Clownbombing.

 

Professional photographers generally agree that 2023 has been
the worst year to date for clownbombing of weddings.

I think it's been going on for some time -- why, in all the groom pictures from my wedding, there's a clown front and center! 

Happy pants!

Sorry I was so low yesterday. I took steps to remediate it. Actually, I got right to it and put on my happy pants! 

You can't go around looking glum with bright red sweatpants on. You just look like an idiot. It's the same reason I used to wear amusing neckties to the office when I was unhappy -- if someone would cheese me off or something would fill me with disgust or discomfort, I'd look down and see I had on a tie with Warner Brothers critters or cartoon elephants or something, and I'd have to turn that frown upside down. It was my Sun-Will-Come-Out-Tomorrow, Give-a-Little-Whistle, Fake-It-Till-You-Make-It, Whistle-a-Happy-Tune, even Smile-Though-Your-Heart-Is-Breaking moment, and it would get me through the day. Then I'd take the tie off and scowl all the way home. But I'd made it to five!

The bright red sweatpants were a bit of an error. I love Jockey's sweatpants, and while ordering a couple of pairs I noticed the red ones were on sale. They looked red on screen, but they looked REALLY red on my legs. I'm not one to wear bright colors, being more old-fashioned in my couture, so this was a surprise for my wife. I had to explain that my cheapness had brought about this change in style.

I do wear these semi-clown sweats at times other than needed to cheer myself up. I dig out my New York Giants cap and wear the sweats with a blue shirt to annoy my Cowboys-fan neighbor. I think that wearing them with a blue shirt and white socks (as pictured) also makes me look like a Great Value Golden Age Superhero. Sweatsman! And Panty, the Wonder Pooch!

And then there's Santa. It's warm now, but Christmas morning was freezing. I put on a Santa hat, my red sweatpants, and the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man coat that I only wear when it gets close to zero. It was very early, and figured maybe some kiddies might like to see Santa out walking his dog. Or I'd just tell them I was an elf, since I have no beard. "Yeah, all us elves actually are about my height. A lot of us own dogs, sure. Only friendly ones. Santa uses the dog crap when he stuffs the stockings of Congressmen."

Well, I didn't see a soul -- it was really early and really cold -- but the next day I had the same getup on when I got up, and a pickup truck honked at me. Local utility company truck, I think. Anyway, I gave him a Merry Christmas salute as he went by. 

Red pants: The cure for mopeyness. 

Airline mysteries.

1975: Less than a year after its introduction, Ringling Brothers' ClownAir passenger service
was discontinued for reasons unknown to this day. 

 

Either that, or join the clowns.

"I'm not kidding, Neil! Either lose some weight or we have to up the black powder!"

 

E for Effort. And Elephants.

The attempt to revive the public's interest in circuses with Parker & Pestoff's Parachuting Instant Circus was doing
all right until Hurricane Isaias scattered the squad over three Louisiana parishes.

Lack-of-summertime blues?

Feeling low as we slump to the end of February? Tired of winter in this northern hemisphere? Wishing for a hint of summer?

Let's go shopping!

Things have certainly changed since the days when Doritos and Fritos were the closest thing one could get at the supermarket to a tortilla chip. There are a lot of good brands out there now, but of course Late July was chosen for its name, a name specifically created for thoughts of summer. The company puts it this way: "Late July is the sweet spot of summer. It’s a moment in time when life is simple, pure & good. It’s also our name and philosophy on snack making."

I suppose that's okay, although as a child I would have said that late July was a disaster because summer was half over, and if we were going somewhere fun we had probably been. August was a hot stretch of boredom tainted with growing fear. But their point is taken and the snacks are good, even if they are organic. Are they really "restaurant style" as advertised? Sure, but that always depends on the restaurant.

We're not just here to talk about food, though. Let's go to the can!

Target keeps changing its house brands. A couple of years ago they introduced a new line of inexpensive personal-care products called Smartly. Intelligence, despite being in low supply, seems to be in higher regard these days, and I guess it's smart to be a skinflint. The company said, "A product that gets the job done but doesn’t cost an arm-and-a-leg? That’s smart. A whole line of products that are effective, stylish and unbelievably affordable? Now that’s Smartly, Target’s new essentials and personal care owned brand perfect for a budget-conscious and space-constrained shopper."

