#zippy chimps

[doctorbeth]

Pojo and Mambo's Hospital Visits

Hi All! I'm back with a bunch of new stories, and Pojo's is first. To paraphrase Panic at the Disco:

Here I come

Oh, how it's been so long

I'm so sorry I've been gone I've been busy writing posts for you!

Well, actually I've been busy taking care of stuffed animals, which then leads to stories that lead to posts but, you get the idea. :-)

Anyway... the first pair of patients I'm going to share are relatives (the same style of animal). They came to the hospital nearly four months apart. Pojo is about 2 feet tall, Mombo is closer to 3 feet, but their relationship will be obvious.

Here are Pojo's diagnosis photos:

I've seen some of his relatives in the past, so I knew he was originally an almost velvety fur, and he had red suspenders. Pojo had lived with his human for over 50 years. She wrote:

"As you can see his entire body needs to be replaced and re-stuffed. His plastic parts, if possible, need to be cleaned but if not, I love him the way he is. His pants, arms and head are black, his shirt is yellow and he has red suspenders. Please let me know if you can help him."

Now, as you may have realized by now, I try not to replace actual bodies, rather, we replace the stuffing as part of cleaning (because stuffing does not clean or dry well), and then recover. And that was the plan for Pojo when he arrived in May.

Here he is starting treatment with his bubble bath:

Next up, once he dried, was recovering his fur. A perfect texture match to his original fur isn't possible without a donor, so I sent photos of two options. One was a modern fluffier fur:

And the other was a modern minky fur which is smoother:

His human opted for the minky. So surgery proceeded till the next decision point, what ribbons for his new suspenders:

His human opted for the narrower fur.

Pojo was almost better.... last little bits included putting in his new heart (from the new minky fur) made with a bit of his original stuffing:

And then he was ready to fly home to Illinois:

His human's response? He is beautiful!

But I promised two chimps in this post and the second was here this past month. Mombo's predecessor had been with his person for over 60 years, but his condition was such that his human felt a new Mombo was needed. So he searched the web for a Mombo in better shape. He found one, but it was holding a banana in one hand, and needed stuffing and some seams tightened up. So the human opted to send the new Mombo to me, with the original Mombo's hand! The plan was to spruce up the new Mombo, repair his seams, replace his suspenders, and replace the banana hand with the original Mombo's hand. And here's the New Mombo (Mombo reincarnated?) all better and ready to fly home to Florida (you can see how much bigger he is than Pojo!):

Mombo's person wrote: He looks great n enjoyed the attention.

[shiftythrifting]

i dont like him

[gabrielora]

Do you ever make references to people that don’t exist? I have to fight the urge to reference Zippy The Christmas Chimp every day…

[pissvortex]

Zippy the Rollerskating Chimp

[animalcuckllective]

I told my mom about that roller skating chimpanzee video and she said she had Zippy the Chimp roller skates as a kid! Wild to me

[thebohemianprep]

[retropopcult]

Zippy the Chimp, operator of the “Late Night Monkey-Cam”.

In 1986, someone at Late Night with David Letterman had the idea to mount a camera on the back of a chimpanzee that would be let loose in the studio. As Zippy ran wild on the set, it became obvious the images from the camera itself would prove disastrously - but hilariously - un-telegenic. The lens would just flay randomly as Zippy swung on a rope or climbed on chairs - never actually managing to keep anything in frame (or in focus) for more than a second or two. This was exactly what Letterman loved - unscripted chaos that seemed like a fail but the audience couldn’t get enough of it.  He liked it so much the concept was pushed a step further later in the year when Zippy was fitted with roller skates and dubbed the “Late Night Monkey Cam Mobile Unit”.

[still-dogmageddon]

Me n my monkeys

[miss-rosen]

“I feel that I’m finding something that tells us something about ourselves but doesn’t accuse us. I’m interested in the real, simply rendering something in time.”

Celebrating Jeff Mermelstein's birthday with a look back at his photographs of anonymous cell phone text conversations via Blind.

Photo: Jeff Mermelstein. Zippy the Chimp at Bar Mitzvah, 1982.

[oldshowbiz]

Zippy the Chimp’s career on the skids at the Piedmont Boat Show

[comradebodko]

Animated a Joey as my formal entry for #internationaldrawjoeyday Voiced by @willbgoode on twitter.

