by: -RoG-

Bicycle safety is something that resonates with me a bit more than most safety subjects because I was actually in a bike riding accident when I was a kid. I had just removed the training wheels from my bike before most of the other kids my age and thought I was the cat's pajamas at the time. Naturally, since I just removed my training wheels, I felt that I was qualified to bomb down the steepest hill in the entire neighborhood. At first, all was going well... sure, I was probably breaking a land-speed record, but I was maintaining control of my bike with no problems whatsoever. Unfortunately, when a friend who was at the top of the hill called out to me, I turned my head around to look back and respond to him as I continued down the hill. Before he could even shout at me to "look out!" I ran my bike headfirst into a truck. All I remember from it was being completely stunned and not knowing what the hell just happened, but perhaps that's because when my face impacted with the truck, my front teeth literally got shoved back up into the gums. As a result, I had to go through some major dental surgery as a kid and was on a first name basis with a plethora of dentists and orthodontists.

So yeah, I learned about bicycle safety the hard way as a kid. That being said, I'm not sure any cycling safety films would've done much to help prevent that accident from happening. Case in point: "One Got Fat". It's an old bicycle safety film from way back in 1963 that will blow your mind. It's not so much a film that teachers you the dangers of cycling recklessly, but a film that teaches you the dangers of taking hallucinogens before creating a safety film for children. Now let's take a look at just why watching this film is a lot like sticking your brain in between the spokes of a spinning bike wheel.

It starts off with 10 kids who are all friends and own bikes that they supposedly treat the same way that they treat themselves. Oh, and the kids apparently have twisty tails sticking out of their asses... more on that in a minute.

On this particular day, the kids all huddled together and decided that they wanted to throw a picnic in the park which is 9 blocks away. So, each of them ran home and packed a lunch and made sure to write his or her name on the bags so as to avoid any confusion. And what names they are, just look at those bags! With names like "Rooty", "Floog", "Tink" and "Slim", you know this is a group of real winners in life. The only thing they didn't win was the parent lottery.

So one of the ten kids, Orville Slump, had a basket on the back of his bike and this makes the fat kid (Slim) ask him to carry it, or as the narrator so elegantly puts it, "Slim knew that his big sack would be hard to handle..." Soon after, all of the kids wanted Orville to carry their lunches in his basket, and while he agrees to carry them, I don't see how the hell those lunches are gonna stay put without being tied down. I guess we'll just have to suspend our disbelief and assume Orville rides his bike so gently that you'd think he was floating. I should also note, as the bags appear one by one in the basket, if you look closely you'll notice that Tink has two bags that appear in it. You call it a blooper, I call it... SCANDAL!

But what about those twisted tails sticking out of their asses? Well, you see, here's the thing...

THE "KIDS" ARE GODDAMNED MONKEYS!!!

That's right, this is an educational safety film in which they have kids wearing horribly creepy paper-maché monkey masks showing you how to ride a bike properly. I couldn't make this shit up if I tried. And maybe I'm going out on a limb here, but isn't wearing a mask while riding a bike a huge safety hazard since a mask significantly decreases your field of vision? Way to start things off by giving a good first impression there, geniuses. Oh and I'm sure you only count 9 monkeys in that picture, but there's a good reason they left the tenth one out, which you'll learn about a little later on. Onward to our first preceptorial primate!

Meet Rooty "Toot" Jasperson, he's got the newest bike out of all them and according to the narrator Rooty seems like a "slam-bang go-getter headed for big things in life." Why, because he's got a new bike that he far too proud of? Sounds like he's more of a jerk than anything. Apparently he didn't have time to make the proper signals while riding his bike just once. And the one time he didn't make a hand signal, a car crashed directly into him.

Get used to seeing that cartoonish accident animation that looks like it came straight out of the old Adam West "Batman" TV show, because any time one of these monkeys gets in an accident, they display it followed by a shot of their lunch bag. Yes indeed, Rooty "Toot" Jasperson was no longer a part of the group. I wonder who's gonna get to each his lunch?

This pretty primate is Tinkerbell McDillingfitty. She has a poor memory and sometimes forgets to watch the traffic signs when her thoughts start to wander. As a result, she ignores a stop sign and gets crushed by a big truck.

