Two Day Magazine

Welcome back to another edition of The Hollywood Outsider!

This is twodaymag’s weekly blind drive down Sunset Boulevard. Speaking of blind drives, this is Halloween weekend. Aw yes, the time honored holiday which celebrates teaching kids the fine art of demanding strangers to give them things under threat of vandalism and challenges young American women to take a conventional outfit and make it as slutty as possible.

The spirits are out in force in the celebrity world, as well, and they are supernaturally lowering the intelligence level even further.

Grab your EVP recorder and your Proton Packs, and just remember not to cross the streams. Here are this week’s spooky headlines!

Psychic James Van Praagh Attacked By The Undead

World famous celebrity “psychic” James Van Praagh, who got famous by convincing large groups of people to give him money to communicate with their dead relatives, got a visit recently by a group of zombies at an L.A. speaking event.

The zombies, who were actually volunteer activists ambling around in zombie makeup organized by the James Randi Educational Foundation, attended the $100 a person event to hear Van Praagh speak with the dead and relay messages from beyond the grave to grieving relatives.

The Outsider spent a pretty good amount of time last week laying into John Edward who performs a similar parlor trick so he’ll try not to retread too much.

On the surface, Van Praagh appears to be a fairly pleasant guy. He’s friendly, polite and seems to want to generally help people. The thing that makes him totally shitty is that he targets people who are at their lowest point and completely takes advantage of them.

To be fair, it is possible that Van Praagh actually believes his own bullshit. In which case,  one could see why he would take offense to someone like the Outsider calling his craft bullshit.

But since I believe that it is bullshit, let’s all agree to keep referring to it as that until Van Praagh decides to prove otherwise.

Unfortunately, many of the techniques Van Praagh uses are hundreds of years old and can be done by just about anybody. In fact, the Outsider used to do them quite frequently to entertain people at parties. The big difference was, the Outsider never took anybody’s money and made sure they didn’t walk away without knowing he was full of it.

What Van Praagh and others like him do goes beyond any form of entertainment. He takes money from grieving people and actually effects their grieving process in an unhealthy way.

He uses a mix of cold and hot reading along with the participant’s desperate desire for what he’s doing to be true so that he can convince a lot of people that he is actually communicating with the dead.

The really sad thing is he’s not even that good at it.

Here’s another example.

And here.

The Outsider has always found it curious that when people communicate through mediums from beyond the grave they always say the same kinds of generic things, “It’s so nice here, I’m surrounded by loved ones, I’ve always loved you.” It’s never anything specific like, “I hid $100,000 in the library. It’s in an envelope tucked in an old copy of Huck Finn on the third shelf.”

As people, we tend to focus on the correct guesses in these situations and forget the incorrect ones. Mix that with some generalizations and a little flattery and you have the basis for most psychic readings.

If you are that desperate to throw your money away, put it in an envelope and send it to:

The Hollywood Outsider
PO Box 166421*
Kansas City, MO 64106

As for James Randi’s zombi protestors, someone from Van Praagh’s group told them he would put them in touch with a person in his organization they could talk to. 10 minutes later, security was escorting them out.

It seems not only can Van Praagh not talk to the dead, but he refuses to talk to the undead as well.

Church Of Scientology Investigates South Park Creators’ Trash

If there is one thing Trey Parker and Matt Stone are not known for it’s sensitivity towards religious beliefs. The creators of the hit show South Park, now in its 1,477th season has satirized just about every religion known to man at least once, including atheism, which the Outsider isn’t sure if atheism even counts as a religion since it’s not organized at all.

Regardless, South Park made fun of it.

In 2005, the satirical show took a pretty serious shot at Scientology in the episode titled, "Trapped In The Closet". The episode feature plenty of shots a celebrities who belong to the organization specifically, Tom Cruise and John Travolta.

It’s safe to say that nobody likes being made fun of, but the way South Park took on Scientology was to simply tell the exact story they believe in through animation. All the while a banner crawled across the bottom of the screen which read “This is what Scientologists actually believe.”

What is interesting here is how the Scientology community responded. Most targeted groups, like the Catholic league for example, would just issue a public statement to the effect of “Those South Park Guys are dicks.” (Outsider’s wording, of course. They said it in a much more Catholic way).

The Scientologist have started investigating Parker and Stone on a very personal level (including going through their trash) to try to exploit any vulnerabilities both in their personal lives as well as their professional lives.

Needless to say, there are probably a few.

The issue the Outsider has here is not with the religious beliefs of Scientologists, but in how they respond to criticism. When someone goes after you for the beliefs you are trying to force on the world, then you should be expected to either defend them, or stop trying to convert people.

If we are honest with ourselves, the Outsider thinks we can all agree that not all belief systems are created equal. Acknowledging each other’s beliefs is important and we should do everything we can do disagree peacefully. However, if you are telling the Outsider he has to be ok with you dressing women up in a 1st century costume and mutilating their genitals, then the Outsider has the same right to tell you that belief sucks.

Happy Halloween!

*Not real!

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