None of Your Business

No, wait…don't leave! This post IS your business, it's just a witty title based on the content of the entry. Whew, that was close! So anyway, yesterday was interesting. I'd been sitting at work thinking I wished I had ANY excuse to go home early, when my older brother emailed me and told me he was driving an hour to the town where I live because my parents' house had a bad leak and the roof needed patching. So anyway, I went ahead and left early, and spent the afternoon on the roof helping re-shingle, then cleaned the rain gutters out (it's been storming constantly out here, and we figured we might as well do it while we were up there). Got my hands and clothes filthy, but it was nice, because I probably couldn't get dirty if I tried at my actual job, and it's just not normal. I'm a manual labor kind of guy at heart, I just can't find a job with better pay in the area (if you've forgotten, I sit at a computer all day long now).

Well, the big news on Monkeesims last time was that Katrina Wilson turned up pregnant, and opted not to share with the rest of the family who the father was. The actual reason for her refusal wasn't made clear, but in the end, nobody but Katrina had any clue who the baby was going to be calling "daddy" once it popped out. Well, when we begin our post today, we find our sims no closer to solving that particular mystery (there wasn't a whole lot to go on, mind you). However, there's something I noticed I found rather mysterious. While playing the Wilson house, Katrina was on maternity leave from her job at Radio Shock, and wasn't required to go to work. However, when I visited the actual Radio Shock lot as anyone but the Katrina's family...


Mia Kay: "Was I the only one who heard her say you didn't have to come in?"
Yes, despite the whole pregnancy thing, Katrina was always at Radio Shock unless someone sent her home. That either shows great dedication or great stupidity. Actually, though, Katrina got tired and crabby quicker than usual, and Amy or Clarence just wound up sending her home super early. The timing was good, though, because Amy had C-3PO and Dot Matrix to put to work if needed, and they actually had some register experience from the moment they were activated. With their minimal and easy to fill needs, it was almost too tempting for Amy to want to send home all her human employees and just put the servos to work, but she didn't want to have to give the Wilsons the boot like she had the other four original Radio Shock employees…


Jesse: "Hey, stranger…lookin' good!"
Well, speaking of Radio Shock, it got yet another face lift since the last time we really looked closely at it (which wasn't all that long ago). For starters, Amy decided the place needed an even darker blue carpet, and the ugly white walls had to go, replaced by the ultra cool "moonscape" wallpaper. The biggest change though was the inclusion of non-robot electronics like remote control cars, game consoles, computers, stereos, etc. On the other side of the store, Amy started stocking the whole line of toys from the toy crafting bench. The little brick face guys were such a big seller, it seemed silly to fight it. The biggest seller still was the ever popular servo, although it took so long to make them that Amy was only able to sell about two a day (thank goodness most of them sold to random townie sims, otherwise there would be an army of servos walking the streets).


Is it a store, or a night club? No need to decide!
The new look of the store really seemed to boost sales, I'm assuming because the extra decorations put customers in better moods (there were always a few folks who were just never happy, but Amy usually gave them the boot so they wouldn't ruin her business score). It was a slow process, but day by day, the huge amount of money Amy spent getting the business off the ground was finding its way back into her pockets. So how were things at home for the Andrews clan? Well, nothing terribly exciting was happening usually. Things had generally been pretty quiet around the house since Aiden moved out, and that was a long, long time ago (quiet if you don't take into account the whole Captain Hero thing). Amy did make an incredible discovery one day while fishing at the pond behind the house…


Presenting the legendary…Golden Trout!
The golden trout almost eluded my gaze, at first I thought it was a regular trout, till I checked Amy's inventory. Then the trout accidentally got set on the floor somewhere, and couldn't be found, then the penguin marched in the door and was heading right for it, but at the last moment, it was found and properly mounted on the wall. As exciting as catching the trout was, there didn't seem to be any special "powers" associated with it. It was worth about $500 to sell, but when you have as much money as Amy and Clarence, it's better to keep stuff like that as a status symbol (if a golden fish can really symbolize your status). Meanwhile, Clarence was finding his own kind of excitement. Amy had brought home a sample of an "evil" clown-in-a-box, to prevent it from being sold at the store. Clarence found it, and proceeded to turn the crank, unaware of the danger…


