ABC’s Brian Ross reported on a cult leader who says that nuclear war will begin by June 12.He's a former trailer park manager who has somehow convinced thusands of others that he is a prophet. His followers have changed their names to Hawkins. Will they change back after the weekend?
“Nuclear war will begin next Thursday, June 12, or sooner, according to the latest prediction of self-proclaimed prophet Yisrayl ‘Buffalo Bill’ Hawkins, the founder of a religious sect in Abilene, Texas.”
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
Good news, everyone!
The wait is almost over...
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21 comments:
Good news, everyone! There's a report on TV with some very bad news!
If we can go by the study chronicled in the book "When Prophecy Fails" (Festinger et al. 1956), he should have even more Hawkins on his hands by Friday.
Ah yes. Many years ago, I was fascinated by Festinger's classic study. The cult leader called Marion Keech in the book was actually named Dorothy martin. Later, she assumed the name Sister Thedra, and she was the chief channeler for a group called the Association of Sananda and Sanat Kumura.
For awhile, she and a guy named George Hunt Williamson were recruiting Americans for the Brotherhood of the Seven Rays, an alleged community of Tuned In Groovy People located in in darkest Peru.
I once talked to a guy who got hooked by this scam. Basically, a whole bunch of naive young Americans were gathered together in a cheap hotel in Lima. They had all paid a certain "reasonable" fee to go on the adventure. Martin and Williamson told them to wait there a week, and then they would all hike up to the brotherhood's mystic retreat.
A week passed. Martin and Williamson disappeared -- with all the money. The "brotherhood," needless to say, never existed.
My contact seemed not to bear a grudge (his parents sent some money to get him home). He later became an anthropologist.
The religion business. It really is something, isn't it?
MY BOY DON'T MANAGE NO TRAILER PARK
It's a gawdam Mobile Home Community for your information and it has a gawdam swimmin pool, two video games and a coin operated laundry. As for that newclear war, he's got somethin in the tool shed that he's been fiddlin with since cousin McVeigh got fried. It caused all the livestock that wandered by to drop dead so if I were you I wouldn't be programin yer frickin teevo past Friday.
now get
Hawkins mom
Well, I shall spend the day listening to Mahler's Ninth and (uncompleted) Tenth Symphonies, which are both about death. Appropos, I should say.
For the few who may be interested, I recommend Bernstein (1985) and the Concertgebouw for the Ninth. That's the one with the SLOOOOOWWW pacing.
For the Tenth: Russian conductor Rudolf Barshai has recorded his own orchestration of the incomplete score. The result carries a few hints of Shostakovich (whom Barshai knew) but otherwise conveys the Mahler idiom.
The performance of the final movement is AMAZING. This is one of my favorite recordings of -- well, anything. If it's the last thing I ever hear, I'll die content.
Wonder what the good folks in the trai -- excuse, please: In the mobile home community will be listening to on Judgment Day?
Thanks, Joe.
I shall now begin rehearsing one of my favorite songs:
E lucevan le stelle from Puccini's "Tosca".
I love Mahler. Heard Bernstein in person conduct the 5th in San Francisco. ( a long time ago) The movie Death in Venice was my intoroduction to his music. Michael Tilson Thomas gives good Mahler. The idea that you are attracted to Mahler hurts my head. Have you heard the Uri Caine variations?
http://www.uricaine.com/
My dear Scott -- Mahler was my RELIGION throughout my late teens and early 20s. In college, I would miss classes (and even finals) simply because I was in the music library and could not tear myself away from the Gustav records.
Really, if you are another aficionado, you must grab hold of the Barshai Tenth. It's coupled with the Fifth -- a well-regarded performance which I didn't like as much as some others did.
But the Tenth! It's a revelation.
I've heard the work a number of times before, usually in the Cooke version. (The old Ormandy performance is surprisingly good, by the way.) At one time or another, I've caught bits of other completions. Barshai sounds much like Cooke. What really sells the piece is the performance. This is no longer music -- it's direct stimulation of your neural pathways.
