Adventures In Scientology

In light of what Brokie just posted, I thought it would be timely to tell you all a horrifying story; a story so bone chilling you won't sleep for weeks.

It is tentitivly titled: "That Time Cristen and I Decided to Go to the Scientology Celebrity Centere"


It all began one fine, lovely, sunny California day when I called Cristen because I was in her neck of the woods. I needed to go buy some things, so I decided that we should go together. As we were heading down towards, well fine Amoeba Records and Hustler (don't even ask), we passed something we pass very often: The Church of Scientology Celebrity Centre". As we were in the car, we both turned to each other and said, hey, why don't we try to sneak in there?

See, what you may or may not know about Cristen and I is that we have a slight problem with tersspassing into places where we are not allowed to go; the more forbidden, the better.

After my first attempt at parallel parking (it only took about 20 minutes) we headed for the main gate.

It seemed a little risky to just barge right in, we needed to get a lay of the land. We werent sure how to pull this off, so we decided to first head around the side entrance.

After making our way through this maze thing we headed up the stairs and saw:


There were gardens and courtyards and SCORE, a resteraunt. See, people less psychotic as Crist and I, resteraunts are always good because, if questioned, you can always tell people you are meeting someone there, waiting for a table, ect. If they get too suspicious, pretend you just got a call saying they can't meet you for lunch, and get the hell out of there.

Anyways, we decided this back ent=rance thing was the way to go, so we walked around the resteraunt, through a back door and into a long, mahogany hall.

Now that we were inside, we needed to regroup, so we headed into a bathroom. After applying lipstick and discussing our plan (we were "guests" at the hotel, and therefore entitled to walk around the lobby) we ventured out. Right accross from the bathroom was something we hadnt noticed when we walked in:



This my friends is L. Ron Hubbard's office, and this picture does not do the creepyness of it justice. It is like a presidential museum, its roped off and has a little plaque (which said somehting to the effect that even tho the guy's dead they always have to keep an office for him.) What they ALSO didn't decide to tell us about were these weird machines in the corner (not pictured). They kinda looked like suitcases that, when opened, had little film reels and wires in them.

We decided that us staring into this room in horror was a bit suspicious, so we stuck with the plan and headed towards the lobby. There was a smaller lobby at the end of the mahogany hall: it had a partition wall made up of posters and flat screen TV's telling us about all the different fundamentals of Scientology. At the end of this lobby was a reception desk and stairs leading up and back into a hall. We knew that this was where we wanted to explore, however the reception desk was posing a slighht problem. Instead, we decided to go around the partition wall and into the other part of the lobby.

Isn't that beautiful? Seriously, aside from this being really creepy it was gorgeous. See those stairs in the back? More on those later.

So after we had hung around the lobby a little bit, we decided we had to head back to the bathroom to develop some sort of plan. While in the bathroom, which, I might point out, was a SINGLE person bathroom, therefore we were also aware that this joint-bathroom going looked a little suspicious. As we were in the bathroom, we suddenly heard a lot of commotion. We tentively ventured out, and saw a group of about well maybe 40 Hispanic people. There were woman, children, men, and they were all heading up the forbidden reception stairs. Cristen and I immediately thought: Perfect, we will go in the middle of the crowd and blend in. Well, ladies and gentleman, we got past the reception desk, up the stairs, and then saw this:

All these people were being hearded down a small hall and into this room by a Scientology lady. At this point we faced a hard decision: how to explain why we, the two gringas, were merrily going inot this film room with the rest of the group. It was then we calmly backed up and bolted back into that beautiful lobby.

Now we had a lay of the land, and knowing that there was a lot more to explore back in that forbidden hall was killing us; however, Scientologists are scary, and we didn't want to get thrown out by them, or worse, converted (we are both VERY proud Catholic girls "Katie Holmes COME BACK".)

While we were in the lobby, we suddenly remembered those stairs. This was a particularly dangeous decision. We had no idea what was up there, who was up there, or what we would encounter.

So yeah, up the stairs we went.

