PAPER Magazine, the same folks who attempted to break the internet with Kim Kardashian’s leathery husk on its cover, did an interview with former Blink-182 guitarist and co-lead vocalist Tom DeLonge. Technically, he was still in the band at the time of the interview, but it doesn’t matter too much because the band doesn’t come up at all.
What does come up is DeLonge’s fascination with extraterrestrials and how he feels he is in danger because of what he knows. Government phone taps, secret documents, and Wernher von Braun all pop up in an interview with the guy who sang a song about his dad’s gigantic penis. This actually happened and, allegedly, so did the stuff discussed in the interview. It doesn’t waste any time getting started either. From PAPER Magazine:
What’s funny, two decades ago when I got into this, it was such a “the world is flat” scenario, and here’s Tom running around about UFOs and they’d just laugh it off. But now, NASA is holding symposiums on the inevitability of finding life in the universe. The Vatican is talking about, yes, there’s life out there, and how it interferes or doesn’t interfere with the church’s view of existence.
Right.
You have to understand, I’ve been involved in this for a long time. I have sources from the government. I’ve had my phone tapped. I’ve done a lot of weird stuff in this industry — people wouldn’t believe me if I told them. But this is what happens when you start getting on an email chains with hundreds of scientists from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and different universities around the country, and you start outing seniors scientists from Lockheed Martin talking about the reality of this stuff, guys that hold 30 patents, guys that work underground out in the Nevada test sites in Area 51. It goes far beyond just saying, “Hey, that little light in the sky, that’s a little green man.” That doesn’t lend the right gravity to the topic.
This would be the moment when I stepped away from the booth at Denny’s and walked outside for a “what the f*ck” cigarette break. I wouldn’t leave because that would be foolish, and I’d miss the rest of the tale, but I would need a moment to collect everything I just heard.
It’s at this point that the government intrigue kicks in for the interview, and we’re treated to Three Days of the Condor, starring Tom DeLonge:
Years ago, there was somebody who was gathering 150 hours of top secret testimony specifically for Congressional hearings on government projects and the US secret space program. People from NASA, Rome, the Vatican, you name it, they’re all on there. The top 36 hours that summarized the best parts of all of that footage, I had it hidden in my house for a period of time, and during that time I was flying this person out along with somebody that was Wernher von Braun’s right-hand assistant. Wernher von Braun was a Nazi scientist that we brought over to build our Apollo rockets that got us to the moon, and on his deathbed he told this person a bunch of stuff, and I was flying them out to Los Angeles and we were taking certain meetings. At that time a lot of weird stuff started happening…
At the time I didn’t know it, but the person I was dealing with was being awoken in the middle of the night with clicking and buzzing noises and falling on the ground vomiting, every morning at 4 a.m. I know now that those are artifacts from mind-control experiments, where the same technology that we use to find oil underground, we can zap somebody at the same frequency that the brain operates on, and it can cause some really horrific things to happen.(via)
It’s around this point that DeLonge admits that he reached a moment where he said, “Half of it’s real, half of it’s not.” That’s not too crazy because a good serving of skepticism is healthy. You shouldn’t just buy what you’re told and you should seek multiple opinions to stay informed, if anything.
Then again, we’re talking aliens. We’re talking brain melting technology, and we’re talking crazy. The good thing is that DeLonge has a solid response to naysayers out there:
People will be like “Oh, you believe in UFOs” [laughs], but I’m reading books on physics, I’m reading books on the secret space program, I’m talking to people that work underground for six months at a time, that are confiding in me about the national security initiatives. I’ve literally read 200 books on the subject, and I don’t spend my time looking at UFO reports or talking to little green men. I’m way past that. If anybody tells you there’s no life in universe, you should be turned off. That’s just such a dumb thing to say. It’s totally, universally accepted amongst the country’s elite scientific establishments that there’s life everywhere. The question is what kind, where, how’d they get here, what are they doing when they get here, and how do we communicate with them? That’s when you start reading books about the mind and consciousness, and telepathy and ESP. It’s a whole different program. (via)
“I’ve literally read 200 books on the subject” is probably the easiest way to ruin any party you’re attending. Either you’re going to start talking about the things in this interview, or you’re going to bore everybody to death. Neither scenario is pleasant.
Part of me wants to say that this is a prank. I’m going to wake up in the morning and see that this is a massive joke that’s been played on the media. Even if it is fake, it’s damn entertaining. Read the entire thing and forget all about that silly Blink-182 breakup news. This is clearly more important.
(Via PAPER / Consequences of Sound / Stereogum)
