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X-Files: The Truth is Out There

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There were X-Files telephone calling cards, too. Word has it that they don't work, although I can't vouch for that rumor.

Posters seemed to be going over big, but the gleaming rows of paperbacks generated little interest. The story on the Net is that the books suck.

People stood in those lines with such bovine patience that I started casting apprehensive glances up at the ceiling. Despite the explosive growth of Silicon Valley, San Jose is still little more than an overgrown cow town, and there have been rumors of cattle mutilators in the area.

Feeding Frenzy Fails to Materialize

The promoters can't be all bad, though. Over the P.A.--not exactly blasting, but loud enough perhaps to frighten some of the more attentive conventioneers--was Screamin' Jay Hawkins' "Frenzy": "Let me ease your mind with a real cool line, I'm in a frenzy! / Hoowaughfowaugh! Frenzy!" If they hoped to generate a frenzy of bloodletting, they missed their mark. There was, however, an extended spurt of cash exchanging hands.

The shortest line led to "food," out of sight around a corner and down a hall. The longest line led to the X-Files Prop & Costume Display, a screened-off area, guarded by a rent-a-cop, in which were exhibited a few forlorn artifacts from the show: rubber masks, stage daggers, bits of unrecognizable stuff, with little signs saying "EBE," or "The Erlenmeyer Flask," or "Squeeze Tooms," depending on the episode represented.



The only prop with personality was one of Special Agent Scully's shoes, a brown suede pump with the toe burned away as if in a mysterious fire. It was darling. Such tiny feet! Such a gaping hole! The shoe didn't look burned, though, so much as it looked like a rottweiler had been gnoshing on Scully's toe paint.

A lot more interesting was an all-but-overlooked easel next to one of the vendors' tables. Pinned to the easel were a number of letters and photos and some sketches, including an American Primative portrait of Scully.

Where Have All the Lone Gunmen Gone?

I once knew a guy who tooled around town in a black and white muscle car with Starfleet Command insignia on the doors. One year he tried to enter it as his costume at a Star Trek convention. The powers-that-be gave him points for originality, but still wouldn't let him drive it through the doors.

I looked in vain for ersatz Foxes and Scullys--the show's lead characters--or even pugnacious baldy boys representing Assistant Director Skinner, their nominal boss. Also absent were faux Lone Gunmen, though many of the men in attendance--and some of the women--looked as if they'd fit right in with that crew.

I did pass one diminutive woman all in black, with white pancake makeup, black lipstick and a metal bat on a chain around her neck. But her getup looked more like the standard fantasy convention uniform than something she'd assembled to demonstrate her affinity for The X-Files. Scary, sure, but nothing more outrageous than you might expect downtown on a Saturday night, or in front of one of those role-playing game shops.

Neglecting Sylvia Browne, Real-Life Psychic

Such action as there was unfolded over in the Civic Auditorium. Among the events was an appearance by co-executive producer and sometime scriptwriter Howard Gordon. He fielded questions from yet another line of x-philes. (Sylvia Browne, the "World Famous Psychic," wasn't so fortunate, having been cordially ignored by a great many attendees.) Asked where he got his ideas, Gordon answered, "[Anything from] an article in the New Yorker to the National Enquirer."

Does he believe in aliens or ESP? "No--are there any aliens here?"

What kind of flashlights to the main characters Mulder and Scully carry? (This avenue of inquiry has been hotly contested on the Net.) "How much do the flashlights cost?" one inquiring woman asked. "I hear they cost $20,000 each."

"They cost twenty-eight hundred," Gordon joked, before setting her straight: "I don't know how much they cost, but they're really expensive." Like a couple hundred bucks, which in the real world is a lot to pay for a flashflight--but not when you work for the feds, of course.

I have a confession to make: I'm no reporter. I skipped a whole bunch of stuff and went off to a barbecue in Santa Cruz rather than staying the whole course. Among other excitements, I missed:

• The Blooper Reel!: "You've heard about it; now here it is, exclusively for faithful fans!"
• The X-Files Trivia Contest: "Win great prizes by showing your knowledge of The X-Files!
• The Paranormal World of The X-Files: "An exciting music video salute to the paranormal world of The X-Files."
• Fox's Foxes: "You wanna know what really keeps Mulder up at night?"

OK, I made that last one up.

Poster Boy for the Anti-Smoking Council

William B. Davis, who plays "Cancer Man," the show's sinister cover-up artiste villain, was scheduled for 3:50pm, followed by Dean Haglund, the blond conspiracy theorist character who publishes "The Lone Gunman" newsletter on the show, at 4:25pm.

Apart from all the bad things that Cancer Man does ("I've watched presidents die," he said with sinister inflection in one episode last season), you know he's a villain because he chainsmokes cigarettes. A coffin nail is the '90s version of a black hat.

Someone asked Davis why the scripts call him "Cigarette-Smoking Man" when everyone (including the show's characters) calls him Cancer Man. Can't they come up with a better name for him?

"You don't like 'black-lunged son-of-a-bitch'?" he asked.

You wouldn't know it from his character's onscreen scenes, in which Cancer Man is perpetually bogarting a butt, generating his own "smoke-filled room" whereever he goes, but Davis is an ex-smoker. The pills he huffs on the show are herbal cigarettes, and they smell like "grass." Staying rigidly in character, he opined that the logical conclusion for the show would be for him to end up in control, with Scully and Mulder consigned to the trashheap of history.

There's a Conventiongoer Born Every Minute

So what lessons, beyond basic finance and trivia nitpicking, were to be learned at the X-Con? It is said that the great American huckster and showman P. T. Barnum, in order to keep the lines moving in the midway, hung a sign over one of the doors. "This way to the Egress!" it read. The egress, of course, wasn't some exotic animal from parts unknown, but the door leading the suckers through the exit.

I still had one shot left in the camera when I passed through the X-egress, and I wasn't sure what I was going to use it on. Then I saw a couple decked out in matching white shorts, pink X-Files T-shirts and big, bright, laminated FBI identification badges.



"Can I get your picture?" I asked.

The guy glared suspiciously. "What for?"

I fingered my press badge. They didn't examine it any more closely than I examined their FBI badges. I've known a few FBI agents, and these kids didn't look any weirder than the real thing.

"For the paper," I said, leaving it up to them to guess which. "You're going to the X-Files con, right?"

"Oh, yeah! Sure!" They linked arms and smiled.

As the X-Files tag line goes, The Truth Is Out There. It's out there somewhere. But it isn't under the Big Top, baby. Remember that.

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