Per Dorothy Parker’s Our Lady of the Loud-Speaker” (The New Yorker 2/19/1928), this was Aimee’s prayer while kidnapped:
“O God, Thou who didst lead the Children of Israel across the wilderness and guide them in all their journeys—Thou who didst provide for them insomuch that they were fed from the skies and watered from the rock, and didst even keep their shoes from wearing out—Thou who didst care for the three Hebrew children, and kept them safe, though cast into the fiery furnace, so that not a hair of their head was singed, nor was the smell of burning upon their garments—Thou who hast ever looked down in pity upon Thy children in their trials—heard and answered their prayers—Thou hast never failed me before and Thou wilt not fail me now—hear my prayer and guide my weary footsteps to safety, for I am lost and sore distressed.”
And so she got back to Los Angeles, and—as was later developed at the trial—her shoes were not only kept from wearing out, but were not even scuffed.
The whole thing is worth a read. It’s laugh-out-loud funny.
It is also exactly 118 years since the remarkably ugly Franz Edmund Creffield aka Joshua had his leadership of the Bride of Christ Church cut short by some bullets. His cult was the origin of the term 'Holy Rollers' and as bizarre as you can imagine. His only claim to fame was just convincing some folks in Oregon that they should let him sex up their daughters while they literally rolled around on the floor shouting for divine forgiveness. Eventually the brother of his intended 'Mary' (a 16 year old bride) shot him dead. She, in return, shot him dead two days after he was acquitted for murder.
Aimee said she wanted to see a "sea of green", so ropes with clothespins on them were held over the heads of the faithful and they could then pin up paper money. No change in the collection basket! We want paper!
I survived HEB. I got a late start and I was afraid it'd be a zoo. It was. It's the first Saturday we've had in literally months when it isn't raining. It's going to be warm enough for a swim, in fact, and I'm sure that people are flocking to recreate outdoors-like. I bought some lovely fruit, including a watermelon that I had to labor to free from the bottom of the box at the store, because it has a lovely butter yellow patch on the bottom. All the others were white, and therefore unripe. Gotta watch the melons, this time of year. I also got some lovely sushi, and yeah, I bought sushi at HEB, because they make it right there. I ate one of those lovely tidbits on the way home without sauce and it was YUM.
My favourite of this variety was the 1967 one-way voyage to the bottom of the sea taken by then Aussie PM Harold Holt. American author Bill Bryson later referred to this as "the swim that needed no towel."
Come on, Don. What's the point of owning an oceanfront property if you don't take full advantage of the amenities?
Ta, Robyn. Ganja and Reefer are cuties, Rob. Good day, beloved Wonketteers. I love and appreciate you all and I bless us all with love, health, peace, and grace. Joan Crawford and Faye Dunaway will have to wait; not in the mood. Anyway, brunch is nearly ready. We're having MyBacon (made from mycelium), blueberry buckwheat pancakes with maple syrup from around the corner, and air fryer home fries with rosemary, smoked paprika, NM chile, and smoked salt. And of course, strong coffee; black for me, a little oat milk creamer for adorable and adored fiancé Meccalopolis. He made the pancakes after I made the mix.
Please, please stay safe. Wear a mask or two, wash your hands, sanitize when you cannot wash and let the sanitizer dry completely, stop touching your face, take Vitamin D, get a booster shot, avoid indoor and crowded outdoor gatherings and when you must meet, remove masks only to eat, drink, and take quick photos, and stay the fuck away from me and everyone with whom you do not share a roof. Do this because you love yourself, and because I love you, too. Do this in memory of our late friend Treg and hero pilot Tony, who was Holly's friend. Do this to honor the nurses and other frontline medical personnel, especially ICU Hera Mrs Land Shark RN. Stay safe.
As someone with a rocky childhood, I had a problem with Mommie Dearest. Dunaway is so talented she had to know she was camping it up. Anyone making a joke of child abuse - well, they've lost me.
My first exposure to Aimee Semple McPherson was through my favorite niche of Californiania: Our history of weird, wacky religious cults. There is something about California that drives our cultists to new and previously unimagined pinnacles of enchantingly bizarre extremism.*
My point of entry was simple enough. On the main highway between San Jose and the beaches of Santa Cruz, there was an obscure but well-marked exit right at the summit for Holy City. Given that it's at the only calm stretch of an otherwise stressful and terrifying mountain freeway, it's hard not to notice.
