on the floor gave him away, That often happened when Mickey came calling.

    Mickey decided to play with this piece of human scum for a while. Real casual-like, he said to Vicious Vlad, “Let me tell you about a friend of mine, a knockout woman name Velda.” A bead of sweat broke out on Vlad’s brow. Maybe he had heard. Maybe he knew the game was up.

    “My friend Velda, she’s got intelligence, you know what I mean? She’s got real intelligence. She has more intelligence in her little finger than you have in your whole nation of goons. And Velda tells me….,” Mickey stopped dead, so that next words he said would hit the little punk with the force of a sledge hammer. Velda tells me that – you’ve – been – meddling – in – our – election.” That hit home. The little man shook.

    Mickey grabbed the punk by the lapels. “Now you listen up and you listen up good. Cut it out!” But Vlad was too much of a stool pigeon to know when to cut his losses. He voice trembled, but he tried to stammer back: “We didn’t me-me-medd….” He never got the words out. A smashing blow from Mickey’s fist sent blood and teeth flying everywhere.

    “I said ‘cut it out’” Mickey roared. What! You think I’m taking the word of scum over my intelligence? I checked out that floozie you were with and I’m not impressed. She can’t hold a candle to my Velda, a real class act, and one of these books I’m going to marry her. There won’t be any hanky-panky beforehand either. I’m kinda an old-fashioned type of guy.”

    “Now I’ve got one and only one question for you,” Mickey glowered. The little man, real cooperative all of a sudden, all the fight out of him, quavered, “Wh-What?”

    “Why don’t you get me a cup of coffee?”

  • I’m Pulling up the Rose Bushes

    They’re all going down now. Charlie Rose is the latest. Charlie Rose! The reporter who interviewed Putin and everyone else under the sun. His two CBS female cohosts somberly intoned that he would get no free pass around their newsroom sanctuary, though they had been yucking it up every morning with him for the longest time.

    I have said nice things about Charlie Rose. No more! I hate him! So that there should be no misunderstanding, I have uprooted all the rose bushes around the house.

    Ultimately half the men on the planet will go down. You can expect no less from a world that treats sex as a great sport following a date or even discarding the date altogether as unnecessary baggage. A hookup culture. What – do you think men are going to be gentlemen in those circumstances? Men will ‘get fresh’ in such atmosphere, like they always have, and both men and women will afterward reassess sex they both thought consensual at the time through the haze of alcohol.

    It is only a matter of time before Celino and Barnes set up satellite offices in each bedroom so that the paperwork is duly recorded and notorized before the action commences. “I got 10 million dollars, 80 times what the creep said he would pay,” we will hear their new ads on TV.

    Sometimes I think that the only men on earth who can be reasonably expected to behave are those at the Kingdom Hall who have agreed to God’s terms on sex. The occasional lowlife there can expect serious chastisement. Knowing that, he tends to keep his hands to himself. Cbs

  • They Welcomed Back Charlie Rose at CBSThisMoring

    They welcomed back Charlie Rose on CBSThisMorning. He’d been off a few weeks for heart surgery. His colleagues made a great fuss over him. Even Trump said ‘Welcome back, Charlie. We missed you.’ Even CBS, who hates Trump, ran the clip. Who doesn’t like it when enemies come together? Image

    You know, I switched to CBS mostly because of him, but I liked him better personally when he stuck with PBS. There, he had freedom to interview newsmakers at any length he chose – sometimes 20 minutes, sometimes 2 hours. He’s perceptive in his interviews, and that talent can’t come across on razzle-dazzle network TV. Did he sell out? Yes and no. He didn’t give up PBS. He simply went for more exposure. Goodness knows I go for more exposure. I want to sell my books, which I like.

    If anyone sold out, it is Larry King years ago. When I first heard of him in the 70’s, he was interviewing newsmakers for three hours on-air. The first hour was one-on-one. The second and third was moderating questions from the call-in audience. But he sold out to someone, and pretty soon he they had him doing only puff-pieces with celebrities, which aren’t as good.

    Nonetheless, who am I to say? A person can do what he/she wants with his/her career. Sometimes people tire of the present and want to move on. Is that so wrong? They wouldn’t be able to (in my eyes) degrade unless they were up there in the first place. I was furious with Mary Tyler Moore for sinking the Dick Van Dyke show by leaving for a solo career. But why should she not? She made shows of her own, which I didn’t like as well. Not that hers were bad, it is just that Dick Van Dyke’s was so good.

    But is there not an overall sad component to this? Charlie once stated he has enjoyed a wonderful career because he has been able to know so many newsmakers. Are they really worth knowing? I’ll take brothers and sisters in my circuit any day.

    And surely there is also something tragic about hitting maximum exposure just as you know the clock is about to run out. It is why I value the JW faith, for only they explain how that came to be, and how it will be remedied.

