Golden Age of Tech, Background and (Mis)Administration

Since its release in 1996, the Golden Age of Tech has been a high interest, hot button subject for many, inside and outside the formal Church of Scientology. Here are the details of how it all came to pass with some opinions of how it was misimplemented, what could have been done better and what can be done now in the independent movement to take what was useful from that period to improve the quality of auditing, which was the Golden Age of Tech's original purpose, however defiantly that may be disputed. There's a fair amount of detail here that hasn't been available to my knowledge about what went on during the evolution and leading up to its release in May 1996.

The previous year, in the summer of 1995, DM was down at Flag for an extended period of time. It may not be widely known that Flag has cameras in every auditing room hooked to monitor rooms in the HGCs where, on banks of screens, executives can look in remotely on any session at any time. This fact isn't widely advertised, as you can imagine. Nothing like knowing that 20 execs may be standing around looking at YOUR session. At Flag rates! These “look-in systems,” as they are called exist in all the SO orgs, Celebrity Centre Int at least and likely some of the more modern Class V orgs. In fairness, the purpose of these systems is to improve auditor quality. Hey, every time you call to complain about your cable service the robo-voice says, “This call may be monitored for quality purposes.” I don't know if that R-Factor is given to pcs before they go in session. Maybe it is. It should be.

At any rate, DM would occasionally go into the monitor room for the FSO HGC and look in on sessions. Various RTC inspectors and Flag executives would be present for his “critiques” of whichever session he happened to be watching.

DM's technical qualifications to give such critiques are actually zero, other than whatever authority he has given himself. LRH policies caution against Executive C/Sing and Technical Training Film 13 covers how a C/S should use TR critiques to improve auditor training and quality. There's also an advice that LRH wrote back in the early 1980s when Class XII auditor Merrill Mayo, who was not trained as a C/S, C/Sed an action for a case because of some extenuating circumstance. LRH found out about it and wrote David Mayo, who was Senior C/S Int, that if any auditor C/Sed a folder for a level they were not trained to C/S, they were to lose their auditor certs on the spot. That's how sacred LRH considered the post of C/S was. DM knows of this advice. (This obviously did not intend to modify the auditor's C/S as covered in C/S Series 25, THE FANTASTIC NEW HGC LINE.)

Out Tech at Flag

DM began noticing some misauditing by Flag auditors with miscalled F/Ns being the trigger for a nuclear explosion in the HGCs, C/S offices and the exec structure of the FLB. Back at Int, RTRC was busy compiling the now near mythical Scientology Dictionary. Alarming reports (there rarely seemed to be any other kind) began coming into the Int base about a “horrible out tech scene at Flag.” Then orders started arriving to gather up references on one technical matter or another. Inspections were done by Snr C/S Int Office and the tech guys in RTC of the auditing occurring in Qual Gold. Similar outnesses were observed. Ka-Boom! Flag and Qual Gold became the Twin Towers of the Scientology Tech version of 9/11.

The primary casualties were auditors who became the most introverted, hunted looking staff imaginable. The FSO stats fared none too well during that summer and fall. Per C/S Series 86, THE RED TAG LINE, the HGCs lost all their stats for weeks at a time due to red tags not being repaired to F/N at exams within 24 hours. How much of this was valid, I don't know. My guess is that some of it was, but there are some people whose hearts don't beat unless there is a five alarm fire, Hill 10 disaster on a daily basis and, in a rigid hierarchical organization, the one at the top can manufacture these anytime it suits his mood or agenda. There's some truth to the saying, “Thetans love Hill 10s (a Hill 10 being Scientology slang for a total screaming emergency).

At the end of 1995, DM returned to the base. The Dictionary Project was turned over to others outside of RTRC and disappeared, apparently forever. (If it ever comes out it will be one hell of a product, no doubt about that.)

