A Bird’s-Eye View of the Cosmic Rube Goldberg Machine

Seasoned students of the highly weird are subject to all manner of ideas and theories regarding what might loosely be called the paranormal. In presenting this rather convoluted solution here in this writing, language and definitions of the words used becomes a stumbling block almost immediately. Depending on your point of view, the label “paranormal” might specifically refer to ghostly activity– and even within that realm, there are various types of ghosts, and a multitude of viewpoints about what each type is and what they represent. As subjects such as ghosts, UFOs, cryptozoology, and various occult traditions become more mainstream the curious seeker is beset with all manner of opinions, many of them claiming expert knowledge. With all of the forms of media available to us now, from books and blogs to reality TV and online influencers, it can be difficult to know where to look for good information regarding the anomalous. 

It’s only natural to develop systems for understanding our world, and conjecture regarding these things that don’t neatly fit into our consensus model of reality is no different. To stick with ghosts as an example, one wishes to find some authority figure who knows what they are- or, short of that, some framework for understanding the phenomena around them. In so doing, the curious seeker will find over a century’s worth of studies in parapsychology; they will find ghost hunters with their own methods and ideas, ranging from the mystical to the pseudoscientific. They are likely to find mediums and demonologists, and in each and every case they will have been presented with answers to something that by definition is unanswerable. It ultimately boils down to the big questions, such as what happens when we die. The only people who know are the ones who have, and perhaps they tell us and perhaps they don’t. There are perhaps questions even bigger than life after death, for which language becomes even more impenetrable. The effort becomes one of making the ineffable effable, and eff it- it’s worth a try!

The multitude of viewpoints each have their own merits as well as their dubious qualities, and where they overlap our popular conception of things such as ghosts coalesces around certain forms, definitions, and inborn assumptions. It is our nature to find patterns, and one could spend a lifetime refining subcategories and deviations with an ever-magnified specificity and still not adequately explain each spook, specter, and apparition. We may get bogged down in minutiae, and though we’ve used ghosts as an example here this same framework applies to UFOs as well, or cryptids, or even specific types of UFO or cryptid encounters to the exclusion of all others. Every viewpoint has its place, from that of the scoffing skeptic to the kookiest of cranks, culminating in flawed popular models for the honest investigator to begin puzzling over. The homogeneity that results in these models allows for virtually anyone to play the game, to pick up puzzle pieces and build off of them. There is a low bar for entry in the world of paranormal speculation, and our technology allows now for anyone with the right device to be part of the conversation. This is equal parts wonderful and problematic, and one wonders whether any progress can be made retreading the same ground. Our bird’s-eye view of looking at how folks look at the phenomena no-one can explain may not help in our attempt to eff the ineffable, but it just might help us come up with bigger and better questions.

There are other ideas which have become more popular over the years which eschew the strict categories and divisions outlined above. The idea of co-creation, for instance- that anomalous phenomena is a collaborative psychic process which can produce any number of otherwise unexplainable effects. There is little doubt that the observer plays a large role in how various anomalies are perceived and reported, and the more one looks at accounts and cases the more one realizes how deeply personal many of these effects are. The lines between the ufological and the ghostly, for instance, fade and break down; we may start to develop a paranormal Theory of Everything. This, however, can also be problematic as it provides an easy answer for every particular story. Ideas that are similar to co-creation, borrowed from occult and spiritual systems and divorced from their original context, become deployed as solutions for virtually every highly weird entity. When terms like “tulpa” and “egregore” are thrown around with reckless abandon, our puzzle comes no closer to showing us a picture of the blinding reality beyond our limited perception. Instead of effing the ineffable, it merely effs it up and confuses matters further. It simply adds to the columns of categories and rigidly excludes other ideas, in a continuation of the very systems it seeks to escape.

Even worse is the idea that nothing is real. As models like the Simulation Hypothesis have become more popular in recent years, anomalies are increasingly referred to as “glitches in the matrix”. The technological frameworks of these ideas carry with them the implication that they are new models of reality, when in fact they are ancient. The idea that we all live inside of a computer simulation is really just a cyberpunk reframing of concepts that trace their roots to spiritual models such as Gnosticism and even further back in time to Buddhists constructs of reality. While these are big picture ideas, they are also non-starters for our purposes in investigating odd phenomena. We may very well be living inside a digital code or an archonic construction of false materiality, but the danger inherent with such beliefs is that one might come to conclude that nothing here on earth matters. The technological spin on these old ideas is particularly dangerous, as it divorces the model from any spiritual and moral framework. For our purposes in exploring the highly weird, we are explicitly interested in phenomena as we perceive it here in the material realm; what we see and hear here, and what stories we tell and systems we conjure to explain them are for all intents and purposes our reality. Even if all of it is some form of invention, it is worth looking at the constituent parts to learn more about how it all works.

