The Continuing Adventures of Beardie (part two)

(To read part one of Beardie's continuing adventures, go here.)



Beardie spent most of the next day in bed, sleeping off his hangover and the bad gastronomical memories of Mexico. Poor fella was so feverish that he had some pretty intense nightmares. Everybody on our floor could hear him yelling in his sleep. "Stay away from me," he screamed, "or I'll carve my initials in your belly with a dull butter knife!!"

Funny story: We didn't find out until later that Beardie wasn't actually sleeping at all. "I was talking to you, jackass," he told us.

Oh Beardie, you're such a practical joker!

LET BEARDIE EASE YOUR PAIN, MOSTLY BY HOLDING YOU INAPPROPRIATELY UNTIL YOU TELL HIM TO CUT IT OUT. KEEP ON READIN'!



It didn't take long for Beardie to get back on his feet and out on the ship's party deck, meeting his fans and slipping his room number to (in Beardie's words) "anybody with a pulse and a fake ID."

How many young ladies did Beardie hook up? We have no idea, but here's a clue: The cruise-sponsored "free shot of penicillin" mixer was hands-down the most popular event on the boat.

For shame, Beardie!



Dave Foley took an instant liking to Beardie, at least until Beardie got in his cups and demanded to know if the ex-Kids in the Hall and News Radio star had ever banged Maura Tierney. Come on, Beardie, let's keep it classy!



Somebody connected with the cruise thought it'd be a great idea to interview Beardie for a promotional video. They thought better of it when Beardie started yammering about how Abraham Lincoln's brain was stolen by the Illuminati, and universal health care is just a form of communist mind control, and why the Second Amendment gives him the right to go anywhere with his ankle holster, because you never know when you're going to have to "teach a lesson" to a train hobo or an IHOP waitress who doesn't understand the meaning of correct change.



When Beardie has a few too many, he likes to sleep it off in public. That way, he can wake up and insist that the cigarette burns covering his chest and arms must've been inflicted by a fellow cruise guest, or more likely, some lackey of the ship's captain. How dare Beardie be so cruelly molested while he lay unconscious and vulnerable! He demands restitution, goddammit!

Last time Beardie tried that old chestnut, he used the settlement to buy a van with an eagle painted on the side.



Beardie thought he'd be a hit at the cruise's sushi tasting, but his "why does it smell like a whorehouse in here?" jokes didn't get the same appreciative laughter it usually inspires from his Navy buddies.

Beardie would never admit it, but the only reason he pretends to like sushi is for the wasabi. He likes to coat his gums with it and then try to kiss the sky.



Beardie hates to be a picky eater (much less a vegetarian pussy), but he has a hard time consuming anything that resembles what it used to look like before it got butchered and laid out on his plate.

"Can you cut the goddamn fins off this goddamn thing?" Beardie shouts at his immergrint chef. "I feel like I'm eatin' fucking Flipper over here!"



Our second stop on the cruise is Key West, Florida: a safe haven for drunk college guys to learn the hard way that everybody is just two frozen drinks away from sleeping with a drag queen.

Before hitting the bars, Beardie visits the home of his old drinking buddy, Ernest Hemingway. A word of advice: If you're ever hanging out with Beardie and he tells you that the gun isn't loaded and this is the best way to practice your fellatio skills, don't listen to him.

Whoops! Sorry, Ernie. That's our Beardie!



Beardie was not amused by the rules posed throughout Hemingway's old stomping grounds. As anybody who knows Beardie can attest, he has a problem with authority. And the one thing you never, ever want to tell him is that he can't pick up your cats. Because let me tell you something, sister, your cats is gettin' picked up.



You know what the main difference is between Beardie and Hemingway? Beardie waxes. ("Ladies like a chest that they can use like a Slip 'N Slide," Beardie tells us, planting a mental image that'll haunt us for the rest of our lives.)

The other difference? Beardie's most influential short story, also called "Hills Like White Elephants", was about a stripper named Trixie with double-D implants and a cleverly-concealed switchblade.



Beardie visits his favorite crepes restaurant for an afternoon snack, not just because he craves the French cuisine but because he enjoys saying, "These crepes taste like craps." (It's easier just to laugh. That way, Beardie doesn't try to explain why it's funny.)

Beardie claims it's all about the food, but he's also there for the French ladies. He loves their hairy armpits and how they all seem to smell like nicotine. They remind him of the summer he spent in Paris, arguing about art with Gertrude Stein and Henry Miller, and getting the clap from prostitués. Aaaah, so many memories! Or as his ex-girlfriend told him before she threw his adulterous ass out of their appartement: "J'accuse!"



Beardie loves watching the delicate art of crepe-making, mostly because it gives him an opportunity to whisper to the chef, "So what's a fella gotta do to get a little peyote sprinkled on top of that bad boy?"



Normally, Beardie isn't the kind of guy who enjoys hard liquor. But if somebody else is buying, and they'll force the shots down his throat like an alcoholic water-boarding, laughing at him as he gasps for air before filling his mouth with even more jagermeister, ignore his girlish pleas for mercy.... well, Beardie ain't made of stone.



It's funny how things can go so horribly wrong so quickly. One minute, Beardie was sitting in a Key West bar, minding his own business and shouting requests to an Elvis impersonator - he forked over $5 for the song "(Let Me Be Your) Teddy Bear" because it reminds him of his youth in the Furry scene. And before he knew what was happening, he was on stage, doing things he wouldn't pay to see on Cinemax.



A word of advice: If you have the opportunity to perform a duet with an Elvis impersonator, make sure it's not the late period "fat" Elvis. If you're small enough, he'll try to stick you down his shirt, and those dudes have some serious man-titties. It can get pretty freakin' hairy down there, like the jungle in a Joseph Conrad novel, and if their pleather jumpsuit isn't properly ventilated (and let's be honest, they never are), it can smell like a sauna filled with sumo wrestlers. By the time you finally wiggle your way towards freedom, your clothes are soaked in a stench that's equal parts peanut-butter-and-banana sandwich and the basement of a morgue, and that's a fetor that no amount of dry-cleaning and therapy will ever be able to undo.

