The Mikado was part of pop culture going back to the late 1800s. There were Mikado TV shows, music albums, radio, print and TV commercials, you name it. The "little list" song was used in ads. Zodiac didn’t need to be an opera fan. All he needed to do was hear a "little list" commercial a few times. He did get the lyrics wrong, by the way.

There was also a Mikado-themed restaurant in Oakland at the time.

The Mikado was part of pop culture going back to the late 1800s. There were Mikado TV shows, music albums, radio, print and TV commercials, you name it. The "little list" song was used in ads. Zodiac didn’t need to be an opera fan. All he needed to do was hear a "little list" commercial a few times. He did get the lyrics wrong, by the way.

There was also a Mikado-themed restaurant in Oakland at the time.

Ah, interesting. Ok thanks!

Technically I don’t think the mikado is considered to be an opera. It’s more of a melodrama. Just saying.

First, The Mikado is definitately a comedic opera.

Second, what’s interesting to me about the Mikado and Zodiac is that he uses the Groucho Marx version of the Little List which is slightly different than the original Gilbert and Sullivan version. Third, if you examine the syntax in the Little List leter and compare it to the actual words in the Mikado, it appears that Zodiac copied the text phonetically from memory. Some of the words he used are wrong.

For example, the original uses this line:

"And the people who eat peppermint and puff it in your face"

But Zodiac uses the nonsense word "phomphit" in place of "puff it".

This implies that Zodiac memorized the Marx version by listening to it, but misheard some of the lyrics.

I can imagine Zodiac sitting in his home listing to the vinyl on his record player over and over and over again, mouthing the wrong words.

Lastly, the Marx connection is interesting in light of the 1990 Eureka card.

First, The Mikado is definitately a comedic opera.

I respectfully disagree.

 

The 1990 Eureka card featured a snowman resembling Groucho Marx, who played the "Lord High Executioner" Ko-Ko in a 1960 televised version of The Mikado that possibly familiarized Zodiac with the opera. If the Eureka card was a hoax then it was a very clever one.

First, The Mikado is definitately a comedic opera.

I respectfully disagree.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mikado

https://www.britannica.com/topic/The-Mikado

http://www.reginaopera.org/mikado.htm

You can disagree, but you’d be wrong.

Also, Jacob, I agree 100% that it would have to be a clever fake. That’s why I think it’s legitimate.

Also, Jacob, I agree 100% that it would have to be a clever fake. That’s why I think it’s legitimate.

The thing that gives me cause for doubt on it is the writing on the envelope. Most of the words look like they have been written more than once on top of each other, except for the one line which would be impossible to copy from previous Z correspondence I’m not sure he used it and that is "901 mission st" ?

First, The Mikado is definitately a comedic opera.

I respectfully disagree.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mikado

https://www.britannica.com/topic/The-Mikado

http://www.reginaopera.org/mikado.htm

You can disagree, but you’d be wrong.

Also, Jacob, I agree 100% that it would have to be a clever fake. That’s why I think it’s legitimate.[/quote

Are you sure? I think that we might be splitting hairs here. An operetta is not an opera in the traditional sense. It actually fails more in line with a musical than your traditional opera.
And my comment on it feeling more like a melodrama was in contrast with it being “a comedy”.
Personally I think it’s hard to tell the difference between a satirical comedy and a melodrama sometimes.
But if you want to call it an opera, I don’t care either way.

Theatre Geeks.

It’s a tricky one. Gilbert and Sullivan are one of those times when something genuinely eccentric had massive mainstream crossover. Not that it wasn’t by design, they wrote the plays for mass consumption and wanted them to be successful. But they were genuine eccentrics and way ahead of their time, or at least ahead of what we perceive their time to have been like.

I absolutely love love love Gilbert and Sullivan. I think they’re are possibly mankind’s high water mark for comedy. It’s right up there with the Cambridge Footlights, Marx Brothers, Charlie Chaplin, they’ve got to be right up there. I would put William Gilbert above Douglas Adams and on a par only with Oscar Wilde in terms of comedic genius, and if you held a gun to my head maybe maybe Mark Twain. Holy honking hell is he funny.

I think history often gets sanitised and opera being something that is seen as very high brow and even upper class, it in particular is a target for historians and academics to clean up and make into something more polite. And I think in reality it’s a rare window into just how much more modern everyday people were in Victorian society.

