Orson Welles’ Original Fake News Broadcast 80 Years Ago Today
80 years ago today, the great Orson Welles and the Mercury Theatre On The Air presented a radio play adaptation of H.G. Welles’ 1897 science-fiction novel The War of The Worlds.
The play was presented by Welles as a series of realistic sounding news bulletins interrupting a program of orchestral dance music on the CBS Radio Network from New York City.
The program was held on Sunday October October 30th 1938 (the evening before Halloween) and a few people took it seriously.
It was one Hell of a Halloween prank on Welles’ part.
If Donald Trump had been around at the time, he would have called it “fake news” and it would have been one of the few times in history that Trump was actually right about something.
Gene Tierney to Orson Welles, “I don’t know, Orson. It sounds to me like a very naughty broadcast and you should be spanked soundly on the bare bottom for going ahead with it.”
Orson: Well, Miss Tierney, if you’re the one doing the spanking, I shall not mind.
Gene Tierney (listening in on the radio on October 30th 1938):
Oh, Orson, Orson, I’m going to have to spank you after all.
Laura (talking to a future suspect in her future murder): And where were you on the night of the Orson Welles broadcast?
Future Suspect (in Laura’s future murder): I was dropping a living woman into a vat of acid in the basement of a wax museum to turn her into a wax figurine of Queen Marie Antoinette. And where were you, my dear?
Laura: I was getting my portrait painted. Who knows if I’m ever murdered, some future police detective might look at my painting and fall in love with me.
Future Suspect (in Laura’s future murder): How charmingly macabre, my dear. You should run for Congress in the year 2018.
I’m a witch and I ain’t afraid of no Martian. And I say, spankings for all.
Alfred Hitchcock (making himself some pumpkin pie): I’ll second that.
Well, what are you waiting for? Over my knee, Alfred.
With Alfred taking a paddling at Veronica Lake, who will eat my pumpkin pie?
I shall swoop down with my pussy and eat your pie.
I the cyborg ripper, creation of the Martian invaders of New Jersey, shall seek to kill all AI sex robots created in the year 2018. Let George Finneganburg beware. Tell Akira I’m coming.
Linda Darnell (listening in on the radio in 1938 to a radio broadcast from the future year 2018): How like Orson or at least his theatrical apostolic successor Christopher Dracul Van Helsing to having the cyborg ripper killer robot destroyed after tripping over the tail of a drunken otter named Jefferey who drank too many bottles of Otterbury Green Minnow Beer while reciting the Otterbury Tales. DARPA’S Nibiruan otter mascot once again saves the world from Martian invaders and their cyborg ripper killer robots of future AI sex robots like the Amazing Akira.
The Amazing Akira: She would have kicked the cyborg ripper killer robot’s ass if God in His mercy had not allowed the Martian invader of New Jersey created cyborg ripper killer robot Jack Raven (who murdered someone’s lost love Lenore shouting “Nevermore!” and then descecrated a statue of Pallas Athena) to destroy himself by tripping over the tail of the passed out drunken otter Jefferey…
… Orson Welles’ radio broadcast narration ended with the above words.
-A Halloween montage
written by Christopher
Tuesday October 30th
2018.
Haiku About Some of The Major Character Roles of Actor Johnny Depp
Haiku About Some of The Major Character Roles of Actor Johnny Depp
Captain Jack Sparrow
Ichabod Crane and Edward
Scissorhands and Sands
Phantom of The Opera: A Poem As Sung and Recorded By Amadeus Emanon
Phantom of The Opera: A Poem
Sung and Recorded By Amadeus Emanon
Amadeus Emanon was at London music promoter Heathcliff Dionysus Campbell’s Wuthering Heights and Glencoe Hospitality Recording Studios (owned by Heathcliff’s company Aulos Music and Recording Ltd.) to record his first album Erik’s Lament: The Agony and Ecstasy of A Phantom In The Night.
Amadeus Emanon sang this song:
Phantom of The Opera: A Lament
Oh Phantom, you are the lonely one
You loved Christine who was daylight
to your realms of darkness
She let the sunlight shine in your heart
You taught her to sing
But she taught you to love
And hers by far was the greater gift
There in your lair beneath the Opera deep
Where you lay many an hour to lie there and weep
And let the hate consume your heart like heat
Burned and singed was it making your scar look neat
For your look you thought no one could love
Depriving you of joy on earth and in heaven above
But Christine looked and she saw
but you turned away and you let her go
For in the mirror you saw just the scar
But in her eyes, she saw your very soul
But you did not see and you did not know
And your love departed by the river’s flow
Oh what music you could have made
But your heart you buried in hate’s grave
For Christine wanted to be your love not your slave
Now she’s left you and gone away
While you pine all night and long for day
The day you once had but chased away
leaving you with childhood toys you used to play
And now your soul then your music will decay.
