Dan Harary (Part 3): The UFOs, the aliens… and then… After They Came…

In my last two blogs, American publicist Dan Harary talked about his life, his PR company, his flirting with the famous and about sex, his rock drummer background and three of his four new books. That was in the last two encounters I had with him. This is, as it were, a close encounter of the third kind…

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JOHN: So, your fourth new book… After They Came – out next Spring – aliens… Surely a movie?

DAN: Absolutely! It’s the best thing I’ve ever written.

JOHN: Aliens?

DAN: In 2017, my dad passed away. He was my hero. He worked for the US Government for about 50 years. He invented missiles and radars and drones and satellite stuff. He always said he helped the US win the Cold War.

I’ve been studying UFO research for about 25 years. I absolutely believe there are others out there and they know all about us and the major governments in the world know all about them.

After my dad passed, I asked my mother: “Do you think dad knew about aliens and UFOs?”

My mother told me: “When he first got the job at Fort Monmouth in New Jersey, in the very earliest days, they took him into the vaults and they showed him something and he came home and he was white.”

My mother asked him: “What’s wrong?” and he goes: “I saw something remarkable. I can’t tell you what it is.”

But my mother said he was scared. He was frightened and he never spoke about it to anyone ever.

There’s no way to know what he saw. But I’m pretty sure my dad knew.

Everything he did flew. My dad invented things for the US Government that flew; they all spied on Russia, North Korea, North Vietnam I know, Cuba… That’s what he did for 50 years.

So my dad passed. I went to a diner by myself to mourn my dad and thought: Right, I love UFOs, my dad passed away. What if my dad knew about UFOs?

So I’m at the diner waiting for my sandwich and on the paper napkin on the table I started writing ideas down… and I came up with ATC.

I’m thinking like: ATC?… After They Came?… ATC. After They Came. Yeah! I like that! That was the birth of it.

The storyline is a man turns 60 years old. He hates his life. He hates his job. His children don’t speak to him anymore. He’s depressed. He commits suicide on his 60th birthday.

He swims out to sea and drowns because he doesn’t wanna live anymore.

As he’s drowning, an enormous UFO comes out of the ocean and then, right above him, beams him up into the ship and revives him. There’s two benevolent aliens on board who we learn, through reading the book, have history with this guy’s dead father.

They save the guy’s life and they present him to the world at the Dodgers’ Stadium in Los Angeles.

The Dodgers’ Stadium – shaping up for a UFO encounter

The UFO goes to the Dodgers’ Stadium; they beam themselves down. All the media, the cops, sirens, the ambulances are there. It’s a tribute – a cousin – to The Day The Earth Stood Still.

They basically say: People of Earth, we’re here to help you. We wanna help solve your problems. We’re benevolent. We saved this man. If you have ideas on how we can help mankind, he’s the conduit to us. We have a relationship with this guy.

So they leave; he remains behind.

Now, he just tried to kill himself…

He’s taken to the President of the United States who, in my book, is based on Oprah Winfrey. You remember a few years ago, they said Oprah was going to run for President? In my book, she’s Tameka Winfield, an African American.

She says: “Who are you? How do you know aliens? How did this happen?”

He says: “I have no idea. I haven’t the slightest idea. I don’t know.”

But she sets him up with an office at the UN.

The aliens come once every month to meet with him and they say: “How can we help mankind?”

Every month.

And he’s like: Climate change… Guns… Mental illness… Disease… Water shortages… Famine… Over-population.

Every month he presents a problem and the aliens, with their technology, help to solve them.

That’s the basic premise. I don’t want to give away what happens.

JOHN: That’s a film.

DAN: It’s Close Encounters meets It’s a Wonderful Life meets The Day The Earth Stood Still and the book is coming out next March…

Dan Harary – After They Came

ECCENTRIVIA: levitating ships, 3,951 dangerous pets and Meghan Markle…

Hertfordshire has been called a “dull” county…

I live in Hertfordshire, an ostensively fairly quiet county on the edge of Greater London. But it turns out there are 104 dangerous and/or ‘exotic’ pets kept here. And those are only the ones people admit to.

According to animal welfare charity Born Free, 3,951 dangerous wild animals are licensed to be kept privately in Great Britain. They say a total of 210 private addresses across 129 local authorities hold licences to keep dangerous wild animals such as lions, tigers, crocodiles and cheetahs.

