Tag Archives: Conspiracies

Listening to Art Bell from East of the Rockies

16 Apr

I opened up Twitter and saw a message from a friend. He wanted my thoughts on the passing of Art Bell. At some point, we had discussed how both of us had listened to Coast to Coast AM into the wee hours of the night. Now, the host of that show was gone.

I first heard of Art Bell on another radio show. I was driving through the night, and a local talk host was discussing Bell’s sudden and mysterious retirement. This was sometime in the 1990s before we had instant access to everything. I had to do some searching to find out the scoop and to find out if he would ever return to the airwaves.

He made a triumphant return, and, although I had joined the party late, Bell became a late night staple for me. Despite the show’s name, he was on the FM dial in Nashville. At midnight, I would put in my headphones and listen for the theme music to start. It was “The Chase” by Giorgio Moroder, and I cannot listen to that song without thinking that an interview about UFOs is coming up next.

My favorite segments were with Richard C. Hoagland talking about NASA and the face on Mars. For months, they talked about the secret messages in the movie Mission to Mars. I went to see it just because they talked about it.

Zecharia Sitchin was also a great guest. His specialty was ancient astronauts and their influence on humanity.

Bell also took calls from listeners, and they always had stories of conspiracies or the paranormal. They would call in from East of the Rockies and West of the Rockies.

I would stay up too late listening to those shows, but I always fell asleep at some point. I wonder how many dreams were influenced by the voices coming through the headphones with words of weird stuff.

At some point, I stopped listening to Coast to Coast AM, but I always wondered about everyone who listened to it. Did they listen for entertainment? Did they believe what they were hearing? Was it a little of both?

I have also wondered about me. I listened for the entertainment value. However, some of it started seeping into my brain. How did it affect my ideas?

One of my colleagues at work teaches a class on conspiracy theories in American history. Maybe I should ask him.

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Secrets of a Secret Society

13 Jul

Newsweek put out a special edition magazine called Secret Societies: Infiltrating the Inner Circle. Of course, I had to buy it. The thing has sat on my desk for weeks, and I finally picked it up. The magazine includes stuff that I have read before, and my mind started to wander toward a question.

Which secret society would I like to join?

The Illuminati would be cool, but I would have to work with reptile people.

The Shriners would be fun because I could ride motorcycles or go karts in Christmas parades. As a kid, I always looked forward to the Shriner band because a guy strutted in front of it while carrying a big sword.

Bohemian Grove sounds interesting, but the way they frolic in the woods in kind of strange.

The Bilderberg Group would be awesome. They only invite the wealthiest and most powerful. Getting to meet with them would mean being in the categories of the wealthiest and most powerful. Who would not want that?

Heck, the list goes on and on. The Loyal Order of the Moose. Modern Woodmen of America. I do not think the P.E.O. Sisterhood would accept me.

As I asked myself the question, all of that went through my mind. Then, it hit me. I do not have to wonder what secret organization I would like to join because I have already been a member of a secret organization.

I cannot remember how many years ago it was, or I cannot tell you how many years ago it was. After all, it was a secret society.

Some guys I knew decided to form a club where they could partake in intellectual discourse and debate. Out of these sessions, they could make decisions to help the community. It was also a way for the henpecked ones to get away from women for a while.

I was asked to join because they thought I would be good at partaking in intellectual discourse and debate.

Anyway, we met in a small church. To be a secret society you need religious symbolism, right? Also, one of the founders was a member of the church and had a key.

At the first meeting, we named it the Cedar City Men’s Forum and set up the rules of the club. I cannot remember the rules, but you cannot have a secret society without them.

After the formalities, we discussed the pressing issues of the day. Local politics. National politics. Star Trek. You know, the important stuff.

We had several meetings and talked about a lot of things. However, we also wanted to give back to the community. Luckily, there was a huge community project going on. The city had built a new park, and local citizens were raising money for a really cool playground. To get funds, they sold posts in the fence around the playground.

The Cedar City Men’s Forum bought a fencepost.image-43

To be a secret society you need secret symbolism to be displayed in public places, right? We needed our name to be out there for people to look at and wonder what it all means.

This afternoon, I went to the playground to find our fencepost, and there it was. Like other secret societies, the secret symbols outlasted the secret organization. After a few meetings, the Cedar City Men’s Forum discontinued.

I cannot remember why it ended, or I cannot tell you why it ended. It could have been because we ran out of stuff to talk about. It could have been because of an attempted coup against the leadership. It could have been because the henpecked guys were told to come back home. It could have been because someone said Star Wars was better than Star Trek.

Like other long-lost secret societies, we may never know.

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The Conspiracy of Michael Pare’s Acting Career

21 Dec

A while back, I got caught up in a movie-themed stream of consciousness that brought to mind several movies that would not be considered classics. Like a good blogger, I wrote a post about it. A few days ago that same movie-themed stream of consciousness hit me again as I was flipping through the guide.

It was late. Necole was asleep, but I wasn’t at that point yet. That’s when I came upon The Philadelphia Experiment, a 1984 movie starring Michael Pare. There is supposed to be one of those lines over the E in his last name, but I can’t figure out how to do that. Anyway, Pare is a sailor during World War II, and his ship is being put through an experiment. That navy is trying to make it invisible to radar. Instead, they make it completely invisible. When the ship returns, all sorts of strangeness has taken place. Some people have become part of the ship. Pare and this other guy are luckier. They get thrown into the 1980s.Philadelphia Experiment

It’s typical of a 1980s time travel movie except for one thing. A lot of people think this really happened. There are a lot of famous conspiracy theories out there, but this is one that flies under the radar. I suppose that’s a pun. Anyway, there is this idea that a World War II experiment made a ship vanish into thin air and return with all kinds of messed up stuff, and the government has been keeping it a secret all of these years.