As Cristen led the way and I checked to make sure no one was following us, we headed up the stairs and found a hallway with long classrooms, and many Scientology people walking around.

This is supposedly what the classrooms looked like; we never made it inside of one so we can't verify this. Oh, btdubs, all these pics are from the Scientology Celebrity Centre Website, its not like we had time to bust out the high tech cameras.

This, dear readers, is a time in spying where you have to suddenly really convincingly act like you are 100% supposed to be there. Cristen and I straightened up, heads held high, and walked around talking to each other as if we belonged. After we turned a corner in a hall we found a bullitain board. Brilliant. We had time to regroup and talk which pretending to look at all the stuff posted. A few people walked by and gave us somewhat weird looks, but we were merrily discussing such buillitain board events as the "Scientology Christmas Event". On the board were job applications, and Cristen, honestly the smartest person I know, decided to grab one as a souviner and a decoy in case someone asked questions.

And ask they did.

PART TWO: THE SPANISH INQUISITION

As Cristen and I headed back down the hall towards the stairs we were still debating whether or not we wanted to leave this floor, or more importantly, how to stay up here without looking suspicious. We were at the top of the stairs by a display of books (for sale on the holidays) and pretended to discuss which book to buy but realy muttering about our game plan. Well, while we were up here, a woman whose name was jamie or Jennie or something (Crist will remember) came up to us and asked what we were doing. Now, when you are presented with an opportunity like this, only the most seasoned spies will proceed as Cristen and I did. We said, "Oh, our cousin wanted us to pick up a job application, but you know we were here anyways and we became interested in the religion as we were walking around" See, you think this is the exact wrong answer, but we knew if we were interested, these weirdos would try to recruit us, and in addition, we would probably be able to see more of the Centre. Seh offered us a tour and we accepted. As we walked down the stairs, we were interrogated by Jamie about who our cousin was, why she wanted the application (answer: she had a friend who did work here and reccomended a job and told her where to get the app.) and why the cousin wasnt here herself; however, this was all worth it when she whisked us by the reception desk, past the part of the forbidden hall we had already ventured into, and into a room filled with more posters and TV's.

As we were instructed to sit down, Cristen and I new we were about to go on an adventure, an adventure that we knew we had to be very cautious in proceeding.

As we sat down Cristen and I found ourselves with a security guard who was talking to a woman about the religion. Suppoedly he had been a security guard here and now wanted to join.

We were handed sheets of paper on which we had to write our names and addresses, ect. GULP. Hmm. Lucky Cristen and I have become telepathic over the years, so we put our RISD addresses and fake names. As we were doing this, more interrogation occured about our stupid fake cousin; however we also had to talk about why were putting Rhode Island addresses down, and it was then that Crist and I got the golden ticket: The Scientology Celeb Centre is not a center for Celebrities, it is a centre for artists, and our going to art school meant that we could visit the centre any time we wanted and use the facilities. She haded us a bunch of flyers, and she woman who was the voice of Bart on the Simpsons (who is a Scientologist) was comming to speak. We were beginning to think, "hey, this might not be so bad. We totally won't ever become Scientologists, but we can wander around and go to these lectures and see Tom Cruise and it won't be a big deal.

Then, Ms. Bitchy Interrogator Decided to explain the religion to us.

PART THREE: WOW, WE OBVIOUSLY WENT TO CATHOLIC SCHOOL.

She began by asking us to stand up and direct our attention to the screen in front of us. We woke up ten minutes later chained to the desk of L. Ron Hubbard. No, we watched a movie. It was about a subject now near and dear to my heart, DIANETICS.

Here is what I learned from the video. You have bad memories? and because you have then they influence your life now? and you have to let them go or else they make your health suffer? so you have to release them?