You have been warned.



Beardie swings by Sloppy Joe's for a brew and some live music. Rather than tipping, Beardie likes to show his support with some constructive criticism.

"If you play another goddamn Jimmy Buffett song," Beardie tells the baffled guitarist, "I will set fire to your children and rape their corpses."



Beardie could've sworn that the woman working at Sloppy Joe's gift shop was is third wife. "Last time I saw you was in a Chilean jail cell," Beardie exclaims to his old Ball-n-Chain. "How the hell did you get out? Did you actually dig that tunnel you were always bragging about?"

She insisted that they'd never met, and Beardie played along with the ruse. He bought a t-shirt with a c-note and told her to keep the change. "Consider it alimony," he said with a yellow smile.



Beardie took a moment just to sit next to the ocean and reflect on the breathtaking grandeur of nature, and how the world can make anybody feel small and insignificant, and if you pause just long enough to truly drink in the beauty of Mother Earth, you can catch a glimpse of god's grand design.

And then he passed out and urinated on his last pair of clean pants. Oh Beardie, will you ever learn?



Beardie posed next to the monument marking the Southernmost Point in the United States. And then, like he does every time he's here, Beardie dropped his pants and directed his (now golden brown) rump towards Cuba and, in particular, Fidel Castro.

"He knows why," Beardie grumbled.



Everybody back on the ship! We've got one more night of partying on the high seas. Or, as Beardie puts it, "Let's rock this boat like we're teenage cousins left unattended with lots of sexual energy to burn off and a tenuous grasp on the moral consequences of our actions!"

Ewwwww. Thanks, Beardie. Way to make the cruise all creepy and weird again.



Like the last twenty minutes of a Rolling Stones concert, when the drugs start kickin' in for Keith Richards, Beardie makes the worst decisions of his cruise during the final 24 hours.

In a way, we aren't all that surprised. When you combine a truth-or-dare contest with a few dozen buckets of beer, it's almost inevitable that Beardie will do something that everybody regrets tomorrow. And it may or may not involve him nestled in a strange lady's cleavage like a baby kangaroo in his mama's pouch.



Beardie has only fuzzy memories of his last night on the cruise. He's pretty sure he got into a chloroform drinking contest, and he's almost positive that he dosed the hot tub with blotter acid and then, worried about wasting perfectly good LSD on a stupid gag, ended up drinking all of the tub water, which tasted like warm genitals and burnt sienna. He may've attended a party with a bunch of hookers and a dead donkey, or he may've just stayed in his cabin and watched Bachelor Party on TV - he isn't entirely clear on that.



Parting is such sweet sorrow, although Beardie would never admit it. He claims that the cruise gave him botulism, rickets, and a touch of the monkey pox. He's leaving with a suitcase full of phone numbers that he calls "my future free clinic friends", and he continues to insist that everybody employed by the ship was "a goddamn immergrint". All in all, Beardie had a miserable experience, or so he would have us believe. But we know that underneath his tough exterior, he's just a big softie.

"Take your rotten cruise," Beardie whispers, his voice wavering with emotion, a single tear trickling down his wrinkled cheek. "And go back to C-c-c-china!"

The Continuing Adventures of Beardie

It's weird to think that it's been almost two years since I first fell in love with a doll named Beardie.



As some of you will recall, I discovered Beardie during a road trip from California to the East Coast. While passing through New Mexico, the Dame and I wandered into a ramshackle antique store off the highway, the kind of roadside dive that smelled of diesel and mortality. There were plenty of vintage curiosities for sale, but most of it verged on the creepy. Everything was rusty copper and sharp edges, and even just breathing the air made me yearn for a tetanus shot. There was nothing there for us, other than a few ironic trinkets we'd surely toss out at the next reststop. But as we slinked towards the exit, I caught a glimpse of something out of the corner of my eye that looked like a midget Methuselah. He was perched in a dusty bin with other forgotten toys, and he looked at me with such sad, bloodshot eyes, like a scruffy mutt abandoned at the pound, long past his adoptable puppy stage.

It was love at first sight.

CLIMB UP ON BEARDIE'S GRIZZLED LAP AND KEEP ON READIN'!

We knew nothing of his lineage. He had no name, no indication whatsoever of his origins or identity, other than a date and the manufacturer's name tattooed on his spine — "Mattel 1973" — like an Auschwitz-ian serial number. All we knew was that he had a spectacular beard — a tangled mess of grey whiskers somewhere between Karl Marx and Uncle Jesse from Dukes of Hazzard — and the grubby clothes of a man who hadn't earned an honest paycheck since the steel factory went bankrupt. He was, to put it kindly, the least desirable toy ever created by human hands. How many tears had been shed on Christmas morning after a justifiably shocked child discovered not an Elmo or G.I. Joe awaiting him under the tree, but a vaguely threatening-looking old man doll?

"Oh... wow... okay... So you basically bought me... a tiny version of Grandpa. That's.... weird. Does he come with his own glaucoma medicine?"

We bought him immediately — it was the best $5.23 I ever spent in my life — and christened him Beardie. It was supposed to be a temporary "handle" — a placeholder, if you will — until we came up with something better, but the name just stuck. If he was clean-shaven we might've called him Cleft-Chinnie. But he wasn't, so he got stuck with Beardie.

During our trek across the country, we had a lot of free time to invent Beardie's backstory. It was surprisingly easy. For some reason, we felt instantly connected with Beardie, like we'd known him all our life. Have you ever heard the Mountain Goats' song "02-75"? It really sums up our relationship. "Yoooooou are my beeeeest friend/ I have always known you." We wanted to hold his tiny hand, gaze deeply into his beady little eyes, and say, "You complete me, Beardie. You... complete... me."

