Thursday, April 01, 2010

Yer A Bunch A Idi0ts!

How is that for a title? Insult my audience. If there is one thing I have learned from something like Youtube is the way to get more people to watch your stuff is to anger them. It is the whole, "there is no negative publicity," thing. The unfortunate part is you get a bunch of people that do not watch your stuff because they like you, but quite the opposite. A mob mentality forms. I am totally not like that, and the last thing I need after a hard day at work is dealing with an angry mob during my "hobby" time.

In light of what today is...check the date...you get the idea...I thought I would offer up a screwball video and a little commentary on a screwball documentary.

You can figure this one out:

Left Turn to Nowhere (Youtube Version)

Left Turn to Nowhere (Vimeo Version)

Okay, a little while back I referred to a tv documentary that I felt almost made a mockery of what I do. It had nothing to do with me, but the coincidences were kind annoying. There was a series on the History Channel called Monster Quest. It deals with legendary animals/creatures and the paranormal from what I can tell. Well, I was told I needed to watch the episodes called, Sierra Sasquatch. At the risk of taking something too seriously that the producers were probably laughing at behind the scenes, here we go...

First, before I turned this on, I was thinking, "why is this on the History Channel?" Maybe Sci-Fi, Discovery, etc., but the History Channel? Of course, I realize there is the issue of putting stuff on to get ratings, but even this was so over the top I thought I better comment here.

This episode might have worked with me had it been somewhere in Canada I have never been, but the fact it was practically my backyard during just about every summer of my life was just too much. The premise of the episode is there have been Bigfoot sightings near the Mono Lake vicinity.

In my experiences, there are lots of animals that have watched me during my hikes, but I really seriously doubt a bunch of Bigfoot are out there. This particular area is remote, but not THAT REMOTE from people crossing by. I think I would have been more impressed with a documentary on wolverine's in the Sierra because they are out there, but are very rare to see.

They had a guy who was training at the marine base in 1985 that supposedly saw some while doing a training mission, they had a glider plane fly over Mono Lake and the June Lake area with radar, a hunter who allegedly encounter some a few years back, and one of the lead investigators supposedly saw one cross the road out near the June Lake area. Then the had 11-13 foot tracks at what looked like Grant Lake. Yeah, my shoe size range. The main thing they showed was video footage taken in the early 1990's at the western tufa site of Mono Lake.

We are told the video footage was done by a father with his family and was not seen until 17 years after while going through the video. Of course, the father was shown as a shadow since he feared for his families privacy. Yeah...right. ;) This is what showed up:

You can clearly see something moving by.
Is it a man with a parka or bigfoot? They went to the site above these days, and it is under water where the "creature" would have been standing. Take whatever you want from this, but these days video footage is very easy to manipulate. Inserting something like the above would not seem to difficult.

Here is what was sort of funny about this episode. They did it during the time I was there for a weekend in October. I hiked in both Lundy Canyon and near June Lake and both were the main featured areas in this documentary. I will blog about these in the future, but the funny thing is I seemed to remember driving by a bunch of people when I left Lundy Canyon that could have been a film crew. I might have walked right by some of these guys out there and not even known it. Check this out, this guy was out there looking for tracks:

I saw that plume of smoke in the background. I knew I was there the few hours that thing was up. This is right after we got done hiking in Lundy Canyon. It was a bizarre thing to see so I said we had to stop and take pictures.
A close up. That was there only on this day.
So, it was downright creepy they filmed in exactly the two main areas I hiked that weekend. I told my brother we need to stop hiking these areas because some idiots think were Bigfoot/Sasquatch. ;)

There is a sucker born every minute. Don't believe everything you see on tv. Alright, enough for the screwy fools day. More serious stuff next time.