Retro UFO 3 Report
Cool music, fire eating, and unique lectures from all over the ufological map made the third Retro UFO Conference something you are going to be sorry you missed. I know you missed it, because there were about 30 people there and we have a lot more ufomystic readers than that.
That’s not quite fair, since a couple of people came up to me and said that they enjoyed ufomystic.
Organizers Barbara Harris and Adam Gorightly put together the sort of conference that I always wanted to see. What more could you want than a gathering at George Van Tassel’s Integratron itself, sitting like a white beacon in the gray and brown high desert of California? We actually got more “face time” with the Integratron than the original visitors to the Interplanetary Spacecraft Conventions of the 1950s - ’70s.
Things always go better with a sense of humor, and the tinfoil hat contest on Saturday was a hint that UFOs and aliens (or their fans) need to laugh at themselves more often. There was a ringer in the competition, winning for the third year in a row.
The first speaker of the weekend was Ralph Ring, who worked with the infamous Otis T. Carr in the 1950s. Carr said that he had developed a flying saucer that would take passengers to the moon in a few minutes, but was dogged with legal troubles over his failure to produce a working prototype. He was eventually convicted of attempting to defraud investors in this project, and spent some time in jail. Ring claims that this was the result of a government conspiracy, and that he has working models flying now in his home state of Hawaii. Although I have very little faith that this is true, somebody should check out his claims. At the very least you’ll get a nice vacation.
Chica Bruce, who I haven’t seen since she appeared on The Conspiracy Zone (a TV show I worked on in 2001) was next. She described her own UFO sightings and the concepts described in her book Beyond The Bleep, an unauthorized companion volume to the What The Bleep Do We Know film. She also talked about the miracle of Fatima, based on her translation of a little-known and exhaustively reserached Portuguese book about the case. She says she’s interested in paragliding, so I’ll have to bother her about that soon.
Some of the lectures took place in the Integratron itself, and that’s where filmmaker Paul Kimball showed his 2007 film Best Evidence: The Top 10 UFO Sightings. It didn’t seem like some of the more new-agey members of the audience were satisfied with his frank answers to some of their questions. Kimball is not hostile to the UFO subject, just some of the more way-out belief systems expressed by some of those who populate UFO conferences.
O.G. Contactee Rev. Bob Short was there for the third year in a row, and took a group out to Giant Rock itself, which lies 2 miles north of the Integratron. I didn’t go on that jaunt, but Adam G, his wife Heather, buddy Joe Hook, my girlfriend Sigrid, and Chica visited on Sunday afternoon, where I described the old Spacecraft conventions and pointed out where the rooms under the Rock had been filled in years ago.
On Saturday night, Tim Cridland did his Torture King act. Cridland, co-author of the recent Weird Las Vegas and Nevada book, also performs as a sort of fakir, walking on red-hot iron pokers and putting steel needles through his arms and chin. He also performed some unique acts of fire-eating, fighting the high desert winds to keep from burning his face and hair. Last year, I saw him on an episode of a National Geographic series about mind-over-matter. He was sitting in a doctor’s office hooked up to a machine that measured his resistance to painful stimuli. Not suprisingly, his score was off the scale.
Just before sunset, Adam Gorightly and Joe Hook performed in the Integratron dome using a keyboard, guitar and theremin under their band name “Good News For Modern Man.” Two compositions stood out for me: one entitled “UFO Lane” and another in the style of one of my favorite bands, Calexico.
While the performance was still going on, I walked up the road and launched my powered paraglider. Well, actually I tried to launch it. I had misjudged the conditions and did about $800 worth of damage to my equipment. Of course, the next evening gave us perfect winds, or actually the abscence of wind, which is better for my style of flying.
Abduction researcher Barbara Lamb led off Sunday morning with a talk about crop circles. I didn’t agree wholeheartedly with her assessment of some of the formations, but Lamb presented a wide range of research and information that had me thinking twice about some of the well-known fakery of this art form (?)
Then, Nick was up with his presentation on the FBI’s interest in the contactees, as documented in his book On The Trail Of The Saucer Spies. Turns out the gumshoes were more interested in commies and subversives than UFO secrets. Not much of a surprise, but when George Adamski tells his audience that the Vensians are communists and live in paradise, it’s what you might expect. During the Q&A, Kenn Thomas mentioned the new rumor of a Marilyn Monroe/ JFK sex film that J Edgar Hoover had in his possession.
After Nick, I presented a talk called “Aliens Aren’t From Other Planets (Maybe)” and described alternatives to the Extraterrestrial Hypothesis. I think it was well-recieved, but a couple of the questions had me wondering whether some people had actually listened. One man stated that the alien autopsy film was proof that aliens were here and the government knew about it. I don’t think he liked my response. I said that it was fake and proved nothing, and that even it it was “real,” it didn’t prove that aliens from other planets were visiting us. The guy “harrumphed” and sat down.
Tim Cridland spoke about Lemuria and Mount Shasta and the rumors and possible facts associated with them, an area of mystery that Cridland is still trying to unravel. A few audience members tried to pin Tim down to a fixed belief system on the subject, but to his credit, he isn’t buying into anything just yet.
Kenn Thomas closed the conference with his talk on the Maury Island UFO case and its associations with characters in the Kennedy Assassination. Kenn really had a slick presentation, with videos interspersed with his powerpoint slides. He also talked about legendary comic book impressario Jack Kirby and his connections to the undergound of the U.S. military-industrial power structure. Kirby seemingly predicted the face on Mars controversy with a 1960s-era comic on the subject, and seemed to know about technological developments years before they were made public.
There is a local TV report on the conference that someone has just posted on YouTube. As soon as I can get my home computer fixed (or can work up the scratch to buy a new one) I’ll post a flickr photostream.
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May 01 2008 
May 1st, 2008 at 7:30 am
Greg, I posted some photos of the event on my blog–one of you apparently performing hand puppetry, here:
http://gorightly.wordpress.com/2008/05/01/a-few-photos-from-retro-ufo-3/
May 1st, 2008 at 11:56 am
Thanks for the report Greg, and also for the photos. Those desert pics were very cool, you could almost glimpse the trail of a sandworm in one or two
I hope you get the chance someday to fly your glider over a crop circle field. that would be totally rad! Or, using a native coloquial term of us: muy chingón!
May 1st, 2008 at 4:10 pm
Adam,
I don’t know what I was doing there. Maybe reenacting my one and only dinner with Whitley Strieber.
May 1st, 2008 at 4:18 pm
RPJ,
I had a request to post more sand dune pictures. I hope the computer shop can get the photos off my dead hard drive.
Funny you mention flying over crop circles. That’s been a dream of mine for awhile. Also, I have a sticker on my motor that actually says “chingon” over the “chevron” oil company logo. It’s on the gas tank, appropriately enoough.
May 1st, 2008 at 6:43 pm
Greg
You’ll love this. It’s my friend Matthew Williams (who you met at Ryan Wood’s crashed UFO gig a few years ago), flying over the fields of southern England where he lives. He’s in his microlight with a camera mounted on it.
LINK:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vc-d6dMv7xs
May 3rd, 2008 at 7:32 am
Better $800 damage to the equipment than $8000 damage to yourself, Greg.
I’m glad everybody had a good time, but
sorry to hear about the sparse attendance.