Waiting for Bigfoot

There are a certain minority of people in this country, a small but very vocal group, who continue to believe in something long after the rest of us have come around on the issue and see that, whatever our beliefs, times are changing. I'm speaking, of course, of the people who believe in Bigfoot (or Sasquatch, as the Native Americans never called him).

Last night, after a great HIMYM, I was bereft of tv-viewing options so I thought I'd check out Finding Bigfoot, which of course is all about not finding Bigfoot, no matter how hard you try. And these people that were trying were really putting their hearts into it. You have Matt Moneymaker (not sure if that's an alias), Bobo (pretty sure that is an alias), and a couple of other people who have devoted their lives to searching for an elusive creature whose proof of life has never been found. Let me say that again: they're looking for something that doesn't exist. Like unicorn enthusiasts or Obama-is-destroying-this-country conservatives, however, they persist in their way of belief.

I mock them, yes, but deep down I understand the appeal. As a young child weaned on Unsolved Mysteries and other "searching for stuff" TV shows, I have an enquiring mind, no matter how skeptical it can be when confronted with hard evidence. And there's nothing saying that, ten or twenty years from now, a Sasquatch or Loch Ness monster will be found alive (though the fact that we've never found fossils of either, and that the cited photographic evidence for both has been debunked). Stranger things have happened, and continue to happen. But somewhere beyond the border of believing and knowing, facts can get lost. And along with facts, your mind. These people left their minds behind some time ago.

But I have to admire their zeal, even if I question the pursuit to which they devote so much of their energy. It's the ultimate scientific find, if it ever comes to pass that Bigfoot does exist but just really, really values his privacy. It's like alien life being found on Mars, or a Republican who can win back Latino voters after all the anti-immigration talk of the past few election cycles. It will make news if it ever turns out that the Bigfoot hunters were right all along.

I envy people that love their jobs, that love what they do. I love to write, though I haven't gotten paid for it in a while (and even then, it wasn't much to live off of). So in that sense, I can't be too harsh on the Finding Bigfoot crew, no matter how much I snicker at the actions they undertake to find him, or the precise scientific jargon they employ to describe what is essentially a figment of their imagination. Sometimes the nuts are right...just probably not in this case.

So I guess, if this whole writing-for-a-living thing never quite pans out, I can set out for the areas of the country with the highest percentage of Sasquatch activity and track them down in the name of science. Though I do wonder if the cast of Finding Bigfoot aren't having a little fun at our expense...now there may be evidence of that, for sure. I mean, what grown man encourages people to refer to him as "Bobo"?

Whatever else, Finding Bigfoot is more plausible than any of those ghost-hunting shows. Granted, there could very well be supernatural things out there, I just don't think they'll respond to guys who dress like roadies for Justin Bieber...

She & Him, "Home"/Regina Spektor, "Us"

Oh yes it's ladies' night, and the feeling's right...

I think I first noticed Zooey Deschanel in the big-screen adaptation of Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which a lot of true-blue Adams fans hated because it dramatically reinterpreted the whole premise of the radio show/novels upon which it was based (namely that it allowed for a love interest, as played by Deschanel). I was not truly aware of Hitchhiker's before the film, at least not enough to be offended. Besides, I got lost in Miss Deschanel's blue, blue eyes.

As it turns out, she's also a singer, and not in the way that most actresses "can also sing"; she actually sounds great when she's singing, and her band She & Him (a duo project with M. Ward) is credible in indie- and alternative-rock circles. At least they were the last time I worried about such things (maybe two or three years ago. I'm telling you, once you hit your thirties, indie-rock just passes you by. It's like the episode of South Park where each generation's favorite music sounds literally like shit to the previous or succeeding generation). I have so far acquired both of She & Him's albums (Volumes One and Two, helpfully titled) and look forward to any third entry in the discography as it becomes available.

What makes Zooey credible and fun to listen to is the fact that...well, I'm not sure what, but she's just so much into it that you can't help but get sucked in, even if you think her country leanings are a little cornball or that after a while, songs don't really resemble one another as visit the same territory sonically and lyrically. It's a matter of taste, however, and one of the songs I come back to is "Home," from their second album. It's a lyrically weird but ultimately satisfying song about that most elusive of human emotions, the need to love and be loved. The line about "I wanna be where your heart is home" is my favorite, I'm a sappy romantic at heart (my inability to actually make a relationship work with a real, living and breathing and complicated female nonwithstanding).

But first and foremost, Zooey is an actress, and a good one; in (500) Days of Summer, you can't stay mad at her even as she breaks Joseph Gordon-Levitt's heart. Who wouldn't fall in love with the character she plays (or the one that she plays on New Girl, her show on Fox)? Regina Spektor's beautiful "Us" is the opening-song credits, after a narrator has already warned us that "this is not a love story" (though the part that sticks with me is the line about sad British pop music and misreading The Graduate, both of which describe me in my early adulthood. I even have a Joy Division shirt like the one JGL wears later in the movie, of the "Love Will Tear Us Apart" sleeve). It captures perfectly the ecstasy of love, though with its placement in a film that is essentially about two people who find love but not with each other, it does seem like an odd choice. Perhaps "Love Stinks" would be more accurate in the sense of what happens in the film, but it wouldn't work with the sentiment that is conveyed: you have to risk getting hurt. That's a lesson I think we all shy away from time to time, letting ourselves think that someone else wouldn't see that about us which makes us lovable if we were vulnerable enough to show it. Hell, I still catch myself thinking like this sometimes, but I'm working on it.

