MARY AND CHRIST WILL HUG AND KISS YOU FOREVER IN HEAVEN
I keep finding stuff that's important - and by "important" I mean "related to either Jesus, Oprah, or Kirstie Alley." I really could care less if Oprah hates Rachael Ray - who can blame Her? - but it's really too much to have an arrow pointing out Kiristie and saying "Even her ankles are fat!" That's just mean. Isn't it? I mean, I laughed out loud when I read it, but is this really the point of magazines - to recreate high school pettiness in a more public and embarassing forum? Speaking of forums, a friend of mine and one of the "gentle readers" of this blog, attended a thing called The Landmark Forum awhile back, and enthusiastically advocated that people join and check it out, since he'd enjoyed it so much. I was afraid it might be something like Scientology without the aliens and the potato clock, though, and I didn't go. He said you worked on a large project as part of your training, and since my main goal in life currently is to start my own Oprah Winfrey-based cult, it seemed like it would be redundant to join a different cult in order to accomplish that. Then this girl at work just yesterday morning said she'd met my other friend last night at a Landmark session, and that I should come to an introductory session. I told her I didn't want to go to a self-help thing, and she said I would like it and it's great and I should come to an introductory session. Then our meeting started, but when it ended I saw her on the elevator, and she kept talking about the forum and how I should come to her introductory session, that she loves it so much she volunteers there, and as the elevator doors were shutting she suggested that maybe I'd like to come to her introductory session. She was so enthusiastic, in fact, that I became markedly suspicious. It was sounding a little too much like a collective cooperative community outreach program project to me, so as we all should do in times of confusion, I asked myself, "What would Oprah do?" Oprah would ask one of her Production Assistants to look into it for Her, I'm sure, but since I don't have any PA's handy, I looked it up myself. It turns out the Landmark Forum is the 1990's reinterpretation of "est." Est, you may recall, is mentioned by Sandra Bernhard on the opening to her album, Excuses For Bad Behavior, Part 1, so naturally I have discussed it at length with The Clever Man. If you'll allow me the courtesy of quoting myself, I wrote the following est-related anecdote back in 2005: 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.
I'm less bitter about The English Patient these days, but I'm never going to get those - what was it, three or four hours long? Seemed like five at least- several hours of my life back, am I? So I guess from reading this bit here, it's not the same exact thing as est - they have more frequent bathroom breaks, at the least - but I really think I'm going to continue my own self-induced self-help course rather than join that one - currently my self-help book is Spy: The Funny Years. Even though it's not actually a cult, I still just don't think it's for me. I tend to self-help through books rather than groups. I'm glad my friend and coworker enjoy it, though, and on the plus side est is actually listed on the enemies list of Scientology, so at the very least they are on the opposite side of whatever Tom Cruise's side is - ha ha. I did find an interesting bit on this other page of people's descriptions of their session: "God" was only mentioned a couple times, and then only in passing; the time I remember well is when the trainer told us he could only tell us one thing about God: "She's black".
Well, they got that right! 
A whole pile of these fliers appeared in our neighborhood this week. They are strangely Warhol-ian for a crazy person's street sign, don't you think? My favorite line is "MARY AND CHRIST WILL HUG AND KISS YOU FOREVER IN HEAVEN." That's a nice thought, isn't it? And you know it has to be true because it's written in ALL CAPS. Not so nice is "YOU MUST KEEP THE TEN COMMANDMENTS OR THE DEVIL WILL TAKE YOU AND YOUR FAMILY AND MAKE BATS OF YOU." O-men. | 
