Paul Manafort

Paul Manafort, he took some dough

From overseas to stage a show

That put D. Trump behind the wheel

Of this here country’s Crackpot Deal.

That money was a slush fund trust

That Russians hoped would really bust

The Clinton juggernaut for good --

As far as ethics . . . knock on wood!

But now the tawdry story breaks

And Manafort is in the jakes.

It only shows that Russian coin

Comes back to kick you in the groin.

Memories of My LDS Mission in Thailand: Aerobics.

When President Harvey Brown took over the missionary work in Thailand, he brought with him a certain gusto, a joie de vivre that was exceedingly infectious.  He wanted his Elders and Sisters to work hard, but he also wanted them to enjoy themselves.  His philosophy was that when the missionaries had a chance to mingle with the ordinary Thai people they would find hundreds of golden contacts who would be interested in knowing more about the Church.

To help push this philosophy along, he suggested that the Elders and Sisters in the mission begin an aerobics exercise club, to be called, in Thai, “Wing Phua Chiwid”, which, literally translated, means “Run for your life”, but would be better translated as “Run for Health”.  (Let me just add that President Brown was of a Falstaffian build and could hardly run more than few yards himself!)

The club was based on the book “The New Aerobics” by Dr. Kenneth H. Cooper, formerly of the United States Air Force, who had pioneered aerobic workouts to help strengthen the heart.  Each missionary was supplied with a copy of the book and told to make it a part of their early morning scripture study.  We were supplied with bright yellow t-shirts with the logo “Wing Phua Chiwid” in Thai blazoned across it, as well as electric blue running shorts.  It was up to us individually to provide our own running shoes, which proved to be beyond my financial resources at the time, so I did my jogging, with my companion, in my Florsheims.  I developed numerous blisters on my tootsies, until my companion, Elder Heier, took pity on me and bought me a pair of running shoes for an early Christmas present. We set a goal of running two miles every morning, which I found thoroughly exhausting and exhilarating.  As President Brown had hoped, our constant appearance at the local park, warming up and jogging around, aroused curiosity in a few health-conscious Thais, and they began to join us each morning for the run.  We explained to them the correlation between good health and the Word of Wisdom, and then would ask permission to come visit them in their homes to explain the rest of the Church’s teachings.  We always got a warm welcome to do so.

It then became a game of cat and mouse, since the Thais consider appointments, especially at their homes, as extremely flexible.  If they say they’ll be home at 6 to receive you, you can be fairly certain they will be nowhere around their house until after 8 that night; they are not trying to avoid you, they are simply people of an impulsive nature – if they are suddenly invited out for a party or a movie or a swim on the beach, they go, never bothering to notify anyone who might be coming over because they realize that in most cases the people who said they were coming over would not be coming over anyway – at least, not if they, too, are Thai.  We, as Western missionaries, of course, always kept our appointments to the minute – but after a dozen or so pointless trips to empty houses, we would double book or even triple book our appointments.  In other words, we would schedule 3 different families all for the same time, and hope that at least one of them would be home.  This worked out well, and we began teaching families about the Gospel. 

The program lasted about four months before a General Authority came to visit our mission, saw the program in action, and decided it was not exactly what missionaries should be doing.  Plus, many of the Elders and Sisters developed bad shin splints, due to the faulty nature of the running shoes available in Thailand at the time – they were Chinese imports that had absolutely no arch support and would fall apart after the first rain.  Many of us were limping around as if we were walking barefoot on carpet tacks.  We were to give our Aerobics book to a Thai member and encourage them to continue the running club, but we had to bow out and go back to spending the early morning hours in prayer, planning, and scripture study. 

I didn’t mind that much; I found out that running was not one of my talents – my companions always left me far behind, eating their dust.

Besides, for most of my mission I had to struggle with a bicycle – which also came from China – that was made of cast iron.  These behemoths must have weighed a hundred pounds each, and to peddle them around for tracting and street meetings, not to mention discussions, was about all the aerobic exercise I could take.  We never had to lock them up, since they were too heavy for the Thais to steal!

