A Giant in DC
Well, I didn't get to snob around with Cam and Company, but I did have my own little celebrity encounter on Saturday. While waiting for my car at the Four Seasons (having the standard two cocktail interview with a visiting job candidate) in Georgetown - the usual parade of DC's pseudo-celebrities (politicians, reporters, and the self-important crowd whose groupies call into C-SPAN's Washington Journal every Saturday morning at 7am) all decked out for the evening works its way out of the hotel.
And then.well then I notice an actual celebrity - the NY Giants' Pro Bowl talent (and the NFL's single season sack record holder) Michael Strahan. Thanks to the aforementioned two cocktails, I had to say hello.
Scientology + YouTube = hilarity
Just in case you needed any more convincing that Scientology is creepy, crazy, nutty, and a little scary - an enterprising type has put an entire 10-part Scientology orientation video on YouTube.
This is my favorite so far, in which we hear how L. Ron Hubbard used his newly-found skills at Dianetics to foil the government's mind control tactics.
Grab em fast before the jack booted lawyers from the Cult of Xenu raid the YouTube offices.
This all, of course, raises the interesting dynamic that the web - starting with blogs and text, now spreading to widely available means of publishing rich content, is a tremendous threat to closed organizations like Scientology. Long famous for their intimidation and scare tactics - towards everything from Google to Governments - that genie is slowly getting out of the bottle. Or more precisely - it's once again out of the bottle, and no court will be able to wedge it back in.
UPDATE: Well, that didn't take long. The creepy nutjob fanatics at the L. Ron Hubbard Memorial Insane Asylum have laid the hammer on YouTube. Never fear - they'll be back sometime soon.