WELCOME TO THE CFZ BLOG NETWORK: COME AND JOIN THE FUN

Half a century ago, Belgian Zoologist Bernard Heuvelmans first codified cryptozoology in his book On the Track of Unknown Animals.

The Centre for Fortean Zoology (CFZ) are still on the track, and have been since 1992. But as if chasing unknown animals wasn't enough, we are involved in education, conservation, and good old-fashioned natural history! We already have three journals, the largest cryptozoological publishing house in the world, CFZtv, and the largest cryptozoological conference in the English-speaking world, but in January 2009 someone suggested that we started a daily online magazine! The CFZ bloggo is a collaborative effort by a coalition of members, friends, and supporters of the CFZ, and covers all the subjects with which we deal, with a smattering of music, high strangeness and surreal humour to make up the mix.

It is edited by CFZ Director Jon Downes, and subbed by the lovely Lizzy Bitakara'mire (formerly Clancy), scourge of improper syntax. The daily newsblog is edited by Corinna Downes, head administratrix of the CFZ, and the indexing is done by Lee Canty and Kathy Imbriani. There is regular news from the CFZ Mystery Cat study group, and regular fortean bird news from 'The Watcher of the Skies'. Regular bloggers include Dr Karl Shuker, Dale Drinnon, Richard Muirhead and Richard Freeman.The CFZ bloggo is updated daily, and there's nothing quite like it anywhere else. Come and join us...

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Thursday, February 07, 2013

CRYPTOLINK: Good music and jokes boot 'Bigfoot' past its flawed script

A word about cryptolinks: We are not responsible for the content of cryptolinks, which are merely links to outside articles that we think are interesting, usually posted up without any comment whatsoever from me.  


The rollicking new musical "Bigfoot and Other Lost Souls" seems to have lost its way en route to a convincing final curtain. The fault is not the energetic, entertaining and stick-in-your-head tunes by composer Mark Hollmann of "Urinetown" fame, but a story with so many fat threads that author Adrien Royce can't gracefully strand them together.
The main character, Bernie (Rachel Landon) is a Hollywood wannabe hired to hack out a script for a documentary about Bigfoot by a pair of sasquatch hunters (Eric Cover and Patricia Hull) in Northern California. In taking the job, she splits up with her boyfriend Max (Luke Bartholomew) and picks up Rudy (Enrique Bravo), who is pictured above, and who is pursued by two squabbling FBI agents (Jerry Demmert and Heidi Poet) and an earthy county sheriff (Margeaux Ljundberg) for long-past protest activities involving explosives.
So far, so good. Take that setup to a dozen members of the local Saturday aspiring writers coffee club and you'll probably get three viable or even terrific endings.
The visual and verbal jokes dependably drew snorts from the audience -- Max in a dress, a phone booth in the woods, Bernie trying to sing from a hospital bed in a state of sedation. And several big musical numbers were enthusiastically received. Hull's excoriation of the most famous Bigfoot hunter, "Roger Patterson," was a tour de force. Several ensembles were show-stoppers, including "Behind Every Man," "You're Not the Boss of Me" and the two dovetailing scenes that ended Act I ("Searching") and started Act II ("Just One Footprint"). Lively performances by the singing actors and choreography by director Elizabeth Lucas and Ricci Adan made these parts worth going back for a second look.

CRYPTOLINK: Russian Bigfoot DNA Analyzed By Scientists: Yeti Or Yogi

A word about cryptolinks: We are not responsible for the content of cryptolinks, which are merely links to outside articles that we think are interesting, usually posted up without any comment whatsoever from me.  


Russian Bigfoot DNA Analyzed By Scientists: Yeti Or Yogi?
Bigfoot DNA is in the news again. Over the last three years, the Russian Bigfoot, or Yeti, was claimed to be a “towering, long-haired beast roaming the Mount Shoria region of southern Russia.” This potential Bigfoot has left clumps of hair in caves that scientists have just now analyzed.
Professor Bryan Sykes of Oxford’s Wolfson Institute has led a global genetics project to test hair samples from possible Bigfoots. Professor Sykes told The Sun what he thought about this Bigfoot DNA:

Read on... 

FORTEAN BIRD NEWS FROM THE WATCHER OF THE SKIES (CFZ)

In an article for the first edition of Cryptozoology Bernard Heuvelmans wrote that cryptozoology is the study of 'unexpected animals' and following on from that perfectly reasonable assertion, it seems to us that - whereas the study of out of place birds may not have the glamour of the hunt for bigfoot, or lake monsters - it is still a perfectly valid area for the Fortean Zoologist to be interested in. So, after about six months of regular postings on the main bloggo, Corinna has taken the plunge and started a 'Watcher of the Skies' blog of her own as part of the CFZ Bloggo Network.





