You Can Say "Monkeying Around" but Not "Orangutaning Around"

We need more road rage like this.

Humor is subjective. And, for some people, it evolves over time.

When I reflect on the things I once thought were funny — dare I say hi-LAR-ious — frankly, I cringe.

THEY'RE LIKE SMALLER, HAIRIER, FUNNIER HUMANS!
One of the high points of hilarity for me was, at one time, the orangutan. Apparently, during the late 1970s and early 1980s, many other people did, too.

Can't argue with the orangutan's place in the comedic animal kingdom. You can snap a cute pic of a dog, cat, even a walrus, but only an orangutan can do a number of things that (most) humans do — walk, fart, crack open a beer — but do them all in a funnier way than, say, your hirsute Aunt Hilda, because it's an orangutan!

Once my brother and I outgrew Disney cartoons, my mother transferred the movie-chaperoning duties to my father. (After we'd return home, my father would then describe to my mother the film we'd just seen, and his explanation always ran longer than the actual movie.)

Sometime in 1981, when I was either 9 or 10, as we departed the theater for a film I can't exactly remember — I perused the Wikipedia list of American releases from that year in order to make this anecdote as accurate as possible; maybe it was the original Clash of the Titans (it certainly wasn't My Dinner With Andre!) — we noticed that they'd already changed the marquee for the following week's releases.

One of the new releases was a film called Going Ape! (the exclamation point is part of the title), and my brother and I were disappointed because we would rather have seen that instead of whatever it was that we'd just watched. (Dad took us to a movie maybe once a month, if we were lucky, unlike the way I am with my own kids today, looking for any excuse to get the hell out of the house and kill a couple of hours.)

With the magic of the Internet I've been able to satisfy many of decades-long nostalgic longings, like using an emulator to play any Atari 2600 game or watch cartoons that I'd forgotten even existed, but I never actually had the urge to track down and watch Going Ape!

But on that night in 1981, I couldn't think of anything else...

Arresting Entertainment, Part 1

What is it that you plan on doing in the event
they appear and ask you to accompany them?

You reach a certain point in your life — that is, I reach a certain point in my life — when you notice certain changes in your behavior. Suddenly, Fun Dip is no longer fun. There's a growing desire to drink on weeknights. And, shockingly, Cops (or the all-caps COPS) is must-see TV.

It's not the kind of show that I've been forced into viewing because of the changing demographic of my household, which has caused a ratings spike in such entertainments as Wipeout or America's Funniest Home Videos of Crotch Shots and Related Tragedies. Maybe it's because I don't go out as much as I used to on Saturday nights, and the 8pm-9pm time slot is part of the "holy crap the kids are finally in bed" downtime before Mrs. The Anthony Show and I decide what we're going to do with the remaining 12.5 percent of our day, and COPS is the perfect show for vegging.

But damn I love this show. I don't understand why...