I don't see how my can of shaving cream does anything to save space, but for a buck, it certainly saved money. What caught my eye was not the price, but rather the scent -- not "Ocean Breeze" or "Sea Escape" but "Smells Like the Ocean." Pretty straightforward. As the site says about its attributes:

rich, soothing lather

moisturizes and protects

light ocean fragrance

all skin types

Okay, well, I can't say it's good for all skin, because I only have one. Its lather is not really very rich and is not particularly soothing; I don't find it to be very moisturizing or protective, either. But smell like the ocean? Yes, yes it does.

I know that can mean many things, from the brisk scent out in international waters to a fish stink at a barnacled broken-down dock, but it's probably just what you'd imagine: A sea-salt fresh-air breeze. Puts you right on the beach. And that'd the summertime beach, because in the cold weather you don't get much of an ocean scent, and you're probably staying away from the beach anyway. I sure am. So I call it a summertime callback product.

Of course, there are other places to be at the seaside in summertime, like:

This is Scent Theory's Summer Boardwalk hand soap.

"The Theory of Scent shapes our lives," says the company site. "It affects our mood, evokes memories , and makes us feel ENERGIZED, CALM, REFRESHED, HAPPY. A moment of pure indulgence in every pump." Pretty strong words for a product I got in Walmart!

Like "ocean," the word "boardwalk" may evoke different scent-memories to different people. Sea breezes. Sausage and peppers. Zeppole. Sweat. Corn dogs. Unwashed carnies. Small-child vomit. But that's not the direction Scent Theory chose to go, thank heaven. "Revisit the carefree SUMMERS abundant in cotton candy and sunny BOARDWALK adventures. Indulge yourself in something special." They love that CAPS button at Scent Theory!

This soap is definitely different. It's pretty much all cotton candy. Nothing wrong with that. It is a fun scent, and it's not cloying, and it not so strong as to make people think you've been strangling clowns. I haven't had cotton candy in a long time, but this brings back some nice memories. And no, not about strangling clowns.

If none of these things help you through the February blahs, take heart -- February's almost over, spring is less than a month away, and in my slice of New York there's daylight at six a.m. and at six p.m. Keep the faith!

No doubt.

"I know this looks a little strange, officer, but I assure you there is a perfectly reasonable explanation."

They only brought out a few to make their point.

No doubt on their way to work at Clown, Inc.

Same with my old office.

One group text was all it took, and Clown, Incorporated's productivity was shot to hell for the day.

Change.

After many years of dominance in the field of comedy, the rubber chicken
began to give way to the rubber rhinoceros in 2019.

Send in the clowns, again.

I don't know if I really want to revisit the whole clown thing. I addressed it pretty thoroughly last year when Ringling Brothers popped the tents for the last time. And yet I can't help wondering how it all went to hell so fast for our greasepainted bretheren.

Think of it: Within living memory, a clown named Clarabell was one of the most beloved personalities on television. Buffalo Bob would never have had a clown on Howdy Doody if he thought it would terrorize children. That's not what clowns did. They were fun-loving masters of goofiness, living cartoons, silly men who could act like children.

And now they're this.

I think a lot of kids now have never even known a time when clowns were fun. They've always been a source of grinning, inhuman, hellish evil.

How did this happen so fast?

Well, popular entertainment tends to turn things upside down for dramatic and ironic effect. The rock-ribbed lawmen of early movies became corrupt weasels or hypocrites or useless or out-and-out villains of later movies purely because that's was what we had been trained to not expect -- until we got to the point where the moment a sheriff shows up on film you can start booing. Tiny women were common victims, and now if you are a movie thug and enter a room with eight of your thug buddies to capture the tiny woman, you can expect her to kick your collective ass in under a minute of screen time. Clowns were innocent fun for children, which is exactly why they had to be turned into the most terrifying creatures in our culture. (They've tried to do it to Santa Claus too, but he has a better lobby.)

To be fair, though, the clowns did a bit of that in their own day. They turned plenty of totems of dignity into targets for derision. One well-known example is what they did to Czech composer Julius Fučík's best-known composition. His march known as "Entrance of the Gladiators" was named because of his interest in Roman history, and was imagined as music to which the mighty death-dealing fighters would be summoned for the crowd. The circus chose it because it was pompous, not silly, and now no one can hear that "Deet deet deedle deedle deet deet deet deet" without thinking: Clowns.

