Monkeying 'round with bananas (from '12)

Hearing from lots of new readers these days. I’m very pleased. So to stoke that fresh interest I’ll be dropping some of my favorites from my more than 1,600 posts dating back to, yikes, 2008. I hope it’ll give readers a chance to enjoy some of the heirloom ones without having to browse through obvious stinkers. If you look forward to the blog, I hope you’ll share it with friends or have them send me Facebook friend request. And I thank each and every one of you for taking the time to read and flatter me with your compliments. Means the world to me.

I mentioned to a friend a while back that I felt self-conscious eating a banana in public, like I was afraid someone would snap a picture and invite cruel captions.

“I don’t know what you’re doing with your banana,” he said, “but you need to just bite it.”

Since last year, I’ve probably spent more time thinking about how to eat a banana than most people. That was when our 4th grader came home and said, “Look, here’s how Mr. Walker says monkeys eat bananas.”

She took a perfectly good banana, turned it upside down and squeezed the scab until it was nothing but peel and pudding.

Then she handed me the mess.

I don’t know how she expected me to react to her little demonstration. Perhaps she was hoping to engage me in some discussion of evolutionary quirks.

Instead I said, “What the hell are they teaching in school these days? Get your ass in your room and don’t come out until Mommy and me are good and drunk!”

I eat probably a banana a day. I love ‘em.

Here’s a fact: The flabby aerodynamics of a banana peel make it impossible to heave one more than 20 feet from a second story window across a tavern’s gravel parking lot.

That’s what I do with all mine. They degrade so quickly no one’s ever said, geez, how come there’s always a hazardous number of banana peels in The Pond parking lot?

I guess we can blame the Stooges for the mistaken belief that stepping on a banana peel can knock the legs out from under dimwits.

It happened all the time with the Stooges and it happened with the old battle ax played by Ethel Merman in the near-perfect 1963 screwball comedy, “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.”

But I’ve never seen it happen in real life. Seeing it happen to someone like Trump’s way up there on my bucket list.

I don’t know whether or not monkeys eat bananas upside down or not, but I know adding monkey to anything improves everything.

I was thinking about this as I was listening to a string of great monkey rock songs -- and wouldn’t that category improve the Grammys?

There’s “Monkey Man,” by The Stones, one of their finest; “Shock the Monkey” by Peter Gabriel; “Punish the Monkey” by Mark Knopfler; and the cheeky “Tweeter and the Monkey Man” by the Traveling Wilburys.

Delbert McClinton has “Monkey Around.” Chorus: “You made a man into a monkey, now that monkey’s gonna monkey around!”

I saw Bruce Springsteen monkeyin’ around with a backup singer the very night I heard him sing his great monkey song, the obscure “Part-Man, Part-Monkey.”

It was 1988, the “Tunnel of Love” tour. I remember seeing him actually making out on stage in between songs with a bandmate -- and it wasn’t Little Steven.

I know what you’re thinking: Shocking! A rock ‘n’ roll singer kissing a girl who wasn’t his wife!

Yes, my prudish friend, I remember thinking the exact same thing. At the time he was married to the luscious Julianne Philips, an ‘80s vixen who had more hair than the floor of an unswept beauty salon.

The on-stage woman with whom he was making out? Patti Scialfa, Springsteen’s wife since 1990.

“Part-Man, Part-Monkey” references the Scopes Monkey Trial and comes down squarely on the side of the chimps. And who can forget “Inherit The Wind,” the Spencer Tracy movie about the historic trial? Outstanding.

Val and I just watched another great monkey movie, 2011’s “Rise of the Planet of the Apes,” starring James Franco. We loved it, as did 83 percent of America’s critics on Rotten Tomatoes.

In it, the Franco character has a super-intelligent chimp for a chum. It turns out as well for him as it did for that crazy Long Island lady who owned Travis the pet chimp who attacked her friend, mauling her so badly she needed a face transplant.

