Best Evidence?

Best Evidence?

by Alfred Lehmberg

Even as the producer/director (inexplicably!) eventually did, do I revision entirely, repudiate ironically, or mea-culpa humbly?  I suspect not, reader.  That's against Ufological guild bylaws and conflicts with the poet/warrior charter.  Issues, of course, remain.

Moreover, pushing 70 I've learned there is often another shoe to drop, eh?  Yes, my perhaps too tediously prosecuted and melodramatic multi-media perturbation with the irrepressible Paul Kimball was long, detailed, and easily (if tediously) Googled.  True, we've battled magnificently in the literary sense, if I may, following the tradition of Lord Byron and Bob Southey in "Don Juan" (I'll leave it to the reader who was who), classic stuff, spun up for the 21st Century, seriously! Poetic commentary!  Critical prose! Woooot! I digress.

A review of my disquiet is outlined in "Why I Fight," located at my Weblog. It leaves Mr. Kimball handily free of any personal responsibility for my perhaps... exuberant (?) criticism in his regard over the years.  That's right. 

...Unless there's sufficient "broccoli water," perhaps, but you'll have to read "Why I Fight" a propos of that.  It's all about angle and approach, eh?

The short version?  As always, the proceeding may be taken as a sincere reportage and not a convenient course change currying favor of stars in obvious ascendancy... Nor is it evidence of vacillating conviction on my part, reader.  No apologies required or necessary, eh?  When it's fair you can't call it foul and vice versa.  That, too, is in the by-laws.

All that said?  This writer rather ironically asserts that the aforementioned Paul Kimball had raised the bar, decidedly, on what constitutes a competent film documentary about UFOs. He had produced a work at once wonderfully convincing and thoroughly authoritative... indeed as interesting as it is compelling in every conceivable way.  I bow, again.

Searching hard, reader, bitten and therefore shy?  I find I can be contrary only about the run-time of the piece.  It was too short by a factor of three.

"Best Evidence" in one word?  Simply: More.  There is much more, after all.

"Best Evidence"!  An always unlikely perfect storm of informed intelligence, controlled talent, and vetted support from key individuals, Kimball is able to ask society at large... reasoned, reasoning, and reasonable questions.  These are questions about UFOs, folks, which cannot go unanswered, ultimately! 

Let me purposefully digress a moment and address this concept of "questions," to better qualify Kimball's contribution to the genre.  Consider then a generic root "question."   The simple unassigned "interrogative." 

See?  The interrogative shapes perception and defines reality... where the answer only restricts itself to the question provoking it; am I right?  If one wants the most useful and productive answer available?  One must first ask the correct question, eh?

Moreover, this will be true, I suspect, even when the answers are not forthcoming—as they often are not vis a vis UFOs... remember.  No, it is the question which has always been enough, friends, to buoy an invested intellectuality until that answer is forthcoming.  "Reach must exceed grasp or what's a heaven for," nes't ce pas? 

This is a benefit of doing what it is we do, reader, you and I: indulging our curiosity for the "out of the box" stuff.  Shadows are regularly revealed and novelty begins to increase for us; am I wrong?  The borders are pushed back, our intellectual horizons get wider still, and we discover that there is all manner of potentiality in those heretofore unrealized shadows.  Wishes are horses and beggars can ride, to a degree, I suspect.

"To sleep perchance to dream," eh?  Then, from those aggregate dreams can't we cooperate to improve an individual's actuality?  This is a subtext of Kimball's film I think.  The correct questions, even if asked between the lines, provoking the best answers for individual advancement and elevation?  Yes.

Besides... It's the rare flower should get a little more water, eh?  Good is often interred with bones, no? Evil, conversely, lives on and on, right?  Kimball's documentary seems that rare and an atypical "good," living on for a change?  We begin:

I think the thing I liked most about Kimball's film was the unyielding width of its beam of stark inclusiveness!  It is an inclusiveness not dismissible as merely playing to the "lowest common denominator.  It remains, Everybody can get the point of Kimball's film. 

