It's October 13th...

 

... do you know where your copy of XF-ULTRA is? Maybe have a listen to this classic episode of The Secret Sun Radio Mystery Hour while you sort it all out.

Out: Halloween. In: Hallow-MEME.

Well, it's that time of the year, and Mary-Kate and Ashley are getting a head-start on the Halloween trend by dressing up as two ultra-rich substance-abusers whose story will end up as a de facto sequel to Grey Gardens.

New Moon on MEMEday

Things are never so grim that you can't have a good chuckle at some memes. Well, maybe not never. But I am thinking today is a good day for some graphical larfs.

But first, the news...

Talking XF-ULTRA on GenX Wasteland

Or should it be called GenXFiles Wasteland for the occasion? Cast your vote below....

Soaking Up the Sun with Kurt Metzger

Kurt Metzger kindly invited me on to his very popular new podcast and the results were anything but dull. The man has a lot to say, and is definitely not afraid to say it. Strap in for a wild ride... 

Getting ULTRA on Higherside Chats

Steel yourself for another epic meeting of the minds on THC, my people.

What's all the hubbub about?

Going ULTRA on Storytelling and Shamanism on Rune Soup

Get ready: Gordon and I dig deep into the power of stories, the need for mystery, the paradox of the paranormal, and the transcendant power of myth. 

Aliens Invade Laurel Canyon

I recently posted an audio podcast of my talk on Dave McGowan’s Weird Scenes Inside the Canyon over at the SSI. That raised the issue of Wavelength, a 1983 film that seems like a strange kind of companion piece to the book.

The (Secret) Space Force & the Never-Ending X-Files LARP

Just how weird are these times we are living in? Well, they're so weird that there's a new branch of the military in the works called the "Space Force." Now, I've talked quite a bit about "Starfleet Reality" and the Star Trek timeline but I never thought things would go this far this fast.

And by that I mean I figured all the toys they've been working on out in the Nevada desert would stay in the black until conditions necessitated their unveiling. Goes to show what I know.

Not a lot.

My X-Files Top 10

I wrote this list back in the early 2000s and I can't remember exactly where I originally posted it. It's before I got the DVD sets and was watching (and taping) the shows on TNT.

Ten Thirteen: The Secret Identity of Isis

Paying tribute to pop culture influences - especially old TV shows -was common practice for The X Files. The Night Stalker himself, Darren McGavin, appeared on an episode as the agent who first discovered the X Files.

Ten Thirteen: I Want to Believe, part 2

The so-called "Mythology" of The X-Files centered on alien abductions, colonization and genetic experimentation. The feature film The X-Files: I Want to Believe did the exact same thing, only in a symbolic, allegorical fashion.

Alien Dreaming: Don't Pay the Ferryman

In our last installment, I mentioned how I've watched I Want to Believe about 40 times (give or take) and found some new easter egg each time. Well, shortly after writing that I took another pass at the film, and lo and behold, found more hidden symbolism. And this stuff is quite juicy....

Project Blue Book, or Putting the Sex in Subtext

OK, first things first: on a textual level, the History Channel's (sic) Project Blue Book is a dumpster fire of epic proportions, historically-speaking. 

On a subtextual level, Project Blue Book is a fascinating if not ham-fisted exercise in subliminal storytelling, at least the pilot episode is. 

Needless to say, I'm hooked!

Fringe (sic)

Fringe is TV's latest attempt to redo The X-Files. This time Hollywood enlisted the ultimate inside ballplayer, JJ Abrams, to get the job done. Which was probably what will ensure this show's doom.

Fringe is competent TV- and too competent at that. It is almost suffocatingly overproduced. Like nearly every network TV show I've seen for the past several years, it's over-lit, over-shot, over-casted, over-edited and underwritten. I don't believe a single one of the characters. Oh, they're all fairly competent actors, but everyone looks exactly like everyone else on every other network drama. 

The X-Files was so revolutionary precisely because the producers went out of their way to cast ordinary looking people. The point was to believe what you were seeing was really happening. The X-Files also had the wisdom to shoot in Vancouver, which was a decidely-unpretty town in the early 90s and had a rich, velvety blanket of mist all year round. 

 The point here is that The X-Files sought to be real, while the kind of TV Abrams and his cohorts specialize in seeks to be sexy. There's a big difference. Network TV dramas are shot to seamlessy blend in with the commercials, and I was often confused while watching the show online when the commercials kicked in, since they were lit and shot exactly like the show itself was. 

 The show is fairly interesting, though, and important in that it goes after the biotech industry in the same way that The X-Files did. The only problem is that I don't feel any passion or conviction in it. It all feels like committee. 

Someone said, "You know, there were all these really great X-Files standalones- 'F Emasculata', 'Wetwired', 'Pine Bluff Variant'- about field experiments being done on civilians. I think we could build a show around that." 

And everyone smiled and nodded and thanked God they'd made it this far in Hollywood where they were sitting around with JJ Abrams doing his X-Files, and hoped they'd never go back to doing cereal commercials. 

 Chris Carter fought tooth and nail to do his shows his way, for better or worse. Most producers today would geld themselves before they pissed off an exec. So all the guys who play ball get a shot to do their Chris Carter shows -- Invasion, Threshold (the most egregious of the bunch), Dark Skies, The Eleventh Hour, Fringe -- and most of them will die. 

None of them will ever make any dent in the Collective Unconscious because Carter and Co. broke all the old rules and wrote new ones and then the power players come in and play by them.

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THE SECRET HISTORY CAN NOW BE TOLD!

Cosmic Synchronicity, from Sinners to Shimmers

 

We’re just a year away today from the 40th anniversary of what might turn out to be the most momentous day in history: the day Supernova 1987A first appeared in our skies.

Prophecy to the MAX

2024 is the year it all begins to fall apart, and here's a perfect example of how the Empire will eventually collapse.  

Fringe and the Hard Sci-Fi Paradox

This season I had only one wish for Fringe; I wanted it to give as much of that 90s/Vancouver X-Files vibe as it could possibly manage. The X-Files leaving Vancouver was as much as a shock to my fanboy worldview as The Clash going pop for London Calling was.

X-Files: "They're All Mythology Episodes"

Mulder and Scully talk with nun 

played by XF vet Christine Willes

Recently Mike Clelland (author of The Messengers, which you should pick up as soon as you're done with this) and the good fellows at the Sync Book Press reported on the second episode of season 10 of The X-Files, "Founder's Mutation", written and directed by TenThirteen founding father James Wong. 

X Type Thing: Synchronicity or Precognition?

I remember once talking about Synchronicity with Dr. David Hufford, who had asked me for examples of it. After giving him a few, the good doctor replied, "That sounds more like precognition to me."