The Basis of GAT—LRH References

From January until May 1996 and beyond very, very intensive work was done to fully comply with plans LRH had mentioned way back in 1971 in a lecture given aboard the Apollo. On 5 September of that year he gave a famous (to SO members) lecture called “Talk on a Basic Qual.” During the lecture, he mentioned that there was a project underway to take every auditing action and turn it into a series of drills by which auditors could learn a step by step approach to performing the actions of auditing:

“Now, you say, ‘Drills?’ Well yes. Actually we are just packaging up a Drills Course which has a drill for every auditing action, the wildest thing you ever saw in your life. It hasn't been piloted out to amount to anything yet, but it's been done by experts. And that goes right in the direction of your Cramming Section regardless of whether you taught a Drills Course. This fellow can't seem to do listing and nulling. Well, there are listing and nulling drills, so it is written down and these are the steps. So, the Cramming Officer simply would have to take this, hand it to him, listing and nulling. He just does the steps with the meter sitting there, and he goes through it on a sort of a doll proposition until he only gets the steps down. He says, ‘Oh, I see. Um, yeah, I got it.’ You know? He goes through the motions, because it's the confusion of sequence of motions is what he is up against. He is unsure of them. So, the second the Cramming Officer can pick out from a great big, long, thick pack of drills he can pick the drills that the fellow has been flunking in his auditing and make him drill those things. And the second that you can set him up with another guy and have him read the bulletins he is supposed to be doing on Method 2 and pick up the misunderstood words. And, if you have got a library there that has the information in it, oh, you've got it made, flubless auditing! A piece of cake!” --LRH

Earlier, in 1969, he had in effect done the same thing with the old HSDC (Hubbard Standard Dianetics Course) when he issued a series of drills for the R3R procedure. These he issued in an HCOB 17 July 69, DIANETIC COMMAND TRAINING DRILLS. The four drills were TR 101, 102, 103 and 104. With the advent of New Era Dianetics in 1978 two more drills were added, TR 100 and TR 100-A in HCOB 17 Jul 69RA (Rev. 11 Jul 78) New Era Dianetics Command Training Drills.

In October 1971 a version of drills for auditing actions up the Class IV were issued in compliance to the original LRH order. Here is the original list of issues that contained the drills:

HCOB 9 Oct 71 IADS # 1 “Drills Course For Auditors, Basic Drills”
HCOB 9 Oct 71 II ADS # 2 “Drills Courses For Auditors, Level 0 Drills”
HCOB 9 Oct 71 III ADS # 3 “Drills Courses For Auditors, Level I Drills”
HCOB 9 Oct 71 IV ADS # 4 “Drills Course For Auditors, Level 2 Drills”
HCOB 9 Oct 71 V ADS # 5 “Drills Course For Auditors, Level III Drills”
HCOB 9 Oct 71 VI ADS # 6 “Drills Course For Auditors, Level IV Drills”
HCOB 9 Oct 71 VII ADS # 7 “Drills Course For Auditors, Dianetic Drills”
HCOB 9 Oct 71 VIII ADS # 8 “Drills Course For Auditors, Interiorization Rundown Drills”
HCOB 26 Nov 71 IV ADS # 9 “Drills Course For Auditors, Expanded GF-40X Drills”

These drills issues weren't very good, unfortunately, and misdrilled students on such things as L&N with disastrous consequences. The issues fell out of favor and were later cancelled. Regardless, these two references—the 1971 lecture and the Dianetic Command Training Drills—became the foundation for the Golden Age of Tech. (The name by the way, came from an LRH mention in one of the Ls lectures.)

Initial Work Out

The first thing RTRC did was to figure out what all the auditing actions were. Charts were drawn up that listed these out by general auditing action such as ruds, various types of processes, prepared lists and so on. From there the pattern LRH developed for the Dianetic Command Training Drills was followed for each individual type of auditing skill needed.

These Dianetic TRs are basically this:

TR 101 was learning the auditing commands themselves by heart. This was accomplished by the student sitting in front of a wall with the BTB that had the R3R commands and saying them over and over until he knew them. LRH called the commands the process patter and so the first level of GAT drills became labeled Patter Drills.

TR 102 was learning to perform the actions of a Dianetics session by sitting at an session set up and going through the procedure.

TR 103 was running a session on a doll with a coach sitting next to the student and answering for the doll, moving the TA (or making it move with a little device that bypassed the Tone Arm on the meter) and presenting situations for the student to handle.

TR 104 was a full Dianetic session with a “pc-bullbaiter” in the pc chair trying his best to make the student's life miserable to the end of the student being able to run a flawless session under any condition.

