How Trump Will Go Down in History

His foot in his mouth, all agree

Is how Trump will make history.

No one so inept

Has ever been swept

Into the job so peewee.

Riding the Unicycle

It is a shameful part of my clown history that I never mastered the unicycle.

At Ringling Clown College the unicycle was taught by an excitable Arabian gentleman who also taught acrobatics. At our first session with unicycles he demonstrated how to mount and stay seated on one. Then he let us all take a turn. Several of the students had already acquired the skill, smugly speeding around the arena. The rest of us gamely used a wall railing to mount and find our balance. Within a week everyone could ride a unicycle to some extent. Everyone but me.

The instructor, Hassan Habibi, came from a long line of tumblers, who had thrived in the querulous Middle East for generations. He was a tough little gamecock, unused to admitting defeat. He did not care for my inability to ride a unicycle, taking it as a personal insult. My problem was I never achieved enough momentum to stay vertical. Once mounted, I always fell over sideways. And let me tell you something, those unicycle seats are unforgiving when you remain on one during a fall. But Habibi would not let me quit.

“Up! Up!” he shouted, his voice rising an octave with each injunction. “You must mount quickly and go forward like a gazelle! You are not trying at all! Why do you shame me like this?”

When the day’s classes were done and the rest of the students went down to the beach for a sunset swim I had to stay behind to take remedial unicycling. Habibi wanted to put on a unicycle exhibition for the Clown College graduation show, featuring all the students wheeling in unison. My willful dereliction would prevent this triumphant display.

Bill Ballantine, the Clown College dean, finally interceded on my behalf. He told Habibi to cease and desist. And just in time, too; I was so bruised and tender that I had to shuffle along sideways, like a crab.  

The unicycle exhibition went on without me. It was a huge success, and became a tradition with succeeding graduation shows.

I put all thoughts of the odious unicycle behind me once I got on the road with the Blue Unit. There was much to learn. How to whip up a batch of shaving soap for pie fights. How to fall on a dozen balloons to burst them simultaneously. The best way to attach a gunpowder squib to my derriere to avoid powder burns when it went off. I mastered all these arcane skills, and many more, the first few weeks of the season.

But then I came down with a bad case of puppy love for one of the showgirls. And she was enamored of the members of the King Charles Troupe -- a Harlem Globetrotters knockoff that rode unicycles. To gain her attention and possibly some of her affection I determined to once again confront my old nemesis, the unicycle.

Since my motivation was carnal rather than theoretical this time around I thought I might succeed. Charlie King and Keywash, two of the stars of the King Charles troupe, had roomettes on the same train car as me; they liked my fresh-scrubbed Minnesota looks and we became friends. So I asked them both to help me get the hang of riding a unicycle. When I told them it was because of my clandestine love of the showgirl Jody, who was one of the last to withhold her favors from anyone on the show, they grinned at me, patted me on the shoulder, and became disgustingly avuncular.

“What you gotta do, Tork” said Keywash, “is never look down once you up on it. You look forward an’ sideways, sure. But not down. Jess like climbing a big mountain. You get me?”

I said I got him.

“My boy” began Charlie King, his arm around my shoulder in a firm grip; his tone that of a manager with his greenest prize fighter. “Don’t let this thing get you down. Who’s the boss, you or the unicycle? Right. You are! Once you mount that unicycle and get her to do your bidding, you can . . . “ he went on with a rather scurrilous analogy about mounting certain other objects which we need not go into here. Needless to say, I was getting hotter to jump on that unicycle by the moment.

Charlie King graciously loaned me his own chrome plated and rhinestone covered unicycle. I leaped on it with gusto and determination and began to pedal like mad. I made it three feet before keeling over, hitting my head on the side of an elephant tub in the process. Charlie and Keywash rushed over to me, hauled me upright, checked for head wounds (none) and immediately lifted me back on the unicycle with encouraging remarks about getting right back on the horse after it bucks you off.  

This time I made it all of five feet before tilting over. I was getting better, but was also experiencing a ringing sensation emanating from inside my skull. Suddenly the thought of a torrid big top romance with Jody seemed ridiculous, a ludicrous pursuit akin to wrangling with windmills.  