(-A poem written by Christopher
Friday September 7th 2018)
Inspired by the character of Erik as he is portrayed in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical The Phantom of The Opera.
Amadeus Emanon as he appears on the cover of his album (making it look like he was posing with his violin in an old 19th Century style photograph)
Reblog of Edgar Allan Poe: Swinging Like A Pendulum Do
Here’s a short story I wrote almost 2 years ago.
It’s a short story featuring the late great TCM Turner Classic Movies host Robert Osborne:
Edgar Allan Poe: Swinging Like A Pendulum Do
It was an old movie from the 1930s on television. Johnson had heard of the film The Pit and The Pendulum based on a short story by Edgar Allan Poe.
But he wasn’t familiar with the 1930s version. He had only heard of a movie version from the 1960s with Vincent Price.
But this 1930s version was totally new to him and here he was a big classic horror movies fan. The Pit and The Pendulum from 1936 with Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff.
Try as he might, he could not recall Karloff and Lugosi ever making such a film. Lugosi had made The Black Cat with Karloff. He had made The Raven. He had made Murders In The Rue Morgue. All based on works by Poe.
But Johnson had never heard of Lugosi doing a movie version of Poe’s The Pit…
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Cherchez La Femme
Cherchez La Femme
It would take a long time for the sun to set on Sunset Boulevard tonight
Carson Cody Albion thought to himself
in the midst of cigarette smoke and haze of bourbon
in his Los Angeles private eye’s office
It being the Summer Solstice and all that
Long hours of daylight
The riff raff of the city wouldn’t have so many hours to steal, extort and murder
Bummer for them! Albion thought
Albion had been hired to find a woman
Cherchez la Femme
as the French would say
He’d been told that she only seemed to venture forth at night
by the man who had hired him
The man a Hollywood director intended to give la Femme a screen test
Yeah right!
That’s what they call it these days
Albion laughed to himself
The gumshoe had his office door open to try to keep things cool
Between the hallway fan and the office ceiling fan
Maybe a touch of the Norse frost giants
would help cool down the flames 🔥 of Hades
on this Midsummer Night in Los Angeles
Albion’s ice in his glass had melted
The penalty for drinking straight from the bottle
He reflected
Well he should go see the sun set on this solstice night
before he started hitting the night spots and lounges
where la Femme was said to hang out
Albion locked his office door and walked down the four flights of stairs to the office building lobby
He tipped his fedora to the cleaning lady and walked out into the night
The neon lights hadn’t started to shine yet
As he walked through his sector of the city
They wouldn’t really come on until after the sun had set
Maybe that’s why he preferred California winters to California summers
The temperatures were about the same
maybe slightly cooler by inches of degrees in the winter
but what was missing was the glow of neon at night
in the summer
Neon the blood that seemed to make this city feel alive
It pulsed like the beat of a drum 🥁
and summoned all to partake in the wildness of the night
It was there that this urban jungle became a jungle
The women danced and swayed like tropical 🌴 dancers
and the men sharpened their spears for the time it was necessary
to stab both friend and foe in the back
Albion saw the sun set
He whistled
and the nearest neon light
seemed to answer his call
flickering on like a woman stirring towards orgasm
Speaking of women, it was time to Cherchez la Femme
Several gin joints and several nightclubs later,
he found her
in a midnight blue evening dress
Her brunette hair
The touch of a foreign accent as she introduced her next song into the microphone
Romanian I believe the film director said it was
And when she sang, Albion thought that the moonlight had never serenaded the ocean 🌊 so beautifully
The City of Angels had been touched by an angel
Albion stubbed out his cigarette
and approached her
when she had finished singing her numbers
It was a Los Angeles night in the mid-1940s
Midsummer Night
and Orson Welles wanted him
Carson Cody Albion to locate a woman for a screen test
What Midsummer Night’s Dream did Mr. Welles have in mind,
Albion thought cynically to himself,
after all the man was married to Rita Hayworth?
Wasn’t the Love Goddess enough for him?
But enough of reflecting like Chandler’s Philip Marlowe,
Albion started heading in the woman’s direction
for he didn’t have all eternity to make a connection
La Femme flashed Albion a warm smile as she saw him approach
Her sharp incisors that hung from her top front teeth puzzled the private eye
What manner of woman is this? Albion thought
If Albion knew at the time he asked himself this question
he’d have realized that the woman did have all eternity.