It’s a horrific story and I always feel shame for chuckling when recalling the tabloid headlines: “Furious George!”

So there you have it, a comprehensive story about bananas and monkeys.

Or as Troy McClure said on “The Simpsons” when he performed the musical version of “Planet of the Apes,” it has everything from “chimpan-A to chimpanzee!”

And now it’s time for me to peel and eat my banana. But first I’m closing the drapes.

I think we’ve all had enough monkey business for one day.

Monkeying around with bananas

I mentioned to a friend a while back that I felt self-conscious eating a banana in public, like I was afraid someone would snap a picture and invite cruel captions.

“I don’t know what you’re doing with your banana,” he said, “but you need to just bite it.”

Since last year, I’ve probably spent more time thinking about how to eat a banana than most people. That was when our 4th grader came home and said, “Look, here’s how Mr. Walker says monkeys eat bananas.”

She took a perfectly good banana, turned it upside down and squeezed the scab until it was nothing but peel and pudding.

Then she handed me the mess.

I don’t know how she expected me to react to her little demonstration. Perhaps she was hoping to engage me in some discussion of evolutionary quirks.

Instead I said, “What the hell are they teaching in school these days? Get your ass in your room and don’t come out until Mommy and me are good and drunk!”

I eat probably a banana a day. I love ‘em.

Here’s a fact: The flabby aerodynamics of a banana peel make it impossible to heave one more than 20 feet from a second story window across a tavern’s gravel parking lot.

That’s what I do with all mine. They degrade so quickly no one’s ever said, geez, how come there’s always a hazardous number of banana peels in The Pond parking lot?

I guess we can blame the Stooges for the mistaken belief that stepping on a banana peel can knock the legs out from under dimwits.

It happened all the time with the Stooges and it happened with the old battle ax played by Ethel Merman in the near-perfect 1963 screwball comedy, “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.”

But I’ve never seen it happen in real life. Seeing it happen to someone like Trump’s way up there on my bucket list.

I don’t know whether or not monkeys eat bananas upside down or not, but I know adding monkey to anything improves everything.

I was thinking about this as I was listening to a string of great rock monkey songs -- and wouldn’t that category improve the Grammys?

There’s “Monkey Man,” by The Stones, one of their finest; “Shock the Monkey” by Peter Gabriel; “Punish the Money” by Mark Knopfler; and the cheeky “Tweeter and the Monkey Man” by the Traveling Wilburys.

Delbert McClinton has “Monkey Around.” Chorus: “You made a man into a monkey, now that monkey’s gonna monkey around!”

I saw Bruce Springsteen monkeyin’ around with a backup singer the very night I heard him sing his great monkey song, the obscure “Part-Man, Part-Monkey.”

It was 1988, the “Tunnel of Love” tour. I remember seeing him actually making out on stage in between songs with a bandmate -- and it wasn’t Little Steven.

I know what you’re thinking: Shocking! A rock ‘n’ roll singer kissing a girl who wasn’t his wife!

Yes, my prudish friend, I remember thinking the exact same thing. At the time he was married to the luscious Julianne Philips, an ‘80s vixen who had more hair than the floor of an unswept beauty salon.

The on-stage woman with whom he was making out? Patti Scialfa, Springsteen’s wife since 1990.

“Part-Man, Part-Monkey” references the Scopes Monkey Trial and comes down squarely on the side of the chimps. And who can forget “Inherit The Wind,” the Spencer Tracy movie about the historic trial? Outstanding.

Val and I just watched another great monkey movie, 2011’s “Rise of the Planet of the Apes,” starring James Franco. We loved it, as did 83 percent of America’s critics on Rotten Tomatoes.

In it, the Franco character has a super-intelligent chimp for a chum. It turns out as well for him as it did for that crazy Long Island lady who owned Travis the pet chimp who attacked her friend, mauling her so badly she needed a face transplant.

It’s a horrific story and I always feel shame for chuckling when recalling the tabloid headlines that read “Furious George!”

