Thank you so much for finding and posting this! I loved this story even more the Gorilla Tales story I found!
And having watched Chimp Empire just last week, I should have found a chimp much more plausible than a gorilla. Gorilla heads and chimp heads don’t look at all alike.
I especially like the part where he said the real gorilla ripped the suitcase apart in seconds. It looks as if the first commercial, gorilla in cage, was the real gorilla. Even the very brief brachiating seems implausible for a human. Also leg proportions seem more nonhuman.
Couple of years ago, I bumped into a book (upright, spine showing author Terry Waite) on a shop shelf titled - Travels with the Primate - I thought - - oooh, Rev Waite (whom I have met twice & spoken on zoom as well, a couple times) writing in the style of (surprise, surprise) David Attenborough / Jane Goodall !!
I had visions of the hulking Rev Waite going about his busyness, with the chimp holding on to his finger. Excited, I pulled it away off the shelf...and lo & behold... it was the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Runcie😯 Primate, indeed😁🧘🌌
A ''tourister'' is a bus used in carrying tourists that is usually owned by a tour operator, and as such American Tourister is claiming it is carrying your stuff, or that their bags are frequented by tourists.
A high school friend, Steve Johnson, went to work for Rick Baker, the special effects guy who's won a lot of awards. Steve made that costume and eventually sold it to a Japanese company that used it in their advertising. Steve went on to work on Ghostbusters, Greystoke, American Werewolf in London, lots of stuff. Cool guy.
There’s a story that one scene involved damaging the costumes, and the director supposedly scheduled it for the first day of shooting, infuriating Baker.
"I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time- when we're a service and information economy; when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide,
"Mark Meadows’s publisher has pulled his book off the shelves and is suing him for millions since he admitted under oath it was all a pack of damned lies."
You mean the publisher though there was the slightest chance it *wasn't* a complete pack of damned lies? What rock have they been hiding under? And besides, why should they care, as long as it sells?
( And you know the people who buy that kind of book probably aren't going to actually *read* the thing anyway. )
They only care because he admitted under oath that none of it was true. Before that, the publisher had plausible deniability, and potential readers/buyers could claim "that's just, like, your opinion, man." Once a thing is a matter of public record, sworn under oath, it becomes fact. And the new fact is that Meadows filled those pages with bullshit. Publisher just wants its money back, because they see the potential lost revenue.
I already cancelled my subscription to WaPo but now I want to do it again. It's sad really, because they do a lot of solid reporting. That's going to end now.
I saw a clip on that. When the Vermont rep made hsome comments on the bill Zinke responded, referring to her as the congress woman from Maine. At least he got close...ish. Good work by someone from West Dakots.
Maine has a coast, Mass has a coast. Even NH has ten miles of coast line. VT has a nice river on one side and a lake and a couple canals on t he other. No seacoast./s (Pedantric mansplainin always free.)
Vermont and Pennsylvania are the only states in the 'real' east that do not have any coastal waters. DC, not a state, also does not, but all the other eastern states do, and that even includes Alabama and Mississippi on the Gulf Coast
Like a lot of people, and a lot white people of my generation, I have mixed feelings about To Kill a Mockingbird.
I first read it as an older kid - maybe 10 years old or there-abouts? I found it in a box of my mom's paperback novels in the basement (Travels with Charlie, too). So much of the book focuses on Scout's little kid activities, and that was the center of it for me when I was a kid. But I read through the parts about Tom and Mayella and Calpurnia, and the parts about Boo Radley, and I kind of (in my little white kid way) found their stories intriguing too. Tom and Mayella were sympathetic characters for me, Cal and Atticus models of strength and measured actions.
Reading it as a teen, I was ABSOFUCKINGLUTELY outraged at Tom's situation, and the complicity of Mayella and the whole white town in getting him killed. It seemed so emlematic of the travesty of justice so many faced, still face, will continue to face.
And as an adult , reviewing it through the lens of more information and the criticism of the "savior" aspects of the story, I cringed thinking of that complicity, and the adulation of Atticus Finch, who could not save Tom.
Now, I feel all those aspects. And continue to think about the way that story, however flawed, opened a door for a lot of white people. It's definitely a book written for a white audience. THe story becomes a lens through which to look at not just the likelyhood of the legal issues the imaginary characters faced, but the constraints of the town's rules, the racism, and way the white folks played into it, and that to the extent Tom has little voice in the story, that's part of the story white people tell ourselves too.
