It didn't come with any instructions . . .

Headlines & Verse. Thursday. June 15. 2017.

YOU THINK PARKING IS EXPENSIVE WHERE YOU LIVE? IN HONG KONG THEY PAY OVER 600 THOUSAND DOLLARS FOR A SINGLE PARKING SPACE!

There was a young man in Hong Kong

Who bought a sedan for a song.

But parking -- good lord! --

He could not afford.

He has nothing left but a thong.

CAN BERNIE SANDERS' SOCIAL AGENDA SURVIVE A MADMAN'S SHOOTING RAMPAGE?

Weak minds look for justification

To garner a grim invitation

That lets them explode

When at the crossroad --

For stupid there’s no vaccination.

THE DUTCH AREN'T WORRIED ABOUT GLOBAL WARMING AND RISING SEA LEVELS. IT'S GOOD FOR THEIR INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS PROSPECTS.

The world may be warming, it’s true --

But Holland has nothing to rue.

They’ll build you a dam

As tight as a clam --

But wait til their bill becomes due!  

The Clown Convention That Almost Wasn't

“In all of our spirits, we’ve been cozened.”

The athletic middle-aged woman leans into the crowd in a comfortable hotel conference room. She hasn’t lost the flat twang of the Midwest in her speech as she addresses the crowd sans microphone. She’s talking about funny business, but not being very funny. “We put on the war paint and baggy pants and believe it’s gonna be love at first sight, now and forever” she lectures her audience. She goes into a goofy little dance, then stops -- completely deadpan.

“It’s time to wake up and smell the creepy clowns” she warns.

The crowd is not that big -- a few dozen, mostly retired. But they hang on every word the energetic woman says. They nod as she expands on her warning and message. It’s the second day of a Clown Convention in Provo, Utah. Unaffiliated with the World Clown Association, the meeting has still drawn some big clown comedy guns. Such as the current speaker -- Michelle Thompson. Thompson worked with various Shrine circuses for twenty years as both a clown and wardrobe mistress. But now she’s on a mission.

She goes on to explain that mankind has a tangled relationship with clowns that goes back thousands of years, and is still relevant today -- what with a new version of both Bozo and Penny the Clown making the entertainment rounds. How do we feel about Ronald McDonald or Insane Clown Posse? People are becoming more and more afraid and suspicious of clowns -- why is this happening and what can be done about it? This particular clown convention was supposed to attract over three-thousand visitors -- but that estimate was way off. Only three hundred showed up for the event.

Guerilla advertising has taken a sick advantage of the public’s fascination with clowns, says Thomas. In recent months several news stories have appeared about scary clowns wielding knifes and swords along busy roadsides until they were picked up by police. It turns out they were local temps hired to scare up business for upcoming indie movies. And that’s sad.

Thompson opens things up for the naming of scary clowns -- a way to get the enemy in their sites, so to speak. The names that pop up include John Wayne Gacy and Penny the Clown and even the Joker from Batman. The room is buzzing with negative energy now. When the crowd runs out of names, Thompson begins her pep talk -- encouraging each attending clown, whether professional or amateur, to not give up the good fight for a good honest laugh.

“Never take work as a blood soaked clown in a haunted house!” she chants, almost like a mantra. “Don’t ever smoke or drink while in makeup! You can’t swear when you’re in your clown character! And for heaven’s sake, make sure you set high standards for your personal hygiene and stick to them -- also plan on dry cleaning and other expenses for your costumes. Even a hobo clown should smell like aftershave and his or her patches should be clean!”  

After workshops and a dinner catered by the local locavore restaurant Good Thymes, which consisted mostly of squash themed dishes and beet salad, Thompson gave a closing thought to the assembled clowns.

“Clowns are not on their way out, like dinosaurs and rotary phones” she promised the crowd. “We are still relevant to society and have much to say in the laughter of our times and on our planet. So give of yourself with charity appearances and spread the gospel of giddiness with your own workshops in your own hometowns!”

I overheard one elderly lady, who wore a brooch pin reading “Clowns do it Better!”, say to her companion on their way out -- “I’m still not sure clowns are anything more than Halloween costumes anymore.”

I have a sinking feeling she’s right.

James Thomas Hodgkinson

Dead at the age of sixty-six, from shooting Republican males;

Jim Hodgkinson had shown no signs of going off the rails.