  • Farewell Again to Mickey Spillane

    Oh, for crying out loud! What is it with you, Sheepandgoats? How many farewells are you going to give this fellow? Didn’t you already do it here and here? Give it a rest, already!

    Yeah, I know, I know. But I can‘t help myself. One more time.

    It’s just that, if you read his interviews, he sounds like he would have made such a great grampa!

    Read up on him, and you will see you see his genuine interest in people (you might not notice that when Hammer is blowing em away) coupled with an absolute lack of pretence….an irresistible combination!  And a classic personality trait of old-timer JWs.

    And who could resist his lines? Such as when being interviewed and conversation veered into politics, which Mickey hated, but his wife enjoyed. So the wife started to hog the interview. Mickey got things back on track:

    "Can I ask you a question?" he asks her.
    "Sure."      (she knows what's coming)
    "Why don't you get me a cup of coffee?"

    And I’m not sure if, as one of Jehovah’s Witnesses (wasn't he in and out a few times?) he didn’t take the truth where it otherwise might not have gone.

    Some pioneers were talking shop a while back. 'I’ll bet John Wayne was really rough to witness to', suggested one. [John Wayne was a super patriot, and super patriots aren't always fond of Jehovah's Witnesses, misinterpreting our stands on neutrality and flag salute] But the circuit overseer was with us that week, and he cut us short will an account we hadn't heard. Back in a prior assignment, he said, some brother had called on John Wayne, who could not have been more kind or respectful. He had the highest regard for Jehovah’s Witnesses, he said, though he himself would never become one because he felt unable to live up to their standards.

    Is the story true? I have no idea. But the fact that the C.O. would relate it does give it weight.

    Now, where might John Wayne have gotten such a favorable impression of Jehovah’s Witnesses? Read Mickey's words below:

    I played in a movie called Ring of Fear …..This was where I got the Jag. The guy wrote and directed the picture had problems, but John Wayne who produced it, never gave up on his friends. Duke was having a bad time, going through a divorce, and they needed to fix the script. So they're thinking who could do it, and someone says, Spillane's a writer, he could do it. Now I'm playing ME in the picture, for pete's sake. They called me up in Newburgh on Wednesday, I'm already back home across the country, and said come back and fix it. So I took my Wagner records, flew West, and worked Friday, Saturday, Sunday. They set me up in a beautiful hotel suite, and I worked. …..And they wanta pay me for the script but I won't take nothing for that, it was a favour. But Duke says, 'he was looking at those Jags in the lot next to the Cock and Bull'. One night, I'm back in Newburgh, it's snowing, and out in front of my house is this beautiful Jag with a red ribbon around it, and a note that says 'Thanks, Duke'.

    ………………….

    Starting with "I, the Jury," in 1947, Mr. Spillane sold hundreds of millions of books during his lifetime and garnered consistently scathing reviews. Even his father, a Brooklyn bartender, called them "crud."

    "Those big-shot writers could never dig the fact that there are more salted peanuts consumed than caviar," Mickey observed.

    Spillane flaunted his lack of authorial polish claiming (mischievously) never to introduce characters with moustaches or who drank cognac because he didn't know how to spell the words.

    After a screening of "The Girlhunters" (1963), he came up…..in the lobby afterward and said, "Boy, that was awful. All I did was take that dumb raincoat on and off". Mickey was right. The movie was awful, but he was so much fun.

    ……………………

    Over the last decades (to his disgust, one suspects) he received increasing critical respect for his contributions to the idiom of crime fiction and for his having played a pioneer's role in the postwar paperback revolution.

    ……………………

    Mickey was one of the most friendly and disarmingly pleasant people that I've ever met. – Alan Rode

    And please don't go thinking that Mickey was one of those JWs who, after he hit it big, never talked about his faith, as if he considered it a career liability. Get a load of this interview:

    You were raised a Catholic, right?

    No I wasn't raised either one (Catholic or Protestant). I'm one of the Jehovahs Witnesses.

    You joined in the fifties?

    You don't join that, you have to be a witness. Witnessing is an active word.

    The word apocalyptic keeps coming up in criticism of your work. Do you believe in the second coming?

