Sasquatch

Apparently, it is possible to have too much of a good thing. In response to a wave of civic activism or, in some cases, cynicism, the White House announced this week that it's upping the threshold required for petitioners to receive a response from the government. As Andrew Khouri reported Wednesday, no longer will petitions that reach 25,000 online signatures trigger a response from the government. It's now 100,000 in 30 days. Thanks a lot, all 50 states. Though White House Director of Digital Strategy Macon Phillips didn't say it in his blog outlining the new policy, the more-difficult-to-reach threshold looks to be a response to a number of petitions the White House has received since President Obama was elected.

Apparently, it is possible to have too much of a good thing. In response to a wave of civic activism or, in some cases, cynicism, the White House announced this week that it's upping the threshold required for petitioners to receive a response from the government. As Andrew Khouri reported Wednesday, no longer will petitions that reach 25,000 online signatures trigger a response from the government. It's now 100,000 in 30 days. Thanks a lot, all 50 states. Though White House Director of Digital Strategy Macon Phillips didn't say it in his blog outlining the new policy, the more-difficult-to-reach threshold looks to be a response to a number of petitions the White House has received since President Obama was elected.

"How cool would it be if we made a movie that looked like recovered footage from some kind of expedition gone wrong? Nobody's seen that before!" Only that sort of willful ignorance could have inspired "Bigfoot: The Lost Coast Tapes. " There's simply no other explanation as to how filmmakers could seem so blissfully unaware of the entire cycle/glut of films that present themselves as "found footage. " "Bigfoot" wanders straight into every tired trope and trap of the conceit. By the time a character actually says, "No matter what happens, don't stop filming" the movie has long-since toppled over into some kind of mad self-parody, lost in its own hall of mirrors of awfulness.

"How cool would it be if we made a movie that looked like recovered footage from some kind of expedition gone wrong? Nobody's seen that before!" Only that sort of willful ignorance could have inspired "Bigfoot: The Lost Coast Tapes. " There's simply no other explanation as to how filmmakers could seem so blissfully unaware of the entire cycle/glut of films that present themselves as "found footage. " "Bigfoot" wanders straight into every tired trope and trap of the conceit. By the time a character actually says, "No matter what happens, don't stop filming" the movie has long-since toppled over into some kind of mad self-parody, lost in its own hall of mirrors of awfulness.

Imagine a hulking, growling, 8-foot-tall woodland creature so elusive that professional trackers can't find it, scientists can only speculate about it and believers can't prove -- definitively -- that it exists. Hiding deep in the forest may be your modus operandi, Bigfoot, but Hollywood and Madison Avenue are pushing you -- however reluctantly -- into the spotlight. A slew of documentary, TV and film projects including Animal Planet's current hit "Finding Bigfoot," and a Sasquatch film trilogy from "Blair Witch Project" director Eduardo Sanchez are poised to get past the old grainy images of yesterday and give the hairy 800-pound biped a high-def close-up.

Sitting in an office cluttered with toy gorillas, plastic skeletons and books about primate evolution, anthropologist Grover Krantz was on the phone recently making arrangements to send casts of some rare footprints to France. It is a normal activity for a physical anthropologist whose specialty is human evolution. What is unusual is these 14 1/2-inch footprints are not those of ancient man or ape or even bear. Krantz claims that they belong to Sasquatch--also known as Big Foot.

SUNDAY "If you guys were the inventors of Facebook, you'd have invented Facebook" from "The Social Network" is our pick in the newly minted best-line-from-a-movie category at the "2011 MTV Movie Awards. " "SNL's" Jason Sudeikis hosts. (MTV, VH1, 9 p.m.) Would-be cryptozoologists traipse through America's backwoods and bayous in hopes of "Finding Bigfoot" — the mythic man-beast also known as Sasquatch — in this new reality series. Do us a favor: Ask him where he buys his shoes.

At 5 years old, makeup effects designer Robert Hall went to the drive-in for the first time for a double feature of "Dawn of the Dead" and "Alien." His mother had planned to cover her son's eyes, but he stared at the screen in rapt fascination. "I really was into how they blew the zombies' heads off in 'Dawn of the Dead,' " he says. "Because even at that point, I knew that it couldn't be real, and I just wanted to know how they achieved it. So it was more of an inspirational sort of outing."

Abarat Absolute Midnight Clive Barker Joanna Cotler/HarperCollins, $24.99, ages 13 and up In the third installment of this lavish series, a teen girl is menaced by a powerful sorceress in a mystical fantasy world. The Annotated Peter Pan J.M. Barrie, edited with an introduction by Maria Tatar W.W. Norton, $39.95, all ages The tale of a forever youthful boy and his friends in a handsome edition edited by an authority on classic fairy tales.