A loner and a Democrat, upset by recent trends;

He died for Bernie Sanders and his progressive friends.

He came from Belleville, Illinois -- a bizness man of sorts,

Who drank his beer and paid his bills and argued about sports.

He owned a gun and loved his wife and dogs -- is what we know.

On Facebook he looked down on Trump and thought lawmakers low.

Now journalists are digging to find out what made him tick.

But likely what they will dig up means less than some mouse click.

For in this disconnected age of tweets and sprawling blogs

What a man is thinking lies too deep in cyber bogs.

The sudden flash of violence that brought Jim Thomas down

Is but a symptom of the morass that is D.C. Town.

Turning the Tables on Clown Alley

Have you ever been misquoted in a newspaper article or blog post? It's very annoying. I try to quote only what I hear or clearly remember in my circus blogs, but still get complaints from an occasional person that I have misquoted them completely. Believe me, it's never intentional. Still, in the interests of fair play, I hereby present an article about me that is full of misquotes and even made up information -- when I initially read it I was livid with wrath and intended to sue the reporter. But now I've mellowed out -- after all, as P.T. Barnum said, why should I care what they write about me as long as they spell my name correctly!

It's from the Minneapolis Star Tribune newspaper, by a reporter who goes by the initials C.J. That should have been a dead giveaway that the telephone interview she was doing with me was going to be more fantasy than fact. It's why I refuse to do any more telephone interviews today. They're too easy to embroider according the reporter's agenda.

Poet and retired clown Tim Torkildson has gotten revenge on me via the NY Times.

“You came down to Nicollet Mall when I was working there as a clown and you did a video of me, about five or six years ago,” Torkildson refreshed my memory Tuesday. “After that I decided, ‘I’ll just send her everything I do.’ I did flood you with poetry and most of it was bad, so I don’t blame you for e-mailing me back, saying, Please stop.”

NY Times business reporter Rachel Abrams handled Torkildson’s poetry in a different manner.

“I sent her several over the past couple of years. Finally she e-mailed me back: Why do you do this? What is your purpose? I e-mailed her, ‘This is what I do. This is who I am.’ We arranged a telephone conversation. I explained, I’m semiretired right now and love reading newspapers. I’m obsessed with poetry. I write a lot of it and it’s always based on a story from a newspaper or magazine. When something tickles my funny bone or outrages me I’ll write about it.”

In Monday’s NYT, Abrams wrote about Torkildson, in a little behind-the-scenes feature, citing this one:

I eat magnets all the time:

the reason ain’t redactive.

If I eat enough of ’em

I’m sure to be attractive.

(Abrams declined my attempts to fact-check but condescended to note, via e-mail: “Just so you’re aware, we don’t intend to write anything else about him.”)

Torkildson taunted me via e-mail Tuesday: “Now my poetic work is being recognized in the New York Times. My revenge is to share that article link with you today. (nyti.ms/1A8ewEQ)”

By phone I told Torkildson that he was not the first reader whose poetry I had discouraged but that I had always intended to get back to him, to follow up on an e-mail he sent about how my video landed him a job in Asia.

“I sent the link [of the video] to all my friends. One of them lived in Thailand and he was concerned that I was reduced to panhandling as a circus clown to get some money together. He talked to a friend of his who owned an English school. I spent the next four years teaching English in Thailand. It was a great part of my life.”

Osteoarthritis, which has the Roseville resident wintering in Utah, brought Torkildson’s clown days to an end. That just means more time for poetry, and, since Torkildson owes me, I gave him assignments for two upcoming interviews: with a clown and a poet.

(The original article can be seen here.)

If you'd like to read another example of a reporter's hatchet job on me and the truth, try this one from the Glasgow Daily Times:    http://bit.ly/2rrH4kx  

Utah Headlines & Verse. Wednesday. June 14. 2017.

CONCERN MOUNTS AS WOMEN PROFESSIONALS IN UTAH ARE CONSTANTLY DENIED KEY LEADERSHIP POSITIONS

In Utah the women are free

To labor in all industry.

But they must respect

That men are perfect --

So they don’t reach top of the tree.

