Monsterquest/Is It Real?

[anarky]

Since Cities of the Underworld has its own thread....

These two are pretty similar--supposedly examining the evidence for and against monsters and paranormal phenomenon. Monsterquest is History Channel, Is It Real? is National Geographic. Both are quite enjoyable.

Of the two, Is It Real? is far more objective, almost always coming to the conclusion that whatever the subject is, is not real. Monsterquest lost some credibility when it didn't debunk and said it couldn't disprove the pictures of people eaten by anacondas that have been repeatedly exposed as bad Photoshopping. However, it gets points for getting into really obscure shit (like the grassman) and more modern legends (like giant sewer rats).

[anarky]

Fuck all y'all hoes!

There was a MonsterQuest called "Giant Bear Attack" last night. Needless to say, I had to watch it.

Unfortunately, after using up most of the "big" cryptids in the first season, the second is really, really reaching, and using a lot of bad science to boot. Like one recent episode about giant snakes showed pictures that circulated online, but have been proven multiple times to be PhotoShop hoaxes. They chose not to mention that.

Last night's episode was talking about enormous bears in Alaska, which are known to occasionally get as big as 10-12 feet tall, as well as a report of a polar bear that came inland a few hundred miles for unknown reasons, and a known polar/grizzly crossbreed. Then it jumped to black bears invading this town (no attacks, except on dumpsters) that is clearly built in the woods, and they hired Joe Schmoe The Hunter to talk about it. Hey, maybe it's because when you build your houses in their fucking territory, they tend to still live there!

They only had one expert who would mention the fact that bears are normally docile when unprovoked, and black bears especially so.

The worst was when they somehow tried to tie together these two totally different stories about different species several thousand miles apart, and came to the ridiculous conclusion that bears are getting larger and more aggressive. And then they kinda threw in the faulty assumption that the short-faced bear (a massive killer that's been extinct since the last ice age) might still be alive in Alaska. (They showed an interview with a paleontologist saying "There could possibly be a 1% chance this creature survived," then really poorly editing it so it was clear they cut him off in the word "but.")

Yeah, shark jumped hard here. The bears tried, but they were only to make this pathetic episode suck less with their awesomeness. Especially the fat rolly-poly black bear. That fatass rocked.

[mabudon]

I dunno how many bears you've seen Anarky, but I have seen a LOT of them in the wild and semi-urban wild and it must be said they are awesome, truly awesome up close

That show sounds like it could become actually hilariously pathetic, IF you accidentally see another episode please provide a summary

Hopefully they'll go after the boogeyman in the basement, or maybe a more light-hearted attempt to capture the tooth fairy

[anarky]

I've seen several bears, almost all black bears. Even had a few come in our backyard when I lived in Virginia. They are truly majestic beasts. But, in the case of black bears, usually relatively harmless. True, they should not be provoked, and they definitely have the power to fuck you up good, but they're not true predators in the strictest sense of the word, so they're unlikely to attack unless they think they're in danger, or if they're starved or something.

The really sad thing is, this show was actually quite good until recently. They've had several shows on things like Sasquatch and chupacabra and, at least at first, had no real qualms about saying something was bullshit. It's gotten a bit goofy lately; I think they ran out of legitimate unknown animals. (And, no, I don't think Sasquatch is legit. A big fucking monkeyman might exist in remote corners of Asia, but in North America? Naaaaah. But I mean "legitimate" in that it's more or less a recognized possibility.)

Like the snake episode--there were two totally different stories, one about escaped pet pythons in the Florida swamps, and one about anacondas. And it somehow came to the conclusion that, since there were indeed big fucking pythons in Florida that weren't native, that gigantic snakes in Florida were inevitable. Huh?

At least, looking at the boards on the History Channel website (I like to look at boards, even if I only post in hellholes like this), it seems this episode was pretty reviled overall. One guy essentially said, "Okay, there are bears in Alaska, and bears get big, so there must be big bears in Alaska! Why don't they rename this 'ObviousQuest'?"

