TALES OF LIFE IN A GORILLA SUIT.Byline: Carol Bidwell Daily News Staff Writer When you play a gorilla, life isn't always as much fun as a barrel of monkeys Barrel of Monkeys is a hyperbolistic idiom referring to good-natured pandemonium. According to Charles E. Funk, word historian: "One monkey arouses a great deal of amusement. Two or more then double the interest and amusement. . Take, for instance, actor Don McLeod's run-in with the Internal Revenue Service in 1991, when he listed his occupation as ``gorilla'' and wrote off as business expenses gorilla heads, a cannibal's cooking pot and 85 pounds of bananas. He learned something about the IRS An abbreviation for the Internal Revenue Service, a federal agency charged with the responsibility of administering and enforcing internal revenue laws. . ``They really don't have a sense of humor Noun 1. sense of humor - the trait of appreciating (and being able to express) the humorous; "she didn't appreciate my humor"; "you can't survive in the army without a sense of humor" sense of humour, humor, humour ,'' McLeod said. ``But I had all my receipts and all the pictures we'd taken to show them. They got halfway through the audit and dropped it.'' Although cavorting like an ape for large amounts of money sounds like fun, the job has had its serious side. Customs officers in Japan detained him after they spotted the gorilla suit's hands and feet, convinced that he was a poacher trying to smuggle parts of endangered species into the country. (It took him an hour to talk his way out of that one.) One of his big gorilla feet got caught in the treads of a store escalator. (He was freed before it chewed into his own foot.) A hot air balloon This article is about hot air balloons themselves. For the associated activity, see Hot air ballooning. The hot air balloon is the oldest successful human-carrying flight technology, dating back to its invention by the Montgolfier brothers in Annonay, he was riding in during filming of a commercial crashed in a bean field, and he had to hotfoot hot·foot intr.v. hot·foot·ed, hot·foot·ing, hot·foots Informal To go in haste. Often used with it: hotfoot it out of town. adv. In haste. n. pl. it across the field in full costume chased by a farmer and a pack of dogs. (He got away.) He was nearly shot with a tranquilizer tranquilizer, drug whose action calms the central nervous system, decreasing emotional agitation without impairing alertness. Tranquilizing drugs differ from hypnotic drugs such as barbiturates in that they do not act on the brain's cortical areas but rather on its gun by a trainer at the Los Angeles Zoo The Los Angeles Zoo founded in 1966, is a large zoo located in Los Angeles, California, USA. The Zoo, located in Los Angeles' Griffith Park, is home to 1,200 animals from around the world. after a TV producer thought it would be funny to show McLeod in his gorilla suit standing outside the gorilla cage. ``I go running, waving my arms, yelling, `I'm a guy in a gorilla suit! Don't shoot!'' (He convinced zoo officials it had been a college prank; he was afraid if he told the truth, the TV show wouldn't pay him). While promoting American Tourister luggage in a Tokyo department store, a luggage salesman told him to lumber into the middle of a group of more than 50 Japanese first-graders attending a storytime event. ``I charged over and the kids panicked and started to run and fall all over each other, knocking stuff over, breaking stuff. I tried to calm them down, to show them I was just a man in a gorilla suit, but I couldn't get the head off. I tried to smile, but it came out as a snarl.'' (The luggage salesman rescued McLeod and left the teachers to calm the children.) |
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