[annlarimer]

Smoking monkey slap. Juvenile chimpanzees smoking lit cigarettes on television was high comedy way back when, much like spousal abuse and drunk driving. I had a Zippy the chimp sweatshirt as a toddler that I assume my mother finally burned. #label228 #slaps #smokingmonkey #sharpieart #fez #228 #stickers #20thcenturyculturalhighlights https://www.instagram.com/p/CaDubT9s7zg/?utm_medium=tumblr

[instapicsil2]

This image is an outtake from the May 23, 1955 feature "CHIMP OFF THE OLD BLOCK—Home-reared Zippy's success as an entertainer occasions a move to better quarters." According to LIFE, "Potential champ of animal-world show business is a chimp named Zippy. An undersized anthropoid, Zippy at the age of 6 weighs only 38 pounds, but he has an oversized income...he earned $55,000 last year...his success as an entertainer is largely due to the loving attention of his owners, Lee and Bonnie Ecuyer, who reared Zippy as they might their own child from the age of two months." Zippy was a celebrity of the time, staring on TV's Howdy Doody and staring as Cheta in the film Tarzan. (Michael Rougier—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images) #wildLIFEwednesday #Zippy #chimpsofinstagram http://ift.tt/2BM9LgI

[stevedonnellyfaith-blog]

Evolution (Post 93) 6-17-15

Some friends of my parents stopped by this week.  They are a fun couple.  He is a folksy, puttering, retired physics teachers who once took my father’s side in a debate with other faculty members about why the lighting fixtures in the dining room were swinging back and forth in time. “Hal’s conjecture is both right and wrong,” Mr. Dorson offered in mediation, “While he is right that this is an earthquake, Hal is wrong about the oscillating motion of the chandeliers. They are stationary; it is the building that is moving back and forth.”  

It is helpful to have a physics teacher around to interpret natural phenomena, but for his wife, a liberal librarian, being married to an ultraconservative who is going deaf can be a trial. I believe she has taken up gardening and visiting museums as a means to deal with the relentless onslaught of Fox News with the volume turned up to eleven. It heartens me to see two people with differing views living together in toleration rather than consternation.  It is easy to see though, who a blaring news or sportscast could upset peace within an American family.

The news doesn’t really interest me much anymore.  Today my mother asked me what I thought of the drama of some felons that had escaped from prison somewhere quite a while ago but hadn’t been caught yet.  Initially, I thought she was talking about the Texas jailbreak from about a decade ago. Come to find out she was talking about a new escape that I had only vaguely heard about accidentally.  I am currently in kind of a news gray-out status with the expectation of placing myself under an out and out cone of silence in the Christmas season once the presidential hi-jinks begin in earnest.  By February every broadcast on every channel will be wall to wall politicians, people who used to be politicians and people who once worked for politicians for the foreseeable future.

While temporal debates are consequential and do impact The Church, I seem to be developing and increasingly lower tolerance for posturing, weasel words, taking others out of context, flamboyant exaggerations and smarminess.  Then once the commercials are over, I can’t stand the news commentators either.  It does seem like whenever Joe Biden blows his nose, Fox News will air alternating Democrat and Republican operatives who will dramatically exaggerate the significance and importance of the color of Joe’s handkerchief.   MSNBC will cover the same story with two Democrat operatives who refer continuously with nauseating condescension to a particular hanky that they both remember Dick Cheney using at one point last decade.  I vaguely remember that there may actually be another cable news channel, or there once was one, but it has become so irrelevant now that it is only watched in airport waiting areas by travelers who have forgotten to pack earphones as protection.  So that pretty much leaves the often biased CSPAN broadcast as my only probable news source. Unfortunately CSPAN is pretty much a consensus pick for the most boring channel not dedicated to auctioning shiny baubles.  So I mostly ignore the political news.

With regard to social issues, my views are mostly insulted on MSNBC and so vociferously agreed with by Sean Hannity that even I begin to question axiomatic beliefs that I have held all my life.  Mostly, I listen to a couple of minutes of Al Kresta on my drive home and compare my own conservative views against whatever Pope Francis has to say.  I try to allow his words to change my heart in a way that my mind can make sense of after the fact. Sometimes his views challenge me, but I am confident that Francis truly believes what he says and that the Pope doesn’t add spin. In general, whenever a Vatican mouthpiece is pontificating for him though, I change the channel as fast as I can.