So there you have it, a comprehensive story about bananas and monkeys.

Or as Troy McClure said on “The Simpsons” when he performed the musical version of “Planet of the Apes,” it has everything from “chimpan-A to chimpanzee!”

And now it’s time for me to peel and eat my banana. But first I’m closing the drapes.

I think we’ve all had enough monkey business for one day.

Chimps gone wild in tabloid world

Many sober and sensible journalists advised me never to mention the eight years and 1,000 stories I did as an offbeat feature reporter for National Enquirer. They said the toxic connection would forever doom my professional advancement.

I considered what they said, gave it its due then immediately started stapling my greatest hits from those swashbuckling days to the resumes and queries I was sending out in 2000.

The full color clips were of me getting sledge hammered while laying on a bed of nails, gaining 20 pounds in one week on the eat-like-Elvis diet, and spending a day wearing a kilt ala Mel Gibson in “Braveheart” to see if women found it sexy (my disappointment that they didn’t was mitigated by the joy I got out of mooning wise guys who ridiculed me for my skirt).

I figured the unusual package would inoculate me against the kind of stick-in-the-mud editors I’d want to avoid in the first place, and it would ratchet up interest from editors looking for reporters with unconventional backgrounds.

I wanted to prove a guy could emerge from a scandalous tabloid background and eventually succeed writing cerebral essays and prosaic features for prestigious publications.

And, of course, I was right. Those clips led directly to nice long runs with some top magazines that gave me the clips I needed to get some at bats in the big leagues.

But I’ve spent much of the last week feeling nostalgic for those days because of the story that’s dominated the national news all week, and you know I don’t mean the billion-dollar bailouts flying around Washington like so much confetti.

Of course, I’m talking about Travis the chimp that went ape. Or as the tabloid New York Post calls him, “Furious George!!!”

It reminded me of the dozens of stories I did about people making ill-advised decisions involving living with various creatures beyond the realm of what’s commonly considered domesticated.

There was Joe Taft who in 1997 shared his home with 24 tigers and lions -- “Indiana Man Thinks Killer Cats are Grrrreaattt!!!”

He ran an exotic feline rescue center from his rural home. “I’ve had as many as nine big cats in my house at once,” he told me. “The come and go as they please. The big tiger sits in my recliner and watches TV. She likes National Geographic Explorer and Bugs Bunny.”

I remember complimenting him on raising well-rounded maneaters.

There were stories about 24-foot pythons, alligators, giraffes and elephants and the difficulties and messes that went along with sharing your property with animals that usually reside in zoos or jungles.

I don’t remember ever doing a story about a woman sharing a home with a chimp because I’m certain the demanding Enquirer editors would have dismissed it as too routine, although the lover-like relationship between Travis and his nut job owner might have earned a nod on a slow week.

But it’s hard for outsiders to appreciate how sensational a story had to be to earn an assignment.

Case in point: I remember one time seeing a story about an armless woman who cooked, kept house and drove a vehicle with her feet -- all outstanding elements. But the item that caught my eye was that she also worked as a secretary. I turned in the lead that started out, “Armless woman types 50 words a minute -- with her feet!”

I still recall the rush I’d get when I’d see a story as compelling as that one. I thought it couldn’t miss and was crestfallen when the editor told me not to bother. How come, I wanted to know?

“Fifty words a minute? That’s not that much.”

Whenever I teach a class, I always mention my Enquirer experience and stress that aspiring writers should get into writing, not for any perceived glory that comes with writing for high-profile magazines, but for the pure joy of telling a great story.

So now I spend my days sitting around writing scattered essays about things like how to become more patient and compiling a growing stack of terse rejection letters for books that may never be published.

I’m just about where I wanted to be nine years ago when I set my goal to become a respected writer who works for prestigious magazines.

And I watch the news about Furious George and can only come up with one nagging question:

What the hell was I thinking?