I’m back from vacation, though I could probably use a little time off to recover from it. I spent much of yesterday driving and missed a lot of college football while trying to get home in time to take our little guy trick-or-treating.
We made it, and once I’d unpacked, I caught the end of North Carolina’s game against top-ranked Miami. The unranked Tar Heels, with Bill Belichick focused on the sideline, came close to pulling off the upset.
Close only goes so far, of course. USC did get the job done, beating No. 2 Ohio State. The Buckeyes looked overrated again, and losing a game they were expected to win will bring plenty of talk about Julian Sayin’s injury. Still, they didn’t get it done. The mood in Columbus is probably a little less rosy today.
More importantly, Paige Spiranac put her enthusiasm for Halloween on full display. If you’re going to join in, you might as well go all in, and she certainly did. She’s one of the biggest golf personalities around, and her Halloween effort made it hard for anyone else to keep up.
Do we still name a winner for Halloween? I’m not sure. I don’t usually keep track of that sort of thing, but I do appreciate a strong performance. Paige’s was hard to miss.
I also watched the documentary “Capturing Bigfoot” when it came out on October 20, which apparently is Bigfoot Day. It focuses on the well-known 1967 Patterson-Gimlin footage, said to show Bigfoot walking through the California woods.
I learned a few things from the film. The biggest surprise was that some people still believed the footage was real. I’d assumed most people had decided long ago that it was a hoax. Apparently, that wasn’t the case.
The documentary also presents footage that some believe was a test made a year before Roger Patterson and Robert Gimlin filmed the clip everyone knows. I considered writing a separate piece about the documentary, but it seemed to fit better here. I’d said I would watch it, and I did. I’m not sure it was the best use of my time.
I hadn’t known how widely the Patterson-Gimlin film was shown when it first appeared, or how much money it brought in. I didn’t get interested in Bigfoot because of that footage, though. As I’ve mentioned before, it was the people on “Finding Bigfoot” and their remarkable confidence in Bigfoot’s existence—despite the shortage of evidence—that got me hooked.
If you want to hear more about the famous film, the documentary talks with several people connected to it. If you’re hoping it will finally settle the question, though, the original footage makes a fairly convincing case against itself.
One last detail I picked up: the Bigfoot in the Patterson-Gimlin footage is described as female.
A reader wrote in about a long-awaited chance to grill: a sunset, the tide coming in, a bottle of pinot noir, and a ribeye that turned out bigger than expected. The Gamecocks won, too, so it sounds like the evening came together nicely.
That’s what I’ve got for the first day of November. Halloween is a big moment for Instagram personalities, and plenty of them followed Paige’s lead by sharing their best holiday looks.
My Panthers have already lost this week. One upside to a Thursday-night loss is that you have Sunday free to watch your fantasy team lose instead.
Even so, Carolina is still atop the NFC South, with the rest of the division within reach. At 3-4, there’s plenty of season left. I’m choosing to stay optimistic, even with the coaching changes and what they might say about the state of the team. For now, there are still games to play.
