Is It Just Me or Is Everything Shit? (26 page)

Certainly, on one level, an addiction to prescription painkillers does have logic on its side. If taking drugs is a way of killing the pain, then clearly the ultimate painkilling drug would be the painkiller. It’s kind of the mother lode. But the outlaw chic that drug use supposedly confers on the user is somewhat diluted by the “prescription” element.

Did Francis Ford Coppola and crew film
Apocalypse Now
on drugs that made your legs wobbly and your speech slow and slurred? They did not. They used high-octane cocaine. These were very much the go-getters of the age. Would they ever have made it up the river pumped up on Xanax? No, they would just have wobbled about in the hotel room for a while. Then they’d have had a bite to eat.

XENU

The Church of Scientology’s theory of Xenu, its highest level of wisdom, must be imparted only to those who have ascended to the zenith of human development (that is, people like Tom Cruise). This is because lesser people trying to process the revelations may die; that is actually the stated reason. But we will now reveal to you what OT (Operating Thetan) level Scientologists pay probably hundreds of thousands of dollars and devote many years of effort to learn. Be brave. Gird thyself, or turn away, damn you . . .

Basically, humans are made of clusters of spirits (or “thetans”) who were banished to earth some 75 million years ago by an evil galactic warlord named Xenu. Suspecting rebellion due to overpopulation, Xenu—ruler of a galactic confederacy that consisted of 26 stars and 76 planets (including the earth, which was then known as Teegeeack)—duped citizens into attending “income tax inspections,” where he drugged them and shipped them off to Teegeeack. They wore clothes “which looked very remarkably like the clothes they wear this very minute” (wrote L. Ron Hubbard), and were shipped in planes that were exact copies of Douglas DC-8s, “except the DC-8 had fans, propellers on it and the space plane didn’t.”

Through the Scientology process of “auditing,” the thetan—who has lived through many past lives and will continue to live beyond the death of the body—can free itself of “engrams” and “implants” (the accumulated crud of ages) and thus recover its native spiritual abilities—gaining control over matter, energy, space, time, thoughts, form, and life. This freed state is called Operating Thetan.

How are you feeling? Dead yet? Do you still want a free stress test?

Scientology claims to be the “study of truth.” Which is almost amusing. The church was founded in 1954 by L. Ron Hubbard. Tired of his unsuccessful attempts to be a pulp writer (he had also previously flunked college and was discharged from the U.S. Navy), he told acquaintances: “I’d like to start a religion. That’s where the money is”; and “If a man really wants to make a million dollars, he should start a religion.” So he started a religion and got rich. The richer the church got, the more Hubbard could deal with his own stress—ultimately de-stressing by cruising around the Mediterranean in his own liner with lots of foxy women in uniforms attending on him. (Since Hubbard’s death in 1986, the church has been run by David Miscavige.)

How did Hubbard discover the “Space Opera” that is the Xenu revelation? The revelation came to him in 1966–67, when he conducted a series of “audits” on himself to unearth what he believed to be his hidden or suppressed memories, using an EMeter (the primitive lie detector used by Scientology in its stress tests/“intensives”). In a letter to his wife of the time, Mary Sue, Hubbard said that to assist his research he was drinking a great deal of rum and taking a cocktail of stimulants and depressants (“I’m drinking lots of rum and popping pinks and grays”). His assistant, Virginia Downsborough, revealed that he “was existing almost totally on a diet of drugs.” Well, it was the mid-1960s: Everyone was at it. But you wouldn’t let “I Had Too Much to Dream (Last Night)” by the Electric Prunes become the basis for a religion, would you?

The church now claims ten million members in 159 countries and more than six thousand churches, missions, and outreach groups. Volunteers sign contracts donating a “billion years” of labor. Scientology charges for virtually all its services: Intensives, those little chats about your engrams, can, according to Janet Reitman in
Rolling Stone,
“cost anywhere from $750 for introductory sessions to between $8,000 and $9,000 for advanced sessions.” Being registered as a religion, of course, means the church is tax-exempt.

Anyone thinking critically within the church is marked down as a Potential Trouble Source. Those trying to leave have to go through a yearlong “route out” process, during which they are put under immense pressure to stay. Critics outside the church have been intimidated with litigation, and also by more direct, old-fashioned methods.

