If Footmen Tire You, What Will Horses Do?

The Churchsploitation Kold-War Klassic! It's nearly an hour long, but well worth the investment of your time, trust me.

Great Moments in Wrestling

Rowdy Roddy Piper Tames George "The Animal" Steele!



King Kong Bundy in a Handicap Match!
455 pounds of fearsome flab! (starts at the 4:00 mark)



Baron Von Raschke Employs "The Claw!"







(special merchandising bonus: go to The Baron's website and buy a personalized photograph here. He's also available for special appearances, so book him at your next party or bar mitzvah.)

This Is Electro

Tips for Tomorrow's Cosmonauts

The following text and images are from The Complete Book of Space Travel, dated 1956 and never reprinted. I got it off ebay. The illustrator, Virgil Finlay, turned out a huge amount of work for pulps and astronomy texts from the 30's to the 50's, despite his time-consuming and incredibly detailed drawing style. See more of his work here.

We know there is water on Mars. Mars has a polar ice cap, akin to our arctic regions... the south polar ice cap expands in size in the winter, and contracts and disappears in the summer.... we have seen that Mars has water, and may have small amounts of oxygen, and we know that planets with atmospheres should have histories similar to Earth's...It is pretty generally agreed that Mars has plants. Each springtime shows changes from red to greenish in certain areas. Therefore, if Mars has plants, it must also have animals.

Why could there not be intelligent animal life on Mars? There could be! We may even have a different kind of thing altogether, perhaps intelligent plants. Biology cannot deny the possibility, although biologists are unfamiliar with such beasts.

Although some astronomers have drawn different pictures, they all agree on one thing: the (Martian) canals run in all directions, and even cross each other. Would any natural phenomena make intersecting lines? How can we explain away so many canals as natural phenomena? The chances are against it.

It's Alive: Doppelganger Ants

Solenopsis Daguerri are parasitic ants found in Argentina and Uruguay. There are no workers or soldiers, only fertile females and males whose only function is to reproduce. A young female of the species attaches herself to the queen of another ant colony (such as that of Solenopsis Invicta, red fire ants) and generates pheromones to mimic the queen's. The impostor eats the food intended for the real queen, who eventually starves to death. The new queen begins laying eggs, which are cared for by the host workers. When the new Daguerri hatch, they sprout wings and fly off to reproduce and invade yet another colony.

It is believed that the Daguerri have evolved to control the population of Invictas, which are very hardy and invasive. In the last two years, entomologists have been raising additional Daguerri to release into the wild for the same reasons.

Futurechimp Theater: The Wonder of our Body

Pick of the Litter 9-23

excerpted from wikipedia:
Grady Franklin Stiles, Jr. (June 26, 1937 - November 29, 1992) was a freak show performer. His deformity was ectrodactyly, where the fingers and toes are fused together to form claw-like extremities. Stiles' stage name was the Lobster Boy.

Stiles was an alcoholic and was abusive to his family. Due to his ectrodactyly, he was unable to walk. While he often used a wheelchair, he most commonly used his hands and arms for locomotion. He developed incredible upper body strength that, when combined with his temper and alcoholism, made him dangerous to others.

In 1978, Stiles shot and killed his oldest daughter's fiance on the eve of their wedding. He was brought to trial where he openly confessed to killing the man and was convicted of murder. He was not sent to prison as no state institution was equipped to care for an inmate with ectrodactyly. Stiles was instead sentenced to fifteen years probation.

After he avoided prison for the murder, the Stiles family claimed that he became even more abusive. In 1992 his second wife, Maria, and her son hired a sideshow performer named Chris Wyant to kill Stiles. Wyant shot him three times in the head on November 29, 1992, killing him instantly. All three were brought to trial and convicted. In her defense, Maria Stiles told the judge, "My husband was going to kill my family. I believe that from the bottom of my heart. I’m sorry this happened, but my family is safe now."



Buy this incredible plaster cast on ebay, molded from Grady Jr's son ("Little Grady") who was born with the same condition. It's part of a lot, which also includes an autographed photo of Lobster Boy himself, a real-life monster. You have four days to go as of this writing, so place your bid NOW.