Or at least that's how I feel. The Dame is on the fence.

How can I describe Beardie to you? He's paranoid, xenophobic, antisocial, intolerant of other cultures and beliefs, and borderline schizophrenic. He's also a cantankerous jackass. (And I say that with love.) He's like Ted Kaczynski without the charm, personal hygiene, survivalist training or handwriting legibility. He wears aluminum hats to stop the government from reading his thoughts, he suffers from night terrors and spontaneous public urination (SPU), he carries most of his belongings in a hobo bindle and catheter bag, he's had at least one organ transplant — a baboon liver — because of his drinking problem (he performed the surgery himself in a motel bathroom, with nothing but a rusty switchblade and a bucket), he claims to have killed men for sport ("the most dangerous game of all," he likes to cackle) but we don't believe him, and he assumes that anybody who looks even slightly different from him (which is pretty much everybody on the planet) must be an "immergrint".

Since settling down in Florida, Beardie's had numerous wild and exotic adventures, many of which would've made Cervantes snap his fingers and say, "Daaaaaaaaaaaamn, bitch! You all that!" We've documented some of his exploits, and some (for legal reasons) we've tried to pretend never happened. Here are just a few of the highlights from the past year.



Beardie welcomes his new neighbors with a big, flaming bag of poop. "Go back to China," he screams, despite the fact that they aren't in any way Asian.



Beardie learns the hard way that you should never "experiment" with bondage with a woman you just met three hours ago.

"Bitch stole my wallet," Beardie barks at the motel maids who eventually release him. Not surprisingly, they're unsympathetic.



What's that? You had no idea that Sasquatch masterminded the 9/11 Conspiracy? Well, you obviously haven't been reading Beardie's blog.



Yes, Beardie regrets partying a little too hard last night. But in his defense, he blames the Jewish-run media.



Beardie's been journaling again. Two dozen free verse poems about his inner child later, he's finally able to admit that he's still pissed off that his alcoholic father never showed up for his 7th grade flute recital.



Beardie takes a long, hard look in the mirror and finally gives himself permission to cry.



Beardie loves the ladies, but every once in a while, he just needs to spoon with another man. And not just any man either. Steve Austin, the Six Million Dollar Man.



Beardie's gonna spend a few weeks in the country till the heat dies down. You ain't seen nuthin'!

* * *

It's been a wild ride. But nothing compares with what happened to him earlier this month. Beardie, for the first time in his wrinkled life, took a vacation. And not just any vacation, either. A cruise! Sailing from Mexico to Key West on the luxurious (and relatively norovirus-free) Norwegian Jewel, Beardie spent a week relaxing in the sun, meeting new friends, drinking as much as his tiny frame would allow, and generally just getting away from the rat race, all while committing only a handful of felonies (which is a lot less than his weekly average).

For your viewing pleasure, here's a collection of photos from Beardie's cruise-tastic holiday on the high seas:



It took some convincing to get Beardie on a cruise ship. He still has too many bad memories from the Lusitania. And the Titanic, wow, that was pretty brutal for Beardie, too. And don't get him started on the Bismarck, and the Tek Sing, and the SS Dakota, and the Belgrano, and the Wilhelm Gustloff, and the Dona Paz. Yes, it appears Beardie has been on a suspiciously large number of boats that've sunk, but he swears it's just an unfortunate coincidence.

Now if you'll excuse him, he has to try and get past the Port of Miami's security without setting off their goddamn metal detectors.



Beardie was quite pleased with his cabin. Not only did it provide an excellent view of the ocean, but his bed was much roomier than anticipated, making it perfect for multiple sexual partners.

As Beardie liked to remind us, "If this cabin's rockin', don't come a'knockin'... unless you're into the freaky stuff."







The ladies on the cruise were enamored with Beardie, despite his sometimes handsy behavior. We probably wouldn't have recommended quite so much open-mouth kissing, but we tried not to hamper Beardie's style. We understand that many of these ladies were drunk on rum punch and probably weren't thinking clearly, but still...

You know what Chlamydia smells like? It smells like Beardie.



We're not sure how Beardie climbed up to the upper deck all by himself, or what inspired him to stand on the ledge and scream down at the pool, "I am a golden god" before vomiting over the side and showering the crowd with an orangish bile that smelled like fish guts and Tang.

As he explained to us later, "Turns out mescaline and Coors Lite don't mix."

Oh Beardie, will you ever learn?



As the ship passed Cuba, Beardie took a moment to drop his pants and moon Fidel. Why he felt compelled to give the communist dictator an unobstructed view of his brown hole (or, in Beardie's case, grey hole) remains a mystery.

"He knows why," Beardie grumbled.



Our first port of call was Cozumel, Mexico. Beardie wasted no time deboarding and running down to the city's marketplace. If there's one reason to visit Mexico and it's not donkey sex shows, it's gotta be the discount wrestling masks.

Three masks for 400 pesos? Muy bueno!



It took some searching, but Beardie finally found the perfect mask for his new wrestling identity: "Brawny" Beardie Piper.

"The blood of my enemies will run through the streets like inexpensive merlot," Beardie hollered, assuming what he hoped was a threatening pose.

Yeah, yeah, we know. But we didn't have the heart to shatter the little guy's dreams. He's just so damn cute when he pretend-wrestles.



The mark of a good vacation is if you're finally able to let yourself go and just be a tourist. Beardie, usually so serious, couldn't help but laugh when he stumbled upon this awesomely silly photo-op.

"Look at me, I have boobies," he chortled, spit dangling from his lips.



