Pop Culture

The Automatic Automatic’s Monster

Now, for a little break from the news of the Nessie video, Tubesquatch, and other real world events. How about a musical interlude, as rock comedy meets cryptids, if not cryptozoologists? Enjoy this Sunday distraction.

Loren is Youtubed

I discussed YouTube a few days ago, coining the word “Tubesquatch.” Before the week was over, I’d been Youtubed myself. I guess the lesson is, be careful about what you write. Ha. The following is the clip from CNN’s “Paula Zahn Now,” for June 1, 2007, on Nessie, which was run in the final moments of her program. It was originally scheduled to be five minutes long. What happened is typical for the fate of a combined human interest-animal-mystery teaser held to the end of such a program. Especially it seems in live news talkshows, such segments are squeezed for [...]

CNN’s “Paula Zahn Now” Tonight

I will be a guest on CNN tonight, Friday, June 1, 2007, between 8-9 p.m. ET, on Paula Zahn Now, discussing the Gordon Holmes Nessie footage. Yes, this video is exciting a lot of people, but I wish it would have happened some other week, from a purely personal point of view. As the producer was trying to convince me to come on the show via emails and several calls – my first priority, after all, is that it’s my son’s senior prom this evening – she says: “There is a tremendous interest in the story (the most popular story [...]

Radio-Controlled Nessie Video

The Gordon Holmes footage newly taken at Loch Ness, which you can view the stablized version here, should have us looking with caution at the footage of an already existing radio-controlled Nessie. Recognize the above image? Is this one of the two photographs of the original “Surgeon’s Photograph” from 1934? Or is it something else? Since 2005, the year when the Japanese toy company Takara introduced their radio-controlled Nessie, we all have to be careful and questioning when looking at new loch and lake videos of cryptids. Here are some photos of the model, in two different color versions, with [...]

Mystery Fish Postcard Solved? Megamouth?

Could the solution of the mystery fish photograph on an antique postcard (first noted at Cryptomundo on November 29, 2005) be at hand? Could this postcard reveal evidence of a beached megamouth shark decades before the species was officially verified? (Click on image to see full size version the Mystery Fish Photo postcard, enhanced by shockbeton) Mystery Fish head, click to enlarge. Does the head of the megamouth look similar to that of the Mystery Fish’s head from the old postcard? The above photograph (and the one below) of this 2004 megamouth are courtesy of Ton & Marjan of the [...]

“Mythic” Opens

The exhibition, “Mythic Creatures” opens at The American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) in New York City on Saturday, May 26, 2007. Two good articles on the exhibition and the opening are (click on the title of each article for the link): “The Surprising Realities of Mythical Creatures,” LiveScience; “Exploring the Nature of the Unnatural,” New York Times. On some level, I was surprised to see Richard Ellis is a co-curator of the exhibition, while on another, I wasn’t. Richard has painted and illustrated various museums and books with some outstanding images of marine life, has a deep interest in [...]

Bigger Than Hogzilla!

The story goes, the animal is one very big wild boar shot in Alabama. As Mark Frauenfelder said over at Boing Boing, “It’s an AP story, so I am guessing this astonishing photo is legit.” Jamison Stone, 11 years old, shot the wild boar that weighed in at a “staggering 1,051 pounds and measured 9-feet-4 from the tip of its snout to the base of its tail.” The boy was hunting with his father Mike Stone in east Alabama on May 3, 2007, when he killed Hogzilla II, with a .50- caliber revolver. They chased it for three hours before [...]