The Ex-Factor

Last week, yet another celebrity decided to finally call the whole thing off. By the whole thing, I mean their membership in the strange, tangled, mysterious world that is "Church" of Scientology. The celebrity was Leah Remini of "King of Queens" fame, and she joined the ranks of other Scientology "defectors" like director Paul Haggis, actor Jason Beghe, and perhaps most famously Katie Holmes, who almost quite literally escaped the grip of the "church" like a refugee with her child in her arms.

                                                                                                                                                                        

That Scientology is actually a corrupt, money-hungry operation which abuses its members and is, in fact, a cult—is a no-brainer. The big head-scratcher in all this is how seemingly intelligent, interesting people manage to get sucked so deep into this operation that they will spend thousands, sometimes millions of dollars on it, often cut off family members that are not part of the "church," and wilingly divulge the most secret, personal information about themselves to be put in a file that is accessible to the cult's top members. The story of Scientology and its defectors is all about the power of mind control and brainwashing.

Similar to a woman staying in an abusive relationship despite the harm it does to her emotional and physical well-being, thousands of Scientology members choose to stay in the organization, despite the obvious harm it could do to them. "Why not just leave?" one would ask. And, "why join in the first place?"

To find the answers, we really need to dig deep into human psychology and why humans will voluntarily allow someone to put ideas into their minds and have their actions be influenced by others. Further still, what comes after freeing yourself from the grip of the mind-controller? How do you deprogram yourself from years of belief systems that were instilled in you?

From the day we are born, there is someone in our lives who imparts us with a level of mind control. Initially, it is our parents, who shape our minds in a way that generally reflects their own thinking and views, at least in the initial years of our lives. The grip of a parent's control can be so powerful, that adults often come to repeat the actions of their parents—whether by pursuing the same careers, or embarking on self-destructive paths, like alcoholism. Even as adults, many people seek their parents' approval. And why?

Because humans are validation-seekers, by nature. Whether from peers, lovers, friends, colleagues or  role models. Because we like being good, and like being told we are good at what we're doing.

Which brings us back to Scientology. Its central tenet—as founder L. Ron Hubbard had formulated all those years ago—is self-betterment. We all desire to grow and become wiser and more intuitive, intelligent and able as human beings. Scientology says, "We can help you achieve that—and more." In fact, Scientology promises: we can take your abilities beyond typical human ones. But you have to play your part. You have to work towards reaching that place of unlimited potential. You play your part by studying. Your are given access to a wealth of knowledge that is unprecedented, remarkable, life-altering—the cult claims—and, like any school, you have to pay to study. This is how you get better, this is how you grow.

So you pay. And you keep paying, because the road to reaching that pinnacle of potential can be a long one. In fact, as members who have left find out, the road is infinite. Because the promises are a sham. So, like a hamster in a wheel, you think you're moving closer to something real, an actual destination, but you are as far from it, as the day you got on the wheel.

"I was in a cult for 34 years," said Haggis, after finally leaving. "Everyone else could see it. I don't know why I couldn't."

What's fascinating about ex-Scientologists is how quickly, once out of the cult, many are able to take an objective, critical view of something they had so staunchly believed in for so long. It's as though they come out of a kind of hypnosis.

Which is no coincidence, because one of L. Ron Hubbard's real talents (he had many imaginary ones) was his ability to hypnotize people. And if one studies mind control—whether used in government or inter-personal relationships—they will learn that a kind of prolongued hypnosis is involved.

So does this mean Beck, a creative person who makes innovate music that is beloved by millions, is currently under hypnosis? Or that actress Juliette Lewis, who has delivered some truly maverick performances during her career, has been under a kind of hypnosis her entire life? (She's been a Scientologist since birth). Very possibly. But it can also mean that the consequences of leaving the church—just like the victim of an abusive relationship—are scarier than the consequences of staying. When you are that deeply entangled in a group that is so controlling, breaking away can break you.

More on that, and the man who coaches ex-cultists in deprogramming themselves, in Part 2.

Fine Young Cannibals

    The other night, I had the strangest dream. I dreamt of a grim future, in which the human race had spawned a sub-group dependent entirely on human meat for survival. Not because all the other food was gone, but because their bodies demanded it, craved it. These flesh-eaters weren't zombies, but mortal humans, who stalked their prey at night like predators in a jungle, then ripped into them with teeth that had evolved into razor-sharp cutting devices.