REFUGEES IN UTAH WARNED TO CARRY SPECIAL CARD TO AVOID POLICE HARASSMENT

A refugee living in Draper

Was searched for inculpating paper.

Though nothing was found

The cops still were bound

To turn his rights into thin vapor.

WHY IS BRIGHAM YOUNG UNIVERSITY THE LAST CAMPUS IN UTAH TO BAN COCA COLA?

At BYU Coke is denounced --

The campus has all bottles bounced.

If you should imbibe,

A firm diatribe

Will have you completely denounced.

Clowning at the Snake Farm in Thailand

“Don’t let the cobras get ya!” Dougie Ashton counseled me in the Ringling Blue Unit clown alley prior to my leaving on a voluntary LDS mission to Thailand. Dougie had spent some time in Southeast Asia touring with his family’s circus back in the Sixties. “There’s nothing but snakes and dried fish in the whole darn place” was his assessment of Thailand. “Have your Mormonite boss transfer you to Darwin if you want the tropics -- I can set you up with some skirts that you can baptize over and over again!” He waggled his eyebrows at me, a la Groucho Marx.

“Get thee behind me,Satan!” I cried in disgust, backing out of the alley, and right smack into Rhubarb Bob, the Assistant Performance Director. His hatchet face was more dyspeptic-looking than usual as he wished me good luck on my proselyting endeavors. He was about the only one to do so. Even my parents, who were non-LDS, thought my volunteering for religious service was an insane waste of time. I obviously had been brain-washed into doing it. But since I was convinced it was the right thing to do, the die was cast -- I sent in my papers to Salt Lake and never looked back. Not even when I was assigned to Thailand -- a place I had never even heard of before.

I wouldn’t mind the dried fish, I told myself, but, like Indiana Jones, I had no love for snakes. To this day they make me feel uncomfortable, what with their cold lifeless eyes staring at me. Ugh!
Even when, in later years, I returned to Thailand to work as an English teacher, the sight of a snake slithering through one of the open classroom windows was enough to force me to send the children outside for an impromptu recess -- just so we cold all stampede out of the room at once.

I have detailed elsewhere how I was requested to bring along my slapstick trappings to do charity shows for the Thai Red Cross as part of my missionary calling. Soon after I arrived in Bangkok I was requested to do a show for the staff and guests at the Queen Saovabha Memorial Institute -- which sure sounded like a classy gig to me. The Institute, I was told, was part of the Queen’s Red Cross patronage. I’d come a long way, both figuratively and literally, since my days as a First of May who didn’t know a guy wire from an elephant tub. I took extra care with my makeup and costume that day -- trying to keep the clown white from melting off my face from the tropical heat and my clown blouse from showing deep sweat stains under the armpits. I powdered down with about a pound of Saint Luke’s Prickly Heat Powder.  

Imagine my horror, then, when I arrived at the Institute only to find out is was a big snake farm!  Too late, I was escorted past cages and pits filled with vipers and cobras and brightly colored coral snakes, while my palsied hands waved an unsteady greeting to the enthusiastic crowd that had gathered to see my show. A hastily constructed bamboo stage was set up in the courtyard, with a sea of clattering wooden folding chairs surrounding it.

All went well to begin with. My musical saw routine garnered big laughs and shouts of “Chayo!” (which loosely translated means ‘bravo.’) I tipped over in my folding chair a dozen times, nearly reducing it to kindling, to great applause. And I panicked ‘em with a solo rendition of ‘Bigger & Bigger.’  

But then a long piece of liana vine unfortunately blew onto the bamboo stage from a nearby seesiat tree -- which I mistook as some kind of python ready to strangle me. With a hoarse scream I scrambled away from it and toppled off the stage and into a koi pond. Thrashing around in an agonized panic, thinking I was about to be boarded by a sea snake, I set up squealing like a stuck pig -- which the crowd thought was a splendid finale to my performance. I received a standing ovation.

I was escorted from the Institute, a broken man, by the Director and some of his staff, and given a rousing sendoff as I crawled into a taxi back to my humble missionary apartment. My companion, Elder Seliger, who had no fear of snakes and no liking for clowns, told me I should keep the aquatic ending to my show from now on. My reply to his suggestion was not, strictly speaking, phrased in a very godly manner -- but it was certainly heartfelt!  

Utah Headlines & Verse. Monday. June 12. 2017.