“Sorry fellahs” I said to Charlie and Keywash, handing them back the unicycle and shaking my head to deaden the reverberations inside it, “but I don’t think I’m ready to take on a showgirl just yet. I hear they can be awful expensive to satisfy.”

To their credit, Charlie and Keywash did not haze me or tease me about the matter. As experienced and broadminded enthusiasts in the game of love, they agreed with me that perhaps I was wise to put off my first affair amoroso until my physical and financial prowess had ripened a bit more.

Jody eventually hooked up with a candy butcher. After several seasons they married and settled down in Neptune Beach running a frozen yogurt shop. So everything worked out for the best, since I hate frozen yogurt.

The Hobbies of Clown Alley

The merry jesters of the Ringling clown alley were not averse to lavishing their funds on wine, women, and song. Thus it came about that every November as the show wound down, getting ready to return to winter quarters in Florida, a number of denizens in clown alley suddenly found themselves financially embarrassed.

But not the veteran clowns. They made a decent salary, and they had been around the block a time or two. They had wives or business managers who took care of their income, allowing them to spend the winter months at leisure so they could catch up on their sleep and pursue their sometimes surprising hobbies.

Mark Anthony was obsessed with the “Pueblo Incident.” During the off season he collected every scrap of print about that unfortunate episode when North Korea captured a US Navy gunboat. He kept all this in several immense scrapbooks in a storage locker he rented in New Jersey. I went with him once out to it, so he could check to see that the “black bellied paper noshing beetles” (as he called them) had not done any damage. He was worried because he used homemade flour paste as an adhesive. He knew the names of the entire crew, all 83 of them, and he carved a beautiful bas-relief of all of them and their ship on a large slab of Carrara marble, which he donated to the American Merchant Marine Museum, in Kings Point, New York. Mark had trouble differentiating between North and South Korea. I once saw him toss a brand new rubber mallet out the door of his camper in disgust because he noticed a label on it saying ‘Made in South Korea.’

LeVoi Hipps, our boss clown for several seasons, owned a small citrus grove in Florida, to which he repaired during the off season. It really was more of a hobby farm, since he refused to grow anything that he could sell profitably. His passion was raising Nagami kumquats. His kids refused to eat them and his wife could not find a good jam recipe for them, so when they ripened he would pick them and place them in bushels by the side of the road with a sign imploring motorists to stop and take as many as they wanted. Hardly anyone ever did. I had dinner at his trailer house several times during the off season, and each time I ate a dozen of them prior to the meal out of sympathy for his forlorn fruit hobby. You eat them whole, rind and all. They weren’t bad, only they made my lips pucker something fierce.

Don Washburn, otherwise known as Sparky, was crazy about china tea cups. During the season he loved to drift through thrift stores looking for a stray Royal Doulton or Limoges cup. During the off season he traveled the length and breadth of California as a vendor at outdoor flea markets. Each cup was packed in yards of jeweler’s cotton, which was not supposed to be flammable. But it was, and a fire in his truck one night scorched his beloved cups beyond repair, cracking most of them as well. After that, Sparky began collecting pewter snuff boxes. But he did it listlessly, without passion or conviction. When he talked about fine bone china his eyes would light up like a pachinko machine; but snuff boxes were just something to pass the time.

“You gotta have a hobby in the circus” he told me. “Otherwise you just go crazy -- or crazier.”

Anchor Face spent the winter months testing barstools in Massachusetts. He bragged he could nurse one beer for hours without even losing the head of foam. He told me swiveling barstools should be avoided; they tended to make you dizzy (apparently how much you drank while sitting on one had nothing to do with it.) A captain’s chair barstool, in his estimation, was about the best place to rest one’s fanny when bending the elbow. It had some back support, some bottom cushioning, and, most important, you only found them in really classy cocktail lounges where lonely women congregated and were glad of the chance to buy a forlorn circus clown laid off for the winter a few snorts. And maybe a meal to boot.

I think Prince Paul collected delusions during the winter months, he seemed to have so many more of them every new season. He discovered a company in Colorado that sold pine cones for chewing. Thereafter he always had a bit of pinecone in his mouth, claiming it sweetened the breath and prevented cavities. He certainly carried a resinous reek with him from then on. To protect his sensitive eyesight he wore a brand of sunglasses that guaranteed nothing but blue light spectrum rays could get past the lens. This essentially made him blind as a bat when he wore them. At Madison Square Garden he ran into a closing elevator door and had the tip of his nose snipped clean off. He came into the alley the next day with his nose stitched up and so raw he had to wear a rubber nose for the next six weeks. He abominated reading a used newspaper, even though he was otherwise so tight he squeaked. He explained to me, in all seriousness, that you only got the latest news from a crisp new paper -- anything already opened and perused was as archaic and useless as a singletree.