Holy City is a ghost town today, although when I was a teenager there were still a few very elderly former cultists living a hermit's life there. It was founded in 1919 by occasional Semple associate William E. Riker as a utopian community that supported itself as a dionysian tourist trap full of racy slot machines, hootchee-kootchee shows and other titillating nonsense and was called a "sexual Disneyland," by writers a generation later, a perfect poster child for the pre-Beat cult scene in California. Small wonder this niche of California history hooked me, huh?
* And yes, sometimes not so enchanting, but who wants to think about the People's Temple in such a nice morning?
That's what I hear, but it's probably a good investment. Development would be expensive, but it's a primo location for affluent douchebags who's idea of "rural" means trees and not weeds.
Oh yeah -- the guy who would preach on stage with a chalkboard filled with Bible verses written in the original Greek and Hebrew. He was sort of hard to pin down theologically -- not your typical evangelical..
There was one night he sat in a easy chair, and went on for several minutes about how pissed he was that donations were down and that he was gonna sit there until enough people called and pledged. In the meantime they showed videos of him with his horses, doing some other stuff that was almost like a big FU
“I need more money for this lifestyle I have.”
Then they’d come back, just a close up of his face, and he’d bark some more. “GET ON THEM PHONES”.
I think Trix got some of her moneybeg skills from Dr Gene…
I was doing some road work, scanning through TV channels while staying in the DFW metroplex. The only thing better might have been staying in Grapevine.
That was a confusing Wikipedia article - starts with “it was on 17” and then “became a ghost town after 17 was built”. From the map, I’m guessing Old Santa Cruz Highway was once 17, which is only terrifying when there’s a lot of traffic and the dividing wall is way too close.
Gonna have to take the Miata on the old road, didn’t know there was a twisty road I’d missed.
Yeah, they were referring to Old 17 when the place was built, the later freeway bypassed Holy City to the east by a mile or so.
As for the new freeway...that thing was almost always crowded with traffic whenever I was using it, that divider is always too damned close, and you're forgetting those fun reverse-banked turns that always had a fair amount of pucker factor even though I knew when they were coming. After my kids were born I started to take the back way to Santa Cruz, Highway 9 through Boulder Creek and Ben Lomond. It took forty minutes longer, but I wasn't a bundle of stress when we got there.
9 is almost always better, except during Christmas tree season - the overlap between “has tree on roof” and “knows what a turnout is for” is essentially zero.
Yeah, but the only reason I'd go that far into the hills that time of year was if there was snow up there. There are closer places to get Christmas trees.
Before Guyana, the People's Temple fed a lot of poor kids and did other good works. Of course, Jim Jones was always a sexual predator, separating wives he wanted to fuck from their PT husbands.
Alabama poultry plant could be closed for 30 days for allegedly hiring minors. At least two children have already been killed while working in Mar-Jac Poultry plants in the US south over the last year.
Jordan Klemperer is all they have. The rest of the show hasn’t been funny or interesting for awhile. Jon Stewart seems like he is clinically depressed.
How amazing!
She basically invented political populist mass media.
Ohhh I would have hated her! She was the first of the super flashy preachers.
Ohhh I would have admired her for technological innovation.
Yes Mommie WHAT!?
Exact same thing happened to my hamster, Scooter. Praise him!
Per Dorothy Parker’s Our Lady of the Loud-Speaker” (The New Yorker 2/19/1928), this was Aimee’s prayer while kidnapped:
“O God, Thou who didst lead the Children of Israel across the wilderness and guide them in all their journeys—Thou who didst provide for them insomuch that they were fed from the skies and watered from the rock, and didst even keep their shoes from wearing out—Thou who didst care for the three Hebrew children, and kept them safe, though cast into the fiery furnace, so that not a hair of their head was singed, nor was the smell of burning upon their garments—Thou who hast ever looked down in pity upon Thy children in their trials—heard and answered their prayers—Thou hast never failed me before and Thou wilt not fail me now—hear my prayer and guide my weary footsteps to safety, for I am lost and sore distressed.”
And so she got back to Los Angeles, and—as was later developed at the trial—her shoes were not only kept from wearing out, but were not even scuffed.
The whole thing is worth a read. It’s laugh-out-loud funny.
"her shoes were not only kept from wearing out, but were not even scuffed."
