Keeping up with the Joneses

Hey, hey to one and all, and thanks for dropping once more (hopefully not once more as in for the last time, mind you). I hope everyone enjoyed our special holiday installment of Monkeesims. I know it's not nearly Christmas yet, but I never know when my vacation days at my job are, and I'd hate to plan a day to post it only to find I wasn't even going to be at work then. Plus, this gives you time to share it with friends and loved ones so you can recite it around the fireplace on Christmas Eve while playing "Dance of the Sugarplum Fairies"..

Today, we give all of our overtaxed families a little bit of a break. It's the way of Monkeesims that when a certain family is on a roll with a lot of exciting stuff happening, we'll focus on just them for a while, and there are a few such posts coming up. In the meantime, are you one of those people who, having read all of these posts, finds himself wondering what became of Homie D. Klown? Are you that person who wonders what Jimmy Jones does for a living? Or wonders where Jean Trevolto lives? Yeah, I wouldn't care either, if I didn't already know, but in the spirit of providing you with info you neither want or need here at Monkeesims, I'm gonna tell you. Welcome to the Jones home...


From the outside, all appears deceptively normal...
The funny thing about the Jones home is that there's only one person named Jones who lives in the house. It's actually been something of a dumping ground for "displaced sims" who don't really merit their own home, but are unwanted elsewhere (I hate to just put them in the queue, because then they get no interaction at all). The head of the house is Jimmy Jones, who you may or may not recognize from several previous posts. If his camo clothes or dark eye shadow don't ring a bell, surely his cheeks stir up some sort of memory deep within your cranium.


…and this is the most popular guy in the whole house…disturbing...
We won't discuss how Jimmy, who has no job, came to own the house. There's no point in explaining that because I never cared enough to dream up an explanation. It is what it is (man, I love that excuse). The important thing is that Jimmy cares about others, and has opened his doors to all local sims in need of a home, provided they bring their own bed (or enough money to purchase one). One such sim currently living with Jimmy is Homie D. Klown, who was boarding at the Daniels home for a while, way back before Vyn was ever even adopted. Homey got the boot because Jack Daniels wasn't thrilled with the idea of having a clown in the house forever, and Jimmy was glad to take him in.


Homie: "Man, oh, man, this is some Grade 'A' comedy material!"
There is one resident of the house who remains an enigma to me. You see, nearly every one of the sims in the Monkeesims neighborhood was created for a reason, whether it was to help fill the needs of another sim or simply fulfill my desire to see a certain kind of sim created. Sim Jean Trevolto fits into none of those categories, really. I was really tired one morning, created him for no reason, then felt bad about getting rid of him, and moved him into this house. Don't ask me how feeling bad about getting rid of him sees eye to eye with the fact that there are roughly 28 mostly decorative tombstones in the neighborhood. It's a weird world.


Jean: "We'll toughen you up yet, clown!"
Don't get me wrong, I like all my sims, it's just that I like certain ones better than others (I feel I can say that, since I'm entitled to my bias, and they aren't really anyway). One variety of sim I have a special interest in in the neighborhood is the sims based on real life family and friends. In this case, it's Peter Miller, a sim based on one of my brothers. Now, if you really stretch that gray matter, you might recall Peter from the original Monkeesims. He was the one who started that whole mess with the evil house-burning cursed clown doll in "The Curse of Bozo". The real Pete didn't feel like designing a house for sim Pete to live in, so he got stuck in this house. Not intended to be a punishment really, but I can see why some would think it would be…


Pete's back, and still lovin' those clowns...
Peter is the only one of the Millers to have made the transition to the new neighborhood. Thank goodness for that, eh? I guess that's a matter of opinion. I haven't really missed the rest of them much to be honest. Well, Peter may have moved in without the rest of the original Miller family, but he has a very special friend in the house. No, it's not Homie. It's his freaky looking little dog, Bleu (who, incidentally, IS blue…genius!) Bleu has red eyes to go with his blue fur. Lucky for you, I wasn't able to get close enough to show them to you - I don't want to have to scare you so early in the day!


The stick is almost as buff as the dog is...
Now, Jimmy, the man of the house, is quite the social animal. He's friends with quite a few of my better known sims around town, and nobody else does the "Smustle" quite like he does. Well, as fun as visiting everyone on a purely social basis can be, Jimmy decided it was time for him to find a girl. Heck, I don't think a female has set foot in the Jones house since Jimmy first moved in. I don't have any really good shots of just the interior, but trust me, it's a decorator's nightmare. While he had nothing against making an effort to find a girl, Jimmy couldn't ignore the convenience of having one delivered to his door every few days in the form of Kerrie Bradshaw.


