Week In Perspective: The time has come to talk of monkey things

OMG THAT MONKEY IS LISTENING TO AN IPOD!!!!!!!!

Or, Three paragraphs just to tell Paul Rudnick to stop being such a
hack.

Monkeys come up a lot. In TV shows, in science experiments, in the jungle, in movies about science experiments or the jungle, at the zoo. Everyone knows monkeys are funny, even the word is funny. I think it's the unk sound, because Dunk and Uncle are also
funny, as are dunkaroos. Also my uncle dunking a basketball while eating dunkaroos.

Monkeys are even infiltrating our judicial system, and have been since the beginning of America/time. There was the Scopes Monkey trial in 1925, over teaching evolution in schools. In 1824 there was Gibbons V Ogden, in which two Gibbon monkeys who drove steamships were arguing over Congress's right to regulate commerce. Then one monkey hit the other monkey on the head and everyone laughed and the case was thrown out, because how can we stay mad at each other on such a sunny day? Most recently, a Liberian woman that wanted to eat monkeys was taken to court over her right to continue her tribal custom of eating "non-human primate species" (my foul ex-friend Violet?).

Yes, monkeys are funny, whether they are in diapers or smoking cigarettes, both of which make them look like old people, and maybe there is a lesson in that. But monkeys are also serious, as they are in court all the time. And you know what else is serious? Monkey jokes. Seriously OLD. With this serious realization on the cultural weight of monkeys, it is time to lay these jokes to rest. That includes you, Paul Rudnick.

Week in Perspective

When you write on the internet, anyone can hear you. My Ben Franklin post on Monday caused something of a stir in my family. When I posted it, I was more worried about future employers reading it than my parents, since they have some idea of my habits anyway. I reassured my mother and father over the phone that some parts of the story were exaggerated for effect. She then asked, "What about twelve beers in twenty two minutes?" No, that was true.

My mother sent me this note after reading the post.

You made your mother look up venery in the dictionary. But you also made me laugh out loud. Not telling which parts. And I'm getting closer to the derivation of your nickname, but the closer I get, the less I want to know. Finally, 12 beers in 22 minutes sounds like bad judgment no matter what century you are living in or whose rules you are following.

Love,

Mommy

I guess that's "approval."

Have a good weekend, we'll see you Monday.

Week in Perspective

A brief look into why Odysseus would have been a great Valentine


Pictured above: Odysseus on the prowl, probably to buy his Valentine something nice, as opposed to not buying her anything.

How to put this week into perspective? There are people starving all over the world? Some people can't go to school? All sad, but it doesn't really make up for the fact that yesterday at WesWings I was walking out and re-looked at the Specials Menu and saw that I what I had ordered and eaten was the Valentines Day Lady and the Tramp Dinner for Two. Except I ate it for one. Because I am alone. So put that into perspective, jerks. Here's something I wrote while thinking all these positive thoughts.

A brief look into why Odysseus would have been a great Valentine

Hey yall. So Valentines day was a total lame and I’m really sad. My friend of the male persuasion and I had very different opinions on how valentines day should be spent. I felt that it should be spent. He felt that we should pretend we don’t know each other. Anyway, I can’t stop thinking about who I really wish was my valentine, the one I’ve always loved from afar (besides the Wesleyan Men’s Soccer team), the one Athena protected, the hardest working man in show business, Odysseus.

First of all, Odysseus was really dedicated to spending time with Penelope. I mean he almost killed his own child trying to get out leaving her and going to war. This shows dedication, love, and not being a huge jerk that never calls Penelope back.

Also Odysseus was really smart and manly. He sliced and diced them on the battlefields of Troy, and he designed the wooden horse that helped the Greeks win the war. Ok so he clearly couldn’t navigate himself out of a paper bag, but obviously navigating the seas of Greece is a lot harder than navigating to Amici’s Italian Grill on Main Street.

And another thing. Odysseus ate real food, like meat and wine and feast things. Sometimes guys are on sports teams and then feel like they can only eat various Odwalla products, such as Superfood and Superprotein Almond, and sometimes that makes girls feel fat because they want to eat solid foods, including chicken parm, which everyone knows is good for you because cheese has calcium for healthy bones and teeth. Just throwing that out there.

In conclusion, I hate this era.

Week In Perspective

We're at the end of another stellar Monocles Galore week. We want to thank Eli for being this week's Friend of the Site, and all of you for reading and your contributions to the caption contests. Here are this week's co-winners "The quality of penthouse pets has really gone down lately. Look at this young lass here..." and "if i knew more about erotic gay literature, i would write a caption that made it seem as though that is what they were reading." Perhaps many of our readers come from British prep schools. [Sophie's note: Perhaps they were written BY ROBERT GRAVES, WHO DID GO TO BRITISH PREP SCHOOL, FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!]

A lot of people ask us how we come up with ideas for our posts. We get struck by inspiration in all kinds of places, the worst being the kidneys. This scene actually happened, and exemplifies the creative process behind Monocles Galore.

Scene: Editor's meeting at James's house

James's dad: So what is this?

James: It's like…you know…a website…with like…where we're funny, and we're like…writing, like, in the style of like….other writers.