In the period before the GAT project began in earnest a valuable reference was found which became the basis for one of the drill types that were incorporated into the GAT handling. During one his lectures to Class XIIs on the Apollo LRH mentioned a drill that was going to be developed wherein the coach presented the student with a situation and then asked “What do you say?” or “What do you do?” One or the other, I forget which. Either way, this became the basis of the Standard Tech Procedure Drills (STPs).

TR 103 became the basis for the Standard Tech Session Drills (STSs) and TR 104 became the model for all the Session Drills that are part of GAT.

Drill Compilation

From there, three Snr C/S Int Office staff, Dan Koon, Ray Mithoff and Tom Ford assembled the basic sequences that would be used for all drills. For instance, they took the common auditing situation of asking an auditing question and followed down the sequence of what action to take depending on the possible situations that could occur. That is, a) the meter could read and the pc had an answer, b) the meter read but the pc had no answer, c) the meter didn't read and the pc didn't have an answer or d) the meter didn't read but the pc had an answer. Then, based on the permutations that could occur off that they put together drills for ruds, sec checking, prepared lists, L&N, repetitive process and you name it.

The way they did this was by scouring the Tech Vols, lectures and Advanced Course bulletins and lectures to determine what auditor action followed which and in which sequence. That took awhile. At long last parsing the LRH references made it clear how the basic auditing actions should roll out.

After this was settled, drills began being assembled starting with the rudiments—ARC Breaks, Present Time Problems and Missed Withholds. Drills were written up for the patter for each rudiment. The Standard Tech Procedure Drills wherein all possible situations that an auditor might encounter were written up and then randomly shuffled to provide three drill versions for each rudiment. Similarly, the Standard Tech Session Drills were developed for drilling the procedure on a meter along with a handy little instrument that was being worked on in the LRH Audio Visual Unit (RAV) called the Drills Simulator.

Concurrent with the work in Snr C/S Int Office, RAV I/C, Gary Lew (“Luigi”) had worked out how to program a device that when hooked up to a meter would produce any and all reads and Tone Arm positions. The coach could sit next to the student and push buttons on the simulator to give meter responses during the drill, thus adding a level of realism that had been missing from auditor training.

The final drills developed were the Session Drills wherein the coach would throw everything he could think of at the student who had to handle it all standardly in order to receive a pass on that particular set of drills.

As the drills starting coming out of Snr C/S Int Office they were sent over to Qual Gold for piloting. Among those piloting some of the drills were Marty Rathbun from RTC and Senior C/S Flag Richard Riess who was at the Int base at the time. Pilot students wrote up any bugs or obvious errors in the drills and sent them back for correction.

Also under development at the time was a new meter, the Mark Super VII Quantum. There was a lot of stuff going forward in certain specific areas of the base. Oddly enough many areas of the rest of the base were entirely oblivious to what was going on. The people working on the GAT project were working between 20 and 24 hours a day and were not out briefing other units. There was an extreme disconnect between the management units, Exec Strata and CMO Int, about what was brewing just down the hall from them. At any rate, drills started getting finalized. More people were recruited as drill writers to take the first wave of drills and adapt them to other actions. For example, the basic drill series for handling an L1C was worked out and then these drills were adapted for other prepared lists.

As drills were written, piloted and finalized, they were sent over to the LRH Book Compilations Unit (R Comps) for production into the drill binders. The binders themselves had to be designed, prototypes worked out and finalized, sturdy enough paper selected, the drills printed and then translated into 14 other languages. A giant evolution started up in LA to get everything produced. A work out was done for each org to determine how many sets of drill binders were needed and in which languages.

Courses, Bulletins and Training

The auditor training lineup didn't change insofar as the courses. It still went: Student Hat, Pro TR Course, Upper Indoc TR Course, Pro Metering Course, Academy Levels 0 – IV. But the checksheets had to be revised to incorporate the drills and explain how these fit into the course. A few bulletin revisions were required or new bulletins needed issuing. The most significant of these was a compilation of LRH TR critiques from his work on TR training in 1979.

The Student Hat Course was recompiled to include drills dealing with Study Tech. The course was resequenced to fit the chronological presentation of the study materials. This turned out to be a big mistake.

The bulk of Study Tech is contained in the Study Tapes from 1964, which came before all the bulletins on the subject. These bulletins had been issued in the 70s, often drawing from the tapes themselves. This re-sequencing was poorly thought through, since years of successful Student Hat delivery showed that many students needed the essentials of Study Tech contained in the bulletins before they could easily get through the Study Tapes. Consequently, the course now takes longer than is used to. (Thanks, Shelly.)

