Finding The Guy Who Dresses Up Like Bigfoot

The  Zaprover Film:

 Is this the Guy Who Dresses Up Like Bigfoot?

Hundreds of sightings.

Four investigators --- Batt,  Clift, Dumbo,  and Renault. 

Hello, my name is Batt Moneychanger and I'm the founder of a team of four investigators convinced that somewhere in the wilds of North America there lives a legendary creature I've tracked  for over 25 years.  Join us as we continue in our tireless quest ...

Finding the Guy Who Dresses Up Like Bigfoot!

Voice-Over:  The legends, tales, and folklore have long captured our imagination. They tell of a strange and elusive middle-aged man who dons a second-hand unconvincing ape suit and prances around in the woods dressed up like Bigfoot. Who is this guy? Why does he dress up in that suit? And is it hot in there?

Batt: Who is he?  It's my contention he's a random dude who perceives some oddball advantage in fooling others into thinking he's Bigfoot. Maybe he even expects to make money out of it! 

Clift: He probably thinks Bigfoot is in line to inherit some!  [Laughter]

Voice-Over:  Over the years Batt and the Guy Who Dresses Up Like Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization  (GWDULBFRO) have collected countless statements from eyewitnesses who claim to have seen the Guy Who Dresses Up Like Bigfoot.

Eyewitness No. 1:  I wuz huntin' an' thought I saw me some kind of critter, but it turned out to be a big fat feller puttin' on a monkey costume!  Durned if he don't come up to me and ask me to zip him up in the back! 

Eyewitness No. 2:  Me and the family, we saw him whizzing just outside the campgrounds,  the front of his costume fully unzipped. What a schmuck!

Voice-Over: The contentions of  the GWDULBFRO team are further bolstered by the famous Zaprover film, a four minute movie shot by the late Emile Zaprover in 1976 in a wooded area of Kentucky outside a strip mall near a suburban tract home development. 

Batt:  Yes, the Zaprover  film very explicitly shows a nondescript middle-aged fat white guy cavorting in his tiny back yard while wearing a gorilla suit such as you'd get at Halloween Adventure on close-out the first week of November.  And if you look carefully, you can even see the white picket fence of his split-level in the background!

Voice-Over: Skeptics, however, dismiss the film as a hoax.  Many say that instead of a fat loser in a suit, the Zaprover film actually depicts a feral creature never before known to humankind.  And the alleged fence? In reality a pile of bones stacked high from the human victims the beast has brutally ripped asunder.  

Clift:  Frankly we're used to such skepticism.  Columbus ... Galileo ...  the Wright Brothers ... us!  All we true visionaries must deal with those who doubt.

Batt:  But nothing will shake our belief that somewhere in the wild is a chunky overage nobody in a lame ape suit!

Voice-Over: This August the GWDULBFRO team traveled to a lightly wooded area of Oregon where Guy Who Dresses Up Like Bigfoot sightings have been plentiful.  First order of business: littering the area with bait calculated to attract the fat doofus' attention --- empty beer cans, NASCAR magazines, and all manner of porn. Then Dumbo has an odd premonition:

Dumbo:  I feel it!  I can feel the presence of the Guy Who Dresses Up Like Bigfoot in these marginal woods!

Voice-Over: Ahead in a clearing, the team spots something.  It looks to be an heavy-set under-educated man in a moth-eaten costume!   Clift and Dumbo try to make contact. 

Clift: Hey, Bubba!  Didya see the big game last Sunday? Got some brewskis here for you!

Dumbo: Dude, you have to  check out the female campers a mile or so back. One of 'em's packing some big boobies on her!

Voice-Over:  Then the unexpected. 

Dumbo:   It's got me!  Oh my God, it's got the  strength of ten men!!!

Batt, Clift, Renault:   Hang on, Dumbo!  We're ... umm.... rooting for you ... 

Dumbo:  AHHH, HELP ME, HELP ME!!! DEAR GOD, LOOK AT THOSE RAZOR SHARP TEETH!!!!

Voice-Over:  Back in the camp, Batt and the team are forced to concede no human alive has the kind of strength of whatever it is gored and maimed Dumbo. Verdict: this is not the Guy Who Dresses Up Like Bigfoot. 

Batt:  Sorry. Major Fail.  But there will be another day!

Voice-Over:  Yes, indeed,  another day!  The GWDULBFRO will persevere, or at least three out of four of them will persevere, and continue in their bold and indomitable quest ...

Finding the Guy Who Dresses Up Like Bigfoot!

Batt:  And one day, by God, I will find him!  Nothing  --- neither man, woman, child nor savage prehistoric man/beast --- will stop me!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The Tigerzetrunk

"Perry, come quickly!" 

"What is it, Harry?"  I shouted back.

"Out in the garden, something you've never seen before and won't see again!  A mythic creature!"

Racing outside, I saw the astounding animal!

"Incredible!" I cried.  "It's part zebra, tiger, elephant and more!  What is it?"