What could have inspired my bizarre dream of a messed up, post-apocalyptic, humans-eating-other-humans future? Perhaps it's the anticipation of yet another big-budget zombie movie, this time Brad Pitt's World War Z, which hits theaters in June. It's a successor to over 500 film titles that center around the subejct of human flesh-eating—from the obscure (Attack of the Flesh Devouring Space Worms From Outer Space) to the classic (Night of the Living Dead). Cannibalism has even made its way into prime-time, major network television. On Thursday nights, you can tune into NBC for their hour-long drama, Hannibal, about the life of the practicing cannibal psychiatrist Hannibal Lecter. So it's rather clear that, as a civilization, we are kind of obsessed with the idea of consuming each other.

And for good reason: cannibalism—clinically termed "anthropophagy"—can be traced back to ancient times. In Greek mythology, the supreme god Kronos ate all of his four children in an attempt to prevent one of them overthrowing him in the future.  The Old Testament describes the Hebrews resorting to cannibalism while wandering the African desert.
   
Cannibalism can be broken down into two broad categories: Learned and Survival. The latter seems to be the more "accepted" type, because it is practiced only as a worst-case-scenario. It was a frequent enough of a practice that by the 19th century, when shipmen went out to sea, the possibility of eating each other in the event of a shipwreck was simply assumed. But only as the ultimate last resort. Dogs, candles, leather, shoes and blankets were all consumed first before turning to human flesh as a food source.

But the other type, the learned one, is a bit more complicated, more sinister; it's the one that we as a society have the hardest time understanding. The kind that is practiced by serial killers and deviant types, who do it because they "can't control it," because it's a need that grows and eventually becomes inescapable. These people realize that they simply have to eat other humans.

Take the case of one Issei Sagawa, known as "Japan's most famous cannibal." In 1981, he shot and then ate a French woman and fellow student when he was studying for his Ph.D. in Literature at the Sorbonne Academy in Paris. He said he did it not only because he had had a gnawing desire to taste human flesh, but also because wanted to "absorb her energy." The meat tasted like "raw tuna," he described. Sagawa was captured by French authorities while trying to dispose of the body in two suitcases in a public park.

He was proclaimed insane and unfit to stand trial, and ordered to a mental institution. But France didn't want this weird Japanese cannibal on their hands, so they extradited him back to Japan. Psychologists there, however, found him to be perfectly sane, concluding that it was his sexual perversion that lead him to kill and cannibalize the woman. Unable to hold him (the French goverment refused to release court documents), they allowed Sagawa to check himself out of the hospital. The cannibal killer has been a free man since August of 1986, never punished for his crime. Today, he admits that he still hungers for human flesh and actively suppresses the urge, in documentaries like this:

 If Sagawa's act was difficult to punish, then another case of cannibalism twenty years later proved to fall into an even grayer area. In early 2001, a man named Armin Meiwes from a small town outside of Berlin decided to place an ad on a website for cannibalism aficionados, requesting "well-built men, 18-30, who would like to be eaten by me." Eventually, a man responded and his intentions were serious. He was a Bernd-Jurgen Brandes, a gay (though not publicly out) professional who was living with his partner at the time in Berlin, but had somehow decided that he wanted to be eaten. He met with Meiwes at his secluded and, by all the neighbors' account, creepy-looking house, where he had been building a separate slaughter room in the hidden upstairs section.

Brandes doped himself on sleeping pills, painkillers and Schnapps. Meiwes suggested they slice off Brandes' penis and try to eat it. Brandes agreed. After the removal, Brandes climbed into a bathtub and proceeded to bleed profusely, while Meiwes attempted to fry the appendage. After burning it and finding it inedible, he went to check up on Brandes, who was bleeding to death. At this point, Meiwes drove a knife into his throat, slaughtered him and began to eat him. Over the next few months, Meiwes consumed 44 pounds of Brandes' dead body. The cannibal was eventually arrested, tried and convicted...of murder, but not cannibalism. Further still, is it technically murder if the person being eaten (an act in which death is inevitable) consents to being eaten? 

Perverted need or survival necessity, cannibalism is a part of our society, whether we like to admit it or not. Its proliferation, both in real life and popular culture, begs the question: How close are we to consuming each other without seeing the act as an ultimate taboo? After all, we eat pigs, who have demonstrated to possess the intelligence and understanding of a small child. As the creator of Hannibal himself, Brian Fuller, pointed out in a recent interview: "Pigs are even smarter than dogs and more sophisticated emotionally. So if you are having a brouhaha about cannibalism, next time you order that pork slider, you are eating a five-year-old human being." Chew on that.

