Ode to Neil deGrasse Tyson

Riffing on science's funniest man

Ever wonder what it’s like to die on stage?

Amateur night at The Pull My Finger Komedy Klubb

Awfully quiet crowd tonight. Are they diluting the IPA in here too? Nights like these, I’m fine with the soft bigotry of low expectations. I’ve got a Whoopee Cushion in my fanny pocket. Don’t make me use it.

So, the other day I was listening to Neil deGrasse Tyson, that know-it-all celebrity astronomer? Guffaws a little too hard over his own jabs at UFOs? That guy, right? It was the podcast where Tyson was interviewing Jon Kosloski. Anyone know that name, Kosloski? Show of hands? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? (Muffled cough from the audience.) Concrete bounce house. OK, I’ll spell it out.

Kosloski’s in charge of the Pentagon’s UFO research office, and his job is to explain away as many UFO cases as possible. He’s certified whitebread, and his interview with Tyson was dullsville until they started talking about triangular UFOs. When Koz mentioned how a police officer on patrol freaked and threw his car in reverse at 100 mph upon being startled by a black triangle spraying red and green “flares” across the sky, Tyson busted a gut. He brayed, he wheezed, he literally whoop-whoop-whooped. [Ed. note: You can actually hear the whooping by cueing the segment at the 30:35 mark] It was like he’d just seen Moe gouging out Curly’s eyes and ripping Larry’s hair out by the roots.

I’ve been impressed by Tyson’s intuitive disdain for human curiosity for so long now that I’ve almost taken it for granted. He has this knack for articulating what everybody’s thinking, like, If alien abductions are real, why can’t abductees just steal an ashtray when nobody’s looking? Right? But it wasn’t until his CNN performance in December 2017 that he became, in my eyes, the Jim Carrey of the status quo. Anybody here remember that? (A bottlecap clatters on a table.) OK, that’s when news of a $22 million federal UFO program called AATIP broke and absolutely blew brain sprockets out his ears.

Mister Snooty lets ‘em have it!

How Neil responded was so fabulously pissy and petulant, I’ve actually committed his witticisms to memory. Clearing my throat here:

“The evidence is so paltry for aliens to visit Earth. I have no further interest. Let other people who care, go ahead! And when you finally find some aliens, bring them to Times Square!” He’s right! But then he swiveled immediately for even bigger laughs. “No, no—!” he told CNN. “There are too many weird people! And try not to come back during Comic-Con where the aliens would just blend in. Go to the county fair or something where there’s a uniformity of who’s there.”

He ended his schtick with this seam-splitting flourish. “Call me,” he said, “when you have a dinner invite from an alien.”

A dinner invite from an alien — ha! Like that’s ever gonna happen! Wow! I love the attitude, I love the comic timing, the originality, the way the Ivy League pedigree informs his condescension, everything. Adlibbing at this level is a gift, man. If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then color me guilty. Here’s my meager tribute to The Bawd of Science:

So there’s this massive chunk of space debris more than six miles wide hurtling across our solar system at something like 130,000 miles an hour. They’re calling it 3I/Atlas and it’s allegedly interstellar. NASA, the European Space Agency and everyone else seem to think it’s a comet. But not Harvard’s Avi Loeb. Avi thinks it might be an alien spacecraft, maybe even hostile, and that when it comes closest to Earth in December, we could all be in danger, even from 130 million miles away. Hey Darth Vader – we’ll take an ashtray but keep those death rays holstered, yo! But no seriously – I don’t think I can survive another run on toilet paper. I’m stocking up now! (Silence) OK. Well then, take my wife – please. (Someone claps.) Grandma? Is that you? I thought you were dead! (Someone flings a gnawed chicken wing and misses.)

The white stripe

OK, OK, there’s a new virus going around, but don’t worry, if you haven’t seen a UFO you’re probably immune. They’re calling it the SCIF Flu. Well, that’s what Anna Paulina Luna’s calling it anyway. She’s the lawmaker from Florida who has somehow managed to find enough time in her busy schedule to invite so-called UFO whistleblowers to talk about recovering ET ash trays from ET crash sites. No I am not making this up! The hearing’s supposed to happen on September 9. One problem. Whenever Luna – I love that name, by the way, Luna – whenever LOOOna schedules these bean-spillers to spill their beans behind closed door, guess what? They all get sick and back out. True story! They’re no-shows. Maybe they all decided to go home and start breeding prize-winning heifers and hens at the county fair, beats me! (Silence.)

Um, people? That’s what’s known in astrophysics as a punch line. Hello?

Something a little more traditional, then? What’s the Mexican weather report? Chilly today and what? Someone? Anyone? Bueller? (A chair scrapes the floor, the sound of outside traffic as an exit door opens and closes.) Tamale. Hot tamale. Is my microphone working?