KAPOW! I guess the lesson here is, if you have a bad memory, you shouldn't ride a bike? That's a new one to me. Well, either way, we'll miss ya, Tink!

This is Phillip Floogal. He's a star athlete, class president and is the most handsome kid in school (at least that's what our narrator seems to think). I've seen a lot of portrayals of the most popular/successful/handsome kid in school in films, but I can't think of any other time where he was depicted as a monkey with a giant yellow feather in his cap. Oh how the popular styles have changes since the early 60's.

Anyway, Floog's character flaw is that he gets easily bored, so he decides to ride against the flow of traffic. Sure enough, a car suddenly pulls out of a parked spot on the road and the Floogster smashes right into it. What's really great is that you get to see his bulging eyes pop-out of his mask for a split second before he makes contact with the car.

The narrator states that Phillip Floogal is no longer bored, but I'd venture to guess that he's no longer handsome either now that his face is infused with the front of a car. Adios Floog!

Early in the film you notice that one of the monkeys is running on foot beside his bicycling pals. His name is Mossby Pomegranate and he never registered his bike and got a license for it. So last week when he was rehearsing for the lead in King Kong (har har!), somebody stole his bike. He went to the police to report it, but they couldn't find it because he never registered it. Ok, perhaps it's because I'm not a cyclist, but I don't know any kid that gets a license for his bicycle or even registers it anywhere these days. The fact is, Pee-Wee's Big Adventure taught us all one very important lesson: if somebody steals your bike, the police won't help at all... it's up to you to find it yourself!

No, Mossby doesn't get hit by a car while running in the streets, he simply gets exhausted from running and when he takes off his shoes, he notices that they're smoking. Hey, you may be without a bike and a lunch, but at least you're not dead Mossby. Hold your hairy head up high!

Next up, we've got two people riding on the same bike. The one doing all the work is Trigby Phipps, and his passenger on the front of the bike is "Slim" Jim McDoughney. Now here is where the narrator actually gets blatantly mean: "Slim Jim's bike recently collapsed from the effects of his diet." Look, it's obvious that Jim is the overweight one, and it's hilarious that you gave him the nickname "Slim" 'n all, but there is no way in hell that his bike "collapsed" due to his body weight. Unless his bicycle was made of tinfoil and wishes, I'm pretty fucking sure it could hold the weight of one kid. Hell, Brand in from The Goonies rode that little girl's bike and he probably weighed 3 times what Slim Jim here weighs.

As if that's not bad enough, the narrator then forms a sentence improperly when he says, "Trigby, being a nice little fellow, agreed to ride him." Shouldn't he be saying "Trigby, being a nice little fellow, agreed to give him a ride" instead? Between thinking Floog was extremely handsome to trying to put visuals of these two "riding" each other, I think the narrator has some subconscious sexual issues that need to be addressed.

Well anyway, as a result of Slim "BIKE CRUSHER" Jim riding on the handlebars, Trigby is unable to see where he's going. Sure, Slim waves his arms frantically for a good 20 seconds in advance of reaching the open manhole in the middle of the street, but it still doesn't seem to register with Trigby in time. I guess Trig needs a solid minute of advance warning before he can mentally process how to alter his cycling course.

After their lengthy plummet into the sewers and some godawful horrified monkey sound effects, we learn that you should always ride alone on a bike. But hey, screw that right? If you've got foot pegs and a friend needs a lift, give him a ride... or better yet, make HIM do all the peddling if he wants the ride so damned much!

This feisty dame is Nelly Swybach, and she doesn't like having other monkeys crowding her space when riding on a bike. She dislikes it so much that she actually shakes her fist in the air at them and then decides to go riding on the sidewalk. Kinda makes you wonder why they hangout with her to begin with eh? Well, sure enough, she doesn't know that you're supposed to yield to pedestrians when riding on the sidewalk - if it's even allowed in your city.

As a result, she crashes right into these two ladies who were walking home with some groceries. Through the director's trickery of playing the film in reverse, we see the two old ladies get jettisoned up into a nearby tree.

Nelly, however, wasn't saved by the director's trick photography. Maybe she can angrily shake her fists at the heavens for making her so blind to pedestrians.