We're not sure why Mexican bartenders were so wary of Beardie. It's probably because he tried to order a round by saying, "What do you have that doesn't have pee in it?"

Beardie, please, you're embarrassing all of us.



When Beardie learned that patrons of this particular beachside bar were encouraged to write on the walls, he decided to be a little more confessional than the management probably intended.

Good luck with that intestinal parasite, Beardie!



At Cozumel's Margaritaville — which is just like an authentic Mexican eatery, only 98% whiter — Beardie befriended much of the waitstaff. We can only assume they didn't understand him when he started barking, "Pour an extra shot in my drink and there's a shiny new American nickel in it for you. Whaddaya say, Pedro?"

You know those waitresses in tropical bars who wander from table to table, force-feeding shots to customers against their will and massaging their backs, as if making the experience semi-erotic will make you forget that you're paying $10 for thimbleful of watered-down Bacardi? They apparently love old man dolls with deep pockets. A few thousand pesos later, Beardie was feeling no pain, and had lost all the feeling in his face.

Also, he had a raging erection that just wouldn't quit. Thank you, Mexican pseudo-whores!



It took little provocation to get Beardie out on the dance floor. However, it took at least a half-dozen Margaritaville employees to drag him away when he dropped his pants and started singing, "I want to party on your pussy, baaaaabeee!"

Sun and tequila always bring out the worst in Beardie.



To settle his stomach, Beardie ordered the ultimate nachos. Nothing slows down the spins like a heaping plate of cheese and hot peppers, especially if it's eight times his body weight.



You know what's completely underrated? Mexico's raw oysters. Sure, they taste like dog feces. But you can't beat the rush of adrenaline.



And nothing washes down a Mexican oyster like some muddy water straight from the well. Mmmmm. That burning sensation lets you knows it's got local flavor.



Back on the ship, Beardie eventually stopped vomiting around 4am. We've never heard the Lord's name taken in vain so many names, and with so much emphasis on anal rape. We haven't used the bathroom since, as it smells like a toxic combination of sulfur and baby's tears. Also, puke.

(To read part two, go here.)

Everything's Bigfoot in Texas (part two)

(To read part one, go here.)

Bigfooters haven't exactly received a warm reception from mainstream science, either. Dr. Henry Gee, a Senior Editor for Nature Magazine, told me that "the scientific community at large regards 'Bigfoot' as either a figment of peoples' imagination or a hoax." Which doesn't mean he doesn't subscribe to his own special brand of crazy. "That's not to deny the possibility, even if remote, that unknown human-like creatures might await discovery in some part of the world," he said. "The discovery of fossils of Homo floresiensis, otherwise known as 'The Hobbit', a strange humanoid creature that lived in Indonesia until at least 14,000 years ago, increases that possibility."

In other words, Sasquatch is probably fictional. But Hobbits running around in a prehistoric Middle Earth? Totally real!

"Some day a good picture's going to come out," said Robert Swain, the author of an unsyndicated comic strip called "Laughsquatch", in one of the most heartfelt speeches of the day. "And it's not going to be the Georgia hoax that we've all cringed about. It's going to be something that you can really put stock in, and people are going to start looking at this community as something that's really credible and something they need to take seriously. We probably have an endangered species that's a very important scientific find, right here under our noses. We need to help science because science doesn't know what to look for. It's going to be up to us to find it.

"I appreciate everybody that's out there looking for Bigfoot," he went on. "Because I think it's only a matter of time before we bring him home."


THESE BIGFEET WERE MADE FOR WALKIN' AND THAT'S JUST WHAT THEY'LL DO... TO THE REST OF THE STORY. KEEP ON READIN'!

That's the kind of sentence that can resonate with you for days. "Bring him home?" It seemed a peculiar way to talk about a creature that, according to anybody with even a shaky grasp on reality, hadn't yet been proven to exist. Swain sounded like an anxious parent asking for help in finding his missing child. Did he — and for that matter, everybody else at this conference — think that Bigfoot was lost, maybe waiting for a volunteer search party to find him and airlift him to safety with helicopters?

Out in the hallway, among the many Bigfoot books and DVDs for sale, Dr. Paulides was displaying an array of police sketches, all purportedly of Bigfoot. Depending on which sketch you believe, Bigfoot is either scowling and feral, like an escaped prison convict with psychopathic tendencies, or jovial and huggable, like a bearded uncle with an armful of Christmas presents.

A middle-aged mother escorted her young daughter — probably no older than four or five — over to Paulides' table, trying to show her the less threatening portraits of Sasquatch. But the girl was having none of it.

"No, no, no," she whimpered, hiding her face in her mother's shoulder.

Paulides, his smile so calm and nonthreatening that he could've mediated a hostage negotiation, assured the skittish girl that there was nothing to fear. "They look different from you," he told her, "but that doesn't mean they're bad. Bigfoot is our friend."

The girl wasn't convinced, but the adults standing nearby grinned from ear to ear. They nodded furiously, like kids who'd just been reminded that Santa Claus really did exist and he loved them all unconditionally. It seemed that even Bigfoot researchers, with their empirical and "only-the-facts-ma'am" dispositions, have a weakness for Harry & the Henderson fantasies.

Craig Woolheater, the conference's director and founder, was unwilling to pigeonhole the beliefs of his fellow Bigfoot devotees. "There's probably somebody here who thinks Bigfoot pilots UFOs," he told me. "Or that Bigfoot is a dimensional shape-shifter. There's such a wide spectrum of beliefs. The problem is, it’s all speculation. Everybody has a theory but nothing is fact."

Scientific certainty has never been at the core of Bigfoot research, especially in a field where the "facts" are so nebulous. It's about personal experience. Midway through the conference, an MC asked the crowd, "How many of you have had a Bigfoot encounter?" There was a show of hands, roughly half the crowd. A woman in the row ahead of me let her gaze drift around the room, doing a quick head count. Her jaw dropped and her eyes bulged, and like a kid during her first trip to Disney World, she muttered, "Awwwwesome."

