As a cryptozoologist, Loren Coleman rarely gets to play the straight man at meetings with his fellow scientists. "I had to put up with people saying, 'Oh, you're the one who believes in little green men,'" said Coleman, a writer and academic who investigates Bigfoot and other folkloric monsters. But at a weekend symposium called Cryptozoology: Out of Time Place Scale at the Bates College Museum of Art here in Maine, Coleman says he feels quite normal. Maybe that's because he's surrounded by artwork featuring depictions of Bigfoot as a hairy lesbian, subterranean reptilian humanoids and cave people wearing Viking helmets. Coleman was keynote speaker at an exhibition of artwork inspired by his quest for proof of mythological creatures. The point of the Bates symposium, said the museum's director, Marc Bessire, "is not to legitimize or de-legitimize cryptozoology, but to find where it intersects with (art and popular culture)." It's a hot topic at the moment. Though the art exhibit is relatively small, popular culture is currently going cryptozoology crazy. Coleman noted the television networks' fall prime-time lineup is chockablock with shows such as Lost, Invasion and Surface, all of which have cryptozoological themes running through them. He said in recent weeks he has been busy doing hundreds of TV and radio interviews. The media's renewed interest is partly due to the recent discoveries of the "hobbit" remains on Flores Island in Indonesia and the giant squid photographed by Japanese scientists, Coleman said. But mythological creatures are also a diversion from the Iraq War, corrupt politicians and the deteriorating environment. Not everyone in the media takes Coleman seriously, however. Coleman told the symposium's audience that he had to turn away a TV reporter because he learned that the reporter worked for a comedy show that planned to ridicule his research. Cryptozoology has been taking its knocks since the discovery of Neanderthal man in the 19th century.Many mainstream scientists at the time insisted the remains of Neanderthal were actually those of a sick or deformed human, said Coleman.
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