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November 28, 2007 |
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Monkee Astronaut
FOUND by Jake
in Burlington, Vermont
I found this in a book (a bookmark?) while I was looking through an old library collection at an estate sale. 1954 is typed on the back, that's it. It seems so lonely, like no one else exists in this world, but someone is taking the picture. It seems sad that the plane is tipped up on an edge like its crashed. Also the expressionless monkey mask creeps me out.
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Gang Aft Agley August 11, 2006 |
Last Warning February 15, 2004 |
In Other Words June 09, 2002 |
Karen's Guide January 04, 2007 |
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We collect FOUND stuff: love letters, birthday cards, kids' homework,
to-do lists, ticket stubs, poetry on napkins, telephone bills, doodles -
anything that gives a glimpse into someone
else's life. Anything goes...
What a treasure this find is! A house with plain old steps, not the now ubiquitous deck, and a genuine white picket fence. The plane looks like one of those from the ride at the state fair - the one where all the planes are suspended and they 'fly' around a centre point like a carousel but suspended. Images of monkeys spin me out - this one particularly so. It almost looks like "planet of the apes".
I adore this one, too! I like the laundry air-drying on the line, wooden steps, not concrete, and the monkey!! I do feel it's a boy/girl dressed in that suit, tho'.
look at the cellar doors and the old-fashioned car in the distance!
my first thought was "Planet of the Apes!"
I wish kids toys were still made of metal.
This picture is fantastic. I hope that kid works at a zoo.
Or in a jungle, trying to communicate with apes.
Wherever she is, she's probably super cool.
Well, at least we don't have to guess what year it's from.
YES! ]
this totally fits with the awkwardkidsposingwierdly theme! thank you found for the monkeychild of the day!
I didn't realize at first that it's a real child in a monkey mask. I thought it was a toy monkey in a toy plane.
This picture is awesome!
This picture is creepy. The monkey reminds me of the toy from Stephen King's "Monkey Shines."
Maybe it's one of the first pics of how they trained monkeys to go into space? Selling the idea to NASA using a kid dressed up to show them what it might just look like! LOL
I would LOVE to have a print of this photo! It's my favorite photograph EVER!
If you look close it almost looks like those are people hands so maybe the monkey face is a mask.
I think the plane is like the one we used to play on at the playground. It has a giant spring so that it moves back and forth. Those were awesome.
Pat: I thought the same thing!! What were their names... Ham and .... I forgot!
This is the best find I've seen so far. What an achingly beautiful and lonely photograph.
Looks like Chim-Chim got his fixed wing license. Nice to see the little fella out of Speed Racer's trunk.
How Awesome! The first thing I thought of was the movie Project X with the monkeys who flew plans..maybe this picture was inspiration for a future movie writer..look mom im a monkey flying a plane!
That "monkey mask" has been cut & pasted onto that photo.
The NASA monkeys were Able and Baker. Able died shortly after his flight during a fairly routine examination. Miss Baker lived at the Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville Alabama to a very old age for a monkey - something like 27 years (about 3 times the normal live expectancy of that species of monkey) and is buried near the entrace to the Center.
YAY!! Finally a find from VT. No one litters here (well- sort of), finds are are to find!
I love this find! I agree about the loneliness in this pic..... ahhh.... like winter in VT.... NOT! See you on the slopes Jake!
this monkey really has it's freak on. definitely the most disturbing monkey-child i've ever seen
Can I buy this picture?
Aww, how sweet! This kid wanted to be a monkey AND a pilot when he/she grew up. A real go-getter!
This may me the most fantastic week of finds ever! I can’t wait to see what is in store for us tomorrow, however none of these are doing any thing to dissuade me from my fear of children.
Cowgirl, my first though was "damn dirty ape" Great find. This will be a good comment day. I've never seen a basement or cellar. The water table is to high here for those.
I picture the child behind the mask as a blonde haired boy with a crew cut. Too cute! Although that monkey mask *is* a tad freaky.
I, too, immediately thought of Planet of the Apes. I guess that makes it apepropos?
Found peeps....how 'bout that magnifying glass so we can examine to see if Sera is correct? (Please)
Awsome picture, love every bit of it.
I need to find the finder of this great pic...I would love to incorporate it as a CD cover design for a friend of mine who does dark folk music...
i think the mask has been stuck on coz it does not fit in and also masks of that quality werent freely available or cheap in 1957 so i dnt think it fits in with the photo.
ah such a pesimist, sorry folks.
This looks kind of like a part of a series by Ralph Meatyard, where he had his sons wear masks while he photographed them.
http://www.eastman.org/ne/str085/htmlsrc8/m198
Amy I'll see if I can track down the hi-res version of it, although from what I remember there wasn't any evidence that the monkeyface was cut/pasted on there.
