Yet another male celebrity accused of sexual impropriety

Markozen.com Animals, Offbeat

The accusations are seeping out of the woodwork fast and furious. From Harvey Weinstein to Kevin Spacey to Louis C.K., sexual misconduct reports have become a non-stop cascade in the last couple weeks. And now another bombshell.

A well known pitchman for cat food is now under the microscope. Morris the Cat is accused of improper sexual advances towards Hollywood female felines.

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Morris the Cat is the advertising mascot for 9Lives brand cat food, appearing on its packaging and in many of its television commercials.

Morris has appeared in other media over the years. He debuted in the Robert Altman film The Long Goodbye with Elliott Gould, and starred in the movie Shamus with Burt Reynolds and Dyan Cannon in 1973.
Morris also appears as a “spokescat” promoting responsible pet ownership, pet health and pet adoptions through animal shelters. To this end, he has “authored” three books: The Morris Approach, The Morris Method and The Morris Prescription. He was quoted at the 1993 “end of year” edition of People magazine which noted deaths of 1993 to which he quoted a simple “Meow” in honor of the death of his friend, fellow advertising mascot, the dog Spuds MacKenzie.
In 2006, Morris was depicted as adopting a kitten, Li’l Mo, from a Los Angeles animal shelter, representing the first adoptee in a campaign known as Morris’s Million Cat Rescue.

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Six pussies have come forward with court dipositions alleging that Morris performed groping and unwanted sexual advances towards them in his Hollywood cat-house. Morris had lured the pussy cats to his house on the pretext of unlimited moist cat food, namely 9Lives.

Morris with one of his more recent lady friends

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A few of the accusers. They have signed a tell all contract with Buzzfeed media.

Caty Purry alleges that Morris kept pawing her behind even after she hissed continuously at him.

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Cindy Clawford put out a statement alleging Morris bit her ears while she was reading a script at his Tijuana villa.

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Lickers Wigglebutt has put forward court documents accusing Morris of unwanted pouncing and groping with his claws that left her an emotional basket case.

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Morris meowed no comment as his lawyer Bengal Tom said the accusations are sour grapes and that no such bad behavior ever happened. “Morris is an upstanding citizen and highly recognized professional actor” Tom put forward in a statement to reporters. “He could have had all the pussy he wanted”, no need for excessive advances on Morris’s part”.

 

The Diving Horses of Atlantic City

Markozen.com Animals, Bizarre

Amusingplanet.com

For nearly half a century, Atlantic City, in New Jersey, United States, was home to an attraction almost too fantastical to believe—an apparently fearless horse with a young woman on its back would leap off a tower some 40 feet high into a pool of water below. The stunt took place at Atlantic City’s popular venue Steel Pier, where trained horses took the plunge up to four times a day and seven days a week.

The idea of the diving horse was invented in Texas by ”Doctor” William Frank Carver, a 19th century sharpshooter who toured the wild west organizing shows with trained animals and shooting exhibitions. The story goes that in 1881, Carver was crossing a wooden bridge over Platte River in Nebraska when the bridge gave away, plunging him and his horse into the river. The diving horse franchise grew out this mishap, and over time it became Carver’s most favorite act on his traveling animal shows. His son, Al, helped train and take care of the horses, while his daughter, Lorena, is said to have been the first rider. By the time his future daughter-in-law, Sonora Webster, joined the show in 1923, Carver had two diving teams on the road, each performing in a different city.

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The diving horse at the Hanlan’s Point Amusement Park, Toronto, Canada.

Carver died in 1927 due to poor health aggravated by the drowning of his favorite horse. Following Carver’s death, the diving horse show continued with Al Carver at the helm. In 1928 the diving horse show came to Atlantic City and became a permanent fixture at Steel Pier for the next several decades.

Allegedly, in all the years the show ran, there was not one reported incident of injury to any of the high diving horses. However, the same cannot be said for the riders. On average there were two injuries a year, usually a broken bone or a bruise. The most serious injury in the show’s history happened to Sonora Webster, who was the best-known of the horse divers. She joined Carver’s show in 1923 and made her first dive when she was just 15.

In 1931, during a dive, her horse dove into the tank off-balance, causing her to hit the water face first. Sonora failed to close her eyes quickly enough, resulting in detached retinas that left her sightless. Despite being blinded, Sonora continued with the act for eleven more years. Her story became the subject of the 1991 Disney film Wild Hearts Can’t Be Broken.

Later in an interview to the New York Times, Sonora’s younger sister, Arnette Webster, remarked:

The movie made a big deal about having the courage to go on riding after she lost her sight. But, the truth was, riding the horse was the most fun you could have and we just loved it so. We didn’t want to give it up. Once you were on the horse, there really wasn’t much to do but hold on. The horse was in charge.

Horse-diving continued until 1978, when pressure from animal rights groups forced organizers to shutter the show. In 1994, Donald Trump’s organization, which owns Steel Pier now, attempted to bring back the act by featuring diving mules and miniature horses, but public protests once again brought the act to an end.

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Sonora Webster, in 1904.

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Horse diving into the water at Atlantic City.