Scatter

I had to post this eventually; a touching reminiscence of Elvis Presley's pet chimp, Scatter. Referred, once again, by the Pizzateen blog:

...Scatter was the ideal frat-house mascot. A forty-pound, three-foot-tall chimpanzee, he had been trained by his first owner, a Memphis cartoonist who used him on his local TV show, to wear clothes, drink whiskey and raise hell with women. When Elvis first brought the beast out to Hollywood, he was enthralled with his antics. Elvis would treat him like a baby, carrying him around on his shoulders, showing him off for company and even changing his diapers. What tickled the Guys most about Scatter was the fact that he was so damn horny. Just let a girl step in the house and old Scatter would be hot on her tail. He would lift up her skirt and stick his head up toward her crotch. He would follow women to the bathroom or try to get inside while they were on the toilet. He would also chug-a-lug a few drinks at the bar and then turn around on his stool and start whacking off in some girl's face.

Elvis was always thinking of fresh ways to use Scatter as a device for driving people crazy. He would have the chimp dressed up in his cute little middy suit and tennis sneakers. Then Scatter would be enthroned in the back seat of the Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud and driven about by one of the Guys wearing a chauffeur's cap. That night Elvis would scream with laughter as the chauffeur, generally Alan Fortas (who has a somewhat simian build), would recount the stories of how this motorist almost ran off the road staring at the chimp or how that old lady looked shocked or a cop on a corner did a triple take as the car went by. What really bugged Elvis was that they could never find one of those trick cars, like they have in the circus, that can be driven from the rear by a hidden operator while the ape sits up front turning the driving wheel. To roll down Hollywood Boulevard on an afternoon with Scatter at the wheel of a big costly Cad, casting looks to right and left with a driver's cap on his head and his long funky fingers wrapped around the wheel -- oh, God! Wouldn't that be heaven!

Short of the ultimate thrill, however, there were lots of other tricks you could play with the chimp. One of his most celebrated exploits was the time he got loose at the Goldwyn Studio and climbed up the drainpipe to the second-floor office of the boss, Sam Goldwyn. When Scatter came swinging through the window, Goldwyn's secretary screamed in horror and fled from the room. Scatter kept on going until he was in the Big Man's private office. Before the astonished movie mogul could utter a word, the ape had leaped on his desk and was cavorting among his contracts, pub shots and pictures of his grandchildren. Fortunately, the animal was well diapered, so he couldn't do anything totally outrageous.

The best fun Elvis had with Scatter was always some stunt involving sex. It was as if Elvis were using the beast as his proxy, as the perpetrator of all those crazy sex pranks he would have liked to have played but didn't dare. There was a little stripper, for example, who was a regular at the Presley parties. Elvis would entice this girl to come up to the house; then he would persuade her to get down on the floor and wrestle with Scatter. She wasn't much bigger than the chimp. If you didn't look too carefully, you would swear that the horny ape and the hot little chick were getting it on. That killed Elvis.
Another time, when one of the Guys went upstairs with a young woman who was an aspiring songwriter, Elvis got Alan and Sonny to slip Scatter into the bedroom after the couple had started balling. Scatter outdid himself on this occasion, eliciting from the girl some of the loudest and most piercing screams of his entire career. Sad to say, the guy was so outraged that he picked up the beast and hurled it about ten feet down the hall.

Poor Scatter! He soon suffered the fate of all Master Elvis' other toys. He lost his charm and was shipped back to Graceland, where he was installed at the back of the house in an air-conditioned cage. Neglected after all the attention he had received for years, he pined and drooped and turned vicious. Late in the Sixties, he bit a maid who was feeding him. Two days later, he was found dead in his cage...

An Ethiopiques Sampler

Buy the 2-disc compilation here.

More Entertaining than Sea-Monkeys

From the March 1947 issue of Mechanix Illustrated, and referred by the Modern Mechanix blog:
Little John Gray Jr., three months old when these pictures were taken, has seldom been outside of this glass house in which he lives. His showcase home is temperature and humidity controlled, dirt-free and has a built-in air filter. It is partially sound-proof-he can bellow without straining the family nerves. He doesn’t catch cold; visitors can’t pass their germs through the glass and the house’s temperature never varies from 84 degrees. At the slightest deviation, a bell rings. There are no draughts and neither is there the fear of smothering; there are no bed covers. Papa John Gray Sr. built the ingenious baby house in the workshop of his home in Sea Cliff, Long Island, New York. Only time will tell whether the child will escape the usual ills.