The Pro TR Course and Upper Indoc TR Course didn't change much as those drills already existed.

The Pro Metering Course underwent an overhaul including a requirement of doing each drill five times. The books on the E-Meter were revised and reissued.

Academy checksheets naturally had to be revised to incorporate the new drills.

Stages of Making Auditors

In the summer of 1978, LRH formed up RTRC to help him with technical research and compilations. Among the first things he ordered was new Academy Level checksheets. As part of that evolution he made a telling comment about auditor training. He said that an Academy auditor was supposed to be someone who could do a series of mechanical actions well. In other words, an Academy Auditor was essentially a technician. They weren't supposed to be Saint Hill Special Briefing Course auditors and they certainly weren't meant to be Class VIIIs. They were meant to be technicians who could do specific actions well.

Another relevant factor is the progression by which someone attains a level of judgment in any subject. LRH said that it goes: 1) Duplication, 2) Understanding, 3) Judgment. That's sort of a self-evident sequence. You have to duplicate the technical actions before you can audit successfully enough to understand how to handle a case and eventually develop real judgment about cases. This sequence would hold for any profession, from engine repair to brain surgery.

The GAT lineup fit in as a beginning step to the vision that LRH expressed for auditor training. GAT was meant to be the first stage, where the student would learn her drills (Duplication) well enough to perform the basic actions of auditing as a skilled technician. There's no denying that it is valuable for a student to know the commands of flying ruds or attain a level of skill where he can read off the lines of the L4B without fumbling the lines. Of course, experienced auditors learn this on their internships or from putting in enough hours. But LRH's idea was to train them well enough in the Academy that that the actions became second nature once the auditor was graduated from course and in session.

But drilling alone won't necessarily lead one to a real Understanding of auditing, the second step in the progression. So the second stage to a Golden Age of Tech would have to involve the SHSBC where one listens to 447 lectures, reads all the LRH books and reads all LRH's bulletins. The end result of the course is someone with a full philosophical understanding of the human mind and complete technical mastery of modern auditing. That is a big step up from the level of capable technician learned in the Academy. Nevertheless, this second stage can't be attained without the first.

With Duplication and Understanding one can graduate up to the level of Judgment and that is gained on Class VIII training. Here an auditor learns an unvarying, uncompromising standard of application, 100% Standard Tech, as LRH called it.

This all sounds fairly reasonable and because it hewed closely to LRH's intentions for auditor training, it is. So what went wrong?

One Size Does Not Fit All

It's evident that GAT as it exists today was only the first of three necessary stages. Yet, it was entered into a world of auditors that ran a gamut from Student Hat students, to Academy trainees, to Briefing Course students not to mention thousands of already trained and experienced auditors, some of whom had audited many thousands of hours. This brotherhood of auditors included great auditors and not so great auditors, auditors in the Flag HGCs and auditors working as lone wolves out in the field.

DM ordered that the implementation of the new drills and lineups be issued in a series of Senior C/S Int Bulletins that explained the new releases and contained implementation programs for each aspect of the evolution, i.e., how to set up the course rooms to accommodate the drill binders, how to care for and use the Drills Simulators, how to get already trained auditors through the drills, etc.

Essentially what happened is that every auditor, trained or not, experienced or not, was squashed into this new mold, a mold that was best suited to a student going through an auditor training lineup for the first time, one designed to make a competent technician. Not necessarily the All-Knowing Master of All Tech, but a capable journeyman. Yet, among this wide ranging scope of auditors and auditing skill, everyone was rammed into a single box.

Now, if there's anything that yanks a Scientologist's chain it is a blanket, one size fits all approach.

The overriding PR club used to beat people senseless in the GAT evolution was the word “perfection.” It was repeated so often and so loudly that it soon trumped the more calmly stated LRH datum that “absolutes are unobtainable.” This PR club was used often enough to allow arbitraries to enter the scene.

Invalidation and Other Errors

In the instance of the Pro TR Course, LRH established a standard for passing TR demonstrations in the film that he directed for exactly that purpose. That standard is perfectly correct in every regard and is certainly adequate for a student going on to Academy training. How do we know that? Because LRH directed the film. He sat not 15 feet from the actors while they were doing their drills and okayed the shots when he was satisfied.

