Montauk Monster Wins Awards, Stars in TV Commercial

The Montauk Monster is proving to be more than a one-season wonder. Now there are awards and maybe a TV commercial! After all the intense interest in Monty during this past summer, when the monster washed up on a beach in Montauk, New York, the attention died down during the Fall, with Monty keeping a low profile. But the Montauk Monster is back in the news as Winter sets in, capturing the coveted "WTF of the Year" title at the URLie awards.

I lobbied hard to have John McCain name Monty as his running mate, and even (prematurely) wrote a post saying that Monty had been picked as VP. And of course who can forget the Montauk Monster chilling with his celebrity buddies?

Now it seems Monty is doing commercials (see below), specifically a German Volkswagen ad. The dog-fish in the spot bears too much of a resemblance to the Montauk Monster to be a coincidence. But is it Monty or a celebri-creature lookalike? If that's not Monty in the ad, he should sue Volkswagen for unauthorized impersonation!

Montauk Monster 2.0: New Pictures, eBay Auction, and More!

It was sad to think that the feel-good event of this New York summer, the discovery of our very own Montauk Monster, had outlived its 15 minutes of fame. But wait! There's more!

Gawker has put together a photo album in tribute to the Montauk Monster. Called the 2008 Montauk Monster Yearbook, it includes many of the photos of the Monster, as well as some clever take-offs, including the Montauk Monster cuddling up to a woman in an evening gown, the Monster with sunglasses and a hand of playing cards, and even the Monster sticking out of a bucket of KFC! "Finger Lickin' Gross," as the caption says!

Even better, Gawker alerts us to a new site, MontyMash.com, that collects some of the best Zelig-like moments of our beloved Monty, including some of the ones mentioned above, plus an ever-growing collection of reader-submitted contris. You can see Monty in The Godfather, as part of the Full House TV gang, and even wading into the political sphere, appearing with Hillary Clinton and doing a fist-bump with Barack! (No word on whether these Democratic photos will have an adverse impact on the Montauk Monster being chosen by John McCain as his VP.)

And... miracle of miracles!... a man has claimed that the Montauk Monster magically appeared on his piece of morning toast!



It's a fitting tribute to the Montauk Monster as we knew him, as he used to be (unfortunately he has now turned to bones and black goo, in a plastic bag in someone's garage).

Montauk Monster Has Curious Americans Wondering, "WTF *is* that Thing?!"

Four-dollar gas. Recession. An endless war overseas. But the thing that's preoccupying Americans these days is a butt-ugly, bird-beaked, nekkid-as-a-jaybird rotting animal corpse that's washed up on the northeast end of New York's Long Island. So what the hell is this "Montauk Monster," as it's being called?

[BREAKING NEWS: John McCain has named the Montauk Monster his running mate!]

Here are some possible explanations of what the Montauk Monster is, ranging from the practical to the absurd (you can decide for yourself which is which). [UPDATE: A blog called Amnesia Blog has a good collection of Montauk Monster pictures, so you can get a better look at The Thing.]

* Lab experiment gone wrong, escaped from a nearby agricultural research facility, the Plum Island Animal Disease Center
* A turtle without a shell (never mind the fact that turtles can't just detach from their shells, like in those TV cartoons)
* A shaved raccoon
* An alien creature from outer space, come to warn us about the end of the world (or to go on a tour of one of the North Fork's many wineries)
* A new undiscovered species of animal, just out looking to check out some of the North Fork's wineries
* A pretty snazzy creation of someone's imagination and a lot of time spent on Photoshop
* An escaped pet (notice the cloth wrapped around it's right front arm... leg... whatever it is)
* A very large rat, escaped from the NYC subway or maybe the Long Island Rail Road (it got injured after not Minding the Gap)
* A Department of Defense experiment - a successor to the attack badgers the British were supposedly using in Iraq
* A very lifelike synthetic creature made by an unemployed movie prop maker with a lot of free time and even more spare latex
* A viral marketing stunt for a sci-fi TV show
* Joan Rivers fell off a cruise boat... this is how she looks without her wig

What do you think the Montauk Monster is? Let us know!