BellGab.com Archive

I second the "Too far".

Criticize his hosting skills to your heart's delight, but posting pics of him with his family, and photoshops that suggest homosexuality or pedophilia, is crossing the Reasonable Human Being Line of Acceptable Conduct.

The Hopi Prophecies show (main guest) was actually decent.

Wow, something is up. It's like C2C has dropped through the sub-basement of craptacularness and landed in the sub-sub-basement. Snoory's Halloween show (I won't even dignify it by calling it Ghost to Ghost) was an abomination, as discussed, and his voice attained this flat, exhausted, "Aw just fuck it" quality, and then finally he just threw in the towel and ran "The Reluctant Ghost".

With Wells's show last night, I went in giving him the benefit of the doubt (which means skipping The Numbers Lady and going straight to the main guest). But even that was rock-bottom horrible. James Roger Brown sounded like some crazy who's been hounding them at conventions and bombarding the producers with emails: "Put me on! Put me on!" Finally they just said, "Aw fuck it, let Wells deal with this nutjob. We've got nobody else." In all fairness, I can understand why Wells didn't ask for specifics on some of Brown's wackier statements. Like the obvious question when a guest reports they have survived multiple assassination attempts is, "By who?" But you know Brown would just fumble and drone as he desperately tried to concoct a story, and it would be even more awkward for everybody. 

In going to the Art Bell livestream, it strikes you in contrast what a professional and innovator Art was. Once you forgive the man for inflicting Ed Dames on the world, you can really appreciate the scope of his talent. I caught the Amityville horror guy (Lutz?) interview, and Art consistently asked challenging questions without being rude, steered the conversation when things got off-track (Even discretely ending an appearance by an elderly "psychic" the Lutzes had hired, who just wasn't adding anything relevant), and at one point even handled a phone malfunction with grace and aplomb. 

Basically at this point I just continuing listening to C2C out of habit and for George Knapp, who I say is awesome 90% of the time.

RESURRECT DEAD was awesome, a real treat for anybody who's been fascinated by the Toynbee Tiles.

I was particularly impressed by the dedication those kids gave to their investigation. Looked at from a certain perspective, it kinda represented the best of humanity. Strangers coming together to pool their resources and problem-solve creatively to solve a mystery, following the data honestly to wherever it led.

Also the story of the kid with the tattoo on his skull (Justin?) was particularly compelling. He mentioned being tortured in high school then living in a "squat", which I assume means an abandoned building that homeless people live in. That would have broken some people, but for Justin it just seemed to make him a more interesting person.   

Best of luck to those guys.

Really informative and good posts, Iceman. Thanks for sharing those thoughts.

Also

Sardondi: "(Rob's) creepy, like Inspector Javert spending his whole life pursuing Jean Valjean."

I had the same thought.

Also, I second (or third or fourth?) the sentiment that the Paulides shows were some of the best C2C ever. I don't get con man vibes from Paulides in the slightest, and I think Rob should be ashamed of himself. 

kf5iwe: "Speaking as a Deputy Sheriff, I only divide people into 2 groups, Cops and criminal scum. Booked too many of my family members. SWAT ON!!!"

Wow. Assuming you're serious (which is probably a bad idea on this site), how many innocent people have you financially destroyed or murdered? Just curious.

So Lovecraft, another potentially awesome topic just ruined, and the Choking Open Lines, which was a non-starter, but Art could have probably made it interesting.

I wonder what are the upper limits of Snoory's ability to ruin a show? How vast are his powers??...



Snoory: "Thank you, Quaxcom, leader of the Grays, for agreeing to your first public interview on Earth. This is a historic moment for humanity."

Quaxcom: "You're welcome, Human Noory. But I was told George Knapp was going to do this interview so-"

Snoory: "I like to warm up guests with a folksy and often pointless question, so are you any relation to my dear friend Doug Jones in St. Louis? We call him 'Quaxy' sometimes. It's a long story but-"

Quaxcom: "I came here from 12 light years away in a technology that your species has only the faintest understanding of, so no. Obviously no. Look, I was told Knapp was going to do this interview, so-"

S: "Tell us a little bit about yourself."

Q: "Well, I started out as a Glux rancher, but gave that up to join our Exoplanet Colonization Corps. Gluxes could be viewed as similar to your Earth horses."

S: "I used to own race horses!"

Q: "Uh, that's... that's great, Human Noory. So anyway, I served in the Corps for about 14 of your Earth years, then-"

S: "I served in the Navy for 9 years! Thank you for your service!"

Q: "That's great, but look, I think you're missing the point here. I said Exoplanet Colonization Corps, so obviously you could infer from that that we're here to colonize your-"

S: "You know, I was talking to my dear friend Jake Grossman the other day. He's ZZ Top's number one roadie. Anyway, he and Tommy and I were at our favorite Greek restaurant in Los Angeles. Jakes was saying how much he enjoyed CC Radio's new crank-powered radio, and then Tommy said-"

Q: "I'm here to discuss the COLONIZATION OF YOUR PLANET, Earth Noory. We've already abducted about a third of your US Congress and have replaced them with pod people. Don't you have any relevant questions that-"

S: "Are you familiar with my aunt? Do you like tulips? Did you know that I was the last journalist to talk to Jimmy Hoffa?"

