More Scary than Funny, more Sad than Scary
Does the world in fact love a Clown? Maybe in some regions, like I don’t know, Paris. But I’d say for the most part we’ve (and by “we’ve” I’m speaking for everyone in the whole world not counting Paris) tired of the Clown, not necessarily the Rodeo variety or even the Circus Ensemble Clown (based on the theory something doesn’t seem AS retarded if a large group of people are doing it…you know, like smoking.) The Clown I’m singling out here is the “One on One Party Clown.” That sounded sexual and I’m not sure if I meant it to or not. You see I was at a post X-mas extended family function this weekend and there were enough little kids there to merit the hiring of a Clown (I guess all the Magicians were busy.) This gave me a rare insight to an intimate clown performance, the likes of which I hadn’t seen since my days at the Metropark. It got me thinking of a lot of things…mostly Clown related things. Anyway let me introduce you to Flutterby:
Isn’t she lovely?
What was the first thing you noticed about her? I mean after the terror sank in. I don’t know if the picture does it enough justice but I immediately noticed Flutterby is FlutterOLD. She’s a grandma for sure. Assuming she had time to find a husband in her busy clowning life. This immediately bummed me out because older versions of everything (non Nintendo related) bum me out. What’s more fun; a kitten? Or a 21 year old blind cat with cataracts? Do you want to play catch with a 5 year old? Or change your grandpa’s colostomy bag? Do you want a stripper with young perky boobs? Or one with 3 teeth missing a second mortgage on her trailer and tripping over her “breasts”? Having said that, let me say this, a young clown wouldn’t have represented anything more to me than a kid who made a terribly poor career choice or was horribly burned and now needs an excuse to be constantly covered in face make up.
Here she is in action.
That’s my nephew assisting her. He is awesome, he can sing “Jessie’s Girl” from start to finish with no music or assistance, but that doesn’t have anything to do with the clown so I’ll move on. Oh and that’s my brother Steve holding my nieces Hannah and Abby in the background. Again all great people, but terribly un-clown-related. That scarf FB is holding up is the end result of a “magic trick” (Clowns should stick to clowning) that took somewhere around 3 and a half hours. A typical clown sketch goes down something like this:
1. Corny Joke Opening
2. Look for assistant
3. Get to know assistant
4. Hand assistant Magic Wand that keeps “comically” breaking.
5. “Comically” break Magic Wand for 14 minutes.
6. Show everyone the tube is empty (see picture (below) note: Tracie INSANELY unamused in back corner)
7. (pass tube around room)
8. Pull scarf out of tube that has a picture of a Caterpillar on it
9. Ask of crowd “What do Caterpillars turn into?”
10. After crowd responds “Butterflies!” Repeat steps 6-9 but this time produce BUTTERFLY scarf.
11. Reclaim Magic Wand, but not before “comically” breaking it for another half an hour.
12. Thank assistant and make corny exit joke.
13. Check crowd for suicides.
14. (remove any)
15. Move on to next trick. (see below)
98% of Flutterby’s Tricks are Scarf and Tube related. (author’s aside: I love how very IN ACTION Flutterby is in this shot, but I hate how she’s looking RIGHT at/into me.)
After the second scarf trick she wrapped the act up and switched to face painting (another one of the myriad of skills automatically possessed by all clowns everywhere) after that I hear there were balloon animals, but I wasn’t there for that. I also wasn’t there long enough to get my picture WITH Flutterby which was my main ambition from the start.
I spent the drive home wondering what the rest of Flutterby’s life is like. First off, when she gets a party private gig is she interviewed? Or is all clown hiring done on trust and word of mouth alone? If she IS interviewed does she interview in street clothes, calmly and rationally explaining what she’ll be doing? Or does she hit you with a pie and spray you with a seltzer bottle? Can she juggle? I never saw her juggle. Did she put that make up on before she left or when she got here? And what of the removal process, does she stop and get gas on the way home dressed like that? (When you don’t care about things like the war on Iraq or the existence of God you have LOTS of time to ponder Clown things.) You know, Adam hooked up with a clown once. Maybe he can answer some of these queries.
Here’s how I see the rest of Flutterby’s evening playing out. She drives home (with or without make up) completely high on the feeling of all the joy she brought to those small children who remind her of her grandkids she never sees because her kids never bring them over to her apartment (possibly due to issues of Clown related shame,) she cherishes the fact that she felt like part of a family even if only for an hour or two. She arrives at her lonely one bedroom apartment where she throws out the Domino’s pizza coupons that were clogging up her mailbox and then she heads in. She checks her answering machine. No messages. She changes clothes and microwaves herself dinner. She puts it on a TV tray and turns on the news. Half way through dinner a picture of her grandkids catches her eye. She starts sobbing uncontrollably. She smacks herself across the face to regain her composure. She finishes her dinner and throws her tinfoil plate away. She gets the small step ladder out of the pantry and takes it into her bedroom closet to get her late husbands old revolver out of the cigar box on the top shelf. She pushes past her bowling ball, her first pair of clown shoes and that ukulele she never learned how to play and gets the gun. She loads it with a single bullet and goes back to the chair where she was watching the news and eating dinner. She closes her eyes and opens her mouth as wide as it’ll go. She tastes the cold steel. The tears start streaming down her cheeks. Then the phone rings. She pauses and decides to answer. It’s a client hiring her for a birthday party Wednesday evening. She accepts. She hangs up the phone and puts the gun back in the box, but she doesn’t put it back on the shelf.
That or she went right from the party to play Bridge with 5 of her best friends.
The End.
