Around the Town #150

Whew…what do you get when you spend all weekend and two days of the week doing nothing but packing or hauling stuff around? Tired, that's what you get, and that's what I am. Alas, I'm not so tired that I couldn't find the energy to hammer out this, or 150th Monkeesims post! Quite the accomplishment, since I'd only posted 70 some times when I thought this blog was done for the first time. It seems like the Captain Hero #100 post was just yesterday, my, how time flies! I hate to waste any more time griping about how bad the weather is or how overworked I am when we could just get on to the good stuff, so...

Anyway, here we go with another exciting (hopefully) visit to the Monkeesim neighborhood, and since I'm an equal opportunity blogger, we'll be checking in on a few of the less visited individuals. If you think way back, you'll probably recall the days when the neighborhood had an evil organization called C.U.S.S. (Criminal Underground Secret Service) operating behind the scenes, devoted to creating chaos and mayhem (which I'm pretty sure are the same thing). C.U.S.S. had been slowly falling apart, and after Lawrence Madrox of the most recent team was killed, Reeve Madrox was the last C.U.S.S. agent in town, and not even a very good one. Reeve's boss, Falco, came to town to keep an eye on him and make sure he was up to no good. In the end, love proved to be stronger than the bond between Falco and his underling Reeve.


Reeve: "You are most fortunate to have found me, my darling!"
Yes, Reeve fell in love with Leon Jackson's ex, Claire Redmond, and the two were quickly wed. Rather than try to sway Claire to follow his former evil ways, Reeve decided he preferred to join the side of good, and C.U.S.S. was officially dissolved. As for Falco (last we saw, he was locked in a greenhouse prison), he was sent packing in a taxi, doomed to live out the rest of his days in the dreaded "family queue", where he could do no harm to Claire or Reeve. So what does a recently married former C.U.S.S. member do for fun without evil deeds to occupy his time? Well, that was indeed the question needing to be answered. The couple decided to head down to the Freetime Lounge, mainly because it hasn't been featured in a post for quite some. Notice the presence of my sim likeness watching TV and wearing a scarf indoors.


Reeve: "If you find this to be boring, I can always perform for you on my violin at home instead."
Being out in such a public place, there was some potential for an awkward situation, with Claire having ended her last two relationships so abruptly and less than gracefully. It was the two Leons she really didn't want to see, although Leon Hartman was the guilty party in their breakup, and Leon Jackson's failure to tell Claire about his ex, Debbie, resulted in the end of their relationship. Still, nobody likes an ex, even if they claim they do, and Claire was in no rush to see hers. She needn't have worried, though, as Reeve was more than up to the challenge of kicking some butt if anyone hassled Claire, but no Leons appeared, and there was no butt kicking, just karaoke.


Reeve: "What do you say we do a duet of 'Back in Black'?"
Being out in public was a weird experience for Reeve and Claire, partly because they never really get out of the house, and partly because they don't have any friends as a result of being such home bodies. Despite how busy the lounge was during their visit, nobody really paid much attention to the pair, it was sort of like they were invisible (perhaps folks recognized Reeve as a former C.U.S.S. agent and still assumed the worst of him). It didn't bother Reeve and Claire any, though, they'd become one of those sickening couples who were so happy with each others company they just didn't need anybody else (no offense to that kind of couple). That, and they had some stuff they wanted to discuss in private.


Claire: "I know you're trying to be good, but just think of all the money we'd have if you pulled a bank job!"
Those little grapefruit looking things with the cream blob on the plates in the picture there look disgusting, by the way. Anyhow, I have considered on occasion, since Reeve and Claire got together, having the couple start up C.U.S.S. again to reintroduce that "bad element" into the neighborhood, but really, there's enough bad stuff as it is I've come to realize. There's the non-C.U.S.S. "Justin the Jerk", sims getting into stupid fights with one another for no good reason, fires, illness...do I really need to go on? The idea of having an organization to start trouble or dispose of annoying sims just seems unnecessary, especially with an escaped gorilla on the loose twisting peoples' heads around backward, like poor Jean Trevolto.


Jean: "Hey, since when did my @$$ get so big?"
Okay, well, that was just a little weird there, but there is no gorilla in TS2 obviously…not yet anyway (there is Bigfoot, but I don't have that expansion, and he doesn't twist peoples' heads around last time I checked). Anyway, there would be no more C.U.S.S. for our happy couple, Reeve decided to let fate (and me) be in charge of any bad fortune bestowed in the Monkeesim neighborhood. Reeve decided he and Claire's outing just wouldn't be complete without a visit to the cemetery to mourn the loss of his old pal, Lawrence. Claire didn't know Lawrence, but she did take time to acknowledge the irony of the fact that the first C.U.S.S. "accident" victim, Jenna Boyle, was herself a doer of evil deeds. Guess there's just no loyalty among evil doers.


