A Brandon refugee gives hip South Tampa primates something to look at and laugh at with MonkeyNerves.com.
By RICK GERSHMAN
Published May 28, 2004
[Times photo: Joseph Garnett Jr.]
When Colleen Yeatts isn’t updating MonkeyNerves.com, she can be found juggling fruit at home, roaming the South Tampa scene or, by day, logging hours as a business information analyst. At a recent party were, from left, Stuart Suls, Maria Duda, Randy Coppola and Candace Manno.
[Times photo: Chris Zuppa]
Colleen Yeatts, 32, began MonkeyNerves.com as a virtual photo album of her and friends hanging out. In the past year, she has added features of interest to others.
[Times photo: Joseph Garnett Jr.]
Stuart Suls and Randy Coppola, who write the MonkeyNerves column Tips for the Wingman, have in impromptu brainstorming session in Colleen Yeatts’ kitchen.
HYDE PARK - The term is "MonkeyNerves," and if it seems unfamiliar, that's fine. You won't find it in a dictionary.
You will find "monkey bread" and "monkey jacket," though neither turns out nearly as interesting as the names suggest. (The first is a fruit monkeys eat; the second, a short coat worn by sailors.)
Fact is, unless you're a truly devout fan of the sitcom Laverne & Shirley, you probably have no idea what a case of monkey nerves entails.
But you likely would suffer from the symptoms if you met MonkeyNerves.com creator Colleen Yeatts, who bursts with energy.
Yeatts claims the term "monkey nerves" is found in a couple of Laverne & Shirley episodes, defined as the sensation you get "when you're around someone who's kind of hyperspastic, and it makes them jumpy too." So it became the name for MonkeyNerves.com, a.k.a. "South Tampa's Satire Wire and Society Pages," which is about to hit its first anniversary.
The site, however, is largely sans simians.
"People think the site's about monkeys," said Yeatts, whose name rhymes with dates.
"I got four stuffed monkey dolls for my birthday, and I have quite the collection of monkey socks. If I could name the site again, I'd name it DiamondNerves."
South Tampa's Code Red
Yeatts, 32, works in downtown Tampa as a business information analyst at Syniverse Technologies, a communications technology company. She leads teams that compose requirements for the company's software systems and writes up the rules in layman's terms.
For fun, she takes pictures of friends and writes stories as Web master of MonkeyNerves.com. If we told you it is the place South Tampa social animals go to get the lowdown on the percolating parties, we'd be lying.
MonkeyNerves isn't quite there yet, and that's okay. It is what it is - very nice, very silly, very cool. It's a fun grass-roots Web site Yeatts crafted to communicate her love for hitting Hyde Park hot spots and other local haunts.
Yeatts started it to post hundreds of pictures of her and friends hanging out and having fun. Over time, she began adding features of interest to others, from humorous newsletter articles to links to charitable organizations.
Since Yeatts moved to Hyde Park from Brandon three years ago, she has become an ever-more regular presence at local festivities. With her red hair and blue eyes, she's reminiscent of a young, pretty Carol Burnett. We like to think of her as a well-shaken can of soda. Mountain Dew, specifically.
Code Red, of course.
Pizza premonitions
It's getting late on a recent Thursday, and Yeatts has the next day off. Not so for everyone else. Yet Yeatts' Hyde Park apartment remains full, populated largely by the people most often seen on the MonkeyNerves site. They're playing a heated game of Jenga.
Yes, Jenga: The game where you construct a little building and then pull out pieces until it crashes. Every time someone pulls out a piece, the building teeters, and a newspaper photographer fires a half-dozen times. But nothing falls, nothing crashes.
Turns out that's uncommon at a Yeatts soiree.
This night started with a concept: a "Mystic Pizza party." Yeatts ordered pizza, busted out the fortune cookies and even had a tarot card reader. Attendees watched the film Mystic Pizza but got a premonition the Tampa Bay Lightning was kicking butt on another channel and flipped over.
Back in the kitchen, MonkeyNerves contributors Randy Coppola and Stuart Suls a.k.a. Captain Randy and Captain Stu, brainstormed ideas for their MonkeyNerves column Tips for the Wingman. But they seemed to get stuck after the phrase "You've been winged, man," and repeated it exactly 2,784 times.
Meanwhile, one of Yeatts' best buddies, Kathy Loveridge, challenged a reporter to a Play-Doh sculpting contest. Loveridge crafted a mini Colleen Yeatts, who seemed to appreciate the perky clay cleavage.
And yes, this still was before the tequila shots. Not that there were many, basically because Yeatts' parties have been known to produce wanton destruction. Also, she has a tendency for doing spit-takes (for those not spit-take savvy, that's spraying liquid from your mouth when hearing a joke).
That can be dangerous with tequila.
And, for that matter, Play-Doh.
Not all monkeying around
MonkeyNerves or not, Yeatts is no party animal. She and her friends have fun, but they're all smart, upwardly mobile professionals. They're not going to turn up on Girls Gone Wild or a backyard wrestling DVD. At least not without negotiating a killer royalties arrangement.
Yeatts is the good kid, the baby, the youngest of four girls. All 30-something, Stacey is the oldest, followed by Amy, Stephanie and Colleen.
The family moved to Valrico when Yeatts was 14. She went to Bloomingdale High and Hillsborough Community College before transferring to the University of Central Florida in Orlando. She went to work for the company now called Syniverse, commuting from Brandon.
