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How Aliens Stole My Childhood
June 16, 2023
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In case you haven't heard, it seems that aliens were confirmed this week. An Air Force veteran whistleblower has come out and said that we have extraterrestrial ships. It’s not getting much discussion in the mainstream news, with many commentators brushing it off as a nonevent. In the paranormal podcast space they’re saying this is the most significant event of our lifetime. 

I’m, shall we say, dubious.

Days later there was a weird green light in the skies over Las Vegas and a family called the cops saying that a UFO had crashed in their backyard. And an 8ft tall creature came out. After all these years, our otherworldly observers are getting sloppy. Maybe from watching us they’ve learned the importance of diversity and inclusivity, and started letting their females pilot their ships.

I kid, I kid (or do I?).

When I was very young I was obsessed with alien lifeforms. Specifically Gordon Shumway, aka: ALF (which stands for, Alien Life Form). Little Trevor didn’t understand why such wonderful entertainment was on TV every night, if not all the time. My parents probably thanked God that TiVo and streaming libraries hadn’t been invented yet. I still have my giant ALF coloring book, by the way. Forget Sesame Street. I was all about sitcoms.

And then something terrible happened.

An old family friend loaned us a VCR for a week. In the late 80s these things were still pretty rare (now I have four in the basement, just in case). Being the media savvy little kid I was, I knew exactly what this meant. It meant that I could finally see E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial. And for whatever reason, my parents rented it and we watched it. Afterwards, my life was never the same.

Essentially, it messed me up.

I’m pretty sure I made it through the whole movie, though I only remember Elliot saying a word I’d never heard come from the TV before. Something about E.T. scarred my little psyche and for years I was terrified of seeing an alien outside my window at night. I actually started sleeping on the side of my bed furthest from the window so that I’d have a few extra seconds to escape, a habit I continued for many years. And forget about ALF, he wasn’t funny anymore. 

My dad was not sympathetic.

About the same time Unsolved Mysteries premiered on NBC and it was one of his favorite shows. I was a pretty well-behaved kid and I threw tantrums when it came on. Some of the stories were okay, but as you may recall they didn’t shy away from the occasional abduction reenactment. Just the music was enough to send me into fits. I still wouldn’t go for a walk after dark with it on my headphones now.

Neither would you, so don’t laugh.

In an effort to give me some understanding, my dear old dad tried to reason with me. One night at the Christian bookstore he found a short book that explained exactly what aliens really are. Maybe if they weren’t such an unknown quantity I wouldn’t be so afraid. You know what he told me? You know what he told me. UFOs and aliens are actually demons. 

This did not help.

Eventually, after years of not being abducted, I got over my fear. I saw E.T. in the theater when it was rereleased with those stupid CGI walkie-talkies (trust me, Steve, it wasn’t the guns that bothered me) and I was fine. I started to like Unsolved Mysteries and put it on myself. Unlike my peers, I never got into The X-Files, but that had more to do with it being on past my bedtime than any unaddressed anxieties. When the crazy guy at the swimming pool was convinced there were UFOs overhead, I hardly batted an eye at the airplanes.

I was good.

Or was I?

One evening in high school I had some buddies over to watch Signs with me and my dad. And when when that stupid ET crashed the Brazilian birthday party there was a fraction of a second when all those childhood fears crashed into me like a ton of bricks. Say what you will about M. Night Shyamalan, that guy has gotten more visceral reactions out of me than anyone else. But the moment passed, and I went on to enjoy the rest of the movie.

And here we are.

Turn on the news at the right time and they’re telling us things that Robert Stack would have said were too absurd. We’ll see something right out of Signs in the next year or so and told this time it’s real. I wish I could say that my whole life has been preparing me for this moment, but I can’t. At least, not that part. Do I believe in aliens from outer space? No. Do I think my dad was on the right track and believe they’re demonic? Yes. 

If this is what’s coming, if it doesn’t just go the way of killer bees and holes in the ozone layer, I’m ready.

Are you?

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Tuesday Update

New article is on the way, but I'm feeling too overwhelmed to crank it out.

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Update!

I cover it in the the video, but I've got some new professional writing opportunities coming up and I'm trying to finish my next novel, all while navigating a change in schedule. So look for more pictures and videos, and new articles here on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

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He Who Rides on the Clouds - Conclusion

Leo and Britt come face to face with a prehistoric god a new cult on Saturn. Can they save the children doomed to sacrifice and escape?

He Who Rides on the Clouds - Conclusion
He Who Rides on the Clouds - Part 2

Leo and Brittany have arrived on Saturn, but not in the way they'd hoped. Captured by a pagan cult, they don't have time to stop the unthinkable from happening. But they'll try anyway.

Content warning: language and sexual situations.

