Wednesday, November 19, 2014
Beatle for Sale
“Money can’t buy you love, but it sure can buy you a Beatle,” he remarked wryly.
“Paul is a vegetarian and a friend of the gorilla nation,” I replied haughtily. “I will not believe gossip about him until I have researched the matter to my own satisfaction.”
My investigations have since confirmed that the story is well-founded, although there are several qualifications to add. A million dollars is pocket money for Paul, so he was clearly there to network and promote his own investment ideas. Many of those fund managers will soon be putting money into sea cucumber farms. They were also ardent fans of his music:
“I love you Paul!” screamed one investor, jumping up from her seat the moment he appeared.
I’m not the least bit envious of these people. The truly lucky ones were those who heard the Beatles rehearse in the studio. The Beatles themselves were incredibly lucky to have heard themselves play when they were playing.
Although I did not attend the famous rooftop concert at Savile Row, I am proud to reveal that a couple of chimpanzees were among the onlookers. Having been hired to appear in a TV commercial, they were being measured for suits in a nearby couturier when the music started. Quick as a flash, they scarpered out of the shop and bounded up the tallest building in the street to get a panoramic view of the action. The Fab Four’s hirsute appearance affected them as deeply as the music, which they danced to in the traditional arms-forward-bum-backwards style.
People often wonder why it took the police over 40 minutes to end the concert, which was causing major traffic jams as well as annoying several old farts in the vicinity. I can now clear up this mystery. When the Beatles started playing, a retired army colonel phoned the police to demand that they “stop that bloody din” coming from the roof of a nearby building. He put his phone receiver outside his window so the duty sergeant could hear it for himself, and this witless Plod, being no aficionado of pop music, told a couple of fresh-faced constables to “get the Monkees off the roof”. This caused the hapless Bobbies to waste half an hour trying to evict the chimps from their vantage point (an impossible task given the comparative gymnastic abilities of humans and chimps). It took another phone call from the irate colonel to make the sergeant realise his error and redirect his troops to the Apple studios.
To be honest, I don’t blame Paul for preferring to hang out with rich people like himself. His fingers and toes got badly burned by Heather Millstone, who not only fleeced him for 30 million bucks but aired a lot of dirty linen that should have remained in the laundry basket. As we say in the jungle, if you swim with the crocodiles it might cost you an arm and a leg.
Labels: chimpanzees, money, Paul McCartney, sea cucumbers, The Beatles
Wednesday, December 18, 2013
The high price is right
So what did the psychologists discover? It seems that women dislike sexual imagery in advertising unless the goods being promoted are very expensive, when they view the imagery as erotic rather than vulgar. I was so surprised by these findings that I rushed to the safari camp and interrupted the manager and his wife during tiffin.
“Oh GB, you big naïve gorilla!” exclaimed the manager’s wife after I told them about the study. “Of course it’s true! If a man offered me a hundred dollars for sex I would slap his face. But if he offered me a million dollars, I would giggle and poke his ribs.”
Far from being disgruntled by his wife’s confession, the manager nodded sagely. “I’d feel exactly the same way if a woman offered to pay me for sex,” he said.
“You wish and as if,” scoffed his wife.
On my way back to the jungle, I considered the matter logically. If a hundred dollars is an insult and a million dollars is a compliment, there must be an intermediate sum at which the issue is finely balanced. What would it be? Ten thousand dollars? Fifty thousand dollars? I suppose every woman has her own crossover price. How fascinating it would be to watch a woman waver between slapping the face and poking the ribs of a man who had offered her that price. The tension would be electric.
Some insults leave no room for ambiguity, of course. A man in Detroit was so angry with his ex-wife that he moved into the next door house and placed a sculpture of an erect middle finger on his patio. Heaven knows what the woman did to provoke such rancour. Maybe she let her lover wear his masonic apron when he was away on business. No end of bad blood can arise from symbolic acts of desecration.
I can’t say I approve of the sculpture, though. What are his other neighbours supposed to say when guests arrive for a dinner party? If you’re going to insult someone, make sure the target is clear to avoid aggravating third parties. If I saw something like that in the jungle, I would hire the chimpanzees to piss all over it.
Let me end with heart-warming news from China, where a lad called Qin Yu was hired to stand in a public square and pay 16 dollars to any woman who would kiss him. Far from taking umbrage at the small sum on offer, passing young ladies were quick to accept his proposition, and a few even gave him their phone number. It just goes to show that some women will be nice without it costing an arm and a leg.
Labels: advertising, flipping the bird, money, selling kisses, sexual imagery, women
Friday, December 23, 2011
Christmas Carols
I arrive in London to spend Christmas with the noble Dr Whipsnade, benefactor of the worthy, guardian of the innocent and chastiser of the villainous. After taking supper with the doctor and his wife, I step outside to watch a band of humans singing Christian hymns. Their voices are earnest and tuneful, although rather affected for my taste. We gorillas prefer a more robust style of vocal expression that reaches the pelvis as well as the ear drums. This does not stop me from applauding their performance:
“Bravo!” I cry. “Wait here while I go inside to get something for you!”
I brush past the butler when he opens the door and return with a couple of crisp banknotes in my paw. I am about to hand them over when Dr Whipsnade emerges in his overcoat and grabs my forearm.
“Don’t do that, Bananas, they’re not licensed to collect for charity,” he says. “Jevons will bring them some mulled wine.”
The choir look disappointed. “We wouldn’t have minded a tip,” mutters one of them as I re-enter the mansion with cash in hand.
This incident illustrates one of the enduring features of an English Christmas: it’s the time of year when money is at the forefront of people’s minds. The first man who properly understood this was Charles Dickens, whose work is much celebrated in the festive season. A Christmas Carol, let no one forget, is a parable about a miser. I’ve seen it enacted so many times that I now hold revisionist views on it.
The story, you see, has a glaring moral defect: Scrooge was scared into turning over a new leaf by ghosts. The use of terror tactics to make a sinner repent is not the Christmas spirit. It seems obvious to me that what the old codger really needed was a woman. Instead of harassing him with spectres, Dickens should have given Nancy from Oliver Twist a supporting role as the Wench from Novels Past. If she had snuck into Scrooge’s bed at midnight, straddling him between her broad and luscious thighs, he would have definitely been a new man in the morning.
A consistent theme in all of Dickens’ work is that sex makes humans happy. Why else would Bob Cratchit be in such good cheer, in spite of all his woes? The size of his family suggests that servicing the missus was one of his favourite pastimes. The same is true of Dickens’ female characters. David Copperfield’s pretty young wife died with a smile on her face, which women don’t make a habit of doing unless they’ve been given a good seeing to. And no one was more miserable than Miss Havisham, the bitter old prune who renounced men after getting jilted on her wedding day.
After retiring to my bedroom, I look out of the window at the grand houses in this affluent neighbourhood of London, and wonder how much shagging is going on. Not much, judging by the long faces I saw moping around in the morning. I blame Dickens. People are so preoccupied with money and presents that their libidos have turned Scrooge-like. They ought to remember the event that Christmas celebrates: the first and only time that God had sex with a woman.
Gorilla Bananas wishes his readers a Merry Christmas.
Labels: Carol singers, Christmas shagging, Dickens, money, Scrooge