In other news: The Director of National Intelligence, I forget her name. White stripe in her hair like Nadine Cross from The Stand. Tulsi! Tulsi Gabbard. I’m listening to her on a podcast the other day where she says she quote “still has a lot of questions” unquote about the New Jersey drones from last year. Wait, what? Really? Maybe they’re probes from Venus instead? Look, in my day, we used to smoke cigarettes and light firecrackers on dogs’ tails. Kids today, they go to Walmart, they buy these cheap drones and they spy on their neighbors. They fly under radar coverage so they can’t be tracked and now suddenly everybody thinks it’s little green men? Oy! Don’t bogart that joint, my friend! (A restroom door opens to the snarl of interior puking.)

J.D.’s all over it!

No, but seriously, what’s gotten into the water supply in Washington? The other day – did you hear about this? J.D. Vance, the Vice President? Now he says he’s obsessed with UFOs! 2028’s still three and a half years off and he’s already lobbying for votes in West Virginia and Mississippi? His words – his words, I kid you not, verbatim:

“I'm obsessed with the whole UFO thing. What’s actually going on? What were those videos all about? What’s actually happening? I haven’t gotten to the bottom of it yet, but we’re only six months in, we’ve been very busy. The August recess is, in part, me going to try and dive to the bottom of the whole UFO thing from last year.”

Oh! So when Congress reconvenes in September, J.D. will update us on what he’s found out? Let’s check in with the crystal ball: They’re eating the cats, they’re eating the dogs, they’re eating the pets of the people that live there! Ay yi yi. This is an administration that fires the Bureau of Labor Statistics director when it doesn’t like the jobs numbers. So what are they gonna do when J.D. files his UFO report and it confirms what real scientists already know? That there’s no there there? Tread lightly, J.D. Washington is screwing science so thoroughly it’s gonna need the UFO distraction, now more than ever. So yeah, for my money, these little green men ain’t goin’ away anytime soon! (Silence.) Go get ‘em, Luna!

And as long as we’re talking probabilities . . . Remember how, back in April when the market was tanking after Trump’s tariffs were about to shoot the price of imported goods through the roof? And how he told investors to buy now, at fire-sale prices, just hours before announcing a 90-day delay in enforcing those tariffs? (A rattle of car keys, someone muttering something about not leaving a tip.) No wait, you’ll want to hear this:

How to find the Skinwalker wormhole

There’s a new place where techbro gamblers can go to wager on the outcomes of future events. It’s called Polymarket and it only takes cryptocurrency. A few months ago, they were posting odds on the government — whatever that is — “confirming aliens” — whatever that means, space aliens, obviously — by the end of 2025 at maybe five and a half percent. But get this. In July, Polymarket reported that a flurry of trading has goosed those odds up to seven percent. I’m not making this up! So you gotta ask yourself: Who benefits by keeping these dead-end hearings going? I’m not pointing fingers but it’s not about the little green men, OK?

Speaking of which: How about that “Skinwalker Ranch” series? Anybody watching that? (Voice from the rear: “Travis Taylor rocks!”) Oh, you think so? Well, I’ll give him points for imagination, the way he and his team keep shooting rockets and flamethrowers in the air to try to find that wormhole. Boy, would I love to have that budget – I’d be able to find a cure for cancer! But no, seriously, can I make a suggestion?

As I understand it, the whole point of Brandon Fugal’s Skinwalker research is to try to get a visual profile of this strange “blob” or force field that’s allegedly parked over the ranch, right? It’s supposedly, what, an invisible spaceship that keeps sucking all the juice from their battery-operated surveillance gear? Unfortunately, the best they’ve been able to come up with so far is CGI that looks like the Spaceship Earth sphere at Epcot. I’ve got a better idea — stay with me! (The scraping of more chair legs.)

Remember the old Sherwin-Williams logo? An upside-down bucket of red paint dripping down the sides of the globe and the motto “Cover the Earth”? Problem solved! You rent a DC-10 or some other firefighting tanker, OK, you fly over Skinwalker Ranch and you dump Niagara Falls-sized cascades of paint over the area, and presto, there it is – a big red ball hovering in mid-air. If something’s there, it won’t be invisible after that! No, wait a minute. Reboot. If that happened, the mystery’s solved and you wouldn’t have a show anymore. Drat!

By the way, did you hear the one about — (The house lights flash on; employees are stacking chairs on tables; a waitress attempts to revive a patron asleep on the otherwise deserted floor.) Thank you, you’re a wonderful audience. Next week I’m gonna do a salute to Albert Einstein. Remember that guy? Anyone? Anyone?