Welcome back! Are you still here? What is this, Saturday? Sunday? I’m writing this from the past, so a certain amount of time control is at play here.
Let’s get down to the serious business of serious fucking art. Yes?
Today’s suggestion comes to us from DJ D, who is, as they say, “goth as fuck”. What does it take to have a mind like DJ D? You have to come up with shit like this:
“Draw me (DJ D), as Ian Anderson, pointing to a cloud in the sky that looked like a turtle, and exclaiming, “Hey! It’s a turtle!” If you want to include any other fun thing in there, knock yourself out.”
I like how he left me a little leeway at the end there to add as much stuff as I wanted, while still keeping the general concept his own.
Okay here we go. Nice package, Mister DJ:
Deej said I could add some extra personal touches, so I gave him a sex doll mouth and sprinkled the skies with little copies of him. It’s raining men.
The cloud doesn’t REALLY look like a turtle, but that’s what happens when one allows the mind to drift into the abstract pleasures of cloud-gazing.
By now I’m probably balls-deep in my vacation so I have no idea if anyone is enjoying these art displays, or even if they’re posting on schedule. I hope you’re all having as great a time as I probably am!
Welcome back. Today we are beating this dead horse with a violently challenging suggestion from my beloved LA Juice, who requested that I put my talents to work on an illustration of:
“A Lionel Richie-esque Hello Bust of SIFU, being sculpted by weinerdog, while you, the Rev- sit as the “model” wearing darkened wayfarers. At Niagara falls. just like that dream.”
Holy shit, Juice.
Well I’m not one to back down from a challenge so let’s get this motherfucker going. I give you:
Surely this won’t be the most challenging work of art I create this week. I’ve seen the other suggestions. I and I alone know what I am up against.
I’d like to say that if I were the model, Weinerdog13 would sculpt a bust that looked more like me, but we all know she’s totally high all the time and she sculpts whatever the hell she wants. I’m taking some artistic liberties with Niagara Falls. I’m pretty sure there are no barrels there anymore.
So, I’m on vacation, as I mentioned yesterday, and in my absence, because I cannot destroy my perfect attendance record, I am continuing my “Atrocities in MSPaint” series, in which I will do a terrible job of drawing things in MSPaint, based on SUGGESTIONS FROM THE READERS!!! (You should see those words in flashing text, because they are exciting).
A few months ago, I requested that everyone e-mail me with their suggestions, and I got a whole bunch, and I even drew a few, but because I didn’t want to overwhelm you with my talent and make you feel bad about yourselves, and because this is not an Art Blog, and because I quickly forgot all about it, I stopped short of completing my goal.
Well fuck that. I’m on vacation and this is the time for pictures of Beyonce without her makeup on.
We are kicking this thing off with a suggestion from Bill:
“I would like to see what Nicki Minaj and Beyonce look like without makeup and hair.”
Okay Bill, here you go:
Bill’s blog, by the way, is so authentic and sincere and well-written, I can’t even believe he comes here. What the hell are you doing here, Bill? Don’t go, but honestly. I think it was WHAM! that drew him in.
See you tomorrow with more art. I’m currently slacking in Parts Unknown, so hopefully these will all post automatically while I’m away, or else I’ll feel stupid when I get back.
Today is Thursday, but there will be no Big Boss of this day, because the time has come for Simian Idiot to go on a long overdue vacation.
It won’t be a lengthy one, or even a silent one, but my input here will be minor compared to my usual blathery million-word sermonizing, like a nun from the Chattering Order of St. Beryl. I plan to have an extremely relaxing time out in the middle of fucking nowhere. Parts Unknown, PA. The land of a thousand abandoned lodges and resorts. I also plan to go utterly batshit crazy with cabin fever and kill everybody within hours. They say you can’t plan ahead for that kind of thing, but fuck them. DON’T TELL ME WHAT I CAN AND CANNOT DO!
Get it?
So because this is going to be an awesome vacation, and because I will be away from you all for a few days, missing you all so very deeply, I thought I’d share some anecdotes of a few of my WORST vacations of all time. Let’s take a walk down Shitty Memory Lane together.
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1. Finger Smashed in the Cooler CampingTrip: For ten years, Sifu and I went on an annual religious retreat to a campground in western New York State, for a big end of the world party. This party still takes place every year, right on schedule, though so far the world has not yet ended. Those in the know have some good explanations for this, I can assure you. They are well practiced theologists, in every way.
