126 – Monster Trek: The Obsessive Search for Bigfoot with Joe Gisondi
Joe Gisondi grew up in New Jersey reading the National Enquirer and from an early age. Before 1967, the tabloid focused on gory true crime stories, but in order to be stocked in newspaper checkout lines they changed their focus to celebrities, UFOs, and the occult. And the world was made better for it, because it inspired the paranormal bug in little Joe Gisondi.
Joe worked at different Florida newspapers for two decade, becoming an expert in sports news coverage, before settling down as a journalism professor at Eastern Illinois University in 2002. But he never lost that interest in the weird and wonderful and decided to write a book about the hunt for Bigfoot.
You know it’s gonna be a great book when America’s eminent Cryptozoologist, Loren Coleman gave it the NUMBER TWO recommendation for 2015’s top cryptozoology books (right behind our friend Tea Krulos’ excellent Monster Hunters !)
Joe’s take was not just writing about Bigfoot, but about the people who have upended their lives in hunting for the famous monster. What motivates someone to take months and years of their lives, go in the woods, and chase after a mythical (until it’s proven at least) beast? Especially when most other people just think you’re crazy.
That’s what Joe intended to find out. In the process of working on the book, he got to go on several expeditions himself and he might have had his own sasquatch encounter. We cover those expeditions, the weirdest thing he ever saw in Florida, and some of the regional differences in Bigfoot/Skunk Ape/Sasquatch lore in this interview.
You can pick up a copy of Monster Trek: The Obsessive Search for Bigfoot right here , like the book on Facebook , and learn more about Joe at this link. He’s got a weekly sports podcast and you can find Joe on Twitter at @MonsterTrekJG for Bigfoot and @joegisondi for sports media.
Obsession is something we often deal with on this podcast, and according to German Existentialist philosopher, Martin Heidegger, humans use these obsessions to distract ourselves to think about anything besides our impending mortality. Like Top Dollar says in The Crow, “Childhood’s over the moment you know you’re gonna die.”
Movies, sports, books, gardening, Bigfoot hunting,etc… we do almost anything to distract ourselves. To be (in Heidegger’s words) “authentic” we have to own each moment as it happens, accept our past, and accept that we will eventually become “non-being”. Bigfoot hunters own each moment through their quest into the unknown. This Sunspot song is accepting that life sucks sometimes (after all, we can’t always be out in the Woods looking for the Sasquatch!) but we can “own” each moment the best we can and in this particular song, “owning the moment through partying!”
Monday comes and Tuesday goes,
Dishes suck and laundry blows.
I’d love to tell my boss to kiss my a$$.
Wednesday’s here and then it’s gone,
My best friend’s passed out on the lawn,
And Thursday? $%^& Thursday!
Raise your glass to Friday,
When I can be all I can be,
I’m dying to party and I want a life that’s owned by me.
We only get one shot,
Somedays I don’t even wanna try.
Tonight’s our night to rock,
Life sucks, let’s live before we die.
My momma slaps me in my face,
My girlfriend puts me in my place,
Why didn’t anyone say it’d be this tough?
My minivan is in the shop,
Because I backed into a cop,
I’m flat broke, bored, and sitting on my duff.
As many times I’ve hurt my pride,
I just can’t stop this wicked side of me,
Because Mr. Hyde, that bastard, wants me back,
And I’ll get too inebriated,
Wake up again humiliated,
I’m just trying to have some fun,
Cut me some slack.
We only get one shot,
Somedays I don’t even wanna try.
Tonight’s our night to rock,
Life sucks, let’s live before we die.
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