Daddy’s pet

When I was a kid we were only allowed to have pets that lived in cages. After hearing about Annie Butor’s childhood living with anarchist singer/poet Léo Ferré, I feel very lucky indeed.

According to Ms. Butor (from her new autobiography), as a youth she had to compete with a pet chimpanzee named Pépée for her mother’s and stepfather’s attention. And this wasn’t just some “My dad loves this smart-ass scary wooden puppet better than me” Candice Bergen/Charlie McCarthy rivalry; judging by the news that Candice is making a biopic of her father from the point of view of Charlie, it seems that those two seem to have buried the hatchet, so to speak. No, this was some cut-throat competition, and it ended very badly. Pépée attacked houseguests and ripped off their clothes. She stole jewelry. She once kidnapped a baby and dragged it up to the roof of the chateau. And still, Pépée was the one who got to drive the car. Pépée.

At some point, Léo himself realized shit was crazy and he moved out of the chateau… by himself. Annie and her mother Madelaine had to deal with Pépée on their own. Following Léo’s departure, Pépée had a very serious fall (I’m thinking some sort of drunken William Holden-esque headfirst crash into a  bedside table, but don’t quote me on that) and she refused to let anybody near her to help out. Madelaine finally asked a nearby hunter to shoot Pépée to put her out of her misery… or according to some sources, she just got pissed that Léo abandoned them, and had all the animals at the chateau exterminated.

Anyway, Leo never forgave Madelaine, they got divorced, and he wrote this weepy song about Pépée that as far as I can tell noted that Pépée had ears like Serge Gainsbourg and was so great that Léo didn’t have to drink scotch around her. My french isn’t very good, but I think I got the gist of it.

Ugh. Let’s not talk about these horrible people anymore. Let’s share a song from Nino Ferrer, who as far as I can tell never owned a chimp.

Who eats lettuce in the bathroom?

There are five commonly accepted collective nouns for a group of baboons:

• a congress of baboons
• a flange of baboons
• a rumpus of baboons
• a tribe of baboons
• a troop of baboons

I’m pretty sure this is a rumpus.

via Arbroath, via Neatorama

Rest in peace, Gerry Anderson

Two days after Christmas and I’m still feeling as dumb as a chimp in a lifeboat. I’ll start using my words again soon, I promise.

Monkey claws

This starts out not making much sense, and then… wow. Stick with it until 8:23, where you may behold the vision of murderous rage in a child’s eyes.

Cornelius fallen

My friend Sweater Chicken broke the news to me this morning that the Mystery Monkey of Tampa was captured after about three years eluding The Man. Drugged up. Caged. Renamed. Ugh. It’s like the saddest movie in the world.

Much love to you, Cornelius. Here’s hoping you find a lady friend in your new home with whom you can make a baby. You can name him Caesar.

50 million monkeys can’t be wrong

“The Peanut Vendor” is not considered to be a “significant” work by artist Len Lye. I think that is kind of a shame.

Yours and ours

There is a very brave fellow in Cambodia named Aki Ra who was forced into military service under the Khmer Rouge when he was a child. One of his duties was laying landmines. Now that he’s an adult and he isn’t being forced to lay landmines under threat of death, guess what he’s doing with his time? Digging up landmines and dismantling them, of course. He’s found quite a few:

And now it appears that Aki Ra may have some gorilla counterpoints in Rwanda. From the National Geographic article about some hairy kids who are getting pretty good at taking apart poachers’ traps:

On Tuesday tracker John Ndayambaje spotted a trap very close to the Kuryama gorilla clan. He moved in to deactivate the snare, but a silverback named Vubu grunted, cautioning Ndayambaje to stay away, Vecellio said.

Suddenly two juveniles—Rwema, a male; and Dukore, a female; both about four years old—ran toward the trap.

As Ndayambaje and a few tourists watched, Rwema jumped on the bent tree branch and broke it, while Dukore freed the noose.

The pair then spied another snare nearby—one the tracker himself had missed—and raced for it. Joined by a third gorilla, a teenager named Tetero, Rwema and Dukore destroyed that trap as well.

Now, I know I keep harping on about how afraid I am about the day when simians rise up against us humans, and seeing as humans were the ones who set the traps in Rwanda, I could see how this recent event might add fuel to the “they are just going to get sick of our shit and kill us” fire. However, I think we can still all figure out a way to get along, and if anybody can do this, it’s Aki, Rwema, Dukore and Tetero. Thanks, you guys, and let me know what I can do to help aside from dismantling landmines. I’m just not very good with my hands.

Photo by jystewart on Flickr

Elephino

Oh, residents of Beverly Hills. You are a confusing bunch. One the one hand, you’re allOHMYGOD THINK OF THE CHILDREN when the city tries to build a subway under the local high school. But when faced with a family of vicious white tigers, a pride of lions,

wait – make that two families of white tigers, even more lions, a leopard,

a tower of giraffes, a herd of elephants,

and a goddamned gorilla

mere blocks away from an elementary school, with only the flimsiest of iron fences keeping the beasts from rampaging through the streets, do we hear a peep?

Sometimes I question your priorities.

But it’s empowering

I don’t know which is worse – looking at this chimp in a sequined dress, or watching her take it off. I’m so glad the ’90s are over.

Banana wobble

The Swedish office for Tori’s company sent her a rather interesting promo for a music festival just now:

The premise is interesting to me, of course, but the actual experiment is bullshit. It was nice of them to hang the keyboard upside down for it, but is a two-toed sloth even a monkey? Disqualified. And why do the pygmy marmosets get the Bleeptronic 5000 while the baboons are stuck with the Casiotone? Who can blame that guy at 1:51? Then again, maybe he was just emulating Art of Noise:

I say give that guy some samples and see what he can really do.