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Diving horse at Atlantic City Steel Pier, 1959.

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Dimah, the world famous diving horse, Atlantic City NJ.

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The Maine Coon

Markozen.com Animals

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The Maine Coon is one of the largest domesticated breeds of cat. It has a distinctive physical appearance and valuable hunting skills. It is one of the oldest natural breeds in North America, specifically “native” to the state of Maine (though the feline was simply introduced there), where it is the official state cat.

No records of the Maine Coon’s exact origins and date of introduction to the United States exist, so several competing hypotheses have been suggested. The breed was popular in cat shows in the late 19th century, but its existence became threatened when long-haired breeds from overseas were introduced in the early 20th century. The Maine Coon has since made a comeback and is now one of the more popular cat breeds in the world.
The Maine Coon is a large and sociable cat, hence its nickname, “the gentle giant.” It is characterized by a prominent ruff along its chest, robust bone structure, triangular body shape, an uneven two layered coat with longer guard hairs with a silky satin under layer undercoat, and a long, bushy tail. The breed’s colors vary widely, with only lilac and chocolate disallowed for pedigree. Reputed for its intelligence and playful, gentle personality, the Maine Coon is often cited as having “dog-like” characteristics.

Ice Road Truckers: Behind the Scenes

Markozen.com Fake News

Ice Road Truckers is a reality television series that premiered on History on June 17, 2007. It features the activities of drivers who operate trucks on seasonal routes crossing frozen lakes and rivers in remote frozen territories in Canada and Alaska. In the first few seasons the long haul semi trucks operated mainly in Alaska and the Canadian Northwest Territories.  But in the last few seasons the truckers have discovered the area of North America with the most ice roads and also the most treacherous. The Canadian province of Manitoba.

Many of Manitoba’s isolated Native communities in the central and northern part of the province do not have access to year round roads or rail lines. The Native reserves are located in areas of thick forest and thousands of lakes. Therefore the winter roads are the only way to get supplies up to those communities.  Thousands of tons of freight is hauled to the communities during the short winter road season, usually January, February and the first half of March. Once the melt starts, the roads disintegrate. Hundreds of kilometres of the ice roads are just that, roads running on frozen lakes. When the lake ice starts to melt it can be quite hazardous.

Manitoba Winter Road Map

 

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I have always wondered what kind of support the truckers receive when they are out in the bush hundreds of miles from nowhere.  When old grizzled God-fearing trucker Alex Debogorski is hauling across a frozen lake what back-up does he have when the ice starts cracking?  While Alex is praying to the heavens to keep him dry there is always cameras shooting his movement from many different angles, some from outside his semi truck.

And when foul mouthed trucker Art Burke is swearing like a drunken sailor because he took a wrong turn and is 300 miles in the opposite direction of where he should be, a helicopter is filming his semi’s movement from a thousand feet up.  When Art starts getting bleeped out by the program censors because of his obscene and indescribably vulgar diatribes he is talking to somebody who is riding with him.  And when Art runs out of fuel and he is pacing around in the snow there are two different cameras capturing his every lewd gesture.

How isolated and in potential peril are the Ice Road Truckers?  A recent photo seems to shed some light on this question.

 

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The back-up and support package that shadows the Ice Trucks is extensive. Middle: Polar Industries truck driven by swear-master Art Burke; middle left: two F-350 Ford pick-ups providing mobile camera footage from different angles outside the truck; top left: Jet ranger helicopter that doubles as a camera platform and air ambulance; bottom left: the main satellite receiving central processing television truck; bottom right; 4-wheel drive ambulance with defibrillators, body thaw-out receptacles and neuro-cryogenicist surgeons; middle right: super-heavy X-1000 Mack telescopic arm tow recovery vehicle, and for good measure, a high-speed all-terrain mobile crane. Just in case a semi needs to be plucked out of a very deep lake.

In my opinion I’d say the Ice Truckers are covered pretty good for any contingency.

 

What is wrong with these men, why can’t they keep it in their pants!!?

Markozen.com Celebrities, Sex

First it was Harvey Weinstein, then Kevin Spacey and now Louis C.K., not to mention Fox News bully Bill O’Reilly, filmmaker James Toback and celebrity chef John Besh, to name but a few. All alleged to have committed sexual advances on unsuspecting victims. Oh I forgot one, President Donald Trump has 5 accusers alleging that he committed unwanted sexual advances towards them. And ‘The Donald’ admitted on tape that he grabbed women’s crotches, because since he was rich and powerful he could do anything to women.

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Is there not an antithesis drug to Viagra? When the libido of the harassers starts to boil, leading to a possible eruption, they could pop a pill that makes the cockeyed urges deflate. Keep it in your pants you idiots!!

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Really Bad Horror Movies

Markozen.com Movies

Brief list of bad horror flicks.  I thought the Amityville Horror franchise flicks were really bad.  But these appear to be a heck of a lot worse according to the reviewers.

Basket Case

In Basket Case, a baby is born with a parasitic twin. A small, evil parasitic twin the size of a basket ball. It grows out of the boy’s shoulder. The boys parents decide to save the “normal” twin by having the parasitic twin surgically removed.

