PUNCHING YOUR HAND THROUGH A WALL FROM A CERTAIN POINT-OF-VIEW or Why Darth Vader Is Not Luke Skywalker’s Father

by Stephen Romano

Working as a screenwriter in the business of motion picture production, I have had the opportunity to study a strange and disparate species known as The Film Director. More specifically, I have encountered, worked with and endured the myriad insecurities, eccentricities and outright childish regressions of the Film WRITER-Director in his natural element. I have studied the beast close-up. I know where he nests and breathes. And I know how fearsomely he (or, in those rare cases, SHE) protects his (or her) babies from the cold, cruel world out there. I have seen these people rage out of control. I have seen them shield themselves behind walls of arrogance and self-delusion. I have seen them manufacture alternate realities and stand up to claim the fruits of other people’s hard labors. I have also seen them regress into chasms of self-hatred and wallow in the shallows of creative burnout. I have watched helplessly as beautiful dreams and best-laid plans were shot to hell in front of horrified eyes. I’ve even stood right next to a few of these bizarre creatures as they were calling “cut” on a scene, their faces twisted into desperate grimaces, signifying that they had no idea in hell how any of this shit was gonna cut together later. In one specific case, which I will never in a million years forget, a film writer-director turned to me after a particular performance in a scene did not please him … and slammed his fist through the nearest wall, breaking three of his fingers. I’m pretty sure he hoped I would forget about that a few days later. In fact, most people in Hollywood COUNT ON you to forget stuff like that a few days later. But, see … that’s just it, people. I’m a writer and it’s my job to remember stuff. (That’s usually so I can steal it for a story later.) I don’t forget it when something weird goes down—particularly when it has to do with one of my heroes on a movie set. It’s all burned forever in my brain … along with the many formative memories from childhood that made me wanna do this shit for a living in the first place.

Like … oh, let’s see, maybe seeing STAR WARS for the first time? Read more »

Southern Ohio may seem a world-away from the Pacific Northwest habitat one typically pictures when they hear the word Bigfoot, but the region does have a rich history of hairy biped reports. The rugged Appalachian foothills of southeastern Ohio, in particular, have a number of reports from the Shawnee State Forest in Scioto and Adams Counties, and the Wayne National Forest further east. In his book “Field Guide to Bigfoot and Other Mystery Primates” Loren Coleman recounts the story of a devil monkey seen in the Duncansville area of Adams County. (Duncansville, which is mostly Amish owned hilltop pasture land and forest, is a short drive from the famous Serpent Mound and was a destination for curiosity seekers in the mid to late 1980s because of an image of an angel or Christ supposedly burned into a church door when a young girl was cured of an illness after stepping outside during a service for some fresh air and having the entity appear to her.) The famous Ohio Howl was also recorded in eastern Appalachian Ohio, in Columbiana County where Ohio borders Pennsylvania and West Virginia. Read more »

By Kenn Thomas

After Fidel Castro stepped down as Cuban dictator, CNN’s post on the fanciful US assassination plots against him included the following:

Project Amlash-Rolando Cubela. Cubela, whose code name was Amlash, was a member of Castro’s inner circle from the beginning. He had become disenchanted and made contact with the CIA as early as 1961. Nestor Sanchez, his CIA case officer, was meeting with Cubela in Paris when President Kennedy was killed in Dallas, Texas, November 22, 1963. Sanchez provided Cubela that day — at Cubela’s request — a poison pen-syringe to be used either on Castro or on himself, in case of a failed attempt. Nothing happened. As CIA covert operations against Castro began winding down, the Agency put Cubela in touch with Manuel Artime, the exiled chief of a 300-member, CIA-funded exile guerrilla army operating for Central America. The joint Artime- Cubela plan was for Cubela to assassinate Castro when he gave his annual July 26, 1965, speech at Varadero, a beach resort on Cuba’s north coast. The assassination would coincide with a seaborne invasion by Artime’s forces with the presumed support of several Cuban army officers in the area. The operation was canceled in late June 1965 after it became compromised.

Here’s what I have to say about Rolando Cubela in my latest book, Conspiracy Files (Murdoch Books, Australia): Read more »

In the medieval era most parishioners did not speak Latin. Mass, however, was delivered in Latin (sometimes, undoubtedly, by illiterate priests who were simply reciting by rote). In the highly organized structure of the Catholic Church the fact that the laity could not understand Latin did not matter. It was not their lot to truly understand, but to accept on faith. There were priests to act as intermediaries in absolving their sins. There were Bishops and Cardinals whose jobs were to pour over esoteric texts and pages filled with strange symbols and letters, to unravel and understand the workings of God’s Universe and to dole out that knowledge in spoonfuls and dollops as they saw fit.

Jump forward thirteen centuries and although the players have changed, the game has stayed pretty much the same. Today it isn’t God’s Universe but a universe ruled by laws of physics and complex mathematics that only professors (cum-priests) can decipher. As with the medieval parishioners and their Latin mass, the average person today doesn’t understand the mathematics used to calculate the redshift in a star, they simply take it on faith that the calculations are correct and that Star X is Y light years away. Read more »

My good friend Greg Bishop has reminded us that Saturday was the 40th anniversary of the tragic bridge collapse in Point Pleasant which was the climax to a flap of strange phenomena reported on by fortean ufologists John Keel and Gray Barker. Which also means its the anniversary of the birth of Mothman.

Silver Bridge Disaster 40 Years On by Greg Bishop at UFOmystic.com

Greg also links to some Point Pleasant related music.

- SMiles

The year 2007 has been a banner anniversary year for Forteans in general and ufologist in particular. Those with even a passing interest in unexplained phenomenon know that 2007 marks the 60^th anniversary of the June 24, 1947 Kenneth Arnold sighting that ushered in the modern era of UFO sightings and gave popular birth to the term flying saucer, as well as the 60^th anniversary of the purported late June or early July crash in Roswell, New Mexico (reports of the exact crash date vary and the story would remain buried until Stanton Friedman, a physicist with experience working on various government air and spacecraft projects, began investigating the Roswell rumors in 1978). Read more »