Sophie: It's humor writing about literature and history

James's dad: So who provides the humor and who provides the literature?

Sophie and James: Blank stares.

James's dad: yeah…so, what, it's like George Washington crossing the Delaware and then you make fun of him because he had a leaky boat?

James: Haha no that's stupid

Sophie (whisper): James, write that down.

Have a great weekend.

Week in Perspective

(Jerry's mom voice) How could anybody not love him??!?!?!!?!?


This has been a weird week for all of us here at Monocles Galore. Well, mainly just James. He’s been living Ben Franklin’s thirteen resolutions, which hasn’t been easy for him, since it means he can't mack on girls at parties or shove food down his throat until he gets so full that he unbuttons the top button and wheezes until somebody brings him a glass of milk. Also, I told him that Walt Whitman called America “the greatest poem,” and now he’s filled with all these conflicting feelings: USA #1 versus Poetry is Sissy.

This week’s caption contest went better than last, since instead of zero responses we had two responses: “the greatest blowjob in all of history” and “Sophia Dumaine’s bat mitzvah.” I don’t know which is least appropriate—one that is about oral sex or one that is an inside joke about how waspy one of our friends is. Well, you know what our motto is around here: everybody wins!
(Except losers and my foul ex-friend Violet, who is a loser.)

Week in Perspective

Sophie gets to go here! For free!

In case you missed it, (chances are you did) we’ve made some big changes to the site this week. We added the weekly schedge to the column to your right so you can tell what day it is by what you’re reading on MG. We had our first caption contest and guest writer posts. Since nobody submitted a caption, Sophie won the contest. She receives a free pass to the spacious Lincoln Memorial in our nation’s capital.* Look for next week’s caption contest on Captioncontestday. (Tuesday, for those who cling to the old-fashioned nomenclature)

Our link of the week (from Sophie’s dad): Jill Lepore, one of my favorites, reviews “The Papers of Benjamin Franklin,” another favorite, in the New Yorker: http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2008/01/28/080128crat_atlarge_lepore

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* transportation, lodging, and food not included

Week In Perspective

If intern Mike brings me sugar instead of Splenda, I get grouchy.

A lot of people ask me what we do around the MG offices all day (nobody asks me this). Besides doing research for my writing, watching reruns of The Hills on mtv.com, and ordering Intern Mike to go buy me more Fat Free Vanilla Jello Pudding Snacks (60 calories and 0 guilt—so why am I always crying?), I also spend time throwing out pieces that just aren’t working. Realizing it’s time to let go of a joke or idea is one of the sad but important parts of writing. In an earlier draft of what you are reading now, there was even a joke right here. Most recently I said goodbye to the piece that started the whole idea for this site in the first place, The time the guy I was hooking up with hooked up with my foul ex-friend Violet, by Henry James.

Initially, it was fun to experiment with the Henry James voice and figure out how he would write about a trivial college story. It started:

In the small American town of Middletown, Connecticut, named for the place it inhabits between the cities of Hartford and New Haven, there is a university, as there are in many such towns in New England, full of trees and house parties, and, as we are often warned, young men of a particular type, who feel entitled to particular things, and sneak about with a very particular type of girl, girls that other girls feel it is in their best interests never to speak to again, try as they might to get back in their good graces.

However, I soon I realized it made me look cray-to-the-crazy insane and sad and alone and bitter and fat. But so much of the MG experience has been about James and I being honest with each other, and just like I told James that I honestly thought his sweater looked like something a blind baby with no hands who was raised by wolves had knitted, he told me that honestly this piece was way too long and overall a huge mistake, both in the writing and its intentions. So I’ll just think about how much I hate her and her fugly pleather Steve Madden imitation Christian Louboutin shoes, instead of writing about it on the internet.

Oh wait.

PS Speaking of me being famous, here's what that week in Ikea was about (ME!!!). Don't forget to visit friend of the site Mark Malkoff's page at Marklivesinikea.com.

Week in Perspective

The first week of the life of Monocles Galore has been a whirlwind for us, so here’s a look at what happened on our side of the internet. We started this site because we love everything in the sidebar to your right; essentially, dead white men and what they wrote. We’re like the kids history class who made snide remarks about the lectures, except we kept it to ourselves, until now. Right now, I’m like one of those no name guests on the WGA strike version of A Daily Show; I’m so happy to be here I can’t form a coherent point.

Along with getting the site off the ground, (it took lots of time for me to write the code) it has been a busy week in the (proverbial) Monocles Galore office. Sophie has spent more time in IKEA than most people do in their entire lives, and she hasn’t even bought as much as a Nyttja (picture frame, $2.99). And I went to White Castle.

For the past week, Sophie has been a PA for the comedian Mark Malkoff’s film Mark Lives in Ikea, in which he lives in Ikea. check it out.

As for me, aside from demolishing White Castle cheeseburgers, I recently came across a passage in Brideshead Revisited in which a drunken college student yells out the window at passersby lines from The Waste Land. I feel this is cooler than anything I’ve ever done in college, and is an example of something we love; a poem about the tragedy of lost traditions in a book about the tragedy of lost traditions. So if you’re into that kind of thing, keep checking for new posts, and if you’re not, keep checking and soon you will be.