By Bob Gaydos

Hades … too much to pray for?

     Had breakfast with a friend the other day, trying out a new coffee shop in town. Nice addition.

      The conversation touched on the usual stuff. Too much rain. What’s planted in the garden, the hummingbird count, the challenges in living in a house with another person. Living on a planet with certain other people.

      That last proved provocative. With regard to those certain other people, my friend offered that, if he were a praying man, he would pray for The Rapture.

      I got his intent, but I suggested that I thought he had it backwards. Having read “Left Behind,“ I knew it was the good, caring, kind, faithful humans who were transported off the planet to Heaven, I believe, leaving their clothing and loved ones behind.

      The others, the nasty ones, the ones my friend wanted to be rid of, stayed and, through a series of books, fended for and against themselves and other non-believers. So I suggested that, assuming we wanted to remain in whatever state this is for a while longer, what we needed was a Reverse Rapture.

   We needed someplace we could pray for all those You Know Whats to be sent to, without any get-out-of-jail card in the form of an Orpheus, if I may be allowed to mix my miracles.

     Hades. Yes, Hades. The Underworld would do.

     So, who would we want to go? Personally, I’d start with Trump and his immediate family. The whole crew. Every member of his Cabinet and White House staff. Every lawyer who ever worked for him, except for Michael Cohen. Elon Musk. J.D.Vance. Every current Republican member of Congress, except for Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski. The authors of Project 2025. Anyone who wears a Maga T-shirt or hat. Anyone who identifies as a journalist but works and lies for Fox News. Putin. Kim. Hamas and all the other terrorists. The pushers of fentanyl. Laura Loomer. (Speaking of Loomer and Kristi Noem and the Barbi press contact and the attorney general and all the other Trumpettes, Hades will come with no cosmetic amenities, including plastic surgeons. Zero. Just saying.)

    Also, all those mask-wearing ICE employees who’ve been enjoying grabbing people off the street, out of their homes, wherever, with no warrants or concern for the people or the law. And Clarence Thomas, to fulfill Hades’ DEI requirements.

     And, really, anyone who voted for Trump three times. What were they thinking? They get a special wing in Hades where The Apprentice plays on big screens constantly. In Spanish. And they have to use their bitcoin to buy English subtitles, but they already gave it all to Trump, who gave it all to the Saudi royal family (they’re there, too), who promised to build a Hades Trump Tower using white South African immigrants for labor. It could take a while, but who really cares?

     Now, all that cosmic deportation would obviously leave behind a whole lot of room, especially in this big, beautiful country, and a lot of available work for good, caring, reliable, nice, talented, decent, tolerant human beings, maybe from Venezuela or Mexico or Greenland or Panama or El Salvador.

      Too much to ask for, you say? Especially over breakfast? Hell, if you’re going to pray for anything, especially a Reverse Rapture, I say why not go all in?

       Besides, checks and balances seems to be broken.

                                     ***

Additions to the prayer chain are welcome.

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.