I mean, that is a detail that would work if she were kidnapped.
That IS a good read, and the demo-derby video link was fun too.
It is also exactly 118 years since the remarkably ugly Franz Edmund Creffield aka Joshua had his leadership of the Bride of Christ Church cut short by some bullets. His cult was the origin of the term 'Holy Rollers' and as bizarre as you can imagine. His only claim to fame was just convincing some folks in Oregon that they should let him sex up their daughters while they literally rolled around on the floor shouting for divine forgiveness. Eventually the brother of his intended 'Mary' (a 16 year old bride) shot him dead. She, in return, shot him dead two days after he was acquitted for murder.
https://offbeatoregon.com/o1106a-bride-of-christ-holy-rollers-in-corvallis-ending.html
That's quite a photo.
Yikes! He is pretty much 100% repulsive.
He wasn't there for his boyish good looks.
Walked kinda funny when she reappeared.
Aimee said she wanted to see a "sea of green", so ropes with clothespins on them were held over the heads of the faithful and they could then pin up paper money. No change in the collection basket! We want paper!
Green! Give me GREEN!
I survived HEB. I got a late start and I was afraid it'd be a zoo. It was. It's the first Saturday we've had in literally months when it isn't raining. It's going to be warm enough for a swim, in fact, and I'm sure that people are flocking to recreate outdoors-like. I bought some lovely fruit, including a watermelon that I had to labor to free from the bottom of the box at the store, because it has a lovely butter yellow patch on the bottom. All the others were white, and therefore unripe. Gotta watch the melons, this time of year. I also got some lovely sushi, and yeah, I bought sushi at HEB, because they make it right there. I ate one of those lovely tidbits on the way home without sauce and it was YUM.
HEB?
Famous regional grocery store chain in Texas. I've shopped at the same location exclusively since 1996.
My favourite of this variety was the 1967 one-way voyage to the bottom of the sea taken by then Aussie PM Harold Holt. American author Bill Bryson later referred to this as "the swim that needed no towel."
Come on, Don. What's the point of owning an oceanfront property if you don't take full advantage of the amenities?
You know, you make a good point. Donnie? Are you listening to this?
“The only difference between a cult and a religion is the amount of real estate they own” - Frank Zappa
In a cult, there is a person at the top who knows that it is all made up.
In a religion, that person is dead.
Perfect
Ta, Robyn. Ganja and Reefer are cuties, Rob. Good day, beloved Wonketteers. I love and appreciate you all and I bless us all with love, health, peace, and grace. Joan Crawford and Faye Dunaway will have to wait; not in the mood. Anyway, brunch is nearly ready. We're having MyBacon (made from mycelium), blueberry buckwheat pancakes with maple syrup from around the corner, and air fryer home fries with rosemary, smoked paprika, NM chile, and smoked salt. And of course, strong coffee; black for me, a little oat milk creamer for adorable and adored fiancé Meccalopolis. He made the pancakes after I made the mix.
Please, please stay safe. Wear a mask or two, wash your hands, sanitize when you cannot wash and let the sanitizer dry completely, stop touching your face, take Vitamin D, get a booster shot, avoid indoor and crowded outdoor gatherings and when you must meet, remove masks only to eat, drink, and take quick photos, and stay the fuck away from me and everyone with whom you do not share a roof. Do this because you love yourself, and because I love you, too. Do this in memory of our late friend Treg and hero pilot Tony, who was Holly's friend. Do this to honor the nurses and other frontline medical personnel, especially ICU Hera Mrs Land Shark RN. Stay safe.
Slava Ukraini. 🌻🇺🇦💙💛
Gotta refuel since we're going a foraging!
As someone with a rocky childhood, I had a problem with Mommie Dearest. Dunaway is so talented she had to know she was camping it up. Anyone making a joke of child abuse - well, they've lost me.
Agreed. I assume that the topic made enough people involved in the movie uncomfortable that laughing at it was more palatable - which is fucked up.
My first exposure to Aimee Semple McPherson was through my favorite niche of Californiania: Our history of weird, wacky religious cults. There is something about California that drives our cultists to new and previously unimagined pinnacles of enchantingly bizarre extremism.*
My point of entry was simple enough. On the main highway between San Jose and the beaches of Santa Cruz, there was an obscure but well-marked exit right at the summit for Holy City. Given that it's at the only calm stretch of an otherwise stressful and terrifying mountain freeway, it's hard not to notice.