Kerrie: "Do I come here often? Sure…rain, or shine!"
The rest of the household didn't have such grand aspirations as Jimmy. Their favorite thing to do was sit around and watch TV all day long. Of course, there were occasional breaks to get up and pee and play that stupid game where they punch each other, but for the most part, it was TV all day long. I must confess I find some of those sim shows funny to watch, but hour after hour of the same show? You'll note that there's not even a little blue meter above anyone's head, so they're not even watching anything educational. SOMEONE in this house needs to learn to cook…


Peter: "Alright, I'm serious…who let one?!"
I think maybe Jimmy was hoping that if he could get Kerrie to stick around, maybe she already knew how to cook and would take care of that problem. Well, I can tell you she does know how, but Jimmy didn't have any way of knowing that for sure. He did know one thing, though, and that was that he's not possessed of a lot of natural charm, and needed a little help hitting on Kerrie. We all know what that means - the gypsy matchmaker (I think she's getting more exposure in these most recent posts than a lot of my "primary" families).


Matchmaker: "In addition to being irresistible, you will glow in the dark for several hours!"
Man, those love potions have really made me lazy when it comes to the amount of effort I have my sims put in to wooing each other. If I see a match I think is meant to be (which by the way, I have no such strong feelings about Jimmy and Kerrie), the love potion is almost always a must. No wonder so many local sim relationships fizzle afterward. Jimmy wasn't taking any chances though. Eventually, Kerrie did take off to go finish delivering the mail, but when Jimmy called her up five minutes later, she came right on back…and her mail bag still looks nearly full…this was of no concern to Jimmy, though. He was engrossed in working his hypnotic love spell.


Jimmy: "Look into my cheeks…er…I mean eyes!"
Well, the love potion isn't always a sure-fire success story waiting to happen, and even with its help, it was taking forever for Jimmy to woo Kerrie. She wasn't responding negatively to their interactions, it's just that I could easily have watched all of the parts worth watching from the entire Star Wars prequel trilogy in the time that it took them just to become friends (in other words, about 45 minutes). Now, I'm not sure how much of a success factor environment around the house is, but it can't help much that not all of the walls in the house even have a covering of any sort. Sure, I know that in real life, houses go through phases of gradual construction, but this ain't real life!


Kerrie: "Oh, Jimmy…this is the ugliest bathroom ever!"
Time was running short, and Kerrie agreed to stay overnight so as not to cut the smashing time she was having any shorter than she had to. The family decided to throw a party to show Kerrie they knew how to have fun, and what a party it was! First off, they didn't invite any outside guests. Second, they all just sat at or around the dinky table in the kitchen. There was food, but it was just one lousy TV dinner Jean Trevolto was eating, and he didn't even share! Everyone chatted for a little bit. Then Jimmy just sat there, thinking about Kerrie. Homie thought about Jean Trevolto. Kerrie thought about climbing out that window in the bathroom before it was too late, but she was momentarily occupied with a drink.


Never before has a party with a clown present sucked so badly...
After the party was over (which didn't take long, because it never really began), folks went back to doing their own boring things. I don't have a picture of it, but I can almost guarantee you that Homie, Jean, and Peter all went back to watching non-educational programming on the TV. Jimmy went into the bedroom, but somehow wasn't tired enough to merit the ability to sleep yet. Kerrie was stuck sleeping on his bed, but as you can see, there wasn't a whole lot of sleeping going on. There wasn't a whole lot of ANYTHING going on. Come on, guys…at least daydream or something…this blows…


You can't see it, but the mail bag is still there…mail undelivered...
Well, everyone basically decided the evening was sucking, and that they should do something a little more exciting, at least while there was a guest present. Kerrie must have gotten bored with her repeated exposure to the love potion, because her attraction to Jimmy seemed pretty minimal at best (some might call it a mercy visit). Of course, anything is better than Kerrie's date with Leon that lasted for like five minutes in the "Revenge of Tommy Wolf" post. At any rate, the gang wound up doing the same darn thing every family in the neighborhood winds up doing…going to "Marty's". New family, same old story. I can't help it if that's where all the "cool" sims hang out.


Kerrie: "Nobody does disco quite like Jean Trevolto!"
Hmmm…well, that's fun. You'll be glad to know I don't plan to expose readers to repeat visits to the Jones home. There are certain sims placed in their world solely for the purpose of playing the role of visitor or party guest, and the Jones family is a perfect example (and when was the last time you heard from the James family?) Coming up next, we're going to drop in on the Andrews family for several posts in a row and see just what's going on with them. They've been quiet for a while, which usually means they've been up to no good.

By the way, I'm pleased to announce the return of J.D. and Julie Wilson, house mates once again with Marty and Kitty Wilson. It will be a while before we get there, but at least you know it's coming. See you later!