Movie Spotlight: Poultrygeist

Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead is 2006 movie starring Jason Yachanin, Kate Graham, Allyson Sereboff, Robin Watkins, Joshua Olatunde, Rose Ghavami, Caleb Emerson, Ron Jeremy, and Lloyd Kaufman (who also wrote, directed, and produced the movie) , and it starts off with a bang (literally).  I saw the Poultrygeist trailer on the Cannibal! The Musical (my favorite movie ever) DVD a few years ago and thought it looked like something I might like...and it's on Netflix, so I thought I should finally watch it and write a blog post about it.  The movie takes place at a New Jersey fried chicken restaurant called American Chicken Bunker; the restaurant was built on top of an Indian burial ground and  is being attacked by zombies who have been possessed by chickens.  And it's a musical!

Poultygeist is bloody, funny, and ridiculous (in a good way)...I really enjoyed this movie, and the music was pretty good too!  If you have a good sense of humor, and don't mind blood and nudity, give Poultrygeist a shot!

My rating: 7/10

Goat Herpes and Other Problems is now available!

I know this isn't exactly paranormal (though gods certainly aren't normal), but I'm thrilled to announce that I published my third book today! It's called Goat Herpes and Other Problems, and it's a book of plays about Greek mythology.  Right now it's only available through Createspace, but it should be on Amazon soon (and the Kindle version should be up today).  If you'd like a signed copy, just send $13 through Paypal to crystalsmithconnelly@yahoo.com, and I'll mail it to you when I get my copies. : )

https://www.createspace.com/4557357

Morgan Spurlock Inside Man: UFOs

MUFON (Mutual UFO Network) sent out an email last week telling people that the CNN show Morgan Spurlock Inside Man would be doing an episode about UFOs, I thought it would be the perfect subject for a blog post.  The show started out with Morgan Spurlock driving on a dirt road in Arizona on the way to the MUFON compound, where he'll learn how to investigate UFO sightings and crash sites.  Morgan meets with Chuck Modlin, MUFON's chief technical advisor, and Fletcher Gray, who are both part of MUFON's "Star Team."  Fletcher, the Star Team manager, says that MUFON's purpose is "the scientific study of UFOs for the benefit of...humanity" and "to make the unknown known."  Morgan runs through a practice scenario one might encounter while investigating UFO sightings, and Fletcher tells him to look for discrepancies or things the witness might have left out.  Then it's time to learn how to investigate a crash site, and Fletcher says the first thing to do is look for hazards and check for high levels of radiation, then look for electromagnetic fields. Fletcher says that anyone who thinks we're here alone is arrogant, and I completely agree with that...I've said many times that it's arrogant to believe that Earth is the only planet that has life on it (and what's the point of the other planets existing if there's nothing living on them?).    

Morgan goes to Sedona, Arizona, "the crossroads of extraterrestrial activity in America."  It is believed that there are vortexes/portals in Sedona that make extraterrestrial communication easier.  Kim Carlsberg, author of three books about UFOs, takes Morgan on a "UFO Sky Tour" and guarantees that they'll see a UFO that night.  After waiting for awhile, Kim hands Morgan a pair of military-grade night vision binoculars, and they eventually see a small craft, then another one above it.  By the end of the night, they see at least forty objects in the sky.  The next day, Morgan and Kim meet to talk, and Morgan asks her what made her want to get into the UFO business.  Kim says, "I didn't want to get into the UFO business...the UFO business wanted to get into me."  She explains that she has been abducted by extraterrestrials hundreds of times and that they have been using her DNA "to create hybrid species."

Morgan heads to Atlanta, Georgia to work with MUFON as they investigate John Martin and Karen Fine's claim of a UFO sighting.  Morgan and Fletcher meet with Ralph Howard, the director of MUFON's Georgia chapter, and they begin interviewing John and Karen.  John says that while walking his dog on September 28th at 4:22 in the afternoon, he saw "two massive structures...one was in the shape of a plus, one was in the shape of a crescent."  Karen says she saw the UFOs as well and can't explain what she saw.  John shows them a picture he took on his cell phone, and Ralph says they will enhance it and examine it closely.

They then go to Ball Ground, Georgia to meet with Elizabeth Scott, who saw a craft that was "the size of a midsize car" over her neighbor's yard.  They look at the video she took of the object, but can't tell what it is and will do a scientific analysis later.  They travel to Athens, Georgia, where Morgan will take the lead on the interview of Bridgette Herron and Scott Creney, who saw bright lights in the sky while they were driving at night.  They followed the lights and stopped in a parking lot, where the object was about 150 feet above them.  Bridgette and Scott show Morgan exactly where they were standing when the craft was above them, and he tests the magnetic and electric fields, but finds nothing.

