Ah yes. The latest is that Isaac Hayes reportedly had a stroke and the “Church” of Scientology graciously acted on his behalf and quit the show for him. Right. Here’s a good article at HollywoodReporter.com which I think sums up the view of South Park fans quite succinctly (and, which I would really hasten to add, is THE DAMN TRUTH).
Will somebody please set up a “Rescue Katie Holmes” fund?
Like I’m not plugging South Park enough, eh? Har. Well, what the hell, I really want the viewership at a solid level so we can ram Scientologists in the back door (the way Mr. Cruise likes it, unfortunately) and get “Trapped in the Closet” re-aired.
Seriously. The Catholic Church couldn’t succeed in silencing the “Bloody Mary” episode. And Scientology ain’t got no Pope, goddammit!
Right. The new episode is on tonight (Wednesday) at 10 PM on Comedy Central. 1002, “Smug Alert”, Stan convinces everybody in South Park to buy a hybrid car. Sounds good. And no, I doubt they’re going to spend the entire season lampooning Scientology, but I will bet that the issue re-surfaces.
Right. Since we’re doing a lot of hailing of Xenu, I thought I should put an artist’s rendering of our Magnificent Lord here. Courtesy of wikipedia and a BBC special on him, I give you…XENU!
I must admit he looks a TAD fruity for a Galactic Emperor.
Have been informed by the good folks at SouthParkStudios.com that there is an online petition over here at ChefGate.info that is trying to get “Trapped in the Closet” re-aired. Go on and sign it. Xenu commands you.
Okay. I almost pissed my pants at the South Park series opener (“The Return of Chef”). Apparently a lot of other people did as well, because this episode was apparently the most highly-rated premiere since 2002.
Me, I’ve been reading up on Scientology, and holy CRAP do you have to be stupid to buy into that.
So, this is what I say:
Come, Legions of Xenu! Harken unto me! We shall liberate our most glorious Lord from his mountain prison. Then we shall build more space planes that look exactly like DC-8s, call the Thetans in for a tax audit, put them into a stupor with alcohol once again, fly them on our magnificent Space DC-8s to the moon, place them around craters, and blow them up with hydrogen bombs!
Can you believe these people have their own cruise ship?
I also propose someone write a book called The Thetanic Verses.
Thank God for their sheer pig-headed idiocy, though, because it’ll make South Park more visible, and give it even more lease to make fun of Scientologists.
As I said, I read Hubbard, too, when I was young, and his books are really horrible. No, I did not read Dianetics. I’m “pre-clear”, unfortunately.
And I like it that way. Har!
Oh man, this is great. Being a huge fan of “South Park” — I was hooked when I watched the premiere of “Cartman Gets an Anal Probe” and phoned friends everywhere — and having a sort of six-degrees-of-separation relationship with some of the people who work on it (and who did Orgazmo), I love news about South Park (henceforce referred to without quotations) pissing people off.
The latest is posted over at CNN.com, but I’ll summarize just for the hell of it.
South Park ran an episode lampooning Scientology (and Tom Cruise and John Travolta, etc., etc.) titled “Trapped in the Closet”. Isaac Hayes, who plays Chef, happens to be a Scientologist, quit the show, saying that South Park was “religiously intolerant”. Matt Stone and Trey Parker responded with an open letter saying they were sorry to see him go, and that it was interesting that he had spent about ten years, and cashed hundreds of thousands of dollars of checks, while gleefully lampooning Mormons, Muslims, Christians, Catholics — basically ever religion they could get their hands on.
The latest story revolves around Tom Cruise, who apparently demanded that the “Trapped in the Closet” episode not be re-run on a cable network where he was promoting Mission Impossible III (which, by the way, is the next Lord of the Rings, I’m sure) — or he’d pull the promotion of this Gone With The Wind epic tale. The cable network obligingly did not re-run the episode.
Matt and Trey responded with the following, which, to help the unitiated, I should explain is full of references to the “religion” of Scientology (oh God, it’s horrible, but I read L. Ron Hubbard’s science fiction — I said FICTION — novels when I was in the fifth grade or so). Anyway, here’s what they had to say, and if you know anything about Scientology, or don’t and can read between the lines, this is frigging hilarious:
“So, Scientology, you have won THIS battle, but the million-year war for Earth has just begun. Temporarily anozinizing our episode will NOT stop us from keeping Thetans forever trapped in your pitiful man-bodies. Curses and drat! You have obstructed us for now, but your feeble bid to save humanity will fail! Hail Xenu!!!”
That’s some damn funny shit right there.
Hail Xenu. 🙂
I would like to make clear from the outset that I HATE MICROSOFT. This will show you where I’m going. I despise Microsoft. I was an avid Macintosh user until the lack of software literally drove me from my Mac LC III to an earlyish Dell of limited power. Microsoft makes buggy operating systems, drives out competition with unfair monopolistic practices, and consistently delivers software that is under-expectations and under-performing. Sony makes beautiful things that work but which sometimes require maintenance. Wonderful HDTVs, wonderful stereo equipment, and, at least they used to make, the monitor and other such equipment for the Macintosh.
Why should their damn gaming consoles be any different?
I am a self-admitted PS3 “fanboy”. I love the Playstation. Always have. From the second I tried Resident Evil 2 on it on a PS1 (guy who showed it to me warned he had given up sex for the game), I was hooked. For years, I lived in the Playstation Eden — until Microsoft popped it’s snake’s head up to offer us all an apple.
I will not say the XBox is a piece of shit. Perhaps it is. All I know is that I will not play it. It doesn’t have the games library I want. The controller is clunky as hell. And it’s made by MSFT.