I didn’t believe Swede Johnson’s hobby when he told me what it was.

“I like to build bottles in ships on my off time” he told me once.

“You mean ships in bottles” I corrected him.

“Nope, pinhead. I put together little bottles of gin and such inside model ships.”

“Aw, go on, you old ninny; there’s no such thing!”

He just shook his head at my abysmal ignorance and walked away. Several weeks later he came over to my trunk in clown alley, a wicked grin splitting his lopsided face in half. In his hands was a scale model of the Mayflower, and down in the hatches he pointed out a miniature bottle of Johnnie Walker.

“Did you rig that up just for me, you miserable old sinner?” I asked.

“Is the Pope a Republican?” he shot back, continuing to grin like the Cheshire Cat on something anabolic.

From the New York Times:  A New York Times feature writer, Jacob Bernstein, has come forward as the reporter who made derogatory comments about Melania Trump at a Fashion Week event on Sunday, apologizing in a four-part tweet.

Reporters who quiet can’t be

About others fine livery,

But must become snide

Deserve a rich tide

Of media ignominy.

The questions of Jesus

And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others? do not even the publicans so?

A publican told me “Hello.”

Insulted, I gave him a blow.

An angel appeared

And said “I’m a-feared

In heaven to him you’ll kowtow.”

Irwin Corey, Comedian and ‘Foremost Authority,’ Dies at 102

The ultimate Authority, in need of thoughtful gnome,

Has gone and called Professor Irwin Corey to his home.

No more in sneakers and frock coat will Corey clarify

All the issues of the day in language daft and sly.

But Somewhere Irwin Corey will continue to explain

To laughing angels that theology is just chow mein.

The Day I Made Verne Langdon Cry

The day I made Verne Langdon cry was towards the end of my term at the Ringling Clown College. I had been struggling with the makeup class Verne taught. He was a knowledgeable and dedicated makeup artist who inspired my fellow classmates to create stunning yet breezy clown faces.

My attempts at clown makeup were, by comparison, grotesque -- not to say frightening. My efforts at applying greasepaint looked like fingerpainting. When I tried a hobo makeup I looked like a refugee from a coal scuttle. My auguste makeup showed the consequences of a childhood spent coloring outside the lines. And when I spread on the classic whiteface, I gave a pretty good impression of Bela Lugosi in “Dracula Versus Eczema.”

Verne, who created the makeup for the original “Planet of the Apes”, and who lived in a house in Beverly Hills that was an exact replica of the Seven Dwarves cottage in Disney’s “Snow White,” was very patient and long suffering with my fumbling fingers as he tried to guide me towards a clown makeup that would not scare off too many circus patrons. But even he had his limits.

On the day of which I speak I decided that I wanted to pay homage to Oliver Hardy by emulating his curl bangs and toothbrush mustache in whiteface. The resulting facial carnage was ghastly. Rather than remove the abomination quickly and start over, I decided to brazen it out; powdering my face to set the makeup until Langdon came down to my end of a long row of picnic tables.. We were located under the south bleachers of the winter quarters rehearsal barn, which opened to the outside with some folding doors to give us maximum use of the natural sunlight.  

When he saw my face he gasped and sat down. Cupping his face in his hands, we all heard him groan “Ye gods and little fishes, what has Torkildson wrought now?” When he looked up, his face a mask of pain, there were rivulets of moisture trickling down his tanned and robust cheeks. Vern was considered an artist of note by Hollywood. His obituary ran to five pages in Fangoria Magazine. Some of his work is on display at several museums throughout the world. Yet in me, an obscure dunce from the icy, lefse-haunted wilderness of Minnesota, he had met his match.

