Kim Jong-nam

The North Korean head of state

Prefers his relatives be ‘late.’

When uncles or an aunt is odd

He sends them to a firing squad.

When there are half-sibs to erase

He pats some poison on their face.

I would not be a North Korean

For all the wealth of the Aegean.

A Clown in Mexico

I was in the mood for a wanderjahr after my first season as a clown with Ringling. My pantomime skills were still rudimentary, so when the Little Guy, Steve Smith, told me he was going to Mexico for further studies with our Clown College pantomime teacher I decided I’d go there too.

I’ve always believed that comedy should be seen but not heard. While I relish the quips of Groucho, my true affection is for silent Harpo -- who brought forth a world of meaning with just his ‘gookie.’ To look upon the faces of the great silent clowns is to read an open book that never ends.

So I got off the bus in Patzcuaro, Michoacan, expecting our instructor Sigfrido Aguilar to meet me. But there was nobody there. After waiting an hour I started dragging my luggage around the town square, inquiring about the location of the pantomime school -- Estudió Búsqueda de Pantomimo. The school, a former nunnery, was two miles out of town. When I got there I piled my baggage next to the plain Jesuit fountain that bubbled in the patio and lay down to take a siesta.

I awoke to the beaming face of Sigfrido, who escorted me to the hacienda where I and the other students lived during our apprenticeship. I was assigned a room with Smith. He immediately set up his stereo and started playing excerpts from “The Night They Raided Minsky’s.” I got out my used copy of Prescott’s “The History of the Conquest of Mexico” and stretched out on my bed for a good long read.   

The next morning we six students started classes with the maestro in the courtyard of the nunnery. We began with warmup and stretching exercises, then progressed to some simple pantomime moves and classic poses. Sigfrido was an admirable teacher. His Tarascan face, with luminous brown eyes, blunt nose, and perpetual smile, patiently encouraged us to work through the tedium of rote movements to discover the beauty of silent action.

Afternoons were devoted to siestas, Spanish lessons, gorging on pesca blanca (a dried white fish that came exclusively from Lake Patzcuaro and went extremely well with refried beans and several bottles of Jarritos) or sightseeing in Sigfrido’s indomitable Volkswagen bus. Once a week we were assigned to sit in the little town square to observe passersby and then work up two-minute impressions of them to show Sigfrido. I watched dyspeptic Carmelite nuns shepherding their little girl charges, all uniformed in white blouses, blue skirts, and red bows in their hair. The peanut vendor and the ice cream vendor continually circled the square, hoarsely calling out “Tan bueno!” Their tin carts rattled in a way that reminded me of the corrugated tin roofs back in Winter Quarters in Florida. Sleepy old men sat on the stone benches, whittling grotesque little statues of peasants with long noses and drooping cheeks from driftwood. They sold these for a few pesos to the local tourista shops, who in turn sold them to the touristas for many pesos.

When Montezuma’s Revenge swept through the student body, as it did on a regular basis, the Little Guy acted as an angel of mercy, dispensing Kaopectate from a large bottle he brought with him from Nithercott’s Drug Store in Zanesville, Ohio, where he made his home. During these down times I learned to play Besame Mucho on my musical saw.

Our Mexican idyll began to shatter when the four other students in class decided simultaneously to go back to the States in pursuit of other interests. They had considered Sigfrido’s school an intellectual lark unlike Smith and I, who considered it sound vocational training for our careers as clowns. Plus the nightlife in Patzcuaro was nonexistent. After six pm they rolled up the sidewalks. That didn’t bother Smith and me; we spent our evenings recording a series of cheap cassette tapes about life in Mexico and sent them to Tim Holst back on the Ringling show, where he was now ringmaster. They were extremely insensitive, brash, and as far from politically correct as you could get. From the bucolic little town of ‘Fartzalotto’ Smith and I interviewed imaginary citizens who worked in the tortilla mines or stomped out the vintage refried bean wine, playing all the parts ourselves. Holst told me years later that he would play these cassettes for a select group of the veteran clowns and that the consensus, as expressed by the eloquent Prince Paul, was that we were “meshuge vi genem.”   