But what do we find on courses now? There are Supervisors and Snr C/Ses and even RTC Reps adding in all kinds of arbitrary standards into what a passing TR video is and that has screwed up many a student. (“That first ack wasn't quite … uh … quite … uh … do another video.”) The person giving the final pass should be able to compare it to the film and if it matches, the student's TRs are correct and are a pass. End of course. LRH wrote a very important policy called INSTRUCTION AND EXAMINATION, RAISING THE STANDARD OF, wherein he cautions against hold lower lever students to the same standards as higher level students. By not adhering strictly to the standard in the film, Supervisors, C/Ses and other execs tended to add in their own ideas of what correct TR renditions sounded like.

The Upper Indoc TR Course usually presents no problems, probably because the Supervisor gives the final pass.

Not so the Metering Course. It's all pretty straightforward until one gets to the Dating Drills (EM Drills 23 and 25) and the final assessment drill. Now obviously the ability to read a meter well is vital and an auditor has to be able to assess a list accurately. But the Dating Drills are completely unnecessary for that. Beyond learning the patter for those drills there is really no point anymore for doing them, especially since LRH laid out the tech of Date/Locates in 1978. These two drills became a nightmare for most students, their Supervisors and org execs who were faced with stuck flows in their course rooms.

Despite attempts by RTRC to delete these drills from the course during compilation of the Pro Metering Course checksheet, DM would not hear of it. And the amount of ensuing BPC in students could light the world for years. The final assessment videos are likewise lumbered up with arbitraries when the end product is: can the student do a proper technician's job of assessment? Students have taken a year to get through this course.

Once the student makes it through the Metering Course, the rest of the lineup goes relatively rapidly.

(As an aside, another complicating factor was that nearly everybody who worked on the evolution from working out the drills to writing the drills to translating, proofreading, printing the drills, course packs, books, and implementation issues were basically under extreme sleep deprivation for nearly the entire evolution. All nighters were many. A few hours sleep per night was a high normal stat. There were bound to be errors that made it through the line and students out in the orgs sent in reports which necessitated sending out corrections to drill binders.)

Auditors in org HGCs, many of whom were already overburdened with pc lineups, were supposed to keep making their hours and get through their training lineups on Auditor Certainty Courses. Already trained auditors were ordered onto retreads of their existing levels to catch up on their drills, including the Pro TR and Pro Metering Courses.

There was an implied blanket invalidation of every existing or past auditor. All auditors were made to enroll on Auditor Certainty Courses for their Class but that included the Certainty Courses for Student Hat, Pro TRs, Upper Indoc TRs and then Pro Metering. Undoubtedly, some auditors would benefit from these actions. On the other hand, for some it is “cleaning a clean.” If the person has his or her TRs in, why re-drill them? LRH said that once an auditor's TRs are in they don't go out. If she can read a meter and get reads on a list, why retrain on the meter?

Clearly, the implementation should have included far more individual attention to all existing auditors to determine which, if any, drills the auditor would need to do. If the person doesn't have problems with study, has good TRs and can run the meter, why bother with these other actions? One good answer is because International Scientology Management (read “DM”) takes a “glass half empty” view of people and the world. Therefore, “the blind have been leading the blind,” and all must do actions X, Y and Z.

Field auditors, some of whom had been getting great results for years, were told they couldn't audit any more until they did their Certainty Course lineup. Many simply quit in disgust. This is the exact opposite of what LRH would want to see. Any auditing is better than no auditing.

A much easier and more Scientological approach for already trained auditors would have been to start out from a position of trust and respect and then let the person demonstrate that he or she doesn't deserve it. Instead, Management started out with the view that people aren't to be trusted (or respected) and it was up to the person to earn it (today, that is through donations; in 1996 you had to pay for your retread courses).

In other words, an individual approach should have been worked out. The auditor could have been briefed on the entire evolution and then persuaded to have his TRs, metering and basic actions checked and the appropriate actions laid out in a specialized program for that auditor. Auditors are, after all, the most valuable beings on the planet. They should have been treated as such. Instead the validity of all auditor certs was thrown into question. Certified auditors could have been handled the whole thing as a Cramming action, like LRH specifically referred to in the 1971 lecture. They could have been handled with respect and even had it presented to them as an optional action. An auditor knows if he has weak areas and any dedicated auditor would want to get better. Someone who was mainly PR would eventually be found out anyway from lack of results in her pcs. Market forces could be said to be at work here, even in the monopoly that organized Scientology exercises on auditing.