Indeed, disparate persons could "get" the film wherever they've approached it on the Bell curve, and in as much as the smartest person on the planet is numbingly stupid about some things, proper respect and appreciation gets shown to what has ever been inappropriately maligned, too readily disrespected, and heartlessly betrayed as the dimmer left half... of what proves to be an overworked and inappropriately applied, if famous, "Bell" curve.  

Shortly, Kimball talks down to no one, and is straight with everyone!  Everyone gets respect!

Truthfully, I was all set for a tedious viewing ordeal, upon which I would strafe and pan a review of equal if vitriolic tediousness.  It was not to be! 

In fact, I was immediately delighted, hugely interested, and completely absorbed with the program from its onset.  With a little shame, I'd started the doc prepared to sneer.  Thankfully, I was spared that! 

...And strap yourself down, reader!  The boost's not over at perigee!  Acceleration is ongoing!  Infinity and beyond!  Concrescence looms and beckons!

Like a ten stage rocket for a micro-mini mind-missile, the reality of a ufological profundity is fired so high and hard into the ufological fence-sitter's forebrain, said fence-sitter can't really look at UFOs the same way ever again!  Seriously, for every iterated case or stage of this rocket... given the quality of the persons concerned?  ...The numbers of quality persons concerned?  ...The multi-faceted evidence concerned?  ...The quality of science concerned? 

Well... let's just say that the aforementioned fence-sitter has every right, authorization, and duty to float down from that undecided *fence* and be amongst his or her fellow anti-klasskurtxians or sharp-beaked pelican-hawks... yea and verily...feast on the well invalidated skeptibunky flesh vanquished hereby!  LOL!

But seriously, trees of ufological liberty finally nourished by the blood of harsh klasskurtxian tyrants, no?  That's another subtext of Kimball's film and small hyperbole reader.

...At case #10, even conversant I was, "wow"!  By #5, I was, "Great suffering Zot"!  At #2?  Well, my exuberance knew no bounds, reader!  At #1 I stood and cheered!  You see, Kimball has paid that awful debt incurred by a scurrilous lapdog mainstream in the abortive second half of the infamous "Peter Jennings UFO Special." 

Yes!  Jennings' ABC is put paid by Kimball's Redstar Productions!  No one is more gob-smacked than myself!

Indeed! Kimball's "Best Evidence" is filled with all manner of meaningful and constructive surprises.  One such?  The employment of one Kris McBride, a serious young female actor, as the narrator.

There was some small discussion whether or not McBride was the correct choice to provide the aforementioned anchor.  Based on what I heard consistently throughout?  She was, actually—in spades.

Her unruffled and understated approach to the material, coupled with the calm confidence of her informed delivery, contrasted productively with the youthfulness of her voice in a wide-sweep synergistic sense generational in demographic. She hit all the buttons.  Consequently, her performance compelled and communicated at many levels where a masculine delivery would fall short, I assert. 

Moreover, she shows a rare courage (always guaranteed to blow my dress up) associating herself with even a serious ufology—lest she be painted as a "woo-kookian (tm) or tin-foiler"! This girl is more than the sum of her parts, assuredly!

Another surprise: brief mention must be made of the late Mac Tonnies' contribution; his intelligence, sobriety, imagination, and intellectual bravery are at once capstone and keynote of Kimball's impressive work.  Perfect punctuation.

Finally, the full blown DVD of Kimball's best evidence is predicted to add all the material not entertained by network television, so the work could better approach the run-time wished for at the beginning of this essay.  I submit that it will be a wealth of valid information about not being alone in a backwater galaxy, and whatever the implications of that are, you can bet that it is a great pay-off to a concrescence graphed asymptotically lately and yawning like the greater future...  Buckle up!  The future is inexorable, but I suspect, still, that that is good news.

I wonder... could "Best Evidence" be that "other shoe" dropped regarded earlier?  Time will tell, reader, but I'll keep my saber loose in its scabbard.   There are seasons for poet-warriors to stand firm; however, this is not one of them.  No, Kimball's "Best Evidence" is a sea change, if we let it.  I can only wish it its god's speed.  Keep an eye peeled for it, yourself.

Here it is!  https://vimeo.com/19717064

Read on.

ÆL