"It's called a Tigerzetrunk.  Legend has it that Odysseus first saw one on his travels and it hasn't been seen since!"

The tigerzetrunk looked up shyly, saw us, and ran.  I snatched a quick picture with my cell phone before it sped off into the bushes.  

"Wait til they see this!"  I said to Harry.

"Doubt anyone will believe you, they'll just think you photo shopped it."

"You're probably right, old friend," I said.  "Well, goodbye, Bigfoot, check you later."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Whether or not you believe me, it's all true!

That is, it's true that this is my weekly submission for the Fabulous Friday Fictioneers, with the picture prompt up top, the story below, and 124 words in praise of the equally fabulous tigerzetrunk therein.  Don't believe me?  Consult the views of the other Fictioneers with a mighty mythical click right here.

Yep, the tigerzetrunk sure was cute!  Just ask my friend Harry. 

Yes, Virginia, There is a Hubert

Various Sketches by Dr. Humber

There are all kind of conspiracy theorists nowadays, from those espousing alien visitations and the legitimacy of Bigfoot and Nessie to those asserting that Lorne Michaels keeps SNL on the air by eating the brains of NBC executives. No such theorist, however, is more strident and in-your-face than Professor Neil Humber of the University of Havertown PA.  

Professor Humber, who tweets as @flophouseflip, is a brilliant socio-economist and deep thinker whose ground-breaking socio-economic models and theorems have served to prove conclusively that socio-economic models and theorems are boring. After years of  intense study,  Dr. Humber has come to believe that a massive fraud has been perpetrated  on the people of the United States, and in fact, on the peoples of the world. 

"They don't want you to know!" Dr. Humber exclaimed,  his fist pounding upon the table, when we met last week.  "They continue to propagate the ages-old myth that parents provide toys and gifts to children at Christmas time! As if all parents from Baltimore to Botswana could make an objective, unbiased determination as to which of their children are naughty or nice and then implement annual Yuletide gift-giving accordingly and do it all in one night!" 

"Only one highly competent and dedicated entrepreneur could successfully accomplish this task," asserts Dr. Humber, "obviously working with a crack team of professionals he has himself vetted, assembled, and trained to perfection." 

Ladies and Gentlemen, meet Mr. Hubert "Santa" Claus!

Professor Humber posits the existence of a rotund, jolly, and white-bearded gentleman who every year on Christmas Eve delivers toys to good little boys and girls, rides in a sleigh pulled by eight tiny reindeer, and is originally from New Jersey.  The author of 17 books on the subject, including  His Name is Hubert! and Your Parents are Fucking Liars, Professor Humber  is the leading proponent of the so-called Single Gifter Theory. 

I asked Professor Humber how he came to believe so fervently in the existence of a Mr. Hubert Claus and the plot to cover him up. 

"In conjunction with parental malaise and incompetence, modern methods of manufacture and distribution are simply nowhere near effective enough for the Parental Multi-Gifter Model to be feasible," he told me.  "Hell, you can't even get anybody to come to the phone at a Toys R US any more!"

Parents foster the duplicity, Professor Humber contends, in order to have something guilt-invoking to hold over their children. "Clean your room, Jimmy," "do your homework, Sarah," "don't run off and marry that uber-tatooed grifter, Sylvester," go down a lot better with "don't forget, I'm the one who gave you the 12-speed bicycle at Christmas!" than "if you want some marbles, write to Hubert!"

As proof that the U.S. government is complicit in the cover-up, Professor Humber points to the alleged downing in 1947 of a "red-nosed reindeer" at Roswell New Mexico and the mysterious appearance in a Cherry Hill NJ shopping mall in 2006 of a cheerful and avuncular fat guy asking children what they wanted for Christmas who was swiftly escorted away by government agents. 

"What do you envision this Mr. Claus to look like?" I asked Professor Humber.

"His eyes sort of twinkle," he answered thoughtfully.  "Not only that, his dimples are merry, his cheeks are like roses, and his nose like a cherry. He's sort of like an older Zach Galifianakis, but less stoned-out."   

But then why doesn't Mr. Claus simply come forward and take credit for his prodigious efforts?

"I believe that he is a humble man," replied Dr. Humber, "who wishes only to speak not a word, go straight to his work, fill everyone's stockings, and then turn with a jerk. I'm not exactly sure who that jerk is, but I'm thinking Mr. Claus may sometimes hang out with former Vice-Presidential candidate John Edwards or Charlie Sheen."

Professor Humber will be speaking tonight at the Unitarian Church in Center City Philadelphia, and a small but enthusiastic crowd is expected to attend.  Most other people will claim to be busily Christmas shopping, but Dr. Humber says that the majority of them will be out drinking with co-workers, engaging in sexual encounters with random strangers, or watching "It's a Wonderful Life" on television.

So what do you think about the existence or non-existence of the elusive Mr. Claus?

Oh, and if you're reading this, Brandon, clean up your goddamn room! 
Remember who got you that X-Box last Christmas.

 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~