Sigfrido was at a loss as to what to do now that he only had two students, but Smith saved the day by suggesting Sigfrido get some kind of grant from the Mexican government to do pantomime/clown shows up and down Mexico. No sooner said than done -- as a native Tarascan, Sigfrido had an in with the Ministry of Culture. He simply neglected to tell them that his ‘culturally significant’ show included two gringos. Now there was money for a tour.

The three of us spent a few weeks rehearsing some standard mime routines, spliced together with traditional clown gags like ‘Dead and Alive.’ We billed ourselves as ‘Los Payasos Educados’ (The Educated Clowns.) Opening night was in Guadalajara, and it was well received. Sigfrido’s character came across as winsome and innocent; Smith’s character was impudent and cocky; and I came across as just plain nuts, trying to run into the audience with a bouquet of bedraggled flowers whenever I spotted a charming senorita and being restrained by the other two. Smith and I kept our traditional circus clown makeups, even though Sigfrido begged us to use the classical mime white face like he did.

We played a dozen other towns in Mexico before the grant money finally ran out. Then we holed up back in Patzcuaro while Sigfrido made a play for the Ministry of Culture to subsidize a tour of South America. Pemex was making obscene profits at the time, and the Mexican government tapped into that gravy train to sponsor a legion of cultural exports. We figured Sigfrido was a natural for some of that mazumah.

But as the captain of the Titanic once said to Robert Burns, “The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men gang aft a-gley.”

First, Smith’s girlfriend Robin showed up, driving all the way from Ohio in a battered Chevy held together with hair bands and nylons. It was an intrepid journey, I’ll give her that. She thought it was time to talk about marriage. Her unexpected presence shifted the subtle dynamics between Smith and I that had led to some great comic timing onstage. Now his mind was on Robin, and how to respond to her request. When Sigfrido came back with a swingeing great check from the Ministry to finance our South American tour, he immediately sensed the lapse in our esprit de corps. When he refused to pay for Robin’s travels with the tour, it looked like the end. But somehow Sigfrido and Smith came to a private understanding. We began rehearsing again.

Then I came down with something called pseudo-dysentery. I was bedridden for several weeks before I could get up, nearly a skeleton. I would need months to recuperate. My parents flew me back to Minneapolis so I could stay with them. Smith and Robin drove back to Zanesville to look for curtains. Los Payasos Educados was kaput. Sigfrido toured South America as a solo mime, to great acclaim.  

In latter years I worked with many Latino clowns, some of them from Mexico. On Ringling there was Zapato, who could keep a half dozen ping pong balls in the air simultaneously by spitting them out of his mouth. He also had a hilarious elephant walkaround, making the creature first squirt water out of its trunk . . . and then out of its backside.

I miss that kind of humor.

Judge Neil M. Gorsuch

The judge wants people living, not dying by the hands

Of doctors who push poison in many diff’rent brands.

If they will confirm him, he’ll use up all his breath

To tear down euthanasia -- and bore us all to death.

Betsy DeVos

Made of money, made of steel,

Betsy will not play genteel.

In her Education post

She will make her rivals toast.

But so far with Trump discreet,

Betsy takes a meek backseat.

A Clown in Thailand

At the end of the 1973 season I looked fondly at my clown alley compatriots for one last time. Over the last few seasons we had shared a lot of laughs, a few hard times, and many miles on the old Iron Lung (our name for the train car where the new clowns had their roomettes.) I had been kicked by llamas; peed on by elephants and tigers; swindled out of ten dollars by a roustabout named Scotty; discovered my inner clown with the help of master comics like Swede Johnson, Prince Paul, and Otto Griebling; been promoted to Advance Clown; and eaten my first bean burrito. Now it was time to leave these hallowed halls of harlequiny for a radically different environment. I had received a letter from Salt Lake City, signed by President Spencer W. Kimball himself, calling me to spend the next two years as a proselyting missionary, at my own expense, in the Kingdom of Thailand for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I was to report to Salt Lake to begin my orientation in three weeks. From there I would be whisked off to BYU-Hawaii in Laie for a crash course in the Thai language. And then drop anchor in ancient Siam for two years to discuss the rudiments of salvation with Buddhist monks and tuk-tuk drivers. I wanted to say a fond farewell to these benighted buffoons who had tolerated a Minnesota naif and taught him so much -- with the maximum amount of obscenity and absurdity.

