Elton John – "Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting" (1973)

My old man’s drunker 

Than a barrel full of monkeys

And my old lady, she don’t care

The New Yorker once had a three-panel cartoon that depicted three people.  

The person in the first panel was captioned “More fun than a barrel of monkeys.”

The second person was captioned “Less fun than a barrel of monkeys.”

The third and final person was captioned “Exactly as much fun as a barrel of monkeys.”

I think we all know that third person, right?

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I always thought the phrase “More fun than a barrel of monkeys” originated with my grandmother.  But apparently she didn’t coin that expression.  

Some of the other expressions I learned from her were “She’d cut off her nose to spite her own face,” “He’s too pretty to be a boy” (which was her comment about my younger son when he was was a toddler), “If it was a snake, it would have bit you,” and “Why buy the cow when you’re getting the milk for free?”  (Actually, she never said that last one.  But it’s a question I often ask myself.)

We know that “more fun than a barrel of monkeys” goes back to at least 1895, when the Chicago Daily Tribune ran a story about the Republican Convention in Syracuse, New York, that described the event using those words.  That was 13-plus years before my grandmother was born.

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Did you ever play the “Barrel of Monkeys” game when you were a kid?

“Barrel of Monkeys” was first sold in 1965.  Today it’s marketed by Milton Bradley.

You might think that “Barrel of Monkeys” is a really dumb game, which it is.  But it’s not just a really dumb game.  From Wikipedia:

[“Barrel of Monkeys” monkeys] have been used for the modeling of polyhedral structures, including virus particles and other protein structures. . . . A pair of monkeys can hook around each other in more than eighty different ways, forming quite stable links.  The links may be either symmetrical or asymmetrical.  Repetition of an asymmetric link generates a helix.  A symmetric link is self-limiting, so that the structure cannot grow further unless a new link is used to join symmetric pairs.  It is possible to generate structures with point, line, 2D or 3D symmetry by choosing two or three different links (from the 80 or more possibilities) and repeating them systematically.  An enormous number of compatible combinations can be found by trial and error. . . .

[Each monkey’s] arms, legs, hands and feet are able to twist around each other to form many stable links.  In this, they resemble protein molecules which can also link together in many ways.  The resulting assemblies simulate biologically important structures, but their symmetry follows general geometric principles.  The monkeys provide a “hands on” approach to understanding these principles. 

Did you know that in 2012, Dartmouth College student Parker Phinney led a fundraising group that built a record chain of 5990 “Barrel of Monkeys” monkeys.  (Parker’s parents must be soooo proud!)

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Click here to listen to Elton John’s “Saturday Night’s Alright (for Fighting),” which was the first single to be released from his 1973 album, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.

Click here to buy the record from Amazon.