The book, it's history, and our different experiences reading it are all part of the story, the teachable moment.
And I'll never think of a turkey costume in quite the same way.
reading it as an 11 yr old in the UK who hadnt gotten interested in history and politics yet, I was outraged at the racism. I grew up in Islington, north london ( before it was gentrified to shit) and my friends were all colours and religions. This is probably why I went on to study american political history
So I was reading Jeff Tiedrich's latest and was tickled about wanking euphemisms. This was a review of Mike Johnson's making sure his son knows when he's indulging:
at which point, I guess, they’re supposed to ring your phone and say “yo bro, I know you’re slamming the ham, cut that shit out.”
because what healthy, well-adjusted person doesn’t want everyone to know when they’re throttling the trouser trout?
yes, it’s that magical time in every teenage boy’s life when he gets an alert telling him his father is polishing the bishop.
This will be a good day if, at the end of it, PAB, Alina Habba Dabba Doo and Christoper Kise have ALL been remanded into custody for the duration of the trial. And the appeal, if the judge has that power.
Here's some accurate gun history. The 2nd Amendment was adopted because the southern states wanted to maintain their militias because of the fear of slave uprisings, which occurred more often than most people realize. Slave patrols, in other words. Gun rights were for white people only, as even free blacks were often prohibited from owning guns. Look at the reaction to the Black Panthers wielding guns in Oakland; Saint Ronnie signed a gun control law!
Young voters and die hard progressives egged on by Russian and GOP bots were what helped defeat Hillary in 2016. We see the results of that in a 6-3 Supreme Court split that may take decades to reverse, especially since that court is granting unlimited campaign donations and extreme partisan gerrymandering. Presidential elections in America have only two possible outcomes, a Democrat or a Republican winning. Voting for a third party or sitting it out only helps the candidate furthest from your ideology.
So learn from very recent history. Vote for the candidate you favor in the primary, then unite behind the primary winner without whining or attacking the winner with claims of stealing the primary. Otherwise you may see Trump win and the few gains Biden has accomplished will be history. Just like some initiatives by Obama vanished, including higher minimum wage for federal contractors and changes in what job classifications are entitled to overtime pay. And almost ending the Affordable Care Act, with repeal saved only by one vote after being approved six years earlier by only one vote. A law that helped younger people get affordable health insurance.
Just educate yourself about the Trump administration, realize they have had several years to hone their regressive policies and action plans to subvert constitutional protections and rights. Then ask yourself if you would be better off with Trump in charge for another four years or longer. Because the contest will be between Biden and Trump or an equally horrible replacement Republican whether you want it or not. You may not get everything you want in Biden, but part of that was due to not voting for Hillary in 2016 because she wasn't progressive enough. But you will still be heading in the right direction. But if Trump wins you are going to get a lot of things you really are not going to like that will take you in a direction you do not want to go, guided by authoritarian religious zealots controlling your lives.
Too many voters claimed Trump was not too bad, he would grow into the presidency, and forecasts of judicial horrors was just Democratic propaganda. What we ended up with was worse than most people imagined and it will be much worse than that if Trump and his policy of revenge wins.
Call me crazy, but I kinda think that if you're a teacher who believes "To Kill a Mockingbird" should be called out for its white savior complex and leaving Tom Robinson voiceless, those could be opportune teaching moments, not excuses not to teach the novel.
I can see addressing this point if you are to teach TKaM. But there are so many good novels by black authors to teach from these days. I honestly don't see why this particular novel rises above other more contemporary novels.
Doest it rise above others? I don't know. It was something everyone in my high school seemed to have read, but it wasn't "taught" in a classroom. Of course I'm old as dirt, so I don't know what's getting taught today.
There was a pretty shameful paucity of Black literature taught in my high school, though, consisting mostly of Langston Hughes, with books like "Native Son" and "Invisible Man" held out as elective choices. In Junior High everyone had to read "The Autobiography of Malcolm X," and I wonder if that gets taught anywhere anymore.
It does matter when you check in for your flight if the plane has closed its doors and begun taxiing away without you. I’m sure that’s a metaphor for something, but I haven’t had coffee yet this morning at 7:29 am in Los Angeles.
It makes me lol that the gorilla in this 1970 ad for American Tourister gets acting credit. https://open.substack.com/pub/martiniambassador/p/oofie-tests-some-luggage
I found the story of the filming - of Oofie the chimpanzee.
https://chuukyuu.hatenablog.com/entry/20100122/1264099102
Thank you so much for finding and posting this! I loved this story even more the Gorilla Tales story I found!
