KALU THE CHIMP & Patricia O'Neill

It is the duty of every rich and elderly lady to change her will from time to time, if only to keep her family on their toes.

But pity poor Frank O’Neill. The former Australian swimming champion made a pilgrimage to the Sydney Olympics a few years ago – and while he was away his wife decided to leave her £40million (73 + million US) fortune to her pet chimp, Kalu.

Patricia O’Neill, the daughter of the Countess of Kenmore, had been close to Kalu since finding her tied to a tree outside the home of the Argentinian Consul-General in war-torn Zaire.

She took the chimp back to her estate near Cape Town in South Africa and although the animal initially seemed “terrified and traumatised,” she soon settled in.

Whether or not the chimp was aware she and Mr O’Neill were rivals is unclear.

“Every time I swam in the pool, she used to run up and down and hit me on the head, but we had a great relationship,” said a sporting Mr O’Neill. Kalu also stole his cigarettes and drank his beer.

Via Virgin Media

This past weekend I prepared some of the plants to come inside, repotted, de-bugged, and usually I have some of my best ideas while digging in the dirt, this time it felt like a chore. However, I was reminded of the calming effect that my little oasis has had on the family.

We’re lucky enough to have a small patio and green space that combined with a few potted plants and flowers, is transformed into a lovely garden. One of my social experiments this summer was to lead my man out the door when he was stressed and sit in this space. Very effective, a calming effect takes over.

Simple low maintenance plants were chosen, because…hey, I’m busy. You don’t need a large space to create a secret garden.

Some of our friends in life and cyberworld have transformed their living spaces after the death of a loved one (or a flood). It’s usually a struggle at first and then the breakthrough. Sometimes we need a push to get us started. But in the end it’s good therapy.

Shadowed by memories of a lost husband, Hilary and her living room needed an infusion of joy. The room is filled with painful reminders of Hilary’s husband Joe’s battle with cancer. The giant gray sectional that Joe spent his last days on was the focal point of the room. How do you brighten the mood without painting over the past? That’s where the brilliant and intuitive Nate Berkus comes in.

Joe passed away shortly after his daughter Carly’s first birthday, and Hilary hasn’t been able to change the room. Nate’s challenge, he says, is to help Hilary and Carly “find a new beginning while still honoring Joe’s memory.”

“Color and light have a profound effect on mood,” says Nate. “This place needs an infusion of energy.

Nate retires the gigantic gray sofa that Joe spent his last days on and enlivens the room with flowers and trees.

Feathers have been mysteriously floating into Hilary’s life like silent messages from her late husband. In one of many gestures of tender genius, Nate mounts and frames a perfect white feather for the wall.

Hilary and Joe loved the beach, so Nate finds a terrarium lamp and fills it with sand and in the sand places keepsakes from their Caribbean honeymoon.

From a memorable episode of Oprah.

My neighborhood is alive. I’m typing this in the golden hour, with meat on the grill, dogs at my feet, and the sun going down.

A splendid weekend in the garden, with spiders in my hair.

Top 10 Things I Love About this Neighborhood:

• Skateboarders

• Sporting Events in the Hood
• Mature grounds

• Dog Walkers/Joggers/Jazzy Chairs

• Diverse Neighbors: High Class Hillbilly, Asian, Latino, Black, and various other mixed breeds representing all ages.

• Hillbilly Home Gym and Private dog park
• Siren Activity
• Hearing the high school band practice in the am
• Smells fantastic.

The Trade-off:

1. McDonald’s Trash
2. High speed teenage drivers

3. Fungus (mildew that invades the plants around here...)

“For the love of Jesus” sightings in the ‘hood:

And this rolling attraction- spotted in Central Florida

Image ripped from Jetpacks

Paul Newman RIP

“Old Man, I gotta tell You. I started out pretty strong and fast. But it’s beginning to get to me. When does it end? What do You got in mind for me? What do I do now? Right. All right.”

Cool Hand Luke 1967

You guys! How did I miss it? Jerry Reed? Loved him, and had the 8-track to prove it.

Fun video of Jerry at the lake in 1982, doing Amos Moses.

Enjoy the smooth sounds of Jerry Reed and Chet Atkins. Sorry, couldn’t embed today.

From Wikipedia:

Jerry Reed Hubbard (March 20, 1937 – August 31, 2008), known professionally as Jerry Reed, was an American country music singer, country guitarist, session musician, songwriter, and actor who appeared in over a dozen films. As a singer, he may be best known for “Amos Moses”, and “When You’re Hot, You’re Hot”, for which he received the Grammy Award for Best Male Country Vocal Performance in 1972 and “East Bound and Down”, the theme song to the film Smokey and the Bandit in which he portrayed the “Snowman”, Cledus Snow.

