I had reached a crossroads in my life and I wasn't sure what to believe anymore.

Dissatisfied. Confused. Overwhelmed. A certain weariness had come over me. The world was a mess. I was overloading on the 90s. Life itself had lost its relevance. Much of my sluggish anxiety came from the television. The goddamn tv---one of the most insidious monstrosities ever devised by Man. Day after day, I propped myself up on the couch...my love seat if you can believe it...and watched...The News. It was The News, more than anything else, that was killing me. I had long ago walked away proudly from situation comedies and nighttime soaps. But I had somehow convinced myself that watching...The News was a worthy effort. It's important to be informed I rationalized and so every day I tuned in to the latest...News. I would watch anything.

But it wasn't News. It was Crap. NBC News? CNN? Inside Edition? Hard Copy? It was all the same. It was Crap.

Finally, I quit. I disconnected my converter, pulled the coaxial cable from the back of the tv and hauled the tangle of wires and electronic hardware to the cable company (for out-of-town readers, if you don't have cable in Moab, you don't have tv. There is zero reception in the Mob Valley). The cable people looked at me with worried concern. "Are you sure you want to do this?" I nodded shakily and went home to contemplate my good deed.

I felt lost for about nine hours. That night I was saved by Art Bell.

I still remember the day. It was a bit after midnight on the 13th of March, 1997. I couldn't sleep and desperate for some human contact, I turned on the radio to the AM band. I spun the dial past the endless gibberish of sports talk radio, hate talk radio, and top 40 country music. I considered slashing my wrists. And then I heard something strange and different, drifting in and out between the white hiss and electronic buzz of distant radio signals...

"...going live to Peter Davenport. Strange things are happening in the skies above Phoenix tonight. Peter we're getting reports that this object is a mile wide and moving right over the downtown area."

"That's right, Art. We're tracking these lights all the way across the state. It's incredible. We've had sightings in Prescott, in Wickenburg...obviously this UFO is moving from the northwest to the southeast at an incredible rate of speed."

"OK, Peter...that's Peter Davenport from the UFO Center with a huge story tonight. Lights over Phoenix and we don't know what they are. This is Coast-to-Coast, I'm Art bell and we'll be right back."

And so I found Art and later it seemed strange that it took so long. I've been a UFO buff since I was a kid...since a bitter cold night in Brown County, Indiana thirty years ago. I was on a Boy Scout hike when my buddies and I saw a mysterious trio of white lights drift quietly over our heads. Widemouthed, our necks craned skyward, we watched the 'UFO' for more than a minute before the mysterious craft disappeared over the treetops. We were terrified. Scared out of our wits. I'd never been happier or felt more alive. It was great.

Now, all these years later, I've come back to my roots.

Art Bell's 'Coast-to-Coast AM' airs every weeknight from 11pm to 4am (Mountain Time Zone) and is carried 'live' by more than 400 affiliates across North America. Most of those stations broadcast reruns on the weekend. But Art's show doesn't originate from a high rise in New York or Los Angeles. No, he does the show from a double-wide trailer in Pahrump, Nevada, a hundred or so miles north of Las Vegas, and "just over the hill," as Bell likes to say, from the top secret military installation Area 51.

But despite his humble broadcasting digs, Art is everywhere.

Art's guests are from everywhere. Sometimes not even from this planet. Not even from this Time. It is impossible to stereotype his guests. Some nights Bell will interview Nobel Prize-winning physicists about the origins of the universe. He'll debate the Big Bang Theory one night and interview a warlock the next.

His style is not combative; he's not there to humiliate anyone, no matter how preposterous their claims or theories may be. For this he's been criticized by some scientists who say he recklessly mixes science and science fiction and ultimately discredits himself and them.

Art Bell says, "Lighten up."

The way Art looks at it, people are intelligent enough to make up their own minds. Is his show entertainment? Is it educational? It's up to the listener. He distances himself from the likes of Rush Limbaugh. While Limbaugh proclaims, "I'll do the thinking for you," to his well-named "dittoheads," Art Bell doesn't want to tell anybody what to think. But he sure as hell has a damn good time not doing it.

One topic that has left Art Bell cold is Washington Politics. During the height of the Lewinsky Affair, he wearily and reluctantly allocated a couple of nights to the topic, taking calls on his numerous "open lines." But that was more than he really felt necessary. After his half-hearted token effort, he returned to his usual agenda which didn't really seem all that weird after the Bill & Monica & Ken Show.

So while you fools were being beaten senseless by the endless gibberish of a full-fledged media sex scandal, I was tuned in to really important stuff...

