Tag: Bigfoot

Myersvision: Project Bigfoot

The Portly Politico2 Comments

Good old Audre Myers has been sending me little e-mails each morning for the past few weeks, usually containing sweet little sentiments about the power of music and the like.  These are always a welcome start to my day, and I’m sure she sends similar e-mails to a number of fortunate souls every day.

She’s also been sending me more Bigfoot videos, I suspect because I a.) find them interesting and b.) am sympathetic to the existence of the big lug, even if I remain a bit of a skeptic.

After sending me the draft of last week’s Bigfoot post, Audre sent along a video of thirteen unexplained, alleged Bigfoot encounters.  Included in her e-mail was a rundown of the videos, sometimes with her reflections, sometimes referencing the relative quality of the videos in the compilation to the originals.

This cataloging and breakdown impressed me, and I asked Audre if I could reproduce the e-mail here in full.  She agreed, but offered me a sage warning:  people might start to think I’m a kook for running so many Bigfoot-related pieces.  She pointed out that belief in Bigfoot is still very much outside the mainstream (true), and that the blog could suffer from too much Bigfootiana.

I appreciated her looking out for me and the blog, but here’s thing thing:  I don’t care if people think it’s ridiculous.  As I’ve frequently stated, while I’d like to believe that Bigfoot exists, I’m undecided.

In my mind, the point of this blog—or at least of these Bigfoot posts—is to explore Creation with an open mind and a sense of intellectual curiosity and adventure.  Conventional wisdom is usually quite flawed—at worst, even dangerous—and, at best, boring.  Often boring is good—it’s safe and stable and productive.  Better to be boring and reliable than flamboyant and a flake.

But doesn’t anyone else feel like we’re becoming intellectually ossified?  Maybe cryptozoology isn’t the answer to that ossification, but at least it’s interesting and different and unorthodox.  Life is too short for banality.

Here’s what I wrote in response to Audre’s kind-hearted warning:

Thanks for the warning.  I’m not worried about being ridiculed.  Seriously, I don’t care.  I want to present the interesting, the unusual, the weird, the unorthodox.
There’s too much boring content out there, and too many conventional takes.  I want my blog to be spicy, unusual, and intriguing.  Your Bigfoot posts achieve that.
Like Kierkegaard, I want to embrace the absurd passionately.  Bigfoot may or may not be absurd, but he’s interesting!

We live in a time when the official wisdom is dishonest, debased, and demonic.  It’s time to embrace the absurdity of Reality.  Maybe Bigfoot is a part of that.  It takes a great deal of intellectual humility even to be open to the fact that there are many things we can’t know or understand or comprehend.

With that, here is what I am dubbing the first installment of “Project Bigfoot”:

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Myersvision: My Very Large Friend

The Portly Politico4 Comments

Some of my favorite guest posts on this blog are those from our dear Audre Myers, who always brings a certain wide-eyed innocence coupled with the wisdom of experience.  It’s a curious combination, and one that I respect when it exists, as it is rare.  I admire Audre’s ability to remain excited about learning and the world around her, while still staying rooted in Reality.

But my favorite posts from Audre are the ones she writes about Bigfoot.  I am agnostic on the existence of our hairy friend, but as I tell Audre, “I want to believe.”  

One of my major critiques is that, with all the alleged Bigfoot footage (Bigfootage?) out there, we still haven’t gotten a good look at the big lug.  In our age of hyper-documentation of every bit of life’s minutiae, how have we not caught this beast on camera in glorious hi-def video?  Surely some eccentric, Elon Muskian billionaire could pepper the forests of the world with high-end recording equipment or even non-lethal traps and bag a Bigfoot.

But so far, we just have grainy photos.  Even the Bigfoot YouTubers don’t do themselves any favors, padding out their videos with lots of long, boring shots of their own backyards, pointing to broken twigs as some meaningful sign of a disturbance.  No way it could be a wild cat, or a bear, or a stray dog; nope, it’s gotta be Bigfoot.

Yet we’re constantly dredging up horrid monstrosities from the depths of the ocean, the kinds of creatures that we thought only existed in science-fiction stories or in prehistoric times.  The woods are quite as impenetrable as the blackest depths of the murky deep, but there are plenty of forests and hills and dales in the world that are impenetrable to humans.  Perhaps Bigfoot has retreated to his natural, dwindling habitat in these still-inaccessible regions of the globe.

Audre mentioned some Bigfoot books, and I hope she will share some reviews of them in future posts (more homework for her, mwahahahaha!).

With that, here is Audre telling us all about her very large friend:

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Guest Post: By Special Request

The Portly Politico28 Comments

Our dear Audre Myers really is the gift that keeps on giving.  After her excellent (and very well-received) post about the Idaho Bigfoot, she sent me a clip of audio of the Bigfoot’s “call.”