After that episode he left me to my own devices. I continued to struggle to find the right combination of colors and lines that would produce a memorable clown face. But nothing seemed right, and my clumsy efforts continued to distort and defy all the rules of theatrical makeup. I finally decided that a simple whiteface makeup suited my me best, and it was nearly impossible to screw up as long as I kept it very simple. So after I slathered on the Stein’s Clown White, I penciled my eyebrows black, put a red dot on my nose, and colored my lower lip red. That was it. It was more mime than Ringling, but Langdon could look at it without shuddering.

Came the big night of our graduation show, when the rehearsal barn was filled with circus management and most of the inhabitants of Venice, Florida, to watch us strut our stuff. This one-time performance of old clown routines and a few new wrinkles thought up by the bolder students would determine who got a contract with Ringling and who was just given a handshake and sent on their way to eke out a drab existence somewhere else.

Needless to say, I was nervous that evening as I applied my makeup. Keep it simple, Tork, I kept telling myself. But some evil imp got into me as I put the finishing touches on my face. I decided that a demure teardrop under my right eye would set things off rather nicely. I dipped my brush in the small saucer of lampblack by my side and began tracing. But my unsteady hand betrayed me; the intended shape became an irregular blob; the more I tried to fix it the more unmanageable it became -- until it began to look like a birthmark, not a teardrop.

There was no time to clean it off and start over -- the show started in five minutes. I did my best to smooth out the shape until it looked something like the black eye people wore in Tareyton cigarette commercials. Thinking I had really blown it, I trooped out with the rest of the students for the opening number . . .

And found my clown trademark. It was unique; it was attention-getting; and it didn’t scare children. Irvin Feld said he liked the little black eye when he handed me my one year contract to sign. And Verne Langdon forgave me, saying at the aftershow party “You pulled it off, Torkildson! Now for godsake stop trying to improvise and stick with that face.”

Which I did for the next thirty years.  

Every Clown Has a Mother

Without mothers, how could you have clowns? That’s assuming, of course, that clowns are human -- and not cloned. Some of the clowns I knew at Ringling may very well have been products from a defective test tube.

Swede Johnson told me that after he was shanghaied at the tender age of 14, he never saw his mother again until he was 34. He had enough money to go back to Copenhagen and look her up. She thought he was dead, and fainted when he walked into the modest apartment where she took in laundry to wash by hand to make ends meet. He had saved up some money to give to her. She wouldn’t take it, so Swede bought a washing machine and had it lugged up four flights of stairs to her apartment to make her wash days easier.

Prince Paul told me all he remembered of his mother in Germany was the time she used all their hyper-inflated paper money, a basket of it, during the Weimar Republic, to make a bed for his nap. He slept on thousands of worthless marks.

Chico said his mother helped his father run a grocery store in Brooklyn, and grew to hate the sight of broccoli and spinach -- so he never had to eat those evil vegetables as a child.

The Little Guy described how his mother made a special dish every Sunday. Potato Chip Casserole. It was horrible. It glued his teeth together.

Holst’s mother and father came to visit the show in Champaign, Illinois. She darned all his socks during their 3 day visit, and then offered to mend anyone else’s socks. I was the only one to take her up on the offer.   

My mother didn’t even drive – she depended on my father to take her places that she couldn’t reach by bus or by walking.  She did not attend to the affairs of state, and didn’t like the limelight one little bit. She never understood how I craved it so very much.

On summer weekends in my childhood it was the practice of the Torkildson tribe to drive to Lake Johanna, ten miles from home, for a day of picnicking and swimming.  It’s no Coney Island, but it was plenty good enough for us.  My dad always found a nice, shady tree to set up his folding lounge chair under and snooze away the hours, awaking only long enough to pour a Hamm’s beer down his throat before sinking back as if he’d been shot.  My mother worshipped the sun; she slathered on the coconut oil and broiled happily on a blanket on the beach.  We kids, of course, turned into naiads and manatees, splashing and floating in our native element, refusing to come out even for lunch.

There was a whitewashed wooden pylon set up for the lifeguard on the public beach at Lake Johanna.  He, or she, wielded a large tin whistle, frequently tootling on it to gain the attention of some freshwater malefactor who was swimming outside the roped off area or otherwise acting the maritime scofflaw.  The year I turned eight Ramsey County decided not to stock the pylon with lifeguards anymore, no doubt as an economy measure, and neglected to inform patrons of the public beach, outside of a teeny weeny sign, the size of a flyer, that was tacked briefly onto the whitewashed wooden pylon, and fluttered away in the breeze soon after being posted.