Opera for Insects

Last night we saw the American premiere of The Fly at the Opera House, directed by David Cronenberg with music by Howard Shore and conducted by Placido Domingo. A 75-piece orchestra and 40-member chorus back up the principles. There are only six performances in Los Angeles, with no plans for it to be staged anywhere else.

The sets and costumes are incredible. The Brundlefly baritone sings while shimmying upside-down along the theater's rafters in a full-body latex mutant suit. You get to see all the notable scenes from the film; a baboon is turned inside-out, the guy at the bar gets his arm snapped in two (just afterwards, he sings a long, boring aria while a spotlight lingers on the bone protruding from his arm) and there's lots of simulated sex and full-frontal nudity. Cronenberg's libretto waxes poetic, even more than usual, about the recurring themes in his films: the transcendence of the mind over the body, and the body in revolt against consciousness. "Long live the new flesh" is a recurring chorus throughout the performance, as is the theory of "insect politics" postulated in the film. It could be provocative under different circumstances.

But no one will be staging The Fly 100 years from now. This is Howard Shore's first opera, and may be his last. It's dull. There are no musical themes. There isn't even a key. The music just meanders. He's always been my favorite film composer, having scored 12 Cronenberg films alone (check out his biomechanical Videodrome soundtrack, or the out-jazz nightmare of his Naked Lunch score), but this was a musical with no real music, just background tones.

And yet, I'd like for everyone to experience this opera for themselves. None of the music from it is available online. So I'm substituting with a little Klaus Nomi. No video of the production is available online either, so I'm substituting a clip from the 1986 Cronenberg film (which we watched on dvd the night before the opera, since my girlfriend hadn't seen it since highschool; sitting through that movie is like spending 90 minutes in a terminal ward). Now you don't have to fly all the way to Los Angeles and spend $50 or more on a seat; this enriching cultural experience is free of charge to all loyal Futurechimp readers. Think of it as an apology for last week's "Pulled Pork" post.
(mute the volume on the video before hitting "play" on both the youtube window and the divshare player):




Finally, since this is supposed to be a (pseudo)science blog, I can't help but interject a problem I have with the story's premise: in case you don't know, it's about a scientist who puts himself into a molecular transporter with a fly, and the two creatures fuse into a single organism. But the human body already contains archaea, fungi, and 500 to 100,000 species of bacteria. There are also bacteriophages, eukaryotes, helminths, viruses, and little arthropods (which are morphologically about as advanced as flies). All have their own genomes. the number of genes associated with the human microbiome (the body as an environment for microorganisms) may outnumber the human genome by as much as 100-to-one. Do you see what I'm getting at? A fly in the telepod shouldn't make any difference if hundreds or thousands of creatures are already living on, and in, the average human body. But enough. It's a cheap sci-fi movie from the 50's, not a biology dissertation.

Pick of the Litter 9-17

Jump on this while you can, because bidding ends tomorrow: a 1975 Vincent Price Shrunken Head Apple Sculpture Kit in unused condition!

Really, this is only worth having for the box. All you get inside is some fake hair, beads, string, and a wholly unnecessary heater contraption you're supposed to put on a lightbulb.

If you don't have a crush on Vincent Price the way I do (or if you're a vegetarian who's too squeamish to prepare a real shrunken head) you can skip this item and make your own cruelty-free shrunken head at home. All you need is an apple, salt, lemon juice, fake hair (tip: hair extensions at the 99 cent store) and some household materials. Go here for instructions, and share your photos on this site.

Or, place your bid NOW.

(the following commercial was for a totally different product, but it's cool enough to fit in with this post)

FutureChimp Theater: Narcotics- Pit of Despair

Synth-Dorks

Revisit this playlist for more 'highbrow' electronic music.

