Part 7 of Anniversary Week
On this anniversary of T.J. Monkey’s: The Website, I would like to take this opportunity to remind people how T.J. Monkey’s started. Oh sure, now we’re a world-renowned group of talented comedians, able to fling money and women by the wayside like all-too-consumed banana peels, but we weren’t always like that…
I remember when T.J. Monkey’s was just a dream. A dream of a restaurant. A restaurant that would have food, and drinks, and waiters. But not just any waiters. Monkey waiters. Some said that it couldn’t be done, that monkey waiters were too hard to control, that they couldn’t take orders, that they would defacate on the customers. But they were wrong. We hired the best monkey trainers in the country, and those monkeys, God bless them, they walked around the restaurant, they took orders, and they never once defacated on a single customer. At least until animal control came and took them away from us. For those first two hours of business, it was beautiful.
Did T.J. Monkey’s fold without the monkey waiters? Hell no. We kept on innovating. We introduced the Monkanator – 64 wings of pure bliss for $6.40 if you finished the whole plate and $32.00 if you didn’t. Some “economists” said that charging $6.40 for 64 wings wouldn’t make us a dime, but what they didn’t realize was that no one can eat 64 wings. Not even if they’re really hungry. We also had a great Chicken Marsala.
People came for the food, but they stayed for the comedy… Our first Maitre D, Jimmy “Two Toppper” Johnson made people roll on the floor with his Byonce impression, and our regular stand-up, Wilson “Phillips” Jackson, only had one joke, but it was fantastic. The comedians only went up from there, and soon we were getting comedic giants like Gilbert Gottfried, Carrot Top, Matt Pinfield from MTV’s Alternative Nation. All of our careers took off from there and as aforementioned, we are now able to fling money and women by the wayside like all-too-consumed banana peels.
In September 1995, the street that T.J. Monkey’s Comedy Extravaganza and Sports Bar complex, was renamed TJM Parkway and an interstate was redirected through our front door. Business wasn’t so good after that, and in October 1995, T.J. Monkey’s closed its doors forever.
While T.J. Monkey’s has closed its doors, the doors of T.J. Monkey’s will forever be swinging open and closed in our hearts… O.K. that analogy didn’t make any sense. I’m not afraid to admit that.
What I am afraid to admit is that I love T.J. Monkeys. And I love the Monkanator. And I love Porter. Not in a gay way (not that there’s anything wrong with that), but in a having sex with him kind of way.
And I love monkey waiters. They were cute little guys.