Until I find my own Summer Finn or Jessica Day, I can always listen to the two songs here, or watch anything that Miss Deschanel is in (she's kind of my celebrity crush at the moment; we'd bond over the Smiths and bad Eighties romantic comedies, I think). Maybe then I'll find someone into whose heart I can make my home. Here's hoping...

Now I Can Afford Things

Last weekend, I was as giddy as a schoolgirl. This was brought on by a very important change in my fortunes: my tax money came due. Brother, I was gonna go through that like Elvis at a banana. peanut-butter, and bread stand.

Not really, of course: I got bills to pay, every month, and even after I pay them for one month, it's almost time for the next month's payments. I'd been living paycheck-to-paycheck since at least the end of January, when all sorts of things came due in addition to my usual bills. February was not a particularly good month for me.

But it ended on a couple of positive notes: my friend Sara found a job (awesome), and I got my tax money back without having to immediately spend it on car- or health-related stuff.

For now...

But I'm pretty good right now, I have to say, for the first time in a long time, at least in terms of finances. Yes, I know that I didn't get back a whole lot compared to other people (I doubt Donald Trump would wipe his nose with the amount of tax money I got back), but that's his problem, not mine. As these past couple of months have proven, having too little money can cause pain and misery. But having too much of it can also do so.

Before you accuse me of free-market socialism (if that's even a thing), let me explain: I know that the rich, for all that they can buy (private islands, presidential elections, yes-men who won't look askance at your bright orange spray-tan), can't buy happiness, at least not without the assistance of a needle, some coke spoons, or the silence of a hotel staff when the idea of inviting hookers to your room turns out to be a very bad idea. There are as many miserable rich people as there are poor, though their miserableness comes in better-fitting clothing. Envy of the rich can be as much a dead-end as devoting your life to doing as much meth as you can. The rich aren't any better than us, they can just afford to hide it better.

So I don't want to be rich, but I've had a pretty good taste of being poor and that's not appealing either. Basically, my philosophy is this: have enough to take care of bills and myself, but with some left over for shit that I don't need but want. How to go about achieving that? I haven't figured that out yet. Damn you, philosophy!

But I do know a few things: first, I want to get a laptop. Not a tablet, not a smartphone, but a laptop. I want to be able to write long pieces again for publication by reputable websites and magazines. I also want a laptop so that I can surf the internet at the local lib (they have free Wi-Fi). And I'd like to re-start my iTunes account, either with all the stuff I had (assuming it's not lost) or afresh with newer stuff (I've bought a few CDs since last June, there's a nice collection there waiting to assault my earbuds). That's it...oh, and any car issues that may come up, I want something in the bank so that I can handle it.

But otherwise I'm good. I realize that things will come up, and I will likely have to spend some of that tax money more than I might perhaps like. But keeping things in perspective, this allows me to pay my bills as close to time as possible (I still might try to stretch out some things here and there, depending on what comes up) and perhaps even have a life besides work and home (maybe, anyway. Fingers crossed). More than anything, for the first time in a long time I think I can handle shit-storms that may come my way, at least for now.

That is, until the Great Dragon Apocalypse of 2014...

Yeats Rolls

Sometimes, God gives you a wink...I was at a local Chinese buffet place Saturday, pretty good selection (it's telling that many such buffets offer a lot of stuff besides your usual Chinese-buffet mainstays like fried rice and General Tso's chicken; they're having to expand their range to accomodate all us foodies out here), when I looked at a sign for one of the items, yeast rolls. Only the way it was spelled was "yeats rolls."

Now, I love good puns based on the names of long-dead Anglo-Irish poets because I grew up loving Monty Python (once described as "a terrible waste of an OxBridge [Oxford and Cambridge, the two universities where most of the troupe went to college] education"). MP excelled at taking people you'd only hear about in history or literature classes and turning them into punchlines for their bizarre, absurdist humor. So when I saw "yeats rolls," I went to W.B. Yeats, the Irish poet whose work I'm passingly familiar with (I read some of his stuff in a poetry class I took at Clemson, where the professor was trying to tell us about all the rules in poetry. I don't like rules when I'm writing, so needless to say I won't be challenging Dylan Thomas' status as a poet anytime soon). Yeats exists in my mind as a slightly befuddled-looking old schoolteacher type, based on the photographs of him on collections of his works. Apparently he was a baker as well (not really, but come on...English majors, back me up on how funny this is! No, just me?).

If W.B. Yeats was responsible for the rolls, I wondered, did that mean that Lord Byron was the brains behind shrimp fried rice? Was John Keats too busy perfecting sesame chicken to take his TB medication? Did I have too much time on my hands to ponder these irrelevant and uttler baseless ideas?

Yes indeed, but give me credit: I didn't point out to the staff the error of their sign. I'm simply snickering about it now behind their backs (and not revealing the name of the place, as I'd like to go back. Did I mention how good their Yeats rolls are?).