It Came From Outer Space, Your Honor

The best graf in the LA Times today is buried on page B9, after the jump, in a story about a witness in a Santa Barbara lawsuit against a utility company. The witness also happens to believe he's been visited and poked by aliens; he's even set out tinfoil to record their footprints, and he claims to have videotaped them.

But that's not the best part.

"Here's their most important witness, and the D.A. is buying into it, saying that none of this affects his credibility," said Bela G. Lugosi, an attorney for Greka and son of the actor best known for playing Count Dracula. "We're very surprised." (Emphasis added.)

That's right. Bela Lugosi's son went to law school, no doubt worked hard, eventually became the counsel for a utility company -- and he still ends up questioning a guy about aliens.

In one exchange, Lugosi pressed him about his conversations with a UFO researcher.

"Did you in fact tell him that you were being terrorized by creatures that you considered to be alien in nature?" Lugosi asked.
Lowrey's response was measured.

"They were bothering me," he said. "I don't think I said they terrorized me. But I said they were bothering me."

I love living here. Seriously, sometimes it's like being inside a Pynchon novel.

Comments

[Ol' Pedro]

Here's the prequel to your story. Back in the early '90s, I covered a civil case in which the heirs of Curly Joe, the least of all Stooges, sued the heirs of Moe, the quintessential Stooge, for royalties related to Three Stooge schwag sales.

The heirs of Larry, the middle Stooge, eventually joined with Curly Joe's team and were represented in court by .... Bela Lugosi Jr.!

He -- Bela Jr. -- sorta pioneered California case law that established that the heirs of dead celebs had rights to their images. This, of course, being established after Bela Jr. had represented the heirs of Boris Karloff and Lon Chaney earlier....

And unlike most of the pseudonymic comments I leave here, this one's 100 percent true! You can look it up!