All the question marks are there because I have actually no idea what these people are talking about. Even sadder was the video kinda made sense at the time, mostly because it showed a man remembering car crashes and it looked sad so I kinda understood why you might want to release them, but they kept talking about your mind being a movie and film being recorded and in retrospect, its really confusing. However; you cannot turn to your Scientologist minder and proclaim, "This makes no sense", so we asked some nice questions, and were directed down the hall back towards the partition wall. We passed a picture of this excersise room:


Part of our Dianetics movie was about how to get rid of these memories, which was through E-Machines and these excersise. A whole nother poster was devoted to this, however when we asked about it, she hastily glossed over this info. It was then Cristen and I knew she was giving us the diluted tour, the tour reserved for teenage girls who arent the celebrities giving all the money to this place. In light of this knowledge, Cristen and I became a little more angry with this bitch. We were listening to her whole spiel, why wouldnt she show us all the goods?

We were directed towards the posters near the reception area, a poster about the mind, body and soul. Oh wait, no. The mind, body and THETA. (Mind you, all my info about Dianetics and Theta are exactly from what i remember, how they the Scientologists tried to explain it to me. I am purposefully not going back to the website to recheck what I remember, I'm trying to convey how it felt to be Cristen and I right then.)

This was a non-movie poster, so the Bitchy Lady decided to explain that you have to nourish your mind and body, but then your Theta was well, your soul kinda thing. I don't remember how she explained it, all i remember is Cristen saying that (since we had already explained to Ms. Bitch that wer WERE Catholics, but looking for an alternative) the theta was kinda like the soul in Christianity, right? The kinda center of your spiritual life. Oh god. This was the WRONG thing to say. Ms. Bitch was like, no, its your Theta. Cristen replied, well I mean, its kinda like your soul because... and the woman was liike no, its like your Theta. Around and around they went until I thought I was going to explode wiht laughter and Cristen gave up.

It was around this point that Jamie lost her patience with us completely. She, the sly little woman, decided that since we OBVIOUSLY were having some trouble with Scientology, we shoudl buy some books. We wer not so keen on the idea, so we tried to ask more questions and pretend to understand the religion better. Jamie replied the, just like Christians and the Bible, you have to read the texts to understand. What we decided not to tell her was that priests rarely just get frustrated with you and say, "Hey, just read the book and come back with questions."

As she walked us to the book store, we passed that creepy L. Ron Hubbard office. She explained a little about that, and then directed us to the bookstore, or as it is more affectionately known "Where the Scientologists Try to Wheedle All Your Money Out of You."

We walked in and she pointed to a selection of books. She started loading our arms wiht about 6 or 7 books, including a DVD called something to the effect of "Psychiatry Kills" with a graveyard and a lot of blood on the cover. It ws then Crist and I began the evasive maneauvers. We said since we were sisters we only needed ONE copy of each book, and we should probably start off small with maybe... just... two. (We cited lack of money, and as we opened our wallets to lay had to hide the excess money) We ended up with "Dianetics" and "The Fundamentals of Scientology"

As we paid, I said I was happy I was buying the Dianetics book, I used to suffer from headaches from my ADHD meds and how medicine never helped. Suddenly, the whole room was silent; you could have heard a pin drop. "You took WHAT?" Jamie said. Freaked out and scared, I kinda just stood there. After half a second she began a RANT about how psychiatric drugs were so harmful, how America over medicates, and how I might DIE from having taken these meds. It was all Cristen and I could do to not die laughing. She was so deadly serious, yet the thought that I might die from these meds was utterly rediculous.

While we were checking out (and to our dismay our names wer already logged into their computer database) the Bitchy Jamie (having calmed down from her rant. I really wanted to offer her a Prozac, but I thought she might kill me) flipped through a book on the life of L.Ron Hubbard. Like a fan with a rockstar she showed us his baby pictures, explained how he used to be a photographer, and gazed adoringly at pictures of him leading lectures. When she got to a page with the E-Machines, Cristen and I saw an opportunity. We asked what they were, and noted that we saw them for sale in the store and in L. Ron Hubbard's office, and this lady avoided the question like she was guarding a deep secret.

So, becoming rapidly bored with this and scared of being coerced into buying more things, Cristen and I took our reciept, went to the car, and exchanged our Christmas presants: "Dianetics" for me and "Fundamentals of Scientology" for Cristen.

Happy Holidays.