Tuesday, June 26, 2012

Animal hybrids: monsters in the making





I know, I realize I shouldn't get into these things, these creepy things, these creepy things that make my flesh crawl, these creepy things that make my flesh crawl and also make me realize that humanity has no idea what it's doing.

What awfuls me out about this short video isn't the mammoth size of this freak animal, nor even the casual way they putter around him in total denial that he could kill them with one swipe of his gigantic paw. No doubt they think he's "sweet", no doubt they think he's "tame", no doubt they call him one of their "babies" (an ever-present symptom of the malignant disease of keeping exotic animals as pets).

I want to write more about this whole mess later, when I get a chance to see a documentary called The Elephant in the Living Room. I saw the last half of it on National Geographic Channel and spent the half-hour with my mouth open.



The cases in this documentary weren't the worst, but they were bad enough. Keeping exotic animals as pets often goes completely unregulated, sometimes with disastrous results. It wasn't just the utter degradation of seeing glorious jungle animals kept in wire cages (with one male lion slowly, agonizingly electrocuted by faulty wiring on a freezer): it was the emotional abyss at the core of the people who were keeping these "babies". "He's like my son," claimed the lion's owner before the disaster,"one of my kids." Why is it I have this feeling his real children never tapped his heart in the same profound way?




All that unfathomable sickness aside, I soon got on to the topic of animal hybrids and was pretty astonished at what I found. Astonished, and freaked out. There has been an awful lot of tampering going on behind our backs: I didn't realize the well-known liger is three times the size of a normal lion, weighing close to a thousand pounds and resembling some prehistoric beast on an unimagineable scale. All this has been engineered, folks - we made it happen - and we made it happen without the slightest knowledge or concern that the resultant creature would be so grotesquely proportioned.

From the liger and the smaller tigon, often afflicted by dwarfism (not that such an insignificant thing will stop them from being bred), I fell into the dusky world of the wolf dog, which some people own for the same reason they'd get their bodies tattoed over every square inch: look, I'm a social rebel, I own a dog that's half-wolf! Look, I take a huge risk every time I take him out of the wire cage!




Does anyone stop to think what is going on in the mind and biology of an animal that has been created from spare parts, cobbled together in God-knows-what sort of way just on a human whim? Might there be some sort of internal conflict at the most fundamental level? Might that animal not know who he/she is? Or are those kinds of concerns not on the table, so long as we satisfy our "let's try this and see what happens" impulse?

Oh, but it got worse, a lot worse! Zebroids, including a zorse, a zonkey, and a zony. A cama, fusing together two species that are, well, close enough, aren't they? Except the llama genes seem to cancel out the camel's hump. But who needs a hump anyway?




When I came to the grolar or pizzly, I began to feel sick outright. But bears are bears, aren't they? Does it even matter if they're brown or white? Then why do I feel so nauseated? Never mind that these grotesque and ridiculous names insult their animal dignity and wouldn't even suit a toy. Hey, the leopon is just a spotty lion, right? And the wolphin. . .



I stop at the wolphin. I stop at the wolphin because I know whales and dolphins are so intelligent, and I honestly wonder what sort of genetic clash might make these sea geniuses go completely mad.


What set all this off - I mean, after the National Geographic documentary, which I have ordered on a DVD - was stumbling upon something that nearly made my hair stand on end: the humanzee. I didn't like to think that it was possible, that we've come that far, that we might just want to try this out for a lark or out of scientific curiosity: but haven't we been told over and over again how genetically close we are to chimps?  




This is a weird story that has been officially discounted, and now that I look at it a little more objectively I can see why. A couple claimed to have captured a baby chimp "in the wild" in 1960. Oliver had some pretty strange traits, the strangest being walking upright without the weird staggering gait of most chimps. He also had a strange-looking face, hairless and sort of flat, though hardly human. His ears creeped me out however, as they didn't look like chimp ears at all. They looked like human ears that had been grafted on.






Other chimps shunned Oliver, who seemed to prefer human company (and even mounted his owner's wife, causing them to eventually sell him). He smelled different, not like a normal chimp. These were all little question marks that added up to a very big one: did Oliver have human genes, and if so, how had this happened?

Back in 1960, the assumption was that some man had had sex with a female chimp "in the wild", the chimp had become pregnant, and little upright-walking, flat-faced Oliver was the result. He quickly became a sensation, dressed up in a tux and encouraged to smoke and drink for the crowd. This reflected the hilarity of the times upon witnessing animals "acting like humans". (Remember the Marquis Chimps on Ed Sullivan? I hope you don't.)



But a funny thing happened on the way to fame. People lost interest. The whole thing looked a little bogus. Oliver was sold again and again, each time falling a little deeper into the hole, and ending up in a small square wire cage in a laboratory.

