The Mammalian Daily

Satirical fiction in newspaper form

Lovely to look at - Book by Noreen

On This Day—October 6, 2013: Rapper Will.o.be. to stand trial for defacing Tree at music fest

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Rapper Will.o.be.Rapper Will.o.be. will stand trial in December on one charge of mischief and two charges of assault on a living being, it was announced today. The charges relate to the singer’s alleged defacing of an Oak Tree during the last evening of the Beats of Burden music festival in September.

With his legal representative by his side, the rapper appeared before Mr. Justice Augustus Dindon yesterday afternoon. The Justice formally laid the charges, set the date for trial, and placed restrictions on the rapper’s pre-trial travel. The Justice also advised the accused not to spend any long period of time close to Park Trees.

In a short statement that appeared on his web site, the beloved Park musician expressed his disappointment that the matter had to be resolved in court.

“I had hoped to avoid a court trial, but this was deemed impossible unless I confessed to the crimes with which I have been charged and of which I am not guilty,” he wrote. He also thanked his fans and supporters, saying that he hoped he hadn’t let anyone down.

“I believe that my actions on September 16 were misinterpreted and misunderstood and I welcome the opportunity to explain myself to the court and to Park citizens,” he wrote.

On the evening of September 16, the last night of the Beats of Burden music festival, Will. o.be. was arrested after several event attendees said they saw him sharpening his claws on the trunk of an Oak tree behind the Tartan Crab Memorial Pond. The Tree, which is a cousin to The Park’s Ancient Oak Tree, was found to be missing a significant amount of bark. Park Police immediately restricted access to the tree and the trunk was subsequently treated by a specialist in the field. The Tree is expected to make a full recovery.

On This Day—October 5, 2015: TMD managing editor may bow to pressure on bylines: rumour

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Extra! Extra!Mammalian Daily managing editor Orphea Haas may be about to bow to pressure from rival Park media outlets to publish journalists’ names above their news reports.

According to a post on the gossip web site headsNtales, Haas has received counsel on the matter from a number of sources, including Nathan DiPressa, Executive Director of the Association of Non-Mammalian Park Newspapers (ANMPN).

In a Friday post, one of the web site’s “reporters” claims to have seen DiPressa leaving TMD headquarters late last Tuesday. DiPressa’s office refused to confirm the meeting, but an anonymous source at The Canary Courier said it was the third time in the last two weeks that DiPressa had been seen exiting the building.

For decades now, the newspaper has successfully defended its longstanding policy of keeping journalists’ names—and more importantly, their species—out of the paper. But that policy has gotten increasing attention in the last few years, with other media organizations demanding the same amount of transparency from The Mammalian Daily that they themselves are obliged to offer their audience.

At a print media conference held in August at the University of West Terrier’s Cuthbert School of Journalism, the number one issue for attendees was transparency.

“The era of anonymous reporting is over. If you are hiding your journalists’ identities, you are hiding their biases, and you are not being forthright with your readers,” DiPressa said at the time.

Even some who supported the policy in the past appear to have changed course with the passage of time.

UWT Professor Ludwiga Saimiri, who had praised The Mammalian Daily’s policy as recently as last year, appears to have had a change of heart.

As a guest on the Yannis Tavros show last week, the distinguished scholar and former director of the Centre for the Incorporation and Integration of Interspecial Values in Journalism (CIIIVJ) said the time had come for TMD to embrace transparency.

“Zoocracy and its attendant openness require it and I no longer see any harm in knowing the species of those who bring us the news,” she said. “The Mammalian Daily may be coming late to the party, but it’s one I believe they should make an effort to attend.”

On This Day—October 4, 2012: Hundreds jailed after Noon Nuttiness protest turns violent

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Hundreds of Animals were jailed this afternoon, after a group of angry protesters interrupted the Noon Nuttiness screening at the Park Cinema and demanded that audience members hand over their cackle™–enabled devices.

The protesters, who belong to a group that calls itself Realidad Incorporated, stormed the Cinema during the opening credits of the comedy Kribbles. In between making cackling sounds and insulting the cinema’s patrons, they grabbed the cackle™–enabled devices within their reach and threw them to the ground. They then demanded that all patrons relinquish their devices.

“At first I thought it was a stunt…part of the comedy experience,” said one witness, who appeared to be in shock. “Even when they were breaking them [the devices]…I thought it was [representatives of] GooseBook. Until they started fighting and I saw Animals down on the ground. That’s when I knew it wasn’t planned and I started to get scared.”