Bernstein was always good in the Fifth, and I'm jealous of you for having a chance to hear it.
I'm checking out the Uri Caine site right now.
This video...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zsAOOgry-8A
...illustrates how I spent most of my spare time between the ages 16 and 26. Yes, I was THAT geeky.
Hey Scott...you ever hear the first (and only) symphony of Hans Rott, Mahler's old roommate at the Vienna music academy? Some of it sounds an awful lot like Mahler's own First, which came later.
That was great. I was about 21 when I first discovered Mahler.
The Uri Caine's music is complex and sometimes difficult. I like him- especially his Mahler variations. Sometimes it is difficult to hear the Mahler in his work but it is always interesting even when it makes me jump up to turn it down. Listen to some examples before you put any money out for it as you may hate it?
I have never even heard of Hans Rott. Why only one symphony? Must be a story there. I will look for him.
Thanks.
"Wonder what the good folks in the trai -- excuse, please: In the mobile home community will be listening to on Judgment Day?"
C'mon Joe you know good n well that the dupes and marks in the parks --er, mobile residences-- will be cranking up Alexander Nemtin's "completion" of Scriabin's Mysterium AKA Preparation For The Final Mystery.
You might want your beauty and pathos (and why not Part's Canticle for Benjamin Britton, speaking of death how about Corigliano's Sym No.1: Apologue: Of Rage And Remembrance? )But back to the Mysterio: what could be better for the final farewell? Especially if the Hawken cultys are right about it, then this will be the best soundtrack. Scriabin wanted to build a temple for the production of Mysterium, a mixture of rite and drama to last for seven days and nights (no really. and not at Bohemian Grove), and Scri said that this would transform the human race. In some of his 1000 pages of notes, he said; "There will not be a single spectator. All will be participants. The work requires special people, special artists and a completely new culture (see what happens when Obama gets the nomination??). The cast of performers includes an orchestra, a large mixed choir, an instrument with visual effects, dancers, a procession, incense, and rhythmic textural articulation (if you're going out, might as well do it in style). The cathedral in which it will take place will not be of one single type of stone but will continually change with the atmosphere and motion of the Mysterium. This will be done with the aid of mists and lights, which will modify the architectural contours." Later he added that after the grand performance the world would come to an end with the human race replaced by "nobler beings."
The story of Rott, the quintessential tortured young artist, is indeed pretty interesting. I've even thought about writing a screenplay about it.
Rott came form a family without much money. (His dad was an actor.) Somehow they scraped together enough money to send him to the Vienna Conservatory. His mother died, then his father had a serious accident. With no financial support he was destitute. Anton Bruckner --a simple, religious man with a good heart -- taught there, and took Rott under his wing. Through Bruckner, Rott was able to find some work as an organist.
Somehow, in spite of his precarious circumstances, Rott managed to finish his great first symphony in 1879, which has echoes of Bruckner and Wagner -- and very distinct pre-echoes of Mahler.
The symphony was placed before the judgment of Johannes Brahms and the critic Hanslick, who were in a position to grant Rott a state scholarship. Both of them couldn't stand Bruckner. So naturally, Brahms detested the work of Bruckner's protege. Brahms excoriated the sensitive young man in the worst possible way, telling him to seek some other profession, because he would never make it as a musician.
Rott became unhinged. He became convinced that Brahms was trying to kill him. One day, when riding in a train, he took out a gun to prevent another passenger from lighting a cigar. Rott was convinced that Brahms had planted dynamite in the train.
Soon thereafter, he was committed to an asylum, where he was forced to wear a Hannibal Lechter-type mask. Finally, he committed suicide -- at the age of 25. He wrote the symphony at the age of 21.