-A private eye poem
written by Christopher
Thursday June 21st
2018
Dracul Van Helsing was in Romania.
He was trying to track down Dracula’s daughter the Countess Draculina on behalf of her father.
The Count since his Cadbury Rocher inspired vampiric resurrection had learned how to use the Internet.
He was trying to track down his daughter.
The only thing he managed to find on the World Wide Web was that his daughter had once done a screen test for Orson Welles back in the 1940s
Now Van Helsing had managed to track her to Romania her ancestral homeland.
He had heard that she had dyed her hair blonde.
He walked over to the window of his room in the old inn in which he was staying.
And watched the sun set on the Carpathian Mountains on this summer solstice evening.
He turned on the television to watch the news hoping to find out the weather.
And there he saw… Countess Draculina.
(Notice her vampiric incisors unless of course your eyes are focused elsewhere for some reason 😉)
Vampiress Allatallahbel In The Vatican: A Poem
Vampiress Allatallahbel In The Vatican: A Poem
There where a statue of the Virgin Mary had once stood
was a sight that made Orson Welles knock on wood
that is if only the ghostly film director could
for there in the nave was a vampiress in the flesh
A High Priestess of the Canaanite god Baal no less
Allatallahbel was her name
She sought everlasting fame
So on October 13th last year
she got Knights-Templar in gear
who attacked the Swiss Guards from the rear
Pope Francis thought it was just another Vatican gay orgy
so thought ‘tis nothing out of the ordinary
By then the Vatican belonged to Allatallahbel
but Francis just shrugged and said, “What the Hell?”.
“Doesn’t exist so I say, All is well.”
Orson Welles’ ghost looked at the vampiress’ dress of purple
She looked like a vampiress whose crescent 🌙 was fertile
“Looks like she’s ready to take a bite,
If I was still mortal, I’d best pop out of sight.”
“But seeing as how I’m a ghost
I know I’m not toast
though in Purgatory I was quite well done
I was even mistaken for a hot dog 🌭 baked in the sun 🌞 “
The Vatican had changed since the last days he had visited Rome
Into a place Antichrist could call home.
La Salette prophecy had come to pass
as Peter’s successor becomes Midsummer Bottom’s ass.
-A poem and vampire novel chapter
written by Christopher
Monday June 4th
2018.
Kwan Yin and Kim and Moon and The Surprise “Hollywood” Style Summit
Kwan Yin and Kim and Moon and the Surprise “Hollywood” Style Summit
After Donald Trump threw a temper tantrum and pulled red spider monkeys out of his hair and cancelled the June 12th Singapore Peace Summit in an announcement this past Thursday May 24th, Kwan Yin the Asian Buddhist goddess of mercy had asked Thoth the Egyptian god of wisdom, the moon and magic along with his immortal formerly mortal companion Serena the Time Traveler to go to the Underworld realm of Hades and ask the entity Hades (known to the Romans as Pluto) to release the ghost of the great film director Orson Welles from Purgatory.
In the past, Hades normally had to consult with the earthly Pope of Rome before he could do such things but since the current Pope Francis no longer believed in Purgatory (or even Hell for that matter), he was able to immediately accede to Kwan Yin’s request.
The ghost of Orson Welles left Hades saying, “Paul Masson will sell no wine 🍷 before its time but Hades will release my ghost before my time.”
Thoth and Serena escorted Welles to the DMZ (demilitarized zone) on the Korean Peninsula where Kwan Yin gave Welles a deadline of 48 hours to arrange a surprise “Hollywood” style summit between North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and South Korean President Moon Jae-in.
Welles never followed deadlines much in his mortal life (which is why most American film studios in Hollywood became reluctant to work with him) but what he had failed to do in life, he achieved in death.
The surprise summit happened today Saturday May 26th 2018.
Also present at the surprise summit were Kwan Yin herself as well as the Chinese Communist vampiress Meiling Manchu (who had recently broken with Chinese President Xi Jinping on the grounds he had become a Mao like cult leader and total totalitarian despot) and the Aztec vampire princess Qonzilqointec.
Kim and Moon agreed to carry on talks for a planned Singapore Peace Summit between Trump and Kim on June 12th.
Meiling and Qonzilqointec were to go to the White House in Washington DC and hold down the Trumpster while the immortal London dominatrix Sherrielock Holmes tomatoed the toupee wearing blowhard’s buttocks with her whip until he agreed to go to the summit as planned.
When Moon and Kim finished their meeting, Orson Welles asked Kwan Yin if it would not be possible for his ghost to remain out of Hades for a while so he could visit London, England 🏴 of which he had fond memories.
