January 19, 2011

City Hall

Jogging is uncomfortable, time consuming, hot, sweaty, boring, and, most of all, exhausting, but jogging in a gorilla suit is just fucking silly. Really. There’s no way to sugarcoat it. Not even a gorilla would jog in a gorilla suit … and not just because it would be creepy, but because gorillas, being primates, are smarter than that. Unlike those of us higher up the primate order, gorillas know what it’s like to actually wear a gorilla suit, and there are just certain things you don’t do in a gorilla suit. One of those is jog. Beat your chest? Check. Jump up and down with your arms curled at your sides? Yep. Swing through the trees on vines? Of course. Delouse your buddies? Definitely. Jog? Nuh-uh. Why go to all that effort when you could be lollygagging around in the grass munching on foliage? Gorillas can run, yes … on their hind legs even. They max out at about 20 feet – which is plenty enough distance for even the most ambitious primate. Why should humans in gorilla suits be any different? Besides, you don’t need to run in a gorilla suit to realize it’s a bad idea. Just put one on and wait a few minutes. There’s nothing like polyester fur and black rubber for working up a prolific schvitz. As long as you’re at it, you might as well pop some peyote and make it a real sweat lodge experience. You may not cross the finish line, but once the mescaline kicks in, you won’t even remember you were racing to begin with. Look at it this way: Anytime you wear a gorilla suit, it’s a vision quest, so you might as well make it official. Those eyeholes don’t offer a lot of peripheral – just enough of a window to let in a little fresh air, a margarita straw, or the wet tongue of a mischievous friend. After all, if you’re wearing a gorilla suit, you pretty much have to expect to get pranked. It’s part of the territory. You can’t go sashaying around town in a gorilla suit without consequences. What self-respecting gang of disaffected adolescents would allow you to pass within a stone’s throw and not chuck a few at you? You should expect a fair ration of slaps on the ass, “kick me” signs, and occasional mountings by Great Danes … or even just plain Danes. Danes are fetishy like that. Oh well, if you’re going to draw attention to yourself, you have to expect some of it to be negative, right? One thing is for certain, a big (or even small) group of gorillas, whether fake or real, is going to attract attention, and that’s the point, really. The plight of the mountain gorillas in Central Africa doesn’t get a lot of play here in Central Texas. We’ve got our own species to endanger and enough genuinely good causes to keep us impoverished until kingdom come. A city can only do so much, right? Austin may be nearly tapped out philanthropically, but when it comes to a sense of irony and a love of dorkiness, our wealth is limitless. This is exactly what makes Saturday’s first-ever Austin Gorilla Run so ingenious. It might be difficult to get a few hundred people to fork over money for endangered mountain gorillas that are half a world away, but getting people in Austin to run around in gorilla suits? Slam dunk! That’s exactly the type of ridonkulous nerdfest that whips the locals into a lather. This Saturday you can join those locals as they run, walk, skate, and bike their way through the streets of Austin in support of the mountain gorillas. Plus, after it’s all over, you get to keep the gorilla suit … and maybe even all the new silly friends you made.