He Who Rides on the Clouds - Part 2
He Who Rides on the Clouds - Part 1

Star Wars is dead and the more apathy you show the faster it will be allowed to rest in peace.

Instead of griping about what Disney has done, why don't you listen to my space adventure story? He Who Rides on the Clouds is supernatural noir that spans space and time. When children on Mars go missing, Alexis Leonard and his ex-wife Brittany go looking. Their search leads them to a pagan temple and an ancient religion.

If you'd like to buy the story and read ahead, it's available in the Fall 2020 issue of Cirsova, available here: https://amzn.to/3yRRywY

He Who Rides on the Clouds - Part 1
No Posts This Week

Hey everyone, with BasedCon coming up this weekend I'm busy catching up on things and getting ready to go. But I'll be back next week with lots of new thoughts!

Big Changes Ahead

Hey Friends, I've got some big life changes on the horizon and should be able to create more content. What would you like to see? More fiction? More fitness? Maybe you'd like more video or audio content. Let me know in the comments.

Also, if you aren't a paid subscriber, what would get you to pay $5 a month?

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Transformers One and The Wild Robot: A Battle of Myths

In case you haven’t been paying attention, right now Hollywood loves robots. We’ve got a steady stream of robot horror, robot romance, and robot movies for kids. Maybe it’s tied to growing interest in AI, as the robot is a physical manifestation of such an ephemeral thing. I suspect this will be a point of discussion for years to come. But for whatever reason, we’ve got robots.

So many robots.

Transformers One, based on the toy commercials disguised as 80s TV shows, didn’t get much love at the box office. Yet I haven’t heard a bad thing from anyone who’s seen it. While I’ve never gotten into the franchise, the trailers gave me some hope that it wouldn’t just be content. And it's not! Honestly, I was impressed. It’s an origin story for Optimus Prime and Megatron, so there are no humans this time around. 

Just a planet full of robots.

Yet because the story is so unapologetically mythic, I found it inspiring. It’s Cain and Abel, Zeus and Chronos, and Braveheart for kids. The character development is so subtle I hardly noticed it, and the tone of the film changes so gradually from small stakes fun to deadly serious that frankly I'm in awe of the deft storytelling. By the end, I felt like I’d gone on a long journey with these characters.

Not like I’d sat through a long ad for Happy Meal toys.

Then there’s The Wild Robot, a commercial and critical darling that’s winning all sorts of awards recognition. It’s… fine. Visually, it’s gorgeous. The voice acting is perfect and the music is great. But the story, about a robot who crash lands in the wilderness and must raise an orphaned gosling, left me cold. If Transformers One wants us up on our feet cheering, The Wild Robot wants us feeling warm fuzzies.

Not there’s anything wrong with that.

However, with Transformers it was organic to the story. Everything about those characters, in that world, had to be epic. And the effect of the epic is awe and inspiration. The Wild Robot feels contrived to manipulate those heartstrings. Nothing about the story has to do that. It wants to. But the bigger problem for me is that it leans into a new mythology, whereas Transformers retells something ancient.

The Wild Robot is about found family and overcoming your programing.

Transformers One is about following a code and fulfilling your potential.

More than than that, The Wild Robot presents the audience, children, with a childish world. At first it hints at life’s harsh realities. The pain of death. The kill or be killed laws of nature. The pain of saying goodbye. But by the end, Roz the robot has taught everyone to be nice and get along, so that a bear can be buddies with his prey. We won’t see the lion laying down with the lamb in this world, I’m sorry. (Also, Tolkien would’ve hated technology improving on nature). Transformers One, however, leaves us with the knowledge that there is evil in the world, predators who will always feed off of their own ambition, and that we must fight against them.

The old myth will always trump the new, because one has been confirmed by time.

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Will AI Replace the Writers?

When it comes to human technological advancement, artificial intelligence (AI) will probably be looked on as significant as the printing press. Whether you love it, hate it, are anxious, or ambivalent about it, nothing short of a Tower of Babel act of God is going to make AI disappear. It will likely change in some way everything we do, and, at the rate things are going, very soon if it hasn’t already.

But if we’re good at one thing, it’s adapting.

For the sake of brevity, I’m not going to spend any time trying to define what AI is. Rather, I want to discuss what it can do. More importantly, I want to talk about what it can’t do, and I have a perspective that I have yet to hear anyone mention. Full disclosure, I like AI and use it several times a day for getting information. Gone are the days of keyword searches and sifting through results.

Now I can just ask a question like I’m talking to a person and get an answer.

It’s great!

However, in the very near future AI will be able to do more. Much, much more. We’ll be able to ask an AI to make a movie with certain plot elements and actors, done in a particular style, and have it. We’ll be able to ask for a new novel from our favorite author and have a custom made original work. It’s not there yet (I think several movie scripts have been written by AI with little oversight and the results have been dismal), but we’ll get there.