Reality is so big and weird that we can’t even conceive of the vantage point from which we could appreciate how big and weird it all is. Perhaps there are intelligences and entities for whom this vantage point is the norm, and there have certainly been those who have presented theories along these lines. Such an entity would be beyond our dimension of space and time, existing alongside us in mind-bending ways that can only be occasionally perceived if at all. These types are variously called inter-dimensional beings, or ultraterrestrials, existing on a superspectrum mostly outside the bounds of our material realm. Of course, some might say the same of demons, while others might have other religiously oriented or folkloric concepts to rely on. There really is no end to the possibilities, and we could conjecture about any or all of them until the end of time. In trying to illustrate the problems of creating a system of myriad concepts and categories, we have done just that– and perhaps it's a fool’s errand to take such a lofty view of it all in the first place. Foolishness has never stopped this writer before, though, so as we fly closer to the Sun upon waxen wings we might ask ourselves this question: What if everybody is at least a little bit right?

That is to say, with any particular paranormal event there may be several, or many, factors at play. One explanation need not exclude others. Is a Bigfoot sighting just simply a sighting of an unknown animal? Or is it a timeslip to another era? Perhaps the hairy beast shuffled in from another plane of reality and ambled right off into yet another- but some combination of these things could simultaneously be true. It might be productive to inquire why these encounters happen, more than how- if for instance our hypothetical Bigfoot encounter is followed by poltergeist activity or premonitory dreams, or happens at the same time as UFO sightings in the area, perhaps there’s a reason for it all beyond our ability to see. There might be machinery behind the veil, and causation need not follow linear time or reality as we know it. Perhaps we can look to the work of Prof. Lucifer G. Butts for a little insight into how this might work:

The fictional professor is the creation of cartoonist Rube Goldberg, and the inventor of the marvelous machines that have become synonymous with Goldberg’s name. The satire of the cartoons involved engineering absurd and complicated devices, often using live animals, to accomplish some miniscule action. If we employ the cartoon logic inherent in these machines to a multidimensional structure of reality, we may gain some insights into the how’s and why’s of highly strange events. First and foremost, the design is comically absurd from where we sit in material, non-cartoon reality. Of course, this is what old Rube intended. From a 4th or 5th dimensional standpoint, however, our comings and goings and our machinations may appear just as crazy to an outside intelligence; perhaps something like the Butts patented egg opener makes more sense there.

These machines rely on living things to remain static in time and space, and then behave in a predictable way once stimulated in order to complete the chain reaction of events. Imagine our metaphorical bird’s eye view once again, and the allusion to waxen wings and the Sun- this would be similar to the viewpoint of our extra dimensional intelligence, only we’ll add that the wax is not melting and the Sun has not begun to set. That is to say, our hypothetical observer from 5-d reality is outside of our concepts of linear time. Such an entity would be able to act upon static living things, including you or I or any experiencer of high strangeness. From where they sit (if indeed they have butts on which to sit) they could view any and all moments of our lives as frozen, static realities- and move backward and forward as they wish. One wonders if some cosmic cartoonist engineers events with us as playthings, pieces of a weird machine which we have no ability to conceive of (if indeed they have a Prof. Butts for whom this would be a habit.) We would be blissfully unaware, like the little monkey in the cartoon– that is until the pistol fires, and we perform the prescribed duty of jumping in alarm to continue the chain reaction. 

Causality becomes a mind-bending proposition when one removes Time from the equation. In this cartoon and others, the Goldberg design relies on a flower to grow after being splashed with water, in order that it might push upon a stopper above. In cartoons, there is no problem with such rapid growth from a plant, but as we reconcile cause and effect with the realm of timelessness this becomes a fantastic thought experiment. What would it mean if both the parrot and the monkey had perspectives to match that of a small potted plant? What if the firing of a pistol took the same amount of time? Suppose plants are sentient and their perspective is better equipped to deal with the brain-breaking model of non-linear (or even non-existent) Time! Maybe the trees know more than we do.