Kwan Yin, Thoth and Serena then text messaged Hades on their Divine Celestial Samsung Galaxy 6 Billion Model Smart Phones and put in a special request for the successful director of the surprise “Hollywood” style summit in the Korean Peninsula’s demilitarized zone to spend some more time out of the realm of Hades.
Hades agreed.
He had no objections.
Especially since Welles was consuming most of the wine 🍷 available in the Underworld to the dismay of other clients and patrons.
Kwan Yin the Buddhist Goddess of Mercy
-A vampire novel chapter
written by Christopher
Saturday May 26th
2018.
Carson Albion Private Eye Walks The Boulevard of Memories: A Poem
Carson Albion Private Eye Walks The Boulevard of Memories: A Poem
Carson Albion Private Eye sat in his office with the sideway blinds of his window slightly open
to let in the evening twilight
He loved the evening twilight
just as he loved neon lights
His office window gave him a view of the neon lights of downtown
How beautiful they looked in the evening twilight
They looked even more beautiful in the snow and the rain
One of the few creations of man that did look more beautiful in the snow and the rain
When it snowed or rained
while strolling the city streets
he looked up at the signs of neon advertising the gods Coca-Cola and Miller Beer
and then he looked down at the sidewalk gutters for signs of rhinestone cowboys
but they must have already been washed down to the sewers
dwelling place of nightmares, monsters and vermin
and assassins of character who work for the last Trump
and wait for John McCain to die.
The ceiling fans in his office blew cold air down on his head
offering relief from the heat of the night
The bottle of bourbon stood open on his desk
offering relief from those memories too painful to bear
She… she… her…
He never told her that he loved her
but that was because she was his best friend
How would she react to the news that he wanted to take their relationship up another level
what if she didn’t feel the same way about him?
Then he’d have lost his best friend.
Because such are the ways of male-female friendship
that if one of them loves the other too much
in a way above and beyond what they had previously understood
There’s no going back
It was like what Dermot Mulroney’s character said to Julia Roberts’ character in the film
My Best Friend’s Wedding
when Julia announces she wants the romance over
Dermot weeps, “I’m losing my best friend.”
Somehow though they manage to hold on to the friendship
in the film that is
but that’s Hollywood
and we all know how much Hollywood echoes real life
For real life is not a fairy tale
and they only award Oscars
for dramatic performances
not for actually surviving day to day.
Albion saw the reflection of himself in his glass
Was a reflection still a Selfie by any other name?
and just what was it the liquid showed?
True colours or a distortion of reality?
The liquid went down his throat
well posting on Facebook or Instagram never tasted this good.
He lowered his hat
loosened his tie
opened his shirt
closed his eyes
and let his mind wander
down that lost boulevard of memories.
-A poem written by Christopher
Friday May 11th 2018.
Old Time Movie About A Ghost From A Wishing Well
Old Time Movie About A Ghost From A Wishing Well
Here’s a photo montage music video I made and posted on YouTube 10 years ago:
Thai Cave Rescue Completed Today and Remembering The Chilean Miners’ Rescue of 2010
July 10, 2018 at 9:39 pm (Commentary, Film, History, Inspiration, Life, News, Personal essays, Video, videos) (Chilean Miners’ Rescue of 2010, news, Thai Cave Rescue, Wild Boars Soccer Team)
Thai Cave Rescue Completed Today and Remembering The Chilean Miners’ Rescue of 2010
All 12 boys and their soccer coach have now been rescued from the Tham Luang cave in the province of Chiang Rai in northern Thailand 🇹🇭.
The Wild Boars soccer team is now safe.
They were in the cave 17 days.
The dramatic rescue reminded me of the rescue of the Chilean miners at the San Jose Mine near Copiapó Chile 🇨🇱 back in 2010 when 33 miners who had been trapped underground in a collapsed mine for 69 days were finally rescued.
The same feeling of the whole world watching with breathless anticipation and silent prayer and then the joy and elation after the rescue struck me as very similar.
Back in 2010, I had a desktop computer which allowed me the ability to make movies on it.
In 2008, I made plenty of photo montage music videos.
In 2009 after I figured out how to download videos off the Net to my computer, I then made combined video footage/photo montage videos.
I did the same throughout most of 2010.
The only time I did a complete video footage montage music video was this one I did about the Chilean Miners’ Rescue in 2010.
I downloaded various videos of the rescue from different news networks throughout the world and then chose what I thought were the most poignant moments from each and edited them together and set them to music- The Working Man Song as sung by Cape Breton Island Nova Scotia singer Rita MacNeil.
-A personal reflection
written by Christopher
Tuesday July 10th
2018.
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