Category: The Elusive Beatrice Howard

 

Besides Peter’s glasses there was one other thing in Robert’s office I wanted to take and I think Peter left them there to see if I would take them which I didn’t. Robert had in the main room a box roughly 1 foot cubed which was labeled Radar Love master tapes (Golden Earring).

I couldn’t imagine how Robert could get hold of these, btw check out these boys fine asses in this video. This is an unbelievable song and appeared in the film, “Baby Driver”. It is a great driving song. I asked if I could have them, he said no that they’re important and they have to go to someone. I wonder if he was being tested there too. Enjoy the song.

 

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Ron came up with the dog Tralfaz from Flintstones.

Who knew Ron came up with Gazoo and I became him in real life!

I try and pay attention to genetic markers and the name game, we just got through spending some time with Bob Denver who I would lay double money is from Farid’s blood line, along with Peter Lorre, Buddy Hackett, and Budd Cort. That’s all I have to say about that.

Thanks for a crazy remarkable evening everyone.

 

Much love to all!!!

 

Just back from alpha centauri!!!

 

Hope you are too!!!

 

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This is a good piece, well, a piece of the second Lifespring Movie. It must have been time for the demise of Lifespring because this probably signaled it. The movie was shown at guest events where graduates attempted to ‘enroll’ family, friends, strangers, homeless people, into the next Basic Training which ran a few hundred bucks somewhere between $450-600. I forget the exact sum. The advanced training ran about a thousand. The basic ran wed, thurs, and friday night…all day Saturday and most of Sunday. If you didn’t benefit from the training you got your money back until they changed that policy. Was it worth it?? Yes…every dime and then some. It was probably the single most influential, life changing experience I’ve ever been through and I’m forever grateful for everyone involved in putting this together on the grand scale and the local scale. Not enough time to go through the details but this was a no holds barred experiential training to help you confront your issues and your place in the world. I did the basic training then got thrown out of the advanced course, came back redid the basic training and went on and completed the advanced training, did the Leadership Program, got thrown out of senioring a Basic Training, then seniored a Basic Training, the seniored an Advance Training, did the Masters Course, seniored a Master’s Course and Captained a Master’s Course. I was the Medical Director for Lifespring in NYC. I did the relationship workshop and never made it into the Money Workshop. Worth every dime I spent and more, much more.

We all loved the first Lifespring video, the second one…not so much. We must have jumped the shark at Lifespring (a Happy Days reference to the show tanking after the episode where Fonzy, played by John McCain, jumped his motorcycle over a tank with a shark in it) after that video.

The video was basically terrible. It had none of the excitement and warmth of the first video. It was so bad we were forced to use it but early on the director of Lifespring NY broke ranks and wouldn’t show it but instead showed the first one which was a breath of fresh air.

From recall the movie showed a bunch stuffy, rich, overly removed people squawking about how magnificent they were and their lives since Lifespring. You felt like vomiting by the time the video was over. It basically said over and over…we are marvelous, regale in us, you can never accomplish what we have because we’re too fucking marvelous for words. Enjoy the training but you’ll never be who we are because we’re marvelous. I don’t think I’m so far off. The video featured a bunch of Narcissistic  losers who were so filled with their own sense of excellence they really couldn’t give a shit about anyone or anything else except for how the world could treat them. The video was removed from the common man and elitist in attitude. Based on what I had seen I wanted nothing to do with the people on the screen, I could not relate to them and I had too much to do become one of these marvelous sloths telling me how wonderful their lives were thanks to Lifespring when it was pretty clear their lives were already marvelous.

Who was going to sign up with this piece of crap? Nobody! It’s harsh but it’s true and it was simply time for Lifespring to head the way of the dinosaur as the film was deplorable.

 

 

At Lifespring it was said you can’t have a Lifespring training without John Denver and here he is with Werner Erhard founder of EST. Lifespring was an offshoot of EST.

In Annie Hall, Woody Allen is asked out of the blue at a party, “What do you have against EST?” Funny scene but the whole film was hysterical.

Robert and I were working on preparing an event and Robert asked an important question of one of the higher ups: ‘Are royalties paid to the artists whose music is used during the trainings.’ The answer was no.

I was captaining a Master’s course which I loved and we got to the very last song on the very last day which was the trainer’s personal message to student. The song was “Takin’ it to the Street performed by the Doobie Brothers. Lifespring thrived on perfection and preparedness and when the music guy went to pull the tape it was missing which was pretty much a huge sin as those tapes were supposed to be checked well in advance of the training. So he asked me what to do and I said to ask the trainer who was a wonderful African American woman who got excited tell about the time she met Shirley Maclaine.  She loved me because anytime she asked for something, no matter how minute or difficult to find I’d always manage to come up with a couple minutes later. One night she went into some kind of beautiful admiration state of me and I literally had to push her out the door to go home because she kept finding things for me to do for her and I was afraid of what was next. It was an awesome training but this damn tape was missing.

The guy came back and said to me she said we should pick out another song. So here it is the last five minutes of a three day training and the trainers special message song to the group of 58 of us is missing. I grabbed the play list and went through them.

What song did I pick?     Which song would you have picked??

The list was all popular tunes written by Ron and or his posse.

Ok so which was it?

There it was sitting right next to Takin’ it to the Streets…Take it to the Limit by the Eagles. Which was a great choice, so I was told and things ended perfectly as LIfespring was always about perfection!

LIfespring had a bunch of lawsuits against it for using people as free labor. I didn’t care cause I got lots of hugs and there’s very little better than that.

I was also Medical Director of Lifespring NYC for a few weeks which I though better of and resigned as I had no malpractice for that and I wasn’t being paid and I was already getting all the hugs I wanted so why buy the cow?

I was there for several years. The best hug I got (in fact ever) was during senioring a basic training. A guy named Jack Batman grabbed me during the exercise and gave me the warmest most nurturing and nourishing hug I’d ever had…simply amazing.

The second most amazing hug was from this beautiful ebony woman about 29 years old. I wasn’t going to hug her, you had a choice, but instead just look into her eyes which was important for me at the time however, it was like she flipped on some magic switch and I got consumed with heat and we went into each other’s arms and she pressed against me and ground me like I was French Roast Coffee. She was amazing! She got what she wanted and apparently…so did I!