Bigfoot: Not in HD
You pretend to be a dog at the letterbox to scare the mail carrier because you’re high, bored and unemployed. You agree to work for a cable network six thousand people watch to investigate the existence of Bigfoot. These are signs you’re a washed-up journalist who has decided to whore it out to the only bidder.
Once upon a time, I, Phil Kerr, wrote for The New York Times. Then I took DMT at a White House briefing and stripped from the waist down. I learned this much: hallucinogens and the White House don’t mix unless you’ve got the top job.
‘Do you believe in Bigfoot?’ asked Chuck, my new producer. My integrity was a lot more negotiable since skid row appeared in front of me.
‘Do you?’
‘Do I look like I believe?’
‘Do I?’
‘Not really. But you did have that meltdown in the White House.’
‘Twelve years as a respected journalist, and that’s all people remember.’
‘You did strip and try to douse an invisible fire.’
‘I was on DMT.’
‘Well, you’re on YouTube now. Seventeen million views. That’s notoriety.’
‘Notoriety of the wrong kind. Ted Bundy had notoriety.’
‘And the chicks love him.’
‘I don’t think they do.’
‘Trust me. Ted got inundated with love letters from lots of screwballs. He still has name recognition.’
‘That’s comforting.’
‘Lighten up! Your White House stunt has more views than Imagine.’
‘The John Lennon song?’
‘Yeah!’
‘Now I know you’re full of it…besides, I don’t want that level of fame.’
‘This is America — everybody wants that level of fame.’ I knew he was just trying to cash in on my DMT display, but I’m a man of my word once I’ve signed a legally binding contract.
The crew crawled up my hole wherever I went in Oregon. First stop was a place whiter and more male than a Klan meeting: The Bigfoot Hunter Convention. I tried not to sneer at people who may not be playing with a full deck. Instead, I pondered why they tell these stories, but I was struggling. Coming off a binge is not the time to launch yourself into a serial killer’s graveyard to search for something that isn’t real.
‘I bet you don’t believe in God either,’ said one swivel-eyed, pasty guy.
‘I don’t see the connection between God and Bigfoot,’ I said.
‘You wouldn’t,’ he said before walking away and leaving me to regret my DMT experiments again.
We left the stuffy confines of conference room B and encountered a woman named Tracey, who had been like Waldo at the convention. She spoke to me with a gun strapped to her hip and showed me pictures of a fuzzy blur she alleged was Bigfoot. It could’ve been her husband’s member for all I knew.
‘There’s more scientific basis for Bigfoot than there is God,’ Tracey said. One of my camera guys had a crucifix around his neck and didn’t enjoy Tracey’s comment; I managed to cite professionalism with a straight face.
We met the infectious founder of bigfootisreal.com, Rich McMenemy. ‘There are Bigfoot sightings around the world!’ Rich told me. ‘Indonesia, the Himalayas, Vancouver!’ Bigfoot walking through Central Park would be far too easy. ‘I think there could be as many as sixty Bigfoot creatures alive today!’ Rich showed me several blurry pictures.
‘Does no one own a good camera?’
‘I do. I took this one!’ My eyes squinted to see what was going on in this foggy scene of dense forestation and a brownish smudge.
‘I can’t tell what’s happening there.’
‘You’ll understand once you see Bigfoot.’ One of the crew circled an index finger beside her temple. These days, sanity seems a nebulous concept, and after my White house stunt, I shouldn’t judge anyone, but I would be lying if I said I wasn’t.
Douglas fir trees soared into the sky above a scene that made me think someone somewhere was laughing. God, local law enforcement, Bigfoot all guffawed at our expense. People from the convention dispersed into different wooded areas and left us with Rich, Tracey, and Puck. Puck, a wild-eyed hippie, is yet to come back from wherever he went in nineteen sixty-nine. If Bigfoot existed, and things went south, it was comforting to know I only had to outrun a septuagenarian who’d rather hug a drug cartel than sprint from it. In these alien surroundings, I’d take my victories wherever I could find them.
Rich assured me the middle of nowhere was a Bigfoot hotspot, and Puck agreed. Tracey thought another stretch of no landmark woods was better, but Rich was adamant and louder. At this point, he was an NFL running back on amphetamine, and you can’t negotiate with a person who is pacing into the unknown forty yards in front of you and your apathetic documentary crew.
A hush fell over us after Rich dropped to his knees. He had a face on him that suggested he’d regressed to childhood, and it was Christmas morning. There it was slowly walking, lumbering, not thirty yards from me.
‘Why’s it so fuzzy?’ I whispered to Tracey. She didn’t get a chance to answer before one of my crew, who didn’t trust the nonchalance of the out-of-focus creature, sprinted away with the grace of Godzilla. A gigantic, blurry face looked in our direction, and fear made rational thoughts disappear. Everything was real: Bigfoot, ghosts, werewolves. I turned around to ensure I was a healthy distance from Puck. If only my gym teacher could see me now.
‘It’s a shame everybody made it back intact,’ Chuck said. ‘A bit more drama would’ve really sold this.’
‘What about the video footage?’
‘It’s all blurry.’
‘That’s because Bigfoot’s blurry! Look at the trees behind him. They’re in HD, and he’s still out-of-focus.’
‘So, there’s an out-of-focus monster roaming the woods?’
‘Yeah.’
‘You need to go back and get more footage!’
‘I’m not going back into nature with God knows what. I’ll take my chances in New York with the murderers and hipsters.’
Inspired by the Mitch Hedberg joke, ‘I think Bigfoot is blurry, that’s the problem. It’s not the photographer’s fault. Bigfoot is blurry, and that’s extra scary to me. There’s a large, out-of-focus monster roaming the countryside.’