For all of my knocking Flutterby she did have one joke I'm going to steal. As she was getting to know one of her "assistants" she was shaking his hand and while doing so said "Thanks for helping out Brian! Are you nervous?" Brian, confused, said "no." To which she replied, "Then why are you shaking?" Pure Clown Brilliance.
__________________________________________________________________
Well I don't feel better
When I'm fucking around
And I don't write better
When I'm stuck in the ground
So don't teach me a lesson
Cause I've already learned
Yeah the sun will be shining
And my children will burn
Isn’t she lovely?
What was the first thing you noticed about her? I mean after the terror sank in. I don’t know if the picture does it enough justice but I immediately noticed Flutterby is FlutterOLD. She’s a grandma for sure. Assuming she had time to find a husband in her busy clowning life. This immediately bummed me out because older versions of everything (non Nintendo related) bum me out. What’s more fun; a kitten? Or a 21 year old blind cat with cataracts? Do you want to play catch with a 5 year old? Or change your grandpa’s colostomy bag? Do you want a stripper with young perky boobs? Or one with 3 teeth missing a second mortgage on her trailer and tripping over her “breasts”? Having said that, let me say this, a young clown wouldn’t have represented anything more to me than a kid who made a terribly poor career choice or was horribly burned and now needs an excuse to be constantly covered in face make up.
Here she is in action.
That’s my nephew assisting her. He is awesome, he can sing “Jessie’s Girl” from start to finish with no music or assistance, but that doesn’t have anything to do with the clown so I’ll move on. Oh and that’s my brother Steve holding my nieces Hannah and Abby in the background. Again all great people, but terribly un-clown-related. That scarf FB is holding up is the end result of a “magic trick” (Clowns should stick to clowning) that took somewhere around 3 and a half hours. A typical clown sketch goes down something like this:
1. Corny Joke Opening
2. Look for assistant
3. Get to know assistant
4. Hand assistant Magic Wand that keeps “comically” breaking.
5. “Comically” break Magic Wand for 14 minutes.
6. Show everyone the tube is empty (see picture (below) note: Tracie INSANELY unamused in back corner)
7. (pass tube around room)
8. Pull scarf out of tube that has a picture of a Caterpillar on it
9. Ask of crowd “What do Caterpillars turn into?”
10. After crowd responds “Butterflies!” Repeat steps 6-9 but this time produce BUTTERFLY scarf.
11. Reclaim Magic Wand, but not before “comically” breaking it for another half an hour.
12. Thank assistant and make corny exit joke.
13. Check crowd for suicides.
14. (remove any)
15. Move on to next trick. (see below)
98% of Flutterby’s Tricks are Scarf and Tube related. (author’s aside: I love how very IN ACTION Flutterby is in this shot, but I hate how she’s looking RIGHT at/into me.)
After the second scarf trick she wrapped the act up and switched to face painting (another one of the myriad of skills automatically possessed by all clowns everywhere) after that I hear there were balloon animals, but I wasn’t there for that. I also wasn’t there long enough to get my picture WITH Flutterby which was my main ambition from the start.
I spent the drive home wondering what the rest of Flutterby’s life is like. First off, when she gets a party private gig is she interviewed? Or is all clown hiring done on trust and word of mouth alone? If she IS interviewed does she interview in street clothes, calmly and rationally explaining what she’ll be doing? Or does she hit you with a pie and spray you with a seltzer bottle? Can she juggle? I never saw her juggle. Did she put that make up on before she left or when she got here? And what of the removal process, does she stop and get gas on the way home dressed like that? (When you don’t care about things like the war on Iraq or the existence of God you have LOTS of time to ponder Clown things.) You know, Adam hooked up with a clown once. Maybe he can answer some of these queries.
Here’s how I see the rest of Flutterby’s evening playing out. She drives home (with or without make up) completely high on the feeling of all the joy she brought to those small children who remind her of her grandkids she never sees because her kids never bring them over to her apartment (possibly due to issues of Clown related shame,) she cherishes the fact that she felt like part of a family even if only for an hour or two. She arrives at her lonely one bedroom apartment where she throws out the Domino’s pizza coupons that were clogging up her mailbox and then she heads in. She checks her answering machine. No messages. She changes clothes and microwaves herself dinner. She puts it on a TV tray and turns on the news. Half way through dinner a picture of her grandkids catches her eye. She starts sobbing uncontrollably. She smacks herself across the face to regain her composure. She finishes her dinner and throws her tinfoil plate away. She gets the small step ladder out of the pantry and takes it into her bedroom closet to get her late husbands old revolver out of the cigar box on the top shelf. She pushes past her bowling ball, her first pair of clown shoes and that ukulele she never learned how to play and gets the gun. She loads it with a single bullet and goes back to the chair where she was watching the news and eating dinner. She closes her eyes and opens her mouth as wide as it’ll go. She tastes the cold steel. The tears start streaming down her cheeks. Then the phone rings. She pauses and decides to answer. It’s a client hiring her for a birthday party Wednesday evening. She accepts. She hangs up the phone and puts the gun back in the box, but she doesn’t put it back on the shelf.
That or she went right from the party to play Bridge with 5 of her best friends.
The End.
For all of my knocking Flutterby she did have one joke I'm going to steal. As she was getting to know one of her "assistants" she was shaking his hand and while doing so said "Thanks for helping out Brian! Are you nervous?" Brian, confused, said "no." To which she replied, "Then why are you shaking?" Pure Clown Brilliance.
__________________________________________________________________
Well I don't feel better
When I'm fucking around
And I don't write better
When I'm stuck in the ground
So don't teach me a lesson
Cause I've already learned
Yeah the sun will be shining
And my children will burn