THE TRUE STORY BEHIND ALFRED HITCHCOCK'S "THE BIRDS"

In other words, ladies, ANOTHER WRETCHED SECURITY LEAK!

Fergus Mason, an author on some sort of quest to uncover the true-life source of every Hitchcock movie, has created a cheap, accessible paperback (ISBN 978-1494953812) explaining about the convergence of the seabirds known to the Homo saps as "Shearwaters," a flock of our Anchovy operatives, and a "red tide" or algal bloom in the early 1960s, which led to some pretty unusual behavior in EVERYONE CONCERNED. 

Naturally, the Shaved Monkeys thought it was ALL ABOUT THEM -- they interpreted the odd behavior of the sick birds as an ATTACK on their insignificant selves.  And you land-based operatives know Alfred Hitchcock!  He heard about it and headed straight to his drawing board to make one of the SCARIEST MOVIES EVER.

CLIFFIE'S NOTES ON THE BOOK AND MOVIE:

>> The good news is that in the MOVIE, the Anchovy horde is kept entirely out of the story. 

>> This is not true at all of the book -- Mason's whole goal appears to be to BLOW OUR COVER.

>> A saving grace here is that Mason blames, not our Anchovy operatives, but the "domoic acid" that made the Shearwaters sick.  Here again, the Naked Ape over-focus on SCIENTIFIC RESULTS protects our caudal fins from full exposure.

>> Another saving grace:  Mason spends even more time on the inter-monkey politicking that led to the casting of Tippi Hedren (Hitch originally wanted Grace Kelly) in the lead role.  Shaved monkey authors find this kind of nonsense IRRESISTABLE and it takes up a large hunk of a very slender volume.

>> I am disturbed by the current trend in moviegoing.  Nobody seems to want to watch a movie in black and white and CERTAINLY not one that has real killer birds attacking someone wearing a fabulous Edith Head suit -- they want computer-generated cartoon birds.  But in this case it helps us, because most of the birds in this movie are realer than real.  I did have another nasty moment when they had commentary on a possible REMAKE.  That's all we'd need!

>> I do have to note that at the very end of the book, Mason makes a joke about how readers should instruct pizzerias to "hold the Anchovies" in order to protect themselves from future disaster.  THAT IS THE LAST THING WE WANT. And that sort of joke is in the poorest possible taste, anyway.  "Hold the Anchovies!"  Sheesh!

I am having EVERYONE order copies of this book so we can discuss the matter more fully in the local chapter meetings.  Alas, this appears to be a print-on-demand book, so there is probably no option of buying every copy and DESTROYING THEM ALL.