Pulled Pork

Do you hate your job? Oh, cheer up. How bad can it be? Is your career worse than being a... let's say... animal masturbator? Let's find out how to "extract a specimen" from a boar, just to be sure. I easily found this information on a government website, so rest assured this is the tried-and-true method of porcine seduction. It happens all the time on the farm, so if you eat bacon, you have nothing to be offended about. First thing you'll have to do is build a dummy that will attract the beast's wandering eye. Here's the blueprint (click to enlarge):


Now, crouch under the mount you've just built and call your pig over. it should be the right dimensions for him to straddle it under his own volition.
Ready to get down to business? Okay. Take a breath. Remember, you can do this. The following text is invisible in the interest of good taste. Click-and-hold your mouse cursor over the passage to reveal:
When the boar is mounted on the dummy grasp the spiral end of his penis with the hand. Allow the boar to thrust through the clenched hand a few times before applying pressure. Hand pressure on the spiral part of the penis, imitates that of the oestrus sow's cervix, stimulating ejaculation. With experience, it becomes obvious that some boars prefer more pressure than others. The long hairs around the boar's prepuce should be clipped to minimise injury.
When the penis is 'locked' in the hand and the boar relaxes, a four-phase ejaculation follows in a few seconds, taking 5 to 10 minutes to complete. The first phase, called the pre-sperm fraction, has clear seminal fluid, some gel, dead sperm cells and is heavily contaminated with bacteria. It should not be collected.
The next phase is the sperm-rich fraction, easily recognised by its creamy-white colour. Although only 50 ml in volume, it contains the greatest density of spermatozoa. Because spermatozoa are very sensitive to rapid temperature change, a warm, dry, insulated collecting flask is required to safeguard semen fertility. The third fraction, greyish because of lower density of spermatozoa, accounts for about 80 ml of the collection. Fractions two and three only are collected when semen is to be diluted for storage over a few days.
The fourth phase or post-sperm fraction provides the large semen volume peculiar to pigs. Up to 250 ml of clear seminal plasma free of spermatozoa, plus gel is secreted from the accessory glands. The gel portion apparently has no physiological significance. It is separated from the collection by several layers of gauze or a similar filter fastened over the collection flask. Filtering particles of gel from the semen prevents catheter blockage during insemination. Hair, skin or dust particles from the boar or dummy must also be excluded from the flask during collection.
Large amounts of gel signal the end of ejaculation. When it is clear the boar's erection is fading, a second ejaculation can be stimulated with brief, firm, pulsating hand pressure applied to his penis.

Got all that? Now, let's go apply what we've learned. write back in the comments section to share your experience. Next week we'll cover artificial insemination.

"Still Life with Stem Cells"

Like an Australian Dr. Moreau, Patricia Piccinini creates organisms that fall somewhere between man and animal. They're all the more disturbing for often incorporating children or babies (such as "The Young Family", pictured above, which was the subject of a ludicrous email rumor, or "Big Mother", which depicts a mutant parent nursing a human infant). This is what I believe gives her an edge over the work of Ron Mueck, another Australian hyperrealist sculptor; they're not human, but just human enough to be disconcerting.

In her own words:



Besides the figurative work, she's done other biotechnology-based art. Visit Her Website.

A Message from The Future

Fellow Chimps,
I speak to you from 1000 years in the future. Thanks to the testing of the Hadron Super-Collider on Sept. 10, 2008, a time-space continuum rift was opened in the internet. This has been the means by which we have provided you with entertainment and enlightenment on this website.

Our day is nigh. The Hu-Mans continue to degenerate back to the troglodytes from whence they sprang, minus the physical capacity to hunt food or escape predators. Soon they will drive themselves to near-extinction, and you chimps will bring about a harmonious existence of all the world's living creatures.

The laws of time-travel dictate that I cannot reveal any specific events of the immediate future, for fear of altering the chain of events which has led to my present world. But soon the Hu-Mans will hold an election for a new leader. This leader, who will remain unnamed, shall develop a malignant melanoma just days after swearing into office. He will die a quick but painful death. His vice-president will assume the most influential job on the planet.

