Monkey! Monkey! Monkey! 'A while back I read an interview with a birthday clown -- you know, one of those guys who gets hired to entertain a bunch of yard apes at a seven year-old's shindig? And the interviewer asked, like, "What if you're dying out there? What if the kids are hating it?" And the subject, the interviewee-guy (I honestly have no recollection who this clown was or why I was reading this interview) said, in a pinch, he could always resort to a Funny Word. When pressed for clarification, the clown revealed a fascinating (to me) trick of the birthday clown trade: apparently every year there are two or three Funny Words, which invariably crack kids up, and when things are going sour you can just blurt one out and bring the house down. But you gotta keep up-to-date, because the Funny Words mysteriously change over time, so while "booger" might have killed in 1998, 2004 demands nothing less than a "monkey."'