Yes, it’s that day again… the national holiday that isn’t officially recognized (yet) but one we all look forward to the other 364 days of the year. Yes, its National Gorilla Suit Day.

What is National Gorilla Suit Day??? Are you joking?!? It began, as almost all nonsensical and idiotic things do, with Don Martin. A series of cartoons in the 1964 book Don Martin Bounces Back! concerns the misadventures of Fester Bestertester and his railings against various gorilla suit companies and the holiday National Gorilla Suit Day. Proving that Don Martin was about 40 years ahead of his time, his National Gorilla Suit Day paved the way for lesser imitations like National Talk Like A Pirate Day.

The best thing about National Gorilla Suit Day is that there isn’t much that needs to be done to celebrate this very important holiday. There are no gifts to buy or exchange that will drive up your credit card balances. No painted, unfertilized poultry zygotes to hide or place in baskets with chocolate effigies of Oryctolagus cuniculus and other confections for consumption by children. No need to cut a living conifer from the forest, drag it into your domicile, festoon it with bits of glass and plastic and wrap it with lighted wires conducting dangerous electricity while the tree itself dies, dries out and becomes more and more flammable. No need to carve out and remove the seeds and pulp from large, orange gourds and then place live flames within them while small children walk around in close proximity wearing lightweight cloth costumes. There are no pesky lights or decorations to put up around the outside of your home, unless of course you have a giant inflatable gorilla you stole from the roof of a used car dealership when you were in college and you still have it in a box in the rafters of your garage…. not that I know anyone who ever did anything like that. If I DID I would say they are encouraged to inflate that gorilla in their front yard and, if approached by the local constabulary, claim you bought it at a garage sale years ago.

No, all you need to do is put on your gorilla suit and go about the neighborhood knocking on doors and spread the good word about National Gorilla Suit Day. Scaring the bejeezus out of some of the old folks wouldn’t ruin your day, either. So, on January 31st wear your mangy, moth eaten simian garb with pride, and just say “I’m wearing a Gorilla Suit… and I’m okay!”

I happened to be on vacation in Maui a few years ago during National Gorilla Suit Day, and blogged about my celebrations at the time:

Apparently not many local Maui residents own gorilla suits. Hard to believe, I know. Still I did what I could. Here I am at the resort:

I can tell you that gorilla suits and high humidity are a recipe for disaster. I nearly passed out several times. Several old ladies screamed as I ran around the pool, although one tried to buy me a drink. A number of Japanese tourists insisted on getting their pictures taken with me… one at a time. That took about 40 minutes and I almost passed out again. Everything was going fine until I tried surfing in it. Did you know that when a gorilla suit gets wet, it gets significantly heavier? No kidding, it weighs a ton when soaked. I was trying to hang 10 but I only hung about 2 and a half then went down and stayed down. I managed to walk out onto the beach, soliciting a number of other screams and another offer of a drink from a different lady. The good news is I found several mahi-mahi in my pants when I took off the suit, so we are set for dinner tonight.

All in all, a good National Gorilla Suit Day. I hope you all had a happy one.- Jan. 31, 2007

So, have a great 2009 National Gorilla Suit Day. Please be aware of the elderly and infim when you go knocking on doors scaring the crap out of people, and lay off the banana liqueur… National Gorilla Suit Day is behind only New Year’s, July 4th, Memorial Day weekend, Labor Day weekend, Halloween, St. Patrick’s Day, Super Bowl Sunday (?), Thanksgiving, Valentine’s Day, Christmas, President’s Day, Easter, Hanukkah, Columbus Day, Veteran’s Day, Kwanzaa, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, National Bring your Child to Work Day and Yom Kippur as the deadliest of U.S. holidays. Keep it safe, people.

I know I’m a tough guy to get gifts for. The Lovely Anna constantly reminds me of this. She says it’s not that I don’t want or need anything, it’s just that I have this habit of buying things I want for myself… Well, I hate waiting.

Lately Anna and I have been in the habit of getting something together and calling it our Christmas present to each other. This year it was a case of six bottles of Silver Oak cabernet sauvignon, 1998-2003 that had a Thomas Arvid painting reproduced on the case lid. Anna loves Arvid’s work, which is a realistic style of oil painting with wine bottles, glasses and trappings as subject matter… usually in a forced perspective, almost fisheye setting. Great idea to blend fine art with wine as a subject, since that attracts the interest of people with money for both interests. Anyway, we enjoyed one bottle on Christmas eve.

The kids all got iMacs, which meant Daddy Tech Support spent hours setting them up, installing Leopard, installing other software, transferring their files from their old PCs, blah blah blah. Next time I’ll just get them completely disassembled bicycles with instructions in French. That would take less time. The Lovely Anna is now the old PC holdout in the family.

I still got a few things under the tree, including some cartooning/art related stuff. “The Completely MAD Don Martin” (pictured) was one. I can’t wait to dig into that… His cartoons were some of the funniest things to me as a kid reading MAD, when some of the other stuff went over my head. I also got a nifty traveling case to carry brushes, pens and other art supplies in that keeps them from getting mashed (especially the brushes). That will come in handy, I am sure. I also got a pair of Grinch pajamas from my daughter Elizabeth, who loves to make me sing the Grinch song… year around of course.

I’m still under the gun in the studio, so I don’t have much time to blog right now. My apologies. I’ll make it up to people in the new year, with some caricature instruction tutorials I’ve been working on.