Last week I took my niece Chelsea and her friend Sarah to the Church of Scientology for a research project they are doing for their sophomore AP World History class.
What I knew about Scientology before my visit to the cult headquarters church was
1. Tom Cruise is a freak.
2. L. Ron Hubbard wrote Dianetics and also a bunch of comic books.
3. Scientologists believe an alien named Xenu came to earth on a spacecraft millions of years ago. Or something like that.
4. It reminds me of Amway.
So when we arrived at Xenu's Outpost in Mountain View, CA we were greeted by a super nicey nice man who was very helpful and offered to show us a short movie about Scientology. Being curious I said sure, we'll watch your movie. The girls and I were led to a conference room arranged with theater-style seating and a projector, the nice man then started the movie and left us alone. After about 3 minutes, I thought, this is a JOKE right? This cannot be the real movie they use to brainwash inform people about Scientology. It was unbelievably fake and cheesy. Not to mention outdated. Sarah said "This movie looks like it was made in the early 90s!" (meaning, this movie was made before I was born, are they serious??).
I could go on and on about what they say in the movie but here is a sample of what I can remember given that I was laughing through the entire thing.
- L. Ron (as they call him) was fully professional in 29 fields. Really?? What does that mean??
- Scientology is a bona fide religion is said many many times. In case you were wondering why it is called the Church of Scientology, which may or may not include their cruise ship, I couldn't tell.
- Scientology will improve your personality and your IQ. Ahh - that explains what happened to Tom.
As we were leaving, the really really nice nice man told the girls to looks around (like for example at all the shelves lined with the many books you can buy authored by L. Ron that are shrinkwrapped so you can't peak) while he put together some information for them to take home. Sarah got out her camera to take a few photos and in a (so creepy) Jeckyl and Hyde moment, the no longer nice man screamed "NO PHOTOGRAPHS ALLOWED!!".