Blog Archives

Review of Ancient Aliens S20E07: “Secrets of the Sumerians”

2/23/2024

Well, here’s a change of pace. After a streak of six weeks of clip shows—embedded in more than six months of clips shows and reruns--Ancient Aliens returns with a putatively “new” episode. We have to take this with a big grain of salt, of course. Even “new” episodes have contained heavy doses of repeat material for most of the past decade or so. They ran out of “new” material back in the early 2010s. This episode, for example, covers the Sumerians and Zecharia Sitchin’s various fantasies and overlaps rather heavily with a 2013 episode that was similarly devoted to Sumerians and the Anunnaki. Of course, back in those wild days, before Ancient Aliens became an adjunct to Congress, they would make wild claims, like Jason Martell accusing the U.S. government of invading Iraq and looting museums to suppress alien evidence. Now, with the respectability afforded by government patronage, we get a mostly boring hour of forgettable televisual wallpaper.

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Read an Interview with Me about James Dean in "Closer" Magazine

2/22/2024

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The cover story in the upcoming March 4 issue of Closer magazine is about James Dean's relationship with his agent, Jane Deacy, and how she helped turn an untested young actor into a star. The article features an extensive interview with me and a plug for my new book about Dean, which will be published this fall. You can read the piece for free on Yahoo! News.

After a bit of a delay, my editor is sending me the edits the manuscript this weekend, so I will be spending much of the next few weeks revising and working on corrections. As a result, you may see less of me on the blog and on social media as I work through the revision process.

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Review of Ancient Aliens S20E06 “The Top Ten Alien Disasters”

2/16/2024

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I’m not sure why I bother with these reviews anymore. Ancient Aliens doesn’t seem interested in producing actual content, so I don’t see much reason to review the clip shows they have substituted for a real season of television. This episode’s theme is disasters, which is what Ancient Aliens has been for most of its run. The idea of aliens being associated with world-changing catastrophes is a very old one. As Chris Aubeck noted in his 2022 book Alien Artifacts, one of the very first ancient astronaut theorists, the Baron d’ Espiard de Colonge, made similar claims in his 1865 book Le Chute de Ciel (The Fall of the Sky). He wrote that meteors had devastated the ancient earth and brought space aliens down. Ancient humans remembered these aliens as the monsters, demons, giants, and gods of mythology. These alien gods gave humanity sophisticated science and interbred with humans until another cataclysm destroyed Atlantis and the world of the Nephilim/aliens. And even at that early date, the good baron had already mixed his ideas with significant racism, claiming the white race was the most intelligent and the only one with divine alien ancestors, and thus the only one with real science.

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Avi Loeb Says the Messiah Is an Alien; Plus: David Grusch's UFO "Spiritual Awakening"

2/13/2024

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I have often argued that the driving force behind ufology beliefs is primarily spiritual, an attempt to reenchant the world, reverse the damage Charles Darwin did to faith, and seek meaning in a literalized higher power, substituting aliens for angels in paying backhanded homage to the place of science as modern arbiter of truth. From the aliens-as-religion department comes two surprisingly blunt confirmations this week.

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“The Best Possible Denial”: Vogue Tries to Rescue James Dean from Homosexuality

2/11/2024

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This week, various editions of Vogue magazine published a lengthy piece on the failed romance of James Dean and Pier Angeli, born Anna Maria Pierangeli. The original Italian article by journalist Giacomo Aricò, published on Wednesday, and the truncated English adaptation published on Friday contain a number of misrepresentations and errors that came from the telephone game of repetition and PR that passes for “celebrity” coverage in our media. But the broader purpose of the piece, as the author writes in Italian, is to deny that Dean was either homosexual or bisexual, a remarkable claim for a major magazine in 2024. Let’s take a look at some of the ways the Vogue pieces went wrong.

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Review of Ancient Aliens S20E05: “The Top Ten Alien Codes”

2/9/2024

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The last episode of Ancient Aliens to not be a clip show aired on August 25, 2023, some five and a half months ago. Eleven of the past fifteen “new” episodes to air were clip shows. The History Channel’s baffling decision to turn Ancient Aliens into a non-stop series of repackaged segments from past seasons doesn’t seem to have made much of an impact on the show’s ratings, however. Last week’s episode brought in 730,000 live + same day viewers, of whom 70,000 were under the age of 50. That’s about on par with the diminished status of latter-day Ancient Aliens, whose ratings have hovered between 650,000 and 850,000 viewers, varying mostly due to whatever sporting event it aired opposite. However, there is clear evidence that viewers are tiring of the series’ endless recycling, when even “new” content rehashes old material: The show’s lead-outs, currently The Unbelievable with Dan Aykroyd, perform much better. Aykroyd has nearly a million viewers and almost double the viewers under 50. But Ancient Aliens can’t die, since it’s the lynchpin of a valuable “lifestyle brand” that powers History’s merchandising and lucrative live tours.

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Whoops, "Disclosure" Happened and It Turns Out There Was Nothing to Disclose

2/5/2024

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Since Sean Kirkpatrick published his Scientific American op-ed in mid-January revealing that the government's UFO office found no evidence of aliens, ufologists have been on a tear, arguing that Kirkpatrick was deluded, intentionally lying, or had never done the research to reach that conclusion. Now, in a new podcast interview with Scientific American host Daniel Vergano, Kirkpatrick explains clearly what the upcoming official report on the history of government UFO investigations will show: There is no ET coverup, no secret crashed saucer programs, and the so-called whistleblowers who claim otherwise have mistakenly applied their own sci-fi fantasies to known and documented classified programs that they did not understand.

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Review of Ancient Aliens S20E04 “The Top Ten Scariest Encounters”

2/2/2024

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Organizers released this year’s lineup of speakers for the annual Contact in the Desert gathering, and the biggest surprise is that the biggest names in ancient astronaut theory are sitting out this year—perhaps because they’re committed to the rival Ancient Aliens Live tour. Instead, second-string Ancient Aliens talking heads like Linda Moulton Howe and Jason Martell join the collection of psychics and speculators to represent the show. The big news is that once again Avi Loeb is headlining the conference of kooks, facing no repercussions for consorting with grifters, frauds, and anti-science extremists. Joining him will be actor Thomas Jane, who is a longtime UFO nut and previously attended MUFON conferences.

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Unveiling My New Book's Title

2/1/2024

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I am happy to announce that my forthcoming book now has its official title. Jimmy: The Secret Life of James Dean will be published this fall by Applause Books. I am excited to see the book moving its way toward publication!

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Review of Ancient Aliens S20E07: “Secrets of the Sumerians”

Read an Interview with Me about James Dean in "Closer" Magazine

Review of Ancient Aliens S20E06 “The Top Ten Alien Disasters”

Avi Loeb Says the Messiah Is an Alien; Plus: David Grusch's UFO "Spiritual Awakening"

“The Best Possible Denial”: Vogue Tries to Rescue James Dean from Homosexuality

Review of Ancient Aliens S20E05: “The Top Ten Alien Codes”

Whoops, "Disclosure" Happened and It Turns Out There Was Nothing to Disclose

Review of Ancient Aliens S20E04 “The Top Ten Scariest Encounters”

Unveiling My New Book's Title

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