Q: "SHUT UP! SHUT UP! YOU BABBLING FUCKING MUSHMOUTH! SHUT THE FUCK UP!"

Look, I spoke my mind and I certainly appreciate your responses.

Further, I appreciate being welcomed to this forum and the opportunity to share my opinions on C2C with likeminded folks.

But I'd ask some of you to take a step back and look at what you are writing. With all due respect, CHEWMOUSE wrote that Strieber doesn't work. What's going to happen if he goes down to the local temp agency and they read the name on his resume? Are they likely to give him an assignment? If not, why? Also, with all due respect, STEVESH wrote that Strieber enjoys being perceived as a rape victim. I think if you value your metaphoric membership in the Reasonable Human Being Club, you have to back up an accusation like that. You also wrote that COMMUNION was some conspiracy amongst Strieber and multiple employees of his publisher, risking their careers on something that would be a bizarre gamble. If you are a reasonable person, you have to also back something like that up with facts.

With Dames, to me it's a different story. One can point out as a fact that none of his predictions have turned out, yet he still sells prediction services to gullible people. ITSOVER further pointed out (paraphrasing) that one of Dames' predictions was that a Space Shuttle would explode before the Killshot, and that the Shuttle program has been retired, so that's an impossibility. Also Dames' backstory strains credulity. If the Army saw any value in Dames' services or Remote Viewing in general, why would they let him go... or at the very least not prosecute him for revealing classified information (One would assume the capability to bend the physical universe would carry some sort of secrecy agreement)? The logical conclusion is that he's a flim flam man.

Here's the tl; dr version - Prove that Strieber doesn't believe what he is claiming. (I gave you a reasonable explanation in the above post as to why he would believe such extreme claims.) Do so and I will be the first to acknowledge the correctness of your position and admit my naivety. But if you can't, I think some of you need to admit to yourselves that you're being Anonymous Internet Meanies (Yes I just coined that term) and to a possible rape victim no less.

Let me go out on a limb here and say I don't believe Whitley is a liar. Certainly not in the sense that James Van Praagh and Ed Dames are.

I'm not saying his stories are factually accurate either. But I just don't get the impression that he is knowingly lying. The details, the tenor of his voice, etc. In other words, I believe he believes what he is saying.

Another way to look at this is what does he get out of making such claims? Van Praagh and Dames, as far as I can tell, make their living as con men. Whitley writes novels, a handful of which have done kinda well and/or garnered movie options. I don't know how much you guys know about the book business, but this still doesn't translate into a lot of money. To put it another way, if he was after money, he would probably be ahead financially by now if he had just spent those hours working for minimum wage at the local gas station.

Now look at the negatives for coming forward with such claims. He has to spend the rest of his life as being the guy who got "probed" - to put it tactfully - by aliens. Everywhere he goes, every day for the rest of his life. If he was going to lie, wouldn't it make more sense from a PR standpoint to claim, I don't know, something like he heroically fought off an abduction team of Grays?

Here's what I believe. Somewhere, sometime, this guy - to not put it tactfully - got raped. I think we can all agree that this would be among the top most traumatic events to ever befall a person. And the human brain is a complicated thing. Sometimes it processes highly traumatic events in ways that don't make any sense whatsoever to us outside observers. Now add to that that he has come forward as a public figure in a hotly debated, "fringe" issue, might have mental issues, and is also something of a vulnerable guy. You know as well as I do that there are people out there who predate on vulnerable people like carnivores on a wounded gazelle. People - like maybe this fellow "The Keymaster" who supposedly showed up at his hotel room door, could very likely be flat out fucking with him for whatever twisted reason.

In conclusion, my impression is that Whitley deserves your sympathy, not your scorn. I don't feel like he intends you any harm.

Heh. I read the above post as Ed "Devil Deuce" Dames. That's almost as good a nickname for him as "No Shame".

So let me get this right. Last night, Snoory and his producers had a choice - an entire show with the guy from Veterans Today, who had quite the tale to tell about everything that made Coast great (Majestic, black ops, alien abductions, etc), or 1 hour with him and the rest with Ed "Devil Deuce" Dames' typical bs. How do radio professionals blow a call like that??

You know, to the best of my knowledge, I have suffered through every show Dames has done with Coast. None - absolutely none - of his predictions has come true. Yet every time he appears on Coast the host congratulates him for his hits. It's bizarre. Like even if let's say I missed some shows where he got some predictions right, it would have to be 1% of his predictions that turn out. That's kind of an amazing anti-achievement because you'd think if they pulled a random person off the street they could make predictions with a greater success rate than that just based on common sense and probability.