I stepped into the middle of the alley, already dressed in a white shirt and tie, with pressed black slacks, and rapped on Swede’s trunk with a handy turkey baster for attention.

“Listen, you guys” I began, my voice husky with emotion. “I just wanna say that . . . “

“How many wives ya gonna have, mate?” jeered Dougie Ashton.

“I just wanna say . . . “

“Hey Tork, bring me back some pre filled sarongs, will ya?” This from Chico. The rat.

“I just wanna say . . . “

Several clowns began a rousing rendition of Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus, substituting the word ‘halitosis’ for ‘hallelujah.’

“All of you guys can go to perdition for all I care” I yelled as I strode out of clown alley, right into Charlie Baumann’s starched tuxedo shirt.

“You must do this, this Mormon nonsense?” he asked me sternly.

“It’s all set, Charlie. I can’t back out now.” I gave him a weak smile. I didn’t want anymore arguments, especially since he was holding his tiger whip.

“Verwahren” he shook my hand. “Come back vhen you are done. You are a goot clown.”

Before I could react he pushed past me into the alley, to begin a rancorous investigation concerning the previous night’s panty raid on the showgirl’s train car.

I looked around for Tim Holst, who had introduced me to the LDS church several years earlier. This was all his fault, I wanted to joke with him. But he and his wife Linda were out shopping for bassinets somewhere.

I passed out the back entrance, looking at Backdoor Jack and thinking “There’s a face I won’t much miss.”

I had more luggage than the other missionaries when I arrived at the Mission Home in Salt Lake. President Morris in Thailand had instructed me to bring along my clown ensemble for possible use as a goodwill ambassador for the LDS church. Airlines, then as now, charged me an arm and a leg for the excess weight -- which I had to pay out of my own pocket.

In Hawaii I spent ten hours a day learning the basics of the Thai language. “Sour tea cup” or something like that, meant “Hello.” Being a tonal language, you had to sing it or risk having phrases such as “Would you like some rice?” come out as “Get out of here.” As set apart missionaries we were sworn to complete celibacy and obedience to other strictures that could rub a young man the wrong way pretty easily. The torrid beauty of the entire Pacific Rim poured into BYU Hawaii to study English, accounting, and home economics, and these languid island girls were not shy about parading past the barracks where we studied, ate, and slept. Even though I had been exposed to dozens of painted ladies (showgirls) during my years with the circus, I still found myself taking several cold showers a day -- as did most of my fellow sufferers.

When it was learned that I was a professional circus clown, the powers that be set up a one hour show for me at the campus auditorium, for all the missionaries and student body. I had plenty of my own original material, but I did not scruple to swipe bits and pieces from my colleagues back in clown alley. I especially relished stealing Otto’s old gag of going out in the audience and flirting with the girls while pretending to be cleaning the seats with a rag. I stole several impudent kisses from Melanesian and Oriental lasses that I still cherish today -- mostly because my clown persona let me get away with it. Out of costume, I would have been sent packing for such an egregious breach of standards. To paraphrase Mel Brooks’ famous dictum: “It’s good to be the clown!”

In Thailand itself I faced several challenges new to me as a clown. First, all my grease paint melted in the tropical heat, becoming impossible to apply. I finally solved this problem by purchasing bags of ice prior to my performance to firm up the greasepaint so I could apply it properly. Next there was the problem of my classical whiteface clown makeup. To the Thais I appeared to be a “phii”, a ghost. Their initial reaction to my appearance was to screech and head for the exits. Or else cover their eyes and wave their Buddhist amulets in front of me to ward off the revenant’s evil eye. I finally overcame this dilemma by having my companion (LDS missionaries always work as a team) come out before me to explain that although I may look like a specter I was actually a harmless funnyman (“tuatalog” in Thai.) This satisfied most people, but there were always a few betelnut-chewing grannies in the back row who remained unconvinced and would pelt me with holy water sold by the pint by Buddhist monks. Finally, my clown shoes, stuffed with horsehair, began to sprout grey wedges of fungus out the sides -- making me look like a ridiculous winged Mercury.  Through trial and error I found that Snake Prickly Heat Powder discouraged the growth, not only on my shoes but on me.