Rev, if you email us (info@foundmagazine.com), I think I could help you get in touch w/ the finder!
This is great! I really hope it's not been photoshopped - so much cooler if it was found this way. Either way though, intriguing and creepy-in-a-good-way image. Here's a link to a story about those NASA monkeys - ironically on CNN today.
http://www.cnn.com/2007/LIVING/worklife/11/26/
My dad was born around 1954 and had a creepy chimp toy from childhood that reminds me of this- the head was plastic and eerily life-like. I think the photo is real!
Drew, that picture in the link was the ultimate definition of creepy!
I guess now we know what happened to Amelia Apehart.
(snicker snicker)
I don't trust that monkey child, not one bit.
This chimp is hella suspicious.
After checking out the hi-res version at about 800X magnification, looks legit to me! Great find, Jake.
this would be a great addition to the found board game!
this is such a lovely picture.
so. this photo was the last thing i saw before i went to bed last night and i dreamt that there was a conversation on found today wherein someone asked how many pets a monkey could own and someone else responded that monkeys have been proven to be able to manage three chickens and three horses, all on their own. (WTF?)
so, anyway, i half woke-up, laughing, of course, and remember reasoning (whilst dream-giggling, as you can imagine:-)) that monkeys really probably COULD tend to 6 animals on their own (and i was picturing a monkey walking around a farm, carrying feed, climbing all over the horses to brush them...) but you'd have a heck of a time trying to get them to understand the term "ownership" to them. (i repeat, WTF???)
okay. it went a bit further than that. thinking about farms made me think of self-sustainability and i was thinking that you could probably even teach a monkey to cook up a chicken.
in my defense, i'm really not crazy. (of course, everyone says that). i AM, however, sleep-deprived and stressed out. anyway, it was too funny not to share.
so (i guess i'll open up this conversation)-
does anyone know how many pets a monkey can handle?
(wow, deja vu!)
The Meatyard pics are amazing. So creepy, but very thought provoking. He seems he was "before his time".
Today's find could have been snapped by Meatyard while he was in Vermont.
thanks for the cool links, by the way.
when i find a few minutes, i'm going to look into the sexual harrassment case that koko was recently involved in! how bizarre.
well, its not hard to tell that Pepper is back, is it?
sarasara, you have weird dreams. I'm impressed that you can remember them like that.
i like monkeys. I wish that we could know the backstory to this one. Oh please, powers that be, please make the person who took this picture, or the kid in the picture, look at this website, and tell us the story? We'll sacrifice Pepper to the gods, if you do this for us.
i <3 ralph meatyard
Fan-fucking-tastic! Two things, 1)Molly in TX is right. Haunting and lonely. I think the cellar doors and laundry give it a time and place. Check out the car. 2) The kid's wrists are simeon (sp?). LOVE IT!
Looks like another potential Jandek album cover - Spacemonkey In The Grass, perhaps?
simian
Thanks, James, for weighing in on the picture's authenticity. It doesn't look 'shopped to me, either. The shadow at the bottom of the mask is too perfect.
Cheers to Amy and Turbo for your ape puns!!
Do you think that plane is an old "Pedal-car" type toy? My grandparents have several old pedal cars from the 50's kicking around their house- the great grandchildren still use them- but I've never seen an airplane one. There are a couple of toy companies that are starting to re-create those vintage toys.
Oh, and Sarasara, have you ever been to a circus where one of the acts is a chimp, running the puffy, pastel-colored poodles through their routines? Such a spectacle! I can't say whether or not the chimp sees to all the poodles' daily needs, but I've seen a chimp handle about a dozen puffy, pastel poodles.
I'd love to see a chimp feeding the chickens, milking the cows... but I don't think I could handle watching the chimp butcher and cook. Something very wrong there.
we'll sacrifice pepper? geez, mona!
what does pepper get out of it?
:-))
pepp, it's strange to think that there are places w/o basements and cellars. tell us more from this strange land you inhabit!
no, but it sounds really wacky! and by the way, i mis-read "pastel" as "pastry." and i just thought that was another interesting way to refer to a poodle. i just call them snacks (for big dogs, not me).
sorry for the disturbing mental images with the cooking bit, also poodles as snack food for real dogs.
crap. i keep putting my foot in my mouth.
Hell yeah! What could be better than a monkey in a plane? I love the way the photo looks.
*SCREAM*
reverend, i would love to hear your friend's dark folk music. it sounds luscious.