Clarence: "Ha, ha! I believe I just peed myself!"
It appeared that since Clarence has no "niceness" points left after being a werewolf so long, he actually found the evil boxed clown to be funny. I guess somebody has to. Why Amy would want to leave such a dangerous device just sitting around is beyond me, although she probably figured Clarence was too old to be interested in a clown-in-a-box (which again, makes no sense, since he's not too old to jump in the bath tub and start playing pirate). Besides playing with evil toy clowns and being Mayor (oddly enough, at this point, he hadn't been home enough since his last promotion to actually go in to work as Mayor), Clarence tried to busy himself with finishing up some of Buddy's training. He'd done a little bit of it himself, and had the weird pet trainer lady do a great deal more. He decided to call her up again and see if she couldn't teach Buddy the last few commands he had yet to learn, and again, she displayed weird behavior. Last time it was eating rotten food. This time, it was coming over, ignoring Buddy, and taking a bath…


Clarence: "She'd better at least be teaching Buddy how to bathe..."
Yes, the pet trainer is one of the most valuable and at the same time, most worthless services in town. Half the time she does a fine job of performing the boring tasks of pet training, while the other half of the time she spends eating rotten food, bathing in other peoples' tubs, and hanging around their houses doing nothing remotely related to training pets for hours on end (although, she ranks pretty highly as "skill vacuum fodder", right up there with the gypsy matchmaker). Eventually, the big day came for Clarence not to call of work and actually go in to perform his duties as Mayor. He sat around watching the TV in the living room waiting for a limo to pull up, and nearly peed himself when a helicopter tried to land itself on the street in front of the house.


Amy: "That has got to be violating SOME sort of traffic law!"
I'm sure most people who've played the game for any length of time have seen the chopper before, but up to this point, I'd only managed to reach the top of careers that had buses or limos or something strange like sims flying off into the sky, so I found the chopper to be quite cool. Well, meanwhile, back at Pimp Harbor, our old pal, Moon Dawg, was feeling the call of his inner entrepreneur. Remember back in the days of the old Jackson house when Moon Dawg had his gnome stand out in the front yard, and supported the family through the sale of gnomes? Well, despite getting busted for his unreported income, he never quite lost his love of selling gnomes. Once the Bluewater Village business district opened up, Moon Dawg's destiny became clear…


Moon Dawg: "We're gonna' do it right this time, mon!"
Sure, Moon Dawg could have just set up some shelves on the sidewalk outside Pimp Harbor, but he wasn't taking any chances with his business not being "legit". And so, in no time, he'd purchases a nice pink building in Bluewater Village, and dubbed the place "Gnomes n' Domes". The "gnomes" part probably makes sense, but the "domes" part you may find a little confusing. You see, Moon Dawg decided early on it wouldn't take an army of people to keep gnomes the shelves or run the register, and decided to incorporate a hair salon into the place as well. Do any of the family have any styling experience to speak of? Not really, but the combination of a gnome store/hair salon seemed too obvious not to try. Moon Dawg placed Leon in charge of the hair chair, since he had nothing better to do, and kind of sort of looked like a stylist.


Leon: "I just don't think there's enough pink in this place, man!"
Although Moon Dawg did hire some local sims to run the register and manage the salon chair, he decided to take the inexpensive route and have Leon and Keri run those things as often as possible (ie. when I was actually playing the lot as a business). Keri was awful at the register at first, as you might suspect, but got better over time. Moon Dawg handled the shelf stocking and customer relations, and business picked up very quickly - he just couldn't keep the shelves full of gnomes at the rate folks were buying them (hard to believe, I know). Apparently, there isn't a lot of talent needed to be a stylist at the most basic level, because Leon was able to deliver a decent number of makeovers without complaint. He did manage to give Clarence Andrews a makeup job from hell that made him look like a cross between a clown and a transvestite, but everyone else seemed fairly pleased with the results.