It was at such an event a few years ago that I encountered the world’s most comfortable naked man, and it was at another that I ate blueberries that might have had raw sausage liquid on them and spent an hour barfing up blue gore into a shrubbery. And it was at yet another such party, though I cannot recall which as they all blur together in my memory after a while, that Sifu simply could not get that darned cooler to close no matter how hard he pounded on the lid, because, funnily enough, my FINGER was in it. He’s very strong, and he can pound very hard. Heh.
The guilt and horror on his face when he realized he was pummelling his wife’s fingerbone to a fine powder was worth the pain of the experience, as I have never once let him forget about this.
Yet my finger was not broken, and the absence of broken bones means that this was not the worst vacation of all time.
2. Grandma Falls Down and Breaks Her Leg While Getting Out of the Car Moments After We Arrive at Vacation Resort: This was a pretty bad one. I was a young pecker at the time, maybe 10? The whole clan, plus my best friend, piled in the car and drove 3108235 hours out of the Bronx to a “family vacation resort” in the Catskill mountains. Four seconds of research indicates that this particular resort, featuring a bar I wasn’t allowed in, a game room the older kids chased me out of, and hayrides and shit that never happened as far as I could tell, closed down in 1992. Oh well.
This occurred sometime in the mid to late 1980s, when everything was a weird shade of brown if my family photos are to be believed. Here I am at the pool at that very resort, wearing a scandalous bikini and showing off my toned side-groin or something.
Somebody really could have hiked that up for me before taking the picture.
But that was taken in happier days. This vacation I am about to tell of was to be our final voyage to this resort, and I think the last family vacation we ever took. After an endless drive, we couldn’t wait to get out of the car and run off to the pool. That is when my grandmother, her big ass still half in the car, stepped into a pothole and fell on her face, breaking her leg in a million places.
She was taken to a podunk Catskill hospital for a couple of days, so for the kids at least, the vacation was still on, but it was a somber and shitty one indeed. However, the worst was yet to come. Because grandma was a large woman, and her recovery time was many months long, and a lengthy visitation from Johnny Fucking Mathis was about to begin. To this day I am not quite over it. Chances are my chances are I’m not quite over it.
3. Celebrate Good Times Come On! When I was maybe 7 years of age, my best friend and her family went on vacation and took me with them. I guess that was a big thing back then - bring another kid on your vacation to occupy YOUR kid so you can drink copiously at poolside. Her family went to a different resort, which wasn’t as nice as the one we used to go to, and we ate a lot of baloney sandwiches and spent a lot of time playing ping pong as there was little else to do.
There WAS, however, “live” “entertainment”. I put both of those words in their own separate quotation marks because both terms are dubious here. He was very old, propped against a wall with a Casio keyboard, playing all the polka hits you could handle.
He went on frequent breaks, thank the lord, sometimes for hours at a time. When he was on break, he turned on his boombox and played a cassingle of “Celebration” by Kool and the Gang.
Over and over and over and over and over and over again.
To this day, I can’t hear “Celebration” without a tiny spasm forming in my eye and the smell of baloney filling my nostrils.
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This coming vacation won’t be anything like that. For one thing, nobody’s breaking any bones or I will punch them very hard in the face. Nobody’s going to have any baloney or I will punch them very hard in the face. I’m planning on keeping my fingers far away from the coolers. And if I hear one note of Kool and the Gang, all hell is going to break loose.
You have a few days of Simian Idiot filler to look forward to in my absence, you lucky dogs.
Are you vacating this holiday weekend? Any traumatic vacation memories? Share them here. I will enjoy reading about them as I lounge under the trees, surrounded by friends, immersed in slack. Celebrate good times! Come on!
In the elevator yesterday, I came face to face with my own identical twin.
We “went up” together. She had my same approximate body shape, gaunt complexion, and defeated looking stance. I find it difficult to stand any other way in an office building elevator, because they seldom take me anywhere I particularly want to be unless they are going to the lobby. Sweet freedom, escape.
She was dressed like me - nondescript, clean, unadorned, dark colors - and she had the same long, wild hair, the same expression that shifted between exhausted and bored. The same tired eyes staring into some far-off point in the unseen distance, the classic defensive gaze of the beaten-down NYC office drone.
I know I’m painting myself in a really positive light here, and you’re all going to think I’m an egomaniac, but you won’t think that anymore when I tell you: this stranger was better than me in every way.
Her nondescript, dark, clean, unadorned clothes were better, like she picked them out specifically instead of completely at random. Her doomed posturing was better, doomedier. Her pasty, pale face and the dark circles under her eyes were more defined than mine, as if Tim Burton himself designed her on an off day. Even her wild hair was controlled in a fully intentional looking braid thing.
