October 20, 2004

• Have you been watching the Major League Baseball playoffs?  Are these long, four and five hour games altering your sleeping patterns?  Now when you try to go to sleep at your normal time, do you lie in bed for hours, making you cranky and irritable in the morning?

  
  

  Well, I believe Dramamine Boy’s Xanga has just the thing to help you sleep!  That’s right boys and girls, it’s time for another…

  
  

  Dram’s Bedtime Story Service

  
  

  Tonight’s bedtime story is yet another classic.  Yes, it’s the original tale of that playful, happy-go-lucky bedtime pal…

  
  

  

  
  

  Curious George was written in 1941 by H.A. Rey.  The story begins with a monkey named George playing in the African jungle amongst his other wild animal friends.  Some guy in a yellow straw hat sees Curious George and thinks he’d make a great pet.  So, he decides to capture him and take him home to America.  Apparently, animal smuggling wasn’t a very big deal in 1941.

  
  

  

  
  

  While they’re on the boat back to America, the man tells Curious George that he’s gonna put him in a zoo, telling George, “You will like it there”.

  
  

  Wait a minute.  This guy snatches Curious George from his home, ships him across the Atlantic and then he’s not even gonna care for him to make sure he’s happy?  He thinks George will have more fun being in a cage at a zoo than staying in Africa with his family and friends?  What kind of fun is Curious George gonna have in a cage!?!  YOU’RE STUNTING HIS CURIOUSITY!!

  
  

  

  
  

  So, this lame-o in the yellow hat takes Curious George home and in the morning, calls the zoo to make arrangements to drop George off there.

  
  

  Okay, I’m just not seeing any advantage that this guy had to capture a monkey.  My only guess is that zoos back then were giving complete strangers money to bring them animals.  Maybe zoos back in 1941 were filled with stray cats and dogs and rats that bums were capturing to make money?  If so, then I can understand that zoos would be paying big bucks if someone brought them a monkey or an elephant.

  
  

  Anyway, the guy leaves the house, leaving a wild, untamed monkey alone in his home.

  
  

  Good plan.

  
  

  

  
  

  Curious George decides to use the phone as well and ends up calling the fire department.  The fire department shows up and sees no fire, only Curious George calling 1-900-HOT-BABE (he IS, after all, curious).  The firemen capture Curious George and take him to the place every wild, untamed, phone-calling monkey gets taken to… jail!?!  HUH!?!

  
  

  Apparently, the jail is being run by Barney Fife, since he falls for the old “monkey climbs on window bars so jailer opens the door to get monkey off of the bars and jailer falls over, letting monkey run out the door” trick.  Man, I wish I had a dollar everytime someone used that cliche in a story.

  
  

  

  
  

  So now you have a wild, untamed monkey running amok in the city.  Why this is a great idea for a kids story, I have no idea.  “But Dram”, you say, “monkeys are cute!”.

  
  

  Hey, I don’t recall any instance where a wild (and probably rabid) monkey roaming loose on the streets was considered “cute”.  Didn’t anyone see Outbreak!?!  If you didn’t see the movie, some guy on a ship captures an African monkey and decides to take it home with him.  The monkey has a disease that kills the guy and then the virus spreads to a small town, threatening to kill everyone in the world until Rain Man shows up and invents a cure.

  
  

  

  
  

  Yeah, definitely… definitely the monkey

  
  

  Rain Man couldn’t have saved the world and gotten back home in time for Wapner without the efforts of Rod Tidwell, who apparently was an army helicopter pilot before playing football for the Arizona Cardinals.

  
  

  

  
  

  SHOW ME THE MONKEY!

  
  

  And another thing about Outbreak… who do those movie makers choose to be the one stupid enough to choose a wild, deadly, virus-ridden monkey as a pet?  One of the few asian guys in the whole frikkin’ movie, that’s who!  Doggone it… just another example of the man tryin’ to keep an asian monkey smuggler man down.

  
  …
  
  
  
  

  Okay, back to Curious George.

  
  

  

  
  

  Curious George steals some balloons (great role model) and floats away until the wind stops blowing and George descends down into an intersection where the moron with the yellow hat happens to be.  Curious George is happy that he’s found his only friend in this new country and the guy is happy to see George so he can now sell him into animal prison.  The story ends with George at the zoo… behind bars.

  
  

  

  
  

  The end.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

  Okay, that’s not the real pic of Curious George at the zoo.  The pic above is actually another pic of the jail.  BUT IT MIGHT AS WELL BE THE ZOO!  The actual last picture in the book shows a happy Curious George hangin’ out in a tree with a bunch of other ridiculously happy animals frolicking around him, all of which are holding balloons.

  
  

  Yeah right.  Anybody that’s been to a zoo would know that’s the fakest picture of a zoo ever.  In a real zoo, all the animals are unhappy cuz they’re locked up in individual cages.  WITH NARY A BALLOON IN SIGHT!

  
  

  And the moral of this story is… well heck, I’m not sure.  Don’t smuggle illegal animals into the country?  Don’t trust men in yellow hats?  My best guess is, “Don’t be so doggone curious or you could land in jail”.  Or worse, the zoo.

  
  

  NOW GO TO BED!  OR I’M COMING IN THERE WITH MY BELT!

  • 1:54 am
  • 25 Comments