    The word coming is a misnomer. The word used is parousia in Greek, and it means 'presence'. Take President Clinton. Do you know him? No. But you feel his presence, all the taxes he lays on you. We feel his presence because we have to live under his direction. So when these things were asked of Jesus they asked 'what will be the sign of your presence, and the end of the system of things…now that was translated in the King James Bible as the end of the world. Now the word 'world' and the word 'earth' are two different things…the Bible says the earth abides forever. It's the simplicity of it, religion has turned everything inside out! Someone says how'd you like to be able to live forever? You say, oh boy would I liketa live forever, there's so many things I'd like to do, I used to be able to pass a football with either hand, now I can't throw from here to the wall…there's so many things…I think the best time for me was around 35…but if you're not a wise guy you can put up with those things…I know too many guys my age, they walk around, like they're crippled. I try to stay in good physical shape, I don't smoke, I don't drink…I'll have a beer once in a while. People say,' you have a beer, you're a Jehovah's Witness…but the Bible doesn't proclaim against drinking, it proclaims against drunkenness…anyway, someone says how'd you like to live forever…we know what death is, you can kick a dead dog, it won't bite you…but Jesus makes the greatest remark I think it's so funny nobody pays any attention, he says 'this means everlasting life', and they say what, 'you gotta stand on your head, you gotta pay knowledge, what', and he says it's taking in knowledge of you, the only true God, and that's so easy…I get so excited about this, I'll keep talking to you like this if you don't say that's enough, but this is why people think you're a nut, they say, don't people turn you down, I say 'they don't turn me down, they turn God down'. That's why people can't stop drinking, do drugs, that's why the world's the way it is…do you know a stable country in the world?

    Okay. That’s my third Mickey Spillane farewell. I’m done.

    For now.

    Some quotes are taken from the following sites:
    http://www.crimetime.co.uk/interviews/mickeyspillane.php
    http://books.guardian.co.uk/obituaries/story/0,,1823306,00.html
    http://www.filmmonthly.com/Behind/Articles/MickeySpillane/MickeySpillane.html

    Vanity Fair     December 2003

  • Another Farewell to Mickey Spillane

    Here’s the first. Click here.

    Mickey Spillane’s Black Alley…a book review:

    If private eye Mike Hammer takes some lead in the gut and needs a doctor to patch him up, will he get a loving sincere TV doctor? Or will it be the fallen skid row bum type… some has-been doctor clawing his way back to respectability? (Hint: Mike likes to swill beer with his doctor.) Is Black Alley to be a tale of redemption?

    Or is it a love story? For at long last, Mike proposes to his knock-out secretary Velda….violating doctors orders….he is not supposed to get excited, but how can you not with a woman like Velda?  She’s long hoped, but never thought, the day would come. But there will be no shacking up before the knot is tied….Mike is an old fashioned type of guy. And it’s going to be one heck of a courtship.

    See, the mob has lost all their money, and they’re not too happy about it. Turns out they think Mike knows where the dough is. The Feds think so too, and they want the money for taxes. So Mike has to dodge them both and beat them all to the stash. Oh, did I mention that he’s recuperating from a near fatal wound, and the dead beat doctor has to show up now and then to patch his guts with duct tape? Will Mike be up to the challenge?

    As Mike himself would say, don’t be a jerk! You know very well he’ll be. This is Mike Hammer! It’s the mob that better watch out!

    This is a crime story, and it may sound over the top, but writer Spillane pulls it off with flair. He’s doing what he does best…writing cops and robbers. He’s was doing it while I was still….well…he’s been doing it a long time, and it shows. His first novel sold in 1947, and he has mastered his craft. No cardboard, techno-thriller characters in Black Alley. Love and redemption subplots operate in the background. Here are characters with depth that you can care about. If they’re not entirely believable, they are nonetheless riveting, well-sketched. The bad guys are bad, the good guys are good, and they are all well worth the read.

    The preceding is the book review I wrote a while back to be released someday, and now that Mickey Spillane has died, (July 17, 2006) it seems a good a time as ever.

    Mickey was one of our people, one of Jehovah’s Witnesses. He may have been in and out once or twice….I’m not really sure….but he died faithful.

    A worthy pastime, if you are going to read any of his novels, is to find in them references to the faith. You have to bypass the first super violent Hammer novels, written from 1947 on, because he didn’t become a JW until 1952. And I’ve only read three, one of which doesn’t count: (pre-1952) I, the Jury, Black Alley, and Something’s Down There. I, the Jury was his first. Black Alley and Something’s Down There were his last.

    Mako, in Something’s Down There, speaks of the nutty evolutionists. That’s a clue. Evolutionists aren’t nutty….they’re revered. Thus, the book’s author is either a JW or a fundamentalist Christian. If he is a fundamentalist Christian, the characters will spend lots of time in church. No one does in this book, so the author must be a JW.

    But the real giveaway is Mike Hammer eying the Mafioso’s house in Black Alley. It is heavily fortified, he observes, like ancient Babylon! Mike Hammer, tough private eye, familiar with ancient Babylon?? Not likely, but Jehovah’s Witnesses know all about Babylon. They’ve studied it time and again….it’s impregnability, it’s system of canals, it’s massive walls and gates….and it’s one vulnerability. It’s imprisonment of exiled Jews. And their unexpected, even miraculous, release.

    Jehovah’s Witnesses take great interest in Babylon because its fall foreshadows events in the modern day.