This Meatyard pic is the creepiest of them I think. It's awesome!!!!
http://www.eastman.org/ne/str085/htmlsrc8/m199
I think I found his plane! Look up the "Vintage Murray Peddle Airplane Riding Toy" on Ebay (the link is way to long).
Get this, Meatyard was born in (wait for it) Normal, Illinois.
Heh, Normal! Guess he made it his life's mission to contradict that.
It was a family gathering. Actually it was just after the gathering. Everyone had gone home. Uncles and aunts and there tweeky cheeky fingers all got into their cars and drove off. Finally Joey's mom let him put on the mask. He'd pestered her about it for the whole morning before the relatives showed up. And she said no. In fact she hid it. And because Joey had been such a nice boy, his mom gave him the mask, without him even asking for it. So Joey went out to the back yard and ran around with the mask on and his arms out and he imagined he was the king of the jungle, swinging from trees. Then he remembered that old movie his mom and dad had let him watch a few weeks ago. The one about this huge gorilla swinging from buildings and swatting at airplanes as they swooped in on him. And Joey wondered how that story would have turned out if the gorilla had had a jet fighter to fly. So Joey dragged out the new toy his Uncle Walt had given him, and sat in it, imagining the great gorilla flying away with his lover.
While he was day-dreaming we ran across the backyards and shot the wheels out from under his new toy. We remember it like it was yesterday. Don't you?
i think the shooters win the explanation game!
well met, good fellow!
Does anyone else think that the house is leaning OUTWARDS? And the door looks too narrow. I would love to visit that place.
Sarasara, the monkeys-with-pets question reminded me of this, although it's the other way 'round: http://mfrost.typepad.com/cute_overload/2007/09/a-p
Sarasara.. pastry poodles.mmmmm sounds good. I dont think monkeys could make pastry, tho. I hope not, anyway, cuz i can't make pastry. i do that all the time, misread things. One time, at a discount bookstore, i saw a sign that said (i thought) 10% off for teachers and lesbians. I thought... hmmm how would they ask for proof of your lesbianism? then i realized that it said librarians. Which is different. Not much different, but more different than a girls gym teacher.
omg..that meatyard guy is creepy/wonderful. see the image of the girls face in the right hand side of the pic that Christine put the link to?
MASK?!
That's a picture of my uncle John, and that's no mask, that's his FACE! All you people making cracks about zoos and circuses should be ashamed! How insensitive!!
cassisu, that picture is great. see, we CAN all get along.
mona, that's hilarious! and, if a lesbian in a bookstore needed a great way to meet new people... i mean, why not? most of the managers are idiots anway!
Zira took this when I was growing up; who stole my picture? And how did you humans learn to write?
The photographer must've been the Man with the Yellow Hat.
Maybe it's just me, but I see the kid's own hair and eyes...it's like the monkey face is only the lower half, with the ears and lips part "stuck on" his face. But I'm tired and I've been online too long, I probably can't see straight.
Roddy McDowell as a child...
Oh, sweet Jesus, head for the root cellar, the evil monkeys have come to reclaim their mother planet!
this is the scariest picture i've ever seen. the background...the scary monkey mask on the lone person in the whole picture...its just creepy.
Someone should teach that monkey how to mow the lawn.
sometimes when i'm out in this polish part of our city I pass this house that has an airplane just like this but its kind've a swing or something for kids and this picture just reminded me of it...
It's cool, he's not the only one left. There's still the Statue of Liberty half burried in sand someplace.
THis actually looks like my neighborhood, except for I don't live in Vermont.
My best TIP ever was from a nice New Zealand lady, she took me up in a small 4-seater plane during a flying lesson. We flew 1,000 feet over Gov. Schwarzenegger's house, awesome! He is a Great Governor!!!!!!!!!!
This is the last surviving member of the rivals to the Wicked Witch of the West's Flying Monkeys
Love this one...I think it should be hanging up in a museum somewhere, people will stand in front of it for hours...
Mickey Dolenz as a lad.
Glad I stopped by today. The Meatyard photography are chilling and amazing. The second meatyard link id the creepiest photo I have ever seen. http://www.eastman.org/ne/str085/htmlsrc8/m19900010
By George, it's Jane Goodall!
I don't think it was photoshopped, either. I saved a copy to my computer and enlarged it. I agree it looks a little suspicious, but I think it's a child maybe wearing an adult-sized mask, which is why the mask looks like it was added on to the photo.
Also, I think this could be the cover photo for the latest children's book: Curious George Flies A Plane.
I love you all. Your witty and insightful comments make me smile big.
I agree completely with Molly in Fort Worth: "This is the best find ... an achingly beautiful and lonely photograph".
