Celebrity Scientologists

Scientology investigated Trey Parker and Matt Stone after the Trapped in a Closet episode.

It's not so much the invasion of privacy: yada, yada, yada it's that someone was out of touch enough to think they would find ANYTHING capable of embarassing Matt and Trey.

On ONTD they are speculating that Travolta's current media mess is a Scino strike aimed at his attempted defection over his son's death. I'm not sure why Travolta would be worth the effort at this point, but the clams have never let that sort of rationality cloud things for them before. Plus it gives us a new angle to gossip,because Battlefield Earth is the only Earth that John's gay rumors are news on.

Lisa Marie Presley out? Good for her, I think there have been stories about her growing antipathy for The Church since the Michael Jackson divorce, but I'm always glad when someone takes even a vaguely public stand against Co$.

Maybe Priscilla should have married Michael, since I think she now spends all her time in a cryo-chamber in between plastic surgery bouts.

I hope she finds happiness, she is the one person who has done nothing to deserve the Church of Scientology.

So back in the news thanks to Travolta and Cruise.

I still can't get over that it's a religion founded by a bad science fiction writer. And it's a genre that doesn't have the most exacting standards considering two of its leading lights are Lucas and Rodenberry. The B-Lister is the prophet?

Personally it's a shame Phillip K Dick never started a religion just for the easy jokes.

I remember when I was a kid how Dianetics used to be advertised on TV. The voiceover would use MOMENT OF IMPORTANCE voice to say "DIANETICS BY L. RON HUBBARD" availableatyourlocalbookstore.

big chicken wrote:I remember when I was a kid how Dianetics used to be advertised on TV. The voiceover would use MOMENT OF IMPORTANCE voice to say "DIANETICS BY L. RON HUBBARD" availableatyourlocalbookstore.

With the graphic of the exploding volcano! My husband said he wanted to get it because he thought it was about geology.

big chicken wrote:I remember when I was a kid how Dianetics used to be advertised on TV. The voiceover would use MOMENT OF IMPORTANCE voice to say "DIANETICS BY L. RON HUBBARD" availableatyourlocalbookstore.

When my now 40 year old brother was about 9, he bought this book for my mother for Christmas because he knew that she liked to read. It was pretty hilarious. We still have the book.

I remember those commercials. They were so bad. I don't think I ever really understood what they were about until I got older and realized that they were connected to Scientology.

The other day I was watching Access Hollywood and they were playing clips of this two hour interview that Billy Bush did with Tom Cruise and he talked about giving people his number. They'd call him up in the middle of the night and he'd just talk to them to help them. The manic look in his eye was super creepy.

Hee, I remember the Dianetics book commercials, too!

I also remember seeing Kirstie Alley on a talk show a long, long time ago. It must have been shortly after she became a Scientologist. They were asking her about it, and she was going on and on about "engrams" and how Scientology could cure them or fix them or whatever the hell they claimed to do. I always assumed that was what the "e" in "e-meter" stood for, but I don't know for sure.

What with the problems Cruise and Travolta are having, maybe the Clams are running a bit scared right now.

I think you're right about the e in e-meter. Martin Gardener did an awesome takedown of Dianetics in his 1957 book on pseudoscience, "Fads and Fallacies," and I think I read that in his chapter on it.

When I first moved to Vancouver and was looking for work I went to a job interview in someone's office in the back of a house (I know, I know, but I was young and stupid). Anyway, when I got there they asked my sales experience and what I could bring to the job - normal stuff, and then they asked if I could do a couple of quick tests for them to see if I would fit in with the company. I said sure and was presented first with an IQ test and then with a personality quiz.

During this time I noticed a large poster of someone who looked vaguely familiar to me hanging on the back wall but I couldn't quite place him. I did the IQ test and started on the personality test. Towards the end of that test the two people who were in the office finished grading the IQ test and they both made a point to say how smart I was. One of them looked at me a little suspiciously and said, "You're very, very intelligent." I quoted Cordelia Chase about doing well on standardized tests because I do, and finished the personality test. It was then, once I was looking around that I notice the hundreds of books on the shelves that were all Dianetics, The Way to Happiness, and basically everything written by ol' L. Ron. It was then I realised I had stumbled into a den of Scientology.

They marked the personality quiz and I plotted my way out of there. But I never heard from them again. I'm mostly relieved but a little miffed that I was somehow not deemed worthy for the Scientologists.