It's a terrific work. I think it needs a revision -- Rott never got a chance to hear it performed. If he had, he probably would have deleted most of the triangle-player's part. (It gets really annoying.) But the relationship to Mahler's First is unmistakable.
I like Rott's first, warts and all. I like it better than I like Brahms' first symphony. Of course, I was never a big Brahms fan. I think Rott's work would be better if some conductor would have the courage to rewrite it a bit. Or just put a muffle on that damn triangle.
Rott was hardly the only one of Mahler's early friends to end up like that, incidentally. And you think YOUR school days were tough...!
MH, the only Scriabin I know is YouKnowWhat, and I'm not the world's biggest fan of that. But the piece you describe sounds fascinating. If, by some miracle, the world survives past this weekend, I'll do everything I can to find the Mysterium. It sounds like just the thing to herald the coming of the Lightbringer From Chicago.
Anything by dear old Arvo Part will more or less do on Big Death Day. I'm a great admirer of Passio and his other light classics. We're all suckers for catchy tunes you can whistle.
Since we're talking about uncompleted works devoted to piercing the veil, I must make note of the Bruckner Ninth. If you haven't heard it with the Fourth movement, you haven't heard it. The version you want was conducted by Kurt Eichhorn. It's out of print and used copies go for a hundred bucks or so, but what of it? Skip dinner for a week. Stiff the landlord. How else are you going to hear Gabriel descend and sound the last trump?
(Most other performances are kind of lame. You do NOT want the one by Harding and the Swedish RSO. The very different completion by Carragan is also good.)
(Far be it from me to suggest having a friend make a not-quite-legal copy for you, but in the case of the Eichorn...)
Thanks Joseph for your story of Rott. I will get a copy of his lone work.
Didn't Mahler have a problem with Brahms as well?
Here Joe a gift for you-- only because of three things: 1) you let my MH sig pass up there when you can obviously tell from my IP that it was me all along 2) you let my sig pass with the obnoxios Mena-meme and 3) well cause if it's the end of the world, i sure don't want you mad at me. So here; used Eichhorn copies may go for a hundred bucks or so, but Free Lossless Audio Codecs (FLAC) last forever! Well, unless the world ends.
Careful, lee. You may be leeching off some jerk who doesn't like Obama.
Joseph, this is a petition to remove Pelosi from her obstruction of the impeachment prodceedings.
http://www.petitiononline.com/everyman/petition.html
Nancy Pelosi is an outrageous congressional poison. Whether she's criminally collusive or just unfathomably ignorant, her disregards for democracy, the American people and the U.S. Constitution were laid bare the moment she took impeachment "off the table." She's obstructed justice long enough, and should not only be removed, but also indicted, tried and very possibly jailed alongside the Bush administration!
Hey, I'm a seeder not a leecher!
But I am concerned about the sexist diction there.. are you saying that all those who don't like Obama are jerks? Or conversely, that those who like Obama are non-wankers? Are you, Mr. Cannon, considered a non jerker because you voted for the guy? or are you a jerker because you found out about him after your vote was cast and now well, Joe, you just seem like you don't care all that much for Obama....
But does that make you an onanist? a waxer of the little Joe? Do we know what you do in your spare time? And is that any of our business? Jerks all of them! Ever since "She" got into the ring, it's been one sexist diction from all the Toms Dicks and Willies. "Diction" ha ha.. As in BHO has one, and HRC has not? Like the great poet Pier Giorgio Di Cicco wrote in the Male-rage Poem; Feminism, Baby, Feminism.....
Dude, I am so done defending Nancy. I carried water for her endlessly when the Kossacks and DUpes had decided that she was Beast of the Century. Then Hillary became the New Beast and you never heard another bad word about Pelosi.
But...jailed for WHAT? Come on, that sort of language is ridiculous.
By the way, "E lucevan le stella" is a good choice.
Did you ever hear the story about the time Maria Callas sang the role of Tosca and she really, really stabbed Scarpia? The retractable knife didn't retract. He kept singing!
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