Chaplin and The Circus

I first saw Charlie Chaplin’s movie “The Circus” at the Oak Street Cinema near the University of Minnesota campus in Minneapolis. I was visiting my parents before heading down to Florida to start rehearsals for my second season as a clown with the Ringling Brothers Blue Unit.  The Oak Street Cinema often presented silent film revivals, and I still recall the frosty nip in the air as I walked the 2 miles to the show by myself -- no one in my family wanted to see such foolishness, and the girl that I asked to go with me queried “Who’s Charlie Chaplin?” -- so I dropped her like a hot potato. I was thoroughly frozen by the time I got to the theater, but the Homeric gusts of laughter during the movie soon had me warm again. We Scandinavians love a good belly laugh.

Chaplin won one of the first Academy Awards ever given for this movie in 1928. He certainly deserved it -- for endurance if for nothing else! It took over a year to make the movie, and during that time he went through a devastating divorce, saw his studio burnt to the ground, had to buy a second big top when the first one blew away in a Santa Ana wind storm, and was threatened with studio foreclosure by the IRS. Only a clown genius keeps his sense of humor during such a string of catastrophes.

The movie opens with the whiteface clowns already underfoot and in the way as the equestrian star, played by Merna Kennedy, jumps through paper hoops to the audience’s applause. Anonymous, superfluous, and annoying -- these whitefaces are an exact fit for the doleful lines from Shakespeare’s Macbeth:

And all our yesterdays have lighted fools

The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage

And then is heard no more. It is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury

Signifying nothing.

In this movie the clowns truly ‘signify nothing.’ They are looked down upon by everyone from the propman to the ringmaster, and, indeed, never perform a single truly funny clown gag. About the best they can do is wear some decidedly odd hats -- such as one clown who sports a miniature washtub complete with laundry hanging on a line on top of his bald pate. Chaplin’s serendipitous appearance in the ring, when he is chased by first a cop and then a mule, is the only risible event in their act -- and they had nothing to do with it. It’s as if Chaplin were saying to his brethren in the slapstick fraternity “The harder we try for a laugh the more we have to depend on accident!”

I’ve always wondered about the major ‘ring gag’ the clowns have at the beginning of the movie. It’s just a gaudy little circular treadmill, on which the listless funny men leap on and fall off of. Later in the movie Chaplin and the clowns do a bit of the barbershop gag and the William Tell gag -- hoary staples of circus comedy. But that weird treadmill is like nothing I’ve ever seen in any clown alley anywhere. It must have sprung whole from Chaplin’s imagination -- although there are precursors to it in the cycloramas Mack Sennett often used for his Keystone comedies.

Although there are several major gags in the movie, such as Chaplin on the highwire and in the lion cage, for me the funniest and most satisfying moment of the film comes early on when the ringmaster is auditioning him for clown alley and says those cursed words that have ruined many a professional comic’s day -- “Go ahead and be funny.” Chaplin’s attempts, needless to say, are woefully inadequate. There is only one effective reply to people who say to a clown “Make me laugh” -- and that is to take out a pistol and shoot them.

“The Circus” takes a sweet and sour poke at that fleet-footed fame whose comings and goings remain such a mystery to showfolk. One moment Chaplin is the king of the clowns, demanding, and getting, preferential treatment and a big salary. The next, when his heart is broken in the traditional manner by a woman, he loses his touch and is left behind to fend for himself with the rest of the wind-blown trash.

Much has been made of the fact that this silent movie was made just as sound disrupted the whole movie-making industry in Hollywood. In a matter of months the wonderful pantomime infrastructure of silent comedy came apart at the seams, never to be fully rehabilitated. As Chaplin finished up “The Circus” he must have been wondering what this new technology would mean for his character, the Little Tramp. Could he survive in a suddenly rackety world or would he be left behind in the cinematic dustheap? His contemporaries like Buster Keaton and Harry Langdon fared badly with the coming of sound. Fortunately for the gaiety of nations, Chaplin decided to ignore the cacophony and go on clowning his own way.

As I left the Oak Street Cinema that cold December night for the long and lonely walk home, young and brash and foolishly optimistic about my own future as a clown, I didn’t have any such deep thoughts. Back then, I merely thought that I’d never be a clown with a broken heart -- it’s too cornball! I hadn’t yet realized that the secret to all great clowning is to risk your heart with every performance, until it really does break . . .

“ An inability to admire silent films, like a dislike of black and white, is a sad inadequacy. Those who dismiss such pleasures must have deficient imaginations.”  Roger Ebert.

