Dr Seuss exploitations, Kiddie Litter and Daisy-Head Mayzie

Reprinted from the Oregonian
August 19, 2004
by JOSEPH ROSE

The Oregonian: Oh, the sentence he will serve

Somewhere in Con-ville, Charles Steen hatched his plot. He wanted money, and he wanted a lot.

To the widow of Dr. Seuss, the Portland man e-mailed a threat. "Give me 2.5 million, or I'll do something you'll regret."
He painted a picture, unseemly and lewd, of famous characters in poses no child should view. Horton, Sam, and the Cat in the Hat. And, yes, even little Cindy-Lou Who.
It was extortion! A Grinch-like pinch, you know. This Steen man, this mean man, threatened to put on a show.
But the widow did not bite. She turned the con man in to police, who grimaced at the painting and said, "This just ain't right."
In fact, Portland fraud detectives say, Steen's attempts to squeeze money out of Dr. Seuss' 82-year-old widow, Audrey Geisel, is among the most bizarre cases they have investigated.
"Let me put it this way," said Sgt. Judy Brumfield, "after I handcuffed Mr. Steen, he asked me to make him a cup of tea. That's when I said, 'Whoa! Something's not right in Who-ville.' "
Working with a San Diego high-tech crimes unit, Portland police arrested Steen, 33, last fall at his Northwest Portland apartment.
Steen recently pleaded guilty in a San Diego County courtroom to sending written threats of extortion to Geisel over the Internet. A judge sentenced him to three years' probation and anger-management counseling.
The plea deal also orders him to stop trying to contact the San Diego woman, her attorneys and Dr. Seuss' enterprises.
In a barrage of e-mails late last year, Steen demanded "$2.5 million after taxes" from Geisel, said San Diego police Detective Skip Stephenson.
If she refused, according to police records, Steen said he would "go public" with a painting depicting Dr. Seuss characters engaged in sexual acts.
Police said he sent a digital copy to Geisel's attorneys to prove the painting existed. He said he had friends who ran art galleries.
"He promised that it would be hung in galleries all over the world," Stephenson said.
At one point, Steen also threatened to find a theater that would produce a play he wrote to discredit Geisel and her attorneys, police said. The play was called "The Tragical History of Audrey Geisel, or How the Grinch Plagiarized My (Expletive) Children's Story."
The play's title cut to the heart of Steen's dispute with Geisel, police said.
Theodor Seuss Geisel, who wrote the acclaimed Dr. Seuss books, died in 1991. In 2001, Steen filed a lawsuit in New Mexico against Dr. Seuss' estate, claiming the late author's "Daisy-Head Mayzie" was a rip-off of his unpublished children's book "The Pains of Being True at Heart."
Steen acted as his own attorney. The court wound up dismissing the plagiarism complaint after Steen failed to meet a deadline to file additional paperwork, authorities said.
That is when he started sending the e-mails. Last fall, they became increasingly threatening, prompting Geisel and her attorneys to go to police, Stephenson said.
"She wasn't actually receiving the e-mails," he said, "but they were sharing them with her because the threats were intended for her." Authorities were worried about Geisel's safety.
Steen signed his name to the e-mails. It wasn't long before investigators tracked the e-mail address to Portland.
In November, Stephenson called Brumfield asking for help. She wondered if it was a prank call.
A pornographic Dr. Seuss painting? A play depicting the beloved widow of Dr. Seuss in erotic situations?
"I see a lot of threats and extortion," Brumfield said, "but I'd never heard anything quite like that."
Portland detectives tracked down Steen. When it came time to obtain the search warrant, the San Diego cops said they were looking for evidence of the e-mails, the play and the painting.
Besides finding a copy of the play, detectives said, they discovered some of the threatening e-mails on a computer. In one, Steen wrote, "Sure, my last e-mail seemed crazy, but the Grinch has driven me to this madness," according to police.
He also wrote that he was "the best playwright alive" and said that his grandfather is "the uranium king," referring to a family mining fortune in New Mexico, police said.
Police say Steen attended Portland State University and has lived in Portland for several years. He could not be reached for comment, but his San Francisco-based defense attorney, Erin O'Donnell, said her client never intended to harm Geisel.
He was just angry, O'Donnell said.
"This person felt like he was plagiarized," she said, adding that the situation was a "David and Goliath case" of a little guy trying to be a playwright and children's author.
If Steen gets through probation without problems, the felony will be reduced to a misdemeanor, O'Donnell said.
Prosecutors said Geisel, who also is a philanthropist, asked the authorities not to publicize the case, which started just as "The Cat in the Hat" was about to open on movie screens across America. She could not be reached for comment.
Looking over the case file in her office Wednesday, Brumfield said one thing still bugs her: "We never did find the original artwork."
She saw a copy of the painting. At first glance, it looked very Seuss-like, she said. "Very colorful." But then she noticed what the characters were doing.
"I wanted to confiscate it," said Portland Detective Tim Sukimoto, who also worked on the case. "I hate to think of it out there."
He hopes he never sees it again. Not in a box. Not in a house. And certainly not in a gallery.
"I mean, it's Dr. Seuss and his characters," Sukimoto said. "It was like spitting on the American flag, apple pie and baseball."

