Day of the Monkey (obs.)

As promised, today has been declared DAY OF THE MONKEY, a showcase of why our primate friends are hilarious by default, even if YAB has failed to feature them in the last 19 months of bringing the funny. But at the same time, it has come to my attention that a little global athletic competition known as the Olympic Games begins today, so as editor-in-chief, we’re torn as to whether he stay the course or drop a YAB Olympiad Preview on you all.

YAB Writing Rule #55: Don’t waste topics. Combine them for comedy’s sake.

Tonight in Turn, Italy, human athletes from around the world will convene to compete in the toughest sports that winter weather has to offer. As a viewing public, we can’t be guaranteed the United States will match the medal count of 34 when the Games were last held in ’02 (on American ice no less), but they are plenty of medal hopefuls.

According to the IOC’s Olympic Charter, the purpose of the Olympics is to “contribute to building a peaceful and better world by educating youth through sport.” I’d like to point out that in using sport as an education tool, it mentions nowhere in the Olympic Charter that the teachers must be human. And just like that, YAB has opened the doors for another athlete contingent.

Monkey Olympians.

Now, I know, I know that this could make a lot of the competitions in both the Summer and Winter Games a tad unfair, considering once you let the monkeys in, all sorts of other animals will start lobbying from inclusion. Cheetahs would rule the track and field events. Elephants would rock Greco-Roman wrestling. And I have a feeling that penguins would make pretty sweet short-track speed skaters. But maybe if the animals, namely monkeys, were allowed to participate in a non-competitive fashion, more people would tune in to some of the less popular Winter sports (and thusly, make NBC a very happy broadcasting network.)

Without further ado, here are the top 3 Olympic sports that a Unified Monkey Team would do well to compete in (Letterman style, of course):

3 – Monkey Luge! - One of the best aspects of monkey physical comedy is their ability to flail without any rhyme or reason. This is the complete opposite for lugers. In order to succeed in the luge, one must be totally comfortable lying on his back with the arms pressed to his body, legs as straight as arrows, and head back to the point where your only steering mechanism is prayers. This is why watching luge is rather uninteresting – no action. Monkeys have no shot at complying this technique, leaving viewers with lugers that are flailing wildly at 90 miles per hour praying that they haven’t eaten their last banana. That’s entertainment.

2 – Monkey Curling – In the sport of curling, large rounded stones are pushed down an icy track by one team member while two others clear the way and determine its speed by using brushes to clear the stone’s path. There’s a lot of precision and technique to this sport, which actually requires little athleticism at all. Enter the monkey team. While Norway is struggling on whether to go for points or knock out the monkey stone in the middle of the score target, the monkeys have a counterstrike plan. On their next turn, a monkey slides down the ice, with helper monkeys clearing the way with brooms (assuming they don’t beat each other senseless with them.) When the monkey reaches the end, he leaps off the ice and tackles the Norwegian waiting his turn. Hilarity ensues. (And if you need proof, that monkeys can slide, go watch King Kong.)

1 – Monkey Bobsled – I find that there is a direct variable correlation between level of funny and number of monkeys. Therefore, send 4 monkeys in a bobsled down an icy track and actually entrusting the smart one to steer the thing would be as high as comedy would get. Do have faith in them to finish the run without crashing a la Cool Runnings? The contemporary philosopher Trace Adkins, in his 2005 opus, states that a woman has it, and I quote, “going on like Donkey Kong.” And since DK was a fixture on the Super Mario Kart circuit for years, I think that racing is in the primates’ gene.

But that’s just me.