I watched the beginning of the movie, but my mind drifting to best of all Michael Pare movies, Eddie and the Cruisers.Eddie and the Cruisers

Made in 1983, this movie follows a reporter who is doing a story about a long dead singer from the 1950s. She interviews the members of his band and learns some interesting things. There is a recording that has never been released, and someone claiming to be Eddie is trying to get that recording. Is Eddie alive? Is Eddie dead? It’s a mystery. Wait, it’s a conspiracy.

That’s went it hit me. Did the navy make a ship disappear? Did a singer survive a wreck and live the rest of his life in obscurity? Michael Pare was the king of conspiracy movies, and that answers a question for which I have always wanted to know the answer. Why did Houston Knights, Pare’s television series, not make it?

This show had it all. There was a Chicago cop working in a city that is strange to him. His partner is a local boy who knows his way around Houston.Houston Knights

They fight crime while one tries to figure out where he is and the other one laughs at him about it. How could a show like that misfire? It has to be a conspiracy. Hell, Michael Pare’s career is filled with conspiracies.

There’s more. An actor named John Hancock also appeared in the series, and there has to be a lot of conspiracy theories involving the original John Hancock. After all, he was a Founding Father, and everyone knows they were up to their eyeballs in the Freemasons.

There’s also this. Michael Beck, who was the second part of the cop buddy system, starred in Megaforce, a 1982 movie about a secret group of elite soldiers who fight evil around the world. These guys have it all. Flying motorcycles. Cool spandex uniforms. A giant cave hideout in the middle of the desert. They have names like Ace, Dallas and Sixkiller. What else can you ask for in a movie?Megaforce 2

I’ll tell you what else you could ask for – Michael Pare. He should have been in it. That would have been three years in a row of conspiracy movies and made him the super king of the genre. Think about it.

Megaforce in 1982.

Eddie and the Cruisers in 1983.

The Philadelphia Experiment in 1984.

With that under his belt, Houston Knights would have made it past two seasons and become a classic. Instead, it fell victim to its own conspiracy. If a Michael Pare vehicle doesn’t involve a conspiracy, then no one will accept it.

Anyway, that’s the kind of stuff that runs through my mind while flipping through the television guide late at night.

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It’s a Conspiracy

4 Mar

This semester, one of my fellow history teachers is offering a cool class on conspiracies in American history. I wish I could sit in on the course because he covers conspiracies from different eras and explains why people have been attracted to the theories during those times. It is interesting to hear his students talk about the subjects they cover in class and the assignments that he gives them. I can tell that they are having a lot of fun and learning along the way.

A few days ago, a couple of students were in my office talking and explained that each of them have been given a specific conspiracy to research and write about. As one talked about their assignment, I said that I had been there. Then, the other one talked about their assignment, and I have been there as well. Finally, one of them said that I must be the one behind all of the secrets because my travels have made me a common denominator. We laughed, but I began to think, “Damn, I have been to a lot of these places.”

With that in mind, here is a list of the places I have been lucky enough to visit that are connected to some vast conspiracy.

Cape Canaveral – One of the coolest tours anywhere, you can get a upclose view of the launch pads used from the 50s to the present. It is amazing to take a journey through the technological changes. What makes this prime conspiracy territory? Ask any moon landing skeptic, and they will tell you that these launches didn’t go anywhere. The astronauts were walking around somewhere in the desert.

Mount Rushmore – Actually, I didn’t know a conspiracy surrounded this monument until I watched an episode of Brad Meltzer’s Decoded. I thought the only conspiracy involving this place was by the people who made that stupid National Treasure: Book of Secrets movie. However, Meltzer’s minions looked into the possibility of the mount paying homage to racial purity. I don’t know about that, but I know that the Black Hills were the sacred land of the Sioux. The fact that it is now a tourist trap is conspiracy enough.

Roswell – In 1947, a UFO crashed near this New Mexico town, and the government has been covering up the incident ever since. It must be true because there is a museum dedicated to it with a lot of cool exhibits.

What? You didn’t know Bigfoot is an alien?

Then, you probably didn’t know that they have real recreations of alien autopsies.

Actually, the museum is interesting and has an extensive collection of UFO videos, research and writings.

Memphis – I wrote in a recent post about my visit to the National Civil Rights Museum, built on the site of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination.

This conspiracy springs from the idea that a petty criminal like James Earl Ray could not have shot King and escaped to Europe without help. Ray fed this idea with his insistence that he was working with a man named Raoul. I have also wondered how Ray got away but had my questions answered after reading Hellhound on His Trail: The Stalking of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the International Hunt for His Assassin.

Dallas – The granddaddy of all conspiracy theories is based around the assassination of John F. Kennedy at Dealy Plaza. Most people probably believe that Lee Harvey Oswald did not act alone. Some say it was the mafia. Others say it was the Cubans, the Russians, or even the vice president. I don’t know about any of that, but I believe this conspiracy lingers for a couple of reasons.

First, a president, Abraham Lincoln, was actually the victim of a conspiracy.

Second, a visit to Dealy Plaza leads people to believe that something else must have happened. Walking around the grounds, it just makes sense that the gunman was on the grassy knoll and not in a window on an upper floor of a building. It is difficult to describe the area, but everyone should take a look for themselves. I must admit that of all the conspiracies this is the one I come closest to believing.

There you have it. The list of conspiratorial places that I have visited. I promise that this doesn’t make me the Cigarette-Smoking Man from The X-Files. Where’s my proof? If I was, then the following would happen.

Derek Dooley would resign as the head football coach at Tennessee, and the team would never lose another game.

I would win the lottery.

People would be breaking the law when they throw chewing gum on the ground.

I would win every hand of Blackjack.

All of us bloggers would be world-famous.

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