By Bob Gaydos

Alice Cooper, Joe Perry and Johnny Depp, the Hollywood Vampires

  I don’t really remember how the conversation found its way to Johnny Depp. One minute we were talking about The Rapture and the book, “Left Behind,” the next I was saying, “Johnny Depp, isn’t coming to Bethel,” as more of a question than a statement.

     “Yes, he is,” Ernie replied, “with the Hollywood Vampires on June 1.”

      “Well then,” I said, “he can hang out for the weekend and ride on a float in the Pine Bush UFO Fair and parade on June 3.

      Let me back up a little here. This column is clearly an intersection of synchronicity and what an editor once told me a long time ago: Every story is local.

       As near as I can recall, we were talking, as we often do, about the sorry state of politics in this country and one of us (probably me) mentioned the need for a charismatic leader to appear and lead us out of this mess. Hence, “Left Behind” and the Rapture, which provides such a “savior” for humanity.

     Ernie correctly pointed out the “savior” was actually the Antichrist, but I’m thinking this is where I came up with Depp to play the role.

      Why Depp? Well, he was obviously in my vortex. There was all the publicity of the Amber Heard defamation trial in Virginia (Depp won) and his recent coolly received film at the Cannes Film Festival and, out of nowhere but on YouTube, a woman romance-scammed out of tens of thousands of dollars by a guy pretending to be, yep, Depp.

      So Ernie says Depp’s in the Hollywood Vampires group coming to Bethel Woods on June 1. I’d never heard of them, but since this group also includes Alice Cooper and Joe Perry, I realized it’s a pretty big deal, even for a place (the original Woodstock site) that specializes in big deals. It’s a big local story, if anyone were still doing big local stories.

     And making it an even better story, I mused, would be Depp hanging around and doing his savior of the Planet Earth schtick two days later in Pine Bush, the UFO capital of the Northeast, as a  charismatic alien, a role he could surely own if he had any more use for Hollywood, which he has said he doesn’t.

     He could join a group of UFO experts giving talks, lots of locals dressed in weird alien getup, other musicians probably willing to share the mike with him and lots of happy people walking around, snapping photos and making videos. Fans.

      So, there it is. A lot of synchronicity, a bit of imagination and two local venues combining for a great local story. If anyone were still doing big local stories.

    But the thing is, synchronicity and imagination notwithstanding, Johnny Depp and the Hollywood Vampires really are going to be in Bethel June 1 and Pine Bush really is having a UFO Fair June 3 and both are likely to be pretty entertaining affairs. A good way to ignore, for at least a short while, where we came in — the sorry state of politics in this country. And that’s the story.

      You’re welcome.

(Information on both events can be found online at Bethel Woods and Pine Bush UFO Fair. Bethel and Pine Bush are in the Hudson Valley/Catskills area of New York state, a little more than an hour drive from New York City.)

rjgaydos@gmail.com

Bob Gaydos is writer-in-residence at zestoforange.com.