Ghostly Men

America is hot for hoarders! The morose topic of people with a compulsion to accumulate stuff has inspired not one, but TWO shows on competing networks. One is A&E's "Hoarders" (my personal fave); the other is TLC's "Hoarding: Buried Alive." The fact that there is enough real life content to fill two one-hour weekly shows tells us just how common hoarding is: according to research, nearly 5 million Americans suffer from it.

In some ways, there's a little bit of a hoarder in all of us. Who hasn't been reluctant to let go of a book that sits unread on a shelf, or an old piece of clothing that may hold sentimental value? People like their crap. But to reach the highest level on the hoarding scale—Level V—your possessions have to fully take over your space, swallow up the floor and the stove (which you will never use), the bathroom (where you will never shower), and transform your home into a barely inhabitable, condemnable cesspool of trash.

It's the kind of hoarding that A&E and TLC feature: The old lady that shits in bags because her plumbing has been out of order for 2 years. Or the father who shares a twin bed with his 8-year-old daughter (yes, creepy) because they have run out of space; a woman in Milwaukee with two refrigerators overflowing with rancid, expired food that she can't bring herself to let go. "The smell is so aggressive, it just burns the hair out of your nose," says one clean-up specialist at a particularly ghastly scene.


This is riveting "entertainment." Each episode is more transfixing than the one before. But there is one episode that you will never see, and it's the best one by far. In fact, it will never be made because its subjects have long been dead and the house which they inhabited razed to the ground.

The house was at 2078 Fifth Avenue in Harlem, New York. It was March of 1947, and someone had made an anonymous phone call reporting a dead body there. Two recluse brothers in their 60s, Homer and Langley Collyer, were living at the address—the same one where they grew up with their wealthy parents. For the last three years, though, Homer stopped emerging from the house completely, having been blinded as a result of a stroke. Langley only left after midnight once a week to collect food. (He fed Homer a diet of 100 oranges a week, black bread and peanut butter, a self-devised combination that he was convinced would help his brother regain his vision).

Kids threw rocks at the windows, and eventually instead of replacing them, the brothers boarded up every window completely. Electricity, gas and water had been cut off for almost two decades, and the brothers used a kerosene lamp for heat.

When authorities showed up to investigate the dead body, they found themselves in a place where time stood still, where there was neither night nor day, and where two men managed to fill every square inch with over 25,000 books, 14 pianos (both grand and upright), hundreds of yards of unused silk and fabric, half a dozen toy train sets, the folding top of a horse carriage, an armory of weapons and other miscellaneous junk. 100 tons of it, to be exact—about a third of the weight of a Boeing 747. Convinced that Homer would one day see again, Langley had been saving every single newspaper that was published, daily for three years straight, so that his brother would read the news he had missed.

After hours of making their way through the labyrinth of debris, police found the dead body. It was Homer's. He had died of starvation and dehydration. Apparently Langley had stopped bringing him his oranges. But where was Langley, everyone asked. He was missing. A massive, three-week search was launched, reaching as far as Atlantic City. Then, one day, in the process of clearing the seemingly endless amount of junk, Langley finally showed—squashed under one of his own booby traps and gnawed on by rats—just a few feet away from his brother. He had died first, and without a caretaker, Homer soon followed.

Eventually, the house was cleaned out. Despite their rumored wealth (which was the reason for all of the Langley-constructed booby traps around the house, to keep thieves out), the salvageable possessions sold at auction for a measly $1,800.

Locals who knew the Collyer brothers had a nickname for Langley: "The ghostly man," because he was only seen in the deep of the night like a phantom. But it's a title that can be applied to all extreme hoarders, for in their obsession to hold on to objects, they lose the most important possession of all: themselves.

The Breeders

Two weeks ago, the baby factory and reality TV stars known as Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar gathered their whole clan of 20 to make a BIG ANNOUNCEMENT on national, live television via the "Today" show. Oh jiminy, what could this big announcement ever be? The suspense had the whole nation on the edge of their seats!


"I'm gonna go out on a limb and guess," Meredith Viera joshed. "You're getting a puppy!" To which Michelle Duggar, the womb (I mean mother) of the clan, replied: "Haha! Well, not exactly." Such jokesters the two of them are. "Congratulaaattionsss...." Viera cooed after they revealed the real secret, which is that Michelle is pregnant with their 19th child. Big surprise.

