The Big Foot Theory
By Mike Marino

No such thing, you say? Big furry things that go barefootin' and big footin' in the Left Coast Peoples Republic of the Pacific Northwest? Too many better living through chemistry hallucinagenic drugs over the years have created cretinous creatures of immense mythical stature, more so than those peskly little green angry red planet Roswellian aliens or a Jurassic Scot Nessie that only grainy film will attest too? Who'se been smoking the redwoods anway?

When it comes to "The Ugly American" Bigfoot has that contest won in spades, but is he or she or it an American original? Is Big Foot a guy...or a girl? Damn ugly either gender, are there Pink Big Foot's..homosexual Sasquatchs...the term Sasquatch does conjur up some weird sexual configurations. Is it religious?

No doubt about it..there ain't no pussyfootin' when your Bigfootin' and try, just try to squash the Sasquatch legend. It's a realm of myth guarded by the Keepers and Creepers of the unexplained...the more unexplained..the better. Leaves room for desert in the form of conspiracy. The Northwest is particularly susceptible to Bigfoot brainscan bravado. Remember in the Northwest they have given us Randy Weaver and Ted Kascinski..two people who spent too much time foraging and hallucinating in the Northwoods of the Northwest. Nazis, Uni-Bombers and Bigfoot...the Larry, Moe and Curly of Northwest pop culture.

Don't forget D.B. Cooper who parachuted into physical oblivion but certainly not local legend as his face adorns many a tee-shirt in Seattle and Portland to this day. A Highjacking High Priest who set sail over the Northwest forests with a parachute and a bag o' cash. He actually was met on the ground by a tribe of Bigfoots or Bigfeet as Oregonians refer to them, and is now their tribal leader leading a hidden underground life in the pine trees emulating the late, great Col. Kurtz in Apocalypse Now..the horror...the horror.

The land of yaks and yurts and all things that begin with "Y" have given us the legendary Yeti. a purely Tibetan incarnation. Is it real, or just a happy holy hoax of Bhuddist monks with an unholy sense of humour? The Dali Lama alone knows the truth..and he aint giving it up! Yoga to Yeti, Yoga Bear, Yogi Bear, Yogi Yeti, Yoga Bear, Yoga Yeti..the fictional beast that guards the gates to Shangri-la where the elusive monks of Bhuddism conceal the secret of remaining young to keep the Yeti legend alive for decades. Yeti on the other hand is pure speculation as to it's source of myth and legend. Hallucinating monasticians looking too deeply for the meaning of life, stumbling across and large furry prescence they couldn't explain...something that needed no explanation and any student of zen could have explained simply by not saying a word? "Holy Tao Batman, it's Yeti!"

Unlike the Loch Ness Monster, which is only seen by tipsy Scots who'se kilts are wrapped too tight, Big Foot is seen everywhere from New York to Michigan to Texas to California to Oregon-Washington..(both states are the same, Siamese Twins joined at the hip...the only difference is that one of them thinks they're hip, the other actually is!) Canada is probably the root of all Big Foot evil, the land where the legend was born...probably around a lumberjack campfire, as was Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox...these loggers were sitting around with a Mershcaum full of fine Quebec marijuana or Halifax Hashish when these tall tales were hewn from the experience of the great outdoors.

Sooner or later, yet another Yeti had to surface on The Trail of Fears and all roads to this myth vs. reality adventure leads to the doorstep of Canada where smoking dried beaver tail has taken it's toll over the years in creating and spinning yards of yeti yarns that morphed into something oh so Canadian...Sasquatch! Native Canadians, the north of the border version of Native Americans like words that begin with "S" as much as non-indigenous Canadians who share the vast lands of the Great White North...Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, and the ultimate Canadian apology word..."Sorry."

Enter....Sasquatch as in Sasquatchewan could be the name of a new province. Remember in a land so vast you always have room for one more...Canada gave us a blue ox named Babe, a feminine named bit of cattle lore that had a hefty set of balls on her, go figure...a Transexual bovine version of Sarah Palin...big balls...small brain...a tea party Tea Bag.

Somehow, somewhere, Sasquatch crossed the border of sanity into the insanity of American folklore and became..Big Foot...we are a simple people..Big Foot will do...Europe gave us the artful game of chess...we turned it into checkers! Must have been the plaid layout of the board that appealed to our simplistic nature. We Americas worship mediocrity and love to dumb things down at any cost and Sasquatch is not immune to our desire to do just that. "Look at the size of that footprint, Ed..man, what do you make of it?" Ed replies dropping his jaw and empty whiskey bottle at the same time..."Why, looks like some sort of big footed monster, Billy Bob..." Yep, they both agree ..."Yep, a goddamn bigfoot is what it is, a goddamn bigfoot..." Whooweeeee...almost dropped my dentures over that 'un. Lets tell the wives over dinner then afterwards go outside and practice for the big weekend "Deliverance" re-enactment festival..."

The mythical monster inhabits uninhibited in the Pacific Left Coast forests, if you buy into the dream of Bigfoot afficianado's everywhere. There is but on bit of celluloid "proof" and I use that term loosely that purportedly has a sauntering bugger of beast hightailing it away from a mere mortal human...now, it's been my experience and others, that a behemoth as large as a grizzly bear or a cougar or an ape..would run from us...in fact...we would be considered fair "game" for the game to devour.