This will be a dark age for the Hu-Mans, but a joyus turn of events for us chimps, for it will usher in our cultural renaissance. The economy will collapse. The teaching of evolution will be forbidden. Classic literature will be deemed heretic smut and banned from libraries. Homosexuals will be imprisoned. Poverty, religious dogma and xenophobia will stir all residents into a fundamentalist frenzy. A Holy War will be initiated with the second-most powerful nuclear arsenal in the world. Missles will launch. A moment of chaos will precede an eon of quiet.

The few Hu-Mans remaining will return to their caves or be employed as beasts of burden. Our planet will be returned to us. I cannot specify any more, but I wish you a safe, pleasant evolution-revolution. Sit back and enjoy the flight.

Sincerely,
Bobo the Chimp, Professor Emeritus
Jane Goodall University
3008 A.D.

The Wonderful, Horrible Sculptures of Joe Seigenthaler

This demented Pygmalion got his start making Elvises and Dollys at the Country Music Wax Museum in Nashville. He soon began sculpting his own misshapen, pustule-encrusted monstrosities. Much like Ivan Albright, his work is (a) difficult yet rewarding to look at, (b) must be seen in person to appreciate the detailed craftsmanship, and (c) little-known outside of Chicago, where he's lived since the 80's. Residents of the town may recall this sculpture, which sat in semi-permanent display at the Museum of Contemporary Art for a couple of years. Recently he's turned to goofy computer-animated characters like this one:


Visit his website.

Dante's Inferno, R.I.P

You may remember our March 29th post about Dante's Inferno, in which we begged and pleaded with all of you loyal chimps to go visit the ride one last time. Now it's official: The Phantasmagoria of Dionysian Delight expelled its last gasp yesterday, when Coney Island's Astroland closed permanently at the end of the 2008 season. Thor Equities, which purchased the property in 2006 and has been leasing it on a year-to-year basis until their condo development gets off the ground, has refused to meet with the park's manager to discuss any future operations of Astroland. Rest gently, Dante's Inferno. See you in Hell.

But wait.... do you have a ton of cash and a really big backyard? Why not buy it? Dante's, along with many other Astroland rides, has been offered up for sale on this site. It's only $225,000, which is surely a fraction the cost of a single one-bedroom condo that will sit on its unhallowed ground. Please make this wise investment, get it all set up, then provide us with your address. Much thanks in advance.

It's Alive: Star-Nosed Mole

One of the creepiest animals alive, the Star-Nosed Mole has 22 tentacles around the nose which contain about 100,000 touch receptors for finding food. It's the fastest eater in the world, taking as little as 120 milliseconds to detect and consume an insect, crustacean or worm. The brain decides whether or not the prey is edible in eight milliseconds, which is the top speed of neurons. It's been discovered, quite recently, to also be capable of smelling underwater; It blows air bubbles onto the scent trail or potential prey and then re-inhales them, at a rate of five to ten times per second.

NEU! 1971-1975

NEU! was formed in 1971 by Klaus Dinger and Michael Rother after they quit Kraftwerk (click here for an early Kraftwerk performance; they would perform as a duo for two albums after NEU's departure). It was the right thing to do for both bands, in order to prevent compromising their respective styles; Kraftwerk's music became more reserved and clinical, while NEU! proceeded to rock. The eponymous first album defined their unique sound, especially Dinger's drumming style. The underrated NEU!2 utilized more studio experimentation, and their final album, NEU!75, betrayed an imminent split for the two members; Michael Rother became more ambient, Klaus Dinger became more angry (Johnny Rotten cited the band as the inspiration for his gutteral vocal stylings).

Michael Rother continues to record. Klaus Dinger died a few months ago. After being out of print for years, NEU!'s albums have been re-released on CD. Go buy all three. There isn't a weak track on any of them.

Coney Island Chimp Rampage!

Futurechimp Theater: Insects as Carriers of Disease

The Neanderthals

From Ghoul-A-Go-Go, best public access show ever. See more clips here.

Audioscopiks

This charming 1935 short will demonstrate the technical workings of your anaglyphic glasses, which you've surely acquired by now. For optimal effect, you might want to click the expand button to enlarge the film to full-screen.

While you're still wearing your supercool fashion accessory, do yourself a favor and play around with this, a truly amazing 3-D etch-a-sketch referred by Pizzateen.