Confidential to Todd: 

I'm sorry...but I simply won't stand for that kind of talk.

I haven't had any porn over here in ages, I tell you, except for that really important and relevant picture of Vincent Gallo's denouement in The Brown Bunny, and that was an ART FILM, you poopiehead, so it was necessary for commentary and crititque. 

Well, I was going to tell you all a funny story about est, but now I'm not so sure I feel like it any more. 

Really, you'd like to hear it?  Even though it's not porn and it isn't about Todd, the poopiehead? 

Well, okay, you wrestled it out of me.  (What a terrific audience!  Please sit down, all of you - it's too much!)

The Clever Man once told me the following anecdote:  A friend of his went to an est orientation several years ago.  I believe the whole est thing is defunct now, so it would have had to be awhile ago. 

est, if you don't know (and I barely know myself) was a wacky spirituality thing that was popular in the 70's, much like Scientology , The Kabbalah Center, and Christianity are popular these days. 

Apparently, what they would do at the est induction seminar is that they'd get a big group of people - and possibly Linda Evans -  into a big room where they'd yammer away with their spirituality hokum introductory crap - lying on mats and closing their eyes and self-actualizing and all that sort of zen-like meditation hibberty-jibberty, but here's the funny part: they wouldn't let you leave, even to go to the bathroom, and it went on for hours. 

At some point during this excercise, you were suppposed to have some sort of transcendental moment, where you would get "It".  "It" was some sort of unexplainable moment of realization or something, but apparently it couldn't be explained to people unless you had them lying on mats for hours on end, bladders swelling, stomachs growling, and at some point they would just get "It." 

You would ask an est  person, "Well, what is 'It'?" and they would say, "I can't explain "It," you just have to experience "It"!"

So CM's friend is lying there after several hours of this irritation, eyes closed, being led in some sort of mediation exercise, and she falls asleep!  But then, even worse, she is awakened some unknown time later - not by her bladder, like you'd expect - but she is awakened by the oohs and ahhs of excitement of everyone around her- they had just gotten "It"!  She'd slept right through "It" and missed the whole thing! 

All those hours of hunger and meditation and pee-holding-in had been wasted on her! 

I bet that really sucked. 

She never had the energy to go back and put up with the whole thing again to find out what the hell she had missed.  I have a feeling "It" was just an enormous diappointment, like The English Patient, but, like The English Patient,  no one wants to admit that they'd wasted that much time on something that shitty, so they just pretend it was great, even though it sucked, big time.

But, as horrible as that whole disappointment must have been, I bet it wasn't nearly as big a disppointment as Todd is, because Todd is a total pussy.

That is all.