Thee Monkey Butlers

History of Thee Monkey Butlers: Part II had just spent my last handful of coins on what I assumed would be the last extra dry martini I'd see for a while when the vision appeared to me...After a lifetime of traveling the globe to find and capture the planet's most talented animals I, Hoodie Sapperticker, the worlds greatest trained animal act impresario had hit bottom,well I was usually on the bottom so I can't say as that was anything new, but staring down into that dirty glass on that bar in Bora Bora I knew I was finally at the end of my rope. For years I had scoured the globe in pursuit of what I hoped would be my greatest prize. The elusive legend of Thee Monkey Butlers, genetically altered monkeys taught to play rock and roll by the evil scientists at Screaming Monkey Laboratories located on uncharted Evil Monkey Island. More myth than real, my pursuit of TMB had made me laughing stock among the other animal act managers, and forced Mr. Ovitz to let me go rather than face more embarrassing questions, but never did my belief in Thee Monkey Butlers, or my faith that I would someday find them(and make a lot of money off of them) waiver. Through jungles deep and mountains high I searched, spending my days macheteing the bush down paths no man had trodden and my nights battling the endless attacks of mosquitoes that plagued my sleep, but still I pushed on. I squandered the fortune my grandfather Ezekiel Sapperticker had amassed running the great flea circus' of the 1930's, I gave away my last Ron Jeremy movie for a compass and a half-full canteen of Tsing-Tao beer, I traded my Franklin Mint civil war chess set to an old sailor who an X marked on a Krusty Burger map…but all roads, in the end, had led me nowhere…And then he appeared. Maybe it was the three weeks of seasickness from the junk-ride over from the mainland, or maybe it was the malaria that was eating my brain, but there before me, standing on my olive, with Beefeater gin sloshing around his knees, stood the one inch tall ghost of P.T. Barnum. "Hoodieee…"He called to me. "Looook…" At once the surface of the drink changed, colors began to appear and swirl until a map of the south seas formed, a map like the ones I had studied a thousand times before. This time, however, a monkey face flashed at a point in the middle of the ocean where no island had been listed on any chart before. I scrambled for a burnt match and scribbled the coordinates on the side of my last cigar. When I looked down again the map had disappeared and Barnum's specter was beginning to fade. "How can I ever repay you?" I asked. "I want 20% of the T-shirt saaaleeess" he said, and then he was gone. At last I had hope, I had a sign that my quest was almost at an end! Now all I had to do was get a ship, a crew of strong men, fierce and brave, and a couple of jars of olives… But that is a story for another day..hoodie sapperticker