My Heroine’s 15 Minutes of Infamy

Does all the bad press get you down? Still better than being ignored. Do you draw scorn every walk to town? Still better than being ignored.

Selena at singing gig (Illustration by Shane Colclough)

Here’s another short piece from Aliens Crashed in My Back Yard featuring the singer Selena M. After the crashed alien spaceship was discovered and the government hauled it away, the tabloids pestered Selena, assuming she was in cahoots with a bunch of aliens. She speaks:

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Paparazzi came onto my property to interview me in my pre-coffee hour, the morning after a singing gig, when I wasn’t looking or feeling my best. The guy stuck the TV camera obtrusively in my face, so I stumbled against him and “accidentally” yanked the cable out of the jack, making sure I bent it. A woman poked at my garden with a spade that was leaning against the fence, fiddling with my artichokes. Whoa, too close to my alien friend buried beneath the roots! “Leave my garden alone,” I yelled. I grabbed the shovel from her. I’m truly sorry it swung around and smacked her in the shin. Maybe that accounts for the lousy cover photo.

I kinda brought it on myself, because to keep my sanity, I did some, shall we say, tongue-in-cheek interviews. Here’s the one you probably saw on TV. I was in the studio in San Francisco, being interviewed by several reporters who were at least as profound as the alien love baby crowd. They asked silly questions, so I answered them in kind.

Reporter 1: “Selena. That means ‘of the Moon.’ Do you claim to be a Moon maiden?”

“Not really. My parents are from France, though. They knew the Coneheads.”

Reporter 2: “What did our cosmic visitors do for recreation while they were here?”

Me: “They went to casinos to gamble. They won big! Strangely, nobody recognized them. I taught them to play poker. But they loved playing Twister. They were unbeatable, because of their long limbs and tentacles.

We should never have played Strip Twister though.”

Reporter 3: “I’ve been wondering — we’ve all been wondering — why did the aliens even want to visit Earth?”

Me: “They’ve left now, for good. They had hoped to save us, but found that we are beyond redemption.

“They wanted to learn from us, but then wondered what we could teach them. They wanted to teach us, but no one would listen. We only listen to the wrong things.

“They wanted to have a quiet sit-down with our leaders, to see if our world is ready to join the galactic community. But our leaders fought amongst themselves for the right to sit next to the aliens.

“Then they thought maybe they’d just conquer us, but things here are so chaotic, they saw we couldn’t be conquered. So they gave up and went back home. It’s probably for the best, don’t you agree?”

This last bit is the clip that has been played and replayed and forwarded so many times! I regret it, for the ruckus it caused, but I can’t help but chuckle.

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As you can see, Selena doesn’t take life too seriously. She’s a popular singer, but she had also been drawn into these space adventures by a strange, non-human alien who crash-landed on her hillside.

Want more of Selena’s adventures, both singing and spacefaring? Follow me for more sci fi stories on Medium.

Check out her series here.