NASA Finds Alien Life?

A couple of weeks ago, everyone on the Facebook community was posting one of these two articles, "NASA Finds New Life" or "Nasa Reportedly Discovers 'Completely Alien' Life on Earth." If you've read my article "Office For Outer Space Affairs," you know that I am something of a conspiracy theorist interested in the existence of extraterrestrial life. By extension, you know that I was pretty excited to stumble upon these articles.

Shortly after people began talking about NASA's discovery of aliens on Earth, a much smaller faction of Facebook researchers began to surface. While many had begun to act as if we were living in a momentous time in history, the time of first contact with extraterrestrial life, this faction was devoted to deriding these individuals for their ridiculous beliefs. They began talking about how this scientific discovery was a heck of a let down.

These particular articles talk about how NASA has discovered a new form of bacteria called GFAJ-1 in Mono Lake, California. Nearly all life forms on this planet are called carbon-based life forms, which means that the structures that support us are carbon compounds. These newly discovered bacteria do not fit this mold. Their DNA, RNA, proteins and cell membranes are instead constructed from arsenic compounds.

It has been hypothesized for years that non-carbon-based lifeforms may exist on Earth. When I was in grade school I remember hearing that people suspected that silicon-based organisms lived beneath the Earth's crust. Since silicon is a metal, it would be more useful as a building block of life where heat and pressure reach extremes beyond that which carbon-based life forms can handle. Furthermore, it is directly below carbon on the periodic table, which means that it would function like carbon in many ways. This theory was common enough by the 1960s that Star Trek: The Original Series featured a silicon-based alien life form called a Horta in the first season episode "The Devil in the Dark."

The 20th century has seen its fair share of upsets in the definition of how life forms are defined, most significantly with the discovery of archaea, microorganisms that were originally understood as bacteria but which are now understood as having a completely different evolutionary path. These organisms can thrive in the harshest of climates, in volcanic vents and toxic waste even, because of their ability to metabolize a variety of gases and metals that would kill nearly any other organism. Knowing about these variations on life, it never seemed like much of a leap to suggest that we would find a non-carbon-based life form on or in the Earth.

While the discovery of arsenic-based bacteria is certainly a momentous scientific discovery that can lead humankind down some interesting avenues of research, it has been marketed to the public as if scientists had just discovered intelligent extraterrestrial life capable of long-distance space travel. If the headlines referred to scientists discovering new life, few would find it very interesting. The nature specials I used to watch in the 90s told me that new species are being discovered on a daily basis in places like the Amazon rain forest. Instead, the headlines made use of the "NASA" keyword, which combined with the keywords "new" and "life," plants the false idea that we are dealing with ET here. Throw in the word "alien," meaning "other" or "different," and people automatically think you mean "extraterrestrial in origin."

I would love to fit this story into my greater theory regarding the possibility of extraterrestrial biological entities traveling lightyears to make contact with the civilization of Earth, but it just doesn't fit. This scientific advance is extraordinary but it is also a let down, and the crux of this distinction is the bait and switch that popular sources reporting on this issue have used. They promise Independence Day and X-Files, but instead they give us Nova.

The Justin/Jeff Project: The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou (2004)

In the spirit of the Julie/Julia project in which writer Julie Powell chronicles cooking all of the recipes in Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking, 524 recipes in 365 days, I bring you the Jeff/Justin project. The Justin/Jeff project chronicles my descent into the filmography of Jeff Goldblum and will take as much time as it takes.

If Jeff Goldblum were to die tomorrow, and I pray to God that he does not, the film The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (as well as Goldblum himself) would be considered late-Goldblum. This means that you shouldn't expect some skinny kid who is just trying to get his name and his face out there (Annie Hall) and you shouldn't expect an unlikely blockbuster hero (Independence Day) - you should expect Jeff Goldblum to focus on interesting characters in movies that not a lot of people watch (Igby Goes Down). The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou is probably one of the highest grossing films of Jeff Goldblum's later years (though I fear that gimmicky chick flick The Switch may have surpassed this number), but it still holds on to, and in many ways defines, the Independent feel and character complexity that Goldblum has chosen to pursue in these, his latter years.

In The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, Jeff Goldblum plays Captain Alistair Hennessey, the nemesis of Steve Zissou (Bill Murray). Though he is described as the antagonist to the protagonist and namesake of the film, this is certainly not an evil and good, harmful and helpful, black cowboy and white cowboy sort of thing. Like the works of Dostoyevsky (The Brothers Karamazov) or Mitchell Hurwitz (Arrested Development), this is a story of a group of individuals whose faults outnumber their virtues, none of them good by any definition, but all of them struggling together through the situations in life that everyone faces, love and loss, crime and punishment, rivalry, revenge, forgiveness and hope. Alistair Hennessey may be the declared nemesis of Steve Zissou, but this is almost a throw-away description. The two men spat and battle and tussle and groan but in the end they are enveloped in a narrative that is bigger than just the two of them.