No event, whether paranormal or mundane, happens in a vacuum. Any event that we can conceive of is contingent upon other events, environments, and material items. We exist in a complex universe wherein every action has an attendant reaction, on and on through the Goldberg machines of our lives. Like dominos falling in every direction with every move or decision, our actions have spiderwebbing effects connecting otherwise disparate seeming events and phenomena. Sometimes something gets stuck on a strand of said web, alerting our spider sense and becoming apparent as a synchronicity or apport. But perhaps our foolhardy flight has gotten us tangled up in this web, as we might begin to wonder what Rube Goldberg really has to do with paranormal events. 

You’ll be relieved to know, dear reader, that there is some support for some of these wackier ideas; artist, writer, and paranormal researcher Eugenia Macer-Story explored a great deal of multidimensional concepts in her papers written for The U. S. Psychotronics Association. In exhaustive detail and complicated, technical terminology Macer-Story presents her ideas about the “Fluidice Matrix”- a system through which living information can be transduced from one dimension to another. The manifestations of this as we perceive it can appear to us in any number of ways, and she doesn’t shy away from referencing everything from psi effects to astrology to UFO sightings in her work. In her paper Reflexive Time: The Magic Non-local Touch, she describes the conditions through which 5-d actions might be triggered and perceived as objects of wonder from a 4-d perspective. In essence, these would be anomalous events with no apparent cause. 

In the paper, she utilizes Einstein’s analogy of a stationary person and a moving train to illustrate these anomalous transductions from another realm by adding a 5-d helicopter above. The train represents linear time as we perceive it, where the helicopter exists outside of time, and the paper outlines the various ways 4-d “anchor points” allow for non-local intelligences to interact with our world. She posits that certain times and places are more likely for such an intelligence to “plug-in”, and the paper concerns itself with how one might predict such things. For our purposes in our own peculiar flight of fancy, the mathematical and physics based approach of Macer-Story in her papers may be a bit too obtuse and heady to discuss adequately; this humble writer is not entirely sure he understands her theories overall. It’s enough, then, to say that someone much smarter than I has probably come to similar insights within these streams of weirdness, and it’s perhaps little wonder that Macer-Story found various outlets for expressing her world view in her other writings, her songs, and her artwork. While people now glibly mention “glitches in the matrix” when referring to odd occurrences, Macer-Story conceived of a fluidice matrix using advanced physics terminology to support it. 

If living informational energy can exist non-locally to our material, mundane reality and occasionally touch down like the tip of a cartoonist’s pen to paper, any and all miracles, wonders, and paranormal happenings could be possible. While Rube Goldberg may never have intended his wacky machines to provide a springboard to understanding a greater reality beyond what we see and hear, untethered to the passage of Time and free floating in another dimension, the absurdity of his cartoons may just be an approximation of Truth in comical garb. Perhaps Prof. Butts deserves a prize for excellence in paranormal research, while we’re at it. One suspects that the old debates will continue, favoring one theory or another about every minute aspect of the paranormal- with skeptics decrying the woo all the way, and grifters looking to cash in, and honest but naive seekers caught up in the mix. It’s all as it should be, as they are all playing their parts in a machine. So are we, if we’re being truly honest- but it’s nice every once in a while to zoom out and take it in from a bird’s-eye view aboard a 5-d helicopter… pondering the ineffable.

Star-cross'd Lovers

 

Valentine’s Day is a complicated affair, and how one feels about it very much depends on circumstance. For some, it might mean a last minute trip to the store, borne out of  absent-mindedness, in order to get a card for a spouse; while for others it might mean a night of planned dinner by candlelight. Still for others, it might be a hopeful opportunity for connection, or it might be an unwelcome reminder of loneliness. The more cynically-minded among us may even begrudge the holiday as existing simply to inspire everyone to buy more chocolate and flowers. Whatever your situation may be this Valentine’s Day, dear reader, it is hoped that this article will make it a little bit more weird- and to provide alternatives to the standard love stories you might hear about.

