But I guess that wouldn’t make much of a book, would it? If superior aliens are going to find us - attracted no doubt by old Sonny & Cher and Partridge Family episodes - I’d posit that they have already done so, found us boring, and moved on. This latter part of the story is where Hawking and I part ways, because I simply don’t agree. His premise being that we are a young civilization in an old galaxy and if we are visited by aliens they’ll probably bring enough firepower to burn our sorry asses. I thought about that encounter, if it even was an encounter, this week when I heard about Hawking’s new book and Discovery Channel documentary in which he cautions against announcing ourselves to the universe just in case aliens we attract want to eat, enslave, or simply eliminate us, which Hawking apparently sees as a pretty good bet. He proved this again when I bumped into Hawking - in a completely different sense - in the Claremont bar after my gig, where he was still surrounded by the laughing girls and apparently enjoying a festive beverage. This guy, trapped as he was in his body ravaged by ALS, still knew how to live.
Recovering from my gaffe, the first thing I noticed was that Hawking was surrounded by four (4!) attendants, all of them attractive young women ( not the girls from the picture). Bursting through the doors at the bottom of the stairs and into the lobby I almost crashed into Stephen Hawking! Killing a world-famous physicist in a wheelchair is not what I wanted to be remembered for so it was lucky I was able to roll a bit to one side and avoid - just barely - taking out both Hawking and his chair. I was there to give a speech and was late for the gig, so instead of waiting for an elevator I took the stairs down a couple floors in the old wooden hotel. Everything I know about Stephen Hawking I learned one evening a couple years ago at the old Claremont Hotel on the border between Oakland and Berkeley, California.
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