Hennessey is the former husband of Eleanor Zissou (Anjelica Huston), Steve Zissou's former wife. Early in the film he is portrayed as stylish and debonair, occasionally wooing Eleanor, but possibly only because it gets under Steve Zissou's skin. It seems very likely that Hennessey's days of chasing woman have come to an end, and this is supported by the fact that he declares himself half-gay. When this morsel of information is revealed, the viewer suddenly understands why the crew of Hennessey's ship (which, if I'm not mistaken, is called The Hennessey) is comprised of attractive, boyish men and also why Hennessey would walk around his ship in a bath robe. A man with money is likely to surround himself with the things he loves, and if this is any measure then Alistair Hennessey loves men, big ships, fancy parties, real estate, research vessels, research turtles and fancy coffee makers.

The most interesting part of Alistair Hennessey's story, if I'm to be considered any sort of judge, is when The Belafonte has been attacked by pirates and Hennessey is the captain of the rescue ship. Zissou is in his moment of greatest need. The ship has taken enough damage to render it dead in the water. The crew has just been roughed up by pirates who stole much of the ship's contents and abducted the bank stooge. The damage from the pirates alone will cost more than Zissou can reasonably raise. When Hennessey encounters Zissou, he does not respond with kindness and caring. He responds coldly and calculatingly, charging Steve for every single extra cost that will come about in tugging his ship to dry land. Where one might expect compassion even from ones enemy, Hennessey pledges only to continue his rivalry with Zissou, stacking fuel on the fire of their mutual hatred.

Things are soon turned on their heads. As Zissou and crew approach the Ping Islands, they encounter The Hennessey, destroyed and almost completely submerged. Zissou wishes a great many bad things on Hennessey, but I doubt death at the hands of pirates is one of them. When Zissou and crew stumble upon these pirates, Alistair Hennessey is sitting among them, alive, but this may not last long. Hennessey is shot in the chest by a pirate and a gunfight ensues between Team Zissou and the pirates of Ping. Zissou has no time to thin about rivalries, about the price of Hennessey's rescue. There is only time to act. Zissou and crew hold off the pirates long enough for Hennessey to escape with them. (It is almost in vain, because as Team Zissou takes cover against the gunfire Hennessey stands, dumbly, in the line of fire, holding his chest wound. By the grace of cinema, however, he isn't further wounded.) Through clever use of pirate ex machina, Hennessey and Zissou dissolve their rivalry, at least temporarily. A common enemy will do that. They find common ground in the fact that they are both bad husbands (though Hennessey excuses his behavior on account of being half gay). Their bond is strong enough that Zissou includes Hennessey in the enormous crew of the tiny submarine he pilots to find his true enemy, the leopard shark, another rival that Zissou finds peace with.

Alistair Hennessey is a giant leap in acting for Jeff Goldblum from his first role as Freak #1 in Death Wish. Rather than a nameless criminal, Goldblum takes on a role that is probable best described as a kind of brother to Murray's Zissou. In East of Eden, John Steinbeck describes every set of brothers as sharing something in common with Cain and Abel. Zissou and Hennessey fit this mold perfectly. One has gained favor and the other has not, but we're given a creative solution to the murder story of Cain and Abel. We're given the possibility of redemption in human relationships. Unlike my write-up of Goldblum in Death Wish, I don't need to write some fake happy ending for Alistair Hennessey. I expect that Hennessey and Zissou bicker in some comedic fashion for the rest of their natural lives, and honestly I wouldn't want it any other way.

The Willennium So Far - 2009

In the mid- to late-nineties one of the most important American cultural traditions was the Fourth of July Will Smith blockbuster. The tradition had a proper beginning with the film Independence Day in 1996 in which Will Smith saves the world from aliens and says such profound lines as "I have GOT to get me one of THESE!" and "No, you did NOT shoot that green [expletive deleted] at me!" This was followed the next year by Men in Black in which Will Smith saves... the world... from aliens... (Author's note: it feels like I wrote this sentence already...) and then in 1999 by Wild Wild West. These latter two movies are significant because of Smith's musical contributions. For Men in Black, Smith wrote the hip hop song "Men in Black" which features a sample of Patrice Rushen's funk standard "Forget Me Nots" that Smith raps over. In the song "Wild Wild West," written for the movie Wild Wild West, Smith samples the Stevie Wonder tune "I Wish."

