Today on Midwest Weird: “Space Aliens” by Heath Smith.
This is a special reading of Heath's column, Donzerly Light.
Heath Smith is a special pop culture contributor to Midwest Weird. Read his column, Donzerly Light, at midwestweird.com, and get it direct to your inbox when you sign up. Heath is co-host of Fuzzy Memories, the 80s and 90s pop culture podcast. Listen to the end for a short clip from the show.
Midwest Weird is an audio literary magazine from Broads and Books Productions. We’re the home of weird fiction and nonfiction by Midwestern writers.
Note: If you like this episode, you’ll like Fuzzy Memories. Hosted by Heath Smith, along with Midwest Weird editors Amy Lee Lillard and Erin Johnston, this podcast celebrates the good, the rad, and the fugly of the 80s and 90s. Season 2 starts today.
This episode features a short excerpt from our episode on 1987. Listen to the whole episode here: 1987: Shark Revenge and Brains for Breakfast.
And listen and subscribe to Fuzzy Memories wherever you get your podcasts!
Episode Transcript:
This is Midwest Weird, an audio literary magazine from Broads and Books Productions.
We’re the home of weird fiction and nonfiction by Midwestern writers.
Today’s episode: A special reading of Donzerly Light, our pop culture column from Heath Smith.
Do you remember being a kid and a teacher or a trusted adult or youth pastor that was probably not legally allowed to be within 500 feet of you told you that you should always get to know someone before drawing any conclusions about them? That you should give others a chance to put their best foot forward before you decide you don’t want anything to do with them? Speaking of feet, I remember being told that I shouldn’t focus on one detail about a person, like their ugly, pilgrim-like shoes that look like they came over on the Mayflower and ended up in a dumpster behind Nordstrom Rack (because some shoes are too ugly even for Nordstrom Rack), and turn it into their singular, defining quality.
That’s all well and good as far as people are concerned, but you know who that doesn’t and shouldn’t apply to? Space aliens.
You give a space alien the benefit of the doubt and they’ll take that opportunity to suck your skeleton out through an ear hole using a vacuum-like device that’s built into where you would have thought their three-fingered, left hand should be. Space aliens simply cannot be trusted. That’s not based on actual evidence. That’s based on the fact that there is absolutely no evidence that supports that they CAN be trusted. A well-adjusted adult wouldn’t tell you to store leftover spaghetti in your gardening Crocs, even though a well-adjusted adult has never stored leftover spaghetti in their gardening Crocs. Like “knowledge is power,” and “money can’t buy happiness,” “don’t store leftover spaghetti in your gardening Crocs” is a universal truth.
But what if space aliens arrive on Earth and tell us they’ve come in peace? Name even one being that’s ever showed up on another planet with good intentions. Oh, “Neil Armstrong,” you say? He showed up on the moon and planted our flag without asking ANYONE if that was cool. So the moon is a U.S. territory now, like a big, cold as hell Puerto Rico floating out in space? What if the moon people didn’t want that flag? What are they going to do with it? Do they have trash day on the moon? Was Neil Armstrong mansplaining outer space to the American people? Can you imagine if your neighbor just walked into your yard and planted a flag that said, “Welcome,” knowing full well that you’re the biggest bitch in the neighborhood? Unacceptable!
Pop culture is full of space aliens. Some of them were bad and some of them were acting like they were good and probably secretly wanted to harvest our organs for sport. If you think it’s a bad idea to meet someone on the internet and go to their house alone, but you’re open to welcoming space aliens with open arms, then per The Real World, it’s time to stop being polite and start getting real: you’ve got an undiagnosed emotional disorder.
I didn’t just wake up one day with this reasonable, well-though-out, layered opinion on space aliens. See below for the list of pop culture space aliens that acted as a library of information, used to create a path that led me to this point in my journey. When you put it that way, it almost sounds like these space aliens regard themselves as poorly as they regard us. In space, no one can hear you ESTABLISH REASONABLE BOUNDARIES.
E.T. – I don’t want to body shame anyone, but I feel like E.T. looks a lot like a chocolate Easter bunny that has partially melted. Why did E.T. only want to hang around with children? It’s giving child predator vibes, but I also don’t think he has the upper body strength to actually act on this perversion. You may think my space alien cynicism is lacking any real evidence, but I offer you this: in the 80s, people drove enormous cars and those enormous cars had cigarette lighters in the back seat door handles. The kind of cigarette lighters that you pushed in and then they’d pop back out when they were hot and ready for that ciggy. One of my friends (who is now an engineer AND a lawyer) pulled out one of those hot cigarette lighters and stuck his finger in it, so he could be like E.T. Thanks to E.T., this kid burnt the shit out of his finger. Makes you wonder if anyone would answer if he actually did phone home.
Alf – The fact that the people who wrote this sitcom were on heroin is both very surprising and it makes complete sense. Alf, aka Gordon Shumway from Melmac, lived with the Tanners and was always trying to eat their cat. Was that a euphemism? Or was it too blatant to be considered a euphemism? The Tanner’s bitch neighbor (see Welcome flag above) was the real hero of this show. She knew what was up. She knew that the Tanners were harboring a space alien life force and that he was up to no good. As you have probably deduced by now, I’m not really one to defend space aliens, but would it have been too difficult for the Tanners to call Alf by his actual name? I mean, “Alf” stands for “alien life form.” Isn’t that essentially the same thing as my coworkers calling me “office homosexual,” like they read it on my birth certificate? Anyway, Alf is a cat murderer and should be treated as such.
