We’re halfway to the moon (LOL), and I’m already pushing a 12-hour call time on the set of Artemis II at NASA’s new state-of-the-art studio outside Burbank, California. “Johnny,” I hear from the craft services table. “The crew needs those Starless sodas and Cosmo chicken salads for lunch, T-minus 6 minutes ago!” I grab the tray and moonwalk backwards through the studio doors.
This one goes to Artemis II
Inside the studio is as close to space as any of us will ever believe. It’s quiet with only a handful of grips, best boys, DPs, AI engineers, the CIA, and of course, the infamous director Rob Reiner, aka Meathead—moving around the top-secret location surprisingly stealthily for a man who died last year. I drift through the darkness and arrive at a plastic capsule where the set designer has meticulously constructed the Artemis II spaceship. Not a replica, the real deal. It’s the same design NASA has been using for decades, but with 4.1 billion dollars in modifications, like plasma TV screens and Atari 2600 consoles. Truth be told, this thing couldn’t bounce off a trampoline.
The crew—four C-list actors with OnlyFans accounts—are dressed in the latest orange jumpsuits specially designed for this mission by the NASA marketing department. “Thanks, Johnny.” They grab their lunches, half pretending their plates are floating out of their hands, and mime swimming through the air, laughing hysterically to a picnic table near the “Milky Way,” and the door to parking lot 6.
It’s a ten-day gig, the ad in the back of an escort services magazine read: Pays well, limited experience, discretion is mandatory. Starts April 1st. No Joke. Naturally, I pictured myself servicing some wealthy sugar mama at an all-inclusive in the Riviera Maya, but when I arrived at the clandestine studio outside LA, I learned I would actually be “craft servicing” for Not A Space Agency.
“Have you done this before?” I ask my temporary boss, Chef Dee.
“It’s my second gig,” says the woman who once competed on Season Four of Gordon Ramsey’s Hell’s Kitchen.
“Most chefs don’t make it past one mission with NASA. Discretion, bro.” She laughs, but I can tell the thought of mysteriously ending up at the bottom of a Nantucket pond after this gig scares the freeze-dried ravioli out of her.
Look, fam; flat earth, worm holes, and landing on the moon never really interested me. Sure, I watched Star Trek as a kid and wanted to go ‘where no man has gone before’ with Marina Sirtis like every other hormone-warp-powered teen … but did Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin mean anything to me? Hells no! “One small step for man, one giant boner for sexy Starfleet Counselor Deanna Troi,” I always say.
Stand By Me, Dummies!
“Live feed up in 6, get the video tape rolling,” Meathhead’s voice boomed from the overhead speakers. I hustled off the set of the film after picking up the garbage the crew had left on the greenscreen floor. Sloppy. I watched as they positioned themselves in green full-body harnesses around the ship, suspended on frankly obvious wires. “Let’s talk about something fun and relatable,” the tubby director suggested as the first improv game. He inhaled a Supernova Sub into his galaxy-sized gullet. One of the crew members suggested 80s TV shows. “Nostalgia,” Meathead nodded. “My bread and butter. Let’s go with that.” The crew starts riffing about ALF, Full House, and Family Matters. The theater becomes interactive, and everybody on set joins in, talking about how to make these clips go viral.
“Going Viral” appears to be extremely important to the fake space agency. From meticulously edited live feeds to Insta reels to TikToks, everything they produce seems to stick with the braindead masses, who appear to be eating up this latest charade like one of Chef Dee’s Big Bang Macs.
The one thing Dee can’t explain is why the filmmaker behind award-winning movies like When Harry Met Sally, Stand By Me, This is Spinaltap and The Princess Bride is fronting the latest NASA psyop.
“I guess he had one more mockumentary theme to chew on,” I laugh. She glares at me in warning. “You’re going to need to satirize more quietly on this set, kid.”
Spotting a chance to meet the Meathead behind the magic, I straddle up next to the enormous director. After some small talk about the Dodgers, I timidly ask, “Uh, shouldn’t they be talking about space?” “Shit,” Meathead yells, sub sauce cascading down his chins. “We need more shit about space shit!”