As a result of the popular tradition of Will Smith blockbusters with songs of the same name featuring easily recognizable funk and soul samples, Smith found himself on a particularly influential platform. On November 16, 1999, Smith released the album Willennium. With the combination of the Y2K hysteria, blockbuster success and the propaganda off of his album, Will Smith declared the coming millennium to be the Willennium. Such are the days that we currently live in.

Though the Fourth of July Will Smith blockbuster trend has continued with such films as Men in Black II (2002) and Hancock (2008), the first decade of the Willennium has not been what the world expected a Willennium to look like. These films didn't see the magnitude of success and popular culture following that their predecessors had, and the huge spacing between them makes one feel that the tradition may be coming to an end. Furthermore, Smith has been featured in enough "serious" films (The Pursuit of Happyness, Seven Pounds) that Hollywood production companies appear to simply make scrips that would work for Will Smith to be in. In other words, Will Smith no longer plays roles or characters in movies; rather, movies are built around the personality that is Will Smith.

There is also the unfortunate possibility that Will Smith is Satan, which compounds the difficulties of the Willennium. Revelation 20:7-8 says, "When the thousand years are ended, Satan will be released from his prison and will come out to deceive the nations at the four corners of the earth, Gog and Magog, in order tog ather them for battle; they are as numerous as the sands of the sea." What this would suggest is that Satan Will Smith was released into a position of power at the end of the previous millennium, and that his unification of all mankind under the sign of the Willennium is a means of bringing about a strife-filled end-times. Gog and Magog might here be understood as producer DJ Jazzy Jeff and label Columbia Records.

The evidence, however, to conclude that Will Smith is Satan is somewhat unconvincing. Your beloved Fort Worth Movie Examiner would like to suggest that there is hope yet in this Willennium we are witnessing, that there is still room for the courage of the human spirit, for men and women who stand up against the evil aliens and robots and protect this great planet. That, after all, is what Will Smith has always stood for, and by proxy, that is what the Willennium stands for. Though our parents just don't understand this Willennium, it is not theirs to understand. It belongs to us and to our progeny. Perhaps Will Smith was a little big for his britches when he declared this millennium to belong to him. That is not the issue under scrutiny. The issue is fulfilling the potential of the Willennium, making this thousand years the best possible thousand years.

...unless Will Smith is actually the devil, in which case let's just try to survive.

The Justin/Jeff Project: Death Wish (1974)

In the spirit of the Julie/Julia project in which writer Julie Powell chronicles cooking all of the recipes in Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking, 524 recipes in 365 days, I bring you the Jeff/Justin project. The Justin/Jeff project chronicles my descent into the filmography of Jeff Goldblum and will take as much time as it takes.

If you were born in time to experience the 1990s you are likely to adore Jeff Goldblum with a fiery passion. Few films are more quotable than his 1993 film Jurassic Park, and few actors can pull off long pauses and verbal junk ("Uhhhhh") better than Jeff Goldblum. Jeff Goldblum is to 90s cinema what the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are to 90s television. Of course, the TMNT film trilogy complicates this analogy, but that's not important right now.

What is important is Jeff Goldblum's cinematic excellence. The strongest of rivers often begins as a trickling mountain stream, and so too with Jeff Goldblum, whose first cinematic role is a character named Freak #1 in the 1974 Charles Bronson revenge flick Death Wish.

Freak #1 is one of three disturbed twenty-somethings who run around New York City looking for trouble. Viewers are lead to believe that the three freaks are capable of horrendous acts of carnage by the uncivilized manner in which they knock items off of shelves and eat snacks they haven't paid for at the super market. Shock! Menace! They are like velociraptors hunting in a pack formation.

Another similarity between the three freaks and velociraptors is that they all know how to open doors, which leads to the beginning of the movie's revenge theme. Freak #1 and his posse assault two women named Joanne Kersey and Carol Anne Toby in their own home after getting their address from a grocery store delivery slip. The whole crime is perpetrated with the use of their amazing door-opening skills.

In the aftermath, Carol Anne is comatose. Joanne dies. The family's partriarch Paul Kersey goes on a criminal hunt. All this and the fate of Freak #1 is never revealed. I imagine that Kersey's highly publicized vigilante justice scares Freak #1 off the streets. He cleans up and goes back to school where he studies criminal justice or city-planning and goes on to make New York City a better place. Maybe there's a Mrs. Freak and some little freaky children. He does all of this in the name of the Kersey family.

Why this optimism? Because Jeff Goldblum is a better man than Freak #1. He stands up for a dinosaur's right not to be cloned (Jurassic Park). He stands up for Earth's right not to be destroyed by alien death rays (Independence Day). This is why Freak #1 becomes a pillar of his community in the off-camera future of Death Wish.