LITTLE BIGFOOT

When amateur filmmakers - sporting Super-8 cameras - set out to document Bigfoot sightings in Washington State in the 1960s, one researcher, Tarah DeLuge, had a love-at-first-sighting encounter with the cryptid creature. She strayed from the path on Wilde Ridge long enough to bump in to the beast. Their eyes locked, followed by their arms... and then a strange exchange ensued. Nine months later, Lillouette was born. She bore her mother's porcelain-doll face and her father's plush-toy fur. While kept closely guarded from the press - and public - the girl did pose for the famous portraitist, Rolando Choy, at his Fairmont Heights studio in 1972. Over three days, she sat - all doe-eyed - while Mr. Choy painted his masterpiece, "Little Furry One". Tarah DeLuge regretted allowing a mass-produced reproduction to be sold shortly after the painting's completion. (The print was the second-biggest selling reproduction after the Mona Lisa.) Mother and daughter lived in relative seclusion until Tarah's death, from cancer, in 1981. Lillouette moved to Colorado in the early 1980s. She died tragically in an electrical fire in 1988. In 2009, "Little Furry One" sold at auction for $2.5 million, a record price for a Rolando Choy painting.

© BILL BLAIR 2012

THE LIGHT AND THE WAY

After weeks of wandering the Shadow-Of-Death Valley, and feeling vitamin D deficient, Jesus asked his father for a miracle. And it was answered. A ray of sunlight shot down from heaven, spotlighting his iconic face - providing enough light to brighten his spirits, heighten his facial tan, and restore his savior's disposition. In other words, sonny felt sunny.
© BILL BLAIR 2012

THE MUSHROOM GIRLS OF MYSTIC POND

Red Russula and Yellow Stropharia, commonly known as The Mushroom Girls, appear after the first Spring rains along the shore of Mystic Pond in central Brazil. They sprout up through the loam, fully clothed, with spongy flesh. It is a common Sunday pastime for the locals to perch on the terrace of the facing tearooms - watching the female apparitions glacially-glide along the shore - while sipping cachaca cocktails. Though benign in appearance, the girls' flesh exhudes a highly fatal poison when touched. Prompted by a dare, 14-year-old João de Miguel approached Yellow Stropharia one Sunday. He ever-so-gently brushed his fingertip against her left elbow. And that was it. Immediately, his vital organs began to shut down. He was rushed to the nearest clinic, but died on arrival. If only young João had paid heed to the warning signs surrounding the lake: LOOK - BUT DON'T TOUCH.
© BILL BLAIR 2012

BASKET CASE

Like a random thought, Little Moses was cast adrift on the Phlebitis River, cribbed in a reed basket. Upstream, at the edge of the palace, the Pharoah's daughter, Helsinki, noticed the leavening-bread-shaped baby bobbing among the rushes. "Don't eat him," warned her servants. Helsinki had him swaddled in Egyptian cotton before she ventured in to the kitchen. Like a yeast infection, Helsinki had a baker's addiction. The sight of the doughy baby had spurred her urge to bake bread. For the next 15 years, she filled the palace - and the boy's stomach - with an ongoing product line of loaves, sticks and tarts. Like a stretched bread crust, the spreading Moses could consume no more. On his 16th birthday, he left the palace with his flock of sheep (a gift from the Pharoah) and roamed Pyramid Valley in search of a burning bush.

© BILL BLAIR 2012

FISH ON FRIDAYS

"I fry with my little eye..." began Theresa's weekly ritual. The prairie girl was gifted beyond reason. The first in her family to develop kitten ears, she could detect the tiniest wind-whispers of the wheat through her stuccoed bedroom wall. Because of an inherent stir-fry genome, her eyes could sizzle succulent steaks and seafood with one gaze. Each Friday, her father would bring home the pond-caught trout. Once gutted and rinsed, it was Theresa's duty to cook the fish - with a focused feline ray - to perfection.

© BILL BLAIR 2012

A FULL HOUSE

Madame See-Ying came from a long line of fortune tellers. Her great grandmother, Empress Xiang-Wei, ran a house of cards in Sichuan province. Settling in the Yucatan city of Merida (with her Mexican husband, the visionary painter Ramón Futuro) just after the war, she set up her studio - A Thing Or Two - where she foresaw the futures of heat-hazed travellers and curious locals. The Mayan people, knowing a thing or two themselves about the future, would give her tips gleaned from their elders' stories. The topic of the Mayan calendar would often come up in conversation. Why, everyone wondered, did it end in the year 2012? One old man told her it was because the writers had caught flu - and were too ill to advance the dates. Another claimed, with great authority, that it had been misinterpreted - and actually continued to 2102. But the Madame - with her mental channel tune-locked to the divine - knew the answer: by the end of the year 2012, with limited space for the world's departed souls, there would be no more room in heaven.
© BILL BLAIR 2012