To start with, the origin of the holiday is weirder and bloodier than you might think. The ancient Romans celebrated the festival of Lupercalia between the 13-15 of February, which involved ritual slaughter of animals such as goats and dogs. Celebrating this fertility rite in the nude, the Romans would imbibe alcohol and skin the animals, and the men among them would beat the hides against the women. Couples were then paired up for the duration of the festival, and it doesn’t take much imagination to guess where that led them. Later, the church would attempt to eradicate these pagan celebrations, resulting in the name we currently apply to it. Two separate martyrs, both named Valentine, were executed on the 14th of February in different years of the third century. It is thought that their feast day combined with the ancient debauched Roman rites begat the “Hallmark Holiday” we currently have.

While bloody animal pelts may seem far less appealing by today’s standards than a box of sweets, the coupling itself- determined by random, essentially drawing names out of a jar- meant that at least the participants weren’t alone on that day. Often, if they hit it off, it would result in long-term relationships. Love is funny like that, and very much a product of fate. Cupid’s arrow can hit at the most unexpected, and inconvenient times- much in the same way anomalous phenomena manifests. It’s not surprising, then, that there would be some overlap in the realms of Forteana. 

Experiencers of the UFO phenomenon, for instance, find their lives irreparably altered by not only their encounters but by the social repercussions of sharing them. This could be particularly disruptive to one’s marriage, especially if your alleged contacts include a sexy space captain. Enter: the story of Truman Bethurum and Aura Rhanes.

Bethurum had taken a job as a mechanic at an asphalt plant, which required relocation and living separately from his wife of 8 years for the duration of his assignment. During this time, beginning in the summer of 1952, Bethurum found himself repeatedly boarding a landed flying saucer in the middle of his night shifts at work. Only communicating with Mrs. Bethurum by mail during this time, despite repeated attempts to have her visit him, he hesitated to tell her about his late night saucer sessions. After all, such a fantastic encounter should be explained face-to-face with one’s spouse, he supposed. To make such an explanation even more awkward, the captain of the craft with whom he spent all this time conversing with was a woman. “And what a woman!”, he says, in his book Aboard a Flying Saucer. He would go on later to describe her as “the tops in shapeliness and beauty”. This petite brunette emissary from the planet Clarion was described as usually being garbed in a red skirt, a tight black top, and a beret. 

In the course of his repeated late-night sessions with Captain Rhanes, although his attraction to her was made abundantly apparent, nothing untoward occurred between them. This didn’t lessen the impact when Truman finally wrote about his experiences to his wife. Initially, she had considered the tales to be either a sick joke or a product of insanity. She was concerned that if her friends found out, she’d be known as the wife of some kook who hangs out with aliens. As he continued to try to convince her, she called him and said “I’ve come to the conclusion that you’re just trying to make me jealous, through all this mention of hours talking with some beautiful space woman, so you can get me up there. Well, it won’t work.” Her opinion softened a bit later, when Truman got a bit of validation of his stories from “Professor” George Adamski. Ultimately, however, the interloping woman from space was cited among the reasons she filed for divorce. Later, he would remarry at Giant Rock, the mecca for contactees, although not to his fantasy woman from Clarion.

Another out-of-this-world romance from the same era is the story of Howard Menger, and his reunion with his wife of several reincarnation cycles… or so we’re told. Menger had encountered a beautiful, golden-haired woman when he was just 10 years old, who claimed to be from Venus and told him about his future. Enamored with this lovely Venusian, he vowed to marry her someday when he was grown up, since people from Venus don’t age the same way we do. 

He continued to have odd experiences throughout his service in World War II, and when he returned one day as a grown man to the site of his childhood encounter he once again met his Venusian dream girl. This resulted in his contacts with other space people, a ride on a flying saucer to other planets, and a name for himself within the contactee community. It was at a saucer lecture one day that he met Connie Weber, who he immediately recognized as looking just like the woman from Venus who he so adored. As it happened, Connie, or “Marla Baxter” as he would refer to her in his writings, was a reincarnation of his lover from previous lifetimes. He himself was a Saturnian, who had jumped into Howard’s dying body when he was an infant. Their love affair is recorded from the perspective of “Marla” in the book My Saturnian Lover, which includes such moments as Menger (referred to in the book as Alyn) teleporting, astrally projecting himself, and even physically transforming into his true Saturnian shape. She reports that in their first expression of love together, he started to grind his teeth, stretch and flex, and as he did so he became much larger, his facial features changed, and his voice deepened as well. She concludes by saying “It was this individual, this Saturnian, this strange being who revealed himself to me as he really was, with whom I fell in love.” 