A guy sitting next to me noticed my notebook and craned his neck for a closer look. He had delicate features and the whisper of a mustache. A backpack was nestled between his legs, and he was dressed entirely in fleece. It was a curious outfit for an afternoon of lectures. I wondered if he was expecting more, anticipating that at any moment somebody would blow a horn and announce the beginning of the Sasquatch hunt.

"Had any luck in the field?" he asked me.

I just shrugged, quickly covering my notes (a few of which contained some less than flattering observations about the audience) and asked him the same question. He was more than happy to tell me everything, sharing the intimate details of his Bigfoot research like I was a potential investor. He lived in Dallas, he told me, and had made several expeditions to Paris, Texas, where he'd had at least one Bigfoot sighting.

"What did it look like?" I asked, genuinely excited.

"Long, gray and skinny," he said, whispering to me like he suspected somebody might be eavesdropping. "I saw it climb up a tree with only its hind legs."

We talked for several minutes, and he eventually admitted that his story wasn't entirely accurate. When he claimed to have "seen" Bigfoot, what he meant was "on the Internet". He'd seen and even touched the footprint casts taken from a Bigfoot hotspot in Texas, and he'd visited the Paris swamps where Bigfoot purportedly called home, and he'd sat in the dark on countless nights in countless Texas forests, listening for the snap of twig or the echo of a growl or anything that might give him reason to believe. But as for his sighting, the Bigfoot close encounter he'd been bragging about from the moment I met him was, well... funny story... he actually saw it on YouTube. And he was almost 98% positive it was the real deal.

Confusing reality with a viral video might seem like a symptom of insanity. But I didn't tell my new friend that he was a delusional idiot. He went on to explain that he'd recently lost his job at a helicopter factory in Dallas, and how he and his girlfriend had slept in their cars last night because they couldn't afford a hotel. It didn't take a huge leap of deduction to realize this guy lived with a walnut of worry and anxiety buried in his chest, and Bigfoot was his outlet.

For some people — many of them at this conference — the debate over whether Bigfoot is real or fictional isn't the point. It's just a metaphor. Fifty years ago, when Bigfoot first entered the pop culture lexicon, it just so happened to coincide with the Cold War and atomic paranoia. It makes a weird sort of sense why monsters would be making a comeback in the late 'aughts, just our country is in the midst of a crippling recession and a seemingly never-ending war in Iraq. Just walking out of your home means confronting a never-ending deluge of intangible threats. We can't get on a plane without studying the other passengers and trying to identify potential terrorists. We can't walk into a high school or a church or a mall or a fast-food restaurant without anticipating that some disaffected kid might storm in with a shotgun and kill everybody. We can't walk into a bank without wondering if our entire life savings has disappeared in the blink of Sarah Palin's eyes. We need monsters when the world gets scary, because it brings our fears into focus. Bigfoot is a big, hairy, lumbering behemoth that we can point to and say, "There! That's it! That's the thing I'm afraid of! Let's form an angry mob and chase it out of town with pitchforks and torches!"

Not everybody at the conference had exaggerated their Bigfoot sightings. Craig Woolheater, a co-founder of the Texas Bigfoot Research Conservancy, had a tale that read like a superhero origin story. In 1994, he was driving through Louisiana with his girlfriend, on a two-lane and unlit highway. At some point around 11:30 at night, they saw something on the road that looked... Sasquatchian.

"As soon as we passed it, we looked at each other," Woolheater told me. "She said, 'I think I saw a Bigfoot.' And I said, 'Well, we've got to turn around.' And she said 'Hell no!' I regret to this day that we didn't stop."

That lingering regret inspired Woolheater to create the Texas Bigfoot Conference in 2001. Listening to him talk about that fateful day when he almost, kinda saw Bigfoot, he sounds like Daniel Johnston, but instead of writing songs about the girl who broke his heart in high school, he's devoted his life to the bipedal ape that got away. The conference, in its weird way, is his way of turning around and driving back.

"I don't know what I'd do if I had another chance," he said, in the reflective voice of somebody who's pondered this question many, many times before. "I don't even know if it would've been there if I'd stopped the car and backed up. But I wanted — I still want — a closer look."

The most telling moment of the conference occurred during the panel discussion. Every speaker gathered on the stage to field questions from the audience, which ranged from the Georgia hoax ("an anomaly," Dr. Meldrum insisted) to Bigfoot's poop. Asked if they thought it was ethical to shoot and kill a Bigfoot — if only to collect DNA samples for research — the entire panel, without hesitation, said no.

"It doesn't have to be killed," said Woolheater. "Somebody could be hiking in the woods of north Georgia, for instance, and actually find a Sasquatch body. But until that happens, we'll stick with documenting it with video and photographic evidence."

Kathy Strain, the author of a collection of Bigfoot lore called Giants, Cannibals & Monsters, just shrugged and said, "I don't know that DNA is necessarily going to make or break this case."

It's unlikely that Bigfoot research will ever gain the credibility its proponents crave, at least while they consider DNA overrated. Real science requires more than blurry photos and first-person accounts from jittery hikers. But maybe scientific legitimacy isn't as important to them as they claim. After all, gathering too much information might backfire, accidentally disproving the creature they've come to love and need. Better to keep Bigfoot at a safe distance, where it can remain mythical and larger than life, leaping over canyons and kidnapping women and hosting forest gangbangs.

The last word on Bigfoot hunting went to Dr. Fahrenbach. The question of whether to shoot Sasquatch was moot, he told us, because such a plot would never succeed. "Time and time again, you read about the idiots with .22s, shooting at a Sasquatch," Fahrenbach said with a smirk. "The Sasquatch doesn't even speed up. It swats at the bullets as if a bee had stung them. They'll probably have festering wounds and it certainly will decrease their mobility, but it doesn’t bring them down."