Many patrons, who had been lent the devices by GooseBook to use during the film, refused to surrender them. It was at this point, Park Police say, that the scuffle turned violent.

“The RI members were yelling at the audience, but the audience wouldn’t give up their devices,” said a Park Police Officer called to the scene. “They didn’t even belong to them. It was kind of strange. It was like they were willing to die for them,” he said.

The RI members then became aggressive and began to physically attack the patrons in an effort to force them to release their devices. This resulted in a counterattack by the patrons, according to a police report filed this afternoon. In all, almost three hundred Animals were hauled off to The Park jail. Eleven others, who were sent to The Park Hospital for the Afflicted and Infirm, will face charges as soon as they are discharged, Police said.

According to a statement released by Realidad Incorporated (also known as Reality Incorporated), the members of their group were acting in protest against cackle, the new “happy only” social networking site rolled out in August by GooseBook.

“At such a difficult time in the life of The Park, we find it unbelievably offensive that a company would invent a site that, in effect, denied the reality of Park Animals in favor of a sugar-coated view,” the statement read in part.

On This Day—October 3, 2014: The Dog Paddle: Noon Nuttiness opener cracks us up: review

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Manwel Kelb, left, and Eamon Madra star in The Dog Paddle as rival swimmers forced to compete together as paddlers after a mixup occurs in the qualifier for the “big race.”


The Dog Paddle
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Starring Manwel Kelb, Eamon Madra and Vicente Perro. Directed by Sofia Koira. First screening: October 2; repeat screening October 4 at the Park Cinema. 72 minutes.

The Dog Paddle, which stars two of The Park’s best known Canine comedic actors (Kelb and Madra) as well as newcomer Vicente Perro, hinges on a familiar Park issue: two rival Canine swimmers are vying for the opportunity to compete in the first-ever Dog paddle event of the Interspecial Summer Games. After the qualifying final is cancelled due to a vicious storm, the athletes are told that both their names have been entered in the “big race.” What Kelb and Madra’s characters realize too late is that the big race they’ve been entered in is a different kind of Dog paddle race: one that involves two Dogs, two paddles, and a canoe.

The reaction of the two characters to the news that they must cooperate with each other rather than compete (and do so in a canoe) nets us some priceless physical comedy — the sort that both actors are famous for.

But it’s what happens next that elevates The Dog Paddle to comedic art: the film slows down just long enough to allow us to see both Dogs in a different light. In this case, it’s the twilight before the big race, when they finally decide they’d better talk strategy if they’re going to have any chance at all of winning.

In the hands of another director, this scene might have turned the film into a tragicomedy. But in the hands of the skilled and savvy Sofia Koira, who is quite a hoot herself, the poignancy becomes so off-balance that it rights the canoe and steers the rest of the film to its conclusion, which I won’t spoil for you here.

Who would have thought that a send-up of the Canine Athletic Association’s bid to reinstate the Dog paddle as a competitive swimming stroke could be so funny? Certainly not this critic, but the surprise was well worth the humility with which I will be forced to live for some time.

On This Day—October 3, 2015: Searching for the Spitman: Noon Nuttiness Review

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Park Interspecial Film Festival
Searching for the Spitman: A Journey Through Foam, Froth, and Fun
♥♥♥♥♥♥

Directed by Ernesto Santiago Camello | 23 minutes | Final screening October 5 at the Park Cinema

We’re all familiar with our friend Stan the Spitman’s signature phrase, “Spitballs from Heaven!” Yet how much do we know about the Spitman, himself?

Not a lot, as it turns out. But writer and director Ernesto Santiago Camello has set out to change all that in this alarmingly candid short film about one of The Park’s funniest citizens engaged in one of the world’s oldest professions: spitmaking.

Estanislao “Stan” Gonzalo de Llama is a second generation SpitMeister, a master of the art of spitmaking.

“It’s an honourable profession,” he says with a wry smile, “that makes products used for dishonourable purposes.”

That wasn’t always so, as Camello demonstrates in his short look back at the history of spitmaking. But, these days, Stan estimates that about ninety per cent of his products go toward humiliating other Animals.

“It’s a fact of life in the profession,” he says. “But it doesn’t keep me up at night.”

Camello follows Stan through his day, from rising long before dawn to set a pot on the fire, to the arduous task of mixing, boiling, and stirring the ingredients.

“I tell my clients it’s an old family recipe, but it’s not. I made it up on the fly and it worked…because the fly stuck to the wall,” he jokes.

