2011-02-18

Let Bigfoot be!

The last day or two, I've seen an unfamiliar term. At least one media story has characterized the PM's treatment of international development sock-puppet minister Bev Oda as "Bigfooting".

Us semimythical critters have a circuit. We all know everybody else. I'm proud and privileged to say that back in the day I shared stages with "the" Bigfoot when we gigged psychedelic festivals at the height of his fame. Later, after the biz lost its innocence, went commercial, and the suits and beancounters and copyright grifters co-opted everything that was good and pure, Ol' Biggie took to the nostalgia tour circuit to keep hairy body and soul together. When I had backstage passes, I'd look for him in the greenroom and catch up over a complimentary sody pop or two.

Ol' Biggie was one of the true giants, an enigmatic prince of a guy who was talented beyond belief. It was perhaps inevitable that a fire that burned so brightly would start to consume itself. But even during his later, well-documented struggles with the dark, self-destructive downsides of early fame, he never lost his innate sweetness, his openness or his generosity. His subsequent choice to become a virtual recluse was one he took to protect himself, and one that nobody who knew him would begrudge. I don't even know how to find him anymore, really. But I'm glad he finally got clean and sober.

So, if Harper has the temerity to think he can ever authentically Bigfoot anybody, I say only this:

"Prime Minister, I served with Bigfoot, I knew Bigfoot, Bigfoot was a friend of mine. Prime Minister, you're no Bigfoot."

2 comments:

4th Dwarf said...

"Bigfooting" as a verb is new to me too.

Here's a possible definition from the Urban Dictionary:

1. Where one person physically staggers around in an uncoordinated way whilst vomiting (due to ingestion of copius amounts of alcohol) - named for it's astounding visual likeness to alleged video footage of the sasquatch known in Northern America as "Bigfoot" who roams around in the same uncoordinated manner

Rather unflattering to your old friend, Coyote.

So it is more likely that the headline writer at the Star was more in line with this definition from Dictionary.com:

verb
2. to assert one's authority or influence (over): lobbyists bigfooting around the Senate; a reporter bigfooted by a senior correspondent.

coyote said...

But ya know, Shorty, that first definition does kinda put Biggie's pre-detox period in a nutshell.

And it holds real promise as an explanation for the governing party's bent take on reality...