Decades later, Oliver's original owner (perhaps wondering if there was more money to be made) tracked him down and eventually settled him into one of those chimp retirement homes. He didn't walk upright any more - too much trouble - and by this time he just looked like an old chimp, a very relieved old chimp, relieved he didn't have to wear a tux, smoke cigars and drink brandy for the crowd. He died only a couple of weeks ago, in fact, probably about 55 years old. Certainly he had served his time.






But it hangs in the air, doesn't it - weirdly, and sickeningly. Camas, pizzlys, zorses and wolphins. Why not humanzees? At the end of his life Oliver was genetically tested, and it was officially announced that he was "100% chimpanzee", so that was that. (If he hadn't been, what would they have said? The genie would be out of the bottle for sure.)  


But I had a funny feeling about it all. I had a funny feeling about it all because that was over 50 years ago. I had a funny feeling about it all because that was over 50 years ago and, by God, now it is not only possible but bloody well likely we could do such a thing, "cross" a chimp with a human and come up with a whole new sort of species.




At the embryonic level, this has already been attempted and perhaps even accomplished. We want stem cells and new organs and all that sort of thing, necessary spare parts salvaged from throwaways, and we don't seem to care how much we ravage the natural balance in order to get them.

But an actual humanzee, a hybrid? Is it illegal? Would it be funded? Who cares. Money comes. It follows curiosity. I am beginning to get this sick feeling, this prickly feeling that we're going to see this, and sooner than we think. The trouble is, no one will know what to do with this wretched thing, this product of strands of DNA twisted horribly wrong:  kill it now? Watch it suffer, or, perhaps worse, thrive?






What will it look like? Can you see it in your mind? Will it maybe resemble its human parent: "Doesn't little Johnny look just like his Dad"? Will it walk upright like Oliver, or scooch around on its knuckles and swing from the trees?  Talk, perhaps? Have thoughts, opinions, needs? But who cares about needs at a time like this: who thinks of needs except OUR needs, our whims, our wretched inability to leave things alone and appreciate a fragile, unforgiveably damaged wild world that is committing suicide right in front of our eyes.



 

Dear Sir or Madam, will you read my book
    It took me years to write, will you take a look



Sunday, June 24, 2012

The United Church: a study in decline





















Further reading:

Mysteries of Old Hollywood




This is what I write about when I can't think of what to write about. This ghostly image, as seen through a shivering square of nitrate or a dark lapping curtain. I don't know who she is, but she has an awfully big head, which is the key to success in Hollywood. Name six small-headed actors.






The predatory female. Dead now. They're all dead, did you ever think of that? All. Like my grade school teachers, like too many of my friends. It's creepy. The hard-eyed look is sad and weary and ruthless. And I want that big fat jewel pasted in the middle of her forehead.





The patent-leather hair must have been a turnoff. Or not? Things were different then. People took one bath a week and wore natural fibres which must have stank to high heaven, and almost everyone smoked. So much for the mystery of Hollywood.





This picture is sweet in a misty sort of way, though very posed. "Now hold up that magazine and pretend to read it. That's it." At least it's not upside-down. And those furs they wore! Looks like a slice of ermine jellyroll.






Like a 3D cutout or one of those Stereoscopes my grandmother had. The dog fairly walks out of the frame.






Rory Calhoun? Rory Calhoun? I'd say it's Charlie Sheen and a very young Alec Baldwin, before all those fits on the airplane.





The shroud of Turin, Hollywood-style.

Friday, June 22, 2012

Was Hermann Goering a transvestite? You decide



It's waaaaaay too late, and I am waaaaaaay too sick with this flu-thingama-jiggy to even be out of bed right now. But just a short time ago, while looking for something else, I came across a couple of pages that fascinated me. In fact, it made my jaw drop. It was an account of someone who had special duties during World War II: to keep Hermann Goering supplied with lacy panties, silk stockings and all the latest Paris creations so he could dress his chubby frame in elegant satins and high heels and parade around in front of the mirror. Just for the sake of comfort: those stiff Nazi uniforms do chafe in some very private places, don't you see?





The only trouble is, though I remember parts of this information in excruciating detail, probably more detail than I want, I don't remember which book it was in! This is worse than Mary Astor's diary (which I finally found in a really filthy book called Hollywood Babylon, not that I actually have a copy). I went through both David Niven books (again, because I really did think it was in there: it's the sort of story he loved to tell in his memoirs, very Carry-On/Catch-22-ish military stuff).





It's not there. Not in the Babble-on book either. So what does that leave? What have I been reading lately? Is it in my book of medical myths (when you sneeze, does your heart stop? If you cross your eyes will they get stuck that way?) or somewhere in the Marion Meade biography of Dorothy Parker, one of my favorite books in the whole wide world? Doesn't seem too damn likely. Dorothy Parker liked men who were men (in spite of the fact that she repeatedly referred to her effeminate husband Alan Campbell as "a fawn's ass").