    Old Testament        She has fallen! Babylon has fallen, and all the graven images of her gods he has broken to the earth!  Isa 21:9

    New Testament:      After these things I saw another angel descending from heaven, with great authority; and the earth was lighted up from his glory.  And he cried out with a strong voice, saying: “She has fallen! Babylon the Great has fallen…  Rev 18:1

    Every Jehovah’s Witness knows about this.

  • Farewell to Mickey Spillane

    Here’s a bit of writing to brighten your day!

    Caution:  graphic (not sexual) stuff ahead. Feel free to skip the next paragraph. You can always come back to it if you want.

    I snapped the side of the rod across his jaw and laid the flesh open to the bone. I pounded his teeth back into his mouth with the end of the barrel … and I took my own damn time about kicking him in the face. He smashed into the door and lay there bubbling. So I kicked him again and he stopped bubbling.

    Isn’t that a bit…..um….violent?

    Yes, it is, and it was penned by Mickey Spillane, who died last week at 88 years of age.  He was the most selling author of the twentieth century. But I’ve never heard of him, complain the twenty-somethings. That’s because his monster-sellers were written late 40’s and early 50’s, starting with I, the Jury, in which tough private eye Mike Hammer set out to avenge his pal’s murder. He’s gonna plug the sadistic creep when he finds him, instead of arresting him for trial, because…..well….the title says it all!

    Spillane wrote it quickly, in just nine days, because he needed a down payment for a home. Within two years, he had achieved superstar-author status.

    And then he became one of Jehovah’s Witnesses.

    The guy who brought broads and blood to the reading masses is a Jehovah's Witness, a fundamentalist [group] that preaches the imminent end of the world. "There's nothing phony about them. Everything they say is true," says Spillane, a one-time "nominal" Protestant converted years ago by a Jehovah's Witness who knocked on his door.

    [We would never characterize ourselves as a fundamentalist group…..indeed, we maintain a certain distance from those folks. But, alas, sometimes people confuse us with them……Sheepandgoats]

    This posed a problem for Mike Hammer, because Jehovah’s Witnesses are not blood and guts people. Of course, Mike Hammer didn’t become a JW, Mickey Spillane did, but Mike, as an invented person, can’t do squat without Mickey’s okay. In 1952 he (Mickey) told Life magazine: There are more books on the way, but they won't contain the things that bolster the excuses for the moral breakdown of this present generation. I've changed my work and course of action to be in harmony with Jehovah's Kingdom. Spillane didn’t write again for 10 years.

    When he did, Mike Hammer was somewhat tamer, though hardly domesticated. The bad guys, after all, are bad, and you can only be so nice in dealing with them. New characters appeared as well: Tiger Mann, (not Woods) a James Bond wannabe of the 1970’s. Spillane also wrote a couple of children’s books, The Day the Sea Rolled Back (1979) and The Ship That Never Was (1982).

    I wrote those books as an exercise, they sold, they won the Junior Literary Guild Award, which made all the guys who write kids books very aggravated, 'how can you win that award?', but you know what that does, it gets you into all the school libraries, which is a lot of sales.

    For about twenty years, he did Miller Lite TV commercials…. we made Miller Lite the second largest selling beer in the world and everybody said 'no one'll drink that stuff'.

    High-brow authors thought his writing stunk to high heaven, but Ayn Rand (The Fountainhead, Atlas Shrugged) loved it. She examines a passage of his writing:

    "The rain was misty enough to be almost foglike, a cold gray curtain that separated me from the pale ovals of white that were faces locked behind the steamed-up windows of the cars that hissed by. Even the brilliance that was Manhattan by night was reduced to a few sleepy yellow lights off in the distance" — and then compares it to a passage by Thomas Wolfe — "The city had never seemed as beautiful as it looked that night. For the first time he saw that New York was supremely, among the cities of the world, a city of night. There had been achieved here a loveliness that was astounding and incomparable, a kind of modern beauty, inherent to its place and time, that no other place nor time could match."

    To Rand, "there is not a single emotional word or adjective in Spillane's description; he presents nothing save visual facts; but he selects only those facts, only those eloquent details, which convey the visual reality of the scene and create a mood of desolate loneliness." Wolfe, she argued, used only estimates, "and in the absence of any indication of what aroused these estimates, they are arbitrary assertions and meaningless generalities."

    I’ve only read three of Mickey Spillane’s novels: his first, and his last two. So I have a few to catch up on. I wrote to him, but he never replied. However it was only a few months ago, and I guess he’d been in bad health. He was 88, after all. And I had to go through his publisher; my letter to his googled address came back undeliverable.

    In his 80's, he knew he wouldn't write too much longer.

    I'm going to write my last Mike Hammer novel…I used to write fast, but I can't now, my rear end gets tired…I can't put in 12 hours a day sitting in a chair.