Katie Holmes was, of course, famously told by the church to remain silent while giving birth to Tom Cruise’s child (lest the trauma induce engrams in the baby). A spokesperson for the church claimed they actually meant the delivery staff, and Katie could make the occasional noise if she absolutely needed to. Oh, that’s okay then. Except that the average woman would probably appreciate a few words of encouragement from delivery staff during labor. It really hurts.

But what do we non-Scientologists—or “common, ordinary, run of the mill, garden-variety humanoid[s]” (Hubbard)—know? Who are we to question the right of people to be blackmailed, brainwashed, and separated from their families while having their heads filled with horseshit about aliens? Each to their own. Or, as Kabbalah-worshipping freak Madonna put it: “If it makes Tom Cruise happy, I don’t care if he prays to turtles.”

Thus speaks the voice of reason.

Y

YOUTUBE SPAM

To be scrupulously fair about this, we do admire and respect these people’s work rate. To manage to insert an advert for your hot MILF swingers site into the discussion thread under nearly every single video posted by the millions of YouTube users worldwide does represent a level of dedication and downright industriousness that we’re always being told is lacking among the young people nowadays.

It’s still grossly stupid and highly irritating, however. All you’re trying to do is while away the seconds until death by watching obscure clips of The Faces whom, let’s face it, you don’t even like that much but it beats working . . .

don’tstopthenight
(2 days ago):

The early 70’s . . . Rod was true to his rock n roll roots back then, solo or with The Faces. Excellent!

bluemagoo
(1 day ago):

Is this Rock ‘n’ Roll?????

xmo99er
(1 day ago):

Looks like Nicky Hopkins on piano. These guys rocked, what a great band.

captaincaptain
(1 day ago):

Nope . . . that’s the great Ian McLagan . . .

cottoneyejoe
(2 days ago):

Definitively Faces it was a great band.

Awesome

zebb27849
(2 days ago):

for hot teen babes, go to hotteenbabes.com. they’re hot.

yeswe’realonenowtiffany2
(2 days ago):

Thats an Armstrong plexiglass guitar Woody is using. The prototype was used by Keith during the Stones’ 69 tour.

A variation on this is certain users’ obsession with grading any female by how “hot” she is. Any female at all. This is not limited to music videos featuring gyrating honeys, but extends to serious actresses involved in moments of high drama (say, Charlize Theron in
Monster
(“hot”) and even footage of German Chancellor Angela Merkel . . .

hoochiecoochieman
(6 days ago)

SOOOOOOOOO HOT.

jimbo12
(6 days ago)

She’s, like, the hottest.

hoochiecoochieman
(6 days ago)

Yeah, a hottie.

jimbo12
(6 days ago)

Hot stuff.

hoochiecoochieman
(6 days ago)

A hot one. Hot--to--trot.

mangodave
(2 days ago):

I don’t like her.

yeswe’realonenowtiffany2
(2 days ago):

Thats a vintage Ralph Lauren blazer she’s wearing, from the Spring-Summer 98 collection. The one with the three-button cuffs.

zebb27849
(2 days ago):

for hot teen babes, go to hotteenbabes.com. they’re hot.

YUMMY MOMMIES

Don’t just lie there! It’s been two hours since you’ve given birth. Get on that treadmill now. Or you’re never going to “snap right back” by the end of the frigging week. Society expects! Or, at least, a certain part of vile Hollywood monied tosspot society expects. Before your newborn’s first month, you must be playing
Bartok for Babies
while baking organic muesli bars. If you do not spend on your child in its first three months the same as the average yearly wage, then your child will be ugly and stupid. And who wants that?

The country is now so crazed with the desire to produce “alpha children” that some toddlers are even going to Japanese classes. One recent article reported that one two-year-old had reportedly been taught Roman numerals, French, and Latin. At nursery, instead of mixing with other children, she just stood howling—possibly in disbelief at the quality of her peers’ conjugation.

We wonder what’s the Japanese for “teenage nervous breakdown.”

Z

Z-LIST CELEBRITIES AS FUCKWIT PUNDITS

On what had to be the slowest news day of the year, ABC News’s Julia Bain reported that Stephen Baldwin—aka the born-again Baldwin or the Baldwin who looks like a retarded Muppet—decided, after much “homework,” that he is endorsing Senator Sam Brownback in the 2008 presidential race. Thank God! Now we know who to vote for!

