“UFO Man” endorses Bush.  Photo: Times Democrat
 
Bowman, South Carolina (population 968) is home to the “UFO Welcome Center,” possibly the best/worst roadside attraction in America, which mainly consists of a dilapidated, ramshackle spaceship cobbled together from scrap wood and various repurposed construction materials. It’s one of my favorite places on the planet, and I’m lucky as a South Carolinian to get to visit it quite often. I treasure my meetings with the man behind the saucer, “UFO Man,” the adorably kooky Jody Pendarvis.

The giant UFO Pendarvis built in the front yard of his trailer home is in somewhat less than flight-worthy condition and is usually inhabited by a dozen or so feral cats. But if you ever find yourself in Bowman, Jody will gladly give you a tour of the ship and the philosophy behind the UFO Welcome Center, which is essentially a beacon for extraterrestrial visitors.
 

Jody Pendarvis. Photo: Bickel
 
“UFO Man” made the local newspapers this week with his endorsement of Presidential hopeful Jeb Bush. Bush seems like a good candidate for endorsement from the UFO people. Trump has made his stance regarding aliens quite clear (he’s against them), and Ben Carson has attempted to deny the hard work of aliens in building the Egyptian pyramids, claiming that the pyramids were built by Biblical Joseph to store grain—which is clearly insane. Bush is the clear choice for those of us who build giant wooden flying saucers in the front yards of our trailers.
 

 
We’re quite sure the Bush campaign will get a huge bump from this crucial endorsement.

For more on the “UFO Man,” check out Vice’s excellent short documentary on the UFO Welcome Center:
 

 
Here are a few pre-Bush-endorsement photos I took during my last trip to see Jody and the spaceship, three months ago:
 

 

 

 

 

 

 
Much has been made of the recessive and reactive—and borderline petulant—campaigning style of Jeb Bush, son and brother of the last two Republican presidents. The Bush name ought to be mud right about now—even if GWB’s wretched tenure served to make his dad’s performance on the job seem a lot less miserable than it seemed at the time.

The website Death and Taxes has taken to publishing somewhat prickly recent quotations from Jeb as read aloud in a “millennial” tone of voice—lots of question-mark-style upswings? At the end of most of the sentences?—and with the trademark speech inflection of the generation known as “vocal fry,” which comes about when you elongate a vowel sound and needlessly inject the back of your throat into the action, as in these canonical examples. (The term “vocal fry” apparently derives from a 2011 article in Science; it seems that it is mostly something younger women do and that it is a trend started by none other than Kim Kardashian.)

The actual reader of the quotes is Death and Taxes writer Jamie Peck.

I suspect that old Jeb will somehow pull off this stupid race for the GOP nomination, but boy, he’s making it look pretty unlikely right about now…..

Jeb-Bush-as-whiny-millennial, after the jump…