Leon: "How about I give you the old Leon Jackson fro, bro?"
I'd hoped originally that the chair could be used to edit the look of the local sims, but that option never became available while Leon was doing the styling. He was making money doing it, though, and that was really the important thing. It wasn't long before everyone in town was carrying multiple gnomes in their personal inventory, made possible by Moon Dawg's love and dedication to the yard gnome industry. Yes, business was booming, so much so that I snapped like a thousand pictures of the place in action, but luckily, I'm not going to subject you to all of them. When Moon Dawg, Keri, and Leon returned home, they found a most unexpected visitor waiting outside the boat…


A blast from the not so distant past...
It was none other than Leon and Moon Dawg's former room mate, Steve Jackson. Now, Steve and Leon started out as friends, but if you'll recall, Steve got married to Doris Somebody from Studio Town after a magic potion caused the two to fall in love. Later on, however, Leon drank the same potion, causing he and Doris to fall in love as well, which lead to a bit of an awkward situation, to say the least. Steve took it pretty hard, and turned to drinking potions from his chemistry set for comfort, died in a barbecue fire, then came back as a zombie. After the smoke had cleared, he and Leon weren't exactly the best of pals. However, it seems whatever magic the potion Steve used to hook up with Doris may have had was short lived, and since we last saw him, Doris ditched Steve in favor of her career. It didn't take Steve long to figure out where Leon had gone, and knowing full well that they'd parted on less than impressive terms, he came bearing gifts…


Leon: "Man, that better not be the old genie lamp!"
Well, whatever may have transpired between Steve and Leon back in the old days, the Jackson family is nothing if not easy going. And so, Leon was more than happy to welcome yet another person aboard his already fairly crowded ship (hasn't he learned his lesson since Debbie took off because of the overcrowding thing?) It should be noted Steve's last name is Johnston, now that he's free of the limitations of TS1 forcing all family members to have the same last name. Anyway, the question of where the heck Steve was going to stay on the boat was put aside for the time being, because it was time to party! It's a little ironic if you think about it - last time these three were living together, Steve was married and Leon and Moon Dawg were single. Now, it's the exact opposite situation.


Leon: "I see your dancing skills haven't improved at all!"
Well, for better or for worse, the original "Jackson 3" were back together, making a total of six people living on the Love Boat (people in the loosest sense of the word, since Moon Unit is technically an alien.) Leon briefly considered letting Steve stay in the recliner in the kitchen on the upper deck, but since that didn't work out so well with Moon Dawg, that plan was quickly shelved. At the same time, there wasn't really room on the lower deck to put another bed without getting rid of the poker table or bowling alley, and nobody was willing to part with those things. In the end, there was only one logical solution - a dock was constructed at the edge of the harbor, and a little shack was constructed, similar to the one Moon Dawg had lived in when he first moved to the boat. Not having it on the deck made it a little more convenient. Steve seemed to be okay with the whole arrangement.


Steve: "It's not the Hilton, but it will do the trick..."
So there we go with another of the "old neighborhood" folks finding their way to town. It could have been worse…it could have been Kevin Wilson bringing his boring life back for everyone to enjoy (my apologies in case there's a Kevin Wilson fan out there, but I seriously doubt there is). Of course, I'm not guaranteeing Steve's life in his little wooden shack out on the dock is going to be a huge hoot and holler, but in the world of Monkeesims, nothing is for certain. Well, we're checking in on the Katrina/Mia Kay/Antonio Wilson family again in our next post. Will Antonio and Aimee be any closer to actually getting hitched? Will the mystery of Katrina's baby's father be any closer to being solved? Well, if you want to know so badly, you'll just have to check in next time!