Build Date: Sun May 12 17:20:07 2024 UTC
Do you ever just punch domain names into Netscape and hope something comes up?
-- Mr. Bad
Is Someone Trying to Silence Art Bell?
1999-05-22 02:27:35
While you drive along in your hillbilly truck listening to the various radio talkshows, you probably are unaware that there is a fierce battle going on behind the scenes, and on the net. These nighttime talkshow hosts and their guests can be meaner and more ornery than pole cats! This is the latest...
Bad stuff has been happening to talkshow host Art Bell. For some reason the owner of Art's program, Premiere Radio Networks/Jacor, has been trying out horrible replacement hosts for Art's show, Coast to Coast.
None of these trial replacement hosts have the intelligence or showmanship that Art has. They aren't even in the same league. First they had the insanely boring Hilly Rose who doesn't even bother to pretend he believes any of the good hoohaw that Art's show is all about, i.e.: aliens, remote viewing, ghosts, pyramid machines, and whatnot. Then they had that kiss-ass Witley Strieber on who acts like everyone on Earth has been abducted and horked by aliens. He's the guy who wrote Communion, which was a semi-scary autobiographical account of getting buggered by aliens (also made into an awesome movie starring Christopher Walken, by the way). The problem with Witley, besides the fact that he's namby-pamby and whiny, is that he gets such complete nutjobs for guests that they make Art's guest lineup look normal and respectable...
Nobody knows why the network might be gearing up to replace Art. Does it have anything to do with the mysterious events last year that caused Art to walk off the air for several weeks, and claim that he was going to quit the talkshow business? Nobody seems to know what that's all about either. Matt Drudge wrote a report about how Art's son was involved with drugs, so maybe that's it, but that report has never been confirmed (we do know that Art's kid cracked up Art's Geo Metro, though, so maybe he is a little wild).
Or could it have to do with "The Feud"?
Art has been doing battle with David John Oates, the Australian "Reverse Speech" freak who was booted off of Coast to Coast for making inflammatory comments about another one of Art's guests, Major Ed Dames, a "remote viewer" with a Prince Valiant bowl cut. A remote viewer is a type of super special spy who uses ESP. Oates claimed that the reversals of Major Dames showed signs -- specifically, metaphors -- of deception, and involvement in some sort of government disinformation campaign. Art claims that he repeatedly warned Oates not to talk about any metaphors that impugned Major Dames' credibility, but Oates refused to shut up, so he was banned from Art's program forever, and all signs that Oates had ever been a guest were removed from Art's web site.
That's when Oates went on a rampage, teaming up with another arch foe of Art's, the mysterious Robert A.M. Stevens, who was also a former Coast to Coast guest permanently booted from the show because his interview was so sideways that Art abruptly terminated it after only 12 minutes of air time. Meanwhile, Oates took over the Saturday night slot of the Art Bell knockoff show, Sightings On The Radio, normally hosted by Jeff Rense. Besides boring the universe to death with speech reversals, and hawking his reverse tape recorders, Oates has been providing Stevens a platform to smear the hell out of Art. Stevens has been making wild claims (RealAudio Index: 01:55:00) that Art is everything from a former convict to the head of pornography ring using Filipino women, and a pathological liar.
But the big question is: who the hell is Robert A.M. Stevens? A spook? A fraud? Mentally ill? Or just a debunker? He came out of nowhere six months ago, and his claims about his background, such as that he is a former Navy SEAL and a NASA contractor, either cannot be verified, or have been thoroughly debunked. All we really know about him is that he's been involved in a feverish, junkyard-dog style shit slinging campaign against Art and some of his main guests, especially Richard "Face on Mars" Hoagland.
Stevens has darkly alluded that he's working for a group of "anonymous attorneys" who have something to do with the families of those involved in the Heaven's Gate mass suicide, as well as NASA, who want to sue Art and Premiere Radio Networks/Jacor for as much as 250 million dollars. He also claimed to be working with a group of "anonymous private investigators" who are investigating the backgrounds of Art and all of his main guests. He put up several strange documents about Art's alleged dirty deeds on his bizarre web site. And Art has put up documents of his own refuting them.