I wanted to stand up and applaud. It was such an amazing display of verbal choreography. Fahrenbach had taken the original question and reshaped it, sending it spiraling in a new direction. And it was as simple as changing one little word. It went from "should Bigfoot be killed" to "could Bigfoot be killed". The difference between the two was vast. Should was an ethical question, and on a deeper level, exposed their collective fear that Bigfoot might turn out to be imaginary. But there was no ambiguity to could, no uncertainty as to whether Bigfoot existed. Not only was he real, but unstoppable! Shoot at him all you want, it'll only make him angry. And if he gets angry, he'll steal our blonde women and carry them to the tops of skyscrapers. Asking whether Bigfoot could be killed was the intellectual equivalent of looking to the sky and shaking your fists and screaming, "We'll get you one day, Bigfoot! Mark our words! Your reign of terror will come to an end!"

The audience laughed at Fahrenbach, but it wasn't a derisive or mocking laugh. It almost sounded like a sigh of relief.

* * *

If one conference a year isn't enough to satiate your Bigfoot cravings, check out some of these other Sasquatch events and celebrations:

Honobia Bigfoot Festival
Honobia, Oklahoma
(918) 567-3434

Finally, a Bigfoot Festival that the whole family can enjoy. Bring the gang out to Oklahoma during the first weekend in October and give them a treat they won't soon forget. The kids will be endlessly amused with festival-sanctioned games like the Biggest "Big Foot" Contest and the "Big" Idol Talent Competition, while mom sneaks away to check out the quilt show or shop for novelty items like Bigfoot Toe Jam. Dad can take part in the all-terrain vehicle "bigfoot hunt" — because nothing brings Sasquatch running like the thunderous growl of a motorbike engine — or better still, take a class with Farlan Huff, a Bigfoot investigator from Illinois, who demonstrates how to attract a Yeti by recreating their undulating mating call. Perfect for your next expedition, especially if you hope to get raped by a Bigfoot.

Bigfoot Discovery Museum
Felton, California
(831) 335-4478

Owner and curator Michael Rugg has spent the last 40 years collecting Bigfoot minutiae, which he displays for the public at a tiny shack of a museum in the middle of nowhere. And yes, it's exactly as creepy as it sounds. The museum has plenty of pop culture memorabilia — Harry and the Hendersons DVDs and a massive archive of tabloids with headlines like "I Was a Sasquatch Sex Slave" — as well as more scholarly exhibits like Bigfoot footprint castings and a wall-size frame from the Patterson footage. If you ask real nice, Rugg might even show you some of the more bizarre items in his collection, like a pair of plastic nunchucks supposedly owned by a Bigfoot. The real show, however, is out back in the shed, where Rugg keeps four Bigfoot replicas, each at least 10 foot tall and scarily lifelike. Then again, that's assuming you think it's ever a good idea to follow a Bigfoot enthusiast into his shed.



Bigfoot Days Celebration
Willow Creek, California
(800) 628-5156

Willow Creek, the self-proclaimed "Bigfoot Capital of the World", is the Disneyland of Sasquatch mania. The small mountain town, just a few hours north of San Francisco, can claim Bigfoot as its sole industry. It hosts a Bigfoot Museum, a Bigfoot Motel, a Bigfoot Golf & Country Club, and even the first "International" Bigfoot Symposium. But its most famous Sasquatch tourist attraction is the annual Bigfoot Days Celebration, now approaching its 50th anniversary. Every Labor Day weekend, curiosity seekers from around the globe flock to Willow Creek for the festivities, hoping to become one of the thousands who've purportedly seen the beast in the area. The celebration's highlight is a Bigfoot Parade through the center of town, featuring more guys in bear suits than a Star Wars fan convention.

Base Camp Bigfoot
Location unknown

Base Camp Bigfoot makes a promise that few other Bigfoot expeditions can match: You'll see an actual flesh-and-blood Sasquatch or get your money back. Of course, getting invited to the camp for your face-to-face encounter isn't as easy as paying the $100 fee. Applicants must submit to an extensive background check and sign a confidentiality agreement. If accepted, you'll receive a letter with directions to the clandestine headquarters, where you'll be camping under the stars and dining on "the same fruits and vegetables that Bigfoot eats." Cussing and guns are strictly forbidden — Bigfoot, it seems, is a prude — and attendees must wear a Base Camp t-shirt at all times, presumably so the guy in the Bigfoot costume waiting out in the woods doesn't waste his energy putting on a show for some non-paying hikers.

This story originally appeared, in a slightly different form, in vanityfair.com.

Everything's Bigfoot in Texas

I'll go through it all again
Watch their doubtful smiles begin
But the visions that I see believe in me.
-John K. Samson
"Bigfoot"

In a high school cafetorium, a small man in his mid-70s was lecturing to a rapt audience of several hundred people. His name is Dr. Henner Fahrenbach, a retired zoologist from Oregon and a self-proclaimed expert in the behavioral habits of a bipedal ape sometimes known as Sasquatch.

"Their top speed for running is between 42 and 45 miles per hour," Fahrenbach told us in his thick German accent. "They can cover 90 feet in just three steps, or thirty feet per step. So obviously, they have immensely powerful thighs and legs in general."

Fahrenbach was one of the featured speakers at the seventh annual Texas Bigfoot Conference, held every October in the north-eastern Texas town of Jefferson. Unlike his colleagues — a collective of authors, academics and independent Bigfoot researchers who'd shared their findings throughout the day — Fahrenbach made no secret of his beliefs. He didn't speculate about the "possibility" of Bigfoot's existence. He was not only convinced that Sasquatch is real, but also epic and chimerical, like a monster straight out of Greek mythology.

