I have never worn my hair in a mullet, nor have I danced the Macarena. When the Romans went crazy over Isis, I shook my head with derision and ignored the foolishness just as I would do thousands of years later when Clara Peller’s braying fast-food slogan captured the imagination of modern day Americans and everyone was shouting “Where’s the beef?” Throughout history, fads have come and gone with startling regularity, but the “coming” is always much more captivating than the “going” which is usually achieved through a good measure of embarrassment as the fascination with pet rocks or Kato Kalin fizzles in a less than attractive manner. I take great pride in the fact that I’ve never been swept up in the mob mentality of any fad, however, there have been a few instances where I indulged in the transitory trends of certain eras against my better judgement. During the overblown decade of the 1980s, trompe l’œil enjoyed a revival in popularity, and the walls of expensive restaurants, fancy hotel lobbies and the foyers of tony co-op buildings were lavishly painted with scenes depicting cascades of fabric draped over Grecian columns, landscapes, city skylines and extravagantly flowering gardens. I became obsessed with the idea of painting a sky on my dining room ceiling, so I set out and purchased the necessary products along with a how-to manual that made the process appear fairly easy to execute even for a person with no experience in rendering clouds. My project got off to a promising start as I had no trouble moving the furniture and covering the floors with drop cloths, and the first diagram in my instructional book proved to be the equally simple task of painting the ceiling a clean light blue. With nearly half of the ceiling still left white, I felt the gnawing gripe of boredom set in, so I took a break to watch Knots Landing before returning to my paints and brushes. Step Two called for white squares of various sizes to be painted onto the blue field wherever clouds were desired. I quickly made my way to Step Three and carefully applied gray zigzags that would add rudimentary shadows to the white boxes, and then I stepped down from the ladder to survey my work. The ceiling looked nothing like a sky, it was harsh and geometric, but I was pleased with my composition and began to imagine a sublimely finished piece. Turning the page in my “Decorative Painting Like A Pro” book, I expected to find a Step Four as basic and attainable as the preceding three, but what I discovered was a photograph of a completed project with a breathtakingly beautiful sky that looked as if it had been painted by Michelangelo himself. There were several captions that referred to shading and blending, but none of it made much sense as I stared upward at the expanse of robin’s egg blue violated by a scattering of sharp white squares and jagged gray lines. I flipped through the book expecting steps four through fifty to suddenly appear, but all I found was a similarly incomplete tutorial for painting a realistic marble pattern on a plaster pedestal. Weary and disillusioned, I repainted the ceiling back to basic white and headed out to a dance club decorated with pink and aqua neon lights that was at the height of its fleeting popularity. Watching The Animal Planet’s Finding Bigfoot reminds me of my ill-fated experience with trompe l’œil nearly thirty years ago. It leaves me with same strange sensation that I’ve missed some key elements, that I’ve jumped from Point A directly to Point Z.
Every episode of Finding Bigfoot presents its rag-tag cast of investigators stumbling and lurching through a pitch black forest in a murky green night vision haze. Led by the ironically named Matt Moneymaker, who is loud and boorish and the least interesting member of the group, they bang sticks together, toss rocks into the underbrush and when things get especially slow, they shriek and scream and holler and whoop all in an attempt to lure the mythical beasts out into the open. Personally, I would find their antics grating enough to send me deeper into the woods, and apparently, Sasquatch feels much the same way, and through two seasons of the show he has yet to make an appearance. Finding Bigfoot is a performance art piece that side-steps the thorny issue of whether or not “Squatch” actually exists, and it unfolds in an alternative universe where the matter has been long ago settled in the affirmative. Point A jumps deceptively to points well beyond. Every excursion is deemed an unqualified success even though no trace of the titular character is ever found beyond an occasional footprint that looks like it was made by pressing a wooden form into the mud. Bobo, a mountain of man with long frizzy black hair hanging out from beneath his wide brimmed hat, talks of the Bigfoot as if they’re close friends or at the very least neighbors. He functions mostly as the legendary apeman’s stand-in for re-enactments of eyewitness accounts, although one week, he chose a woefully inopportune moment to fall down the stairs of a wooden porch just as he was about to capture a Sasquatch on film. Hovering over the proceedings like a bad smell is the show’s prickly skeptic and lone female, Renae, a field biologist who thinks the whole business is hogwash, but nonetheless, she seems to offer little in the way of rebuttal beyond, “I’m just not convinced he’s telling the truth.” Normally, the only girl in the group is showcased as a femme fatale, but Renae looks like a very masculine iteration of Justin Bieber. Matt and Bobo and Renae and Cliff declare enthusiastically that every area they visit is definitely “Squatchy” before packing up and moving on to another forest in another state.