That was the year I decided I could swim out to the wooden platform anchored in about twenty feet of water – and nearly drowned in the attempt.  Luckily, there were some adult swimmers nearby; they hauled me back on shore, vomiting water like a disgruntled geyser, and turned me over to my mother – who was incensed to suddenly learn there was no longer any lifeguard on duty.  Ever.  

Her fury at this perceived dereliction of the Ramsey County Park Board’s duty was grim and determined.  After making sure I was reasonably responsive, she clouted me on the ear for being such a dumming and strode over to the concessions shack, where sandy hotdogs and lukewarm soda pop were vended by bored teenagers.  She found the most likely-looking boy in the group, grabbed him by the scruff of his neck, and frog-marched the astonished youth over to the white pylon, where she instructed him in the kind of motherly tones that no one who values their life ever ignores to climb up and keep an eye on things until she relieved him of his duty.  The teenaged boy, seeing the dangerous sparkle in her eye, meekly obeyed – and once again Lake Johanna had a lifeguard, albeit a shanghaied one.  He stayed up there until it started to get dark and we packed up to go home.  Then he quietly slipped off the pylon and skedaddled for all he was worth.  I’d like to know what he told HIS mother when he got home that night.

Word must have gotten back to the Park Board, for the next weekend there was an older man glumly perched on the white pylon, gazing about him with bitter resignation.  I can’t say for sure, but I’m willing to bet dollars to donuts that he was a member of the Park Board itself.

From the New York Times:    . . . China’s gender gap remains huge. There were 33.59 million more men than women in China in 2016, according to figures from the country’s National Bureau of Statistics that were issued last month . . .

In China the males dominate

Ev’ry aspect of the state.

On Valentine’s Day

They get in the way

Of each other just for a blind date.

A Smile

Love is the remedy for ailing families, ill communities, and sick nations.  Thomas S. Monson.

Big questions seem to melt away when I can show my love

To friends and fam’ly, even strangers in this world of shove.

What I need to pray for is not health or wealth or grace

As much as just the power to keep a smile upon my face.

Conflict Resolution in Clown Alley

“Take it outside the alley!”

Such was the cry of the peacemakers in the Ringling clown alley during the years I worked there.

Whenever a major conflict arose between parties, with increasing volume and threats, the disputants were invited to remove themselves and settle their differences outside. If they ignored this request and continued their wrangle inside the alley they were forcibly ejected. Very few ever broke the Pax Comici. It was hard enough to keep a lid on 30 paid lunatics all crammed together, without hotheads making the whole shebang go up in smoke.  

My personal hot button were the smokers. Back then it was still a Constitutional right to puff away wherever and whenever you wanted, despite the health and fire hazards. Asking someone to put out their cigar or cigarette was tantamount to asking them to give up their right to bear arms. The clown alley nicotine fiends heedlessly threw their butts way with careless abandon: I had lit cigarettes land on my costumes and even on pizza slices! It was damaging and disgusting, but the more I hollered the less anyone heard me -- since fully two thirds of clown alley were heavy smokers. One of the worst offenders was Chippy, who specialized in making dozens of black powder squibs for each show. Squibs were used as blow offs for numerous gags; anytime an explosion with a large mushroom cloud of heavy black smoke was needed, you just rigged one of Chippy’s squibs up to a battery with a simple on/off switch, and your comic detonation was ready to go.

Chippy shed cigarette ashes like dandruff; they got on everything. Plus he rolled his own, and whatever brand of tobacco he used must have consisted largely of shredded horsehair and rubber tires -- one whiff was enough to telescope my nose back up into my sinuses. But Chippy was big and cranky. He didn’t take criticism well. So I was forced to mute my protests into vengeance-filled daydreams. But Chippy taught me an important lesson about getting even with your enemies. One day a live ash from his cigarette fell onto the squib he was working on. He had it in his lap and the flash explosion sent him hobbling off to the the ER howling in agony. His misfortune gave me a warm fuzzy feeling inside, and after that I didn’t loathe him quite so much. So I learned the age-old lesson that if you want to get even with your enemies just wait for life to do something cruel to them. It always does, to everyone. So you don’t have to lift a finger or take any of the blame. That philosophy has served me well, and kept me out of jail, for many years.