I'M YER GONZO BLOG DOO-DAH MAN

Life is still somewhat confusing. On the good side I have now gotinternet access again, although it is horribly slow. On the bad side, I have been told that it will cost £400 to retrieve the data from the two drives that I lost on Sunday, and as there is some irreplaceable stuff on there, I have no option. So if, when you are out on your travels, you see a fat bloke with a peculiar looking dog and a pile of 'Big Issues' for sale, it will probably be me. This afternoon I go for my diabetic eye test, and I hope that it does not repeat the results of yesterday's ordinary eye test which suggest that I may have the beginnings of Glaucoma. My grandmother had it, and apparently it skips a generation. Hey ho!
An interesting re-appraisal of a classic slice of Rick Wakeman
http://gonzo-multimedia.blogspot.com/2013/02/link-rick-wakemans-no-earthly.html
And finally, our daily visit to Thom the World Poet
http://gonzo-multimedia.blogspot.com/2013/02/thom-world-poet-daily-poem_7.html
  
*  The Gonzo Daily is a two way process. If you have any news or want to write for us, please contact me at  jon@eclipse.co.uk. If you are an artist and want to showcase your work, or even just say hello please write to me at gonzo@cfz.org.uk. Please copy, paste and spread the word about this magazine as widely as possible. We need people to read us in order to grow, and as soon as it is viable we shall be invading more traditional magaziney areas. Join in the fun, spread the word, and maybe if we all chant loud enough we CAN stop it raining. See you tomorrow...

*  The Gonzo Daily is - as the name implies - a daily online magazine (mostly) about artists connected to the Gonzo Multimedia group of companies. But it also has other stuff as and when the editor feels like it. The same team also do a weekly newsletter called - imaginatively - The Gonzo Weekly. Find out about it at this link: http://gonzo-multimedia.blogspot.com/2012/11/all-gonzo-news-wots-fit-to-print.html
* We should probably mention here, that some of our posts are links to things we have found on the internet that we think are of interest. We are not responsible for spelling or factual errors in other people's websites. Honest guv!

*  Jon Downes, the Editor of all these ventures (and several others) is an old hippy of 53 who - together with his orange cat puts it all together from a converted potato shed in a tumbledown cottage deep in rural Devon which he shares with various fish and batrachians. He is ably assisted by his lovely wife Corinna, his bulldog/boxer Prudence, his elderly mother-in-law, and a motley collection of social malcontents. Plus.. did we mention the orange cat?

DALE DRINNON: Plesiosaurs/Cedar & Willow/Benny's Blog

Thursday I shall be in the hospital for my last intensive care visit to Physical therapy and my transition to a regular family physician. Consequently I have had little time for blogs and I shall have less tomorrow. Benny and I do have some new links and they are listed below.

TODAY'S BIG CAT NEWS

The hunt for British Big Cats attracts far more newspaper-column inches than any other cryptozoological subject. There are so many of them now that we feel that they should be archived by us in some way, so we should have a go at publishing a regular round-up of the stories as they come in. In September 2012 Emma Osborne decided that the Mystery Cat Study Group really deserved a blog of its own within the CFZ Blog Network.



  • NEWSLINK: Stewie, the World's Longest Cat, Dies in...
  • SIGHTINGS UK: New big cat sighting reported in Gle...
  • LINK: Is there any evidence for big cats in the Br...
  • NEWSLINK: Little lion tamer: Astonishing pictures ...
  • NEWSLINK: Wellesley Police return lion from big ca...
  • OLL LEWIS: Yesterday's News Today


    Yesterday’s News Today

    On this day in 1936 the game of Monopoly was invented.
    And now the news:
  • Australia dolphins 'saved' by juvenile's distress ...
  • What a Reindeer Looks Like Without His Antlers
  • New Map Shows Turtle Nest Spots Cut off by Conflic...
  • Low Rainfall and Extreme Temperatures Double Risk ...
  • Huge population of tapir discovered on Peru - Boli...
  • Whale Vomit Worth £100,000 Found on Dog Walk
  • World's rarest antelope GPS collared for first tim...
  • Physicists Shine a Light On Particle Assembly

  • Monopoly the movie (this looks pretty epic) :