So now MSFT is gloating because the PS3 has been delayed until November 11. They seem quite certain that if they can sell 10 million consoles before Sony gets to market, they will be the “dominant system of this generation”.
Here’s why they won’t, and why they might:
Rabid fans of the PS3, like me, have been saving up cash in the hopes that the Spring release date originally released by Sony was true. The closer we’ve gotten to Spring without hearing anything or seeing any commercials on TV, the more we began to accept the fact that Sony is probably delaying the console. So I doubt it was really a shock to anyone when we found out it was going to be a wait until November. Oh, people aren’t happy, but…we’ll wait. Or will we?
Microsoft is betting that we won’t. Microsoft is betting that the wife is out of town and we want a quick blowjob from a gross hooker — a gross hooker who will only offer HD-DVD as a peripheral (way to rush to market, MSFT). But we’ve got the money saved up for that glorious night of romance when the wife returns. Are we really going to blow it on a reach-around from Microsoft’s generation-and-a-half-step console?
Okay. I’ll admit it. I’m tempted. But who wouldn’t be tempted when the ads for Fight Night are running right in your face? Your PS2 boxing game don’t look like dat, do it?
But for now, I’m just tempted. About as tempted as I was to get an XBox as a second system back when I had the cash and was wondering what Halo is like.
It remains to be seen whether I, or the rest of my stupid cohorts, jump on board XBox’s ship since Sony left us treading water for another year. Because chances are we’re not going to buy both of them, at least not for a long while.
/rant
Ahhh. When I figure out an easy answer to an annoying problem, I love to share it. I have one of the newer Comcast Motorola boxes with a DVR. Tonight, it was going along fine, recording the series I’ve plugged into it. However, one show wouldn’t play. I got a black screen on playback and a differing number of minutes shown as length each time I played it, and if I tried to exit, I got the “Delete/Do Not Delete?” prompt. I tried deleting. The box returned something along the lines of, “Cannot delete file while in use. Close file and try again. Error CIU.”
I went ahead and restarted the box. Same problem.
The answer? Don’t call the techs, they’ll likely suggest a new box. Pain in the ass. Just unplug the thing altogether, let it sit for a minute (oh yes, the glorious “power cycle” ACTUALLY WORKS FOR SOMETHING), plug it back in — you’re going to have to wait a few minutes to download the menu and the guide and such, but don’t worry, you’ll get it — now, go into the DVR menu and delete the offending program. Works like a charm.
And a good night to all of YOU. 🙂
Now, don’t ask me how — it’s complex and boring, like myself — but my tooth problem has led to thoughts about friendships.
What thoughts, you ask? No, actually, you asked, “Kip, please write something interesting, for the love of God!” but I refuse to oblige. Er. Anyway.
Friendships are like elastic bands. Some bands are stronger, some bands are weaker. All of them stretch over time. Sometimes they break. I’m specifically thinking, in this case, of a girl who used to be a good friend of mine, who I recently saw, and when I let her out of my car at the end of the night (nothing exciting, just dinner, S&M, and…oh, right, no, the S&M was with that hobo I took to see Brokeback Mountain…just dinner, I guess) I realized to myself that she was probably walking right out of that car and right out of my life altogether at the same time. And I think I may have been right. I think the band snapped.
There are some people who you keep as friends forever. I have enough of these to be very grateful. Now, they’re located all over the world, but that doesn’t matter. Neither does the fact that I don’t communicate with them as often as I used to matter. It’s a simple fact of just knowing these people could pop up out of nowhere, hang out with you, and nothing would be very much different. You’d feel just as comfortable as you ever did. Marriage won’t change it. Kids won’t change it. You’re just…friends.
But now I worry about those bands, in retrospect, after viewing the one that snapped (maybe it didn’t, maybe it’s just stretched real thin). I count myself lucky for the ones I have, but I wonder if marriage will snap some of them. Or kids. Or a big career change.
And as for making new friends, it’s just something that slows down after a while. You can still do it, but…it just doesn’t happen as much. Once you’re into your thirties, as I and my cohorts are, you tend to stick to the friends you’ve got, and if a new one happens along, it’s completely unexpected and sometimes even a little unsettling. One certainly doesn’t try as hard to make friends.
What does this have to do with anything? Nothing. Just the occasional worry that A WHOLE BUNCH of bands will snap at once.
Know what I mean?
So, I’m eating a ham and cheese sandwich about two days ago, and all of a sudden there’s this crunch. I figure, hey, maybe I bit into a sharp piece of the ham or something (hams, of course, being notorious for their sharp edges). But I’ll be damned if something wasn’t wrong with my back wisdom tooth on top (I never had them removed). Part of it was wiggling, and then eventually part of it fell off, and I had to chase it with my finger so I didn’t swallow it. Currently the tooth in question has a large V-shaped indentation in it.
Now, I would be distressed, but I’m stuck between a rock and a hard place. I have no dental insurance. People I have talked to insist that a wisdom tooth rotting out on you is not that unusual at all, and still others have assured me they’ve totally let teeth go and never had any pain or trouble with them. But the big thing is no dental insurance. Had I dental insurance, I would go get this “extracted” (wonderful, they hack at you with a saw for forty minutes or so). The other kicker is pain. I’m not going to say I’m NOT HAPPY I’m not in pain, but the problem is, when it’s going to be like $300 or so to get this sucker out, well, when you’re not in any pain, you don’t feel an urgent need to go to the sadistic bastard who calls himself a dentist and have him take care of it.
Also, I wouldn’t mind being sedated during the procedure, which would cost extra, but would get me away from seeing the bone-saw approach my mouth.
So, for the time being, I shall wander the Earth, the Mark of Cain, a damn v-shaped tooth, upon me, until I make a little bit more money or I get dental insurance.