Back in the days of the original THPS, old-time Delphi forum visitors will remember that I used to rename the gaps to weird things, like calling the "SWIM TEAM GAP" the "LESBIAN 3SOME". One of those gaps was "SECRET TUNNEL ENTRANCE" in Minneapolis. I started off by naming this "MONKEY" just to be obtuse. (Look it up.) That wasn't silly enough, so I called it "MONKEY IN A BOX". That was sillier, but still not silly enough, so I called it "GAY MONKEY IN A BOX". On further consideration, I decided that if there was one place a gay monkey would never be, it was in a box. So I thought about it a little, and decided to call it "GAY MONKEY IN A BASKET".
Aaron (not the Neversoft guy) came over one day to play THPS, and when he hit this transfer he damn near passed out laughing. It was clear to me that for once, I had come up with a real winner.
GMIB's next appearance was in Phoenix, where one of the "you fell in the water" messages got replaced by "BASKET MONKEY!" which once again sent Aaron into paroxysms of laughter that threatened to pose a severe health risk. For months, we called people basket monkeys and watch them get confused.
Old timers on Delphi will also remember that in January or February of 2000, someone was talking about having Geoff Rowley's autograph. So I said I had Rune Glifberg. I really *do* have his autograph, but since I neglected to add the possessive apostrophe-s to his name, it looked like I was saying I actually had Rune Glifberg. This struck me as really funny, and I recalled an old Monty Python skit where people were having poets and novelists installed in their homes. So I posted this long-winded explanation of how he lived in the boiler room next to the hot water heater, and was a constant problem when I had company over because he would always come skating out into the middle of the room and bust tricks on my guests.
When this started to get old, I said I was going to trade him in for a basket monkey. That's when I first brought GMIB into the forum -- if anyone remembers it. It didn't go over too big then.
But when I first started doing Crap Comix, I was working on a comic where I needed something excruciatingly silly. Something so weird, it would be funny JUST BY BEING THERE -- even if it didn't say or do anything humorous at all.
The obvious choice was the gay monkey in a basket.
A punch line immediately suggested itself: the monkey would present a skater with some kind of skate equipment widely considered gay (a Shorty's deck), and the skater would take it and suddenly find that he had become gay. This was funny for three reasons. First, because it made a pun on the word "gay" meaning both "lame" and "homosexual"; this was the more sophisticated interpretation, which I didn't expect many people to get. Second, because it exaggerated the common fear heterosexual male teenagers have that you can somehow "catch" homosexuality. And third, because it exaggerated the common stereotype that homosexuals spend a lot of time convincing *other* people to be homosexuals.
September 14, 2000
So here we have a gay monkey who goes around giving people lame skate equipment as an insidious plot to make them into homosexuals... which, unlike in the real world, actually works. Aren't comics great?
Later, I did a really excessively stupid strip inspired by sleep deprivation, in which the gay monkey in a basket came down and tickled a vert skater's nose. This comic was not even funny, just weird, so the punch line was that the gay monkey had taken up the whole strip and it wasn't funny. For some reason I can't even begin to explain, this made the whole thing REALLY funny.
September 14, 2000
And that set the tone. The public reaction was clear: GMIB was now a cult figure, and had to become a recurring character.
In case you're wondering, GMIB always brings people some skate gear and some food because gay people always seem to be "into" food. It's also just plain surreal when a gay monkey in a basket comes up and offers you some Luckies bearings and a can of mangoes in heavy syrup.
As far as where GMIB is *supposed* to have come from, I haven't figured that out yet. But I have some ideas...