Uncanny coincidence or subliminal tour de force, Peter Jackson’s long awaited King Kong opens worldwide next Wednesday, or "Monkey Day," the five-year-old brainchild of Michigan artist and illustrator Casey Sorrow, 30, who’s mounted a worldwide campaign to have Dec. 14 set aside to honour our simian ancestry.
"The purpose," he states, "is to celebrate these noble creatures who embody the best of human characteristics, such as intelligence, family values, kindness, humour and compassion, while also promoting education and recognition of these simian species and their fragile habitat."
"It’s also a day," he adds, "to go ape."
"Scream like a chimp, hang out with your friends and pick fleas off each other; dress in your favourite simian attire and throw an ape-themed party. Whatever you find appropriate without being arrested."
Like many great ideas, Monkey Day first began as a lame joke. Some time in late 2000 on the Michigan State campus, for reasons unknown, then art student Casey Sorrow scribbled "Monkey Day" on a friend’s calendar. It became a running gag, but when the day arrived, they felt compelled to dress up as apes and head for the nearest bar where they promptly made monkeys of themselves.
From such humble beginnings, a tradition was born. "Everybody loves monkeys," Sorrow says happily. "Monkeys are great – they make people smile."
While rooted in the drunken debauchery of self-confessed hooligans with an affinity for monkey business, some have attached spiritual validation to Monkey Day as an evolutionary middle finger to the creationist holidays that permeate the month of December. "I’m no atheist," says Sorrow, "but sometimes it gets a little nauseating around Christmas. This is something you can just have fun with. It’s kind of hard to dress up as Jesus and get a few laughs."
The website, www.monkeyday.com, which has ape news, ape info and even ape-oriented recipes to celebrate the occasion, has attracted interest worldwide, but Sorrow had no idea this year’s Monkey Day would see the long-awaited release of King Kong.
"I just found out about it a few hours ago," he said. "We’re certainly happy to share the day with King Kong, but I wonder if Peter Jackson knew what he was doing?"
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I do find it humourous that King Kong happens to come out on Monkey Day and considering Jackson’s involvement with his online community I wouldn’t be surprised if he knew what he was doing. As for the event at hand I think it is both a reason for someone with too much time on their hands to get publicity for doing something stupid and at the same time an interesting way to get people to both respect their predacessors and animals as a whole. If this day catches on it could help put a stop to animal cruelty but it could also start a rise in stupid animal holidays. Muscrat Mondays anyone?
While this practice may have started out as a campus jest, it attempts to highlight the often underestimated wisdom of our forebearers and our shared history. While Monkey Day is reminiscent of the “Fur and Loathing” CSI episode where a furry is found dead, it may, nonetheless, enable us to understate monkeys and apes as more than just wisecracking animals.
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What would Jane Goodall say?
Monkeys are cute and lovable so it’s pretty hard not to stare and wave a banana at them, but seroiusly speaking, anything that brings awareness and education to these creatures deserves some credit and attention. Good job guys.
We should always remember to protect our cousins from harm.
I won’t worry about a string of animal holidays spinning off from this idea, I just worry about the fuzziness of the line between creating a light-hearted joke and getting carried away with stupidity. We can never expect a sincere answer from our chimp friends on how they feel about pretending to be human so why bother creating a holday for them? I don’t mind creating an awaremess of animals who need shelters. I don’t mind the rhetoric on how “human’ they appear to be but that doesn’t mean I need to commemorate that ability. Still I don’t mind a gag where we can all behave differently just as we used to perform a regular camp ritual where campers were informed that they had to do everything backwards one day, on backwards day.
Monkeys have not faired well in the movie business. There was the infamous “Bedtime for Bonzo” with Ronald Reagan that made him a fool for cavorting with a monkey and which later hurt his credibility for the job of US president. Reagan’s other fine films were ignored.
In “The Planet of the Apes” space travellers visit another planet where the smart monkeys have taken over and have enslaved the humans. Later in “12 Monkeys” the title is used as the moniker of a group of human rebels that tried to spread a dangerous virus among the population.
Only in documentaries such as those of Jane Goodall with titles as “My Life With Chimpanzees” do monkeys appear in a favourable light. We should treat them better as they are closest to us genetically.
To be honest I’m sure if I look up in the calendar on any given day it can probably be a special day for someone or something. Like a Panda day would be cool, we’d dress up like Pandas and sleep all day. I’d also like to see a fish day, maybe we can all take the day off and go swimming or eat sushi. Hell how about a turtle day where we do everything as slow as possible.
It’s all in good fun and comes to the point that you can’t be too serious in life! If you are you will go CRAZY! Oh wait, but monkey day does sound crazy… Then again if you know you are acting silly then you aren’t crazy. Go Monkey day and King Kong! Show us that the real monster is man and we should all be apes.