Yep that is def a copy and paste of the mask!
I love to hang laundry on the line to dry, and take it off and fold it afterward. The three items (pillowcases?) on the line here look sad to me though.
I totally love this picture. I wonder what the photographer was thinking about, to compose it like this. Was it taken with a Brownie camera? Twin lens reflex? Looks like a square format.
I love sarasara's dream too.
Sarasara -- get some sleep!!
Clover: sad picture. I would guess some kind of Brownie with a waist-level viewfinder. The reason the house appears to be leaning outwards is the low viewpoint looking up (with a wide-angle lens). Plus I'd guess the house is at the top of a slope.
The kid behind the mask looks unhappy or bored -- his drooping hands. The 'crashed' angle of the plane, and the uncut grass, add to the air of neglect and desolation. That said, it might have been a really happy household! Who knows.
Maybe the grass is uncut, the laundry still hangs on the line, is because the parents would rather play with their kids and spend time having fun, rather than taking care of stupid things that can wait until the kid grows up.
I love the details in this photo, jonathan. There is so much behind this that we'll never, never know.
You Maniacs! You blew it up! Ah, damn you! God damn you all to hell!
"And so on that fateful day...man took his first tetative steps towards space..."
WOW!! i was the one who found and submitted this photo, and am just now reading the comments. i've been haunted by this picture for years and keep it in a frame as one of my most prized oddity collection. i'm so glad other people enjoy it as well. I can attest to the authenticity of it, although being a skeptic myself i understand the leeriness. if anyone wants a copy of this i'm more than willing to send some. if interested you can email me at: youredeadafterschool@yahoo.com
Great, thanks, Jake. Mona too.
I realise I was talking b*ll*cks -- if you were pointing upwards with a wide-angle lens, the building would appear to lean AWAY from you, not the reverse as in the photo. So I really don't know why it looks like that, unless it's a side-effect of cheap cameras. Midlife, your expertise is required here!
I guess if you had a very expensive rising-front or perspective correction lens and didn't know how to use it properly, it might finish up looking like this, but somehow I feel this is an unlikely scenario.
Unless it *was* Mr Meatyard or someone doing it deliberately (ditto unlikely, especially in 1954).
Even in 1954 that must have been an old car, by the way.
just sayin.
this is probably the best series of comments i have ever ready following a post; not sign of cattiness or hostility. Thank you, monkey boy, for making peace!
Sarasara -- ummm.... couldn't we take "sustainability" a little bit further?...
I mean - if the monkey gathered (carefully) (and maybe cooked?) the eggs, there might be more eggs tomorrow! Just a thought!
At least the monkey child is not spewing blood or anti freeze, and there's not a chicken head in sight.
I grew up in Vermont. This is a typically vermonter kinda thing. Fear not the monkey-masked masses!
Looks like a photograph by Ralph Meatyard. Check him out online; famous photographer known for eerie pictures of kids in masks. If you like this photo you'll probably love his work.
Do you ever read the comments here?
Drew beat you to the punch by two days.
I showed this photo to my husband, and he said:
"This is the kind of photo you would see on a movie you rent from some gas station in some backwater town and you'd take it home and at first you think it's some poorly made slasher flick but after you watch it you realize it's acutally a home movie of some backwoods in-bred hillbilly ganking Yankee tourists. You take the movie back to the gas station and pretend you didn't see it but it haunts you for the rest of your life. It's that awesome."
There's something that looks so off in this picture, so creepy, that it is slightly disturbing. I feel uneasy when I look at it, but I don't quite knokw why...... *shudders*
One thing I noticed just now: there aren't any electric lines that I can see in this photo, can you see any?
Tara, that's the best theory for a find I've read yet. Now I have the chills.
Best picture ever. Quiet suburban desperation, waiting for the bomb, only super-hero monkey man can save us from the dreaded Russkies. He dives fearlessly through the grass-clouds, obliterating Red Square from a ramshackle house in Vermont, until mother broke the spell with her insta-matic. Best picture ever.
Duck & Cover!
PS: I think Sarasara is my soulmate. Her pastel pastry dreams have seen into my tilted heart. Metaphorically speaking, I am a monkey's pet, though I do try his patience at whiles. It was all OK until the turtle died and you all began to question his competency as a guardian. Now I am scared and lonely as an ape in a tot's toy plane.
can you say Roswell and coverup?
Does it creep anybody out that there were 13 creepies in this one? OooooOOOOoooOOO!!!
Creepy! but not all the creepies refer to the Find.. some were Meatyard-inspired.
Flying monkeys! OMFG.
THis picture is awesome
i want it :]