Morgan brings all the evidence he's gathered to Mark D'Antonio, MUFON's chief photo analyst.  Morgan shows Mark the picture that John Martin took on his cell phone; Mark says there isn't much data in the low-resolution photo and that he would mark it "insufficient data" instead of "unknown."  Morgan then shows Mark the video taken by Elizabeth Scott, and Mark says that since the object tips up and down, it must be a wind-borne object that's fairly lightweight.  He compares it to a picture of a mylar kite and thinks that could be what the object was.  Morgan asks Mark to analyze the video from his night in Sedona, and Mark pulls up a database that shows how many satellites were in the sky over Sedona that night, and it shows that there were close to fifty that night.  Mark says that Morgan did see UFOs, "but of the terrestrial kind."

Morgan meets with Chris McKay, a NASA scientist, in Freemont, California, who shows him that a community of microbes lives underneath the sand in the desert; he says this type of thing helps show us how to go about searching for life on other planets.  Morgan then to goes to the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Institute to meet with Jill Tarter, who was the inspiration for Jodie Foster's character in Contact. Jill was SETI's first employee and has devoted most of her life to searching for extraterrestrial life.  She shows Morgan the Allen Telescope Array, which "is comprised of forty-two separate dishes that are designed to receive radio signals from space."  She tells Morgan that they're installing new receivers that will give them access to new frequencies that have never been heard before and asks him to help attach the receiver to the telescope.  SETI has been around for thirty years and has never received a signal from an extraterrestrial, but that's pretty understandable since Morgan explains that "if the universe were comprised of all the oceans in the world, SETI has only searched the equivalent of an eight ounce glass of water."    

Morgan didn't find any definitive proof of alien life during his investigation, but he says that if humans are the only things in this giant universe, "that is a colossal waste of space." (Well said, Morgan!)

My rating: 8/10

http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/us/morgan-spurlock-inside-man

Miniseries Spotlight: Rosemary’s Baby (2014)

The 2014 version of Rosemary’s Baby began airing on NBC on Sunday, May 11^th and stars Zoe Saldana, Patrick J. Adams, Carole Bouquet, Jason Isaacs, and Christina Cole.  After Rosemary Woodhouse (Zoe Saldana) suffers a miscarriage, she moves to Paris with her husband Guy (Patrick J. Adams).  When they meet Roman and Margaux Castevet (Jason Isaacs and Carole Bouquet), things start to get weird. Rosemary's pregnancy is rough, and she's in pain almost all the time, but she doesn't want to tell Guy because she's afraid he'll ask her to end the pregnancy. (Damn, Satan, if a woman is going to be tricked into having your baby, the least you could do is give her an easy pregnancy.)  It's been awhile since I've seen the original Rosemary's Baby, so it's hard for me to compare the two versions, but I enjoyed the miniseries...some remakes are absolutely horrible, but this isn't one of them.

My rating: 7/10

http://www.nbc.com/rosemarys-baby

Hangar 1: The UFO Files

There's a new(ish) show on the H2 channel called Hangar 1: The UFO Files, and I decided to start with an episode called "Presidential Encounters."  On February 20, 1954, Dwight Eisenhower went to Palm Springs, California, and for twelve hours, no one knew where he was.  The next morning, he showed up at a church in Los Angeles (one hundred miles from Palm Springs), saying that he had emergency dental surgery, but it is believed that he was actually at Muroc Airfield (which is now Edwards Air Force Base), and there were rumors that Eisenhower met with extraterrestrials.  Two months later, Eisenhower declared that all matters of an extraterrestrial nature should be classified.    Harry Truman was in office when the Roswell UFO crash happened, and he decided to keep what really happened a secret.  During his presidency, there were several UFO sightings near the White House, and Truman gave the Air Force the go-ahead to shoot them down. He started something called the Robertson Panel, a "CIA group that was tasked to look into the UFO situation and to find out how to handle the situation."  On November 5, 1961, John F. Kennedy discovered that radar systems couldn't identify some objects in their airspace and was worried that the Soviets might mistake a UFO for a U.S. missile and attack the U.S.  On November 11, 1963, the Soviets launched a spacecraft that never made it out of Earth's orbit, so Kennedy asked NASA to work with the Soviet space program and ordered the CIA to share UFO-related information with the Soviets.  Some people believe that this is the reason Kennedy was assassinated ten days later.  

