At 8 p.m. on Friday, March 8, Charred Goosebeak performed at the Barge Canal Coffee Co. While I was walking in, I saw them yelling and singing outside of Slices. Some sort of a capella thing, but strange. Loud and raucous.

“Who are these people?” I wondered to myself. “If in fact they are people,” I wondered again. “Perhaps they are aliens, sent to sing and perform comedy.”

I walked inside the Barge and seated myself in the front row. This way, I could get a better glimpse of them and determine whether or not they were aliens. It was crowded and busy inside and then people started to make announcements – some charity things, I think there was something about a weight-lifting competition and then something about going to the Dominican Republic. This was not the comedy, though; this was before the improvisational routine even started. Then that was over, and we waited. And after we were done waiting, the humans/aliens I had seen singing outside of Slices came barging through the door. Not the regular door, though. They came in through a different door.

And so I thought, “Yes, perhaps they are aliens, using a different door than the humans. Perhaps our air supply, which would logically be present in our doorways, does not suffice for them.”

And so they came in and started asking for ideas for things to improvise with. They said they wanted places and the names of these places.

“The Jug,” someone said.

“No,” the humans/aliens said.

“Disney World,” someone else said.

“Yes,” the humans/aliens said.

And they proceeded to improvise a scene in which they accused two of their own of murdering Beyoncé Knowles with the Epcot ball. And when that was done, they started to play a game where some of them would be in the midst of talking and moving, and then another would yell, “Freeze!” Then, they all would, and then the person that yelled “freeze” would walk into the scene, tap the people they wanted to leave and start the scene again, manipulating the situation as they wished. And when that was done, they started to act out a soap opera, in which someone was shot, revived and then I think shot again. And there were Spanish accents, intrigue and betrayal. Also, although I’m not sure where this fit in, if it was before the soap opera or after the Disney World scenario, but they were in a Footlocker, ‘they’ being a mother, a father, a son and an employee, and there was a conflict over the son’s ‘cup.’ By ‘cup,’ I mean the thing that protects the male organ whilst the wearer is playing sports. The son was clearly appalled by the fact that his mother knew what this thing was.

“Strange,” I thought. “If they are in fact aliens, they seem to have studied the family dynamic and reproduced it quite frightfully. Perhaps they have Freud, too.”

So I laughed and I laughed and I don’t think I cried at all and then it was done and I got up and left, still unsure of whether or not I had just witnessed an alien invasion.