This was all well and good for “Marla” and “Alyn”, in the grand cosmic scheme of things, but in the earthly realm the real-life Howard had a wife and kids to consider. He ended up leaving his wife to marry Connie, and the two remained married for the rest of their lives together.

Some cases of intergalactic intercourse fall more under the category of abduction cases than that of the contactee. A famous example would be the case of Antonio Villas-Boas, who in 1957 was taken aboard a craft in order to mate with a humanoid, female-appearing alien. He was then dropped off back on his farm, and made to feel like an animal that had been used for breeding. But then there’s other cases that straddle the line between abduction and contactee-ism, such as that of David Huggins. Huggins reports being abducted at the age of 8, and having a lifelong relationship with a host of alien beings. His main partner and spouse in this regard is a being he calls Crescent, although he’s also had quite a few sexual encounters with other entities. These encounters are illustrated in his strange, surreal paintings, and his story has been featured in a documentary called Love and Saucers.

Apparent extraterrestrials aren't the only anomalous entities to indulge in amorous behavior with regular, everyday people. In recent years, several love affairs of the ghostly variety have made headlines around the world. In 2018, an Irish “Jack Sparrow Impersonator” named Amanda Teague announced her intent to marry an honest-to-goodness Haitian pirate who had been dead for 300 years. This they did, but sadly the marriage ended before the year was over. A woman in England called Amethyst Realm also announced her intent to marry a ghost, who she claims to have met in Australia. The ghost, she claimed, hopped on the plane with her and traveled to the UK where he eventually proposed. She was careful to note, he has no knees, so he didn't go down on one of them to do this. According to Realm, this wasn't her first spectral rodeo relationship-wise; she had had affairs with over a dozen ghosts prior to this fiancé. The marriage was not to be, however, due to the ghostly would-be-groom's attraction to partying and drugs. C'est la vie, one supposes- or perhaps, c'est la mort?

Pop singer Kesha made the news as well, when she alluded to entering “the bone zone with a ghost” in conversation with Conan O'Brien on his late-night show. The incident  which inspired her song “Supernatural”, however, was less sexual in nature than she had initially let on, according to more recent statements. While staying in Fort Worth, Texas, with her boyfriend, she was awoken by a very sensual touch along her body by a female apparition. She claims also to have had other experiences throughout her life, and is currently starring in a Discovery + paranormal series called Conjuring Kesha.

Relationships with discarnate entities, sexual or otherwise, have been recorded down through history in folklore and legends from all parts of the world. At times, suspicion of engaging in such affairs was very hazardous to the participant. Witchfinders and church officials would seek out evidence of trysts with otherworldly beings as evidence of witchcraft and Satanic practices. A priest named Ludovico Maria Sinistrari wrote prolifically in the 17th century about the inherent sin of sex- in a general sense, but also as it applied to entities such as incubi and succubi. He was considered an expert on exorcism, demonology, and sinful sexuality and as such advised the Roman Catholic Church on its inquisition methodology. Many were persecuted as witches based on books of his, such as De Daemonialitate et Incubis et Succubis (Demoniality: Or, Incubi and Succubi).

The specter of repressive moralism from the murderous inquisitors of the 1600s still haunts us to this day, although it can hardly be argued that we haven’t made strides as a society since then. Thinkers, writers, activists and scientists over the interceding centuries have helped shed light on a more holistic understanding of human sexuality, leading to a more inclusive and representative social structure. It’s a battle that never seems settled, which underlines the necessity of those willing to fight. One such brave soul was the author of several books about relationships with discarnate beings, as well as an activist for women’s rights and sex education broadly. 

Ida Craddock was born in 1857 and raised in an environment of strict Christian fundamentalism, although her parents had been very much interested in the occult prior to her father’s death during her infancy. The same repressive moralism that put so many to death as witches in the previous era informed the young Ida’s curiosity and interest in exactly the subjects she was told to shun. Very ambitious, intelligent, and indomitable in her will towards freedom, by the time she was 18 years old she had already shaken up social mores at the University of Pennsylvania, petitioning to allow women to attend. She had also, by this point, written a textbook on and taught classes about stenography, allowing women much greater opportunities to work, make money, and be independent. By the late 1880s, she began mingling with Theosophists and became very interested in the occult. 