Fast forward a few years and now the twins are all grown up. And like all siamese twins separated at birth, in which one twin was brutally removed from the other and thrown into the garbage to die, they dream of nothing else than revenge against the surgical team that separated them.  Murderous mayhem ensues.

Frankenhooker

“She’s hot. She’s Sexy. And she’s sutured to please.” When a mad scientist loses his girlfriend to a freak lawn mower accident he decides that the best way to get a new girlfriend is to chop up some prostitutes and make a new one out of spare parts. Stupid mysogynistic trash masquerading as a horror comedy.

Cannibal Ferox (a.k.a Make Them Die Slowly)

The subtitle of this movie is “make them die slowly” and the movie certainly lives up to its name. The mindless plot involves some Americans captured by cannibals in the Amazon. There is not much plot except a series of mutilations, eye removals, and gory torture.

Eaten Alive

This is yet another Italian horror movie with a cannibal theme. Americans venture into the jungle where they encounter cannibals. Eating ensues.

 

Erotic Nights of the Living Dead (1979)

A sleazy zombie cheesefest with horrible dubbing of English over the original Italian dialogue. The mouths are out of synch with the sound which adds to the fun.

A classic in the Euro-Horror zombie genre. Gratuitous sex and horrible acting. So bad its almost good.

 

A Night to Dismember

A female murderer is released from an insane assylum, suposedly cured. Then the body count begins. The film is dreadful on almost every level: the sound is awful (where are the foley artists when you need them?), the cinematography is lousy, the plot and acting are D-grade. The whole mess doesn’t make sense, so the director added a narrator that valiantly tries to make sense of the movie and explain the plot to you. The movie must be seen in order to appreciate just how brilliantly awful it is.

Night of the Bloody Apes

It’s the night of the Bloody Apes – well, actually, only one bloody ape. And he’s not really all ape, either.

You see, it seems that a mad scientist had a son with a heart defect. So he gives his son a heart from an ape, which naturally turns his meek, weakling son into a ferocious, murdering, sex crazed monkey man. What else would you expect? 🙂

 

Cannibal! The Musical
You may think that the title says it all. But no, there’s more.

The movie tells the fictionalized story of Alfred Packer, a real life 1890s pioneer who got lost in the Colorado wilderness and ended up eating his fellow expedition members. The story shifts incongruously from schmaltzy musical numbers to gory scenes of human hors d’oeuvres. One reviewer described the movie as “The Musical is Oklahoma meets Bloodsucking Freaks.”

Gingerdread Man

The ashes from an excuted killer are mixed into some cookie dough and naturally the killer comes back as a huge knife wielding murdering Ginger Bread Man. Awesome schlock, made even “better” by the fact that Gary Busey plays the part of the Gingerbread Man. Just try to picture it. The horror, the horror.

Santa’s Slay

It seems that truly bad horror movies always try to be clever by using an obvious pun in their title. For example: Gingerdread Man, or the awful Santa’s Slay, about a murderous Santa Claus.

What’s even funnier is that the killer Santa is played by talented actor and former wrestling star Bill Goldberg. Need I say more?

That’s all folks!

Man’s Life Magazine covers from the 1950’s

Markozen.com Art, Media

Men’s adventure is a genre of magazines that had its heyday in the 1950s and 1960s. Catering to a male audience, these magazines featured glamour photography and lurid tales of adventure that typically featured wartime feats of daring, exotic travel or conflict with wild animals.

These magazines are generally considered the last of the true pulp magazines. They reached their circulation peaks long after the genre-fiction pulps had begun to fade. These magazines were also colloquially called “armpit slicks”, “men’s sweat magazines” or “the sweats”, especially by people in the magazine publishing or distribution trades.

Notable men’s adventure magazines included Argosy, the longest-running and best regarded of the genre, as well as Adventure, Real, True, Saga, Stag, Swank and For Men Only. During their peak in the late 1950s, approximately 130 men’s adventure magazines were being published simultaneously.

The interior tales usually claimed to be true stories.  Women in distress were commonly featured in the painted covers or interior art, often being menaced or tortured by Nazis or, in later years, Communists. Artist Norman Saunders was the dean of illustrators for these magazines, occupying a position similar to that enjoyed by Margaret Brundage for the classic pulps. Many illustrations that were uncredited were done by Bruce Minney, Norm Eastman, Gil Cohen, Mel Crair, Basil Gogos, and Vic Prezio among others.  Historical artist Mort Künstle painted many covers and illustrations for these magazines, and Playboyphotographer Mario Casilli started out shooting pinups for this market. At publisher Martin Goodman’s Magazine Management Company, future best-selling humorist and author Bruce Jay Friedman was a men’s sweat writer-editor, and Mario Puzo was a contributor before he became a well-known novelist.

 Man’s Life 1950’s covers

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The title of the Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention album Weasels Ripped My Flesh was borrowed from a man-against-beast cover story in the September 1956 issue of Man’s Life, and the title went through another permutation when filmmaker Nathan Schif made the horror feature Weasels Rip My Flesh (1979).