Page 170: The day that UFOs turned bad

I recall vividly the day that UFO culture changed in my eyes. It wasn’t a gradual shift in the zeitgeist, but a seismic event. One day aliens were benign scientists gathering data about our curious blue marble and the even more curious humans that inhabited it. Television characters like My Favorite Martian and The Great Gazoo from The Flintstones, the optimism of Star Trek, films like Close Encounters and ET, popular songs like Klaatu’s Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft (famously covered by the Carpenters) and Yes’s Arriving UFO, and all the ancient astronaut books claiming that aliens had visited and helped manking through the ages: these popularized a benevolent image of UFOs throughout the 1960s and 1970s. When there was a UFO flap in my town, for days I watched the skies expectantly hoping to glimpse an alien visitor.

This comic from Close Encounters Studios sums up my feelings about nu-alien culture.

Then one day I opened my eyes to find we had rekindled the paranoia of earlier generations: the horrors of 1950s moviegoers, the hostile invaders of H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds (1897 for the book, 1929 for the radio play, 1953 for the movie, and 1978 for Jeff Wayne’s musical). For me, that day arrived with the April 1978 issue of Official UFO magazine, which purported to show photos of alien spacecraft destroying—and then reconstructing—the town of Chester, IL. For a young person, it was scary, exhilarating, and AWESOME. This paranoia paved the way for everything from scary-alien movies like ID4 to the whole grays-vs-black-slime-vs-bee-clone alien confusion that was The X-Files. And let us not forget Lord Kinbote.

The April 1978 issue of Official UFO was a game-changer for tween me.

The conversation on page 170 of The Billionth Monkey reflects my off-the-cuff perceptions about this time. Could this supposed change just be a reflection of a dewey-eyed tween’s loss of innocence, recognizing the scary alien trope that has always been there? Perhaps, but it seems that the tenor of conversations about UFOs definitely changed in those days from the scores of mass-market UFO paperbacks that had littered my bookshelves. While other people may have observed this shift at different times or places, Official UFO is when I first noticed it. I saved that magazine to this very day (the image above is a scan of my copy).

Page 166–7: Numerical Easter eggs, Lam, and Spacepeopleofwalmart

The Tweezer post on page 166 is a pun on the well-known humor website, “People of WalMart,”  but Destiny Jones’ version localizes it to the Roswell location. I also tucked a couple of numerical Easter eggs into her status update:

• 280 (from 280 “likes”) = נכרי, alien.
• 666 (from 5,666 followers) = Το Μεγα Θηριον, another shout-out to readers of Perdurabo.

The biggest Easter egg of all, however, is Destiny Jones’ note to herself: “Register spacepeopleofwalmart.com.” Once I wrote that gag, I knew that if I didn’t register the domain, someone else would. So I registered it…and thus took my first step down the rabbit hole of having micro-sites for various places in The Billionth Monkey. The site design is an alien-green version of the regular “People of...” site. Rather than hosting embarrassing photos of customers, my lampoon site obsesses over aliens who do their shopping at the Roswell store.

You’ll find plenty of jokes at the webpage. Here’s a breakdown of some of them:

• “Aisle 51” is a reference to “Area 51.”
• We get a virtual representation of the sporting goods manager, Simon. The photo is a pun on popular social media photos showing people posing with a gun and their chosen holy book. Note, too, the sly nod to The Watchmen.
• A couple of pharmacy references (read the scene to see why).
• Jokes about asking aliens for their papers/certifications, playing on the double meaning of the word “alien” and America’s ongoing immigration debate.
• How many times can you find the word “Lam” hidden in the story about the RV ET?
• An ad for the Men in Black nightclub.

Spotted in the parking lot, license plate 4638 ABK.

The sporting goods dialogue about how big a gun Destiny Jones needs is in the style of classic Monty Python goofiness: think of the scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail about African vs. European swallows. When creating the Space People of Walmart gag site, I couldn’t resist taking it to the next level by turning it into one of those ubiquitous social media quizzes…except that the answer isn’t quite what you expect. (Yes, it makes a gun recommendation, but based on your answers it also guesses what cryptid you might be hunting.) Check it out and share it with your friends!