Which reminds me that the history of clowning was not all just good clean fun. In fact, if this article in the Smithsonian on the history of clowns is accurate, and theirs usually are, it's amazing they got sanitized into children's entertainment at any period. I sum up what happened in the same way that fairy tales became fodder for children's books, and later, Disney movies. As J. R. R. Tolkien explained:

Fairy-stories have in the modern lettered world been relegated to the “nursery,” as shabby or old-fashioned furniture is relegated to the play-room, primarily because the adults do not want it, and do not mind if it is misused. It is not the choice of the children which decides this. Children as a class—except in a common lack of experience they are not one—neither like fairy-stories more, nor understand them better than adults do; and no more than they like many other things. They are young and growing, and normally have keen appetites, so the fairy-stories as a rule go down well enough. But in fact only some children, and some adults, have any special taste for them; and when they have it, it is not exclusive, nor even necessarily dominant.

I think exactly the same thing happened with clowns. Adults found them to be old-fashioned and unsophisticated in an era that liked to fancy itself modern and smart, so clowning was downgraded to children's entertainment, even though children's love of clowns was probably overrated. And, like the dark movie versions of fairy tales we're seeing now, the clowns came back as mature entertainment in the only non-sexual adult way we seem to understand anymore -- violent and gory.

So in a way I guess what goes around comes around, or something.

Meh. The problem is that nothing is allowed to be fun anymore, let alone innocent.

Poor clowns. Makes me want to hit someone with a pie.

Family business.

"Son, if you're going to get anywhere you'd better get your act together."

All the world loves a clown?

I have to say I was sorry to hear that Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey is (are?) hanging it up. Seems like a sad ending to a great chapter of Americana. The warning signs were there. Locally, the Big Apple Circus went bankrupt last fall and is selling off its assets.

When I was a kid we went to see Ringling Brothers Barnum Bailey Pierce Fenner & Ziggy at Madison Square Garden and the place was jammed. I think it was a weeknight, too. I guess crowds like that just don't come anymore. I guess people just don't like circuses anymore.

We know that people are down on animal acts. The campaigns against circus animal acts were never going to stop. If Ringling Brothers et al had nothing but a flea circus, PETA would be mounting a "Save the Fleas" campaign.

The trapeze artists and other death-defying acrobats can always find work, I guess. Cirque du Soleil and stuff. Those acts are amazing to see in person. However, I don't know that you get the same effect looking at them on a stage as you do under the big top or in stadium, where the vast three-dimensional space in which they play makes them look so small and yet mighty, fragile, fast, and graceful. They'll all land on their feet.

Another part of the circus experience that's very hard hit, though, is the midway. I think that's been dying off, though. Who needs a freak show when you have YouTube?

The saddest story in the whole thing to me was that of Kristen Michelle Wilson, the first female ringmaster in the 146-year history of Ringling Brothers. The circus said she would be "inspiring and empowering children everywhere to follow their dreams." Days later they might have added, "Straight to the unemployment office."

So that's very sad. But won't someone think of the clowns?

Worse for the circus than the animal acts, I think, is that we have become an anticlown nation. They used to be beloved makers of fun. Now we think the very worst of them.

I admit that I too have done my bit to wound the Clown-American community. I'd like to say that some of my best friends are clowns, but even there, my friends would not take that as a compliment.

There was a time when clowns were seen as happy, fun, or at least nice, like Emmett Kelly and Bozo -- and children were expected to like them and did. But starting decades ago, concerns about what those chuckleworthy chaps were thinking under that makeup made us start worrying about what they were really up to.

Maybe it all began with Pagliacci, Toscanini's tragic and murderous clown story, famous since its 1892 premiere. What was going on behind that greasepaint, eh? Irony! Then there was the scheming Scaramouche of the 1921 Rafael Sabatini novel, plotting his revenge behind his powdered visage.

Next thing you know, clowns were turning bad. Really bad.

There was the Joker, based on the jester playing card; homicidal maniac, archfoe of Batman. Pennywise, the evil clown figure of Stephen King's It. There was the horrid Krusty the Clown of The Simpsons. There was Twisty the Clown from American Horror Story. There were even Killer Klowns from Outer Space, thought to be one of the worst movies ever made by no less an authority than my father, who usually didn't review movies. And there was Stucco the clown.

Well, no, Stucco from Rob Harrell's late strip "Big Top" is a nice clown, but even he seems less human than the animals around him. Like clowns were some weird alien species.