As my two year assignment came to a close I began to ponder about my future career and activities. Did I want to go back to clowning with the circus, or should I aim higher? Most of my companions were set to enroll at BYU in Provo Utah. They would become doctors, lawyers, CPA’s, architects, teachers, and engineers. Have comfortable and productive lives.  I decided that when I got back to the States I would enroll in the University of Minnesota for a bachelor’s degree in theater arts, so I could mold young performers’ minds with my expertise and mellow avuncular humor.  

At the end of two semesters I called Mr. Feld to ask for my old job back. I was suffering from terminal boredom. He cheerfully hired me back. Since then I’ve always wondered . . . did he do me a favor or a disservice? That’s the kind of stuff that gives an old man like me insomnia.

7 Earth-Size Planets Orbit Dwarf Star, NASA and European Astronomers Say

We’re chock a block with planets now.

So when we reach them I avow

We ought to plant no flag or plinth

But leave them in their innothinth.

Charity begins at home

So let us show some when we roam!   

Politics in Clown Alley

Prince Paul insisted on the latest New York Times being delivered to his trunk in clown alley, whether we were in Passaic New Jersey or Albuquerque New Mexico. He kept abreast of current events that way, and was known to suddenly burst into verbal flame over stories that exposed the venality of public officials or described the tumults of our overseas pawns.

Throughout the season a television set was brought into the alley from time to time to monitor world-shaking events. But either the reception was no good or the news became so controversial and absorbing that we began missing our cues for the production numbers. When that happened the formidable Charlie Baumann would silently stalk into the alley, unplug the boob tube, then carry it out under his arm, never to be seen again. His suite on the train must have been chock-a-block with Zeniths.

Murray Horowitz, otherwise known as Raccoon Face, loved to argue politics with anyone willing to engage him in debate, but he had no takers in clown alley. As Charlie Chaplin is alleged to have said, “The only competition I have as a clown is Congress.” So Racoon Face had to buttonhole hapless showgirls or complaisant horse groomers to exercise his jaws.

I personally had no politics when I joined clown alley nearly a half century ago. Both my parents voted the straight Farmer-Labor ticket back in Minnesota, and my dad had once gone out on a sympathy strike for the miners up on the Iron Range (although, being a bartender, my mother said he just wanted an excuse to drink more beer and play more pinochle with his cronies.) Of course, I was a union man myself, having had to join AGVA when I signed up as a clown. When the show hit Madison Square Garden our already flimsy paychecks were further decimated by an increase in union dues. Chris Bricker, who sported a jaunty straw boater and had a sort of barber pole whirl on his rubber nose, was our union rep; he hadn’t heard anything about it. I got so het up about the whole thing that I found the New York address for AGVA and went down to their next member meeting. Some of the other First of Mays came along for moral support. The veteran clowns all said it was a waste of time. Penny Singleton, who played Blondie in the movies for 20 years, was President of AGVA at that time. When she asked if there was any new business I gave a sharp dry cough and stood up.

She glanced at me blankly, obviously not recognizing who I was or where I came from in the least.

“Yes?” she said neutrally.

I had not prepared anything, so blurted out:

“How come we gotta pay more dues when we don’t get anything in return -- not even a newsletter!”

“Oh, you must be one of that Ringling crowd. The raise is to cover the rising cost of your health insurance. You people are in a very dangerous line of work.”

‘Ringling crowd?’ Well, that stuck in my craw. If I was going to be gouged by these people, I at least wanted enough respect from them to be called a performer, not part of a crowd.

“How do you know that?” I asked shrilly, my recently completed adolescence sneaking back up on me as my voice broke in indignation. “Have you ever been to the circus? I tell ya what, you come down to the Garden and I’ll get you a free pass as my guest!”