Restaurant Review: Zubs, of Provo

Zubs is located at 684 North Freedom Blvd in Provo. It's a storefront sandwich/pizza place -- no ethnicity allowed, if you please. The inside seems huge and barren, with a black painted ceiling and a harsh unfiltered light bursting in through the store windows. The place has the ambiance of a better class train station.

The wait staff is all young and perky. They give you heartburn with a smile. I ordered their April Special -- grilled chicken sub with a mayo/artichoke spread and tomatoes. It comes with a fountain drink and chips. $7.89.

It was disappointing. All I could taste was the bread. There was very little chicken and the mayo/artichoke spread was anemic bordering on extinct. If you're a bread lover, then I guess this would be a fine place to come eat. And I can't pass judgement on the pizza, since I didn't have any. But I noticed that most of the customers were ordering and consuming mass quantities of pizza, not subs. I want to be fair to these people, so I'll probably come back another time to test out the pizza. But the subs are definitely sub-standard. Don't waste your money or time on them.

Their motto is: "If it's not a Zub, it's just food!"  From my experience eating there today I suggest they amend it to: "If it's not a Zub, it just might be food!"

The Clown and the New York Times Reporter

I bought a Remington portable typewriter with my first paycheck from Ringling Brothers back in 1971. I immediately began typing little notes to leave on the roomette doors of my fellow clowns. On Tim Holst's door I taped up a page reading "God will be late today -- you'll have to start without Him." On Chico's door I put "Keep Cool with Coolidge." On Roofus T. Goofus' door I put up "Roses are red/Violets are blue/You need a bath/You old stinkeroo!" And on Steve Smith's door I left this literary gem: "Dear Valued Customer:  It has come to our attention that your current subscription to Nose Pickers and Fart Smellers Magazine is about to expire. Please be advised that our local representative, Mr. Timothy Robert Torkildson, will be by to renew your subscription this week. Please have five dollars in small unmarked bills ready for him. Or else. Sincerely yours, The Management."

I like to think that my literary style has matured and mellowed somewhat since then. But maybe not. Still, I have kept on steadily writing all these years. I've written about my time in Thailand as an LDS missionary; my stint in small market radio; my seasons as a circus clown -- and I have also produced an ungodly amount of bad verse. Mostly in response to newspaper articles that hacked me off or amused me. My efforts in the poetry department have been staunchly ignored by newspaper editors the length and breadth of this great land -- until, just a while ago, a reporter from the New York Times called me up for an interview about my poetry!

Dumbfounded, I went ahead and answered Rachel Abrams' questions. The next day the paper printed her article on my work -- and I became internationally renowned and began a successful career as America's greatest light versifier since Ogden Nash.

Sigh . . .

Actually, nothing much happened -- so I took early Social Security and found a Senior Citizen rent-subsidized apartment (I'd been living in a friend's unheated basement.) I still write reams of indifferent poetry each day, emailing it to reporters and editors who for the most part ignore it with amazing willpower.

I've taken the liberty of copying that article here, in case you happened to be in Lower Slobovia at the time and missed it. I think it's a good puff piece -- all except the crack she makes about my "claiming to have worked as a clown for Ringling Brothers." I wish someone would tweet her to set her straight on that snide reportorial comment! (@RachelAbramsNY)

I got a funny little piece of reader mail back in October. It was a colorful drawing of a man accompanied by a poem:

I eat magnets all the time:
the reason ain’t redactive.
If I eat enough of ’em
I’m sure to be attractive.

I had just written an article about children ingesting high-powered magnets and thought the card was amusing, if a bit odd.

But I didn’t give it too much thought, until I received two more poems, this time by email.

The first came after an article I did on illegal products that come through United States ports:

Santa, with his pack of toys, came down the chimney quick,
Loaded with such nifty games and dolls and licorice stick!
Just as he began to spread the gifts beneath the tree,
Consumer product safety agents grabbed him suddenly!

They frisked him as they took his pack to look for contraband;
For Rolex knockoffs or perhaps a smuggled thyroid gland.
The DEA then confiscated ev’ry candy cane,
In the hopes that each one was made up of pure cocaine.

When they were done poor Santa’s bag was empty and in shreds,
While agents captured sugar plums around the children’s heads.
The reindeer were impounded to be tested for the mange;
For bus fare to the North Pole Santa panhandled spare change!