"Well how are you feeeeeeling?" Viera prodded the 42-year-old mother. "Sick and tired," Michelle replied, without a trace of irony, as her sperm depositor (I mean, husband) looked on with a big, goofy grin, while clutching a copy of the book they authored together.

So it's clear that Michelle and Jim Bob do not believe in birth control of any kind, because they regard the fertilization of the egg by the sperm as a "miracle" and the baby produced as a result "a gift from God." It is God, not Jim Bob's penis, that is the reason for the creation of all of their many children, all of whom incidentally have names that start with the letter J (I wonder who inspired that trend).

Ah, but things get even stranger in Duggar-land. Their oldest son recently married his first girlfriend (who, according to the guiding principles of their religion, he wasn't even allowed to kiss on the mouth until their marriage ceremony. . .just mull on that one for a second). They are expecting their first child momentarily. But here's the awesome part: Once his wifey gives birth, the baby will have 18 uncles and aunts all at once. Eighteen! But not just that, some of those Duggar kids will be calling themselves uncle and auntie at the ripe age of 8 months! I mean, really, whatthefuck.

Apart from being a public curiosity, are the Duggars actually doing something sinister by procreating like rabbits? Well, consider this: A 2007 study done by something called the Optimum Population Trust, pointed out that if couples had two children instead of three, they could cut their family’s carbon dioxide output by the equivalent of 620 return flights a year between London and New York.

There is apparently one—albeit disputed—benefit to having many children. Some believe that it can actually increase life span. The oldest woman in the world, one Mariam Amash of Israel, is 120 and has given birth to 10 children. She also has 120 grandchildren, 250 great-grandchildren, and 30 great-great-grandchildren. (Although she does also attribute her longevity to a diet rich in vegetables; perhaps something for Michelle Duggar to consider when she's cooking up her signature dish, "Tator Tot Casserole," which she proudly shares in her book as well as on their TV show, "18 Kids and Counting.")

But whether birthing litters makes you live longer or not, one thing is certain: Decades from now, perhaps centuries, the world will be filled with many, many Duggar descendants of every category—uncles, aunts, cousins, grandkids, grand-grandkids—themselves reproducing, spinning the Duggar lineage into infinity, a group big enough to eventually create a city, Duggartown, if you will. And when human civilization finally comes to an end, the last remaining human will probably be a Duggar, standing amidst the rubble and shaking his fist at Michelle and Jim Bob for churning out so many children that their wanton consumption of the Earth's resources finally helped its demise.

Babies 4 Sale

Tearing up the box office charts right now is a horror film called "Orphan" about an evil little girl named Esther (could there be a more perfect name for an evil orphan?) who terrorizes her newly adoptive parents with her dark powers. It's a well-exploited premise in the horror film genre ("The Omen" did it best).


But if you're looking for an orphan tale that will truly chill your blood, look no further than the one about a woman who for twenty years stole and swindled babies from the hands of poor single mothers, posed them as orphans and sold them to rich parents through her fake agency. No, it's not a movie -- don't rush to your Netflix que -- it's real life. The life of one very bad woman named Georgia Tann.

You all remember that scene in "Mommie Dearest" (don't try to hide it, you love that shit) when Joan Crawford and her arched eyebrows learn she's denied adoption by an established agency. The infamous Crawford fury ensues, but a few months later, magically, she gets her hands on a perfect little blond baby girl. Well, guess what? That child came courtesy of none other than Miss Tann and her Tennessee Children's Home Society.

That child, whom the world would later get to know as Christina, had been stolen by Tann from a mother who would never be found or identified. Tann did this over and over, from the late '20s until her death in 1950, the cases climbing into the thousands. She adopted her stolen babies out to parents whose backgrounds went unchecked, thus resulting in the children sometimes being placed with pedophiles and abusers (such as Crawford).


How in the world did this madness happen, and how could it happen for that long? Well, picture this scenario: A young, cash-strapped single mother with a sick baby, one day gets a knock on her door from a kindly-looking woman who identifies herself as a social worker and director of a nearby orphanage. Concerned about the health of the child, the social worker gives a quick examination, and decides the baby is seriously ill.

