Mr. Bacon Meets Berlin Big Foot

FOR THOSE READERS not familiar with Mr. Bacon, he has been taking the writers-who-blog world by storm with his cuteness, his sass, his bendability—and his willingness to pose for endless photo ops.

Mr. Bacon is currently on his first U.S. tour. His booking agent has generously agreed to allow Mr. B to join my readers on the Fear of Writing Blog for one of his inimitable adventures.

Being a sturdy little fellow who will stand up to anybody, and who’s not afraid to have his picture taken at a presidential press conference, I assumed Mr. Bacon would be game for an adventure in the wilds of our Ohio back country. So I took him captive . . . um, er, I mean, I took him out to Berlin Center—a quaint little village in Mahoning County—to look for the Berlin Big Foot.

First, though, I was obliged to educate Mr. Bacon on just what a Big Foot actually is. He claimed to have led a sheltered childhood and insisted that none of the writers he’s visited so far had read picture books to him about this.

Mr. Bacon was pretty convinced that the part about the guy having big feet would just be more Hollywood hype, so he was rather taken aback when we googled “Big Foot images that are real.”

In fact, I’d say “taken aback” would be a watered-down version of events. I actually had to prise Mr. Bacon off my leg, and I had the distinct impression he was FRIGHTENED.

I didn’t think much of it when I had to drag him to the car for our trip to Berlin Center . . . but it did really annoy me when he kept putting grease marks on the windows of my Accord trying to claw his way out.

When we got to Berlin Center, it was broad daylight and (naturally) there were no hairy monsters running through the center of town. But when I asked Mr. Bacon to pose with the Big Foot sign, he practically had to be tied to the sign. He kept blubbering “Mommy!” (though he says he’ll deny that in every court in the land).

Now, Mr. Bacon has been described as everything from a rapscallion to His Greasiness. He’s an in-yer-face kinda guy who did not hesitate to air his pugnacious opinions about the National Book Festival when he attended with Patrick Ross of The Artist’s Road. He’s been known to drive an ATV single-handedly through the Arizona desert while visiting Melissa Crytzer Fry of What I Saw. He even chose and paid for his own hiking boots at L.L. Bean in Maine while being hosted by Julia Munroe Martin of wordsxo.

Most recently, during his whirlwind U.S. tour, Mr. Bacon graced the Arizona Novel Writers Workshop with his presence, where he treated the audience to a reading from his 400-page dissertation, “Benefits Obtained From Living a Kosher Lifestyle.”

So what was his problem? This guy is not short on kahoonies. How can a few pictures of some mythical scary creatures scare him so much?

In a frank interview (at least, I think he told the truth), Mr. Bacon confessed that he is in fact BaconElvis, a Mr. Bacon tribute artist who gives appearances at bars and clubs doing a stand-up routine of Mr. Bacon Twitter jokes. Naturally, he comes onstage to the tune of C.C. Rider.

BaconElvis confessed that his fondest dream is to perform at International House of Pancakes during breakfast. Or, even better, The Blind Pig Restaurant in Cleveland.

(It’s been rumored he turned down a gig at The Skinny Pig Restaurant in Cincinnati, stating he “ain’t no anorexic strip of lean pork” and you can talk to the hand.)

He also alluded to repeated nightmares of being squashed between the pages of my book. When I asked what that was about, BaconElvis recited the following blog comment exchange from his uppity guest blog post about The National Book Festival:

Milli Thornton: I predict you’ll end up in a book. Squashed between the pages by an angry author or starring *on* the page as the main character . . . we’ll see which one it’s to be.

Mr. Bacon: I take your prediction of book squashing as a personal threat, and will be on the lookout for a woman carrying a Fear of Writing book in her hand.

When I assured him my book will do him no harm, he yelled “And stop dripping that blood on me!”

Evidently, BaconElvis has developed a phobia that the blood dripping from the title on my blog header is actually drip-drip-dripping on his head . . . and then slowly down into his eyes.

After I wiped the imaginary blood from his peepers, BaconElvis said that now he can finally read the title of my blog properly.

“I thought it said Fear of Writers,” he snarled, with a dirty look in my direction.

It happened to be that special time of the year (October 31) when the imaginary blood was dripping. I thought that would be the perfect mood-setter for the holiday! But when I asked BaconElvis if he’d like to dress up as a tribute artist covered in blood and help me greet the trick-or-treaters on Halloween, he said (actually, he shouted, while wringing his cute little jazz hands) that he wants to be taken to an asylum for wigged-out Bacon Boomers and just REST FOR ONCE.

No autographs please. The artist is recovering from his interview.

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Milli Thornton is the author of Fear of Writing: for writers & closet writers. She is owner of the Fear of Writing Online Course, where her mission is to put the fun back into writing. Milli blogs at Screenwriting in the Boonies and Milliver’s Travels and coaches writers individually at Writer’s Muse Coaching.