So as a creative, I have to ask if I’ll still be relevant. 

Well, in short, yes. Because the people who anticipate or fear AI taking over creative spaces are overlooking the fact that us humans, created in the image of God, are more than just physical parts and chemical reactions. Every so often you hear about someone receiving a donated organ and developing a character trait of the donor. There are many questions about surrogate pregnancies, where the DNA comes from the parents, but how the baby, who has grown in the womb of another woman and grown accustomed to her voice, will do when suddenly separated from her.

When we create, do we put something spiritual, something of ourselves, into the work?

I think so.

One of the nice things about being in the indie author space is getting to read books written by my friends. Not friends in the parasocial, “I feel like I know him through his work,” sense, but people I’ve actually met in person or through long interactions online. And when I read their work, even if it’s fiction, I get the feeling that I’m spending time with them. While it’s not the same experience as receiving a personal letter, as these stories are written for everyone, I still know deep down that I’m looking into the depths of their hearts.

AI can’t replicate that.

There’s more to writing than word choice and the length of a sentence. Sure, AI will be able to spit out a novel without any adverbs and lots of short, punchy dialog and call it Hemingway. And, because we never met the guy, we may find a surface level satisfaction from reading it. But it will never be Hemingway. We need to remember that. More importantly, as AI becomes ubiquitous and customized novels become easily accessible, we need to know our authors.

Storytelling is communal, not commercial.

Get online and find a self-published novel you like. Then reach out to the author on social media. I promise you, with rare exceptions, they’re there. If you know writers, read their work and share it with your friends. AI is an incredible tool that will facilitate the telling of many great stories in new mediums. But if we allow it replace human interaction, we’re doomed.

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Spoiler Review - Flight Risk (2025)

Out of the theater reaction video:

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Last year I only made it to the movie theater a couple times. The year before that I only made it once. The main problem is that movies are so darn long! With only four hours to myself most days, an epic has to fall in the sweet spot that fits my limited time. So this Saturday, when I realized Mel Gibson’s latest directorial effort was only 90 minutes, I had to go.

Even if the reviews were so-so and I wasn’t super interested.

There will be spoilers.

While Mark Wahlberg receives top billing, Flight Risk really belongs to Topher Grace and Michelle Dockery. Grace plays Winston, a former mob bookkeeper hiding out in Alaska, who is being flown back to civilization to testify. As you’d expect from the That ‘70s Show Alum, Grace plays Winston as a nervous talker with an obnoxious sense of humor. You know who doesn’t have a sense of humor? US Marshal Madolyn Harris (Dockery). She has the unfortunate task of escorting him.

Very unfortunate.

Because the mob is everywhere. From the get-go, everyone gets an uneasy feeling about the pilot, Daryl (Wahlberg). As well we should, because he’s not the vetted pilot, but a mob hitman. For him, it’s not about the money, either. No. He just likes the game, the torture, the killing. And he’s willing to maim himself to accomplish his goals. Wahlberg plays with different accents, shaved his head, and says incredibly foul things in an unhinged performance.

And Gibson knows when to hold a shot to wring the last ounce of emotion out of his actors.

Things quickly go wrong on the flight, for everyone, and Daryl ends up tied up in the back. Which is good. Except neither Madolyn nor Winston knows how to fly. Which is bad. Using her sat phone, Madolyn is put in touch with Hasan (Maaz Ali), who shamelessly flirts with her as a distraction and to bring some much needed levity to film.

Because there’s a pervasive sense of danger.

Early in the flight, before Daryl is revealed to not be Daryl, the plane hits a bird, leaving a bloody smear across the windshield. That token of death remains throughout the film, the only bright spot in the drab cockpit. Anyone could die at any moment. This isn’t a franchise film. The guardrails of a potential sequel don’t exist. Had this movie been made in another era, our doubts of getting a happy resolution would only be heightened.

And I couldn’t help but think of 1985’s Runaway Train.

Both movies take place in the Alaskan wasteland. Both movies are set on vehicles that cannot stop and, left unimpeded, will crash. Both movies center around two desperate men and a woman who legitimately shouldn’t be there. And let’s just say, Runaway Train doesn’t have a happy ending. But it is satisfying, in its own way.

And Flight Risk is also satisfying.

I really appreciated that push and pull of the story. This isn’t a situation where our protagonists are always losing. Sometimes Daryl gets the upper hand, but when he’s put down, hard, we enjoy it. Every. Single. Time. It might be stupid, petty, or contrived. But in the moment I didn’t care. He had it coming to him.

Ultimately, Flight Risk isn’t a great movie. Certainly a lesser Gibson.

But if he was just looking for a practice run before getting back in the saddle, he proved he can still work on a small scale. The movie delivered exactly what it promised, no more and no less. I know most people aren’t impressed. Me? I enjoyed it for what it was. 

 

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