“Me? Name’s Johnson. I’ve been a sailor since I was old enough to go to sea. I’d been on the Venture under Englehorn for a couple of years when that Driscoll fellow had us sail off to the middle of nowhere. We were told he was going to shoot a safari movie. Never expected no giant gorillas! I’m just lucky as hell I was one of the ones what stayed back in the native village. That whole party that went off, only the first mate and Driscoll ever made it back. Lotta good men, lotta good men…”
“Anyway, years later I saw that movie they made about it, and I can tell you something: they sure don’t mention the shit. That goddamn Kong, he made as much shit as a herd of elephants. And guess who had to clean it all up, every damn day? Me, that’s who! Skipper and the mate, they were mad at me, said it was my fault them natives got on board and snatched Miss Darrow, when I was supposed to be on watch. Hell, you know how foggy it was that night? Goddamn Kong himself coulda swum out and got on board, and you’da smelled him before you saw him”
“Anyway, that’s what I did the whole trip back, each and every day, shoveled out gorilla shit by the barrelfull. And it took twice as long to get back as the trip out took because we had to stop every stop we could to pick up more fodder. Took months. And that Kong, he was as mean as his hide would hold him. Even chained up, I took my life in my hands every time I went into the hold to clean it out. Didn’t take him long either to figure out if he couldn’t get at me, he could throw his shit at me. Every day I was covered head to toe by the time I got outa there, and not an ounce of sympathy I got from anyone.”
“So yeah, that’s what I did. I shoveled Kong’s shit.”
I think I have that book. I Shoveled Kong’s Shit: Untold Stories from the Hunt for the Great Ape, 1933. Later made into a hit Ken Burns documentary.
excerpt from I Shoveled Kong’s Shit Episode 27: The Aftermath
[clip from 1933 King Kong]
POLICE OFFICER: Well, the airplanes got him.
CARL DENHAM: Oh, no. It’s wasn’t the airplanes. It was beauty killed the beast.
NARRATOR: Airplanes or beauty, the ape was dead. But the question all of New York was asking was, who would get rid of him?
ED KOCH: I was just a kid when Kong fell. Every day, I’d walk to school along Fifth Avenue, and that December of ‘33, I remember it like it was yesterday. Every day for three weeks I’d be walkin’ along Fifth Avenue and I see a dead ape there! It was amazing! I thought it was the greatest thing I’d ever seen in my life.
[photograph of three children sitting on the dead Kong]
NARRATOR: What was the city to do with such a large problem?
[photograph of Fiorello LaGuardia smiling, holding an axe, with his foot atop a dismantled pinball machine]
Newly sworn-in Mayor LaGuardia’s first order of business was to find a solution for what he dubbed the “Kong problem.” The answer came in the form of
[shot of four men in sanitation uniforms with an unsually oversized janitor’s bucket] The Dead Ape Squad. Led by Johnny “Swiftfoot” MacGee, an Irish immigrant from Queens, the Dead Ape Squad’s job was to clean New York of its giant ape bodies. [Shot of MacGee with a dynamite plunger standing on top of Kong and the other three men holding their ears] Although they made quick work of Kong, they soon realized that no other dead apes would possibly ever appear. However, the City didn’t realize this, and the Dead Ape Squad continued not working until it was dismantled in 1976. Ironically, it was in this year that yet another giant ape problem would rear its ugly head.
[end of excerpt]
When Harry Left Sally - or She’ll Have What I’m Having
“… of course when I finally got driven absolutely batshit once and for all by her stupid childish petulant hyper-pickiness I walked out and never looked back. It was that or homicide. Can you imagine what sex with her was like? No way could I make her miaow - no-one could. Cost me a bomb though.”
What have they got there? Apes, only they aren’t as big.
“I’m dreading the reviews tomorrow, I tell you that. I remember when Al Jolson escaped from the Winter Garden and climbed the Chrysler Building. After that, he couldn’t get arrested in this town.”