[Diabolical]

Unfortunately, after using up most of the "big" cryptids in the first season, the second is really, really reaching

Reminds me of when Mythbusters hit something like episode 10 and realized they shot their wad on the biggies. Thank God they overcame that (probably due to fan requests and what I assume is a sizable research staff).

Monsterquest sounds a lot like Sci-fi's Destination Truth. DT searches mainly for mythical creatures/urban legends. Naturally they never find anything, but the show is pretty entertaining, thanks in large part to the host.

[anarky]

Tonight's episode on the Jersey Devil was pretty shitty. I was hoping that such a rich legend would breathe new life into this staggering husk, even if it's the most bullshit legend around. But it didn't. Sad, really.

I do have a favor to ask. Don't go hunting it down, but I'd like to find better pics of a model built in the show. An artist took descriptions from various eyewitnesses, then passed along sketches to a Hollywood SFX guy, who built a life-sized model. The "witnesses" (I really think they're all nucking futs in this case and only saw the inside of one beer bottle too many) were shown the model and all (both of them--not a shining moment for objectivity) agreed it looked very much like what they thought they saw. Trouble is, it was shown very briefly, in close up, and from only two vantage points. I'd really like to see the whole thing, but it's not anywhere on the History Channel website. If anyone comes across it, can you post a link here?

[anarky]

No one? I still can't find the fucking image. Weird.

They've got a spinoff now called Mysteryquest. The first episode was dealing with whether Hitler really died in his bunker, and they examined the skull in Russia, and determined it was a young woman.

So I guess he had women with exactly the same dental work he'd had running around in case he needed a burned corpse to be mis-identified as him? They sorta overlooked that part.

I'm calling bullshit, especially since it wasn't national news that the skull believed to be Hitler's was proven to be a fake by some TV show that spun off from one that doesn't have the balls to call out obvious PhotoShop fakes as fakes. And because my mind can think of no fate better for such a dickweed than being dumped in a sewer by Russian soldiers. Unless they'd somehow involved a gorilla buttfuck in there.

[Diabolical]

This Jersey Devil model?


Anyway, fuck Mysteryquest.
Destination Truth is on at the same time.

[anarky]

Thanks, but that's the carpy CG model like they use in every episode. In this one, they actually got supposed eyewitnesses (I'm willing to see the possibility of some of these things existing, but not that one), and brought in a Hollywood SFX guy to actually make a physical model. Only they showed it once, from an oblique angle, which seemed to me to defeat the purpose of going through the trouble.

Sad thing is, it being the History Channel, which used to show things related to history, they could've talked about the history of paranoia about this obviously nonexistent monster.

[anarky]

Well, fuck me with a broomhandle. Just took a while for the news to pick up on it: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090929/ap_ ... er_s_skull

Curiously, as with the Mysteryquest episode, the article seems to ignore the jawbone with teeth that matched Hitler's totally jacked-up dental records. (Apparently, George Washington would say to him, "Dude, your teeth are fucked up.")

[Ben Reilly]

Duh, Hitler did survive and got plastic surgery, and faked an American birth certificate while hiding in Kenya, and now he goes by Barack HUSSEIN Osama, and he's taken over this country from the true, white Americans. Not that I'm racist, but if the Founding Fathers wanted a black president, they wouldn't have allowed slavery to contnue.

[anarky]

So, I keep watching this show as a guilty pleasure, even though I know it's trash, and every other fucking episode is "Bigfoot in another state under some local name you've never heard." I'm sure you watch some crap, too. Some people watch the auditions of American Idol (though, I must admit, NPH was pretty funny on there last night--the man is the next Shatner).

Last night's episode had the potential to be the single most legit episode ever. "Giant Pythons in America." For one thing, it's a real threat, and, for another, they actually found some pretty big snakes as well as an infant, proving they're breeding. They also had a logical explanation for where they came from, damaged zoos and such from Hurricane Andrew, about 20 years ago.