And then there were the Solo Auditors.

Golden Age of Tech for OT

Shortly after the evolution to compile the drills was going full speed, the pattern was applied to all Solo Auditor Training and Advanced Courses. An analysis was done of Solo NOTs Auditors and the Solo Auditor training lineup was overhauled. Drills were developed for different Advanced Courses. Everything is good. Nothing wrong with making sure Solo Auditors know their stuff. Then came the implementation.

All Solo NOTs auditors were basically dumped back to the beginning of the lineup and made to retrain. At great expense. With every arbitrary about the drills as above. And then brought back every six months for “refreshers” and sec checking. Never mind that LRH wrote C/S Series 73 which warned against interfering with a Solo Auditor's progress on Advanced Courses or that LRH in an advice to David Mayo explicitly pointed out that too much sec checking can mess up a case. No, every Solo Auditor is dragged to Flag twice a year for sec checking, which can run up a lot of auditing hours.

Those auditing on Solo NOTs were not interviewed and examined to see if they were deficient in any auditing skills. It was just assumed that they were lacking, pursuant to “the blind have been leading the blind.” Never mind that Pre-OTs have having mind-blowing, universe transforming wins on the Advanced Courses since the 1960s, many of them anyway. EVERYONE was put through the wringer.

On both counts, auditors and Solo Auditors, the training as based on LRH and its implementation as directed by DM were two different things entirely.

And Not One But Two Cherries on Top

The finishing touches for many were the arbitraries entered on the subjects of instant reads and F/Ns.

The long and short of instant reads is “that reaction of the needle which occurs at the precise end of any major thought voiced by the auditor.”

The long and short of F/Ns is HCOB 21July 78, WHAT IS A FLOATING NEEDLE? quoted here in full: “A floating needle is a rhythmic sweep of the dial at a slow, even pace of the needle. That's what an F/N is. No other definition is correct.”

I've heard that there is an interpretation that decrees that the needle has to swing three times to be an
F/N. I've seen F/Ns that swung a lot more times than three and F/Ns that swung fewer. And so has anyone.

It is folly to try and delve into these to subjects here except to say that they sure have caused auditors a lot of confusions and resulted in a lot of pcs being run on unreading items and being overrun past releases.

So, What's An Auditor to Do?

The result of bad implementation of a good idea seems to have been to lessen the amount of auditing being delivered. Field auditors quit. HGC auditors got busted. Solo Auditors became buried in debt.
Now everyone's on The Basics. Academy Course Rooms now deliver Div 6 Courses and Grades pcs are supposed to go to Flag for “Quicker” Grades. (That's the subject of a whole other article.) That pretty much finishes off Org Academies and HGCs.

Scientology was never supposed to be “perfect.” It was supposed to be workable. Every auditor with a decent number of hours in the chair has delivered some really crappy sessions. And some absolutely miraculous gems. And most that were somewhere in between.

The Golden Age of Tech was meant to help Scientologists interested in auditing attain a level of competence faster and more certainly than in earlier times. Only this first stage was ever released and it was meant to make a technician who could do specific actions well.

A similar evolution for the Saint Hill Special Briefing Course and a third for the Class VIII Course would likely appear entirely different. These might not have drills at all. But nobody's looked at these from the perspective of what each Class obtains.

So, Golden Age of Tech or no, where is auditing supposed to continue? In the independent field! Guaranteed, the arbitraries will be fewer as well as more easily resolved and ownership for one's skills will be more self-determined. With auditing being done in the open market, so to speak, a good auditor will get all the pcs and other auditors will have to become better trained if they want to keep their practice. The better auditor would expect to receive higher fees. If that sounds like advocating auditing rates to be determined on the open market, realize that in November 1950 LRH gave a lecture where he basically advocated fees based on what the pc could pay or what a pc might donate to the auditor to help someone else. The monopoly on auditing in the church versus auditing in the independent field is an article for another time.

This one was to explain the Golden Age of Tech in the larger context of auditor training and to differentiate LRH's basic intent from the way the entire evolution was implemented. The floor is now open for questions or comments.

Written by Joe Howard