Eeek, dionneshea. Yeah, I love the roving recruiters who try to get you to take a personality test, or as I like to call it, the Cult Susceptibility Test.

My stepdad said he was once passing a Scientology center in Boston (a long while back in his youth) and they were trying to get him to come in and he finally did, out of curiosity (fully aware of Scientology and what it was). We were like "What HAPPENED?" all breathlessly, and he said not much really, but it was really, really hard to leave. They just kept talking.

I remember going to a Library conference and there was a booth in the exhibition area that was really pushing the works of L. Ron for public and academic libraries. They kept asking people to swipe their badges to get entered into some sort of give away. I didn't care what they were giving away; there was no way I was going to give them my information!

The Ayn Rand people were less creepy than them!

Occasionally the Scientologists send out free unsolicited copies of L. Ron Hubbard's books to libraries and various other organizations. They just show up in a big cardboard box out of the blue. I have taken great pleasure in binning them in the recycling in previous workplaces.

I've forgotten why we called Scientologists "clams". Is that a Snarkfest thing, or a general slang term?

big chicken wrote:I remember when I was a kid how Dianetics used to be advertised on TV. The voiceover would use MOMENT OF IMPORTANCE voice to say "DIANETICS BY L. RON HUBBARD" availableatyourlocalbookstore.

I remember them being on during afternoon cartoons, which I'm sure the South Park guys were watching too. I wonder if it was intentional or just where they could afford advertising.

I think the first time it occured to me that it was a cult was a joke on MST3K spoofing their add. "Why do I hurt inside? page 48 How do we get all of Tom Cruise's money? Page 25"

Scientologists believe human beings evolved from clams (yes, really) and that we suffer emotional distress whenever we see people doing physical actions, like opening and closing their hands or jaw, that resemble the movement of clam shells opening and closing (yes, really). One of the ways Thetans - the ghosts of the dead volcano aliens - attach themselves to humans is by exploiting the emotional weakness created by triggering a clam flashback (yes, really).

The use of Clam as a derogatory slang name comes from the anti/former Scientologists, like the people who run Operation Clambake.

"DIANETICS BY L. RON HUBBARD" availableatyourlocalbookstore.

Should be used for entertainment purposes only.

Pop'n'Fresh, I'd actually forgotten most of that stuff about clams and I'm basically bouncing with glee over here reading that again. Oh God, I love the Thetan Xenu Clam Intergalactic War stuff so so so much.

Part of the Hubbard mythology has humans evolving from clams, or something equally stupid. The first Anti-Scientology website was called "Operation Clambake" in ironic homage, and I think they were the ones to use the clam moniker first. They had pages on Cruise and how everything was to be at his beck and call, including flower fields to romp in that were made by cult grunts. Basically they lost L Ron and they keep thinking they will recruit a publicity messiah that the masses will flock to. That is why they wanted Elvis' gene pool, etc.

I had forgotten those stories about Tom Cruise needing people to plant fields of wildflowers so he could frolic in them! That seems like such quaint craziness now.

Now I just feel really badly for actual clams, which can be delicious. I'm eating a plate of my ancestors with fries, oh noes! The more I find out (or have my memory refreshed) about Scientology, the more I'm convinced that story about how Hubbard started the religion on a bet with Gene Roddenberry must be true. Does anyone else remember a crazy-long blind item story that was out around the first TomKat media blitz, about Tom Cruise hounding people on the set of War of the Worlds to conform to Scientology standards, or convert, or something along those lines? I remember reading this long story about CTC trying to tell (who everyone guessed was) Steven Spielberg he was handling his marriage wrong, and Spielberg getting very angry.

I heard worse- that Tom Cruise sent an auditor to one of Spielberg's neices house, who had been diagnosed with autism. The Great Kate aka Mrs Spielberg took MAJOR offence, and a shoving match started Between the Director and Cruise and they had to be pulled apart. Tom is really,really clueless about women Who You Don't Piss Off.

And Spielberg hasn't worked with Cruise since. I remember both those stories, I could've sworn some story about on-set confrontations wasn't even blind.

Poubelle wrote:And Spielberg hasn't worked with Cruise since. I remember both those stories, I could've sworn some story about on-set confrontations wasn't even blind.

I remember this too. I can't remember if it was thinly veiled or completely open, but there was a Scientology recruitment table on set next to craft services or something, and Spielberg was NOT having it.