Do you ever wonder where you were when significant things happened in your lifetime?

I’ve lived on this greasy rock for half a century, so a lot of time to wonder. I’ve had almost no involvement with most of the world’s significant world events, but I often wonder what insignificant thing I was doing at the time.

For instance, when Hank Aaron broke the all-time home run record in 1974, it was the day before my 1st birthday. When that world-changing event was happening, I was probably sucking my thumb, leaving a package in my diaper for my parents to clean up, or looking outside at trees and wondering why they were stealing my carbon dioxide. All I know is that Hank Aaron deserved more of my attention and he’s probably bitter than I wasn’t giving it.

Some people would excuse my behavior because I was only 364 days old, but I don’t think that was a good enough excuse.

When Star Wars came out on May 25, 1977, there are legendary stories of long lines and Yoda cosplay characters before cosplaying was a thing. Instead of paying attention to the amazing cultural moment where an entire universe was literally being created in front of our eyes, I was busy pretending to fly withe my felt Superman cape. I should have been there, standing in line, with my felt cape and hundreds of adults, soaking in the amazingness of a box office miracle that would someday create a baby Yoda. No wonder everyone around me thinks I’m such a huge disappointment.

Another cultural moment I missed because “I was too young for” was Alien, that came out exactly 2 years after Star Wars on May 25, 1979. What I didn’t realize until this very week, was that Alien probably came out because Star Wars. Everybody was probably trying to capitalize on space and aliens.

Along with Star Wars, Alien and its sequel Aliens (super clever to add an S so they didn’t have to add a two), they are considered one of the best movies of all time. I always knew that the Alien movies were awesome because memes, video games, TV and other movies have parodied this movie forever. And yet, until last week, when someone on a podcast shamed me for not seeing it, I finally broke down and decided to watch it.

The nice thing about Alien is that the slowness of the movie created tension. You would always be wondering if an alien would pop out of a wall or someone’s chest.

After watching Alien, I realized how similar her character in Alien and Avatar were. James Cameron was the director of Aliens, which makes you kind of wonder if that was on purpose.

It all goes back to wondering what I was doing when Alien came out in the theaters. I was six years old, living in California. I was probably eating paste and burning ants with a magnifying glass.

Looking back on how cavalier I was when important things were happening, it occurs to me that I should at least pretend to do important things on a daily basis. When I’m older and my grandkids ask me what I was doing when the Towers went down on 9-11 or what I was doing when aliens invaded earth and destroyed the White House, I can at least say I was in an important meeting. About the stats on our social media for our supplement company. Or I was just about to hit save on my world changing novel, when the aliens stepped on the cord that severed that the internet forever.

The Xenomorph from Alien was scary, but all he did was kill a few humans. My aliens destroyed the internet, but more significantly, my novel. My grandkids will already be tuned out by that point, because they will be on their handphones with their headphones. They’ll think I’m just a super old guy losing his memory. I’ll point back to this blog post, (which was destroyed by the internet destroying), but I’ll tell them to check the memernet (the memory internet) and go back to the 9/15/2023 blog and check it there. They’ll humor me and say they will, but we know they’ll forget it the minute they leave my old folk’s home.

My grandkids will ignore me, but maybe our new alien counterparts will actually be impressed by an old human guy and give me a medal of valor for having lived in both the pre- and post-internet eras. .

Before I venture too far into space, take a look at these Bitter Friday Giftures…which will be in an alien museum someday…

Where was I when Hank Aaron hit…

Probably dipping my face…

Or staring bitterly out the window…

I’ve lived on this greasy rock…

When Star Wars came out in 1977…

In the meantime…

Alien came out two years later…

Someday I’ll tell my grandkids about how I was…

When the aliens invaded…

What is scarier…

Or…

Admit it. For a split second…

Don’t worry…

ARRRGGGHHHHHH

Bitter Alien Invaders Ben