Bigfoot..part gorilla, along with other parts unknown would have feasted heartily on any Oregonion or Washingtonian that happened to cross his carnivorous path. The other puzzling aspect of Bigfoot sightings is the high incidence of Redneck to Bigfoot that exists. Recently in the Carolina's a man reported a sighting and even called 911..it made all the news and don't know how you missed it. Here's a guy who lives in the woods alone, probably drinking shine for breakfast, owns a small arsenal of backwoods weaponry, claims Bigfoot was attacking his dog and yet not one shot was fired off..not even a warning shot over the head, the type you fire over the heads of Christmas carolers when they come a caroling, tra, la, tra, la, tra, la.

In a subsequent interview he (affect drawl here and put yourself in a hillbilly frame of mind)..."I seed him over thar and I rough talked him!" Rough Talked Him? What the fuck is that all about...the rough talk by the way consisted of him yelling.."Git...Git..Git" and of course the creature done got as he must have feared for his life at the sight of an overweight, overly plaid dressed Ted Kascinsky comes "rough talkin'" him. This is the reason people should not live alone in the woods removed from society. If this guy were ever in jail, I can see him "rough talkin" old Bubba in the bottom bunk..Now..who's your daddy?

Is it a carnivore though? A herbivore...omnivore...or none of the above and just a hallucinatory outbreak by the uneducated who want 15 minutes of Warholion fame even if they don't have a clue who Warhol is? They search for the beast but never was a skeleton found or other ghastly remains...droppings...c'mon you can follow a rabbit trail on their tiny offerings of waste...Bigfoot? Man that shit has to be as big as the Rock of Gibraltor! Bigfoots always travel solo...no primate mates in evidence...no little Son of Bigfoots found romping gaily through the trees...Footprints but no rubbings on trees or rocks that have left a hair or two or piece of skin to extract DNA from...certainly a meticulously clean machine. No droppings, no rubbings, and no photos.

With technology today and the clarity of optics not one decent photo has been taken and the strangest part of this whole mystery...everyone who goes in search of Bigfoot..never takes a camera along nor a gun to fell the giant...if I'm in the deep forest purposely looking for something that by rights can rip me to tinier shreds thant he Nixon tapes...I'm gonna be armed...and dangerous, scared shitless too, but armed at least. Today we snap photos of the most innocuous things on our cell phones...yet, somehow no can remember to bring their camera along when searching for Bigfoot..remember King Kong and the search for the mythical beast on skull island? A whole fucking film crew, gas bombs and guns...Sasquatch gear? A pint of whiskey and a very redneck.

One of the other fascinating aspects of this mythical monster is it's supposed role in historic events and is the only explanation that conspiracy theorists can profer. Take the Kennedy Assasination..rumor has it that a large hairy ape-like creature was spotted on the Grassy Knoll. Probably a dark, swarthy Italian made mob guy...real greaseball kind of stuff, but new information has come to the surface over the decades of investigation. Now, the Zapruder film missed this missing link of the puzzle but does explain why Jackie Kennedy was trying to hot foot it out of the limo...Bigfoot scared the privileged pants off of her and her mind kept replaying scenes from King Kong where Faye Ray was palmed and pampered and became the surrogate wife of Kong in his cave. Besides the name Jacqueline Bouvier Bigfoot just didnt have the same panache and resonance of Bouvier Kennedy or Onassis or the hip hop version, Jackie -O!

Bigfoot has also been implicated in the Hoffa disappearance. Posing as a trade unionist, Big Foot managed to infiltrate the Teamsters Union and get up close and personal with James Riddle Hoffa. Seems Jimmy got out of prison and immediately got off on the wrong foot of the mob, and Bigfoot was called in to "do the deed"...Hoffa went to lunch, never ate desert and today is buried in the rainforest of the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State and not the Meadowlands of New Joisey as has been wrongly surmised over the years. The plot thickens as now they have Big Foot sightings on Belle Isle, the island park in the middle of the Detroit River that is more akin to a dark back alley for pimps and junkies in the summer, and has never been mistaken for a tranquil rainforest with Enya music coming from every limb, ad nauseaum. There is also supposedly a large bronze fist of Joe Louis, tons of heavy metal fist posed and poised to strike Windsor, Ontario at any minute. Some Canadians have claimed that the fist of Joe Louis bears a striking resemblance to the fist of Sasquatch whose progeny south of the Canadian Border have become the clan of Big Foot, eh?

There are no doubt Bigfoot female impersonators..Carol Doda for example was one but those weren't big feet she was sporting, but they were the stuff of pure urban legend. Recently a Russian spy ring with one hot red Anna was caught red-handed, turns out she was reporting to a Siberian Big Foot named Uri who used to be KGB. There are also innuendo from the northwest again, that Al Gore fondled and attacked a Big Foot Masseuse who accuses him of being a crazed sex poodle...I can more readily accept a mythical Sasquatch than I can a "crazed sex poodle" or Al Gore even being remotely sexually interesting to anyone.

Anyway you look at it...Big Foot is here to stay in one form or another. Myth, reality or just something to "rough talk" when it charges at you like a crazed sex poodle or any politician. Good God, run...It's Al Gore!