Page 163: Gematria, Cows, and UFOs

Destiny Jones’ Tweezer post on page 163 of The Billionth Monkey references the conspiracy theory that links UFO sightings to mysterious cattle mutilations. For details, check out Bill Ellis, “Cattle Mutilation: Contemporary Legends and Contemporary Mythologies,” Contemporary Legend 1991, 1: 39–80. Suffice to say, this is such a well-known trope that it was hilariously lampooned in the first episode of South Park, as seen in the following clip: http://southpark.cc.com/clips/149573/inside-out-cows

Unfortunately, the video linked above can't be embedded on other sites, but when you click on it you'll see a scene from the classic debut episode of South Park.

The Tweezer update, as with the others, contains a few numerological goodies:

• 87 (from the number of “likes”) = לבנה, the moon…to which, in Western esoteric kabbalah, milk is attributed. This also references the old saying that the moon is made of cheese.
• 385 (from 5,383 followers) = שפה, cheese.
• 333 (from 3:33 pm) = ChVRVNZVN, Choronzon (repeated from an earlier post, this one is thrown in just for fun; no bearing on the content of the social media post)

And since we’re on the topic, every shop described on pages 164 and 165—The Alien Zone, Not of This World, Roswell Landing, International UFO Museum, Starchild—is real…except for the Crashdown Café. That one is a fictional location from the TV series Rowsell. Lovecraft often used the narrative technique of listing a couple of real things (say, books on magic) and then slipping in something wacky and fictional like The Necronomicon. For generations to come, people will chase around looking for it like it’s real. Hilarity ensues.

Pages 157–161: The Comic Book Mega-Post

Stanley’s Marvelous Comics (like the Overlook Hotel) is a fictional place that exists only in the pages of The Billionth Monkey…and in a small corner of cyberspace. The name is an homage not only to Marvel Comics, but also to its legendary luminary, Stan “The Man” Lee. Our Stanley’s last name is Kerbie, which is a reference to the McCartney to Stan Lee’s Lennon: Jack “King” Kirby, the illustrator who co-created so many of Marvel’s legendary silver age characters.

The story of Stanley Kerbie’s comic book trove is a fictionalized composite of several well-known real-world troves. Well-preserved single-owner collections that contain golden age or early silver age rarities are a very special thing in the comic book world. You can read about a few examples here, here, and here.

As mentioned up top, Stanley’s Marvelous Comics is another fictional place in The Billionth Monkey that has its own micro-site. It shows off some goodies from the remains of my childhood collection. It would have been a trove today, but I sold the majority of that collection to the legendary Mile High Comics around 1984. It’s a nice piece of poetry that they were kind enough to let me use a photo of their store to represent Stanley’s Marvelous Comics online. The website is also a place that carries on the Hamlet Special Edition gag; I posted the pages of the comic on the website to help promote The Billionth Monkey (hence the joke that every purchase of the comic comes with a free novel). I should clarify that—contrary to what the website says—there is no full Hamlet book coming out for Christmas. This was another one of those darned Star Wars jokes…referencing how The Force Awakens changed the traditional May release date for the franchise to Christmastime. I have much more to say about the Hamlet comic book, but will save it for when we get to that point in the book…that is, at the end of this walkthrough.

From the moment that Marvel Comics #1 appeared on the cover of the 33rd Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide, it symbolized for me the pinnacle of collecting…and I shamelessly carried my boyish enthusiasm into The Billionth Monkey. It wasn’t merely a gratuitous act, however: referencing this famous issue allowed Nicholas Young to flash back to the book’s prologue, thus playing a key role in his renewed sense of determination and purpose. This was such a pivotal moment in the book that I wanted to include the cover among the view disc images on The Billionth Monkey’s cover…but Marvel doesn’t allow its covers on the covers of non-Marvel publications, which I can understand. The low-res version here lets readers who are unfamiliar with this iconic cover to see it while hopefully remaining within the bounds of fair use.

