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This Week: A Satanist wants to make sure we know his true name, godammit; another one comments on comments on the remnants of the Satan-o scene; some secular ideas about healthcare; and an agnostic tells all. The Caged Bird

John Aes-Nihil Speaking. I recently did an interview with Matt Harvey. I was promised a review copy of the article (“The Devil and the Dow,” Nov. 5-11) before publication. I received Nothing before publication and therefore did Not see that my name was replaced in the article with another name [John Cagle].This problem could have been remedied before publication if I had been sent a review of the article as promised.

I agreed to do the interview solely for the possible publicity it could bring to my Films, Music and Archives. I have no idea why the name was changed in the article. Everything I have done for the past 30 years has been as John Aes-Nihil. The name should be corrected to John Aes-Nihil in the online version of the article. A retraction of the use of the wrong name in the article should be printed in Matt Harvey’s column.

—John Aes-Nihil for Aes-Nihil Productions.

Editor’s Note: While it’s not true that any sort of “review copy” of the article was promised before publication, we apologize for the mistake of using the name John Cagle and will make sure that everyone knows that you are indeed John Aes-Nihil.

Speaking loud and clear.

Satan’s Sentinel

[In regard to “The Devil and the Dow”:] Brian Butler pretty much nailed it, but he’s always had a good eye for the foibles of self-described Satanists and the folks too obsessed with them. Have you seen the bit he did for Disinfo with Ted Gunderson? Genius camera placement.

All in all, I think you captured a good sense of the remnants of the L.A. Satano-scene. They’re the Children, for better or worse, of the folks that make up the bulk of George Petros´ Art That Kills, with a less than desirable final trajectory.

—Pat (aka Pylon Sentinel)

Pointing Out Percentages

[In regards to your Willets Point story online:] The city says that it controls about 40 percent of the 62-acre site. Being included in that number the streets that they already own—so it’s rather misleading that they’re going before the council and saying that it’s 40 percent.The streets represent about 14 acres. If you take the deals that they’ve already made with some of the owners, it only represents about 20 percent of the privately owned land that they now control out of the 62 acres.

—Pete Scully

Payback’s a Bitch

In reviewing the film I.O.U.S.A. (“Here Comes That Rainy Day,” Aug. 20-26), your reviewer Mark Peikert boldly stated that the documentary film “proves the economy is about to implode.”The financial state of our government’s budget is certainly of great concern to the American public, however, your review missed a crucial opportunity to improve the national debate surrounding the deficit in the federal budget.

The film I.O.U.S.A. is scary. I myself literally felt goosebumps looking at some of the more grim projections in the film. However, the movie failed to mention a big way that Americans can solve their budgetary problem—health care. If our country’s healthcare system were even remotely as efficient as the systems of other industrialized nations, the reduction of healthcare costs would make our budgetary problem virtually disappear.The Center for Economic and Policy Research has a nifty online calculator that demonstrates this well: http://www.cepr.net/calculators/iousadeficit/calc_iousa_deficit.html.

The absence of any in-depth discussion of the healthcare crisis in America was a gaping hole in the film, I.O.U.S.A. (and your review of it). Hopefully, with this in mind, the New York Press will view the upcoming DVD release of I.O.U.S.A. in a more critical fashion.

—Matt Sherman

Agnostics Are the Way to Go

[In regard to review of Religulous,“The Gospel According to Maher,” Oct. 1-7]: I am not writing this to defend Mr. Maher, but to mention a few facts that you might find of interest.

Young James Madison (prime author of Amendment #1) was once asked what it was he was trying to accomplish, what was his goal, with his clause concerning religion, and memory isn’t verbatim, but I’ll come close. He replied: To keep forever from our shores that which has soaked the soil of Europe in blood for centuries.

Sam Harris, Bill Maher, Dawkinds as atheists are no different than my friends who are Christians, Jews, what have you. Here’s how it works.

Aldous Huxley finally coined a word to describe the fact that man has no clue concerning the supernatural, gods, goddesses, afterlife and such that hasn’t been handed to us by yet some other man. Book of the Dead, four to 35 gospels, Old and New Testaments, Book of Shadows, Koran...it goes on and on. Men wrote them all. They have much in common, as man tends to create his gods in his own image. Jesus, an Aramaic-speaking desert dweller portrayed by light-skinned, blue-eyed blondes Jeffery Hunter & Max von Sydow? Puh-LEEZ! Yes, those two exude the command one would expect, but a more accurate casting would be Samuel Jackson of Chattanooga. Anyway, we don’t know and we never will.The word is agnostic.

There are about 6,600,000,000 agnostics on the planet, including you and me. They can be broken into two groups, the smaller (about 1 in 7) being the agnostics who know they are agnostics, and the larger (about 6 in 7) being those agnostics who do not know they are agnostic. For ease of discussion, my grandfather called the former Thinkers and the latter Believers. The mutually exclusive “heads-or-tails” attributes of those two words will, I am sure, not be lost on you. We Thinkers have come up with a way of categorizing the Believers that is very convenient, and that is by the Number of Gods in which they Believe… If anything, Mr. Maher was a tad merciful, n’est pas? My favorite religious query was Dana Carvey’s son, who at the age of four asked, “Daddy, does God have feet?” Looks like he has a Thinker on his hands.

Best Regards: Donald (Scottish Protestant) Czerny (Bohemian Jew with tinge of Roma) Nichols (Irish catholic, raised one of six altar boys in South Georgia, where we were taught by Christians that blacks were not children of Adam and Eve and would go to Hell so not to play with them lest we go along). aka Dr. Nic, builder of 19 fine harpischords and maker of 4,764 fine skydives.

—Nic Nichols, DeLand, Fl

New York Press celebrated last week with friends and fans at Santos Party House. Special thanks to Orzel Vodka, DJ David Chang, DJ Jonathan Toubin, Bella Napoli Restaurant and Josie Woods Pub & Restaurant.