Her interest in human rights, and human health, manifested largely in her insistence on sex education- and her writings on sex dovetailed with her occult writings, which caught the attention of notable occultists of the time such as Aleister Crowley. While researching and writing expansive occult texts on the role of sex in ritual, she was also writing pamphlets on sexuality which aimed to alleviate social ills by promoting bodily autonomy and basic human rights for married women. These naturally drew the ire of anti-vice activists such as Anthony Comstock, who sought to stop her by any means necessary in the promulgation of her ideas via pamphlet and lecture. 

Though apparently unmarried, Craddock spoke openly about sex which at the time was very taboo, as unmarried women weren’t supposed to have sex at all. She revealed in her writings that she was indeed married, not to any ordinary man, but to an angel named Soph. In a series of works called Heavenly Bridegrooms and Psychic Wedlock, she outlines her relationship with Soph and the initiatory processes he taught her. Meanwhile, she still had Comstock to contend with, and even members of her own family tried to have her committed to an asylum. Eventually, she took her own life, when she was faced with the possibility of prison or sanitarium due to the “obscenity” of her educational pamphlets and lectures. “I maintain my right to die as I have lived,” she wrote, in a public letter against Comstock and the anti-vice movement, “as a free woman, not cowed into silence by any other human being.” Public opinion turned against Comstock and his conservative views following her death. In a sense, her sacrifice led to a more enlightened world, eventually, where people could love and live more freely and independently. 

This Valentine’s Day, remember to thank Ida for her role in allowing you to express your affections openly, safely, and without shame. Whether your preferred companion is human, extraterrestrial, angelic, ghostly, or hell, even cryptozoological, have fun this holiday and keep it weird and romantic. Or, failing that, gorge yourself on discount chocolate the day after. It sure beats getting slapped with a bloody animal pelt!

*This article originally appeared in the February 2023 issue of Paranormality Magazine

Dispatches From Jerry's Impossible Hallway

At the end of a long day, sometimes there's nothing better for comfort food than revisiting an old favorite sitcom or discovering a new one. In an age in which these shows can be conjured on demand and streamed one after the other, they can be as cozy as a warm throw blanket on a cold night. Familiar faces and situations greet you on the screen, making you laugh even though you've seen the episode before and know the punchline already. So ubiquitous is this form of media, and so universal in its influence since its first inception on radio programming nearly a century ago, that the weirdness of the format often flies under the radar. So it is with weirdness- sometimes the absolute weirdest stuff is woven into the very mundane. And so it is that we turn our gaze, through the lens of our strange spectacles, toward the television screen as a familiar theme song plays- snacks at the ready, we settle in for dispatches from Jerry's Impossible Hallway.

The format of the situation comedy, or sitcom, lends itself very easily to the blandest forms of banality. All that is required is a cast of characters who the audience expects to see carried over from one episode to the next, with consistent and predictable personalities. While many shows come and go quickly, failing to hit the mark with audiences, others become the stuff of legend. The most popular shows are celebrated decades after the airing of the final episode, influencing everything from language to cultural norms. In a previous post, I alluded to the subliminal effects of The Simpsons on myself and others of my general age group- in particular, that of Homer Simpson as a sort of archetypal everyman. Homer-isms have a way of seeping in, which may in part explain the dumbening of our society broadly- the childlike oafishness of the character stands as an exaggerated exemplar of all of us at our most foolish, emotive, lazy, and, well, American. Controversial at the time, Homer and contemporary TV dad Al Bundy of Married... With Children seemed to the more conservative viewers to be corrupting influences on the media landscape. The depiction of a "dysfunctional family" was jarring to those who preferred their TV dads and their respective families to be squeaky-clean projections of the ideal household, while at the same time more realistic and appealing to other viewers. The outward presentation of the idealized TV family is of course a façade, but is no less intoxicating for the viewer who falls under the spell of scripted familiar characters and live studio audiences. When the ugliness of real life intrudes, such as with the revelations about Bill Cosby's sex crimes, a real crisis ensues. Fans can no longer see Dr. Huxtable the same way ever again- a feeling of betrayal pervades, as though the fictional character and actor were known personally and found to be a wolf in sheep's clothing.