Gilbert humor is dark, sardonic, campy, absurd, surreal, bizarre, curmudgeonly, highbrow, lowbrow, sophisticated, sarcastic, whimsical, lighthearted, trashy, irreverent, disrespectful, kitsch, and just downright weird as hell. It the kind of comedy where the working classes could giggle at the innuendo and the more hoity-toity types could contemplate the deeper meaning of existence, or you know, just giggle at the innuendos.

I really do think Gilbert and Sullivan’s work is the most influential comedy ever made. I know that’s a big call, but if I try and think about other contenders, I immediately think of how much they were influenced by Gilbert and Sullivan, Marx Brothers being just one example. The only other contender would be Oscar Wilde, but I don’t see his influence as much on the mainstream. You can switch on virtually any comedy and I can just about guarantee there will be at least one Gilbert and Sullivan gag in it.

So that makes the question of what type of person is into Gilbert and Sullivan difficult. And you can’t ignore the Marx Brothers reference. Marx Brothers were very popular, a lot of people would have enjoyed and quoted them, it wouldn’t have been all that remarkable. But the thing I notice about really average mainstream types is, they move on with the trends. And as mainstream as the Marx Brothers were, to be into them in the late 60’s early 70’s, that suggests more of a genuine interest beyond popularity. Couple that with the Gilbert and Sullivan aspect and taking Zodiacs body of letters as whole, I think it’s more suggestive of someone who was a bit of theatre nerd.

And his contemporaries saw it this way too. Toschi was an interesting fellow and yet he clearly thought Zodiacs interests fell outside of what was common for the mainstream at the time. If it was weird by San Francisco standards…

If you’ve watched the interview with the theatre in San Francisco that was doing GB at the time, the people they describe attending the shows are some pretty alternative characters. The tall guy in the full leather bondage gear for example. You start to see why people like Gaik and Ross are popular as suspects. You know like Gaik is this counter culture luminary and Ross is this theatre nerd who dressed funny and was kind of eccentric. And so to some people that seems like a better fit. And I get it.

I think people kind of go one of two ways, they either get excited by the idea that Zodiac was an interesting, eccentric, counter culture type, which I think really captures some peoples imaginations. And then on the other extreme, I think some people get really excited by the idea that he may have been super average, and boring. Both those viewpoints I think kind of excite and appeal to the people who hold them. It’s exiting to believe he was interesting and it’s exciting to hold a contrarian opinion and say that he was boring.

You know the thing is, I’ve met some pretty eccentric people who were ultra conservative, right wing, didn’t like change, or new experiences. Just think of someone like Varg Vikernes, part of underground culture, but really kind of straight down the line. That’s not uncommon. Weirdos and freaks come in a lot of varieties, I mean you’ve got Trainspotters and Punk Rockers, you know what I mean?

So I’m not going to tell you that I think Zodiac was a hippy, or a satanist, or definitely into this, or that. I’m not going to say he was smart, or dumb, or even interesting to talk to. I’m just going to say this, when I take the totality of his interests into account, I can only say one thing, whoever he is/was, he wasn’t some super straight white suburban lawn mowing kind of guy. He would have had to have been, in my opinion, sufficiently eccentric so as to be noticed by friends, family and members of the community. The kind of guy that people say, "he’s a bit unusual". And that could mean virtually anything, but I do think it tends to lead away from the really ordinary suspects. I mean, he might not be Richard Giakowski, but I don’t think Hank Hill is the Zodiac either.
I really liked Dr. Grande’s mental health perspective, I think he summed up really well what my overall sense is of not so much who the Zodiac was, but who he wasn’t.

Phomphit is a name originating in the Laos-Cambodia-Thailand-Vietnam region. Does that mean anything? I have no idea.

https://www.facebook.com/anglora.angorla

http://www.authorstream.com/kokengerimu8/Podcasts/

The Mikado was part of pop culture going back to the late 1800s. There were Mikado TV shows, music albums, radio, print and TV commercials, you name it. The "little list" song was used in ads. Zodiac didn’t need to be an opera fan. All he needed to do was hear a "little list" commercial a few times. He did get the lyrics wrong, by the way.

There was also a Mikado-themed restaurant in Oakland at the time.

I just watched a Youtube video of an adaptation of the Mikado Little List song for the outcome of the 2020 Presidential Election. So, you’re probably right.