We called troublemakers ‘heat merchants.’ There were a number of them. Dougie Ashton was always sniffing around the alley, looking for disagreements he could fan into a blaze. As a new convert to the LDS faith, I wanted to share my newfound beliefs with others, but Holst, also LDS, advised me to keep quiet and preach by example, not by word. But Dougie liked to draw me out with outrageous statements about Mormonism. Come to think of it, he may have been one of the first purveyors of fake news . . .

Strolling up to my trunk, he once said “I hear your church doesn’t let members eat Twinkies -- aren’t you in big trouble?” I happened to be eating a Twinkie at the time, and shouted back between bites that it was a lie and he was full of dritt! That’s all he was waiting for.

“Oh yeah, you little twit? C’mon and make me eat those words you bloody church boy!”

“Take it outside the alley!”  came the familiar refrain from a dozen throats.

“Sorry Dougie. I didn’t mean to yell at you” I told him quietly.

“Yeah, mate. Same here, I guess.” Many clown alley contretemps blew over quickly, like a summer storm.

There were occasional powder sock fights. After applying the heavy greasepaint, clowns used an old white sock, full of baby powder, to set the makeup and keep it from smearing. One day a major rift developed in the alley when the older clowns discovered that the younger clowns, including me, thought then President Nixon was a crook and a war monger; the sooner he was impeached and the sooner we got out of Vietnam the better. Prince Paul, a stalwart political conservative who thought Barry Goldwater was a hippy, threw the first sock right into Racoon Face’s kisser. After that it quickly developed into a dusty Donnybrook. When the talcum powder settled, clown alley looked like a pale white moonscape. Without anyone saying a word, we reached a consensus that Nixon and the Vietnam War were conversationally off limits in clown alley from then on.

Another heat merchant was Mama. So named because he pretended to a solicitous concern about his fellow joeys, he was only after scurrilous information he could retail to Charlie Baumann. Offering a hungover clown some aspirin, Mama would learn of his unpaid bar tab. The next day Baumann would saunter into the alley and sandbag Mama’s victim with a dire threat to pay his local bills or he’d be cut loose from the show and handed over to the local cops. Mama was universally loathed as a stoolie. When he became boss clown a few seasons later his trunk mysteriously developed the ability to acquire dime bags of pot and other illegal items. Baumann was informed of these amazing appearances but chose not to investigate. Still, it kept Mama on his toes and was probably the reason why he retired from clowning at the age of thirty-five to become an evangelical pastor in Michigan.  

I suppose this is as good a place as any to mention my unfortunate altercation with Michu, the World’s Smallest Man. He received star billing in the program and from the publicity department, keeping Art Ricker hopping to find new ways to exploit his stature without ruffling his dignity. But he never had his own dressing room. Circus management put him in clown alley. He was an ornery cuss, and one Sunday afternoon as I was minding my own business reading the Book of Mormon at my trunk he came over and poured a bottle of beer over it. Without hesitation I grabbed him by the scruff of his neck, threw him inside his own wardrobe trunk, and locked it.

I have never apologized for my actions. The little pisher deserved it. But if I had it to do over again I would probably take my sodden scriptures to Charlie Baumann, tell him what happened, name the clowns who were witnesses to the event, and then ask for reimbursement for a new Book of Mormon.

In the event, once they got Michu out of his trunk I was allowed to finish the season, but then was blacklisted from Ringling. I spent several years in the wilderness, working for mud shows, but eventually, mostly because of the good offices of my pal Holst, who was by now Vice President of Talent at Ringling, I was pardoned and reinstated. Michu went on to animate Alf in the hit TV series.

And, by the way, we never threw pies in clown alley. That kind of stuff only happens in the movies.

There was an old man who was crazy

(or else all his doctors were lazy.)

His meds did include

A bunch of quaalude

It kept him both docile and hazy.

The questions of Jesus

How is it that ye sought me? wist ye not that I must be about my Father’s business?

How is it that we seek him in the universe so vast?

How contact him when he is just a figure from the past?

How often must we speak of him, his image to maintain?

How will we understand his love and sorrow, might and pain?

About his Father’s business, he is here among us now.

About his Father’s business, his dominion makes us bow.

About his Father’s business, he wants us all to learn

His Father’s business is just us -- his only true concern.