My intense love of music, coupled with my growing interest in Bigfoot and cryptozoology, prompted me to ask Audre to consider writing a piece “about the haunting song of the Bigfoot.”

Audre made some noises about doing her best, and I sat back, knowing—like the bloated editor I am—that she would pull through with another excellent post.  I was right.

With that, here is Audre with “By Special Request”:

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Myersvision: Eye on Idaho

The Portly Politico32 Comments

I’ve been clamoring for some beefy Bigfoot footage c/o our very own Audre Myers, and she’s satiated my cravings for all things cryptozoological—for now.  If ever there were a better creature to represent manly, protein-rich snack foods, it would be Bigfoot—the perfect, hairy spokescritter for beef jerky.

Perhaps our insatiable lust for marketing is one reason why the great ape-man has been so aloof.  Why reveal yourself to the modern world, a world in which everything, including one’s own identity, is a commodity to be bought, sold, traded, collateralized, and mortgaged?  Better to pee naked and free in the forest than to put on a tie and punch in at eight o’clock for a shift in the cubiclized salt mines.

I imagine Bigfoot would be put to use doing more blue-collar work—lifting heavy objects, for example.  But perhaps Bigfoot is smarter than we realize, if he’s managed to conceal himself from us for so long.

The other, obvious alternative—that he does not exist—is one I’d rather not entertain.  Although dear Audre alleges that I like “to gently tease… and poke” her because of her “98% belief in bigfoot,” my interest in the topic—and my interest in her interest in the topic—is entirely sincere.  Audre is a fascinating individual; her nearly-complete belief in Bigfoot is one of the qualities I find to be the most interesting about her!

But I digress.  Audre’s shared up some tantalizing Bigfoot footage, straight outta Idaho.  Read on:

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Suspend…

The Portly Politico6 Comments

After putting out my appeal for contributors last week, Audre Myers immediately answered the call.  Within a couple of hours, I had a piece from her in my inbox—and what a fun piece it is!

Audre is a woman of many talents and interests; one of those interests, I’m happy to report, is Bigfoot.  While I’m not going to claim that Bigfoot exists, this site is pro-Bigfoot, in the sense that any musings about our aloof cryptozoological friend will always find a welcome home here at The Portly Politico.  I even floated the idea of Audre doing a regular post about the hairy beast, but she said he’s been quiet lately.

Until now, it seems!  Idaho has more than potatoes, Mormons, Californians, and Mariella Hunt—it might also have a muscular man-ape roaming about!

With that, here is Audre’s piece, in which she will ask you to “Suspend…”:

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TBT: Monsters

The Portly Politico32 Comments

As the days grow shorter and cooler, with a full moon overhead, that old Halloween spirit has me excited for mischief and fun to come.  Shirts for this year’s Spooktacular have come in, and I’m ready to play more spooky tunes from my front porch!

I’ve already reblogged one of my favorite posts, “On Ghost Stories,” and it’s a bit early to throwback to past Halloween posts, so it seemed like a good time to consider another post pertaining to the so-called “spooky season.”  This post, “Monsters,” is very much in the same vein as “Things That Go Bump in the Night,” but from the angle of cryptids—think “Bigfoot“—rather than strictly supernatural creatures.

I don’t know if I believe in Bigfoot or not—I want to believe in it, at least—but I’m very much open to the possibility that there is far more to God’s Creation than we can even hope to comprehend.  As such, it seems self-limiting to outright deny the existence of certain creatures.  There might be plenty of evidence against the existence of Bigfoot, Mothman, etc., but such was the case—as I point out in this post—with the adorably weird duck-billed platypus.

But I digress.  Whether these monsters exist or not, there are still plenty around us.  With that, here is 21 October 2020’s “Monsters“:

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Tuesday Morning Television Series Review: Sasquatch (2021)

The Portly Politico3 Comments

Thanks to Audre Myers at Nebraska Energy Observer and the documentary Missing 411, I’ve become interested in Bigfoot, Sasquatch, the Yeti, etc., etc.—cryptid humanoid megafauna of various stripes.  I’m not sure if they exist, but I’m open to the possibility.  Indeed, I want to believe they are out there, wandering in the deepest forests of North America, living their secretive, hairy lives.

So I was quite interested to watch the Hulu series Sasquatch, a three-part true-crime documentary about an alleged Bigfoot attack in Northern California in 1993.  The attack left three Mexican migrants dead on a pot farm, with their murders unsolved to this day.  Indeed, it seems (from the documentary) that the murders were never actually reported to the authorities.

Let me say up front:  while the documentary was quite good, it was incredibly disappointing:  an egregious example of bait-and-switch.

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