This guy goes by the name Filbert Bagel (at least, I think he said "bagel") and he's too spoiled and lazy to take care of his old bike. It's in dire need of a tune up, as evidenced by the annoying and unnecessarily loud squeaky sounds, but he's just going to wait it out until his parents buy him a new one. Unfortunately for him, he's neglected his bike for so long that there aren't any brakes left. But here's where it gets insane...

Since we've already had some collisions with cars, they decided to up the ante this time by introducing a steamroller to the equation. That's right... those of you who are bad at obeying bicycling rules now have steamrollers to fear as well!

With his brakes failing him, Filbert succumbs to the steamroller and becomes a primate pancake, even though you and I know damned well that ANYBODY could dodge a steamroller... faulty brakes or not. Yes, even a monkey could get out of the way in time.

The monkey boy with the tongue sticking out is Stanerslaw Higginbottom. His story ends abruptly because he rides directly into a tunnel without lights or reflectors on his bike.

Of course, the cars in the tunnel apparently don't have any lights on either because it's pitch black in there when he gets smashed. I guess this one was a lesson for both bike riders and car drivers alike.

That leaves us with the tenth and final character, but wait! He's not wearing a monkey mask! What gives? Don't worry, the answer is coming soon. But first off, now we learn where the title "One Got Fat" came from. It's because Orville, the kid who was transporting all the lunches to the picnic was the only one who actually made it there. As a result, he's got a lot of lunches to eat.

I think they're missing one big point here though... Orville is going to get fat now, right? Won't that cause him to crush his own bike with his whale-like weight just like Slim supposedly did? Maybe Orville needs a lesson in dietary control. Just because you have ten lunches doesn't mean you need to eat ten lunches.

As you can see, Orville followed all the rules of bicycling safety by registering for a license, always making the proper hand gestures while on the road and keeping his bike tuned up. Hence the reason he's in perfectly healthy shape and the others are dead, stranded or hospitalized...

Keep in mind, all of these accidents happened during a simple 9-block bike ride to the park... I guess this means they live in some kind of monkey torture death zone neighborhood? They also found a way to have the monkey kids cover their eyes and mouths before the accidents, but never managed to get them to cover their ears. Come on! That was a perfect chance to complete the "see/speak/hear no evil" trifecta and they totally blew it! Just have a monkey on a bike ride past a loud outdoor rock concert or something and when he covers his ears, it causes him to lose control of his bike. Then they could say, "and that's why you should always keep your hands on the handlebars!" for that particular lesson. Oh, and since we don't have an extra monkey for that scene, I'd suggest bringing in a new monkey and since it was my idea, I get to name him. I'd say it's a toss up between "Horace Winterfield" and "Peanuckle McGillicutty" at the moment.

Believe it or not, the ENTIRE reason that the writer had these kids dressed as monkeys was so he could make a single joke at the end of the film: "As anyone can plainly see, he isn't a monkey, right?" AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! MY GOD THAT WAS SO WORTH THE FIFTEEN MINUTE BUILD-UP! WHAT A PAYOFF! HOLY SHIT, WHAT A CLIFFHANGER!!!! I'M GOING TO SHUT THIS SITE DOWN RIGHT NOW BECAUSE I'LL NEVER ACHIEVE THAT LEVEL OF NARRATIVE CRAFTSMANSHIP!

He may not be a monkey, but he's clearly an asshole. He left his stranded, injured and dead friends behind all so that he could eat their lunches? I hope you choke on one of their bananas and die a slow, lonely death, Orville. You should be in the hospital with your friends that are still alive, feeding them their lunches through a straw, you greedy bastard. By the way... carrying such a large unstable load on the back of your bike which could easily fall off and cause people behind you to get in an accident? That's not practicing bicycle safety either, brainiac.

When you think about it though, all the monkeys in this film were assholes, not just Orville. After all, not one of them stopped for their friends when they got in an accident. They just kept on riding! NOTHING was going to stop these monkeys from getting to their picnic, not even the death of a fellow primate! Honestly, I think bicycle safety was the last thing these monkeys needed to be concerned about. This world is better off without asshole monkeys who care nothing for their fellow simians. Perhaps that is the real lesson we've all learned here today.

Have any questions or comments about this piece?
Email -RoG-

For your viewing pleasure, here's One Got Fat in its entirety!