Dreamland (The Call of the Weird: Travels in American Subcultures - Louis Theroux)

Member Name: Jake Speed

Product:	The Call of the Weird: Travels in American Subcultures - Louis Theroux
Date:	14/06/09 (259 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Morbidly interesting

Disadvantages: Not very long, bit grim in places

'For over ten years Louis Theroux has been making programmes about offbeat characters on the fringes of US society. Now he returns to America and attempts to track down some of the people who have most fascinated him over the years, trying to discover what motivates them, why they believe the things they believe, and what has happened to the assorted dreamers, outlaws, and eccentrics since he last saw them. On a journey that takes him to the porn sets of Los Angeles, among the UFO contactees of Arizona, and up to far Northern Idaho for a festive get-together of leading Neo-Nazis, he asks what 'weird people' have to tell us about our own secret natures. Has he learned anything about himself by being among them? Do we choose our beliefs or do our beliefs choose us?'

'The Call of the Weird' was written by Louis Theroux and first published in 2005. The book sees Theroux tracking down and revisiting the various strange characters he met in weird American subcultures for his television documentaries several years previously. Ufologists, neo-Nazis, 'alien resistance' leader Thor Templar, 'Prussian Blue' - White Power twin musicians Lamb and Lynx (who were just 12 years old when Theroux first interviewed them), Mike Cain, former member of Patriot group 'Almost Heaven', and many more. Theroux sets out to catch up with these people and find out where they are now. My paperback copy of this is 288 pages and The Call of the Weird is a fairly breezy and undemanding read that you'll rattle through fairly quickly. Although Theroux is a lot more savvy and calculating than he pretends to be in his television programmes, he doesn't really delve too deeply or have anything tremendously profound to say although there is quite an interesting epilogue where he admits to being more jaded this time around revisiting these subcultures. The book though is often morbidly compelling because of the plain nuttiness of some of the people profiled.

The Call of the Weird begins with an introduction where Theroux explains that the idea for the book was a 'reunion tour' of his most interesting interviewees. An update on 'both them and their weird worlds'. There are ten people in the book who Theroux tracks down to talk to again and, understandably, some sections are more interesting than others. One of my favourite chapters was about Marshall Sylver, the founder of the 'Millionaire Mentorship Programme. Sylver is like a real life version that Tom Cruise lifestyle coach character from Magnolia, giving endless seminars where gullible dreamers sign up to his Mentor Programme which guarantees to make you a millionaire or give you your money back. Of course, if you really knew the secrets to becoming a millionaire you would presumably be one yourself and not have to travel around flogging a Millionaire Mentor programme for $5000! Unsurprisingly, Theroux finds out that no one has become a millionaire from this scheme and the money back guarentee is cobblers. It's quite absorbing to see what has happened to the now embattled Syvler.

There is a chapter on the world of 'Gangsta Rap' which I struggled with somewhat having no real interest in the subject and an insight in the world of seedy Las Vegas brothels through a dancer Throux interviewed years ago and catches up with again. This profile is quite depressing at times and you sense Theroux himself has a vague distaste just hanging around these places. More interesting is a chapter on Mike Cain, a former member of 'Almost Heaven', one of those survivalist/patriot type communities holed up in the hills who refuse to pay taxes and believe a UN government is going to take over the world any day now or something. We see that it isn't easy to buck the system and that reality has caught up with Cain in the form of a job in the real world after numerous arrests for driving without a licence. The chapter on Lamb and Lynx, who are sort of like a fascist version of the Olsen Twins, is morbidly compelling, not least for their insane bigoted brainwashing mother, a woman who once planned an 'Aryan ABC book for toddlers'. ' I'd stayed in touch with the family, curious how the girls were growing up,' writes Theroux. 'How fully they were absorbing their mother's message, and how they were enjoying their status as White Power celebrities. I was also keen to meet the newest member of the clan, little Dresden, named in honour of the city that was firebombed by the Allies during the Second World War.'

Perhaps the most chilling chapter in the book concerns 'Heaven's Gate', a cult group that made headlines in 1997 when they committed mass suicide, believing their souls were going to be transferred to a waiting spaceship. 'In late 1996,' writes Theroux. 'Speculation appeared on the Internet that there was a spaceship in the tail of the comet Hale-Bopp. Do (the cult's leader) had predicted UFO landings many times in the group's twenty-one-year history, but this time there would be no landing. They were going to meet the craft a hundred-million-miles from Earth.' Theroux meets some surviving former members of the cult and tries to make sense of it all and discover what motivated people, who seemed relatively sane and composed on their 'farewell' videos, to do such a thing. There is also an Ike Turner chapter, which seems a little out of place in the book, but is mildly interesting mainly for including Ike's rants about the Tina Turner biopic film.

One of the more amusing chapters concerns Thor Templar, the self-styled 'Lord Commander of the Earth Protectorate', a company which he claimed was a security agency for people threatened by aliens. His gadgets included a 'Psycotronic Helmet' which Theroux describes as 'a bicycle helmet with some pipes glued onto it'. In each profile Theroux sketches in the details of what happened when he met them in his television programme and then details his attempt to track them down again several years later. Theroux comments on how he looked up Templar on the Internet in order to find him again and found only comments from himself more or less saying Templar was mad and then some links to a 'Church of Satan' site. It's interesting to see how many of these people have drifted away from things they once staunchly believed in. Templar himself seems to have little interest in aliens when Theroux catches up with him as if the whole thing was a minor incident during a confused period of his life.

Theroux also attends a UFO conference where everybody is selling supposedly mystical trinkets and various rubbish, and meets up with a character called Bob who, Derek Accorah style, goes into a trance and allows someone, in this case an alien called korton from the planet Jupiter, to speak through him. 'I found myself feeling irritated with Korton and or/Bob,' writes Theroux, who has little time for the UFO junket himself. 'Little things bothered me like his accent slipping and bouts of coughing.' Like a dodgy medium, Bob/korton is somewhat vague when Theroux asks him questions about the forthcoming election etc.

The weirdest and most absorbing chapter is about Theroux tracking down Jerry Gruidl, a former member of Ayran Nations, a right-wing apocalyptic group who worship Hitler. Theroux recalls Gruidl admitting to being a big 'Are You Being Served Fan?' when they chatted in the guard tower of a neo-Nazi compound several years ago. This chapter includes a profile and meeting with spooky Ayran Nations leader 'Pastor' Richard Butler and Theroux's account of an outdoor event he attended where various nutcases - 'We salute thee, oh Aryan martyr Hitler! Offering our lives to your sacred cause, we shall march forth to victory' - come up to speak. 'The last speaker was the kookiest of the bunch,' writes Theroux. 'Named Arch Edwards, he was the one who looked like the baddie in Raiders of the Lost Ark. For a while he'd been promoting an Ayrans only homeland called New Celtica, that would be built in underground hill forts. The prospectus had floor plans that looked as though they'd been done by a child for a school project.'

The Call of the Weird is a fairly undemanding but interesting enough read about strange groups and people on the margins of American society. Some chapters are more interesting than others and it won't take you very long to read it but, overall, the book is morbidly addictive at times and passes the time in a reasonably entertaining and absorbing manner

Summary: Quite interesting