A Question About Aliens

How come every time aliens land on earth everyone wants to know what do they want? Maybe they're on their way somewhere else, or maybe they're just looking around. You KNOW without a doubt that we would send astronauts to their planet if we could, and we wouldn't necessarilly want anything. But everyone always assumes stuff. That's why we never get along with aliens. I mean, ET never came back.

How I Can Get Famous

When you watch TV, local stations always do these commercials promoting the local new broadcasts, and they always do these "teasers" to try to get you to watch. I mean, this is the same type of thing they do for movies or TV shows where they don't want to give away the ending.

The first thing that springs to mind, as I write this, is "Law & Order" because almost every time they make a promotional spot for "Law & Order", they promise "A Shock Ending You Won't Believe!" or "A Twist That Only Law & Order Can Deliver!" In fairness, the creators of this show do deliver some really cool plot twists, but most of the times they don't. Most of the times you know exactly who committed the crime, and the drama is in having the police and the lawyer guys try to prove it. And yet, they promise a twist in every single promotional spot. If I was watching this show JUST FOR the twist at the end, it would piss me off a lot.

But the thing is, more and more, news people do the same thing, I mean, they give you just enough information so that you'll tune in. This might even be an ok thing for even the news to do, if it's not a piece of news that can't wait, like "The New York Mets trade a key pitcher, tonight at 11 on Channel 5" or "Network Executives announce a new fall schedule. We'll tell you what it is, tonight at six." Ok, no big deal that you wait til the next news broadcast to find out who got traded or what dumb shows are going to be on next year.

This is not what I hear when I turn on the TV, though. What I hear is stuff like:

"Could a common household product be killing your children? Tune in tonight!"

"Fourteen local people die of Anthrax! Could you be next? Find out, tonight at 11!"

"Hurricane Emily headed our way! Should you be concerned? We'll tell you, tonight at six."

It's like, at this point, you are SO SCARED to miss the news! And the thing is, just like "Law & Order" most of the times, they don't deliver. The "common household product" is something you already know is dangerous to kids, it's like bug spray or something. And the Hurricane IS headed our way, but we're only in for some rain.

Now, I'm not stupid (at least, relative to most people) and I know that what I'm saying about sensationalism isn't exactly news to anyone. People have been criticizing newscasts for years for stuff like this.

Something you see news people doing now, though, that I don't think you saw, say, 50 or 100 years ago, is how they make celebrities out of ordinary people. It used to be that a celebrity was an actor or an astronaut, or a sports figure or a politician or something. It was the movie studios or Broadway or voters who made someone famous. Now, the news people actually create the celebrities.

Look at that mechanic in New York who slept with that teenage girl. They were all over the news for years. Or those two kids in California who killed their parents. Or that long-haired slacker guy who slept in OJ's guest house. The South Carolina woman who killed her two little boys. The Hollywood Hooker woman. The Virginia woman who cut off her husband's penis. What about Tom Arnold? I mean, he made some movies, but no one ever heard of him til he married Roseanne Barr.

It's like, if you happen to be in the right place, if you kill someone, if you even just know someone who does something like that, it makes the news. And it not just makes the news, it makes it over and over and over and we know everything about them and they become celebrities.

See, I was thinking about trying to become famous. I mean, killing people and hacking off body parts is definitely out, but sometimes I wonder, if I just try to make friends with people who are seriously crazy, then sooner or later one of them is going to freak out and then I get to be the guy who goes on "Dateline NBC" and act all surprised and say "I can't believe it!" Only in my case, I would be going "O yah! I totally believe it! That guy's a freak!" which would be true, but with the added benefit of being unusual enough to get me on the front page of the paper ahead of the fall TV schedule and the Mets starting line-up.

I guess there are dangers in this plan. So my fictional friend commits a crime, and if I don't act totally shocked by it then people are going to think I'm psycho. And, if I make friends with more than one person and they ALL freak out, then people are going to start looking at me funny and I'm going to be like that old woman on "Murder, She Wrote" where every time she goes to a dinner party someone dies. Plus, where am I going to meet these people? Because psycho killers are notorious for being loners, and for good reason, too, I guess. It's probably hard to be friends with a psycho killer. And since they do tend to kill people, there is always the danger that they'll want to kill me. I've been known to piss people off from time to time.

But, assuming I can successfully navigate these perils, I do believe I could handle instant fame and adoration. I've never been even slightly famous. Or adored, for that matter.

So, like, after my "friend" committed his or her crime, I could go on "Inside Edition" and be in all the tabloids. They could make a movie about me. And then I could get some stalkers, and then I could write a book about THAT and be famous all over again.

I know I would never be able to go to the grocery store again without seeing my name in the paper at the check-out line. And it would be all about how I'm having affairs and love children and getting messages from beyond the grave. That part would suck.

Those tabloids freak me out, always talking about Elvis and UFOs. Sometimes they are consistent, like maybe they'll report on a Frog Boy in Hoboken who lives in a tree. And then like three weeks later they'll report that the Frog Boy is pregnant, or he's dating Jenna Bush, "Frog Boy Of Hoboken To Transfer To Texas A&M To Be Close To Jenna Bush!" And then another two weeks and the headlines will say "President To Frog Boy: Leave My Daughter Alone!" I don't know whether the continuing stories like that make it more believable or less, but I do know that if I ever get the slightest bit famous I hope I'm never upstaged by the Frog Boy.

Other times, the stories are laughably inconsistent. I mean, one week they say Elvis is really alive and pumping gas at a Texaco in Kalamazoo, Michigan. They next week, they say a leading psychic reports that Elvis has been re-incarnated and is now a 14-year-old girl in Canada. And then they say he's haunting a trailer park in Tupelo, Michigan. There's no way that all of these stories could be true.