PUT YOUR BEST BIGFOOT FORWARD AND KEEP ON READIN'

"Sasquatch has been observed walking with two 200-pound pigs under his arm through the countryside," Fahrenbach continued. "On another occasion, he's been witnessed grabbing three goats with one arm and walking over a five foot fence without breaking stride."

The audience listened attentively, but it was difficult to tell if they were convinced by Fahrenbach. He seemed an odd choice for a conference that promised to "establish the legitimacy" of the Bigfoot research field. If anybody in the crowd was already dubious about Sasquatch, they probably weren't swayed by his wild claims of hirsute giants snatching goats by the fistful.

Fahrenbach is elfish in stature and moon-faced, with a scampish grin and head of thinning white hair. He reminded me of a friendly grandfather character in a German fairy tale. With one hand in his front pocket and the other grasping a microphone, he recited his research from memory, rarely consulting his notes. The stories, based on his interviews with dozens of eye-witnesses, became increasingly bizarre. He explained that Bigfoot's diet is rich in mussels, clams, peacocks, and the "hindquarter" of deer. He described how Bigfoot likes to "shake the daylights" out of mobile homes, and in one incident he personally investigated in Oregon, a Bigfoot shook a mobile home so hard that "all the sheathing around the bottom fell off. It was just this guy inside who got scared out of his wits and threw white bread out of the window, hoping to soothe the Sasquatch outside."

When Bigfoot doesn't get what he wants, Fahrenbach warned us, he has temper tantrums “just the same as a baby, throwing itself on the ground and screaming and rolling around." He shared the details of a case in California where a Bigfoot disrupted a construction site by repeatedly turning over a diesel tractor, ostensibly because he was "trying to stop progress." He also insisted that Bigfoots enjoy wrestling, throwing rocks "the size of watermelons", and most surprisingly, tickle fights.

Fahrenbach went into great detail about the sexual habits of a Sasquatch. As it turns out, Bigfoot doesn't just have a healthy libido, he's also a filthy pervert. Fahrenbach claimed that the creature has been observed spying on human women in the shower, and would cry loudly if his view was obstructed. He also described their fondness for gangbangs, assuring us that even a horny Sasquatch has impeccably good manners when it comes to orgy etiquette.

"When an especially large male came onto the scene," Fahrenbach said, describing a sexual pileup involving one willing female and lots of dudes, "he didn't try to buck the line but simply stood there and took his turn in good time."

Somewhere in the back row, a woman turned to her husband and whispered, "I can't tell if he's kidding."

I could definitely sympathize. At least at first, I just assumed Fahrenbach was making some tongue-in-cheek point about the unfair stereotypes of Bigfoot research. His performance was so over the top and goofy, like a "mad scientist" caricature from a Mel Brooks film, that I could practically anticipate the punchlines. But he never broke character, never winked at the audience or said something telling like, "This is what the outside world thinks we talk about at these conferences."

If there was any doubt about Fahrenbach's intentions, he cleared it up at the very beginning. Despite how his lecture was described in the schedule, he told us, he wouldn't be talking about "possible" Sasquatch behavior.

"That could include riding a Harley Davidson or something like that," he said. "I am talking about real Sasquatch behavior."

The most remarkable thing wasn't that Fahrenbach was making these crazy allegations, creating a case-history for Bigfoot that was somewhere between Chupacabra and King Kong on the monster believability scale. What was remarkable was that nobody at the conference raised even a finger in protest. Bigfoot, like any unorthodox pseudo-science, has its fair share of crackpots. But there are usually at least a few rational Sasquatch enthusiasts ready to cry foul when one of their own starts yammering about "Robot Monster" fever dreams and calling it proof. Not so in this crowd.

There was some nervous giggling when Fahrenbach began his lecture. But the audience eventually grew silent, listening with stoic reticence, their expressions wooden and their eyes unblinking. There were no cries of "bullshit" or demands for more evidence than Fahrenbach's aw-shucks smile. They didn't drag him from the stage or chase him out of the building like an angry mob in a Frankenstein movie, brandishing pitchforks and torches. They just sat and stared, like mannequins arranged in contemplative poses.

I couldn't tell if they were seriously considering what Fahrenbach had to say, or if they just didn't have any fight left in them. Challenging his vision of Sasquatch — a Gorilla Grodd who would surely destroy us all — would've led to a very public argument, which would've attracted more attention and possibly turned into a messy media spectacle. Wouldn't it be easier just to treat him like a predator, remaining motionless until the danger passed? If they closed their eyes and didn't move a muscle, maybe he'd go away.

It's been a rough year for the Bigfoot true believers. Last summer, a pair of hoaxers in Georgia tried to convince the world that they'd found a Sasquatch carcass, which turned out to be a cooler filled with animal entrails and a rubber gorilla costume. The Bigfoot legend has always been a hard sell, but after such a high-profile scandal, it hasn't been easy to keep the faith when even casual cryptozoologists are portrayed as gullible or insane, and sometimes both.

At least during the first half of this year's conference, the speakers tried to prove that all Bigfoot researchers aren't con artists or rednecks who subscribe to the Weekly World News. Most of the morning was devoted to raw data, delivered in a grave monotone by Daryl Colyer, a member of the Texas Bigfoot Research Conservancy. He rarely used the word Bigfoot, opting instead for vague descriptions like "unlisted primate species" or "unknown, upright hair-covered species."

Colyer numerated a staggering amount of minutiae from reported Bigfoot sightings, rattling off percentages for everything from witness gender (66% male), the duration of encounters (45% occur within just 11 seconds), reported Sasquatch hair color (31% of witnesses claim it's red-brown), what witnesses were doing prior to their sighting (11% were fishing, 5% were biking, and just 2% were in the midst of a picnic), and a vast array of Bigfoot's vocal sounds, from growls and screams to whoops, grunts, roars, howls, moans, and hoots.