The film is full of lines like that—jokes that wouldn’t even be funny if they came out of another Animal’s mouth. But Stan gets away with it, largely because he is an honourable Animal. Last year, for instance, when Milton Struts, then head of the Park Finance Office, found himself covered in spitballs at the PIFF Awards ceremony, Stan secretly sent him a gift certificate for a full “do” at The Pluming Room.

“I don’t even know for sure that it was my spit they were using, but I know how it would feel and I didn’t think he deserved that. I’m not sure any Animal does,” he says in one of his more thoughtful moments in the film.

In another of those moments, Stan lets slip that if he hadn’t been pressured into joining the family business, he probably would have become a comedian or even a musician. And just so you don’t dwell on the poignancy of that admission, he quickly offers up another:

“No matter what, I’d have made my way back to spit[making]. It’s in my DNA,” he laughs.

On This Day—October 2, 2014: One last assignment: Noreen to cover Frankfurt Book Fair before leave starts

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Noreen official badge portraitNoreen will be taking a short break from her work here at The Mammalian Daily in order to promote her book, Lovely To Look At.

But before her leave starts on November 1, she has accepted one last Mammalian Daily assignment: covering the Frankfurt Book Fair in early October.

In a press release dated today, Mammalian Daily managing editor Orphea Haas confirmed both Noreen’s six-month leave from the paper and her last assignment:

It is with great pleasure that we announce today that our advice columnist Noreen will be taking a six-month leave of absence commencing November 1. She will be spending that time promoting her book, Lovely To Look At.

Before she leaves us, though, Noreen has accepted one last assignment. She will be covering the Frankfurt Book Fair between October 8 and October 12. We take pride in being the only Park newspaper to be sending a correspondent to the largest book fair in the world.

Although we will miss her come November, all of us at The Mammalian Daily wish her great success in this and in her future endeavours.” 

 

On This Day—October 1, 2014: Kanariar speaks out about budget

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harvest_002Aintza Kanariar, Director of Public Relations for The Park’s Department of Holidays, Festivals, and Celebrations, spoke out this morning about the 2015 budget and the ways in which her department may be affected.

During an interview with host Yannis Tavros on Toro Talk Radio, Kanariar admitted that the budget as proposed presented a “significant planning problem” both for her and for other Park departments. In fact, she said, her department was already looking at ways to reduce the cost of the remaining 2014 celebrations.

“It’s a tricky business, though,” she told Tavros.

“We’ve already made agreements and signed contracts and we can’t get out of those. But I do think, at the very least, that we will have to scale down the celebrations and perhaps shorten the hours.”

While she stopped short of calling the budget “bad,” Kanariar said she thought it was short-sighted.

“I think that in trying to simplify, they’ve complicated matters ten times over,” she said.

As for next year, Kanaria warned Park residents to expect a series of “simpler celebrations.”

“Unless there are changes in the budget, we won’t know far enough ahead how much we have to spend. Because of this, we will be planning to have less at our functions. But that doesn’t mean they will be any less successful. We are all able to have fun and enjoy ourselves, no matter what. Our life here in The Park is worth celebrating. And who knows? Perhaps less will turn out to be more in the end,” she said.

On This Day—September 30, 2012: PIFF 2012: Festival frenzy grips Park

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The Park is in a party mood, as anticipation mounts on the eve of the opening of the 8th annual Park Interspecial Film Festival (PIFF).

“It’s game on! We’re ready!” announced PIFF Communications President Leola Ocelot at the final pre-opening press conference this afternoon. “This is going to be the biggest and best film festival The Park has ever seen,” she said.

Festival goers appear to agree. Tickets were snapped up earlier than in previous years, with new events such as Noon Nuttiness and PIFF Pockets attracting a younger crowd.

“It [PIFF] is no longer an adults-only event,” said Ocelot, who confirmed that twenty-five percent of tickets were sold to those under five years of age.

“They bought up Noon Nuttiness and also went for the PIFF Pocket Films. We didn’t expect that at all,” she said.

Meanwhile, adult film fans were busy primping and preening in anticipation of five days of screenings, celebrity sightings and top-secret social events.

“We haven’t had an opening in days,” said Amoltrud’s Aesthetics’ groomer Elspeth Rinder. “We have a waiting list the size of a Python,” she said.

The Park’s other grooming houses reported the same situation.

“We had to lock our doors and pretend we were closed,” said stylist Tano Pagun of The Pluming Room. “We were afraid that, otherwise, we’d see fur and feathers fly.”

The festival will open tomorrow night with “I Love a Man in a Collar”, the much-anticipated documentary about Thisbe and the Barkettes. All eyes will be on the front row, as film goers attempt to catch a glimpse of The Park’s most famous singing group, who have confirmed they will attend the documentary’s debut. The five members have not been seen together for a number of years.

