The Good Little Monkeys

[porphyry]

Once long ago, based on a brief glimpse and fleeting impression, I consulted the oracle of a rebours about the Good Little Monkeys, but received no response. Over time, scouring google eventually turned up the facts they were featured in a series of three Hugh Harman cartoons--but how to seem them? Nothing at Amazon. But eventually everything turns up on You Tube.

How badly Nero is mishandled here! Except for Hitler he could be the greatest comic figure! Where is Aristophanes when you need him? However the references to Modernism in this last one are interesting.

Comments

[petrusplancius.livejournal.com]

I must have seen the monkeys long ago, I remember their song and their synchronized tails; Nero is not quite at the same cultural level.

[malkhos.livejournal.com]

Or he is here reduced to it--or should we say elevated to it? (I'm thinking of some of the more horrible bits in Suetonius such as the leopard skin episode if you recall that--I can't forget it).

I must admit I'm fond of the second for it use of smoking parpahenalia. I don't know how much I mention it here but I am a vorcious cigar smoker and would have a pipe or two in the evening except for the endless rounds of bathing and pajama-dressing. For some reason I always picture you with a pipe.

[petrusplancius.livejournal.com]

Imperial Rome must have been a hotbed of gossip, though I imagine that one had to be careful what one said to whom. Maybe my friend Holmes is to blame for your picture of me as a pipe-smoker! Having had a father who smoked far too much, I was never tempted to take it up, though I do like the smell of cigars and Turkish cigarettes.

[malkhos.livejournal.com]

The Holmes is of course jsut what I meant. You're quite right about the aroma--one of the sweetest things I've smelled, but unfortunately that experience is not among the compensations of actually smoking them. I have mayby 10 a week in the summer and 3 or 4 in the winter, which never seemed that much compared to Freud's 20-25 a day.

[petrusplancius.livejournal.com]

That seems a reasonable amount, I'm sure it brings more enjoyment than when it becomes a sort of reflex action to light up another, and less peril too. Smoking seems to be almost extinct in this country above a certain social level; at the most, some men light up a cigar as a luxury on occasion after dinner.

[himmapaan.livejournal.com]

These are wonderful!