Let this be a lesson to the kiddies and their folks
That imports are a danger, or at least a shabby hoax.
If you want to celebrate the patriotic way Make sure your presents all are stamped: “Made in the U.S.A.”

And last week he sent another poem in response to an article on minimum wage increases:

Guess I never could maintain a franchise with success,
Since underpaying workers would give me a lot of stress.
It’s not that I’m an angel, heaven-sent to make folks rich;
It’s just that I’m a lazy good-for-nothing son of a bitch.

Underpaying workers on a constant basis means
A slew of lawyers and accountants picking my blue jeans.
For poor folks are so hard to manage if you cannot prove
That you are also slogging in that awful selfsame groove.

I’d have to go to meetings and make charities a must;
I’d have to slave like anything to earn my paupers’ trust.
I’d rather not create a bunch of jobs that keep men poor,
And give the world excuses to build another dollar store.

Maybe I should have been creeped out, but I wasn’t. The author, Tim Torkildson, is not the first reader to send reporters poetry. I was definitely curious, though. Was he writing to other people?

A quick Google search produced Mr. Torkildson’s blog, which has dozens, if not hundreds, of entries. He had just written about ferrets, right after Sarah Lyall’s story about the ban on them in New York City. Ms. Lyall said that Mr. Torkildson had sent her the poem.

It turns out that he has been writing poems to reporters for more than a decade. His poetry has appeared on The Times’s website at least once.

Mr. Torkildson, who lives in Utah, has had more time to write recently after being let go from a part-time teaching job this summer. He also claims to have been a clown for Ringling Brothers Circus. 

“I read a couple of newspapers every day, and when I find a story that I like that tickles me or sometimes that outrages me, I’ll set it down as a verse,” he said over the phone last week.

The earliest poem he can remember sending, he said, was in response to the siege in Waco, Tex., in 1993. He used to send most of his poems by mail, until that became too expensive.

Now, he usually sends them by email, although he doesn’t typically hear back from reporters. He also said he had submitted many of his poems to newspapers for publication.

“The reaction I get whenever I submit a poem to an editorial page, it’s, ‘We don’t print poetry,’ ” he said. “It’s gone out of style, apparently.”

Families in Heaven

“Families are the basic organizational unit of the eternal realms . . . “

Henry B. Eyring

In heaven the fam’ly remains

The focus of all of our gains.

No other outfit

Will matter a bit --

Not even the kings and their reigns.

Lunch at the Provo Senior Center: Swedish Meatballs

Youth is never lonely. They constantly attract each other with the force of gravity, if only to complain how lonely they feel. If you want to know authentic loneliness, look for it in the quiet corners of Senior Citizen's Centers. In medical clinic waiting rooms. At bus stops. It makes you feel uncomfortable and sometimes unreasonably mad at the lonely old person -- why aren't they more optimistic and outgoing?

Loneliness is like some kind of social tuberculosis -- it creeps up on you gradually. I still don't think of myself as a lonely guy -- until I do. A certain slant of light at sunset; the sound of distant train horns; quiet Sunday afternoons; a brief email from one of my kids, carelessly spelled and filled with brittle brightness -- these kinds of things put me in a hole in the ground, waiting for the sexton to come by and fill it in.

But we were talking about Swedish meatballs, right? That was on today's menu, along with carrots. There was also canned peaches for dessert, but I decided to pass on that. The meatballs were served over rice, with lots of rich brown gravy, and they tasted pretty good. Of course, I didn't have any breakfast -- just a cup of Bengal Spice herbal tea. So I was ready for a good lunch. Hunger makes the best appetizer.

Not that it matters, but I counted 44 seniors at lunch today. And maybe they're all happy as clams and never get lonely. My perceptions are often lousy.

A Clown's Last Makeup Session

A while ago I fell down while walking to the Provo Library, which is just a few blocks from my apartment. I had to drag myself over to the nearest tree so I could slowly pull myself up. No damage, except to my ego. But it was the wake up call I'd been dreading -- the time had finally come to put away the rubber nose and baggy pants for good, because there is nothing worse than an old clown who takes a fall and can't get up again. But before I put the greasepaint away for good, I created a video memento of my clown craft -- putting on the warpaint one last time.

Please cue Chopin's Etude No. 3 in E Major to play as you watch my Last Hurrah.

White Lies

Mr. Trump has dispensed with what he considers pointless moralizing and preachy naïveté.

From the NYTime

If white lies are now out of style

There’s no need for me to beguile

My neighbors or friends --

Or to make amends

When I tell my in-laws they’re vile.