What's going on here? Is Premiere Radio Networks/Jacor running scared? Are they going to dump Art to avoid becoming enmeshed in a massive law suit? Who could be behind such a law suit? Is this part of an elaborate scheme to silence Art Bell and his guests? Or is it just more bad craziness?
T O P S T O R I E S
In 2010 Dr. Cheng-Huai Ruan discovered a way to cause a patient with an abnormal heartbeat to get back into a normal rhythm by sticking a finger up the patient's ass. (More...)
WKRP in Cincinnati aired from 1978 through 1982. Howard Hesseman played Dr. Johnny Fever, a DJ from Los Angeles who was fired from his previous job for saying the word "booger" on the air. In the show Hesseman would do some dialogue, introduce a song, and start the song. You'd hear a few notes, but never the whole song. (More...)
SF Hippies Can't Get Their Act Together
The annual 420 Hippie Hill event in Golden Gate Park, where large crowds of hippies, wannabe hippies, and hippie poseurs drape themselves in tie dye t-shirts and gather on a hill on 4/20 to smoke weed, was cancelled this year because the organizers couldn't get their act together. (More...)
Mozart to be inducted into the Rock 'n Roll Hall of Fame
Joining such hard-rocking inductees as Abba, Chet Atkins, Nat King Cole, and Neil Diamond, the Rock 'n Roll Hall of Fame is proud to induct Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. (More...)
Gary Busey definitely involved in a hit and run accident
Gary Busey was definitely involved in a hit-and-run accident, but won't face any charges because he's rich and famous. (More...)
Gary Busey allegedly involved in Malibu hit-and-run
"Sir! You hit my car! I need your information!" the woman yelled at Gary Busey driving a battered Volvo station wagon before he sped off. (More...)
C L A S S I C P I G D O G
Pao Tzu: Obtaining San Pedro Cactus
Horticultural clone master, Pao Tzu, guides you through the ins and outs of stealing hallucinogenic cacti from your neighbors' yards. Ooh la la! (More...)
40 Acres, a Mule, and a Crummy 90-Second Spot on Weekend Update
Consider the plight of the Black Man. The Black Man on "Saturday Night Live," I mean. Has there ever been a more pathetic thing than a token unredeemed for 28 years? Where is the NAACP when you really need them? (More...)
Tastes like key lime pie, gets you hammered like nobody's business: Introducing the Key Lime Spocktail! (More...)
First in a regular series! The Pigdog Journal Spocktail of the Week features recipes for EXCITING and DELICIOUS potions and tonics for your quaffing pleasure! Gulp down a whole lot TODAY! (More...)
A Day in the Life of a Beverotologist
It was starting to look like a very boring Saturday, trapped as I was in the suburban wastelands of the outer Bay Area, so I called my Able Assistant (AA) and proposed that we perform some Spocktail field tests. For some time I've been working on creating the quintessential cinematic beverage and even tho' SMRL does most of its testing during nocturnal hours, this seemed an opportune time to roll up the sleeves of our labcoats and get some science done. While the beverotology creation tested this day (The Neurotoxin) must be deemed a success, this article focuses more the journey of the experimenters, rather then the science of beverotology. (More...)
Johnnie Royale's Guide to Wakes
Wakes can present problems for Bad People of the Future. (If you don't know what a BPotF is, you need to read more of the PDJ.) Sure, your friend is gone and you miss him and that really sucks; it does, I know. But all Bad People of the Future are gonna die, and they have all accepted that fact. They do deserve, however, to have one final kickass party to celebrate all the bad things they've done in the past, present and future. And you, as a friend, have to make sure that their desire for a final send off is well executed (sorry for the pun). That's just the way of BPotFdom. (More...)