In the current era, media such as sitcoms is consumed in a different way, but the archetypal nature of the characters still finds its expression. Long before I had ever watched a single episode of Parks and Recreation, I was familiar with the character of Ron Swanson (pictured above) based almost entirely on memes and animated GIFs used on social media. Nick Offerman's character on the show, it seemed to me at the time, had a noticeable impact around the culture of food- particularly when it came to bacon. Suddenly it seemed to me that bacon was having a renaissance, and I couldn't help but feel like the fictional character from a wildly popular sitcom had a hand in it. Whether this is true, it's hard to say- but the memeification of these cartoonish representations of people and their foibles, quirks, and catch-phrases does have a noticeable effect on the public consciousness. These effects range from dietary choices, as in the Swanson example, to more profound and impactful social changes brought about by utilizing the bigoted characterization of Archie Bunker in All in the Family. In a subtle way, they become avatars of aspects of humanity, which invariably cycle back into a feedback loop creating the world in which we live.

There is an allure to the world in which the sitcom characters live, which we only glimpse through that missing fourth wall most of the time- but upon reflection, often it doesn't add up. Another product of the internet and social media age which impacts our collective understanding of the sitcom phenomena is the endless minutiae and conjecture from fans with too much time on their hands. Forums are littered with "fan theories" about shows, sometimes connecting one program to another; other times viewers dedicate time to pointing out continuity errors and problems with the set design. Such is the case with Jerry's hallway in the show Seinfeld- according to people who have clearly put a lot of effort into proving it, Jerry's hallway can't exist as it is shown based on how his kitchen is shaped. The door through which Kramer slides into the apartment, unannounced, thus becomes a portal to a non-Euclidean realm of warped dimensions. The city of New York in the Seinfeld-verse is populated by an odd assortment of memorable and wacky characters- Soup Nazis, close-talkers and hard-nosed library detectives. Some of them, like the aforementioned Kramer and Crazy Joe Davola* are based on real people- and of course, Jerry is playing a fictionalized version of himself.  George is an exaggerated version of series co-creator Larry David, who went on to play a fictionalized version of himself in Curb Your Enthusiasm. The feedback loop for the characters, amplified through our collective embrace of their enduring qualities, subtly erases lines between the fictions and the factual basis- not just of the people involved, but their beliefs, their settings, and their attitudes. Like that missing fourth wall which allows the camera and studio audience a glimpse into the sitcom universe, the liminal bleedover from the soundstage to our living rooms reconfigures our perception of reality, however subtly. More than 20 years after the final episode of Seinfeld aired, people still reference George's father's invented holiday Festivus when it comes around- and who is to say whether it will stay a joking observation, or whether it will one day be recognized as a legitimate holiday? At the time of this writing, Curb Your Enthusiasm is ending its run with David releasing a tongue-in-cheek farewell to the version of himself that appeared on the show, saying he's looking forward to "shedding" the malignant persona. "And so, 'Larry David' I bid you farewell. Your misanthropy will not be missed." He says he can now be reached at Doctors Without Borders where he will presumably be doing humanitarian work.

*RIP to Peter Crombie, who played Crazy Joe Davola. He passed away in January of 2024 at the age of 71. For those keeping up with the clown theme on this blog, his passing seems significant.

Jerry's 1990s New York and the mysterious architecture of his apartment building serve to illustrate the weird logic of sitcom universes, which follow rules specific to ratings, fan reactions, and continuity more than any type of "canon". For a "Show about nothing", it certainly had a lot going on. For any sitcom though, and for storytelling more generally, one must employ a willing suspension of disbelief. This becomes easier when the show is funny and well-liked, but even the best shows face this kind of scrutiny in today's world of online communities. When one starts thinking in terms of multiple universes, as physicists suggest might be the case, one wonders if these sitcom worlds could actually exist in an alternate reality. Conversely, if you're of the belief we all live within a holographic, artificial world, how would we know whether we were just characters on a screen with laugh tracks added on, playing out our lives for the amusement of some supercomputer? The Marvel series WandaVision plays with this concept, illustrating how unnerving such a reality might be from an outside perspective. Using her memories of sitcoms she saw as a child, she has a traumatic break from sanity- and uses her powers to construct the idealized sitcom world around her, effectively trapping an entire town within it. 

Thinking of any particular show as its own insular universe is one thing, but others take it further- insinuating that through a network of crossover appearances, many of the sitcoms and dramas on TV all occur in the same universe. What's more, they all stem from an extended daydream from an autistic child in the series St Elsewhere. This "Grand Unification Theory" of TV, known as the Tommy Westphall Universe Hypothesis, was originally advanced by writer Dwayne McDuffie as a way to illustrate the absurdity in insisting on continuity and canon within both TV shows and comic books. The final episode of St Elsewhere, a medical drama based in Boston, reveals the whole series to have been a daydream from a patient with autism. Thus, the reductio ad absurdum argument goes, all connected shows must also have only been a daydream, extending off of the one in the series. The list includes Cheers, The X-Files, Homocide: Life on the Streets, The Bob Newhart Show, and even The Simpsons and The Critic. The hypothesis has taken on a life of its own, despite its original premise rejecting an insistence on continuity between franchises. He writes that cross-overs are fun, but obsessing over making sense of it all is silly.