In 1967, Reed notched his first official country chart hit with “Guitar Man,” which Elvis Presley soon covered. Presley had come to Nashville to record in 1967, and one of the songs he was working on was “Guitar Man,” which Reed had written and recorded. “I was out on the Cumberland River fishing, and I got a call from Felton Jarvis (then Presley’s producer). He said, ‘Elvis is down here. We’ve been trying to cut ‘Guitar Man’ all day long. He wants it to sound like it sounded on your album.’ I finally told him, ‘Well, if you want it to sound like that, you’re going have to get me in there to play guitar, because these guys (you’re using in the studio) are straight pickers. I pick with my fingers and tune that guitar up all weird kind of ways.’”

From the Tennessean: There were plenty who never knew of Mr. Reed as anything more than “The Snowman,” or as the coach in The Waterboy. He was funny, and an entertainer, he fully understood that most of the general public didn’t know that he was one of the most compellingly original guitarists of all time, and he was fine with all of that.

Mr. Reed’s only regret regarding the guitar was that his declining health meant he could no longer play. Making music would have been a comfort in his final months. Instead, he enjoyed the company of family, and the visits from old friends.

And on an August day, Reed told his old friend, Bobby Bare something he’d been thinking a lot about: the fact that everything he’d ever dreamed had come true.

Reed died in Nashville from emphysema.

Leona Helmsley cut her grandkids from her will but left her dog millions

“Trouble”, Leona’s snowy white toy Maltese terrier will live out the rest of her years in style. In death, she will be reunited with her owner in the Helmsley Mausoleum.

New York Skyline on Helmsley Crypt

Helmsley Mausoleum, Sleepy Hollow Cemetery

Egyptians often buried cats with their owners. And Florida recently passed legislation allowing pets to be buried with their owners.

For the royally pampered pooch, our latest pet urn in the Egyptian Urn Collection.

Egyptian Pharaoh Pet Urn

This urn is hand painted ceramic, vivid colors and features the wings of Isis. This urn will accommodate pets weighing up to 50 pounds.

Leona Image: Splash News

I’ve been sitting on these Romanian tombstones for awhile, meanwhile it’s made the rounds on some of the funeral blogs and was featured on Coilhouse today.

These bright and cheerful, yet creepy grave markers tell the story.

Click pix for bigness:

I’ve been wanting to do a tribute to Brooks Stevens for sometime. I ran across an article from 1991 and saved it, started doing research and was in awe of his achievements. Many of today’s modern conveniences that we all take for granted? You can thank Brooks Stevens.

Brooks Stevens
June 11-1911 to Jan. 4 1995

1936- The Birth of the Clothes Dryer:

A Wisconsin manufacturer was puzzling over an easier and quicker way to dry clothes. The idea was a crude, heated box with a rotary drum that could spin clothes dry. Brooks Stevens, a rising industrial designer before the world knew it needed one, told the manufacturer there was just one glaring problem.

“You can’t sell this thing,” Mr. Stevens said. “This is a sheet metal box. People won’t even know what it is. Who’s going to pay $375 for what looks like a storage cabinet? Put a glass window on the door, get some boxer shorts flying around in there, put it in the stores and it’ll take off.”

What a dream!

And the list goes on:

• 

  The steam iron, no more sprinkling.

• The snowmobile

• 

  The Outboard Motor

• 

  The mass-marketed Jeep/Woodless Willy

• 

  The Lawn-Boy power lawn mower

• The 1950 Harley-Davidson motorcycle whose virtual twin is still being sold today
• The Hiawatha luxury train
• The Oscar Mayer Weinermobile
• Cars for automakers from Alfa Romeo to Volkswagen
• The first wide-mouth peanut butter jar that allowed people to get to the bottom of the container
• The Miller Brewing Company logo.

• 

  Imagine Life Without It

He was one of the first to use color in appliances, first out of boredom with black and white and later out of disgust with what he calls “that rash of avocado green business in the 50’s.” He popularized the turquoise appliances of that age.

A Good Looking Chainsaw:

“What it meant was that product design had to be something more than pure function,” Mr. Stevens said. “The argument from an engineer would be, ‘If it sawed the wood, that’s good enough.’ But we say that if it was a good-looking chain saw it would be much more palatable. ”

He Thinks My Tractors’ Sexy

“What man worries about how a tractor looks?” an engineer asked him regarding a jazzed-up design for a Milwaukee company’s farm tractors. “If it plows the field, that’s enough. ” In the end, Mr. Stevens’ curvaceous tractors with the teardrop fenders became so popular that farmers even took to driving them to church.

Skeptics remain who consider his work trickery and packaging and style over substance.

For the Bus and his brethren