Other highly anticipated events include the opening night gala at Clowder and the Cackle-ary hosted by GooseBook.

The Mammalian Daily plans to publish full details of events in the coming days.

On This Day—September 29, 2015: PIFF preview: Herman Stoat: Mon Chemin Compliqué

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Park Interspecial Film FestivalAll PIFF documentaries are good. Some, of course, are better than others. Then, there are those that are spectacular.

And, that adjective is more than appropriate for the much-anticipated Herman Stoat: Mon Chemin Compliqué.

Conceived and produced by Pussyfoot Productions, this film about the life and work of the renowned dancer, choreographer, and founder and artistic director of the eponymous dance company has been in the making for more than four years. Yet, it received its official title only last year, after Stoat and his company’s assistant choreographer Gustav Hermelin created the dance, Le Chemin Compliqué, for the 2014 Celebration of the Winter Solstice.

“That was how we knew we were done,” Stoat said in a PRANCE magazine interview last month. “Somehow, with that dance and that title, we’d come full circle.”

Stoat knows a lot about circles, having danced professionally for years before founding the Herman Stoat Dance Company. And while he’s achieved a level of artistic success that was previously unknown in The Park, that success, which includes being named Choreographer of the Decade by PRANCE Magazine, has come at a cost.

“You might say that I survived success,” Stoat jokes in an early scene in the film. “But you might also say that I didn’t.”

Even Stoat fans who watched the choreographer’s reality series three years ago on Vertebrate Vision TV will be surprised at the physical, mental, and emotional pain this film uncovers and how complicated a road Stoat has travelled.

A Park refugee, both Stoat’s parents died at the hands of Humans.

“They were in their prime but, unfortunately, so were their coats,” he says matter-of-factly.

Left to his own devices, the young Stoat found his way to The Park, where he was taken in by a family and raised, as he says, “with love and care.” But there were problems in the household, jealousies among the family’s natural offspring, and expectations he could not meet.

“Early on, I discovered my natural talent for dancing and it saved me. I could go off on my own, explore my ideas, and set my moves to music,” he says.

It was during that time that he discovered the effect his moves had on others, as well.

“It was almost hypnotic, the effect. I noticed crowds gathering and they were mesmerized by my dancing. Suddenly, I found I couldn’t stop and they didn’t want me to, either.”

Stoat danced himself into Park history, but there came a time when he did have to stop for a while, after the anguish of his early years caught up with him.

“I’d packed it all away and suddenly, after I won a few awards, it all came tumbling out. I needed some time alone and even contemplated retirement,” he says.

Fortunately for Park dance lovers, Stoat finally returned to the stage refreshed and ready to take on new challenges, including teaching, working with artists in other genres, and calling for more diversity of species in dance. And, he reveals in the film, there is even more to come.

“There are days when I wake up and I think, ‘I’ve only just begun,’ ” he says with joy.

Herman Stoat: Mon Chemin Compliqué will screen at the Park Cinema on Friday, October 2 at 2:00 p.m. and on Sunday, October 4 at 4:00 p.m.

On This Day—September 28, 2016: #PIFFPiffle: Mary Margay and the truth about her PIFF tiff with Douglas Cheetah

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PIFF mugIt was announced yesterday that actress Mary Margay will attend the gala opening of the Park Interspecial Film Festival (PIFF) on Saturday, October 1.

Margay, who is best known for her performance in Black Cats Can’t Jump, has made her home outside The Park for over a decade and has only performed in a few short films. She says her work on behalf of spotted Animals has “consumed her” and hasn’t left her time for much else.

She told #PIFFPiffle in a telephone interview that she was surprised to receive director G.D. Zebra’s invitation to the WINK gala opening, even though she knew of the film and has been supportive of it.

Her appearance this coming weekend ties in with her own work and though she was reluctant to discuss her most famous performance, she put to rest rumours that she is not on speaking terms with Black Cats director Douglas Cheetah.

“Douglas and I have never argued or had any kind of tiff. I had a hard time coming to terms with that film and it had nothing to do with him. I was criticized for doing it by many in my own community. There are some Animals of Pattern who believe we should only do films about ourselves. I think that’s nonsense. Douglas, who is himself an Animal of Pattern, did a wonderful job on that film and I’ve worked with many directors and actors who weren’t part of my own community. We all have to live and work together. We all have challenges,” she said.

We look forward to talking more with Mary Margay when #PIFF2016 opens on Saturday.

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