Silly though it may be, it's fun to think about how these shows could overlap. Richard Belzer's iconic detective character, John Munch, has crossed over to more shows than any other. It's amusing to think of him as some cross-dimensional detective, almost MiB-like in his affect. Munch as a character shared similarities with the actor who played him; Belzer's signature comedic delivery and mildly paranoid worldview were worked into the scripts. Munch was everywhere for a time, it seemed- and the conspiracy laden lines he delivered in character were echoes of the real Belz who would release books on such subjects- a further amplification of resonant feedback looping.

Sometimes, it's not the characters that crossover and imply a shared universe but the props and products used. An example of this is Morley Cigarettes, notably the favored brand of the enigmatic, shadowy villain of The X-Files. Morleys have a history as a fictional brand, created to avoid advertising conflicts in the early 1900s for use as props on film. The Morley-verse thus encompasses The X-Files as well as The Dick van Dyke Show, The Walking Dead, The Twilight Zone, and movies such as Psycho. Detective John Munch would of course have at least visited this universe, as he appeared in character in one episode of The X-Files. One hopes that he fared ok in the zombie apocalypse which was to come...

These fictional worlds, however you want to look at them, offer a perspective of the era in which they are produced just as they inform and influence the culture which consumes them. Going back to the earliest days of really successful sitcom programming for television, there are some surprisingly spooky origins to it all. I Love Lucy stands as one of the greatest shows of all time, and Lucille Ball and her husband Desi Arnaz built a media empire off of it. It began, Ball has said in interviews, with her friend Carole Lombard coming to her in a dream and telling her to get into television rather than movies. Lombard had died in a plane crash in 1942- and regardless of what one believes about the supernatural, it's wild to think that such a huge piece of television history was at least partly inspired by something of a ghost. Ball also traces her family history back to women who were accused during the Salem Witch Trials. It is notable that iconic series such as Star Trek and Mission: Impossible directly owe their existence to Desilu Productions, but in terms of influence and setting of standards in TV programming much more of what we've consumed in the history of sitcoms rests with those early episodes of her show.

Likewise, The Honeymooners was a landmark show which similarly influenced generations of shows that followed. Jackie Gleason, who starred as Ralph Kramden, was very much interested in all manner of weird topics. He was especially interested in UFOs, and allegedly accompanied then-sitting President Richard Nixon to view retrieved alien bodies and craft specimens. He appeared on talk shows to discuss Flying Saucers, and had an immense library of books on the paranormal which are now archived at the University of Miami, in Florida. He even had a custom built house built in New York shaped like a flying saucer.

Of course, aliens are no stranger to the sitcom multiverse. My Favorite Martian, ALF, Third Rock From the Sun, and Mork and Mindy are all examples of sitcoms with lovable alien characters. Mork and Mindy was a spinoff of an alien themed episode of Happy Days, and even shows like The Golden Girls have episodes that at least reference UFO phenomena. The 1960s in particular had other weird subjects featured, in such shows as Bewitched and I Dream of Jeannie, which in their own way introduced and normalized magic to audiences. The Addams Family brought to life the characters from comic strips by Charles Addams, which in turn inspired the repurposing of Universal monsters for the show The Munsters. These shows proved that even the spooky, kooky, and ooky among us can be loved by audiences, and perhaps they hinted at some of the weird origins of the medium. The enduring popularity of these shows in their recent adaptations prove that it's a message that still resonates, and continues to expand.

Regardless of the type of show, the era in which it first aired, or how you consume it, for many of us the sitcom is a form of escapism. Like the theme song to Cheers says, "You want to be where you can see / our troubles are all the same / you wanna go where everybody knows your name". Whether that's a basement bar under a restaurant in Boston or the idyllic town of Mayberry, whether it's in a paper sales office in Scranton or in an apartment in New York, we find comfort in these soundstage environs as much as we do on the couch from which we view them. Wouldn't you like to get away?