Furthermore, the bitch knew it. “Of all the me-type losers in this elevator,” she seemed to say, “I am the most one.”
However whatever-you-are you are, there is always someone who is more whatever-that-is than you could ever hope to be.
“Thank you so bloody much, God!”
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The weinerdog eats my hair.
I don’t know if she seeks it out on purpose, spying a tasty stray hair on the carpet and slurping it up like spaghetti, or if she ingests it accidentally whilst caught in the throes of one of her random, unplanned lickfests where she goes positively berserk licking the rug, and alternately dragging her butt across it, licking the couch, licking the television stand, licking the shower door. She’s lick-crazy, and has been known to sometimes fixate on one part of me, say, an elbow, and aggressively lick that elbow until I have to leave room just to get away from her. She’s stuck in Freud’s oral stage of development, largely because she is too long and fat to reach her rump.
The problem with a dog eating your hair is, when that dog later attempts to excrete said hair, her waste will often be strung together like a chain of horrors, and she will be unable to extract it completely from the orifice. She will spin around in circles, the horrible thing swinging desperately behind her, while you plead in the street that she stop hitting herself in the legs with it. She will gaze up at you helplessly, as if to say, “If you love me, you will pull these mysteriously connected chunks from my ass, for I swear to god I haven’t been eating your hair so I have no idea how this happened.”
Following a recent incident, I implored the Weinerdog. “Why are you this way? Don’t you want to improve yourself?”
“There is no improving upon me,” said the Weinerdog. “I am a perfect and infallible product of the Creator of the Universe. To modify me is to detract from my glory.”
“That is deep,” I said.
“Yes,” said the Weinerdog. “Now please go get me some cheese. I like how it tastes with a side of rug hair.”
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I could learn a lot from that little zen loaf. When I am face to face with a better version of myself in an office building elevator, hurtling toward inevitable annoyance in my dark, nondescript uniform, my hair all over the fucking place, my face a deathmask of dismay, I will cast my mind back to the words of wisdom of the fat little sausage whose poops are strung together by that very mop of unkempt hair, and know that in the eyes of the Creator of the Universe, I am a pasty, pale, sullen fucking masterpiece, a miracle of human engineering, a pure beam of perfect light in an indifferent landscape. A column of dog turds strung together by hair, as the maker intended, perfect in every way.
I’m sorry for what I’m about to do. This has been in my brain for weeks, and it isn’t going to go away until I write about it.
I’m so sorry.
Watch this video.
What you have just seen is “Easy Lover”, by Phil Fucking Collins. Collins is a Simian Idiot anti-hero. He is an unwanted thing that comes up a lot at the wrong times, like an ill-timed boner during math class.
I do not like Phil Collins. I do not care for his strange, synthy voice, his peculiar widow’s peak hairline, his proclivity for sweater vests. Phil Collins makes me uneasy (lover). Phillip Bailey, less so. In the video for the duo’s 1984 hit, there appears to be more going on than two dudes singing about their mutual easy lover. It’s more about a tender friendship than anything else. Let’s investigate.
It starts off with the two Phils taking a helicopter ride together. They themselves are the pilots. Something I did not know about Phil Collins - he is a skilled helicopter pilot. Or else they used to just let anyone fly an aircraft into Manhattan. Simpler times, 1984.
Although they rode into the studio together in their Friendship Copter, the Phils are still happy to be reunited once they touch down. These guys can’t keep their hands off each other:
Now it’s time for a little beautification before rehearsing “Easy Lover”. We get to watch Phil Collins get a haircut, which is thrilling enough without bromance, but if you think our two heroes can detach for as long as it takes to snip Phil’s four hairs, you are wrong.
Dead wrong.
Phil Collins hands his buddy a hairbrush and tells him to brush his hair. Bailey takes the brush without hesitation and does so. That’s about all there is to say about this segment.
Phew! It’s been a long morning. Time to kick back and read the paper together! And talk about our hopes and dreams in a sweater vest.
These guys are best buds.
Hey, haven’t you always wanted to watch Phil Collins dancing? I’ll bet you thought he was a natural, but no. His friend Phillip Bailey has to show him some moves so they’ll be “teevee ready” when the time comes. Collins does a little goofball improvising to keep things jovial. To his credit, Bailey does not punch him:
Then this happens:
Phil Collins just WILL NOT BE SERIOUS. He is cracking those ladies up in the background there. They cannot get enough of his shenanigans, but now it’s time to practice our serious moves again:
Get a fucking hold of yourself, Collins.