With respect to matters of the faith, I do buy into whatever Pope Francis has to say lock, stock and barrel, whatever that means. (I search Google for stuff like that all the time and send kind thoughts towards David Katreeb as I’m doing it.)  Anyway, I think, for instance, that the Pope quite reasonably explains the Church position on evolution in a rational way that is consistent with a man who holds a degree in chemistry.  I agree with Francis when he articulates that evolution as a theory is not inconsistent with Church teaching.  God most likely may have chosen to work His design using evolution as a tool to mold the earth until Jesus entered creation in the flesh of a man.  As Supreme Being, He could also have chosen the more unlikely path of creating a whole mess of fossils and bones as a kind of archeological window dressing so that people wouldn’t be forced to believe in Him.  I don’t expect that He would do that, but as a man, I am not a self-appointed umpire of all that He does.  I am also not a competent judge of the intricacies of how other men think creation happened.  My only strong belief is against the neo-Darwinist spin that the theory of evolution proves that God doesn’t exist.  I know God does exist so I try to take a pass on things like hedonism, euthanasia, eugenics and genocide for which atheism provides license.

Here is a metaphor to explain my feelings on how neo-Darwinists extend the evolutionary theory into atheistic excess.  Nicholas, Abby and Natalie were visiting Pam’s parents in Maryland this weekend.  During the visit, Nicholas discovered a record turntable and a nunchaku set in the basement.  He also ran across a Bud Light clock but that is entirely beside the point.  His conjecture that both relics were a cool find is perfectly acceptable.  If Nicholas extended his reasoning to assume that when placed before a karaoke microphone, his grandfather would belt out, Kung Fu Fighting by Carl Douglas, Nick would be pretty far afield.  His grandfather is actually partial to Roy Orbison – the Okinawan fighting sticks belong to Nick’s Uncle Chris.

Anyway, my point isn’t that the neo-Darwinist (Darwin believed in God) atheists have been hitting themselves in the head with sticks too much, even though I don’t agree with their misguided negation of God.  It seems as if we can reasonably believe that dinosaurs became birds or whatever inference paleontologists can reasonably support with evidence.  It doesn’t bother me that no fossil evidence of a missing link between me and Zippy the Chimp.  I’m sure a very low percentage of living troglodytes were actually preserved in shale sandwiches, so I am unconcerned by missing monkey bones.

To me it seems reasonable to believe that proto-evangelical Jesus oversaw evolution; that seems to be what Francis either believes or allows. That interpretation is also consistent with what Jesus has lead me to believe through the Holy Spirit and my discussions with Pam.  It doesn’t bother me when Traditionalists take the Old Testament more literally. To me the Pentateuch doesn’t read as Adam’s, Abraham’s and Moses’ diary any more that the New Testament reads as a Jesus’ memoir.  The Bible provides us with enough information to feed our faith a healthy meal, while still allowing the atheists enough freedom to come to the conclusion that random chance bred herds of allosaurs, then extincted them, while leaving their bone caches so that we can script an increasingly ridiculous Jurassic movie franchise.

Science is wondrous.  Georges LeMaitre, a Belgian Catholic priest used science to formulate the Big Bang Theory which gives us a window or inkling into how God created all of this and all of us.  For those less interested in the beauty of God’s creation, there is also a funny television show by the same name.  God intended us to engage in science so that we can discover more and more about what He has wrought.  Certainly, we will not discover it all, any more than we will find all the dinosaur bones, but what we do find will lead us closer to Him … if we engage in science honestly.

Not everybody follows the scientific method that was originally formulated by the Catholic Church.  Agendas other than truth can warp scientific findings and theories like evolution into false doctrines. Eugenics, for instance, the bastard child of evolutionary thought, lead men to massacre their neighbors.   Whether the corpses were Armenian, Jewish, Cambodian or Tutsi was immaterial, the blood was on the hands of atheists who purported to be using junk science for rationale.  The last century was bulwarked and sandbagged with bodies killed by men liberated from the enslaving belief in a higher power.  In this century the Neo-Darwinists are bringing us contraception and chemically induced gender selective abortion on demand, an abomination that would have horrified Hitler himself because it is double-decimating his master race within the course of several short generations.