A man from near Seattle, Washington had gone for a hike in the mountains one day. His eight year old dog Suzi was having a great time, chasing chipmunks and enjoying her unleashed freedom. Suddenly Suzi's ears perked and she charged up the trail, barking furiously. At first the man was unfazed by the dog's hysterics, but as the barks turned to desperate yelps, he became alarmed and ran up the trail after her.

As the man reached the crest of the hill, he saw something incredible. His dog was cowering on the ground, still yelping but terrified. In front of the dog, moving so quickly that the image was a blur ("He moved fast like a paint shaker," the man explained.) was a...small being? A child? What? He couldn't tell for sure. Suddenly the dog let out a scream and began to "implode upon itself." The dog vanished before his eyes. The being stopped and for the first time, the man realized this was no human. Outraged he took a large stick and hit the being in the head and killed it.

It is the first known murder of an alien being by a man from Seattle.

To make it even more interesting, the man took pictures of the dead alien, confirming that extraterrestrials have red blood just like us. Apparently the little guy was not from Vulcan. The photograph is posted on Art's web site, which had 27 million hits in 1998.

So what in the hell was that all about? Is the man crazy? Did he make it all up so he could be on Art's show? Did it really happen?

Don't know.

Much of Art Bell's show is built around the callers who phone in from around the country and around the planet. And from outside the planet at times. But these people don't call in to whine about some politician they hate. These guys have serious issues to discuss. It sort of goes like this...

"Yeah...Art? Is that you?"

"Yes it's me. Turn down your radio sir."

"Oh...yeah. Ok. Art this is Larry in Orlando, Florida. My wife and I have been taken on board an alien space craft several times down here. About every day this week for sure."

"Really? Now tell me sir, can you say if it's a Pleidian craft? A delta-wing? Or something else?"

"Well...I don't...let me ask the wife."

"No that's ok. You say you've been up every day this week?"

"Well, Art, I have. But the wife finally told these people that she just couldn't go flyin' over south Florida all the time. You know...she has the washin' to do and the like."

On occasion, Art Bell will dedicate a certain phone line to a specialty item, if you will. My favorite is the Time Line. On those nights when Art opens up the Time Line, only qualified time travelers are permitted to phone in on that number. You would be absolutely amazed at the number of time travelers who are visiting this particular era who also listen to Art.

After a while, you begin to recognize the voices of the regular (I use the term loosely) call-in time travelers. My favorite is a guy named Steve who claims to be from the year 2063 and is always talking about a future dominated by the Supreme Commandant.

One night he began to reveal some information that will some day be released to the rest of us...

"This should interest you Art. It will finally be determined that there was indeed a second shooter on the Grassy Knoll in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy."

"I always suspected as much. Any clues on the identity of the shooter?"

"Yes, Art. And this will stun you and your audience. Incredibly, the Grassy Knoll shooter was...Marilyn Monroe."

It's the only time I've heard Art burst out laughing. "Come ON, Steve! You just went too far!"

But Steve insisted. "Seriously Art. Don't laugh. Marilyn faked her own suicide so she could later seek revenge against JFK. It's a fact and the future will bear me out."

But then there was the night that Art interviewed a physicist nominated for the Nobel Prize. A man with impeccable credentials. He was terribly concerned about a project at the Fermi Lab in Chicago that involved an experimental particle beam accelerator. He claimed that his fellow physicists were getting into an area of science that was unknown territory. And he was afraid. Afraid of what? Art asked.

A sort of explosion, the doctor of physics sighed.

What kind of explosion? Art pressed.

Well...a super nova.

Art's guest believed that the Fermi Lab was on the verge of annihilating not only Chicago, not only Planet earth, but everything...every particle of matter for 50 light years. That's light years.

In fact, Art's guest theorized that every super nova our astronomers have observed in our galaxy came from a planet like ours that essentially pushed the wrong button and went...oops, just milliseconds before it vaporized itself.

Very encouraging.

So ultimately...what does it all mean? Is Art Bell nuts and am I a fool for listening? Does the fact that 8 million other listeners tune to his show suggest that our planet is in worse shape than even that physicist from Chicago thinks?

To me, it's like the debate between the Baptist and the Atheist. The Baptist clings faithfully to his little collection of scriptures and divine truths. The Atheist sneers arrogantly at the Baptist and rejects everything. Each is as ignorant as the other because both of them have hermetically sealed minds.

For me, maybe the Truth is out there. Maybe it isn't. Maybe most of Art's guests and callers are total wackos. But maybe not all of them. In the meantime, if nothing else, Art Bell's show is the best Theater of the Mind I've heard in a long time.

Live long and prosper, Art.