We have not seen any evidence of the easy lover in question, but perhaps she’ll make an appearance before the 4:41 mark.
Nope!
They do the performance, cameras roll, everything goes off without a hitch, and then, presumably, they move in together like the Beatles in “Help”, with their apartments connected on the inside and a soda vending machine right in the living room. There is no evidence to suggest this, but it’s a nice idea.
“Easy Lover” is a beautiful tale of friendship between two stylish 1980’s men with pink ties and finger-snappin’ dance moves, and the woman, the one who will take your heart and you won’t feel it, she who is like no other, is utterly fucking irrelevant. We can learn several important lessons from “Easy Lover”:
1. Good friends share everything. EVERYTHING.
2. Sweater vests are a lively way to freshen up a t-shirt.
I had a great, productive weekend, with lots of necessary things getting done in between long, slow periods of slack, the weather was perfect, I slept really well, ate well, and felt good. Then, last night I dreamed I was being chased by vampires and my only ally was Edward Fucking Cullen.
I have confessed before, in possibly the first Simian Idiot post ever, that I read the Twilight books, because I prefer to make a strong first impression whenever possible.
I even saw one and a half of the movies. I saw the first one with a friend, before I’d even heard of the story, and half of another one which had lots of boys ripping their shirts off. Sifu subjected me to relentless emotional abuse over it and he was correct to do so, so I gave up on Twilight movies. That’s why it was so disheartening to encounter useless Edward Fucking Cullen, with his glittering face and his bronze coiffure, in my savage “vampires in the ghetto” dream scenario last night. I woke up this morning in a foul humor, got soaked in a rainstorm, and now it would be a good idea if everyone just left me the hell alone. Not you guys. THESE people.
Anyway it’s Monday and that’s a time for foreheads so let’s get this party farted.
Today’s Forehead honoree was suggested by Finley, which should come as no surprise. Finley joined us Idiots after Bobby Liebling was recognized as Big Boss of the Day, lo these many months ago, and she is the biggest Pentagram fan I know.
Joe Hasselvander:
What I don’t know about the music of Pentagram could fill a thousand books, but I know foreheads, and what we have here is a fucking forehead.
It’s got bulges, which we all know I like. It’s as high as Bob Ross, with a peculiar hairline. His whole face is kind of mental, which makes him particularly appealing to me. Check it:
Hey there, handsome.
Totally true confession: When I started Simian Idiot, one thing I never expected was the volume of commentary and participation we get around here, and I love that part. The crap I unload on this blog isn’t funny at all - it’s all serious as fuck - but you guys are hilarious.
There’s also a lot of behind-the-scenes communication, with all you fucked up weirdos sending me odd shit to watch and listen to, which inspires a lot of what we talk about here. I have been exposed to some wacky shit over the past couple of years. Alert Idiot Dogs on Drugs alone is responsible for a vast amount of serious soul searching on my part, after the John Oates moustache thing in particular.
And that is why I, Rev. Back It On Up 13, self-confessed John Denver enthusiast and Lionel Ritchie fan, have spent more time than I ever expected, listening to the works of Pentagram. That never would have happened if not for my beloved friend Jugendsenetc. That fated night when he contacted me with a photo of Bobby Liebling and a cryptic comment that went something like, “This guy seems like the kind of person you should know about” unleashed a landslide of strange shit into my life. Thank you, Juge, for keeping me well-rounded.
Congratulations, Joe Hasselvander. You’re not as weird looking as Bobby Liebling, but you give way better forehead.
Weinerdog: I just checked my bowl, and it looks like there’s only dog food in it.
BIOU: That is correct. You are a dog, you eat dog food.
Weinerdog: Your taco sure smells good.
BIOU: That’s what he said.
Weinerdog: What?
BIOU: Nothing.
Weinerdog: No, what. I don’t get it. Let me in on the super funny joke!
BIOU: It was just a dumb joke, forget it.
Weinerdog: NO. I want to understand the BIG FUCKING JOKE. I come to you in sincerity, with a PERSONAL CONCERN about why there are NO TACOS ON THE FLOOR, and you make a JOKE, so I assume it is something POIGNANT and MEANINGFUL that will bring some FUCKING LEVITY to my situation. So just EXPLAIN IT TO ME, who HE is and why he SAID THAT.
BIOU: It’s a vagina metaphor.
Weinerdog: I see.
BIOU: Yeah.
Weinerdog: Put that taco on the floor immediately.