And having watched Chimp Empire just last week, I should have found a chimp much more plausible than a gorilla. Gorilla heads and chimp heads don’t look at all alike.
I remember that ad!
Some of the responses here led me to Snopes for a quick check … nothing there.
But then I kept scrolling and found this sweet story
https://www.tampabay.com/archive/2007/07/14/a-better-gorilla-than-well-a-gorilla/
which mentioned this
https://www.abebooks.com/9781951556242/Gorilla-Tales-Life-Professional-Primate-1951556240/plp
I’m so tempted …
I especially like the part where he said the real gorilla ripped the suitcase apart in seconds. It looks as if the first commercial, gorilla in cage, was the real gorilla. Even the very brief brachiating seems implausible for a human. Also leg proportions seem more nonhuman.
Couple of years ago, I bumped into a book (upright, spine showing author Terry Waite) on a shop shelf titled - Travels with the Primate - I thought - - oooh, Rev Waite (whom I have met twice & spoken on zoom as well, a couple times) writing in the style of (surprise, surprise) David Attenborough / Jane Goodall !!
I had visions of the hulking Rev Waite going about his busyness, with the chimp holding on to his finger. Excited, I pulled it away off the shelf...and lo & behold... it was the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Runcie😯 Primate, indeed😁🧘🌌
Apropos of nothing, they used a short clip of that ad in Apollo 13.
Looked like a chimpanzee
It is a chimpanzee. Or at least it’s supposed to be. It’s a dude in a costume.
Yes, but no lines, so no SAG credit!
The use of the coinage "Tourister" by this company always seemed odd to me. Maybe I'm just being picky.
It's better than their newest model, "The Touron."
A ''tourister'' is a bus used in carrying tourists that is usually owned by a tour operator, and as such American Tourister is claiming it is carrying your stuff, or that their bags are frequented by tourists.
One of the more oddly named minor league baseball teams.
https://images.app.goo.gl/BTfKLDxYKFeEqLdB7
Well, it IS known for gettng a lot of tourists, more than most cities in NC.
The Biltmore n' at.
You mean George Santos' vacation cottage?
My Mom had that suitcase
We ALL had that suitcase, back in the day. Mine was baby blue.
Oops! I thought it was Samsonite. I guess I really didn't "Oh! I remember that one!"
Same!
They are the same … the American Tourister factory in Warren, RI became a samsonite factory in the 80s
I didn't know that. Thanks.
A high school friend, Steve Johnson, went to work for Rick Baker, the special effects guy who's won a lot of awards. Steve made that costume and eventually sold it to a Japanese company that used it in their advertising. Steve went on to work on Ghostbusters, Greystoke, American Werewolf in London, lots of stuff. Cool guy.
Wait. The ape in this commercial isn't real?
Next you’re going to tell me that that was a guy in a fig suit in that Fig Newtons commercial.
Impossible!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QkmS9tLgjDA
Curse you, Don Draper!
Correct! Steve said he's a wonderful actor and a bit crazy himself.
Another fond memory from my yout', trashed.
I haz disappoint.
:-(
Was he the original gorilla in Trading Places, perchance?
I don't think so, but Steve made a lot of different ape costumes, all the ones in Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan.
There’s a story that one scene involved damaging the costumes, and the director supposedly scheduled it for the first day of shooting, infuriating Baker.
Just poured my first cup of coffee and now another of my childhood memories has been exposed as fake. Oh, the humanity.
Ahhhh... great cup of coffee though.
Yay for a great morning cup, BDB -- somebody's gotta keep ahold of the goddamn priorities! *slurp* Mine's pretty yum also. ;)
Yeah next they are going to tell us the old man dancing in 6 Flags commercials is fake!
Or that those nice fellas in the Bartles & Jaymes commercials were just actors!
I had seen that commercial for entirely too many years when the future Mrs. Arolpin broke the news.
In my defense, I was an idiot.
Or Martha of the Medicare Advantage ads.
Soon, I hope to see Pabs in a cage with a piece of American Tourister lugag.
Very clever play on the word gulag.
Hmmm, didn't think of that. Somebody needs to write Lugag Archipelago.
Or something.
Luggagipelago.
"Luggage Archipelago" - where lost luggage winds up.