"But don't worry, I can help you," she says to the mother. "Give her to me and I'll take her back to the orphanage, pass her off as one of the wards and, that way, I can get her free care." The mother is excited. "But you can't come," the social worker says, "otherwise, the nurses will charge you if they find out you're the mother." So the mother hands over her child, thinking she just got hooked up with free health care.

Two days later, she gets a phone call from the social worker: the baby had died. The mother doesn't believe her and makes frantic visits to the orphanage, the police, none of whom help. Meanwhile, the baby -- who is alive and well -- is being flown to her new adoptive home in Ohio.

That "social worker" was Georgia Tann, and this is just one example of how she obtained her babies. How she was able to sell them to new families (sometimes for up to $5,000 for out-of-state adoptions) is another layer in this strange tale, one involving corrupt judges, politicians and the police -- all of whom had given Tann their protection. Add to the mix her trustworthy demeanor (some of her biggest advocates were her own clients), her amazing powers of persuasion and intimidation tactics, endless bribing, and it's not hard to understand how this woman and her macabre baby thieving operation, chillingly, became the foundation for modern American adoption.

Indeed, before Tann burst onto the adoption scene, in the late '20s, there were literally only about five adoptions being arranged a year by agencies like the Boston Children’s Aid Society. But only four years into her baby stealing career, Tann managed to pull off a whopping 206 adoptions. Here's another chilling fact: The whole policy of closed adoptions can be traced back to Tann, who covered up her kidnapping crimes by issuing adoptees with false certificates portraying their adoptive parents as their birth parents. All fifty states ultimately falsified adoptees’ birth certificates -- legislators believed it would spare adoptees the stigma of illegitimacy.

Tann died in 1950, and shortly thereafter the world learned of her crimes. Still, it was too late to deny her impact on the adoption system. So next time you settle in for two hours of evil orphan terror via the silver screen, just remember, the real horror story has already taken place -- and it stars Georgia Tann.

Psinister Psychic Friends Network

Whatever happened to those psychic hotline commercials that were ubiquitous throughout much of the '90s? You couldn't change a channel without seeing one of those odd clips, shot over green screen or in a gaudy studio, with loud graphics and some supposedly clairvoyant host waving her hands, adorned with long fingernails, around a crystal ball. The 900 number would flash on the bottom of the screen, with a slightly smaller print below, telling you that you had to be 18 to call, that this was "for entertainment only" and that the first minute will cost you $3.99 (or more).

It wasn't just some random psychics offering their gifts of foresight, but celebrities too -- either hawking their own hotlines on tv or giving testimonials to others'. You had LaToya Jackson and her "Psychic Readers Network," Dionne Warwick's "Psychic Friends Network," Nell Carter had "Nell Carter Psychic Hotline," and Esther Rolle (the mom from "Good Times") implored viewers to call her "Caring Psychic Family" (such a welcoming name; doesn't it just make you feel warm and fuzzy?). Even Vicky Lawrence, Billy Dee Williams and Phillip Michael Thomas of "Miami Vice" appeared in ads, giving their thumbs-up to some 900 number.

But the Grand Puba of them all, the most unforgettable hotline psychic was, no doubt, Miss Cleo of the Psychic Readers Network. "Kohl meh now for yer free reeden'," she would tell you, in an almost chiding tone, in her Jamaican accent (though she was actually a native of Los Angeles, and not a Jamaican at all). Cleo kept it real, she told the truth, honey -- be it good or bad! "Ye no' aboht dee gal he's seeing raht now? She's a little hoochie mama," Cleo would break it down, no-nonsense style.


Hearing that kind of sage advice could become addictive to some people, and that's why those 900 numbers became such big business. (Our girl Cleo earned a reported $13.5 mil from her hosting duties). Some callers would get their fix on LaToya's line but then also get a "second opinion" with one of Dionne's seers, and so it would continue. The psychic hotline addiction could become as powerful as a gambling one. One woman even wrote a book about the insatiable craving to receive guidance on life's decisions from what, in fact, is just some average joe with no real psychic abilities, sitting in his or her living room in pajamas.

In fact, in the late '90s, as part of Giuliani's welfare-to-work program, New York City trained welfare recipients for jobs as psychics for the Psychic Readers Network. The only other requirement was having a high school equivalency degree, "a caring and compassionate personality" and English speaking skills. Within a few years of this ingenious (and so successful!) effort, both Cleo's hotline and Dionne Warwick's would be buried under various lawsuits and bankruptcy. The newly imposed Federal Communication Commission's restrictions on 1-900 numbers certainly didn't help matters.