Except that Brownback dropped out of the race a mere two months after Stephen’s endorsement. Good call, Stevie. Oh, and also: I am not taking political advice from the second lead from
Bio-Dome.

Harry Belafonte went and did one better, going to Venezuela and calling President Bush “the greatest terrorist in the world.” Careful, Harry! Osama hates being snubbed. He’s already got a long list of U.S. celebs willing to pass off his own big moment as the work of the famously competent U.S. government. Charlie Sheen saw what was happening. He was there. Well, he wasn’t there, but he saw it on TV: “It just didn’t look like any commercial jetliner I’ve flown on any time in my life and then when the buildings came down later on that day I said to my brother ‘call me insane, but did it sorta look like those buildings came down in a controlled demolition?’ ”

Call him insane? No, call him some kind of special genius! The government must be so pissed. They’d gotten thousands of conspirators committed to secrecy on pain of death, covered all their tracks, and thought they’d gotten away with mass murder. They hadn’t reckoned on Charlie Sheen, though.

Right at this moment, they’re probably yelling at each other in some bunker in Nevada: “Damn that Charlie Sheen—looks like we really underestimated that guy! We should have remembered that he’d be seeing it all on TV. But how did he pick up all that knowledge about the physical properties of skyscrapers? We just thought he was an expert on group sex . . .”

Z-LIST CELEBRITIES SAVING THE PLANET

Saving the planet is one of the major challenges facing the planet. Luckily, the celebrities know the score and are fighting—literally fighting—to do their bit. It’s almost—
almost
—enough to make you think.

The poster child of worthless celebrities, Paris Hilton, is now a green-flag-waving environmentalist. While in Berlin promoting a new sparkling wine sold in cans (no joke, and no, we don’t know what that means, either), Paris proudly told an entertainment blog that she “turns off the lights, doesn’t leave the TV on or the water running when she leaves her house.” That’s not environmentalism; that’s just leaving your house. It’s common fucking sense! Did you used to flood the house
every
time you went outside?

Cameron Diaz also attempted to encourage environmental awareness with her MTV ecotourism show
Trippin.
The series showed Diaz and her famous friends touring developing nations, often in a full-size Chevy SUV—despite several onscreen, anti-SUV factoids detailing how environmentally unfriendly SUVs are. More importantly, it gave Drew Barrymore the rare opportunity to brag on TV, “I took a poo in the woods hunched over like an animal. It was awesome.”

Most moving of all is the contribution of John Mayer, the Live Earth performer who has used his position of power to tell people all about the problems facing the world and how we must all . . . do pretty much fuck-all! “Pick one thing to change this year, and keep the rest of your life the same,” he ordered his followers on a 2007 blog.

None of that “brow-beating people” with all that negative shit. You’ve just gotta take it nice and easy: “I drive a Porsche SUV, I still drink lots of bottled water, and I will be flying private charter several times during my summer tour. However, my bus has been converted to Bio-Diesel . . .”

One step at a time, people! Converting the world economy to avoid global catastrophe is actually just a case of “trying to be healthier,” like nibbling on the odd grape and doing sit-ups. Then we’ll be sweet!

But surely, if you are dipping your toe into green waters to tell everyone about how they shouldn’t get too worked up about things that are worth getting worked up about or you’ll just end up turning people off and then no one will do anything, while the entire world burns around our melting ears, then what you essentially are doing is WASTING EVERYONE’S FUCKING TIME.

Acknowledgments

Steve Lowe and Alan McArthur woud like to thank everyone they have worked with at Little, Brown Book Group in London and Grand Central Publishing in New York.

Brendan Hay would like to thank: my lovely wife, Jennifer Chen, for being a rock star; my parents, John and Maureen Hay, for encouraging my writing; my managers at Tom Sawyer Entertainment, Rachel Miller and Jesse Hara, for keeping me busy, as well as their assistant Rachel Tobias for keeping them organized; Ben Greenberg and Bob Castillo at Grand Central Publishing for all their help and guidance; Ben Karlin for putting in the kind word that got me involved in this project; and my cat, Bentley, for keeping me company during my long hours at the computer.