Bubbles lives! And provides a handy object lesson for not keeping chimps as pets Thanks for getting to the bottom of this, AC.
Quincy Jones does not remember Bubbles fondly.
“Are you kidding me? He bit a hole in my daughter’s hand! Rashida’s hand. Rashida Jones — did you see I Love You, Man? That’s my daughter. She was a little girl. And Bubbles bit her hand. Michael used to bring [boa constrictor] Muscles and Bubbles by the house all the time, you know.”[Via Vulture via GQ]
Bubbles reminds of my favorite intersection of music and monkeys. It’s from an entry on Stax’s Wendy Rene, on Allmusic. It’s almost too good to be true.
A tour with Rufus Thomas included an appearance at the Apollo Theater in Harlem, NY. Rene returned from the Big Apple, to the dismay of her parents, with a monkey she purchased at a pet store there. Arguments over the monkey messin’ up the house became the predominant topic; Rene was still a teen and lived at home. Monkeys were a status-symbol in the ’60s for some. You dressed them, tuxedos were the vogue, and drove around in convertibles with the critters riding shotgun. Soul singer Edwin Starr, among others, briefly owned monkeys. Get a hit, buy a drop top and a monkey.