Good day, Idiots. We’ll get back to talking dog butts and jizz farts and stupid commercials and monkeys and stuff before you know it, but first: I know you guys are spread out far and wide around the planet, so I’m asking a favor of you. My friend’s son has been missing since May 7th, and she’s going through some shit that nobody should ever have to deal with, so please contact her if you’ve seen this boy.
I know it’s a long shot, but lots of good things have come from long shots so I thought I might put this out there. She’s been beside herself as you can well imagine, and I would love to see her reunited with her son as soon as possible, and I give you my personal guarantee that helping her find him will get you into heaven. And not lamer harps and clouds heaven, but GOOD heaven, where all the parties are. And that’s all I’ve got to say about that.
So, here is a conversation I had with my weinerdog.
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BIOU: I’m gonna get you!
Weinerdog: Ok.
BIOU: I’m gonna GET YOU! GET YOU GET YOU!
Weinerdog: Okay, get me.
BIOU: I’m chasing you! Here I come!
Weinerdog: (rolls over) Do it.
BIOU: I AM GOING TO GET YOU WEINERDOG.
Weinerdog: LET’S DO THIS.
BIOU: How come you never run away? You’re supposed to run?
My bus stop is on a main street in our neighborhood, but at 7 AM, there’s usually not a lot going on apart from the old bookies sitting in front of the coffee shop and the occasional commuter. That is why I was so surprised this morning when a disembodied male voice bellowed out of somewhere:
“FUCK YOU!”
My fellow bus passengers glanced around at each other, then went back to staring blankly into space, when again, from an hard-to-pinpoint location:
“FUCK YOU!”
To seemingly nobody.
We were all kind of uncomfortable now, because everyone knows that dangerous crazies are everywhere, when we saw him coming out of the sun like a vision, a big, bearded, burly, cart-pushing vision. “FUCK YOU!” he screamed at us. “FUCK YOU!” he screamed at a passing car.
It was then that I realized, he was just a projection from my own brain. He was real, and everyone else was antsy about him, but I must have made him manifest out of my own smothered sentiments. FUCK YOU, mailbox. FUCK YOU, parked Honda with “COEXIST” bumper sticker. FUCK YOU, indeed.
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But crazy strangers are not what I want to talk about today. I want to talk about crazy friends, which is a different breed of crazy.
I learn the same lessons about people over and over again, each time as if it was the first. I’ve always thought that I must be inherently resistant to conditioning. The oft-quoted definition of insanity is repeating the same action, expecting different results each time. That’s also the behavior of optimists, in my experience, which means I’m either crazy, or an optimist. I think we know which one is the more likely conclusion. (hint: FUCK YOU, optimist).
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Here is an example of the kind of pattern I’m talking about. Throughout my life, I have met a series of the same person. A self-destructive, depressed, oppressed, struggling victim of life, whose bad fortune is everyone’s fault but his own. He has the redeeming qualities of high intelligence and an ability to make me laugh, and here is where I come in: he needs a friend.
Every time, this character woos my sympathy, of which there is precious little, and sucks my energy, and drains my resources with constant needs until my friendship inevitably disappoints, and then the relationship turns to The Horror. This happens every time, yet when the next sociopathic genius appears in my life, there I am again, eager to listen and help.
Perhaps I am doomed to repeat this action until I die or get it right. As it is I’m already on the lookout for the next incarnation of this vampiric motherfucker. I suspect the correct course of action, the one that will reverse the trend, is to be heartless on the initial contact. We’ll see.
There’s a good reason why I’m thinking about this today in particular.
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I’m the same way about good experiences. I’ve trained myself to expect an aberration even when things have traditionally gone well for me. FUCK YOU, positive reinforcement.
If I do the same thing ten times, and every time I am rewarded with great satisfaction, I’m still going to approach the eleventh attempt with a feeling of impending dread. “This good luck can’t hold out forever,” my stupid old brain will tell me. “You’re fucking doomed for sure.”
I still ride the bus with him, and he’s still impossibly ssslllloooooowwww about moving. I watch him every morning as he makes his slow ass way to the bus stop, putting his nose on everyone’s yard flowers like a total weirdo. His happy-go-lucky, carefree attitude irks me every time.
Yesterday he sat in front of me on the bus and pulled out a book. Apparently he speaks Portuguese, which is one of those alien languages that doesn’t resemble any earth-speak I am aware of. So I guess he is bi-linqual, which in my eyes, makes him a super-genius. If your brain contains two or more entire vocabularies and the power to put them into a sensible format, I am in awe of you.
I may have to re-think my entire first impression of this bozo.
