Old Mutha Hubbard
There's Hollywood, and then there's Hollywood BOULEVARD
Pardon me for stepping from out behind the curtain, garbed merely in a dressing gown and ascot, my theatrical makeup but half applied…For you see (strike mournful attitude, apply back of wrist to forehead, affect a swoon), I’m having some technical difficulties tonight. The wifi is out, and I can’t seem to upload and post the new review through my phone. Optimistically, the technician will be—is supposed to be—here before noon tomorrow, but I’m a pessimist, so in the meantime, here’s a piece I had preloaded. It was intended as a weekend bonus post, but what the hell, let’s all live a little, shall we? It’s not like the future’s looking so awfully fucking bright at the moment.
Ahem!
Anyway…
As a lot of you know, I lived in Hollywood for over twenty years. In fact, I dwelt in the Hollywoodest part of Hollywood—in a place right on the Boulevard, a stone’s throw from Grauman’s Chinese Theater—and took enormous, even lubricious, delight in every moment of it. The climate was generally mild, thanks to the onshore flow that caroms off the eponymous hills (leaving the Valley to broast in its own sweat), and the neighborhood is walkable, with an abundance of bars, movie theaters, unlicensed food carts, and shops selling knee-high platform boots and acrylic beehive wigs. On the negative side, it's filled with Russians, hipsters, and disappointed tourists, and our end of Hollywood Boulevard was frequently quarantined due to a variety of—to my mind—trivial and irritating pretexts: the Academy Awards, the L.A. Marathon, the Latin Grammys, the odd Van Halen reunion concert, and an endless, Human Centipede-like succession of movie premieres. And then there were the Scientologists...
I don't like to harp on the Hubbardites because what's the point? They're so ubiquitous along the Boulevard that it'd be like a guy who works on the kill floor of a slaughterhouse wrinkling his nose as he winches a bloody carcass across the tiles and muttering to his co-workers, "You guys smell that? It always smells weird in here. It's like I'm tasting copper..."
Usually when the Thetan-free thralls of L. Ron would swarm me with pamphlets outside the Scientology book store on Hollywood Boulevard, or offer to hook me up to an E-Meter for a free personality test outside the other Scientology book store on Hollywood Boulevard, I’d just say, "Sorry, but I'm already in a cult and I'm afraid of becoming overscheduled." Because Pick Your Battles, am I right?
Also, I was naturally fearful of divine retribution from Xenu, assuming he's a divinity and not just a super-villain, because I once pointed out to an aspiring Operating Thetan that Xenu is the only character in a major religion's creation story that sounds like a sneeze. But I softened the blow by adding that I didn't mean one of those big vulgar "Ahhh-CHOO!" sneezes where you really wind up and don't cover your mouth in time, and a couple days later notice a meteorite-like booger fused to your computer monitor. No, "Xenu!" is a cute, high-pitched, and dainty sneeze, the kind of thing that would annoy, rather than frighten the cat nesting on your lap.
But often they were unavoidable—like that time when the "21st Century Edition" of the world's most 20th Century version of the 30th Century was re-released for some reason:
Alien Spacecraft Replica ‘Crashes’ on Hollywood Blvd to Launch 21st Century Edition of 'Battlefield Earth: A Saga of the Year 3000' by L. Ron Hubbard.
Yes, Galaxy Press, which is the Church of Scientology's in-house vanity publisher, decided to crash a space ship into the sidewalk outside its relentlessly beige headquarters in order to mark the new edition of Battlefield Earth; and while it was an inconvenience for those of us just trying to get to CVS, I can't argue with the symbolism. Hell, if they'd truly committed to the metaphor and set the building on fire too, I might have even bought the book.
In addition to the smoldering wreckage, two actors playing Johnny "Goodboy" Tyler and his girlfriend Chrissie (who apparently works at some post-apocalyptic strip club) were on hand to act out the plot for people who didn't want to plow through a thousand page book, but still wanted to see busty, half-naked neo-Vikings.
The Battlefield Earth passion play climaxed with a bunch of Braveheart cosplayers putting a Sasquatch deep sea diver in bondage.
The new edition contained fifty extra pages of stuff even less readable than the novel (Hubbard's handwritten notes, a 34-year old interview with the Rocky Mountain News, and "Original lyrics" which presumably go along with the score Hubbard composed for the novel, entitled Space Jizz Jazz).
However, if you don't have time to wade through all 1072 pages, you'll be pleased to learn that:
The 47½ hour long audiobook features 67 voice actors
None of whom got paid, I'll wager, although they might have received a discount coupon good for 15% off their next Auditing session.
150,000 sound effects
88,000 of which probably consist of uncompensated Scientology initiates making armpit farts, but still...
and three hours of original music
Here's where the production gets expensive, because only Operating Thetan Level IVs have the mental and physical discipline to make their armpits fart out a melody (Level IIIs can sometimes manage an armpit beat box effect). But the amazing thing is the advanced data compression technologies used to bring you this novel of the Future!, for the entire book takes up a mere 44 CDs. At this dizzying rate of miniaturization, we may one day have an ENIAC machine that weighs less than 50 pounds, and is no bigger than a large steamer trunk!
So anyway, learn from the experts. The next time you publish a bloated re-release of an already swollen novel of the Future!, celebrate by shutting down a major thoroughfare, forcing one of your employees to put on a Wookiee costume, a gas mask, and Gene Simmons' boots from KISS, while other employees are made to dress up like Scotty McTape and attack him with t-shirt guns. It may not sell books, but at least it's more dignified than a Trump rally.
(New review coming as soon as The Guy get here with The Thing.)
Damn. The 1980s never really die, do they?
Reality is weirder than we can imagine.