ALIEN THE PLAY: In North Bergen High everyone can hear you scream

Last month marked the fortieth anniversary of one of my most favorite films: Ridley Scott's Alien.  It's one of the most perfect science-fiction and/or horror movies in the history of anything.  It's one that often there is some detail that I missed during all the dozens of previous viewings.  Like, it was a mistake for Dallas to let the Nostromo lift off from LV-426 without its systems fully working on the lower decks: they could have detected the creature that much faster and without any further loss of life!  Patience is a virtue, kiddies.

A few months ago in March, Alien may have been given its greatest tribute ever.  A group of students and their instructors at North Bergen High School in New Jersey premiered their production of Alien The Play.

And these young men and women... yowza!!  They pulled off the impossible.  And with a dire minimum of materials to make the costumes and sets out of apparently.  They made an on-stage theatrical adaptation of Alien.  Including the Space Jockey, the chestburster, and the xenomorph itself.

Photos of the performances went viral across Twitter and Instagram and that Facebook thingy.  Tongues were wagging.  Very quickly word of it reached Ridley Scott himself, who forwarded along a few thousand bucks for the kids to run an encore performance.  That happened a few weeks ago... and who showed up but "Ellen Ripley" herself, Sigourney Weaver.

As I've come to understand it, there's a video in the works using footage spliced from four cameras that captured the magic.  But if you wish, you can watch Alien The Play right now.  Click on the link below and behold the spectacle of this very faithful (and at times creatively funny) work of high school drama department horror:

Alien The Play

Encore Performance via YouTube

(One hour 27 minutes length)

Make some popcorn and stream it to your high-def set if you can, peeps.  Turn off the lights.  And prepared to pick your jaw off the floor.

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Dear friends in the Northeast...

Good night, and good luck.

October 29 2012: Hurricane Sandy floods the site of the World Trade Center in New York City

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Crooks clean out Apple Store... in 31 seconds!

Last Wednesday the Apple Store in Marlton, New Jersey was heisted by five men who shattered the plate glass windows at 2:05 in the morning and proceeded to rob the place. The truly astonishing thing is how fast they did it: they ran off with all the iPods, iPhones and MacBooks in 31 seconds.

Here's the surveillance footage. It's like Ocean's 11 with a NASCAR pit crew...

Read more about the caper here.

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MEETING DAVID WILSON trailer and official websites

Tomorrow night at 9 p.m. EST, MSNBC will broadcast the documentary Meeting David Wilson. It's a film by David Wilson, a journalist of African descent from New Jersey who spent some time researching his family's history. In the course of his investigation he traced his lineage to a tobacco plantation in Caswell County, North Carolina. And that led him to an encounter with another David Wilson - this one a white man from Reidsville (where I live) - whose great-great grandfather had owned the great-great grandfather of New Jersey's David Wilson in the years before the Civil War.

Since posting about it a few days ago I have heard nothing but astounding things about Meeting David Wilson. One person who has seen the film has told me that it is "INCREDIBLY powerful!" Having known Reidsville, North Carolina's David Wilson for many years, I am certainly looking forward to watching this: he's a very smart fella, and as articulate a speaker as he is a thinker. That's something that comes across even in the trailer for Meeting David Wilson...

Izzy Forman of MSNBC also sent me the film's page on the network's website. You can also find out more about Meeting David Wilson from the film's official website and its Myspace page.

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MEETING DAVID WILSON: Local man figures big in documentary about slavery's legacy

This coming Friday night, on April 11th, MSNBC will be premiering the new documentary Meeting David Wilson. It was written and directed by David A. Wilson, a black journalist from New Jersey who took time off from his career to research his family's history. His quest eventually led him to the plantation in Caswell County, North Carolina where his great-great grandfather was once a slave before the Civil War.

And then David A. Wilson of Newark, New Jersey wound up meeting David B. Wilson of nearby Reidsville, whose great-great grandfather had owned David A. Wilson's ancestor.

The film is already getting rave reviews. I'll certainly be tuning in because I've known Reidsville's David Wilson for a long time. He owns Short Sugars Drive-In in Reidsville, a place famous across the country for its barbecue (and where we shot the final scene of Forcery a few years ago).

Click here to read the News & Record's story about Meeting David Wilson.

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Judge OKs "Hitler Youth" buttons to protest school uniforms

A federal judge has ruled that two New Jersey students can continue wearing buttons depicting the Hitler Youth as part of a protest against school uniforms, Fox News is reporting...

U.S. District Judge Joseph A. Greenaway Jr. sided with the parents of the students, who had been threatened with suspension by the Bayonne school district last fall for wearing the buttons. However, the judge added in his ruling that the boys will not be allowed to distribute the buttons at school.

"I'm very pleased," said Laura DePinto, mother of one of the students. "I think it upholds the most basic of our American rights, which is to protest peacefully."

Citing a 1969 case in Iowa involving students who wore black arm bands to protest the Vietnam War, Greenaway wrote that "a student may not be punished for merely expressing views unless the school has reason to believe that the speech or expression will 'materially and substantially disrupt the work and discipline of the school."'

Greenaway's decision "follows the law as we saw it going in," said Karin R. White Morgen, an attorney representing both boys' families. "We believed that it was the Tinker decision that applied," she added, referring to the Iowa case.

The buttons bear the words "no school uniforms" with a slash through them superimposed on a photo of young boys wearing identical shirts and neckerchiefs. There are no swastikas visible on the buttons, but the parties agreed that they depict members of Hitler youth.

Bayonne instituted mandatory uniforms last September for grades K-8, and fifth-grader Michael DePinto wore the button several times before objections were raised in November, attorneys for the plaintiffs said.

In a letter dated Nov. 16, 2006, Janice Lo Re, principal of Public School 14, notified Laura DePinto that her son "will be subject to suspension" for wearing the button in school.

Parents of the other student, Anthony LaRocco, a seventh-grader at the Woodrow Wilson School, received a similar letter from principal Catherine Quinn.

After the suspension threat, the boys' parents filed a federal lawsuit claiming the district stifled the children's First Amendment free speech rights. They also have mounted a legal challenge to the uniform policy.

Neither boy has worn the button since the lawsuit was filed, Morgen said.

District lawyers asserted that the image of the Hitler youth was abhorrent because it conveyed intolerance and racial inequality represented by Nazism.

Thanks to Mark Childrey for the heads-up!

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