Xenomorph (Alien) – Speaking of murderers, this gal is not one of those space aliens that lulls you into a false sense of security before she loses her shit. She lost her shit a good two weeks before she ever even heard of you. I’ve always wondered if she would look more approachable with bangs. I guess it’s not really the lack of bangs that is the issue here. It’s more of the teeth and the screaming I suppose. It doesn’t help that she goes around inserting her eggs into whoever without their consent. You know why Xenomorph skated by during the Me Too movement? Everyone she violated is dead. DEAD. We need to get that little head that pops out of her main head to start talking and then we’ll finally be able to hold her accountable for her years of treachery. Times up, Xenomorph.
Predator – You don’t see a lot of space aliens that can pull off long hair, but Predator does it with aplomb. It really pulls focus from those chompers. I bet his dentist has made a fortune off those things. There’s just so many teeth in there. Is he smiling? Is he yelling? Is he bereft? There are so many emotions there and we’ll never get to experience them all because he is actively trying to kill all of us, all the time. This guy is literally crying for help! Girl, I’d be happy to help but we both know you’re going to rip me in two before we even get to what’s really causing you to act out (which, if I had to guess, is misplaced anger stemming from distant parents and/or finding joy in the pursuit of a relationship and not in the relationship itself). With a name like, “Predator,” you’re making it very tough to swipe right, you know what I mean?
Marvin the Martian – What has eyes, but no face? Marvin the Martian and a very odd Billy Idol song from 1983. I have a sliver of sympathy for Marvin the Martian because, really, he was just trying to do his job and no one was really taking him seriously. The internet says that Marvin likely suffers from a psychotic disorder and delusions of grandeur. I say he’s showing up for the job the same way he showed up for the interview: ready to fuck shit up. Marvin has been wearing a skirt and lifting that skirt to piss on gender norms since the 1950s. He’s a pioneer! He’s the Ellen of cartoon space aliens, except no one has accused him of being mean like her, even though he’s trying to blow up the Earth. All that being said, I still don’t trust him. Not only because he’s trying to blow up the Earth, but because he doesn’t support common sense gun laws, one of which is, “gun owners must have a face.”
Chewbacca – Chewbacca reminds me of a basketball player, but the kind that hates to run up and down the court. He’s tall, but not fast, like a top hat or the Eiffel Tower. Of all the space aliens listed here, he probably comes the closest to being trustworthy. He seems loyal and generally good-natured, but so did J.K. Rowling. (PSA: Shutting the fuck up is free, J.K. You can do that without having to sell even one more Harry Potter book to cover the cost.) Chewbacca, on the other hand, could earn a ton of money if he endorsed the FURminator. Is this an example of someone from a different country/planet taking an American’s job? Maybe Chewy could co-endorse the FURminator with a cat and help rebuild some of that cat/alien trust that Alf tore down. Like I said before, Chewbacca is close to trustworthy, but I will screen him if he calls instead of texts.
The Visitors – Do you remember the TV miniseries from the 1980s, V? I didn’t even actually watch it, but just seeing the commercials scared the shit out of me. That could very well be the source for how I feel about all space aliens. These fuckers showed up, dressed head-to-toe in the Star Trek: Voyager line from Anne Taylor Loft and were all like, “You guys seem great! We want to be friends. We love Jimmy Buffet, too,” and then the next thing you know, they pull off their fake skin and they are lizard people from another planet and they don’t think we’re great and they don’t want to be friends and they could give two shits about Jimmy Buffet! I’ll give credit where credit is due though – it must have been a real pain in the ass to be in full glam/human Geishi drag all day long. But I guess that’s the lengths that some space aliens will go to when they want to kill us all and steal our planet.
“And that is the whole problem with aliens, is you just can't trust them. Occasionally you meet a nice one: Starman, E.T. But usually they turn out to be some kind of big lizard!” – Peter Venkman in Ghostbusters, speaking truth to power.
Heath Smith is a special pop culture contributor to Midwest Weird. Read his column, Donzerly Light, at midwestweird.com, and get it direct to your inbox when you sign up. Heath is co-host of Fuzzy Memories, the 80s and 90s pop culture podcast. Keep listening for a short clip from the show.
We’ve reached the end of Season 1! We’ll be back in February with more weird stories.
If you like what you hear, subscribe, like and review the show.
And if you want your fiction or nonfiction to appear on Midwest Weird, send us your work! Read the show notes for a submission link.
Thanks for joining us. And stay weird.
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If you liked this episode, you’ll like Fuzzy Memories. Hosted by Heath Smith, along with Midwest Weird editors Amy Lee Lillard and Erin Johnston, this podcast celebrates the good, the rad, and the fugly of the 80s and 90s. Here’s a short excerpt from our episode on 1987.
Listen to the whole episode here: 1987: Shark Revenge and Brains for Breakfast.
And listen and subscribe to Fuzzy Memories wherever you get your podcasts!
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