Full disclosure: I am no Bigfoot junkie. In fact, before strapping my mom, my 3-year-old and myself in the car and traveling north on U.S. 101 to Arcata, Calif., then swinging east on California 299 to the blink-and-you'll-miss-it town of Willow Creek, I believed all things Sasquatch were laughable at best. I knew that lots of honest folks did believe that Bigfoot or Sasquatch or, as crypto-zoologists call him, Gigantopithecus , not only exists but also thrives in Klamath River country between the Humboldt County coast and the Shasta Cascade.

Imagine a hulking, growling, 8-foot-tall woodland creature so elusive that professional trackers can't find it, scientists can only speculate about it and believers can't prove -- definitively -- that it exists. Hiding deep in the forest may be your modus operandi, Bigfoot, but Hollywood and Madison Avenue are pushing you -- however reluctantly -- into the spotlight. A slew of documentary, TV and film projects including Animal Planet's current hit "Finding Bigfoot," and a Sasquatch film trilogy from "Blair Witch Project" director Eduardo Sanchez are poised to get past the old grainy images of yesterday and give the hairy 800-pound biped a high-def close-up.

Abarat Absolute Midnight Clive Barker Joanna Cotler/HarperCollins, $24.99, ages 13 and up In the third installment of this lavish series, a teen girl is menaced by a powerful sorceress in a mystical fantasy world. The Annotated Peter Pan J.M. Barrie, edited with an introduction by Maria Tatar W.W. Norton, $39.95, all ages The tale of a forever youthful boy and his friends in a handsome edition edited by an authority on classic fairy tales.

Full disclosure: I am no Bigfoot junkie. In fact, before strapping my mom, my 3-year-old and myself in the car and traveling north on U.S. 101 to Arcata, Calif., then swinging east on California 299 to the blink-and-you'll-miss-it town of Willow Creek, I believed all things Sasquatch were laughable at best. I knew that lots of honest folks did believe that Bigfoot or Sasquatch or, as crypto-zoologists call him, Gigantopithecus , not only exists but also thrives in Klamath River country between the Humboldt County coast and the Shasta Cascade.

SUNDAY "If you guys were the inventors of Facebook, you'd have invented Facebook" from "The Social Network" is our pick in the newly minted best-line-from-a-movie category at the "2011 MTV Movie Awards. " "SNL's" Jason Sudeikis hosts. (MTV, VH1, 9 p.m.) Would-be cryptozoologists traipse through America's backwoods and bayous in hopes of "Finding Bigfoot" — the mythic man-beast also known as Sasquatch — in this new reality series. Do us a favor: Ask him where he buys his shoes.

NOTE:   This is a blog about two guys attempting to lose weight over a six-week period.  They kicked off their weight loss "strategies" on Monday . I guess I really can’t blame my holiday weight explosion on my niece, Randi.  But all it took was one look at the Sasquatch Cyclops cookie she made for me and hopes of having a low-cal Christmas flew out the window. I thought that I could go back home and proudly eat celery stalks and lettuce while my family porked out on the normal holiday fare.

Bigfoot or big, fat lie? Whenever someone reports seeing the hairy beast (details are always fuzzy) or capturing it on film (images always grainy), the news scares up a dubious debate of international proportions. Friday was just the latest episode in the sasquatch show.

Entering the debate over the existence of sasquatch, a.k.a. Bigfoot, a Canadian laboratory will test hair samples that several residents of Teslin, Yukon, say were left when the large (but so far mythological) creature ran through their town in early July. University of Alberta wildlife geneticist David Coltman said scientists would compare the DNA to that of large animals in the Yukon.

NOTE:   This is a blog about two guys attempting to lose weight over a six-week period.  They kicked off their weight loss "strategies" on Monday . I guess I really can’t blame my holiday weight explosion on my niece, Randi.  But all it took was one look at the Sasquatch Cyclops cookie she made for me and hopes of having a low-cal Christmas flew out the window. I thought that I could go back home and proudly eat celery stalks and lettuce while my family porked out on the normal holiday fare.

At 5 years old, makeup effects designer Robert Hall went to the drive-in for the first time for a double feature of "Dawn of the Dead" and "Alien." His mother had planned to cover her son's eyes, but he stared at the screen in rapt fascination. "I really was into how they blew the zombies' heads off in 'Dawn of the Dead,' " he says. "Because even at that point, I knew that it couldn't be real, and I just wanted to know how they achieved it. So it was more of an inspirational sort of outing."

At a glance, professor D. Jeffrey Meldrum would seem to be a star on the Idaho State University campus here. A popular instructor, Meldrum has written or edited five books, written dozens of articles in academic journals, and ranged across the American West and Canada for his field research. Famed primatologist Jane Goodall wrote a blurb for his latest book, which she said "brings a much-needed level of scientific analysis" to a raging debate. The problem is the debate: Is Bigfoot real?