I dont know whether I should laugh or be sad that we have a Monkey Day. Why dont we have a banana day while we’re at it? Or a Cow day (because they give us milk and meat, WOW.). … I mean really now, “A day to go ape”. Really, do you people have nothing better to do than make up crazy days. And I dont really believe in this “they are our ancestors lets honour them by giving them a day”. … um, yea so lets go get drunk and celebrate our primitive beginnings. You might as well throw a banana at serious anthopologists who study these creatures, its a mockery! Tsk tsk. I hope the movie is good. Although when you think about the plot, its kind of like the day: pointless that is.
“Like many great ideas, Monkey Day first began as a lame joke.”–Charlie McKenzie on the brainchild idea of Michigan artist and illustrator Casey Sorrow, who’s mounted a worldwide campaign to have Dec. 14 set aside to honour our simian ancestry.
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Um, sorry but I’m missing the part where it *stopped* being a lame joke. as an animal lover myself I get where you’d try to draw attention to your pet animal cause and yes, in many ways I respect what Sorrow’s accomplished so far but let’s face it, this article is little more than a fluffy hook to tie-in with the new King Kong feature. Apes & monkeys are cool but giving them their own day? Bet you the Creationists and the Intelligent Design people must just love celebrating this day…
If only we could have a day devoted to all of our creatures, but monkeys do certainly hold more human qualitities then any other animal. You can not help but stop to admire a monkey when you see one, especially those cute babies!! So a monkey day it is!! I`ll skip on acting crazy for the day but I would enjoy some banana cream pie in honor of our furry friends and I hope we can continue to enjoy monkeys for generations to come.
Well, this Mr. Casey Sorrow sure puts his money where his mouth is! I suppose, well, that is, if there is even any money involved in proclaiming December 14th – “Monkey Day”. I guess “simians” = the scientific or maybe even the more politically correct term to be calling our hairier “relatives”, since I = kinda used to calling them primates, or at least hearing them being referred to as primates.
Either way, perhaps my lingo = passé, especially now that they = inheriting an entire Day devoted to them. I mean, I like monkeys as much as the next person, but why do they get to be so reveered as to get a whole day for them Only?!? Like, what about, Gee I don’t know – Human Day?!? Ok, maybe I’m getting a little selfish. Afterall, to Monkeys I’m sure that it = all the same to them. Humans feed them in captivity, where they probably perish the thoughts or ideas of their relatives in the wild. And since they = being services by humans so very often, they must feel to a certain extent, that we = put here to serve them. Just the same way as downward looking aliens upon us earthlings probably think that dogs = our ultimate masters, as we humans are actually obliged to pick up their feces.
Really, who’se in charge, huh?
Peace.
I had the pleasure of reading a few of her books.
Chimps are very human like! They can love, create tools, and even go to war!
It’s a shame that people take them, and parade them around in movies. Or worse, they perform medical ‘tests’ on them…
Maybe if we realized that they can think and feel, we would recognize that they have rights too.
“Scream like a chimp, hang out with your friends and pick fleas off each other; dress in your favourite simian attire and throw an ape-themed party. Whatever you find appropriate without being arrested.” (***HUH***?) Although these crazy acts may be nicely borrowed to celebrate Monkey Day, they do belong to another crazy time of the year that has the same irresponsible and zany theme. *Frosh Week*.
**Hmmph.**
Well, I guess we’re all descended from primates, whatever decade we’re living in. Probably explains why Banana Splits are so popular at Dairy Queen, why we humans are born with so much body hair and that, over the centuries, we’ve lost our ability to climb trees and hold things with our toes..
Using my metro dollars to tell me to clean up the metro. . . . are they nuts or just plain stupid?I would like to know who came up with the idea of putting up advertisements in the metro, telling metro users to “clean up the metro, cause Bob the worker does his part”. So whats happening here is the lazy marketing people who sit on their ass all day long are using our fare money to tell us to clean up the metro. Well here is my retort. I am a clean person and I do not litter and I dont need my money being spent to tell me to clean a place that has paid workers doing the job. Do Lawyers do dental exams? Do law clerks build houses? Do telemarketers strip on Mondays to pay the rent? Then why the hell is some STM jerk or crew using my money to tell me to do someone elses job. Maybe the guys getting paid to change these advertisements could pick up garbage in their barrels, but no, that would be too much to ask. Seriousely, these ads should be pulled and these advertising geniuses should be fired and maybe demoted to clean up duty. Maybe the newspaper companies should pay the people who hand out the newspapers to stay longer in the day to clean them up?? Also, can you stop telling the metro cleaner using bleach to clean the stairs on Monday mornings, its not very well ventalited and I feel ill everytime I walk by mornings in Square Victoria metro, or is my health not as impotant as me picking up other peoples garbage? P.s. Don’t litter people, littering is for losers and junkies.———-