Mike! Would there be any way tosomehow put this comment below Bruce’s comment just this once? I want to respond to what he said! I feel rather badly that I might have hurt his feelings.

@Bruce,
It was I, not Richard who just trashed Miscavige awful taste in Int Event sets. The key word here is “his”. HIS taste – not yours or any other Sea Org member involved in set design or construction.

Thank you for sharing what you did.

Please don’t think I was criticizing you or any Sea Org designers or builders. HE was the decision maker!

He didn’t give you much to go on; his guidelines were huge generalizations; he made you guess and then be wrong and have to do it all over repeatedly; he witheld his ultimate approval until the very last minute.

Out of his own inability to communicate and/or out of sheer cussedness and sadism he did not articulate his own vision to his staff – his designers, builders, painters, etc.

My ONLY point was that ultimately what went out there was HIS taste – not yours! HE approved what was offered, after giving his people practically no guidelines.

What a freaking monster, putting you all thru hell cruelly, unnecessarily and I might add, wastefully and expensively.
That Miscavige loves the gaudy and garish is bad enough – actually, its kind of funny to me, if you want the truth.

What’s unforgivable is how he made his staff suffer in their earnest laboring to make his horrific taste manifest.

What is the new “Admin Dreck,” you might ask? Well, Captain Miscavige has discovered that the current Green Volumes are wrong because the policies are ordered by publication date. But to really understand them, you have to order them and study them in order by the date they were actually written. Otherwise, apparently, your head will explode, almost like you got a peek at the OT III materials before you were ready, or something.

He put off fixing Admin Dreck until they had Ideal Orgs and 100% standard tech. Never mind that any business continually evolves its internal administration processes as it grows. Apparently, in Scientology, it’s OK to grow with all that straight up and vertical expansion without having competent administration, and then you can add that at your leisure when you are at the pinnacle of success.

The new “Golden Age of Administration” is weak sauce for the membership, but a terrifying new tool to keep the staff members wrapped up in new training that will keep them from blowing because they’ll all have to come to Flag for many months if not years of indoctrination.

Richard, the sets are actually designed by folks working for Dave. He couldn’t draw a set design if his life was at stake. But your point is well taken just the same.

In the early 90s we were just getting started with the big broadcast events. Every event was a complete circus to get set up. The set designers would put something up at great expense. using slave labor and 24 hour a day schedules. Dave would look at it and say it was bovine excrement.

Not “I think there is too much beige in the background” or “it needs better lighting on the backdrop to make a three dimensional effect”. Just “This is crap. Do it over.”

He loves to see creative personnel just frantically scrambling around. Makes him feel like a god or something.

The worst one was “This looks just like the last one! Not original at all!” Of course, once they got something actually approved within minutes of the curtain call they had a great tendency to try it again.

Honestly there was no real esthetic consistency to his criticism so it was impossible to create something truly artistic that would get approved. Kitsch is king with Dave.

Finally he gave up on the originality crap and it settled down into the absolutely over-the-top styrofoam Greek columns and printed backdrops that you see today. They even bought a huge transparency printer so they could print a new backlit background once in a while and keep the rest of the set pretty much the same.

This background is vitally important to Dave because that is what you see in all his close-ups. It MUST somehow show up his brilliant blue eyes.

Wish you could have been there one time when the video guys tried to explain to Dave that his blue eyes would never look like brilliant sapphires in his face when the camera is in a mid or long shot. His eyes were more like flame throwers that day. Fortunately these guys were hired guns, not Sea Org. They’d be on the RPF in minutes if they were!

Book designs, set designs, CD cases, Scientology TV, everything that needs an esthetic sense in Scientology is poisoned by Dave’s tendency to insist that they emulate Spinal Tap and turn it up to 11.

Laughter!! It never occurred to me before that the garish decorating obscenities at many scn events were Davy’s creations. Now I know. LOL!

It’s a Final Count Down….

2025 , begining of Age of Extinction ,after the end of current state of Age of Paranoia.

It’s not me it’s written.on.the wall.

Richard, as usual, LOL. “Mahvellous, Dahling”. Yes, that would be amusing, watching Monsieur Pompadour in an Ideal Org fly thru, flitting around with cloth swatches, comparing wood grains and tile, matching up curtain fabric and conferring with his assistants as whether to go with deep burgundy-and-mushroom or olive-and-gold in Reception…that would be cute.

Except for one problem:

The little plug-ugly from Philly has the WORST taste. Demonstrably THE worst!

How do I know this? You might well be asking, and fair enough.

Here’s how I know: His Int Events. That scenery in back of him, surrounding him. That stage he stands on delivering his ShermanSpeak. OMG.

The clouds, the fake marble pillars, the swirls of brilliant scarlet, the della robia blue back ground, ornate gold and silver etching everywhere…how can this “decor” be described…let me try…

How about Long Island Low Level Mafioso Fantasy meets Going-Out-Of-Business-One-Day-Sale- Imitation Italian Renaissance?

Seriously, those Int Event sets are awful. No one with taste would stand up there and give a 3 hour speech on a set like that. Normal people would be quite embarrassed. I would DIE of embarrassment to give a speech on a set like that. (No reflection on any former Int Event Sea Org set builders btw. The Dwarf’s bad taste was not YOUR fault.)

I can just imagine what his home looks like. Jesus.

@Chuck,
I hear you. Yes, he is good at getting orgs bought and built with other peoples’ money! We’ll give the devil his due. Too bad Hubbard didn’t post him at Int as Head of all Estates Worldwide, or whatever the name is for such a post.

Thanks – I think I know what you mean…I think. Yes, I think I get it. “Monkey see monkey do”…yeah. That’s what it is, alright!

They abide by the monkey see monkey do rules. If Miscavige accepts their applause of his definition of expansion, then they have caught on to things, and that’s acceptable, so the play along to whatever makes Miscavige happy.

It’s a huge pretend multi levels conditioning monkey see monkey do.

Landlordism is all that Miscavige is good at. He’s not good at the “spiritual” pseudo-therapy and exorcism practices of the movement.

He’s only good at landlordism and getting things built up to put those “orgs” there.

Not the practice of the faux religion.

And, remember, this is quackery anyways, that is, the Hubbard quackery is this pseudo-therapy and exorcism. Since it is fundamentally bogus, no one is going to be ultimately good at it.

It’s a huge futile faux operation, people get conditioned to fake results, and be satisfied with their faked results, and accept and applaud their faked results of each other.

It’s not a winning strategy.

So landlordism is “real” in that renovated old buildings do at least look solid and better than they used to, relatively.

So Scientology’s only winning strategy is the landlordism strategy.

The world’s not obviously on fire wishing to do the pseudo-therapy and exorcism parts of Scientology, and no amount of great practitioners of the quackery pseudo-therapy and exorcism have made any dent in public demand.

It’s a futile false promising operation. Unwinnable.