So when one combines all these psinister psychic factors -- potential for addiction, deceit on the part of the psychics and plain old fashioned greed -- it's not hard to understand why those colorful commercials we were once so accustomed to seeing are now buried in the same 1990s pop culture graveyard as grunge and Vanilla Ice. We can only hope that, one day, they will not attempt to rise from the dead and try to eat our brains...again. Until then, we'll just keep watching those entertaining Extenze ads and their equally lofty promises.

Le Freak C'est Chic

Back in 1932, a dark little film called "Freaks" was released by MGM studios to the masses. The story revolved around a gold-digging trapeze artist who seduces and marries a sideshow little person in order to get her hands on his large inheritance. Eventually, she poisons him, starts having an affair with an average-size man, and when the rest of the sideshow performers learn of her deceit, they viciously attack and mutilate her and her lover in a macabre and unforgettable climax.


The movie was highly controversial then and still is, because the cast consisted almost entirely of people with real-life deformities and illnesses. They included a multitude of dwarves, a pair of conjoined twins, the Human Torso (i.e. a man with no limbs), who in one scene lights a cigarette with matches, using only his mouth. You'd think that this kind of exploitation for entertainment's sake could have only come out of an era before color televisions, Civil Rights, computers.

Well, think again. Because the popular channel TLC -- best known for its "family-centered" reality shows like the mega hit "Jon & Kate Plus 8" -- has become the main purveyor of a slew of documentary programming that can only be described as a kind of modern, repackaged version of "Freaks." And their growing popularity says a lot about us as the audience.


On an average night, usually after 8 p.m., you can learn the true story of Tony, the 750 lb teenager, or Hayley, the girl with progeria -- the disease of rapid aging; or Zahra, the woman who was pregnant for 45 years and didn't know it, or Ronnie and Donnie, the oldest living conjoined twins, or Sharon, the primordial dwarf (tiny, but proportionate). And just like the bluntly-titled "Freaks," the titles of these TLC shows offer no mystery about the contents that await. Here is a sampling:

"The 650 lb Virgin"
"The Tiniest Toddlers"
"Dwarfs: Standing Tall"
"The Smallest People In The World"
"The Girl Who Never Grew"

TLC has tapped into that corner of our psyche that is simultaneously repelled and drawn to human oddities. And although the deformities they feature are no less unusual than the ones displayed in "Freaks," TLC has made theirs somehow more digestible to middle America -- in some cases, even endearing. I mean, who is not going to melt into a puddle of goo when they watch a little primordial dwarf that weighs 11 lbs and stands at about 28 inches, at age four, talk in her tiny voice and wave around her miniature hands, and bat her teeny tiny doll-like eyes? Especially when you have a woman with a gentle, sympathetic voice narrating the whole affair.

And so, the shows play like this, for hours, daily, peppered with commercials advertising everyday people stuff like prescription drugs and Verizon cell phones, as the average American sits there and watches, eyes open wide in both shock and curiosity, secretly thinking, Damn, my life is not so bad.

Bad Brains

Yesterday, the world surveyed the memorial service of all memorial services, the most lavish send-off of a dead man known to our modern times, the only kind of send-off worthy of THE KING (of pop).

Celebrities made speeches, singers sang their songs, retrospective videos played on enormous screens, and throughout the fast-paced ceremony, one thing remained static and conspicuous and that was the shiny casket bathed in fresh roses. Inside it, of course, was Michael himself, perhaps adorned in his signature Thriller jacket, sparkly glove, penny loafers and white socks, the hair on his jet black ladies wig falling elegantly at his shoulders. But what most spectators and performers didn't know was that beneath that wig, and further still, under his skull, there was nothing but empty space. Yes, Michael was being buried without his brain.

It seems rather ironic that the man who sang about zombies would end up taking his final journey without that one piece of anatomy zombies like to feast on. The irony gets even thicker, given that Michael played the brainless Scarecrow in The Oz.

But there is a good explanation for his brainlessness. You see, having reached no definitive conclusion regarding the nature of his death after the autopsies, pathologists requested his brain for further examinations, which could take up to three weeks. That was the choice faced by the Jackson family: let Michael's body sit in a freezer for weeks and wait for his brain to return back from the lab, or go ahead and put him into the earth, hollow-headed. They chose the latter.