This raised a mild guffaw, and Ms. Singleton had the grace not to have me thrown out on my ear. She said my protest would be noted in the minutes of the meeting. But she never did come down to the see the show, nobody from AGVA ever came down to the see the show, and Baumann told us if we didn’t agree to the increased deduction we’d be fired. Ringling was a closed shop. So my politics got a jumpstart after that; I became virulently anti-union in the best GOP tradition.

But there’s just something about working as a buffoon that short circuits the ability to take politics too seriously for very long. Today, like Prince Paul, I have spent the morning perusing the New York Times, then decided to write a poem. I never know what I think about a subject until I write some verses about it. So, for better or worse, here goes:

The town of Turdley stood amongst a fertile river valley;

It counted schools and stores and shops almost without tally.

The citizens were decent sorts, of many diff’rent stripes;

Some went to the synagogue and some played on bagpipes.

Others liked to swim and ski, or look for geode stones;

A very few just lay around, gazing at Dow Jones.

Tho jobs were scarce and pensions failed, the people carried on.

Although they sorta kinda thought there was some hidden con.

And then one day their congressman appeared as if by magic,

And what the town experienced turned out to be quite tragic.

Milford Squiffins Bunting, known to one and all as “Squiff,”

Had been in Congress since the time of ancient hieroglyph.

Wise in all the ways a politician plays the game,

He had amassed a fortune and a slightly frowzy name.

He thought the people loved him, since they always put him in.

(Ignoring that by marriage he was ev’rybody’s kin.)

He thought a town hall meeting would let people see him shine,

He set it at the high school, with its floors of polished pine.

But like a broken spillway at a dam with too much rain

The crowd poured in all turbulent, bent on causing pain.

Just as Squiff got started someone threw their cell at him.

Another gave a Bronx cheer that was heard throughout the gym.

“I’ve come explaining health care” he began most cautiously,

But that just made the crowd begin to moan most nauseously.

“Environmental hazards will no longer plague your days!”

He tried a diff’rent topic to tamp down the coming blaze.

“Fraud!” the maddened hundreds cried, and echo answered ‘Fraud!”

And Bunting starting praying to his great GOP god.

“We do not have connections with the Russians” Bunting yelled,

But as one man the crowd arose and said such sham just smelled.

They pelted him with Tums and they asked what would a wall

Do to bring back jobs to town down at the local mall.

They got a rail to ride him, and some tar and feathers too.

They’d send him back to lobbyists who with the laws did screw!

Before they could enact this crime (though some would call it just)

A SWAT team from the CIA through the high school wall did bust.

They shot down all the ‘terrorists’ to save old Squiffy’s hide,

Then put him on a copter for a safe protected ride.

(And if you ask the CIA it all will be denied.)

There’s no one left in Turdley and the town has gone to seed.

Plastic bags move round like ghosts, in which cockroaches breed.

And Milford Squiffins Bunting just keeps rolling right along

Like a ripe and thoughtless parasitic scuppernong.

Trump Details Plans to Deport Millions of Immigrants

How quiet now the countryside, how still the urban dust,

As cabbages rot in the fields and Wendy’s turns to rust.

The gabled rooftops in DC, the pools throughout LA,

Decline and are neglected till they fall in grim decay.

The lawns become a jungle, full of bugs and randy weeds;

The trash is overflowing as the desolation breeds.

Across the land the factories that gave us beef and pork,

That render all those chicken parts, are silent as a cork.

Those small towns in the Midwest where new life had come again

Relapse into decrepitude with barely an ‘amen.’

The doctors and the scientists that have exotic roots

Decamp in indignation, and shake our dust off of their boots.

America at last is done with immigration woes;

We’ve cut their face off finally -- and just to spite our nose.

The News Clown

I married in 1981, after having been blacklisted from Ringling Brothers for my fight with Michu the World’s Smallest Man. After I attended Brown Institute of Broadcasting and obtained my FCC 3rd Class Engineer’s License, we settled down in the little town of Bottineau, amidst the pines and ponds of the Turtle Mountains in North Dakota. I did the news for KBTO Radio, and we bought our first house. When I dug up a garden in the backyard that spring I found half a dozen arrowheads. I became an expert bullhead fisherman. After I pulled their skins off with a pair of pliers and filleted them, Amy would fry them in butter and serve them with boiled new red potatoes and baked squash.

