[UPDATE: Added some photos and video]
So on Friday night my old friend TJ from Pittsburgh came to visit me in New York. I hadn’t seen him in about six years since we worked at the same company in Youngstown, Ohio. My wife was off visiting a friend in Idaho from Friday thru the following Wednesday. A couple of days before she was supposed to leave I had called my buddy TJ somewhat randomly and ended up spontaneously inviting him to come up for the weekend. I was floored that he actually took me up on the offer (which never seems to happen to me anymore) and arrived late on Friday night.
On Saturday, TJ wanted to go into the city and do some sight seeing. We got on the train and rode from my stop in Queens to City Hall. Sitting across from us the whole way was a very cute black girl carrying a tall bag that looked like it housed a musical instrument of some sort. We get off the train (she stays on) around 2pm, and start wandering around Manhattan. At about 6pm we were walking up Broadway approaching 8th Street, when around the corner came the girl from the train. Now I’ve lived in New York for about 3 years and have had my share of coincidences, so I’m used to letting them slide, but TJ isn’t and doesn’t. He turns around as she passes and says “Hi” and waves. She turns around, smiles and walks over to talk to us. Her name is Debbie and It turns out she was carrying a saber and had just come from fencing practice. This immediately intrigued TJ as he’s a weapons enthusiast and we invite her to walk with us.
We asked what she’s up to and she tells us about this little gathering hosted by Alex Grey, who apparently designed album covers for Tool. Debbie says that people just hang out and talk about history, philosophy and spirituality. If you know me then you know this is my kind of fun. We went to a bar and had a few drinks (she didn’t drink, though), and then shared a cab over to the event (it was on 27th btw 10 & 11 ave).
Outside the building is a huge banner that reads COSM, it’s on the fifth floor and it’s huge. I know what NYC rents are like these days, and this must’ve cost tens of thousands per month (at the beginning of the services they mention that they’ll be moving to bigger digs soon). We walk in, and there’s a girl sitting behind a cash box. We’re asked to pay $10, given purple bracelets, and then ushered into this other room. I’m fairly shocked to see that there’s like 80 other people all sitting on the floor, facing a stage in the corner of the room.
On the stage was a statue, which I’ll just describe from the top down. The top of the head was egg-shaped and made of dozens of eyes, this connected to the rest of the head which had three faces. The right face was feminine, the left was masculine with a beard, the middle was normal, all three shared a set of three eyes. The right half of the chest had a boob and the left hand held a flower, while the right had a pectoral muscle and the right hand pointed to the flower. The legs looked like an eagle’s mixed with a bear, and it had giant furry balls below a penis going into a vagina on its belly. Oh yeah, and the whole room is covered in posters reminiscent of Hellraiser.
TJ was already up at the very front of the crowd by the stage and the girl we were with was waving me up. Just as I sat down, the service got started. It was a mash of neo-religious preaching, with some Allah and some Judaism and some biker poetry, but no Jesus stuff really. The whole ceremony was enough to put me off because of the fact that we’d been tricked into paying a church $10, but it wasn’t until I looked around and realized that only a handful of people were wearing purple bracelets and we were surrounded by a sea of others wearing red. This immediately triggered a memory of the story told by the character Joey in the movie “Melvin Goes to Dinner,” about his getting tricked into going to a self-help seminar, specifically how all the new people were singled out by their name tag color. As soon as the service was over, I leaned over to the guy next to me with a purple bracelet and asked him if he’d ever been to this before, to which he responded “No”. I then immediately leaned over and told TJ “It’s a pyramid-scheme cult, we HAVE to leave now”. After we grabbed the leader and took a picture with him, me and TJ booked it outta there and headed to the nearest bar.
We told the story to the bartender and were cracking up combing over the whole story in our mind. We were struck with paranoia wondering if she’d been following us all day. Why did they sit us right up in front? What would have happened if we stayed? Did everyone there realize they’d been scammed into some sort of by the book pyramid scheme religious racket? Are members of Tool part of this cult?
I’ll be writing more about this over the next couple of days as I piece it together and figure out what it means. I highly recommend anyone who’s been in a similar situation to watch the movie “Melvin Goes to Dinner”. This is only one part of the larger story of the movie which is essentially one great conversation between four people.
No Comments so far
Leave a comment
Leave a comment
Line and paragraph breaks automatic, e-mail address never displayed, HTML allowed:
<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>