In Hertfordshire, the Dacorum Council area – that’s basically Hemel Hempstead, Berkhamsted, Tring and the western part of Kings Langley – has:

15 venomous snakes 

1 bearded lizard

4 ‘death stalker’ scorpions

1 fat-tailed scorpion

3 gila monsters

2 spectacled caimans

A serval in the Serengeti National Park, Tanzania

6 servals (whatever they are)

12 serval F1 hybrids (presumably faster than normal servals)

and

1 recluse spider – though I suspect people don’t see much of that one

In my own council area there is, I am relieved to report, only one exotic pet – a Savannah cat.

The East Hertfordshire District Council area goes in for quality, not quantity, with:

3 cheetahs

2 pumas

4 wolves

and 2 Mississippi alligators

But never venture into the North Hertfordshire District, whose 46 exotic animals kept as pets include:

2 bobcats

2 camels

1 jaguar

1 clouded leopard

1 snow leopard

4 lynx

and 10 – yes, count ‘em, 10 – pumas

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A ship floating… (Photograph by David Morris/APEX)

The most unlikely things are true.

A few days ago, the BBC reported that one David Morris took a photograph of what appears to be an oil tanker floating in the air near Falmouth in Cornwall.

This, apparently, was the result of a rare optical illusion caused by special atmospheric conditions that bend light.

BBC meteorologist David Braine explained: “Superior mirages occur because of the weather condition known as a temperature inversion, where cold air lies close to the sea with warmer air above it. Since cold air is denser than warm air, it bends light towards the eyes of someone standing on the ground or on the coast, changing how a distant object appears. 

“Superior mirages can produce a few different types of images – here a distant ship appears to float high above its actual position, but sometimes an object below the horizon can become visible.”

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It’s all about perception.

Yesterday evening, for 1 hour and 50 minutes, ITV screened the much-hyped Oprah Winfrey interview in California with Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. It made me a tiny bit more sympathetic to La Meg, but she still seems strangely naive verging on being a self-obsessed airhead.

Daily Telegraph on Meghan Markle…

One thing it did was highlight the Atlantic divide. The Daily Telegraph‘s front page this morning reports US President Biden saying the Duchess (Meghan) had shown courage. Their other front page story is an opinion piece headlined: They may claim to respect her, but this is a devastating insult to the Queen.

It starts: “Towards the end of her more-shocking-than-you-can-possibly-imagine, even-in-your-worst-Royal-Family-trashing-nightmare, interview with Oprah Winfrey, Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, mused, “Life is about storytelling, right? About the stories we tell ourselves, about the stories we buy into”… The story the Sussexes have told themselves about their own behaviour… is perfectly clear. The only truthful lens is their own.”

This morning, a female friend of mine’s opinion was:

“She’s a decent actress and she showed she hasn’t lost the knack.  Quivering lip etc. Knows how to let the camera catch a slight tremble. I’ve watched all of (her TV series) Suits. Loved her in it. This performance was up there. And I take my hat off to any pregnant woman who can wear those heels. Harry sounds like he’s had LOADS of expensive West Coast therapy.”

This morning, I also received a text from a gay acquaintance of mine who said succinctly and rhetorically:

“Is she a drama queen?”

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OK – You find an image showing vertigo (Photo:Mwangi Gatheca/UnSplash)

Meanwhile, at the risk of seeming slightly drama queeny myself, my supposed vertigo hovers like an oil tanker in the sky.

I have been ever-so slightly unsteady on my feet (which means wobbly inside my head) since January when I had to spend three days in bed/holding on to walls to avoid falling over if I got up.

It recurred for a couple of less-bad days in February.

Three nights ago, I went out about 7.30pm to get some chocolate (I am on a diet, but hey-ho…) and, for the first time in a while, I felt 100% fine. 

Then two nights ago – bear in mind that, since May last year, I wake up at least once every hour during the night with a severely dehydrated mouth and drink lots of water – I got up on one occasion to go to the toilet and had to hold on to the walls and sundry objects to avoid falling over.

During the next day I was fine.

But, last night, again only once, I was again wobbly when I got up and had to touch walls etc.

And today I am OK again.

The Chinese curse: may you live in uncertain times.