For faithful Catholics, let us forgo intramural arguments about monkey DNA.  Because our observations are made of potshard fragments of a complete vase of knowledge, we will never fully understand the entire tableau that God has wrought until we learn everything we desire to know in the fullness of time.  I look forward to answers about Fatima and Lourdes and the Tilma of Guadalupe as well as how exactly the Big Bang was boomed.  With regard to evolution I have one last thought that interests me:  could there indeed be evolution beyond Jesus incarnation?  Also is Jesus’ glorified body an evolution of a different order that we will follow into, leaving our monkey relatives to their banana smoothies? In the meantime, let’s stick together as Catholics and try to sway the thought of those who no longer recognize evil and cruelty for what it is.

[omg-gwizz]

here's one of my favorite stories from my first tour with David Bowie. Zippy The Chimp. Madison Square Garden. May 7, 8, and 9th of 1978. for 3 nights running the david bowie band played there to sold out audiences. it would be difficult to overstate my excitement as I walked through the hallways adorned with huge photographs of all the stars who had been there. Sinatra, Elvis, Muhammed Ali, Lennon. Marilyn Monroe sang happy birthday to JFK at the Madison Square Garden. one of the thrills of playing MSQ is noting all the famous people in attendance. I remember scanning the front row and seeing Dustin Hoffman staring back at me. off to one side of the stage sat Andy Warhol with his ever faithful entourage trying their best to look nonchalant. somewhere in the audience were the Talking Heads (the band I would play with next), Mick Jagger, Bianca, etc. it was a rubberneck fest. there are two things about our first day there I remember most. first the elephants. elephants? during our soundcheck as I stood onstage suddenly from behind me I heard the distinct sound of elephants trumpeting. I turned around and sure enough, there were four elephants being hosed down with water by their trainers right behind my stage position. beneath the massive round building called Madison Square Garden there is a maze of tunnels and holding areas, something like what Disneyworld has beneath it. evidently Ringling Brothers Barnum & Bailey Circus was playing there soon and the animals were being housed in the bowels of the gardens. they brought up their elephants 4 at a time for feeding and bathing. you can't imagine how happy I was. the second memorable event came between soundcheck and showtime. in one of our dressing rooms there was a long banquet table filled with flowers, fruit, drinks, and all kinds of food. a lot of people were milling about including a few small children. all of a sudden the door flies open with a racket and in comes a chimpanzee! he's dressed in a very loud orange houndstooth suit and he's wearing roller skates! he begins careening around the banquet table, and starts chasing the kids around and around. they're screaming with delight, food is flying everywhere, the chimp is making those noises chimps make. ack ack!! it's total chaos. we sat there in shock. then his manager burst in. how did we know it was his manager? he was wearing the same loud obnoxious orange houndstooth suit! his manager was passing out flyers about the famous Zippy the Chimp who had appeared on 2,000 television..blah blah blah. but no one was listening to him. we were fixated on a chimpanzee in a suit rolling skating around david bowie's dressing room. Adrain Belew

[miss-rosen]

Jeff Mermelstein began photographing Asbury Park, New Jersey, in 1981 on a quest for taffy-rich colors and seedy atmospheres. Mermelstein was mesmerized by the sights: a pink lady at a baby parade, a startled bag lady dressed in red, a cat-show judge named Mr. Friend. Trips to Asbury Park and beyond soon grew to encompass a much broader spectrum of American life—from commercial sets, trade shows, and wedding parties to dog shows, mall grand openings, cocktail parties, and nearly anything jarring, disjointed, or surreal in daily life he encountered in-between.

Magazine assignments led Mermelstein to explore, among other far-out subject matter, the curious sights of animal acting, including legendary four-pawed performers Morris the Cat, Lassie, Benji, the Merrill Lynch bull, the Exxon tiger, and Zippy, a performing chimp. “I can still feel the excitement of hugging Zippy,” Mermelstein recalls, “and watching and photographing him in his bus and as he entertained at a bar mitzvah on Long Island.”

Photo: Jeff Mermelstein - Zippy the Chimp at Bar Mitzvah,