Also "Unclaimed Baggage" warehouse in Scottsboro, Alabama.
Snort. Seems like it would be the basis of a great TV series.
If only William Conrad of ''Cannon'' fame were still around!
"Lugag" sounds French!
Orcish to me.
And if you add four or five irrelevant letters to the end of the word it would be French.
Add twelve more consonants and remove the u and a and it's Welsh.
LOL! lugag. Loooogag!!
Loogie.
Gag.
I read that in Minion voices
"That Barney Rubble, what an actor!"
I was remembering it as Samsonite, but yes, that was a great ad for getting a point across.
Was Samsonite the commercial where the guy was trying to close the suitcase and kid says "why don't you have Mom sit on it?"
So was I.
Great minds etc.
Right?! There are no credits listed for zookeeper guy, case in point.
"I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time- when we're a service and information economy; when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide,
almost without noticing, back into superstition."
-Carl Sagan (1934-1996)
We’re there now.
Wonkette, hi there 🙏
You mention "Potawatomi", and this thrill me so much...
My favourite botanist, in the whole Universe... The one and only... Potawatomi - Robin Wall Kimmerer 🌻🌝🙏greetings to you, Wonkette 🌺🧘from London 🌌💙🌠
"Mark Meadows’s publisher has pulled his book off the shelves and is suing him for millions since he admitted under oath it was all a pack of damned lies."
You mean the publisher though there was the slightest chance it *wasn't* a complete pack of damned lies? What rock have they been hiding under? And besides, why should they care, as long as it sells?
( And you know the people who buy that kind of book probably aren't going to actually *read* the thing anyway. )
They only care because he admitted under oath that none of it was true. Before that, the publisher had plausible deniability, and potential readers/buyers could claim "that's just, like, your opinion, man." Once a thing is a matter of public record, sworn under oath, it becomes fact. And the new fact is that Meadows filled those pages with bullshit. Publisher just wants its money back, because they see the potential lost revenue.
Sorry, but "The Split" reads like bad fan fiction.
I already cancelled my subscription to WaPo but now I want to do it again. It's sad really, because they do a lot of solid reporting. That's going to end now.
Is there anyone I feel less sorry for than Mark Meadows? Other than the obvious guy, no.
"with the Ryan Zinke bill to ban Palestinians from the US, and also all the crazy truly fascist stuff Trump wants to do in a second term."
The problem is that men are too emotional to vote.
I saw a clip on that. When the Vermont rep made hsome comments on the bill Zinke responded, referring to her as the congress woman from Maine. At least he got close...ish. Good work by someone from West Dakots.
at least he was on the right coast
Maine has a coast, Mass has a coast. Even NH has ten miles of coast line. VT has a nice river on one side and a lake and a couple canals on t he other. No seacoast./s (Pedantric mansplainin always free.)
Vermont and Pennsylvania are the only states in the 'real' east that do not have any coastal waters. DC, not a state, also does not, but all the other eastern states do, and that even includes Alabama and Mississippi on the Gulf Coast
Like a lot of people, and a lot white people of my generation, I have mixed feelings about To Kill a Mockingbird.
I first read it as an older kid - maybe 10 years old or there-abouts? I found it in a box of my mom's paperback novels in the basement (Travels with Charlie, too). So much of the book focuses on Scout's little kid activities, and that was the center of it for me when I was a kid. But I read through the parts about Tom and Mayella and Calpurnia, and the parts about Boo Radley, and I kind of (in my little white kid way) found their stories intriguing too. Tom and Mayella were sympathetic characters for me, Cal and Atticus models of strength and measured actions.
Reading it as a teen, I was ABSOFUCKINGLUTELY outraged at Tom's situation, and the complicity of Mayella and the whole white town in getting him killed. It seemed so emlematic of the travesty of justice so many faced, still face, will continue to face.
And as an adult , reviewing it through the lens of more information and the criticism of the "savior" aspects of the story, I cringed thinking of that complicity, and the adulation of Atticus Finch, who could not save Tom.
Now, I feel all those aspects. And continue to think about the way that story, however flawed, opened a door for a lot of white people. It's definitely a book written for a white audience. THe story becomes a lens through which to look at not just the likelyhood of the legal issues the imaginary characters faced, but the constraints of the town's rules, the racism, and way the white folks played into it, and that to the extent Tom has little voice in the story, that's part of the story white people tell ourselves too.
The book, it's history, and our different experiences reading it are all part of the story, the teachable moment.