Marvel Comics #1 © October 1939, Marvel.
[Cover by Frank Paul. Image source: Marvel Wikia]

Several other well-known and not-so-well-known covers in this scene serve to club readers over the head with repeated #DevilReferences. For those who are unfamiliar with them, here are low-res versions of the titles whose covers I describe in The Billionth Monkey:

John Constantine: Hellblazer #1, © January 1988, DC.
[Cover by Dave Mckean. Image source: DC Wikia]

Ghost Rider #1 © August 1972, Marvel
[Cover by Gil Kane, Joe Sinnott, and John Constanza. Image source: Wikipedia]

Hellboy trade paperback Seed of Destruction ©Dark Horse Comics
[By Mike Mignola and John Byrne. Image source: Wikipedia]

Marvel Spotlight #12 “From Hell He Came” © Oct 1973, Marvel
[Cover by Herb Trimpe. Image source: Marvel Wikia]

Marvel Spotlight #13 “When the Devil Stalks the Earth” © Jan 1974, Marvel
[Cover by John Romita. Image source: Marvel Wikia]

Son of Satan #1 “The Time Has Come, Father…” © December 1973, Marvel
[Cover by Gil Kane. Image source: Marvel Wikia]

Page 156 twofer: Gematria and Gehenna

Tweezer Easter eggs
Destiny Jones’ tweeze “Less talk, more man-on-man action” conceals a few thematic Easter eggs in its numerology. In the time posted (6:45) we find the number 45, which is the value of אדם, Adam, the primordial man in Genesis. That references the word “man” in Destiny’ post. Expanding to “man-on-man action,” we find 104 followers, which is the number of סדם, Sodom.

Wooden nickels from hell
When Destiny counters the idiom “pennies from heaven” with “wooden nickels from hell,” she’s not just being clever. She’s also giving us another #DevilReference (or at least to the Devil’s vast real estate holdings).

The phrase “pennies from heaven”refers to the urban legend or folk belief that, shortly after someone close to you dies, you will find a penny in an unexpected place as a “sign” from the afterlife. Others interpret any time they find a coin somewhere as a sign that a higher power is watching over them. In its broadest meaning, the phrase simply refers to an unexpected boon or good fortune.

Page 156: A barrel of monkey puns

By page 156 in The Billionth Monkey, readers have been lulled into a false sense of security with a Shining homage (see here, there, this, that, the other thing, and, yes, here too) only to have the narrator sneak up and beat them over the head with a shameless barrage of #MonkeyReferences. Plus a couple of other goodies. Did you catch them all?

• Estrus: According to sociobiology, the development of menstruation sets those primates apart from other mammals with an estrous cycle. Because this renders fertility/receptivity less obvious, in theory it significantly alters the dynamics of Parental Investment.
• Mandrell: Homonym for “mandrill.”
• Savanna: Several types of monkeys have evolved or adapted to living in savannas, including baboons, patas monkeys, vervet monkeys, and green monkeys.
• Gibbons: The archetypal tree-swinging ape.
• Simeon: Homonym for “simian.”
• Nichols-Woking: Anglophile homonym/bad pun for “knuckle-walking.”
• Chattered, howled, grunted: All terms for how different apes and monkeys communicate.
• “O! I am Fortune’s fool!”: A Shakespeare quote, these are Romeo’s tragic words from Romeo and Juliet, Act 3, Scene 1.
• Central University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne: See our earlier story on unfortunate university names (see here, and its reappearance on Wikibard).

Vervet monkey, by BimboDelux [Image source: Wikimedia Commons].

Page 155: REDЯUM

I wanted to wrap up The Billionth Monkey’s brief visit to the Overlook Hotel by referencing the most iconic reveal in Kubrick’s film adaptation of The Shining (1980). I’m not talking about the creepy twin girls: I’m referring to the scene where Wendy Torrance (Shelley Duvall) looks in the mirror and realizes that Danny’s scrawled word “REDЯUM” is “murder” spelled backward. In our scene on page 155, the childish handwriting is the perfect device to solve Niels and Destiny’s dead-end by identifying the next destination in our chase story.

Danny Torrance (played by Danny Lloyd) expresses himself artistically in this iconic scene from The Shining (1980, dir. Stanley Kubrick, Warner Brothers).

Not to be confused with Propellerheads’ well-loved (and wittily-named) drum computer, Redrum:

Propellerheads’ Redrum drum computer [image course: propellerheads.se]