I'm just saying it's been really hard for all the nice clowns out there, with evil clown sightings and grown men and women suffering from coulrophobia. Look at Party City -- the majority of men's clown costumes are evil clowns, not sweet, fun clowns.

People blame the animal acts for killing the circus, but I'm telling you, it was clown terror that did the circus in, and it was creative folks who loved to have funny, friendly characters be evil that made everyone scared of clowns.

What are the nice clowns supposed to do now, huh?

---

P.S.: I mentioned to Mr. Philbin that this would be today's topic of disquisition, and he remarked that it seemed like a suspicious coincidence that it would run on Inauguration Day. I deny this accusation, because when you deal with politics, every day is evil clown day.

Ornamental terror.

What you are about to read is 100% true. Only the names of my friends have been changed to keep them from killing me. 

When I was a kid, big glass ornaments were nearly a thing of the past. You didn't see them around much. They were going the way of the big hot bulbs. Styrofoam and plastic were more common, even if they were nowhere near as pretty. At least if the kids grabbed one of those thread-wrapped "satin ball" Styrofoam ornaments, odds were they wouldn't kill themselves with it right away. Glass? Different story. Plus, glass was more expensive to make and to ship, and you couldn't guarantee their survival from year to year like you could with plastic.

My parents had a bunch of Shiny-Brites leftover from the 60's, but the stock was dwindling. 

Christopher Radko, genius that he is, brought the age of the great glass ornament back, making gorgeous and fun ornaments in classic Shiny-Brite designs, types that reflected particular interests (firemen, bears, music, etc., etc.), fund-raising ornaments, all kinds of things. The story of Radko and his ornaments can be found here. You can find the ornaments themselves at gift shops, Bloomie's, Dillards, you name it. There used to be a store in the craft village of Sugar Loaf that sold collectibles, and seemed to exist for years on Lladró, Hummels, and Radko ornaments. 

Radko himself sold the company years ago, I have no idea how many designs are created under the Radko name annually, but they've sold millions of the things in the last thirty years. 

In these hypersensitive times, though, I am forced to put a trigger warning on my tree. Coulrophobics, avert your gaze! 

I am not personally afflicted with a fear of clowns, but I do know one grown man that I'll call Jim---a guy who likes bloody horror movies, by the way---who is stricken with a gut-wrenching terror of them. I have to hang this one toward the back of the tree in case Jim comes by. Can't take a chance that he'll catch sight of it and I'll have a Jim-shaped hole in the wall.

This is a 2007 ornament Radko produced as a fund-raiser for St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. I got it as a freebie from a magazine for which I was working at the time. I think it's pretty cute. Sure, some clowns are scary, but these clowny folks are jolly. Most people with a mild dislike of clowns would still find much to like here. 

You can't reason with a phobia, though. I have another friend (we'll call him Pete) who is scared of snakes. and I'd be hard-pressed to introduce him to the most harmless snake in the world. He just couldn't bring himself to get near it. 

If I decide that Pete and Jim are too much trouble to have as friends, though, I can get rid of both by throwing one Christmas party. That is, if I can find these: 

WHAT THE HELL IS THAT? you might say.

Clown-headed snakes for your Christmas tree, of course! 

I suspect that the Radko line doesn't feature them now, but according to a piece in the Los Angeles Times from 1992, these are for real: "His snake ornament also has a story. 'The Victorians always had a snake on their trees to remind them of the Garden of Eden, but the snakes had clown faces so as not to scare the children.'" 

Clown-headed snakes. How could this not scare the children?!?

It does me no good at all, and it would send Jim and Pete flying out of the house. 

I think we can deduce a few things: 

1) Victorians were weird. 

2) Radko may have followed the path of tradition too far. 

3) I should get some friends who are scared of things like heights or the dark, which can't be hung on Christmas trees. 

It would have been a very different movie.

The tragedy of unrestrained clowns.

Washington, DC, March 18, 2015: The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration releases data from 2014, revealing that in 167 road accidents involving clown cars, 3,496 clowns were killed or injured.

Secrets of history.

World War II: Although feared, and renowned for its ability to deliver 206 troops in a single C-53 Skytrooper, the United States Army's 113th Airborne Comedy Division ("The Fightin' Paraclowns") was not particularly effective and was tragically wiped out in Operation Market Garden.

Can't be too careful.

"Not here, comrade. That fellow's giving me funny looks."