And I'll never think of a turkey costume in quite the same way.
reading it as an 11 yr old in the UK who hadnt gotten interested in history and politics yet, I was outraged at the racism. I grew up in Islington, north london ( before it was gentrified to shit) and my friends were all colours and religions. This is probably why I went on to study american political history
So I was reading Jeff Tiedrich's latest and was tickled about wanking euphemisms. This was a review of Mike Johnson's making sure his son knows when he's indulging:
at which point, I guess, they’re supposed to ring your phone and say “yo bro, I know you’re slamming the ham, cut that shit out.”
because what healthy, well-adjusted person doesn’t want everyone to know when they’re throttling the trouser trout?
yes, it’s that magical time in every teenage boy’s life when he gets an alert telling him his father is polishing the bishop.
This will be a good day if, at the end of it, PAB, Alina Habba Dabba Doo and Christoper Kise have ALL been remanded into custody for the duration of the trial. And the appeal, if the judge has that power.
Is looking like Engoron is about to explode.
how would that work? would they have access to all the legal resources they needed to defend TFG?
They do have law libraries in some prisons...
I guess so, but who cares? That’s be PAB’s problem, not ours.
Here's some accurate gun history. The 2nd Amendment was adopted because the southern states wanted to maintain their militias because of the fear of slave uprisings, which occurred more often than most people realize. Slave patrols, in other words. Gun rights were for white people only, as even free blacks were often prohibited from owning guns. Look at the reaction to the Black Panthers wielding guns in Oakland; Saint Ronnie signed a gun control law!
Young voters and die hard progressives egged on by Russian and GOP bots were what helped defeat Hillary in 2016. We see the results of that in a 6-3 Supreme Court split that may take decades to reverse, especially since that court is granting unlimited campaign donations and extreme partisan gerrymandering. Presidential elections in America have only two possible outcomes, a Democrat or a Republican winning. Voting for a third party or sitting it out only helps the candidate furthest from your ideology.
So learn from very recent history. Vote for the candidate you favor in the primary, then unite behind the primary winner without whining or attacking the winner with claims of stealing the primary. Otherwise you may see Trump win and the few gains Biden has accomplished will be history. Just like some initiatives by Obama vanished, including higher minimum wage for federal contractors and changes in what job classifications are entitled to overtime pay. And almost ending the Affordable Care Act, with repeal saved only by one vote after being approved six years earlier by only one vote. A law that helped younger people get affordable health insurance.
Just educate yourself about the Trump administration, realize they have had several years to hone their regressive policies and action plans to subvert constitutional protections and rights. Then ask yourself if you would be better off with Trump in charge for another four years or longer. Because the contest will be between Biden and Trump or an equally horrible replacement Republican whether you want it or not. You may not get everything you want in Biden, but part of that was due to not voting for Hillary in 2016 because she wasn't progressive enough. But you will still be heading in the right direction. But if Trump wins you are going to get a lot of things you really are not going to like that will take you in a direction you do not want to go, guided by authoritarian religious zealots controlling your lives.
Too many voters claimed Trump was not too bad, he would grow into the presidency, and forecasts of judicial horrors was just Democratic propaganda. What we ended up with was worse than most people imagined and it will be much worse than that if Trump and his policy of revenge wins.
Call me crazy, but I kinda think that if you're a teacher who believes "To Kill a Mockingbird" should be called out for its white savior complex and leaving Tom Robinson voiceless, those could be opportune teaching moments, not excuses not to teach the novel.
I can see addressing this point if you are to teach TKaM. But there are so many good novels by black authors to teach from these days. I honestly don't see why this particular novel rises above other more contemporary novels.
Doest it rise above others? I don't know. It was something everyone in my high school seemed to have read, but it wasn't "taught" in a classroom. Of course I'm old as dirt, so I don't know what's getting taught today.
There was a pretty shameful paucity of Black literature taught in my high school, though, consisting mostly of Langston Hughes, with books like "Native Son" and "Invisible Man" held out as elective choices. In Junior High everyone had to read "The Autobiography of Malcolm X," and I wonder if that gets taught anywhere anymore.
It does matter when you check in for your flight if the plane has closed its doors and begun taxiing away without you. I’m sure that’s a metaphor for something, but I haven’t had coffee yet this morning at 7:29 am in Los Angeles.
My favorite part of To Kill A Mockingbird was the ham costume. At least that's the only thing I remember about it.