Joseph Rose
The Oregonian
Crime & Justice Writer
1320 SW Broadway, Portland, OR, 97201
503-221-8029

To Joseph Rose
Before there was Apple Pie and Base Ball, Starbuck's and
Steroids, we embraced the need to find the real story. This is not the real story. As a mouth for a corporate entity you must realize there are other interests in this world beside pumping out profit for your entity and networking with other entities.
Dr. Seuss Enterprises says it all. I don't think Ted Giesel had Dr. Seuss Enterprises in mind when he contributed to children's literature, that is, the love of reading. Karl Zobell is in the business of pumping out product for a corporation; a mindless faceless, amoral machine that has no interest in anything but the bottom line; the children are ancillary to this vision-quest for profit.
You need to revisit this topic with a little more digging. Being tapped "Crime & Justice Writer" obliges one to look into what justice the cirme has wrought, some need to find the crimes of justice.

The real crime is the defense of consumer fraud by the law firm of Gray Cary and Karl ZoBell the minder of Kiddie Litter and those who foisted a sham upon the parent, their children and lovers of Dr. Seuss. Were Dr. Seuss alive, the politics of Ted Giesel would smash the tables of the money changers and burn the temple of greed. The real crime is the crime of defrauding the Public Good. Adding to the body of knowledge is not always a good thing.

Hugo Baltzer

This man knows
who, what, when and where
the evil deeds were done.
One does not have to be Muslim to be an Evil Doer. Where is the Homeland Defense? What protection is there from the 5th column subverting our desire for innovation and the entrepreneurial spirit.

Between his busy work for Dr. Seuss Enterprises, Karl and his pretty wife schmooze at the race track with Dame Tippett. Ah the Good Life. Some race to the top and others are stepped upon in the tumble to the bottom, but that's just business as usual. It's the race that counts.

At the races

Mrs. Tippett studies the day's races with Mr. and Mrs. Karl ZoBell.
July 26, 1989.
Courtesy of Barbara ZoBell

Santa Barbara Barbara looks very very upwardly mobile, Mrs. Tippett looks Dame-like and Karl looks like he knows something that we don't. perhaps a photo from the 1950's

The Zobell Prize is awarded by its founder each year for flagrant theft of children's literature. To be recognized for the "Zobell" one must not only steal intellectual property but take it to press and receive undeserved economic gain. The more one obfuscates and lies as to the origin of the work, the better the chances one has of getting into the finals. Final decisions are made on content and brazen disregard for originality, however chances are improved by the use of bribery and extortion.

Some info related to the Steen painting.