Holy City is a ghost town today, although when I was a teenager there were still a few very elderly former cultists living a hermit's life there. It was founded in 1919 by occasional Semple associate William E. Riker as a utopian community that supported itself as a dionysian tourist trap full of racy slot machines, hootchee-kootchee shows and other titillating nonsense and was called a "sexual Disneyland," by writers a generation later, a perfect poster child for the pre-Beat cult scene in California. Small wonder this niche of California history hooked me, huh?
* And yes, sometimes not so enchanting, but who wants to think about the People's Temple in such a nice morning?
OK, let's all go in and buy it for Wonkers, then name it UnHoly City.
Holy City has since been bought by a Scientologist who has more money than sense.
That's what I hear, but it's probably a good investment. Development would be expensive, but it's a primo location for affluent douchebags who's idea of "rural" means trees and not weeds.
She has a thing for blue glass, and wanted the place for the glassworks, and also for a Scientology retreat.
My favorite Cali evangelical nut job was Dr Gene Scott. One of the Toledo stations ran his show on Sunday night/Monday morning and it was a hoot.
Oh yeah -- the guy who would preach on stage with a chalkboard filled with Bible verses written in the original Greek and Hebrew. He was sort of hard to pin down theologically -- not your typical evangelical..
There was one night he sat in a easy chair, and went on for several minutes about how pissed he was that donations were down and that he was gonna sit there until enough people called and pledged. In the meantime they showed videos of him with his horses, doing some other stuff that was almost like a big FU
“I need more money for this lifestyle I have.”
Then they’d come back, just a close up of his face, and he’d bark some more. “GET ON THEM PHONES”.
I think Trix got some of her moneybeg skills from Dr Gene…
I saw that show. Going on about dressage while nearly demanding donations was very odd.
Haha I can't believe someone else remembers that! That will always be the quintessential Dr Gene moment for me.
I was doing some road work, scanning through TV channels while staying in the DFW metroplex. The only thing better might have been staying in Grapevine.
That was a confusing Wikipedia article - starts with “it was on 17” and then “became a ghost town after 17 was built”. From the map, I’m guessing Old Santa Cruz Highway was once 17, which is only terrifying when there’s a lot of traffic and the dividing wall is way too close.
Gonna have to take the Miata on the old road, didn’t know there was a twisty road I’d missed.
Yeah, they were referring to Old 17 when the place was built, the later freeway bypassed Holy City to the east by a mile or so.
As for the new freeway...that thing was almost always crowded with traffic whenever I was using it, that divider is always too damned close, and you're forgetting those fun reverse-banked turns that always had a fair amount of pucker factor even though I knew when they were coming. After my kids were born I started to take the back way to Santa Cruz, Highway 9 through Boulder Creek and Ben Lomond. It took forty minutes longer, but I wasn't a bundle of stress when we got there.
9 is almost always better, except during Christmas tree season - the overlap between “has tree on roof” and “knows what a turnout is for” is essentially zero.
Yeah, but the only reason I'd go that far into the hills that time of year was if there was snow up there. There are closer places to get Christmas trees.
Before Guyana, the People's Temple fed a lot of poor kids and did other good works. Of course, Jim Jones was always a sexual predator, separating wives he wanted to fuck from their PT husbands.
....
....
Alabamy don't need no unions.
Alabama poultry plant could be closed for 30 days for allegedly hiring minors. At least two children have already been killed while working in Mar-Jac Poultry plants in the US south over the last year.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/may/18/mar-jac-poultry-child-labor-violations
These guys should be forced to watch The Mill. The opening scenes alone...
Disappointed in "The Daily Show".
Several both siderism implications lately that Biden can't talk or think.
It seems that they have to appear comedic equally to Biden and Trump in spite of the tremendous differences.
There was an implication that Biden couldn't talk. He has a lifetime history of a stuttering problem NOT slurred and unintelligent speech.
They actually did this to Hillary and Trump. They made fun of the small stuff at Hillary apparently to show "equal" treatment both parties.
Heaven forbid the stupidity of Trump be shown without some mockery of the opposing Dem candidate.
Jordan Klemperer is all they have. The rest of the show hasn’t been funny or interesting for awhile. Jon Stewart seems like he is clinically depressed.
Ryan George is such harmless fun.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_VeaktSO2Q