North Carolina Welcomes the Conjoined

Just finished watching the documentary Bound by Flesh on Netflix, when it occurred to me that North Carolina serves as the final resting place not to just one but TWO sets of famous conjoined twins.

Chang and Eng Bunker

The first set are the original "Siamese twins", Thai - born Chang and Eng Bunker, who originated  the now-archaic term for conjoined twins and have death masks on display at the mutter museum. After a lifetime of traveling on the sideshow circuit, the Bunker twins eventually settled in Mt. Airy, NC, where most of their descendants reside to this day. Chang and Eng's shared plot can be found at the White Plains Baptist Church Cemetery in Mt. Airy.

Daisy and Violet Hilton

The second set of twins are the Hilton Sisters: Daisy and Violet. Film buffs may recognize them from Tod Browning's 1932 Horror Freaks. They also serve as the basis for Sarah Paulson's characters Bet and Dot Tattler in American Horror Story: Freak Show (although the characters' upper-torso conjoining more closely resembles that of the sisters Abigail and Brittany Hensel than the Hiltons, but I digress).

Born in Bristol, UK,the Hilton sisters followed the Bunkers' path on the vaudeville and sideshow circuit before finding their way to Charlotte, NC where they settled in their final years. The Hilton sisters's final resting place can be found in the Forest Lawn West Cemetery in Charlotte, NC.


Feel free to learn more about the Bunkers and the Hiltons in the links below, as well as Hensels for a modern day lifestyle comparison.

Chang and Eng Bunker
http://chnm.gmu.edu/lostmuseum/chang/

Daisy and Violet Hilton
http://thehairpin.com/2014/06/bonded-and-bound-by-flesh-the-story-of-daisy-and-violet-hilton

Brittany and Abby Hensel
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-22181528

The Pleasant.....Resurrection?

After 14 years of underground marketing, I came across what has to be The Pleasant Company's first television advertisement....ever.

Seriously.

Other than the movie promos and news stories featuring the stores, there have never been any advertisement directly promoting the dolls.

The doll featured was Samantha, the girl from 1904 and one of their three original American Girl dolls. From what I could determine from the brief TV spot, the doll still comes with her (now updated) book, and her secondary outfits. After searching for the spot on You Tube, I found three other adverts for their more build-a-bear type dolls. Samantha's ad follows the same formula as the former three with the only deviation of briefly mentioning her time period.  This may be an attempt to resurrect the retired line through re-absorption into the current one. Whether it's a success is for another update.

Dogs gone Wild.......ly redundant

Feral Dogs in Romania

I was having a discussion with someone about the packs of feral dogs in Detroit when the conversation took a turn that annoyed me severely. What could they have said to annoy me so much to write a blog article? It's not that they said the dogs pose a potential threat to communities. Of course they do, especially if they have aggressive tendencies. It’s when they indicated that the concept of a feral dog was unnatural. Have we’ve forgotten what animal the dog has evolved from?

Don’t get me wrong, I had a dog for 17 years, but I also have no delusions about the canine nature. They’re animals, not human infants, as too many old rich ladies seem to believe. The behaviors we associate with dogs, like dependency and loyalty, are the result of being raised by man.

The reality is that average people have convinced themselves that dogs have diverged further from their lupine ancestors than reality would present.  We've forgotten that behaviors we associate with dogs, like dependency and loyalty, are the result of being raised by man.

The dog many vary in shape, size and hair type, but if they return to living independently from humans, their ancient pack instincts always kick in. How else can you explain a roving pack of chihuahuas in Arizona? Yes, it sounds hilarious, but remember that chihuahuas ARE DOGS, and their size is not a factor to them when they revert to pack survival mode.

They don’t see humans as “mommy, daddy and siblings” but rather "pack leader” and "pack mates". It never left them. Dogs who were never raised in a human home have only their instincts to rely on.  Because they are no longer in forests, they must adjust in a more human-populated environment.  Humans are no longer a pack member but competition in nature…... or prey.

We fear this feral nature, because we cant walk up to it and pet it. We can’t talk "baby talk" to it. We can’t sooth our guilt by giving it a bowl of kibble. We fear feral dogs because like our prehistoric ancestors, we no longer have full control of them.


I’m not excusing or defending the attacks on people by feral dogs, especially in Detroit. Humans created the mess, humans must clean it up. Outside of behavior problems caused by inbreeding, abuse and neglect, people need to see that there is nothing abnormal about the formation of dog packs in and of itself. It’s not a good safety scenario for humans but at least dogs who’ve only known the streets can finally have a fair chance in the fight against humans who really do mean them harm.



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Renovations under way (again)....

Blogging is a progress for each individual. In my case it's been developing with my own life goals. As I grow and change, so does my blog. You may have noticed a subtle name change. I still go by the name "Gorgon Transplant", but only on my new Wordpress blog, now covering topics strictly related to illustration, cartooning and that professional field. This Blogger account will now take the name that used to go to my (now deleted) cartooning blog--Mi, Misma y Me.

Nothing else has changed but the name. You'll continue seeing more of the same topics that you follow me for. Hope no one's confused.

If interested, visit the NEW Gorgon transplant here:
http://thegorgontransplant.wordpress.com

Marissa Alexander: Immovable Object Meets Unstoppable Force

Our story has a villain.

While the American justice system allows trigger happy white men to give in to their paranoia,  Florida's in particular does that and allows draconian state attorneys to play judge and jury as they please.