So what do the scientists hope to discover when they slice and dice through Michael's gray matter? Well, for one thing, they're going to dig for evidence of past drug use and whether he has suffered other overdoses, in addition to any other hitherto unknown diseases.

But that is all standard stuff. It seems that these pathologists have a golden opportunity on their hands -- to go beyond the boring drug stuff and try to understand what REALLY lay inside this mysterious man. Did he lie about having only two plastic surgeries (picture Michael making a peace sign during the infamous Bashir interview when asked that same question) in his life? Did his calm, peaceful Little Prince-like demeanor hide a raging temper? I suppose we can only wait and see.

The family still has the option of burying his brain later. Which begs the question: Will the brain have its own ceremony?

Incest—Common Practice?

When I think of incest, I picture the little redneck boy strumming his banjo in the film Deliverance, looking out of his little black eyes with a blank stare.


Incest is what happens in backcountry somewhere, in small towns inhabited by toothless, uneducated rednecks named Bubba. Right? Wrong. With the recent news of a father-and-daughter couple from Australia, John and Jenny Deaves (what an attractive pair!), "coming out" and talking about their seven plus years relationship and the little baby they've produced and are raising, people are discovering that incest is not just a redneck taboo.


Incest comes in many flavors. There is the unfortunate coerced kind—as in, "Hey, honey, it's your daddy, now slide on over in this here bed and be a good a girl." Examples of this type of incest abound in popular culture. Just think of Mallory Knox in Natural Born Killers and her creepy father (who, incidentally, reminds me of John Deaves in the picture above), who tells her to wash up and be clean for him when he comes upstairs.


Or the video for Aerosmith's "Janie's Got a Gun," where Janie finally snaps and shoots the father who has been repeatedly molesting her.


Then there's the accidental or unintentional kind of incest. As in, "Wait, are you telling me that all this time I've been fucking my own twin brother?" Now this one actually did happen recently, as the public have learned. A British couple met and married each other, settling in for a life of happily ever after. Not so fast! One day, the newlyweds discovered that they in fact were twins, separated at birth. Horror and shock ensued and the marriage was annulled.

The final kind of incest is the mutual and consenting kind. In my opinion, it is the most cringe-worthy, because the couple involved doesn't care that they are blood relatives, that they share a parent (or both) or that one of them is the other's parent or child. This one brings us back to John and Jenny Deaves. Unlike the British twins, the Deaves express no horror at the fact that they are immediate relatives. In fact, they embrace it. "We're just like any other family," they say. And, perhaps, the world shouldn't care what these eccentric two do behind close doors...if not for one small fact. Their baby.

Imagine discovering one day that your mommy is also your daddy's baby, and your daddy is also your granddaddy and your mommy is also your...sister? In the sage words of Bugs Bunny, "Nah, I don't think so!"

Brunch — What is the point?

I've always hated brunch. The feeling of brunching is like washing yourself with a washcloth that doesn't get sudsy enough. It's frustrating. It's frustrating because you feel like when you arrive at brunch, starving because you haven't yet eaten breakfast (making room for brunch in your belly), you must choose between true breakfast food like pancakes and lunch food like salad. But you want both! You want both because you've had neither yet and it's already 3 p.m. You know, deep in your heart, that stuffing yourself with pancakes at 3:30 p.m. is wrong. And yet brunch law says that it's ok. But it's not ok.

The other thing I hate about brunch is its pace. You feel like you have to sit around, sit around, sit around, chew...slowly, sip slowly, talk slowly. Everything feels foggy and lazy and so....Sunday afternoon. I don't want to be reminded that it's Sunday afternoon, the saddest day of the week. The day before the workweek begins, the last day of the weekend. I want to lounge in bed late, shuffle over to the kitchen and make my instant coffee with a heaping of creamer, eat in front of my computer, crumbs falling everywhere, in my t-shirt, sleep still in my eyes. Instead, I'm sitting in some restaurant, trying to look awake and interested, surrounded by other lazy brunchers eating the kitchen's leftovers.

Yes, leftovers. I always suspected that brunch food is not the freshest food on the menu, and recently learned that I was right. In the restaurant business, brunch actually makes chefs downright angry. As one former chef describes: "I hate the friggin' sound of the word Brunch. It's a nice way to sell off your old leftovers, scraps, rejects, stuff on the verge of going bad and outright trash covered with a bit of Hollandaise to the gullible."

And finally, by the time you're done with brunch it's nearly 5 p.m., sometimes later. Dinner is just around the corner. But you don't want to think about food again. And yet you have to, because brunch is dinner's long shadow, always too close behind.