A Gasparilla aficionado, Yeatts is a member of the Krewe of Agustina de Aragon. Suls is one of Yeatts' closest friends and a regular MonkeyNerves contributor.
"Colleen really is a very down-to-earth, funny, nice person," he said. "She would do a favor for a friend in a heartbeat, and I love her sense of humor."
Even his parents love Yeatts' site, but for their own reasons. He said: "They figure if I only call home once a week, they have to find a way to know what I really do during the weekends."
The edge of Edge
Luckily for Suls and for Yeatts' other pals, they don't have to worry about showing up on MonkeyNerves.com in unflattering photos.
Yeatts will only post pictures if they're flattering. She has been known to occasionally dip into Adobe Photoshop for touchups.
Not everyone gets off so easily. Yeatts' friends are a hearty bunch, which is why you can see a picture on Yeatts' site of her buddy Mike Gwiazdowski next to a guy named Edge.
Born Adam Coleman, Edge is a World Wide Wrestling Entertainment star who resides in Tampa. Yeatts met the friendly, hulking, blond-ponytailed Adonis at a Cinco de Mayo celebration in the Channelside courtyard.
Gwiazdowski is a wrestling fan, and he angled for a picture. Edge pleasantly agreed. Yeatts was pumped, since she has a section on the site for "celebrity sightings" but never got any actual celebrity shots.
Instead, she settled for people who looked like celebrities, like the weird old guy you always see who looks like Steven Seagal, or that weird young woman you always see who looks like Clay Aiken.
But now, Yeatts had an actual star. She got her picture taken next to Edge and Gwiazdowski's pal Kevin Melchin. In another picture by Melchin, an eager Gwiazdowski stood next to Edge. Gwiazdowski's look: deer-in-headlights.
Edge's expression was harder to gauge. Or, for that matter, see.
To Gwiazdowski's eternal dismay, Edge got cut right in half.
Melchin, one gathers, had a nasty case of MonkeyNerves.
Or maybe too many Coronas. Heck, it was Cinco de Mayo.
Actually, it's Clown University
Many MonkeyNerves readers dig the parody bits, akin to the satirical newspaper/Web site The Onion. Yeatts' news bites appear on the irregularly updated "Our Gang Tribune" area.
The humor runs from cheesy to inspired, though Yeatts, ever politic, would rather undercut some better bits to protect the innocent.
She recently switched out close-to-real names for tacky pseudonyms in an otherwise seemingly innocuous bit. It concerned a friend who supposedly diagrammed his "Circle of Trust," leaving a co-worker orbiting outside: "I only have room in my life for three friends," he wrote, "and you're number four."
Elsewhere, Yeatts' peers write enthusiastically about her ventures into "topless dating" until they realize she was referring to dinner dates at tapas bars - "tapas dating."
Yeatts said writing the news items is the most time-intensive aspect of the site, which otherwise requires "maybe 10 minutes a day." So she sticks to live humor, such as the spit-take incident: It was at a party, when she claimed she was practicing her spit-takes for "clown college." So there she was, spitting all over.
Granted, she was outside on a deck. Someone's else's deck.
Clown college or no, Yeatts does not lack consideration for other people's property. Quite the opposite, she and her friends are far more intent at destroying Yeatts' stuff.
A porch light bit the dust when Yeatts twiddled with it before the Mystic Pizza party. (Not sure if the tarot reader saw that coming.)
But that was nothing.
Her buddy "Captain Stu" Suls recalled the party when "Big Larry" left the Yeatts hacienda on a beer run.
"We decided to hang out and entertain ourselves," Suls recalled.
About 15 of them huddled on Yeatts' bed and there was a terrible crash. Somehow, someone's foot had gone through the bedroom window. No one got hurt. Everyone got a little sheepish.
"But we still hung out for the beer," Suls said.
Minutes later, a deafening noise came from the dining room. A guest had attempted to sit on Yeatts' glass dining room table, causing it collapse and crash to the floor. As the table lay in shards, Yeatts decided the party was over.
The lesson, according to Suls: "Never let the beer run out."
"Beyond Planet of the Monkeys'
True, that anecdote might be news to Yeatts' landlord. Luckily, she'll be gone in a couple of days. Yes, MonkeyNerves is going offshore, moving to the islands. It's not for tax purposes, though: It's Davis Islands.
Change is in the air, what with the move and the site's paper anniversary. Yeatts expects to get a few more hundred visitors due to recent publicity, which means pressure to make MonkeyNerves a more universal site, to even out the inside jokes.
Yeatts has been adding more events and charity news to bolster the site's usefulness. Suls jokes that he's already thinking of getting rid of his Microsoft Outlook calendar and just using MonkeyNerves.
"I know people that I don't know are looking at my site," Yeatts said. "I went to a wine tasting at Channelside, and a couple I didn't know came up and they recognized me."
Ultimately, though, Yeatts runs her site for the same reason as most every other amateur Web master: because it makes her and her friends happy. Because she can address community issues that matter to her.
And, of course, because she can express her creativity with stories such as "Woman Eagerly Awaits New David Spade Movie in Hopes that Boyfriend Will Quit Quoting Joe Dirt."
And so as the many Dirt devotees know, the next time Yeatts starts practicing spit-takes, there will be only one appropriate response:
