I should have stayed in Ottawa for my holidays, at least there I expect weird things to happen.
My weekend got off to an ultra-weird start when I got a call from reporter Don Patterson maybe a piece of NASA’s UARS satellite crashed in the Okotoks area.
I told Don to calm down. I had been gone for two weeks and he might have forgotten I always leave my desk in that fashion. It only looked like a satellite hit it.
Sure enough, I started getting phone calls asking if junk from the UARS landed in our fair town.
What the heck do I know about fiery objects? So, I asked an expert on dealing with fiery stuff.
I made a direct star trek to the Okotoks Fire Department to see if any of its members happened to notice a six-ton piece of UARS (Am I the only one who finds UARS kind of a funny name?) travelling at a zillion miles per hour crash into the town.
Firefighter J.R. Parker assured me he was quite confident that would be the sort of thing someone from the community would likely phone 9-1-1 about. And no, no one called — except a bunch of media types.
I was stuck. Then I recalled Don told me there were supposedly postings of a video of the satellite over Okotoks on YouTube.
I knew this was a major story. Who would have thought you could actually post a video on a computer (I’m not very internet savvy).
I ran back to the office and quickly got on this new thing called YouTube and sure enough, there was this video with the title “Okotoks, Canada — UARS Fiery Footage.”
I sat back and watched. I was mesmerized. Who would have thought a satellite falling from the sky would look kind of like headlights in the distance.
I need a boost if I leave my car headlights on after just a few hours without the vehicle running. This UARS thing has been dead for years, those lights were still going. Wow, what battery does NASA use?
If you thought the thing in the video was a satellite, here’s a news flash — the 60’s are over. Put away the Grateful Dead tie-dye t-shirts and get back to reality.
Besides, midway through the video the guy says he is filming from Oklahoma City and is looking southeast.
I shrugged and pulled out my atlas and Oklahoma City is a long ways from Okotoks. If you’re looking southeast from Oklahoma City, you are looking at Cuba.
If a U.S. satellite lands in Cuba, we will find out how Kennedysque Mr. Obama really is.
I was kerfuffled. Then on Monday, I discovered (with the help of the Eagle’s Caitlin McLean) the whole thing was a hoax, possibly started as an internet joke done by Calgary filmmaker Sebastian Salazar who used the satellite deal to do his own spoof on Orson Welles’ 1938 radio play War of the Words, the one where aliens invade New Jersey.
Except instead of New Jersey, he used Okotoks. The news reporter was Carl Philips from the Okotoks Western Wheel.
This was cool.
I have history with Orson Welles’ renowned rendition of H.G. Wells’ 1938 sci-fi book.
My dad was one of millions who cut in halfway through the broadcast and got alarmed. He hopped on his bike and just kept riding. Although aliens were capable of getting from Mars to Earth, they did not have the technology to catch a young boy on a pedal bike scared out of his gourd.
I was able to talk to Salazar and the friendly filmmaker was a little concerned about how the community was reacting to Okotoks being covered by the media throughout the world.
I told him Okotokians and people living in the foothills have a great sense of humour and they were going along with the joke.
I know I was upset. As a former (and not-so-former) class clown, I was mad I didn’t think of it.
This was way better than my: “Is your refrigerator running? Better go catch it!” phone shtick of my youth.
Some people thought I would be mad because the reporter Carl Phillips was pawned off as a Western Wheel reporter.
I’ve outdone Salazar there.
I have been accused of impersonating a Wheel reporter for four years now.
All in all, it was a good spoof and no one got hurt. It’s just like that old saying:
“Alls Welles that end Wells.”