Finding Bigfoot would be nothing more than an exercise in the ridiculous if it weren’t for a rather sad human element that’s introduced into each episode. After an initial trek through the woods, the investigators call a town hall meeting to get the lowdown on Bigfoot activity from the locals, and the area residents gather at a nearby bbq shack or roadhouse tavern to face the cameras. When asked who has had a personal encounter with Sasquatch, every person in the room raises their hand. No one shows the slightest hesitation or fear that they might be viewed as eccentric, addled or possibly drunk, indeed, their arms shoot up with ramrod straight pride, then one by one they stand, dressed in their nicest pair of jeans and fancy sweaters and shirts purchased at Marshalls or Walmart, to tell their tales. The big hairy beast occasionally darts out across a dark wooded stretch of road as someone is driving alone late at night, but most peoples’ accounts take the more intimate form of the fabled creature watching them from behind a tree or through dense foliage, and with surprising frequency, some claim that Bigfoot has actually peered through their window. For some unknown reason Bigfoot finds the common folk fascinating. On rare occasions lucky hikers will catch a quick glimpse of the Kirtland’s Warbler or Green Violetear fluttering high up in the trees, but there is no personal connection felt in a chance encounter with those rare birds, however, people who bear witness to Bigfoot don’t describe a sighting but rather a visitation…Our Sasquatch of Fatima, Our Bigfoot of Lourdes. It’s a defining moment, a spiritual experience. Parents, teachers and motivational speakers will tell you to believe in yourself, but while that sounds like a meaty concept, in truth it’s a pretty thin gruel. You don’t want to believe in yourself, you want to believe in anything but your miserable self, and so you reach outward to gods and monsters and movie stars. Adam Levine spied you in the sold out crowd and sang just to you, Miss September smiled with more than professional courtesy when she signed your centerfold calender at the comic book convention. The President cares about you, Jesus loves you, God answers your prayers, and Bigfoot chose you…but Elvis wasn’t the king of anything, he was just a hillbilly who could sing, and Barack Obama isn’t a glowing ray of hope, he’s a well intentioned bureaucrat. “Belief” is a carefully constructed commodity, “faith” a personal fiction.
Several readers have angrily challenged my authenticity. Some want a dark prince who will sweep them away to a velvety world of shadow and romance or a dandy frozen in a by-gone age of stiff high collars and gentlemanly decorum lamenting the loss of a pedestrian love, others hope I’m a hissing drooling monster, but “reality” is the mortal foe of “belief,” and because I don’t fit the mold, the template for the worn and frayed pop culture vampire fad, my reality destroys their belief. I’m not what they see on TV or in the movies, what they read about in books and graphic novels, I’m not a pliable Silly Putty monster that can be pressed to fit their own private desires. To each vexed, anxious email I’ve responded with absolute honesty that I am real, but to keep alive their fantasy they must believe I’m a fraud, and so our communication comes to an abrupt end. On a recent Australian-themed episode of Finding Bigfoot, a middle-aged woman named Pixie led Matt Moneymaker on a tour of her favorite jungley spots to spy Sasquatch’s down-under cousin, Yowie. Pixie delivered detailed accounts of her chance encounters with the unflagging conviction of a person suffering through the hallucinatory phase of Alzheimer’s disease, but if a real Bigfoot or Sasquatch, Yeti, Yowie or Stink Ape were ever to be captured, her disappointment would be profound and soul crushing. A living breathing dumb animal with the innate ability to hide could never measure up to the primitive demigods wandering the misty forests of Pixie’s mind..and that you can believe.
Got a problem? Maybe I’ll help: Ask Alexios at caballoblue@yahoo.com
©2013 M. Smith