As of this post, Marissa Alexander thankfully still remains on house arrest, close to her children. I wish I could say that's the end of the story, though. Like a modern day Inspector Javert, the State Attorney Angela B. Corey does everything she can to get Marissa Alexander back in Jail. After the appeal of the first trial, she fights Alexander's bond for house arrest, then in the letter to the Judge Daniel to revoke Alexander's home detention bond, Corey accuses her of violating parole. To push the Javert analogy further, her letter to the circuit court judge exposes so many unsubstantiated presumptions towards Alexander that she barely hides in her professional language.

Wow. "Hair Salon?" "Shopping Mall?" That's oddly specific.

Finally, Corey pushes a third retrial for a triple 20-year sentence--that's right, a 60-year sentence. For a woman who neither killed nor harmed anyone. After one appeal, and house arrest from the initial single 20 years of the first trial, this woman tries to up the ante.

However, it turns out that Corey has a history of overcharging defendants, including getting a 12 year old boy put in solitary in an adult prison, then threatening to sue the editorial reporter who criticized her for doing so. Angela Corey is not only Javert, but Zimmerman with a law degree and a vagina. A rotten, pus-filled vagina. (Let's see if I get an email for that one).

Like South Africa's Apartheid, the system in Florida is finally set so black people cannot properly protect themselves from any violence without receiving punishment. And Alexander is here to present that message.  Not on my watch.

Keep supporting Marissa's defense team and donate to the link below. They're going to need all the money they can get. Corey will make this a long trial.

http://igg.me/at/freemarissa2


Even Inspector Javert eventually confronted the reality regarding Jean ValJean and killed himself, unable to live with it. A creature like Corey will not (and may not be able to) do the same and can only be stopped by a third party, if so. In the rare chance she ever has her law license revoked, I wouldn't put it passed this woman to pick up a gun and follow her many male counterparts outside the law.

Whatever happened to Larry Johnson?

When I attended my first Charlotte basketball game, my thoughts immediately went to my first nostalgic association--Larry Johnson, the star player of the 1992-1994 Charlotte Hornets. For those who remember, he was known for endorsing Converse Reacts shoes and starred in a couple of Converse commercials opposite his fictional grandmother, dubbed "Grandmama".

"Grandmama" was basically Johnson in a blue flowered dress, grey wig, straw hat, cat's eye glasses and gold-toothed smile. The first ad launched from a very common insult: "[you're basketball skills are so bad] my own grandma can beat you on the court"



Wait a minute....blue dress? Grey wig? Cats Eye Glasses? Sounds familiar....

Anyway......

The "Grandmama" ads grew pretty popular and put Larry Johnson and Charlotte in the national spotlight. The character "herself" grew so popular that merchandising was made to cash in on the craze.
Merchandise from t-shirts to trading cards and posters.

I even recall a time in the Foot Locker when by chance I looked up at the ceiling to find a dangling inflatable dummy of Grandmama's legs (dress, sneakers and all), giving the impression of a slam dunk gone hilariously wrong. That was not the end of it, not by the slightest. The Grandmama phenomenon reached its peak when the character guest-starred on a episode of Family Matters.

But alas, as quickly as "Grandmama" appeared, she quickly disappeared and Larry Johnson left the public consciousness with her. With the Hornets returning to Charlotte this year, I had to find out what became of Larry Johnson since those days. Thanks to the advent of lovely invention I'm blogging on, I could find out very quickly.

Life After Grandmama

To be brief on the subject, Johnson's growing ego, fights with new teammate Alonzo Mourning, and financial strains on the team lead to public backlash and eventual relocation of the team to New Orleans. Johnson himself was relocated to the Knicks, where his rivalry with Mourning intensified and his behavior grew worse. By the early 2000s, he retired for health reasons and converted to islam.

Fellow "blogspotter" Basketbawful has more on this and the fate of the Hornets and John after the Grandmama Era:  http://basketbawful.blogspot.com/2011/09/players-i-hate-part-2-larry-johnson.html A more neutral biography is available at wikipedia (ironically):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Johnson_(basketball,_born_1969)

Johnson may have not been the next Jordan or LeBron, but he did cut a deep notch into sports history thanks to one good promotional endorsement. Maybe one day he'll choose to bury the hatchet with his past and pay a visit to the new Buzz City Hornets at Time Warner Cable Arena. Both Johnson and "Grandmama" have made an impact that still resonate in the minds of nostalgic Hornets fans, Charlotte residents, and basketball pop culture fans alike.

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"Affluenza": A fate worse tham Zimmerman

Revisiting the story of Ethan Couch, the "affluenza" kid made me think about that early 90s HBO: Families in Crisis special where drunk driver Kevin Tunell, who killed a girl in a DUI, had to write a check every day to her parents per his sentence for the next 18 years until his guilt eventually overwhelmed him. Not only has Ethan Couch, his parents and especially the judge and psychologist has made an enemy out of his victims' families, but any other person who had to serve a proper sentence for their DUI manslaughter as well as any cop who's had to face the scene of such accidents and any real judge who has had to deal such cases in their courts.


Young Mr. Couch is going to have fewer allies that George Zimmerman, and his parents can't always be there for him. I hope he enjoys spending the rest of his life locked up in the family estate for protection's sake.

There is already a petition in action to have Judge Jean Boyd removed from the bench:

https://www.change.org/petitions/governor-rick-perry-take-judge-jean-boyd-off-the-bench#supporters

As for the "Psychologist", Dick Miller, please feel free to share your opinions on his website:

http://www.gdickmillerphd.com/G. Dick Miller, Ph.D

4001 W. Airport Freeway
Suite 185
Bedford, Texas 76021
Phone: 817-283-8484
Fax: 817.283.8286