August 4, 2001- I emailed Cathy Anne Bencivengo and every laywer at
the Gray Cary with an attachment of my Seuss parody painting entitled
‘”BEHIND THE SCENES OF DAISY-HEAD MAYZIE.” This painting depicted
Mayzie McGrew in the act of fornication with the Cat in the Hat and
fellatio with the Grinch. I used the ruling from their own lawsuit to
ridicule their client: Dr Seuss Entereprises. The Painting: ”BEHIND
THE SCENES OF DAISY-HEAD MAYZIE,” was listed on the list of items to be
seized by the San Diego Police Dept. on Nov 5, 2003.

This artwork was created as a result of having reviewed a lawsuit
between DSE and Penguin Books USA in November of 1997. Cathy Ann
Bencivengo was the attorney that obtained an injunction prohibiting
distribution of a book infringing Cat In The Hat copyright and
trademark. Penguin had published a parody book written by the ficional
“Dr Juice,” that depicted O.J. Simpson wearing the Cat In The Hat’s
distinctive red and white striped stove-pipe hat, holding a bloody
glove.

The court held that because the book ridiculed Simpson and the murder
case, rather than the original work or its author, it is not a true
parody eligible for the fair use defense.

The “fair use” doctrine allows an artist to make a parody of an author
or work, allowing it to be protected from copyright infringement.

http://www.virtualrecordings.com/seuss.html

A little Bio on Audrey Geisel

Audrey Geisel
Formerly married to cardiologist Grey Dimond with two daughters Lea and
Lark. Audrey and Grey were friends with Ted and Helen Geisel in La
Jolla, California. Despite the fact that Ted was 18 years her senior,
Ted Geisel and Audrey Dimond had an illicit affair which contributed
along with her failing health, to the suicide of Ted Geisel's wife
Helen on October 23, 1967. In less than one year, Ted and Audrey were
married on June 21, 1968. Ironically, Ted Geisel, the greatest
children's writer, didn't care much for living with kids and so
Audrey's two daughters were sent away to school at ages 9 and 14.
Currently Audrey Geisel is CEO of Dr Seuss Enterprises at age 82. In
1992, while remodeling her La Jolla home, Audrey Geisel claimed to have
found the lost manuscript of an unpublished work in the bottom of a
drawer. That manuscript became the book "Daisy-Head Mayzie."
Certified a New York Times Hardcover Bestseller in 1995, the book went
on to sell millions of copies worldwide and was also made into a
feature length animated film in conjunction with Hanna Barbara. The
book Daisy-head Mayzie was registered at the US Copyright office in 1994.

Dr. Seuss & Mr. Geisel a biography by Judith & Neil Morgan
http://www.ghfdesign.com/articles.asp?whicharticle=20

And finally a great little review of the movie
"The Cat in the Hat" by conservative Bill O'Reilly
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,104932,00.html

Gray Cary Recognized

High End Legal Thugs, Gray Cary, receive the Smiley Face, "Take No Prisoners Award"

Gray Cary Ad extolling the virtue of fucking people up, hit-um hard, get-um outa da-game.
Now, Piper Rudnick Gray Cary is moving on into the future thinking lofty thoughts for us.

'Gray Cary's litigators are masters at identifying and exploiting weaknesses' – Gray Cary Law is not about justice, it's about fucking people up, hurting folks and protecting those who can get all the justice that can be bought.

"Finding your opponent’s Achilles’ heel
wih Complex Litigation, We find the weakness."

"We find the weakness. Finding your opponent’s Achilles’ heel is the key to successful litigation. Gray Cary’s litigators are masters at identifying and exploiting weaknesses – thanks to extensive trial experience, the application of leading-edge technology and the relentless pursuit of our clients’ best interests. Regardless of whether you are facing complex IP, antitrust, product liability, consumer class action, white-collar criminal defense or securities litigation, Gray Cary has the unique strengths necessary to hit your competition where it hurts."

Advocates for the Devil if he could only be found. We saw him and he is. . .