Favorite Joe Exotic music video? 🐯
'Cause I saw a tiger...' and other must-sees from a weekend hunkered
I should clear something up. This is new and I don’t know what exactly I’m doing here so you can expect some bumps along the way. This weekend was a bump. The things I singled out on Friday to watch over the weekend were shows and movies I had NOT yet seen, to be clear. I looked at everything that was new to streaming last week and found three programs that sounded cool, based on premise or trailer parts or my unfailing intuition, of course. But, whatever, now that I’ve actually watched them—enough anyway—I can only half-heartedly recommend one of my three so-called “recommendations”. My bad if you sat through more than five minutes of Motherland: Fort Salem.
Tiger King is a ride, man
I have mixed feelings about Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness. The first three episodes took me on a journey from glued to saddened to annoyed to thirsting for some answers...
Will we ever find out if Carole, head of the “good” big cat place, fed her older, unfaithful husband to a tiger and then dumped his remains in a septic tank?
When will Joe Exotic (picture Kenny Powers pimping out tiger cubs in the mall) go full Colonel Kurtz and drop bombs from a helicopter into Carole’s sanctuary? (An actual threat he makes, by the way). We know from the very beginning of the show that he is in jail ... for something.
But what I really wanted to understand during these first two and a half hours was who or what to believe in terms of how tigers in captivity should be treated. Of course, ideally, there wouldn’t be any tigers or killer whales or wild animals in captivity but we’re here, and that’s why animal rights people like Carole say rescues and sanctuaries are the best we can do to give these animals a safe place to live out their lives.
But what’s the difference between a sanctuary and a zoo? One sounds nicer?
I was skeptical too because the show has Joe Exotic going on about how Carole’s Big Cat Rescue is no better for the animals than his zoo and arguably worse because she exploits animals for donations and uses volunteers for free labor. Whereas he pays ex-cons in expired meat.
He’s also a maniac with a doll called Carole that he lights up with automatic weapons and explosives.
Sure does! And after reading a few things, including a good article in National Geographic, there are distinctions between sanctuaries and zoos.
Like?
First off zoos are designed to maximize entertainment value for people, not animals. At the expense of animals, frankly. Smaller cages means we see more. Whereas sanctuaries are built, ostensibly, for animals to have a place that simulates their natural habitat, somewhat.
You added ostensibly … and somewhat?
Because the conditions vary from sanctuary to sanctuary and regulation is imperfect. Still, the consensus is that sanctuaries try at least to be better for animals than zoos.
But sanctuaries still attract tourists, same as zoos, right?
They do, but in some ways the nicer they are the less of the animals you’ll actually see because they have space to roam and they’re not socialized.
You don’t get to pet the cubs?
No, no touching at reputable sanctuaries and no breeding either, so the only cubs you’d see are ones that got rescued from someplace else.
All their animals are rescues?
According to that article, ‘Sanctuaries promise to take in and care for any animals that have been abused, neglected, or abandoned and to keep them for life.’
Like foster care mixed with a retirement home.
Compared to zoos which ‘buy, sell, trade, borrow, loan out, and breed animals.’
Ruthless.
Seems so.
Alright, guess I’m team Carole.
Let’s see how the rest of the show plays out...
But animal rights isn’t what Tiger King is about—it’s not Blackfish—this is just a tangent my mind went to during one extra tangent-y weekend. What the show cares about is its eccentric humans, and much like Jeff the hotshot swinger, the tigers are there just there to suck you in…
A surprise new release
More time at home this weekend meant more time to watch stuff, in theory, but I found my attention span sped up as well. The more I hunkered (our new word, y’all), the more I wanted to jump from one thing to the next…
Five minutes with Motherland. Blah. Opening sequence of the Pet Sematary remake. Honk! Pop some popcorn. Nom. Half of Blow The Man Down. Next. Maybe I should reorganize my office nook. Ahhh. Until finally, I land on Feel Good, a new Netflix show with comedian Mae Martin (new to me) playing aspiring comedian Mae who starts an intense new relationship. Freeze. Two episodes in Netflix locks up and won’t give me anymore Feel Good, for now, but life goes on 🤷♀️
Guess I’ll read a book … nothing like falling asleep to the source material for cult horror movie Audition! Sweet dreams.
Now you’re all caught up on my very exciting weekend of hunkering.
Tune in Friday 📺
Other cool stuff and notes
Watched Scott Pilgrim with a virtual group of movie friends as we commented along in Slack. Fun times 👯♀️
Feel asleep during episode two of Westworld so no comment there yet. Except … Team Maeve or Team Delores? TBD.
I found this Buzzfeed round-up of movies that are coming to on-demand sooner to be useful. (Watching Vivarium next weekend for sure).