Unfortunately, it bit the big one in ways that are so fucktarded, I have to share them here. The lesser of the two had some dude, who acted like he was half-retarded, scouring Central Park to find snakes, since an escaped boa had been caught there about three years ago. One escaped boa. This was in spite of an expert, who sounded a fuckload smarter, outlining a comprehensive climate study that showed they could survive winters as far north as Washington, DC, which was within the first five minutes! Half the show was disproven before it started!

The real kicker was when the narrator said something like, "The real terror would be a venomous snake cross-breeding with a giant python, resulting in a massive hybrid snake with both crushing coils and deadly poison." At this point, I actually yelled out, "Bullshit!" That's like a horse fucking a gerbil and resulting in some weird miniature horse with sharp teeth and a desire to run around on a wheel. They had experts talking about it, who said it was highly unlikely, but clearly edited the interviews so they cut them short just before the "But that would be like a horse fucking a gerbil and resulting in some weird miniature horse with sharp teeth and a desire to run around on a wheel" line. They brought it up again several times, but the most they allowed an expert to say on-camera was that a king cobra would be more likely to eat a python than mate with it, and that the sexual organs were "the wrong size." (Never mind the massive difference in DNA.)

Oh, and more anticlimactic, they brought up a found king cobra shed skin at the end. Thirty minutes after talking about a guy bitten by a fucking green mamba in Florida. Then ended with the threat of king cobras. I dunno about you, but, well, king cobras are really fucking badass, but mambas are a lot more badass, because they hide in trees and you can't see them, and the venom is a lot deadlier, and they don't puff up to try to scare you away before biting, and they're aggressive as hell... I'd be more worried about the mambas.

[Diabolical]

So, I keep watching this show as a guilty pleasure, even though I know it's trash, and every other fucking episode is "Bigfoot in another state under some local name you've never heard." I'm sure you watch some crap, too.

You watch it for the same reason I watch all those dumbass ghost shows - the faintest hint of seeing them legitimately proving something, despite knowing they never will.

NPH was pretty funny on there last night--the man is the next Shatner.

He was Dr. Horrible. The man can retire as far as I'm concerned because he'll never top that role.

The real kicker was when the narrator said something like, "The real terror would be a venomous snake cross-breeding with a giant python, resulting in a massive hybrid snake with both crushing coils and deadly poison." At this point, I actually yelled out, "Bullshit!" That's like a horse fucking a gerbil and resulting in some weird miniature horse with sharp teeth and a desire to run around on a wheel.

Did you learn nothing from Jurassic Park?
"Nature finds a way."

[anarky]

When you see a little hybrid gerbil-horse running on a wheel, complete with a saddle, let me know, and then I'll start worrying about hideous cobra/python hybrids.

Though a hognose/python hybrid would be far funnier. A dangerously huge snake that's too goddamned scared of everything except toads and plays dead.

[mabudon]

Well I have access to cable tv now and have taken to watching fucking Ghost Hunters AND "destination truth" and my goodness they are fucking terrible. Thinking now about it, I am not sure which one is stupid/shittier. Ghost Hunters always ends with a bunch of easily debunked "phenomena" and sometimes a very few things that could be explained a few dozen ways, one of which could possibly be something "paranormal" and the rest stuff like shadows, headlights and straight-up equipment malfunctions- oddly every single episode I have seen ends with them saying they'd love to return to the location to see if they can get more stuff on tape- I have a feeling that will never happen in any of the cases.

"Destination Truth", I am not sure if it is a rebranding of "monsterquest" or what but holy fuck is it ever damn stupid. They go after legendary beasts, spend one night camping out somewhere (gotta be at night so they can use them "night-vision" cameras) then return empty handed. The show tries to include a segment at the end of them lookin over their recordings etc to see what there is to see but in only a few episodes I have now seen 2 where they didn't even bother. The sad part is despite a seemingly perfect record of NEVER finding anything- like, not even a sort of "oh yeah this here things could totally be mistaken for such-and-such"- they still try to "sell" every damn gust of wind and every damn incidental sound as evidence that something "weird" is happening. They freak out for a few minutes like the audience is totally brain-damaged before thinking about it and finding totally mundane (and usually glaringly obvious) explanations for whatever the "phenomenon" was.

And yet still I watch