With over 250 separate Sasquatch sightings in the past year, even the most cynical scientists are starting to ask themselves, “Was I right when I said that he doesn’t exist?” They’re also saying, “What about that old record The Bigfoot Recordings, A True High Sierra Wilderness Story, Narrated by Jonathan Frakes of TV’s Star Trek, The Next Generation? Was that the real deal?” (I’m trying to write like a real journalist but I am fucking baked out of my mind right now so it’s going to sound weird.) So yeah, Bigfoot––it’s a hard question. Yes, it really is, man. Especially to me and my roommate Mark when we sit around listening to weird old records getting “fuckin’ fried and freeze-dried” (said in a Southern accent, please). That’s how and when we came up with this amazing idea: Let’s see how long we can hold hands without laughing. I highly recommend this game if you’re not gay because it is funny as shit. After playing that until it got way too weird we came up with another amazing idea: Why not find the biggest douchebag in the whole world and ask him to tell us the truth about Bigfoot? Once we decided this was a great thing to devote our lives to, we went on eBay and did random searches for things like “douchebag” and “dickhead” and even “fuckface.” After seeing some pretty amusing stuff, we eventually discovered a young man named Kevin who was selling his services as a prank caller. He had amazing quotes in his item description, including things like, “Want to get back at your boss?” and “Getting bullied at school?” and then “Well, let me handle it!” It made us laugh so fucking hard we got a head rush and then went on this paranoid tangent where we thought he might be a genius and was just fucking with us. “Shit,” we thought, “now we sort of don’t even know if Kevin exists. That’s two mysteries.” Fuck it. It only cost seven dollars so we gave him our number, told him it was the number of a fictional coworker named Darren (that’s me), and, well...here, see for yourself what we told him:

Kevin replied very quickly with the following message.

The connection was made. All we had to do now was break out the bong and wait for this stupid teenager to dazzle us with his wit. Kevin was supposed to call us (the evil coworker, that is) that very night. We waited by the phone until almost five in the morning waiting. We talked about how we’re going to tear him a new ass and call him “Kevin” and say shit like, “Is this that fucking eBay guy?” and stuff. We even had a few zingers written out. But he never called. We emailed him the next day asking if it went down and he said he couldn’t get through—LIAR! We were kind of pissed off and worried about Bigfoot. Would we have to give up the Kevin game? Would we have to open the windows and get a job? Would we have to watch Friends again in silence? Fuck no! We emailed back and said it was a blessing he didn’t get through because we had more stuff to tell him. It went like this…

I felt kind of weird about Mark calling me an asshole like that, but then I remembered that I don’t exist. That night we waited and waited and waited. By 4 a.m. we had passed out next to the phone. We had taken Percoden and it made us too sleepy to hang. The next morning there were two gifts waiting for us from Santa Kevin. One was the now-infamous prank call left on our answering machine, and the other gift was an email transcribing exactly what message he had left. So yeah, it was kind of the same present twice, but––and again this is probably the weed talking––somehow hearing that message and then reading a transcription of it was so fucking funny our neighbors complained about the laughing. They thought we were retarded (literally).

It was around this time we decided this guy was, in fact, the biggest genius in the world. Of course “my” kid had to be taken away. “Darren” would have killed him because he’s so stupid. Anyone who could uncover secrets like that could explain Bigfoot to us no problem. We burned him a CD of the record and wrote nothing but “Sierra Wilderness” on it. You should hear this thing, by the way. It’s a field recording from the mid-70s of “scientists” tracking a Sasquatch in the Sierra Mountains. It’s a low-rent audio Blair-Witch-kinda-affair with extended periods of forest sounds punctuated by nervous guys saying “Did you hear that?” or “I think that’s the female” or my personal fave, “Come on out, Biggie” (we must have replayed that part so many times the needle has kind of worn it out and we can’t hear it as well as we used to). One of the more head-scratching elements is the fucking smooth jazz soundtrack provided by Charles McPherson that sounds like it’s from a BET Profile of Gregory Hines or Ben Vereen.

Here’s the letter we sent him with the CD.

Kevin told us that he too had done several zines and wrote movie reviews for the school paper. He was really excited about the project but lost all enthusiasm after hearing the CD.

So the verdict is in! Bigfoot does not exist and me and my roommate should stop smoking so much pot. The question now is: Come up with another quest or get a job and a girlfriend and a life? Oooh, you know what would be funny? If I went undercover as a normal person for a year. I could temp and go to TGIFridays and document it all using hidden cameras. I think I am going to buy some beer and talk about that with Mark here for a really long time.

MARK & DARREN