Monkey C-Note

Seen on Promenade on Sunday: A man peddling a monkey.

Well, that's not right. He was peddling monkey favors.

That sounds even worse. And there wasn't even a bicycle involved.

(Incidentally, a couple weeks ago a drove by a girl on a bike who I'm fairly certain is the same girl I may or may not have run into and almost knocked over w/my old car a couple years back. Is the irony of running her down again worth a lawsuit? Probably, but I passed -- her and the opportunity.)

Biggish guy has monkey on leash. Monkey is wearing silly suit, as monkeys being forced into servitude often are prone to do. Passerby hands dollar bill to monkey, who takes it and puts it in his pocket. In exchange, monkey offers his hand (paw?) so that aforementioned passerby can shake it.

Pay a dollar. Shake a monkey's hand. (I don't know who the guy in that pic above is. Neither does the monkey. Looks very slightly like De Niro, no? I mean the monkey, not the random dude.)

(Pretty sure nobody is allowed to actually buy the monkey, however.)

This greatly amused my niece and nephew, as do so many things. This did not greatly amuse the fine security folk at the L.A. Zoo when I tried something similar last summer. Anyway...

This week I may set up shop down there and offer, for just $1, to shake people's hands. Who knows where that monkey's hand (paw?) has been?! Well, aside from the monkey? Maybe I'll wear a glove. Or a giant foam finger, just to add novelty. Friend of mom's added a good twist: they have to pay more to get me to stop shaking their hands. It's like an early termination fee.

Maybe I'll even offer a squirt of hand sanitizer for another 50 cents.

Other ideas:

There are plenty of street performers, some with drums or buckets for drums. I could go down there and pound a drum incessantly (I am trained for this).
Again, passersby must pay me to stop hitting the drum, at a rate of, say, $1 for 30 seconds of silence?

There also are break dancers down there, who probably weren't even born when that art form was popular. I could go down there with a baseball bat or golf club and, for a small fee (which hopefully will cover the legal costs), offer to break dancers. You know, with the bat. Kerrigan-style.

Sometimes this evangelical sets up a slideshow and, with a microphone, proceeds to tell the rest of the world why he's right any everyone else is wrong. Most recently he was ripping atheists. Look, believe (or don't) whatever you want, but leave everyone else alone. So along those lines, I may bring down a slideshow and start worshipping Satan (the hockey player) and trying to make people join my cause. Just to piss that one guy off.

But holding grudges isn't healthy, so we'll settle our differences, shake hands (for a $1) and break dance.