I loved Art Bell. My wife and I would stay up late rehabbing our first house listening to Art. I’m convinced all of the talk about the wall on the southern border was a smokescreen to hide the extent of the Chupacabra problem in Texas and New Mexico
Art Bell Back in Time
41–50 of 91 posts
Re: Art Bell Back in Time
#42Art Bell had the absolute best voice for late night radio. Used to listen to him on my overnight road trips between Salt Lake and Vegas. Just the endless desert under a full moon, and Art's guest is rambling on about interdimensional beings. Could almost believe it for that moment. One of my favorite things about Art was the tension. Did he believe what his guests and callers are saying? Or is he just humoring them f…
Used to listen to him on my overnight road trips between Salt Lake and Vegas. Just the endless desert under a full moon, and Art's guest is rambling on about interdimensional beings. Could almost believe it for that moment.
Yeah, there's something about that time of night, being out on the open road. Reality seems a little bit, erm, looser, or something. I think it's just that all you have is you, the radio, blackness, stars, maybe the moon, and possibly a cow or a coyote or something. In those moments, there's less "stuff" to slap you in the face and remind you "Hey asshole, there's no such things as aliens, UFOs, ghosts, zombies, time-traveling Titors, etc." You just stare off into the black, see the millions (or so) of stars you can see, listen to the static-crackling AM radio, and, wait is that light really a star? NO... it's blinking wrong...
Re: Art Bell Back in Time
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
Life contributes to death. Do what you like and don't shame others for doing the same.
Sometimes shame is useful. Cigarettes are gross and unhealthy, not just for the user, but for the people around them. It is a costly habit, and most importantly, often leads to premature death. If anybody I care about smokes, you can bet your ass I'm shaming them. They shouldn't be doing it.
Obesity as currently practiced is 10x worse, shame doesn’t seem effective.
Re: Art Bell Back in Time
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
Life contributes to death. Do what you like and don't shame others for doing the same.
It's funny how fast that attitude changes when someone you know dies of something you could have helped prevent. Suddenly you feel like you've got blood on your hands, and that maybe sometimes other people need a nudge or a kick in the right direction.
Guilt is common after a loved one dies. If you only stopped them from eating butter they may have not had a heart attack. If you were there you your grandma might not have slipped.
I don't think we have the control we brainwash ourselves into believing.
For every nag or nudge you create a riff where you are trying to impose your will. Whether it is about smoking, the person they are dating or their career choice your nudges are probably less helpful and more harmful then they appear.
Re: Art Bell Back in Time
#45Remember listening to Art Bell as a teenager when I would go to bed at night. Would scan for channels on my clock radio. Have no idea where the AM signal was coming from but it was interesting listening and was unlike what I was used to hearing on the radio.
Re: Art Bell Back in Time
#46Art Bell was probably a sort of proto-Alex Jones, i.e. a controlled and managed outlet for parapolitical topics and a way to mix up the truth with a hefty dose of misinfo and shitcoating.
Mae Brussell's entire back catalog is easy to find if you're looking for something along these lines without the compromised elements. Dave Emory also has a massive library and is still going strong, doing great work on the origins of SARS-CoV-2 in particular. For modern-day parapolitical podcasts there's The Liminalist, Subliminal Jihad, The Farm, Psyop Cinema, and many others.
Re: Art Bell Back in Time
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sometimes shame is useful. Cigarettes are gross and unhealthy, not just for the user, but for the people around them. It is a costly habit, and most importantly, often leads to premature death. If anybody I care about smokes, you can bet your ass I'm shaming them. They shouldn't be doing it.
Obesity as currently practiced is 10x worse, shame doesn’t seem effective.
Shaming single mothers or having a baby out of wedlock or shaming someone for being gay are great examples why you shouldn't shame people and why the practice should shamed out of existance.
Re: Art Bell Back in Time
#48I used to work obscenely late hours in my QA days at Bliizard and I would listen to Art Bell alone in my car late at night outside an undeveloped area of Irvine looking at the hills and the stars at 1am for my dinner break. I still listen to Coast to Coast for 30 minutes every night for the bumper music or more if the topic is interesting.
I worked a graveyard shift for a while and would listen to C2C on my "lunch" breaks at 2AM. It was a fun show to listen to at that weird time of night by yourself. It was far less fun any time George Noory was guest hosting. He just let guests run unchallenged. Art Bell was good at going on the guest's journey without letting them go too far off in the weeds.
Art always felt more like satire to me.
Noory is just another radio guy and tends to inject conservative radio trope into something that was really pure fun and wacky stuff.
Re: Art Bell Back in Time
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
Obesity as currently practiced is 10x worse, shame doesn’t seem effective.
Shaming single mothers or having a baby out of wedlock or shaming someone for being gay are great examples why you shouldn't shame people and why the practice should shamed out of existance.
Yes, shaming should be shamed out of existence!
Re: Art Bell Back in Time
#50What was a wonderful pre-apocalyptic buzz guilty pleasure back in the 90s is now the sad precursor to MAGA. Why are people so utterly stupid? But, for real, I was in the theater next to Art Bell when he watched Contact. And you know how much he loved that movie. That said, the night the satellite feed was cut after the supposed Area 51 worker called in and said everything about the aliens was real was to die for.
That was back before the fringe was, like everything else in our culture, politically weaponized. It was largely apolitical back then, or if there were politics it was 90s libertarianism of a sort that seems shockingly sane today. Much of the audience and I think Bell himself were pretty skeptical too. It was about having fun and exploring wild possibilities, like a radio version of the old Amazing Stories pulp serials.