Reeve: "You were indeed a most excellent bro, bro..."
Fun, fun times. Maybe not some (or most) peoples' idea of fun but whatever. With the decision to spend their lives like normal people and avoid unnecessary trouble, at least we know the Madrox family won't wind up being the victims of a weather machine "accident" any time soon. Speaking of such an accident, we now turn our attention to none other than Mia Kay Wilson, the very sim who caused the death of Reeve's good buddy, Lawrence (in her defense, Lawrence was being an obnoxious scoundrel before she "offed" him). We won't worry about interrupting anything important with Mia Kay, because if there's one thing we've learned from all the times we've observed her, it's that she never does anything important…


Mia Kay: "I'm so sick of losing to myself at cards!"
Mia Kay has begun to experience some frustration recently. She'd been pulling a lot of "fifth wheel" duty when Antonio and Aimee still lived in the house and Leon moved in to be with Katrina. It never bugged her all that much initially, but when Aimee and Antonio moved out, and Katrina and Leon spent all their time together, that left only Seth for Mia Kay to hang out with, and he wasn't exactly the greatest conversationalist. She has friends and family in town, but she was starting to feel the bite of the romance bug, and as far as she could tell, all the good guys in Riverblossom Hills, Downtown, or in Bluewater Village were taken. I'm not joking. She decided to take a chance, though, and a change of clothes later, she was haunting Schroeder's Jam Land, where Katrina met Leon…


Mia Kay: "I thought someone told me once that blondes were supposed to have more fun!"
Well, sitting at the bar with the female bartender, a clown, and homely guy in a track suit wasn't doing much of anything for Mia Kay. Track suits are kind of ugly, Mia Kay's not into clowns, and while she was starting to become desperate for love, she wasn't to the point of hitting on women yet. Luckily, Schroeder's was designed to cater to all types of people, and there was a second bar with a male bartender, none other than Rooster Fitch. Rooster isn't exactly the pick of the litter when it comes to guys, but again, Mia Kay was otherwise surrounded by Armando Cox and one of the female Hartman plant sims, so her options just weren't that great. Schroeder Fultz happened to be making the rounds behind the bar, though and he thought Mia Kay was just dandy.


Schroeder: "Hey, babe, you wanna' make out?"
It just so happens that this is the very side of Schroeder's Jam Land where Katrina and Leon first met, and there must be some sort of magic behind that. Schroeder decided the business of managing his establishment could be put on hold for a bit while he chatted with Mia Kay for a while. Now, when it comes to sim adults, the game itself doesn't differentiate between sims who have been adults for a while and recent adults, but Schroeder would be one of the former, as I'd envisioned him to be in his early 40's when I created him. Meanwhile, Mia Kay would be closer to her early 20's, making Schroeder old enough to be her father, but the age thing didn't seem to bug them too much (like I said, the game doesn't care what age I envisioned them being, as long as they get along, which they were).


Mia Kay: "The only thing better than hugging it out with someone is when everyone stares at you while you do it!"
Yes, if there's one thing that Katrina and Mia Kay have in common, it's that they both move quickly in the guy department. That, and they don't have any problem with getting all "handsy" right out in public, as previous posts have shown (well, with Katrina, not so much with Mia Kay). If you think the pool of decent guys Mia Kay's age in town is starting to run dry, the pool of available women in Schroeder's age range is far, far worse. Heck, I don't think there ARE any single women that fit that classification. Thus, Schroeder had no problem with Mia Kay being younger than him, as if anyone really expected that he would. He also had no problem playing tonsil hockey with her right behind the bar while his patrons looked on.


Allyn: "If nobody's going to claim this drink, I'm taking it!"
Well, love can bloom in the strangest places. No wonder Mia Kay hadn't found her true love before, she'd always been browsing the selection of young men around town, she never thought "the one" might be a scruffy, biker vest wearing guy twice her age. Everything worked out just fine for the two of them, because Schroeder had pretty much given up looking for love, I guess sometimes it just finds you. Anyway, everyone comes to Schroeder's, and the Daniels family is no exception. Next time, we'll see what sort of lunacy develops when the whole Daniels gang drops in looking for a good time. The weirdness is pretty much a built-in guarantee. See you then!