I was given carte blanche with the news department, as long as I delivered ten minutes of news at 6 am, noon, and 5pm. It wasn’t long before I started sprinkling my newscasts with non sequiturs and limericks.

“The broadest broadcasting in North Dakota” is how I pretentiously opened each newscast. I have no idea what that meant but the station manager liked it; he put the phrase up on a billboard on Highway 5 going east out of town.

When the city council debated adding a second traffic light on Main Street, I editorialized on-air:

We only need one traffic light.

There’s no need to get in a fight.

If driver’s want speed

Why should we impede

Their right to take split-second flight?

And when Grace Lutheran Brethren Church held their annual lutefisk dinner at Christmas, I did a live broadcast from their basement kitchen/social hall, asking participants such burning questions as:  “How can you eat that stuff?”

The station’s news/weather/sports department was housed in a mobile trailer set in a huge field of sunflowers. In the spring and summer there were days when we had to suspend newscasts and sportscasts until the large noisy tractors were done planting and ploughing. We just played country western songs. There was no place to put the large rattling AP machine, spewing out reams of yellow paper, except in the bathroom. I remember the triple bell alert going off on it when President Reagan was shot. I was shaving, and rushed into the studio with suds still on my face to break in with the shocking bulletin.

I was nostalgic for Ringling Brothers, so sometimes I would do my newscasts in full clown regalia, ending with a brief tune on my musical saw. Of course, being radio, no one but the staff could see my outrageous getup. But gradually word spread about the strange goings-on up at KBTO and we started to get crowds coming in to watch my newscasts on days when I was in makeup. The station manager put a popcorn machine in the lobby of the trailer.

Pretty soon I was doing all my broadcasts in clown makeup. The local newspaper, the Bottineau Courant, a venomous competitor with us for advertising dollars, actually ran a photographic essay on my bigtop broadcasts, mentioning that I handed out balloon animals to any child who came to see me. Several other newspapers in the area reprinted the story, and I was soon overwhelmed with grasping tykes and their parents.They even barged right into the studio during my broadcasts, interrupting me to demand a pink poodle dog or an elephant. When the local Dairy Queen reopened for business after adding indoor seating, I was naturally asked to cut the ribbon and throw a pie in the mayor’s face. When nearby Antler held a fundraiser for their Opera House, originally built along the lines of a National Guard Armory in 1905 during a railroad boom, they asked me to be the main attraction.

Continuing my annus mirabilis, our first child was born. We named her Madelaine. And my very first article appeared in print, in an LDS version of MAD Magazine called SunStone. It was called “Clinical Notes on the RM” and it detailed the pitfalls returning missionaries experienced when they tried to get married.  Even the Brussel sprouts in my garden, which the neighbors assured me would never prosper because we didn’t have the right kind of soil, outdid themselves in fecundity.  

I even learned how to drive. Up until then I had never been interested in driving. Why bother, when the circus train whisked me from city to city in comfort and convenience? I informed Amy that she would be lucky enough to be my instructor. She had gotten her bachelor’s degree in Education at BYU, and began teaching me with relish. Her enthusiasm quickly disappeared when I insisted on running down garbage cans and nicking telephone poles in astonishing numbers. By the time I was ready to take my driver’s test she was plucking grey strands out of her brunette hair.

That was my life without Ringling: A family. A house. A new career that didn’t require me to whip up soap suds every day.  Perhaps the blacklisting had been a blessing in disguise? But no, performing for a few dozen potato farmers at a time and announcing the daily pork belly prices from Chicago could not compare to the restless laughing crowds I had once cajoled in every major city in America.

God forgive me, but I was going to get back to that flamboyant and surreal world again -- no matter what it took. And, eventually, I did make it back there. And it did take everything I had.

Everything.   

Alex Jones

A demagogue by the name Jones

Spoke in such fiery tones

That presidents fell

For his hollow spell

And acted like one of his clones.