39. Perspectives

As you from crimes would pardon'd be,
Let your indulgence set me free.
——The Tempest, V.i

If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should've behaved better.
——Anne Lamott

Sept. 2012 — Well, it's been a few years since I last worked on the Big Fat Greek Vacation. I don't have regular contact with any of the characters in the tale these days, although several of them are my Facebook friends. I thought it might be worthwhile to attempt to bring things somewhat up to date.

To this day, Q. still claims to be working on a documentary film project. The title, theme, and cast of said project have changed numerous times. If I recall correctly, it was originally supposed to be concerned with the origins of the hymn "Amazing Grace," and Q. somehow managed to film interviews with musicians like Al Green, Andrae Crouch, and Ricky Skaggs that he intended to work into the film. Q. also decided to involve some of the musicians he was associated with, following them around with cameras rolling as they researched the history of the hymn.

If you know anything about "Amazing Grace," you know that its author, John Newton, was at one time the captain of a slave ship in the 1700s. You might also know that it's already been the subject of at least one documentary, made by Bill Moyers for PBS in 1990. Naturally, then, Q. decided to differentiate his project by broadening its focus to the wider issue of slavery — which, as you may also know, persists in various forms around the world even today. So, he decided, not only would the musicians in his film research "Amazing Grace," they would go to a country with an active slave trade, attempt to buy a slave (with hidden microphones recording the transaction), and set that slave free.

As you can imagine, "slave buybacks" are dangerous — and controversial. Dr. Kevin Bales, co-founder of Free the Slaves and perhaps the foremost researcher on modern-day slavery, compares buybacks to “paying a burglar to get your television back.” But whether or not you think buybacks are a good idea, there are at least two reasons that someone like Q. should never be trusted to conduct one: (1) as we've seen, he possesses absolutely no cross-cultural awareness and is incapable of organizing a picnic, let alone anything more complicated; (2) having put people to work in rough conditions for no pay, deprived them of sleep, denied them sufficient food, locked them inside buildings, subjected them to psychological abuse, and demanded that they kowtow to his every whim, Q. is hardly in a position to point fingers about slavery.

None of this made the slightest difference to Q., of course. The film/buyback was originally conceived as a project for Watercloset, the reconstituted band project with B. as lead vocalist, but that band didn't last long enough to make the trip — it more or less disappeared after the 2006 Winter Olympics. So Q. turned to Six Steps to Heaven, the Hawaiian band that, owing to either a serious lapse in judgment or a can of bad Spam, had allowed him to get involved with its management, publicity, and booking. At the time, Six Steps had a lot of positive buzz in Honolulu (for which Q. took all the credit, naturally) and was just finishing work on its second CD (but had already made the fatal error of agreeing to release that CD through Q.'s record label). He booked Six Steps, along with B., into a few churches to raise funds, and then they all set off for Uganda, Rwanda, India, and Romania, cameras in tow, to play music, shoot footage, and try to buy a slave.

Well, they made three attempts, all of which failed. Predictably, then, when things didn't go as Q. expected, he started looking for a scapegoat. He settled on Jonathan, one of the guitarists for Six Steps to Heaven, and his daughter Stacy, the lead vocalist. Q. accused them of being "controlling, abusive" people (pot/kettle, anyone?) booted them from the trip after the India leg, and sent them back to Hawaii. A third band member also had to return home because of an injury, which left B. and two Six Steps members who decided to stick with Q. In effect, this broke up the band and put the kibosh on distribution of its CD. (The CD does exist — I have a sealed copy I found at the Goodwill in Seattle — but thanks to Q. it became the band's swan song rather than their breakthrough.) After learning about all this, mostly from B.'s account of the trip published on one of Q.'s Web sites, I tracked down Jonathan's phone number in Hawaii and gave him a call.

In a previous post I mentioned the calumnious and libelous letter Q. sent to the Washington Attorney General's office, accusing me of ________. Well, come to find out he'd publicly accused Jonathan and Stacy of more or less the same thing, after butting heads with them on their filmmaking trip. I actually laughed out loud when Jonathan told me this, and I don't think that was the reaction he expected. I told him I did not mean to make light of his misfortune, but I was beginning to see a pattern: When Q. really doesn't like someone, he plays the  ________ card to show how dirty he is willing to get. An allegation of  ________, even if it's false, can wreck a person's life if it's repeated often enough — so most people, even when they are innocent, would rather back off than turn it into a full-fledged confrontation.

Time rolls on. After failing in his first filmmaking/slave buyback trip and in the process breaking up the most promising band project he'd ever gotten involved with, Q. apparently considered reconceiving the film in a way that would somehow incorporate the failed buyback. That might have been interesting, but of course it never came together. Eventually B. moved to another state. Ironically, he did end up being featured in a documentary film recently, although it had nothing to do with Q. or slavery.

In 2009 Q. manufactured another band, this time putting the two leftover band members from Six Steps to Heaven together with a third musician from Hawaii. This group also was supposed to release a CD, which, predictably, has never come to light — but they did make an overseas trip to attempt another slave buyback. I can't imagine that this attempt succeeded either, although I don't know for sure. I can tell you that after that trip, the focus of the film project seemed to change yet again. The band members undertook a more manageable stunt: they attempted to give leis to strangers from 100 foreign countries. One unintentionally hilarious clip, posted online by Q., showed two of the guys hanging a lei on an outdoor statue in Seattle, acting as though they were in danger of getting busted for vandalism. In fact, there's a longstanding Seattle tradition of decorating public art, and it's never considered vandalism as long as the decoration is temporary and easily removed. Like a lei.

Meanwhile, of course, Free the Slaves and other organizations have done a lot of work to raise awareness about modern-day slavery, including releasing several documentaries. Notwithstanding his ineptitude, you can't say Q. didn't choose a worthy topic.

There haven't been any updates on Q.'s film project in over a year, so it's possible that his latest crop of musicians also decided to move on. One could hardly blame them. Let's face it: Whether or not Q. decides that he likes the artist(s) involved, he's managed to sabotage every original project over which he exercises creative control, and I don't see that trend changing anytime soon.

Today's Pearl of Wisdom: So what prompted me to update the Big Fat Greek Vacation now, after all this time? Well, today Q.'s name came up in a conversation with Sarah, and she told me something about him that she'd kept a secret for eight years: During the Greece trip, at some point while I was away from Athens Christian Center, Q. attempted to, in her words, "drive a wedge" between me and Sarah by telling her what a rotten guy he thought I was. That's right. Now as I recall it, there were just a handful of times when I was away from Athens Christian Center without Sarah — and on most of those occasions I was carrying out orders from Q. So, on top of everything else, while I was away serving his whims, the jerk was actively trying to undermine my marriage.