UTAH GUN ACCESSORY COMPANY OWNER MADE LARGE DONATIONS TO GET TRUMP ELECTED -- NOW HE'S LAYING OFF EMPLOYEES. IS THIS THE BIG BANG THEORY IN REVERSE?

It isn’t so very much fun

Waiting to buy your own gun.

The red tape annoys --

And then there’s the noise

When silencers out of stock run.

ST GEORGE BUSINESS TOLD THEIR FLAGPOLE IS TOO TALL -- CITY TRIES TO COLLECT 300 DOLLAR 'VARIANCE' FEE.

In St. George the flagpoles are squat --

Cuz tall ones with danger are fraught.

Suppose that a duck

A pylon had struck?

The Feds might think it was a plot!

CITY OF OGDEN FORCED TO ALLOW FOOD TRUCKS EVERYWHERE BY NEW STATE LAW. STATIONARY EATERIES CRY 'FOUL!'

It’s hard work to run a food truck.

It also requires some luck.

Imagine a fly

In someone’s french fry --

Twould make epicures thunderstruck!

Where is Odd Ogg When You Need Him?

I recently watched several of my grandkids remain completely immobile and silent as they piddled with their parent’s smartphones on the couch, playing games for hours. My grandkids are definitely NOT having as much fun as I had as a kid, back in 1965. A simple list of my toys back in the day will explain why:

Crashmobile. This way cool wind up car came in pieces with springs attached; you fitted it all together and then let it run into a table leg or wall, and the whole shebang would fly apart. It was ghoulish fun, especially when I swiped my sister’s Barbie and Ken dolls to put in the front seats – they went flying like circus acrobats without a net.

Tinker Toys and Lincoln Logs. Don’t talk to me about Legos or any other plastic doo-dads; the feel of wood between your hands, even the occasional splinter, is the right feel for a small boy. I and my companions built veritable metropolises in our bedrooms, and then watched in grave satisfaction as...

Odd Ogg came along. This thing has to be seen to be comprehended. It was supposed to collect a rolled ball, but we used it only to slowly run over and destroy our wooden cities, like an arthritic Godzilla.

Mr. Machine. All right, it was plastic and we started losing pieces to it within a half hour of receiving it for our birthday or Christmas, but still, it made the best croaking noise of any audible item on the planet. Wind it up and point it at a baby, and that baby was guaranteed to start whimpering for its mother – what more satisfactory apparatus could you imagine for a small boy?

Wham-O Air Blaster. This was high tech, by golly! It looked like a death ray, and when you cocked the trigger back and let go it gave a blast of air that could knock the antimacassars off your aunt’s living room chairs, or ruffle your uncle’s toupee. The adults were always shouting at us to get that **** thing out of the house – now THAT’S a seal of approval for a toy!

Silly Putty. So cheap and amazing . . . you could lift a cartoon of Superman right off the comic book page and distort the Man of Steel into a hilarious gargoyle by pushing and pulling. And so what if you left it in your pants pocket and it turned to glue? Woolworth’s always had another capsule of it ready to go, for only a quarter.

Cap pistols. Oh, that spent gunpowder smell! The day a boy graduated from a squirt gun to a cap pistol he became one tough hombre.

Lawn Darts. How this one ever got off the drawing board I’ll never know; giant steel-tipped darts that you threw up in the air and hoped they landed on the target and not on top of your head. They made excellent spears on neighborhood safaris.

Water rockets. You filled ‘em halfway with water, then pumped air into ‘em until your arm fell off. Then you released the stopper and they sailed majestically into the stratosphere, sometimes detouring to break a bedroom window.

Duncan yo-yo. I still have mine, and I can still walk the dog with it. It built hand/eye coordination like no Angry Birds you ever saw!

I Couldn't Help Myself!

So there’s a couple of old ladies in my apartment building who claim to be allergic to any kind of scent. They go around sniffing the air suspiciously whenever they’re in a room with other people. Today at our Sacrament Meeting, which we hold in the building’s Community Room, one of these bloodhounds sat next to me and began drawing in bushels of air in search of an offending perfume. She turned to me and asked “Are you wearing cologne?”

I replied: “No, but I just farted.”

I couldn’t help myself. Honest! She moved to another row of folding chairs.