LEGENDARY ROCK BAND WAS BLONDSTRADAMUS!!
The 1980 Blondie song, “Rapture,” hailed in its time as a pioneering hybrid of disco, New Wave, funk, and hip-hop, is now in the headlines again—this time for predicting a brutal alien attack.
Richard Angelos, 44, of Union City, had just left his job as a bartender on the night of May 10 when he heard a noise above him. What happened next was like nothing he had ever experienced.
“It was a normal night at first,” Angelos said. “Boring, even. I got out of work and motored quite a distance, at which point I spied a bright beam in the sky. It descended until it was level with me, and then a…a being…a figure emerged from the light.”
THEN, ADRENALINE
Angelos didn’t respond. “I was frozen in place,” he said. Then adrenaline kicked in. “I tried to escape,” he said. “But this figure…this being… took action. He had a weapon of some kind, a space pistol. He fired it at me and I felt all the life leave my body. Then his jaws widened — I was no longer alive, but I could still see what was happening, as if through a scrim—and they closed around my skull.”
That night, Angelos didn’t go home. His girlfriend Kathy notified the police, who said that he couldn’t yet be declared a missing person. In truth, he was not even a person anymore—not really.
“You have to understand,” Angelos said. “When I was devoured by the creature I became the creature. And I had a sudden urge to consume automobiles. The first one was a Cadillac that I found parked next to a pool hall. The second was a Lincoln that I was outside a grocery store, still running. Then a Mercury. It wasn’t just American cars, either. Sometime around four in the morning I gobbled up a Subaru.”
Angelos ate vehicles until he could not find any more, at which point he began to eat bars. “That was even easier,” he said. “I went right back to work. There were all these people there, dancing, and I swallowed them in a flash.”
HANGOVER—AND SHOCK!
At some point before dawn, Angelos blacked out. When he came to, he was home. “Kathy found me sleeping on the floor of our kitchen,” he said. “She gave me some tea and by around lunchtime. I was feeling better. Not quite myself, but better.”
Angelos tried to lighten the mood by playing some music. One of the first albums he put on was Autoamerican, the 1980 album by Blondie. “The first side played,” he said. “‘Here’s Looking at You,’ “The Tide is High,’ ‘Go Through It.’”
Shortly after the second side started, Angelos heard something that shocked him. “‘Do the Dark’ ended and ‘Rapture’ started.,” he said. “And I just about came out of my shoes. I could not fathom what I was hearing. The song, almost word for word, described my evening. You know?. ‘And you get in your car and drive real far / And you drive all night and then you see a light / And it comes right down and it lands on the ground / And out comes a man from Mars.’ That was me! I was the you!”
He shook his head. “I mean, Holy God,” he said. “I was dizzy.”
With the album still playing, Angelos called in Kathy. “She couldn’t believe it either. We sat with the lyrics and shivered. I took the record off the player because look, if this song predicted my future so accurately, what would the rest say? Would I end up wiping headlights with a rag? I was too scared to find out.”
CONTACT?
The couple has tried to contact the band, or its label, or even Fab Five Freddie, who guested on the track, to no avail. “I mean, I don’t blame them,” said Angelos. “Who am I? Just a guy.” But he is bracing himself for the inevitable. “I know the song,” he said. “And that means that I know what’s going to happen to me. As of yesterday, I have stopped eating cars and eating bars, and I am starting to have an appetite for guitars.” He paused and shook his head. “Get up,” he said.