So I don't have the hard evidence I was hoping for, but these photos do offer compelling hints of those private passions which he practiced behind closed doors. So it's up to you to decide: WAS Hermann Goering a transvestite? Was one of the most vicious human beings who ever lived just a strutting, primping, mascara-slathering, boa-swishing drag queen?







(Does Bullwinkle wear green gloves?)


 

Dear Sir or Madam, will you read my book
    It took me years to write, will you take a look



My head is spinning (and yours will too)

Thursday, June 21, 2012

"Ah, desert night": the world's dirtiest diary, Part II



Amazing what you can ferret out if you just keep trying. Turns out those lost excerpts from Mary Astor's infamous diary weren't in David Niven's books - any of them. There was mention of Mary being "a very busy girl indeed", but no explicit details.

Damn.


I'm sick as shit today and can't sit in my office chair because it hurts my butt, can't kneel in front of my computer because it hurts my knees, can't sit up in bed to read because it hurts everything, and am too bored and uncomfortable to sleep. So I went on sniffing the ground like a jowly old bloodhound for answers.


As it turned out, what I was looking for was right under my nose. The bookcase in my office is mainly for show, with nice-looking but basically boring hardcovers that were a mistake to purchase. But in with all this bumph (perhaps buried by guilt) was THE BOOK: Hollywood Babylon (which I only bought to research a paper on Cecil B. deMille, I swear!).




OK, so Mary's little diary isn't nearly as salacious as the things we see today, but by the standards of the 1930s it's pretty hot. It even drops the f-bomb a couple of times, so be warned, if that sort of thing bothers you. Her unlikely liaison with the married playwright George S. Kaufman, who looked a bit like Kramer in hornrims, generated all sorts of sparks and steam. The story continues. . .


"One morning about 4 we had a sandwich at Reuben's, and it was just getting daylight, so we drove through the park in an open cab, and the birds started singing , and it was a cool and dewy day and it was pretty heavenly to pet and French. . . right out in the open. . .

Was any woman ever happier? It seems that George is just hard all the time. . . I don't see how he does it, he is perfect."






Such "perfection" had to be carefully hidden from her husband. But there were ways.

"Monday I went to the Beverly Wiltshire and was able to see George alone for the first time. He greeted me in pajamas, and we flew into each other's arms. He was rampant in an instant, and in a few moments it was just like old times. . . he tore out of his pajamas and I never was undressed by anyone so fast in all my life. . .



Later we went to Vendome for lunch, to a stationer's shop. . . then back to the hotel. It was raining and lovely. It was wonderful to fuck the entire sweet afternoon away. . . I left about 6 o'clock. . .

Sat around in the sun all day - lunch in the pool with Moss (presumably, playwright Moss Hart) and George and the Rogers - dinner at the Dunes  - a drink in the moonlight WITHOUT Moss and Rogers. Ah, desert night - with George's body plunging into mine, naked under the stars!

(Uh, OK. Sooner or later the starlit idyll ended: the jig was up and Mary's husband threw a fit, demanding she give up George immediately. But Mary was not quite ready to surrender her sweet desert nights beside the pool.)




"For the sake of peace and respite from all this emotionalism, I told him I would do nothing at the present. My main reason for saying that is, quite honestly, I want to be able to see George for the rest of his stay here without being all upset - looking like hell. I want to have the last few times of completely enjoying him."




Completely enjoy him she did, like prime rib or a fine piece of sirloin. Why she chose such a complete doofus still remains a mystery, especially in light of the rumors that he and his wife lived chastely separate lives.

I like the chick-a-boom at the end of this story.

"Kaufman had taken a powder during the courtroom proceedings: he sat them out in New York with Hart. He dodged queries concerning the case, but once, when cornered by reporters at the stage door of the Music Box, he allowed:

"You may say I did not keep a diary."





Go Ask Mary: the world's dirtiest diary




I don't what this is, must be flu or something, but it is evil.



I hardly ever get sick, and only got really sick on the plane home from San Francisco as it began to land (which takes about 35 minutes or so, during which someone took a drill-bit to each ear and cranked). None of the "methods" to clear my head worked, and I was in excruciating pain, like an icy wind whistling against your face when you have a bad tooth. When we landed, it did not go away, my ears never did "pop", and the next day, Oh Gawd.




I'm having trouble typing this and making about 150 errors per line, but I need some sort of distraction from this rotting feeling in the bones. So I will obsess about something else, something completely unrelated: Mary Astor's Diary.