Gather Me Home

“ Yea, and then shall the work commence, with the Father among all nations in preparing the way whereby his people may be gathered home to the land of their inheritance.”

Gather me home, I am tired of stealing

Through landscapes that lack any intimate feeling.

A nomad that’s drifted for many long years --

I yearn for a haven away from all tears.

My home, my real home, is not just a birthplace --

It’s where I receive God the Father’s e

King Solomon

King Solomon had many wives who cooked exotic dishes;

They made him mango chutney to go with gefilte fishes.

They tempted him with combinations that were very tref.

But his palate, like his love, to augury was deaf.

And so God punished him amain, and took away his harem,

And gave him only pulse to eat, without a splash of garum.

Street Performing on Nicollet Mall in Minneapolis

This brief video was taken by the Minneapolis Star Tribune reporter CJ back in 2009, when I was working the streets of Minneapolis with a clown routine in order to make enough money to move back to Thailand. It took me three months to earn the airfare, and I learned a lot about street theater during that time.

For instance, I learned that there are dozens of bullying s.o.b.'s who make it a habit of shaking down street performers once or twice a day -- if you don't give them your money they punch you very hard. The cops have absolutely no interest in preventing this; they hate street performers and treat them like vermin.

So I learned to get scary crazy with the bullies. Whenever one would come up and demand my 'take' for the day I would pull out a big sports whistle and get right in his face to start blowing as loud as I could. If done without hesitation, making direct eye contact at all times, this always discomfited them enough to send them lumbering away.

I also learned to make a new sign each day -- in my case, in verse. Since I worked right in front of the U.S. Bank headquarters I got a lot of stuffy bankers who wouldn't normally give a beggar the time of day -- but when they noticed that I made the effort to write something original each day for my placard they started giving me ten dollar bills. And you don't do any better than that unless you're a pole dancer!

I worked the main drag of Nicollet Mall, a pedestrian walkway in downtown Minneapolis where only public buses were allowed to use the street. This is where most of the Twin Cities' street performers and homeless lunatics congregated. I was impressed by one young man's determination and simplicity of execution. He spent eight hours a day walking up and down Nicollet Mall, asking everyone "Can I have a quarter?" Most people ignored him or snarled at him to go to hell. But he never stopped, and so the sheer numbers favored him. I asked him how much he made in an hour and he said he could usually count on twenty-five dollars an hour. Nice work if you can get it.

Another guy, a really down-and-out bum who simply sat on the sidewalk with a scrawled cardboard sign that said "PLEASE HELP" actually kept a second piece of cardboard with him, on which were pasted personal checks, with the heading: "Do Not Accept."

A very cultivated gentleman, who rarely shaved and liked to drink Listerine, could recite page after page of Shakespeare for only a dollar, or sometimes he would walk beside a victim reciting the Bard if they DIDN'T pay him a dollar.

After knocking myself out doing slapstick, pantomime, and playing my musical saw to mostly indifferent crowds, I learned that what turns on the spigots for women and children is to simply sit down, look sad, and blow bubbles. I can't fully explain it, but when I would do this women would rush up to me in tears, saying "Oh, this reminds me of my childhood!" and then dump all their spare change into my bucket. And children were mesmerized by this simple expedient. They refused to move away from me until their parents emptied their purses. This leads me to the conclusion that you don't need any talent to succeed as a street performer -- only a deviant understanding of human psychology.

The problem with bubbles was that the cops were always looking for reasons to chase us street performers off the Nicollet Mall, even though we had a perfectly legal right to be there. So if one of my bubbles happened to float into someone's face and pop, causing them to blink and shake their head, a flatfoot would immediately pounce on me as a public menace and tell me to leave. It's no use arguing with the cops, unless you want to get shot, so I'd shuffle down a block or two and go back to work.

And finally, I learned that when it comes to rest rooms some stores have big hearts and some are just plain mean. Panera Bread would call a cop the minute I stepped into their store, but the Target security team was always very pleasant to me -- they never even searched me once, and began greeting me by name when I would come in.

It took me a few weeks to get the hang of street performing, but once I learned the ropes and got tough with interlopers who wanted to horn in on my performance so they could share in the 'take,' I started making anywhere from two-hundred to three-hundred dollars a day. That's on sunny, warm days. When it rained or the wind blew cold I was shit out of luck -- making less than 20 dollars for six hours work.

So do I ever give street performers money when I see one nowadays? Nope. Not even if they're blowing bubbles.