In Miami, Florida in 1974, Richard Nixon went to see Jackie Gleason and took him to Homestead Air Force Base.  Gleason said that Nixon took him to a room with several freezers and that there were alien bodies inside.  Gleason went home and told his wife, who says he was so freaked out by this event that he could barely eat for three weeks afterward and that he couldn't understand why the truth was being hidden from the public.  In 1993, Bill Clinton reopened the investigation of the Roswell crash and went to the Air Force, asking about the bodies that were recovered; the Air Force claimed that the only bodies found in the wreckage were crash test dummies.  When he was running for governor, Jimmy Carter saw a UFO in Leary, Georgia in 1969 while preparing to give a speech; a few years later, he filled out an official UFO report about the incident.  When he became president, he wanted to release official UFO records to the public, but when he met with the director of the CIA (George Bush) to ask for the files, Bush said they were "need to know" and refused to release them.  Carter also contacted the FBI and NASA, but the FBI claimed they didn't have what Carter was looking for, and the CIA sent NASA a letter telling them to refuse Carter's request.  At some point during his presidency, Carter was given an official UFO briefing, and afterward was seen at his desk, sobbing with his head in his hands.  Ronald Reagan had a UFO encounter in 1974 while he was the governor of California.  He was on a plane during a campaign tour and saw a "white object zigzagging" in the director of the plane.  When George Bush was running for president, he was asked if he would release "the UFO secret" if elected; he answered, "Yeah, I'll do it.  Send me what you've got."  The reporter replied, "You were CIA director.  You know what's going on."  Bush answered, "Yes, I know some.  I know a lot."

This was a really interesting show, and I'd love to know what these presidents really know about UFOs and extraterrestrials.  I understand that no one wants to cause a panic, but it's 2014...the Roswell crash happened almost seventy years ago, and I think we can handle the truth about that and any other UFO-related events that have happened since.  I honestly don't think that aliens could be that much scarier than some of the people we've had on Earth (Hitler, for example), so why not tell us the truth?

http://www.history.com/shows/hangar-1-the-ufo-files 

Movie Spotlight: Devil's Due

Devil's Due is a 2014 movie starring Zach Gilford, Allison Miller, Sam Anderson, Aimee Carrero, Vanessa Ray, Michael Papajohn, Griff Furst, Robert Belushi, and Donna Duplantier.  On my honeymoon, my husband and I went to L.A. and Vegas, saw some comedy shows, went to Jimmy Kimmel Live, and won some money on the slot machines, but on Zach (Zach Gilford) and Samantha (Allison Miller) McCall's honeymoon, she gets pregnant with the devil's baby (I'm glad my honeymoon wasn't that eventful).  Of course Samantha has a rough pregnancy because what else would you expect from a demon baby?  Devil's Due was a decent movie, but it was one of the weaker ones I've seen about someone being pregnant by the devil; of course everyone knows about Rosemary's Baby, but Hell Baby is my favorite movie on that subject (and if you want to see a movie about the devil's baby after it's born, The Omen is the way to go).

My rating: 6.5/10

Movie Spotlight: Odd Thomas

Odd Thomas is a 2013 movie based on a Dean Koontz novel, and it stars Anton Yelchin, Willem Dafoe, Addison Timlin, Patton Oswalt (yay!), Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Nico Tortorella, Shuler Hensley, and Melissa Ordway.  Odd Thomas (Anton Yelchin) is a short-order cook who lives in Pico Mundo, California, and he happens to be able to communicate with the dead; he uses this gift to find the murderers of the ghosts who come to him and to prevent the deaths of others.  Odd Thomas is in love with Stormy Llewellyn (Addison Timlin) and is sure they'll be together forever, so you know they probably won't be.  I don't want to give too much away, but I will say that when I read the novel, I was so mad about the ending that I threw the book across the room, and I'm glad I read the book before I watched the movie, so I was prepared for the ending and didn't throw anything at the TV.   I enjoyed the movie, but like most movies based on books, the book was better...also it needed more Patton Oswalt. ; )

My rating: 7.5/10

2014 MUFON Symposium

MUFON (Mutual UFO Network) is holding this year's symposium July 17th-20th at the Crowne Plaza hotel in Cherry Hill, New Jersey.  If you'd like to hear lectures by UFO experts or want to learn how to be a Field Investigator for MUFON, you'd probably enjoy going to this.  I would love to go, but I won't be able to, so if any of you guys go and would like to write a guest post about it, let me know.  : )

http://www.2014mufonsymposium.com/

Which X-Files Character Are You?

If you've ever wondered which character from The X-Files you're most like, here's your chance to find out. I got Fox Mulder, and I don't think anyone is surprised by that. : )

http://www.buzzfeed.com/katieheaney/which-x-files-character?bffb=