You've heard about this? No? The first time I heard about it, I swear it was in one of David Niven's memoirs. He wrote three of them, and I have two  and I cannot find the reference to this ANYWHERE. I was sure it was in the first one, The Moon's a Balloon, then even more sure it was in the second one (which I ordered used from Amazon for one cent, smelling like a rotten pumpkin with the glue all cracked). Nothing! Then why did I remember specific lines like:


Mary Astor , a glamorous star from the 1940s, "looked like a beautiful and highly shockable nun," but "by her own admission she was at her best in bed". The book then quotes the diary she kept of her steamy affair with playwright George S. Kaufman, one of the Gonkers I wrote about in my post about Dorothy Parker and Robert Benchley (which see):





This diary created some sort of hoo-ha in the '40s, I think over a child custody case with her husband. (Need I say both she and George were married, but not to each other?) But do you think I can find it? Do you think I can quote that salacious material (now considered bogus, but wouldn't any lawyer say that?) which graced the pages of one of Niven's not-very-salacious books?

He wrote a third book that's described as a novel, and I'm so obsessed by this topic now that I spent another cent (yes, you CAN get books for one cent from Amazon, though no one believes me) to get a copy. If it's not in there, then I don't know how I could have remembered such specific things.  I can still find bits of the dirty diary here and there, but not the really good parts.  I had a book somewhere called Hollywood Babylon, but can't find it either. Perhaps during my last book-purge for painting, I chucked it out, ashamed of the sleazy peep-show side of me that makes my life worth living.




Maybe I missed it in the first two memoirs. I don't know. I  flipped through each book, skimmed every page. Most of the first book, The Moon's a Balloon, a huge bestseller, is mostly a dull account of his military service during World War II. It's sanitized, not mentioning his second wife's alcoholism or the fact that their courtship lasted six weeks, not ten days.

Maybe it's being sick and this bone-rotting ache and the sneezing and horrible hacking cough - I cannot believe how red the back of my throat is - but I feel like I HAVE to track down this third Niven book . Fiction or not, it may well expand on my knowledge, like George S. Kaufman expanding on (in?) the highly-shockable Mary.



(Note. This is the only excerpt I have been able to find, but I KNOW it is not complete. I won't tell you the other parts unless and until I can find that David Niven book. This is from Hollywood Babbling On or something like that. Except for that one f-bomb, it strikes me as pretty mild by today's standards.)

Mary Astor's Diary: 1936

"His first initial is G, and I fell like a ton of bricks. I met him Friday. Saturday he called for me at the Ambassador and we went to the Casino for lunch and had a very gay time! Monday—we ducked out of the boring party. It was very hot so we got a cab and drove around the park a few times and the park was, well, the park, and he held my hand and said he’d like to kiss me but didn’t.


Tuesday night we had a dinner at ‘21’ and on the way to see Run Little Chillun he did kiss me—and I don’t think either of us remember much what the show was about. We played kneesies during the first two acts, my hand wasn’t in my own lap during the third. It’s been years since I’ve felt up a man in public, but I just got carried away.


Afterwards we had a drink someplace and then went to a little flat in 73rd Street where we could be alone, and it was all very thrilling and beautiful. Once George lays down his glasses, he is quite a different man. His powers of recuperation are amazing, and we made love all night long. It all worked perfectly, and we shared our fourth climax at dawn. I didn’t see much of anybody else the rest of the time—we saw every show in town, had grand fun together and went frequently to 73rd Street where he fucked the living daylights out of me."


Excerpts published in Kenneth Anger’s Hollywood Babylon, from the diary of actress Mary Astor, whose affair with the playwright and critic George S. Kaufman was exposed during her 1936 custody battle. She claimed the snippets leaked to the tabloids were inaccurate. We’ll never know: A judge in 1952 had it burned.





 


Dear Sir or Madam, will you read my book
    It took me years to write, will you take a look


San Fransiskie?



"San Fransiskie? So how did you came, you drove'n did you flew?"

Wednesday, June 20, 2012

Be-in at Golden Gate Park: you had to be there!

Cable cars, squirrels and me

San Francisco: I left my heart (and my wallet)





No, seriously, it was beautiful, even though I came home with some wretched bug that must be the flu. My ears were assaulted with hacksaw blades for the last 35 minutes of the flight, and are still recovering. But it was good to be there, and eve better to be home.

This is my almost-first attempt at posting on YouTube. I apologize for the jerky camera work in this one, but hey, IT WASN'T ME, but my husband trying frantically to find the legendary crossroads with glaring sun in his eyes. Still and all, the Land of Rice-a-Roni was fairly magical, with faint traces of the Summer of Love wafting (along with the pot smoke) down Ashbury Street where, I think, the Grateful Dead once lived.

The Golden Gate Bridge was sighingly beautiful, truly worthy of that song (and the tour guide blasted it over the PA system as we crossed it on the bus). The cablecars, well, I'm going to devote a whole blog post to the cablecars. Ding, ding, ding! It's Rice-a-roni, gang!