The four astro-nots look at one another and then to Reiner with unknowingly perfect comedic timing. They call for the “NASA script doctor” to Zoom in and rework the scene. Then on the teleprompter, the words appear as if by magic, or science, or the Writers Guild of America: Heavens. Peace. Globe Spinning. 1,040 Miles Per Hour. Slingshotting Around Planets. Universe. Dark Side of the Moon. Blah, blah, blah. Meathead gets the screwball comedy of errors back on the NASA trajectory.
Deep Space Cakes
As an investigative reporter, this is my beat. I’ve gone undercover in a Gaza university encampment, posed as an international student at a Canadian donut shop, survived gender-affirming surgery in a British house of medical horrors, aided a group of leftists in starting the LA Fires of ’25, and even joined Trump’s paramilitary special forces, ICE. But nothing—and I mean nothing—prepared me for working at craft services on NASA’s out-of-this-world production of Artemis II.
“But why?” I ask Chef Dee later that evening. She’s preparing the dinner menu with a spacey theme: Moon Mango Salad, Galaxy Beef Stew, and deep-fried Mars bars for dessert. “25 billion dollars,” she shrugs. Dee explains that when the Nazis started NASA after WWII, the idea really was to go to space, believing it existed. “Since it was impossible, people still paid, and the space business started to grow. They found that they could just keep lying to the masses, and the masses would keep paying for more. Sound familiar? By the way, kid, I’m not suicidal.”
The alien science advisor, J-Rod, waddles on to set from the control room with a red phone held aloft in one of his slimy protrusions that I assume to be a hand. “It’s the President, Mr. Reiner!” he telepathically shouts to everyone within his psychic wavelength. Meathead does an unplanned (but perfect) spit take of the Tang milkshake he’d been downing. “That jerk! What does he want?”
(NOTE: Yes, aliens are real, and space is fake. Aliens are basically demons from another dimension. Or something. It’s complicated. Ask JD Vance about it.–ed)
One of the crew shouts, “Make Space Great Again,” which sends Meathead into a propulsion-fueled hissy fit. He threatens to fire the poor idiot, but then is reminded that they’re “200,000 miles” from Earth. Dee and I watch as Meathead scratches his head with a sauce-soaked napkin, trying to put together a third-act twist.
After his TDS meltdown, Meathead needed to leave mission control for some stress eating, and the crew has drifted away from the NASA script. Untethered from reality, they’re making up stories about broken toilets while trying to brainstorm more meme posts so the brain-rot generation will get excited about STEM.
Dee hands me a Density Danish and whispers, “NASA, like Big Pharma were a dying brand. COVID saved Big Pharma; hopefully, Artemis II can do the same for NASA. I mean, who cares about space and the moon anymore? Boooorrrring!”
I’ll have what she’s having
I eat my danish and watch the crew. They know about as much about space as a fourth grader, but all those years in front of the OnlyFans camera have made them convincing. And despite them being surrounded by walls of green screens, I, too, begin to believe they are where they say they are, in space.
“We’re going to the dark side of the moon,” Meathead announces, now back on set. “We’ll break off all comms for 40 minutes. I don’t know about you guys, but I’m starved!” The crew seems happy to chow down on the buffet paid for by the American taxpayer. During the break, I asked the female pretend astronaut what it was like trying to tell the world that you’re in space. Her expression goes momentarily vacant, then gives a remarkably thoughtful and sad answer; she says that, like OnlyFans, you just have to pretend that you’re somewhere that you aren’t. “For example, I need my fans to believe I’m in their bed with them. Flying to the moon is the same thing, basically. If you believe I’m there, I will help you reach that belief … or climax, depending on the scene.”
On set, no one can hear you scream
I find her simile so inspiring that I take out my notebook and begin writing it down. I can’t wait to share it with Dee, who has been missing for the past 6 hours. Glancing over the hero sandwich he is shoving down his gaping black hole, Meathead notices me and asks someone what I’m writing. Then he walks over. Of course, I don’t ask him if he’s dead because he’s not dead. That would be rude, even for an award-winning undercover reporter. He reaches for my hand, “Johnny,” he says. “Great work today, that Uranus Apple Cheesecake was to die for. Hey, why don’t we go for a swim later? I’ll get some of these guys in black suits to give us a lift to a nice deep pond.”
“As you wish,” I say, “that sounds out of this world.”