"A hoot could be interpreted as being the same thing as a whoop," Colyer admitted without cracking a smile.

The audience nodded appreciatively, and those clutching notebooks wrote down every detail, as if these observations directly affected their own research. And it's possible it did. While discussing Bigfoot's habitat (at least according to eye-witness reports), Colyer revealed that 2% of Bigfoots have been spotted in trees.

"I know a lot of you don't look up in trees," he told us. "Well, you might want to do that."

Later, a wildlife biologist from Oklahoma named Alton Higgins talked about Bigfoot hoaxes, using a PowerPoint presentation to demonstrate how costume frauds could be identified. There were the obvious clues — thick, tubular lower legs — and also more complicated hoax telltales, like irregular arm-leg symmetry and head/humerus proportions. At some point, he used the phrase "the length of the arm divided by the length of the leg multiplied by a hundred," and I felt like a teenager again, nodding in algebra class and trying to pretend I knew what the fuck my teacher was talking about.

But this time, being the dumbest person in the room was exhilarating. I'd come to this conference ready to be disappointed (or, worst-case scenario, get enough fodder for a snarky essay). But this lecture, dripping with science-nerd agnosticism, was refreshingly unexpected. And, in some ways, it was the only logical response to a post-Georgia hoax world. To avoid being belittled and dismissed, the Bigfoot community had to become more critical of their research than their worst critics. To make the rest of us believe, they had to be more skeptical than the skeptics. They had to be the first ones to sneer, looking for the bad stitching in a gorilla suit before the cynics beat them to the punch.

"Most of us that work in this field are skeptical when it comes to evidence," Higgins told the audience. "If somebody comes up with some lame picture, we don't start giving each other high-fives and say, 'Here's another picture of a Sasquatch.' You have to analyze it."

It was easy to believe Higgins. He was mad as hell, and like Howard Beale in Network, he wasn't going to take it anymore. But sometimes, even he couldn't keep his inner Bigfoot fanboy in check. While examining the differences between a Bigfoot scam and a bear photo, Higgins couldn't help but comment on how a wrinkle in the bear's upper back could be mistaken for a zipper, a not-so-subtle reference to the legendary Patterson footage, where supposed zipper-sightings have been a subject of heated debate for over forty years.

The audience laughed at the zipper line, and some of them even clapped appreciatively. You don't need to be an expert in psychology to know that was exactly what they needed to hear. Nobody came to this conference to find out what isn't Bigfoot. They were well-acquainted with false alarms. They'd been disappointed every time that strange growling sound out in the back yard turned out to be something perfectly explainable. They'd come here, to this tiny town in the middle of nowhere Texas, to have their beliefs rekindled. Explaining to them that Bigfoot was just a thinly-veiled deception was unfair and cruel — like ending a campfire story by saying, "And that's why rumors of an escaped mental patient with a meat cleaver turned out to be nothing."

You could pinpoint the crowd's loyalties by watching the way they leaned forward in their seats whenever one of the speakers shared a juicy revelation, something nebulous enough to send a shiver up their spines. You could taste it in the air; the audience wanted to be freaked out. They wanted goosebumps, not scientific stolidity.

Among the sea of grey beards and plaid jackets, my favorite audience member was a middle-aged man with a bad toupee and thick glasses, wearing a t-shirt that read “I Want To Believe”. I never exchanged a single word with him, but just by watching him from afar and studying his reactions, I could tell that the emphasis wasn't on "Believe" but "Want". This entire conference was about wanting, so desperately, to believe.

During the lunch break — we're served cold-cut sandwiches and chips — I met Michael Cathey, a Bigfoot hobbyist from Oklahoma who runs his own canoeing business, called Bigfoot Floats. He told me how he's visited the conference every year since its inception, and this time his wife even joined him, although she decided to go antiquing with their daughter rather than attend the actual event.

"I remember doing reports on Bigfoot in Junior High," he told me. "That's what I wanted to do someday, go out and find Bigfoot. But you know, the older I get, I kinda don't want him to be found anymore. It's better as a mystery."

"Mystery" was the one word that kept popping up throughout the conference. Whether in private conversations or public lectures, their voices crackled with excitement — mystery, mystery, mystery. You could almost hear the baritone narrator in their subconscious, sounding not unlike Leonard Nimoy from that "In Search Of" special from the late 70s (which, not coincidentally, was played in its entirety for guests prior to the conference), muttering about the elusive hunt for this creature we call... Bigfoot!

Those who've devoted their careers to studying Bigfoot, however, aren't quite so willing to let it remain mythology. And they certainly don't like being dismissed by the media as fools and charlatans. David Paulides, a speaker at the Texas conference and a Bigfoot researcher from Northern California, complained to me that "the biggest headlines are for the hoaxes and the people who probably aren't doing the best kind of research. The guys in the background, who are sitting in the woods and doing the hard work, they aren't getting the press they deserve.



"Like Dr. Meldrum," he continued, pointing to a man sitting behind a table and selling plaster cast Bigfoot footprints for $40 a pop. "He put his entire career on the line by coming out and saying, 'Hey, these things are real.' And he's still ridiculed about it. There's a hero for you to write about."

He may have a point that the media can be too quick to judge, but he and his peers need to share at least some of the blame. It was impossible not to smile during the conference when a lecturer was introduced as "the foremost expert and collector of Sasquatch hair", or a speaker discussed Bigfoot's criminal history (according to Native American legend) of kidnapping young boys and eating human flesh, or the disturbing revelation (made by Paulides) that Bigfoot might be drawn to menstruating women, and has been observed digging though garbage cans, looking for used tampons.

If they don't want to be ridiculed by the media, then they should try a little harder not to make it so easy.

To read part two, go here.

This story originally appeared, in a slightly different form, in vanityfair.com.