Women's Faces and the Terrible Things They Do To Them

Women do strange, unforgivable things to their faces. Women are mean to their faces. If their faces had a separate soul, they would tell these women: Please stop deforming me, please stop injecting stuff in me, please stop pulling and tugging on me, please stop starving me. If the faces had a voice of their own, they would ask to be left alone.

If a woman's face looks extreme—whether in its thinness, its smoothness or its plumped-uppedness—it's a safe bet that you're not looking at her true face. Her true face got left behind somewhere before she discovered bingeing and purging, cheek implants and porcelain veneers. A good example is Maria Shriver, the First Lady of California. For so many years we've been looking at her jutting bones and the thin skin draped over them like a silk blouse, her sunken-in eyes, and wrinkles prominent enough to be cut with an exact-o knife that it might seem as if this is her real face.

Not so. If we turn the pages of her face's biography a mere twenty years back, we will find her true face there: robust, plump, healthy, perfectly normal. At some point in her journey, Maria realized that being thin was the way to go, the only way to go, and it's her face that paid the highest price.


A similar specimen in face-mutilation is Faye Dunaway. There is something very Dorian Gray-like about her face. It might seem "young" because of its absence of sag and deep wrinkles, but it is for those same reasons peculiarly un-youthful. Because even in youth, humans have expression lines and they have creases. I've never seen a thirty-year-old without a single wrinkle on her forehead. And yet, Faye's 66-year-old forehead has none.


When one flips through the photo book of her face and sees just what its true state was once, one wants to get mad at Faye on her face's behalf, and say: "Faye, how could you stuff those little cheek implants in me? Faye, you didn't need to pull my eyebrows THAT far up. Faye, I wouldn't have minded if you let me develop normal, human wrinkles. And why did you have to remove my perfectly decent teeth and jab long, frightening veneers in their place?"

What would be her answer? Eternal beauty? Eternal youth? Fear, pain, obsession, boredom? But if one really wants to see the effects of a woman's inability to leave her face alone, one should look no further than Joan Rivers. The story of her face is well-known and oft-told, but it bears repeating here. What makes her case so truly frightening is that these days she wears a mask, plain and simple, but unlike other masks, hers can never be removed.


We will never know what her true face would have looked like at 75, because there is no more true face. It has been sliced, diced, nipped, tucked, stuffed, pulled, peeled clear off and in its place has been inserted this new face.

It looks neither young nor old, and yet both at the same time.

Mario Batali's Crocs

What's wrong with this picture? Well, if you allow your eyes to take in the full view of this rather unappetizing specimen of a man, you will notice something unusual on his feet.

Besides the garish bright orange color, what else seems out of place about these shoes? Consider the fact that the feet inside these shoes are standing on the red carpet of a formal charity event in New York City. Yes, those are Crocs. Yes, they were paired with a blazer and tie. And, yes, they are the only shoes Mario Batali EVER wears.

Just what exactly ARE Crocs, first and foremost? They are "an all-purpose shoe for comfort and fashion," according to the company statement. While the "fashion" part is questionable, there can be no doubt about the comfort of these oddly-designed shoes. Naturally, these kinds of shoes are popular with the following types of people: Dog trainers, Children, Stay-at-Home Moms, Frazzled College Students, Tourists and...Overweight Celebrity Chefs. Or, perhaps, simply just ONE overweight celebrity chef named Mario Batali.

So what is Batali's obsession with them, and more importantly what makes him think it's OK to wear these supremely casual shoes to a formal event? Upon further digging, it was discovered that Batali is not a mere fan. He is a Croc whore, if you will, with a line of his very own designs for the line.


And after the hot Food Network studio lights shut down and Babbo's closes for the day and there are no more charity events to attend, I picture this man with his giant, bloated belly in his sleek chef's kitchen, warbling around in his crocs, rummaging through his Sub-Zero fridge for some late night munching. I see him pulling out a salami and some whipped butter, getting a loaf of bread and sitting at the table, his legs spread wide apart, making little sandwiches and piling them in his mouth, one after another—pinkies curled out—and then licking his fingers, followed by a loud burp. I picture him waddling to his bed and sinking into his cal king plush mattress, his long, thin red hair falling loose at his shoulders, scratching his beard and his crotch, and then snoring himself into dreamland, shiny orange crocs eternally by his bedside.