OTUS THE HEAD CAT

Mountain Monsters performing public service

Dear Otus,

I read your paper every day and wonder why your so-called TV critic hasn’t written about the Mountain Monsters show. Is he lazy or just incompetent? I’ve only seen the show mentioned in the Lovely County Citizen.

A film crew and the series stars were poking around these parts for a month last fall looking for the Carroll County Chupacowbra. Did they find one? I saw one when I was a kid in 1947.

  • Bo Vemaucupe, Berryville

Dear Bo,

It was wholly a pleasure to hear from you, although I am in a conundrum over your two choices.

I have known our TV columnist for decades and he may be many things, but lazy and incompetent don’t come to mind.

Let us just say that he hasn’t written about Mountain Monsters because he’s discerning. And I mean that in the most positive definition from the Middle English via Old French originating in the Latin discernere (meaning to separate) and connoting the ability to display outstanding judgment.

When it comes to television, he attempts to separate the wheat from the chaff; the curds from the whey; the diamonds from the dreck.

Sadly, he considers Mountain Monsters to be reality TV dreck. I fear he’s most intransigent about it. He’s not even adamantly ambivalent. He has staked out his intellectual high ground and refuses to admit such programming can even be harmless diversion.

He believes such programs rot your brain cells - cells you can never get back and can ill-afford to lose.

I blame it on his higher education beyond the Little Rock Public School System. You see, the boy left the state at age 17 and went east to college.

Yes, “east” was only as far as Memphis, but that’s where he got, shall we say, “notions.” Being ensconced in a small, ivy-covered liberal arts college for four years in the late ’60s can give one airs.

To make matters worse, he was an English major.

Attending graduate school at UA Fayetteville, that bastion of ostentatious elitism, did not help his quiescent egalitarian tendencies. Rather, his sanctimonious nature took root and germinated for 20 years until he somehow wheedled his way into his current position at the newspaper.

For the past 20 years he has pontificated in print and, by calculated omission, passed judgment on those programs he deems unworthy for the untutored masses.

That would include Mountain Monsters.

I, however, have no such compunction. Mountain Monsters is a hoot and I never miss an episode.

I include the series with other fascinating offerings such as Ghost Hunters, Monster Quest, Paranormal Witness, Deep South Paranormal and The Unexplained.

All diverting. All featuring nifty night-vision scenes with guys whispering stuff like, “Wait! Did you hear that? What was that?!”

In fact, Mountain Monsters is quite educational. The Destination America Channel is doing a public service to bring these horrifying creatures to our attention.

I would go so far as to label the intrepid members of the Appalachian Investigators of Mysterious Sightings - leader “Trapper” Tice, Buck, Huckleberry, Willy and Jeff - as true American heroes.

The goal of AIMS in the first season was to search the mountain hollers and crannies of Appalachia for legendary creatures of myth and lore.

Why Appalachia? Our supercilious and condescending TV critic would postulate that it’s a region of pervasive ignorance and uncultured yahoos. I, on the other hand, agree with the network that the region “is the window from our dimension into another dimension where these creatures exist.”

How else can we explain the frequent sightings of such anomalies as the West Virginia Mothman, the Braxton County Monster, Blue Devil,Lizard Demon and Thunderbirds?

The second season of Mountain Monsters premieres April 4 at 9 p.m. Finally, the cold night vision of truth will shine into the Stygian corners of these mysteries.

The monsters to be exposed include the 500-pound Kentucky Hellhound of Pike County and the 10-foot-tall Grafton Monster of Taylor County, W.Va.

There are others this season - the Fire Dragon, Sheepsquatch, the Snallygaster, the Bloodless Howler and Hogzilla. Also tracked will be the 500-pound Wampus Beast, a relative of Arkansas’ legendary Wampus Cat. Too many have seen the creatures for them to be denied.

Sure to be of interest in Arkansas is Mountain Monsters’ first venture outside Appalachia when the guys investigate the horrifying swamp and pond-dwelling Carroll County Chupacowbra, a beast that lurks in fishing holes and lies in wait for unsuspecting anglers who have had a fewtoo many beers. The episode is set for May 30.

Until next time, Kalaka reminds you there’s only one extant photo of the Chupacowbra and it’s enough to make your blood run cold.

Disclaimer Fayetteville-born Otus the Head Cat’s award-winning column of humorous fabrication appears every Saturday. Email:

mstorey@arkansasonline.com

HomeStyle, Pages 36 on 03/15/2014

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