In town, Samson & Delilah is playing, the words HELD OVER on the marquee. And in the hills, an asteroid-like thingamabobcomes crashing to earth to a Theremin soundtrack.America-from-elsewhere must be one big bull’s-eye.Suddenly, there’s a huge crater. Which locals approach— meaning there’s a gesture to ask Just how fucked are we?It involves waving flour sacks as a sign of friendliness.
And, all right, one or two do make it a few feet before getting zapped to cinders. Followed by the cop and hiscopmobile. A general named Mann is saying he has it,the object from wherever the fuck things like that come, surrounded. (Meaning he doesn’t.) Now, he is handinghis binoculars to Gene Barry / Dr. Clayton Forrester—so he can see a priest reciting The 23rd Psalm before the Holy Father is cremains in a cassock and collar.
Bombers are useless. As are insignia. Uniforms.It’s 1953. America is weary of generals and wars.Uber-handsome Gene Barry / Dr. Forrester takesan ax to the redoubtable ETs, showing off fora woman he’s rescuing. Showing everyone. At last, we are in a church. There's praying.Christ is toppling as, outside, invaders crashand burn brightly to cheering in the streets—
and they might as well be carnival angels, thesetoughies still standing, given southern California has always been a sideshow, the 20th Century too.Especially with Wilbur and Orville Wright deadand Eisenhower as president, the war in Korea. Maybe the end of the world begins like this—victor-America lifted up but then returned to a backlit earth in one cherished piece.
