anyhoo, tonight, I planned to go pick up my friend Kelly, head down to Hollywood, and go see a free Q and A screening of that new, really hot movie "Wanted." You know, the one with Angelina Jolie and James McAvoy...
The confirmation email clearly did state that they DO overbook these free screenings, and that you should arrive plenty early to get admitted. Kelly and I showed up an hour and ten minutes early, and the line was already wrapping around the Los Angeles Film School building. We stood in line for about 2 minutes, then realized that the theater was most likely not big enough to seat everyone in line up until us. So we walked west on Sunset and hit up a coffee bean, then had the brilliant idea to go stop in at the church of Scientology building on Hollywood. It was close by, and we were both up for an adventure, plus we were just down right curious.
So we walk in, and its a very nice building, which I'm sure is funded by its many celeb and otherwise richy rich church members, and behind the front desk sits a very pretty, perfect skin, perfect smile, perfect hair, perfect little size zero, woman, who greeted us with a smile and asked how she could help us. I quickly said, "ah, yes, we would like to take the tour."
"Very good, it will take about 40 minutes to walk through. If you will just take a seat, and I'll get there receptionist."
So, Kelly and I took a seat and read all the nicely illuminated quotes about how amazing and wonderful Scientology and its founder, L. Ron Hubbard are. Of course, Tom Cruise, Kirstie Alley, and John Travolta were among the quotees. We were soon ushered into the tour by the same girl who greeted us, I guess she couldn't find the "receptionist" who was supposed to take us through the tour herself, so she did it.
It was really all about L. Ron Hubbard....which, after you've heard L. Ron enough, you start to think of that rather unfortunate company that went under a few years back....but anyway, apparently he was some Navy officer son who grew up with indians and was some prodigy eagle scout who traveled the world on Naval ships and studied EXACTLY 21 different cultures, always in pursuit of answering the deep questions of life, such as the existence of Man and Life and all that jazz. He studied engineering in college so he was pretty scientific, but he also was really intruiged by eastern religions he came in contact with in his travels, so he tried to find a way to apply the reason of science to...eastern mysticism. Seems kinda contradictory, but oh well.
He was also a very prolific writer of pulp fiction and sci fi novels. That's what he's most known for really. He then wrote this very famous book called "Dianetics," which attempts to answer questions of people's mental state and how they come to behave in certain ways. They think that every condition is linked to an event that happened in your life, because you have a part of your brain called your "reactive mind," which is constantly recording everything that happens to you in your life, while your are conscious OR EVEN UNCONSCIOUS. (dun dun dun....) Let's say you are afraid of clowns. Now, most people would call you crazy and irrational to have a fear of clowns right? Why on earth are you afraid of clowns?! For the life of you, you cant' remember. Scientology has the answer. You go to "auditing," which is basically their spiritual mentoring, and you sit down and hold an "e- meter" (which is basically some weird dial with two wires attached to two tin cans which you hold in your hand) and you go back to that first traumatic experience you had with clowns that made you act in your irrational manner. Through your auditing, you work to get over all your fears and whatnot, so that you are now a normal person who is unafraid of clowns.
In fact, Kelly and I got to experience this emeter thing first hand. The girl told us to hold a tin can in each hand and think of something that makes us angry. I did it, and sure enough, the little arrow on the dial shot from the left to the right. On Kelly it did the same thing. I asked, "are you sure this has nothing to do with rising blood pressure, or anything like that?"
"Oh, no, your thoughts are energy, this machine sends a current of energy through your body, and your thoughts exert a certain resistance to the energy current."
ah...its all so clear now.
Of course you don't learn the REALLY creepy things about scientology by going on the tour. That knowledge only comes with being a member of the church for many years. Fortunately, a girl left the church not long ago and posted all this top secret info on her website, which the peeps at South Park found and made a show out of. Apparently, everything in this episode is real...watch it. It's pretty gosh darn funny as well as informative.
TRAPPED IN THE CLOSET
http://www.southparkstudios.com/guide/912
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