The Donkey and the Elephant

The donkey and the elephant were trapped upon a boat

“That was leaking so severely, it would not much longer float.

“Although in past years they had fought, they suddenly decided

“They’d better work together – or go down as suicided.

“The donkey said they must proceed to search out every leak,

“And plug it up – since, otherwise, the future would be bleak.

“The elephant could not agree; he thought that plan would fail.

“Instead he said they needed buckets, so they all could bail.

“The donkey wouldn’t budge an inch, insisting that the polls

“Were showing everybody wanting first to plug the holes.

“The elephant was adamant that bailing was the cure;

“Any other course would be a damnable detour.

“They argued and made speeches on the ship, both fore and aft,

“Until the other passengers deduced they both were daft.

“Lowering the lifeboats as the vessel still declined,

“The elephant and donkey were abandoned, left behind.

“The boat sank even lower, but those two just kept on squabbling

“Until they floated on the waves, their heads just barely bobbling.

“They then were heard to shout, as both sank out of sight:

” ‘If you’d just do it my way, everything would be all right!’ ”

The Clown and the Washing Machine

We were six in clown alley on the Tarzan Zerbini Shrine Circus many years ago.

Half way through the season we were down to two clowns; the rest had succumbed to the rigors of two shows a day in primitive rodeo grounds where the dust was thick and the audiences were thin. Our juggling and magician clowns were gone; so was the producing clown, who had supplied all the clown props for our gags. There was just me and Victor – who doubled as the Human Cannon Ball.

The boss still expected a grand clown gag with plenty of boffos from the two of us, so we put our bewigged heads together and came up with a weird pastiche that used every remaining piece of equipment we had between us. It went like this . . .

We come out lugging a large wicker laundry basket, full of dirty clothes. In the center of the ring is a huge washing machine (hammered hastily together out of plywood scraps and painted an unconvincing white). We begin tossing the laundry into the machine and set the dials. Working several concealed foot pedals at the base of the machine, I am doused with water and suds from the sides of the washing machine. In a passion I start beating on the washer, and Victor helpfully boosts me up so I can peer inside the rebellious contraption. And then Victor casually pushes me inside the washer. Inside we had placed a propane canister rigged up to some pipes along the top of the washer. I turn on the gas, light it, and WHOOSH, the washer is suddenly aflame! About here all logic and sanity disappears, cheerfully subsumed by the clown mandate that the bigger the disaster the bigger the laugh. While the flames roar I put on horns, a red cape and a long red tail. Then I turn off the gas and unlatch the sides of the washer, which collapse outward. The whole thing ends with me, now inexplicably changed into a leering devil, chasing Victor out of the ring with a plastic pitchfork.

For reasons that still elude me to this day, the gag went over big with the circus crowds. Even the boss, a hard-bitten veteran of the tanbark and not given to praising his joeys, came right out and said he thought it was a pretty good gag.

When the show reached eastern Wyoming my wife brought our (then) six kids to see daddy at his job. I never traveled with my family, preferring to send my paycheck home each week. Clowns always got free room and board, such as it was.

After the matinee I was eager to find out what my children thought of their old man’s comic ability. But when I approached them, still in my clown regalia, their eyes started out of their heads in terror as they ran squealing to their mother, pleading with her to save them from the “daddy devil!”

It was only after I removed my makeup and took them out to McDonald’s for all the Happy Meals they could handle that they warmed up to me again.

For years afterward whenever I needed to lower the boom on their youthful mischief all I had to do was casually mention that I was going to do a load of laundry –they would immediately stop whatever they were doing and start towing the line again.

I wonder what Dr. Spock would think about that?

The Clown and the Bully

There was only one bully I had trouble with in the Ringling clown alley. For the most part clowns are peaceable folk, wanting to be left alone to concoct their outrageous jokes. Pundits claim that the buffoon holds a mirror up to humanity to show us our faults and foibles in a distorted but amiable lampoon -- Make jokes, not war, is their immemorial motto. But there’s always a hectoring exception.

I was plagued by bullies throughout my school years. In grade school a little runt named David enjoyed taunting me for being so tall and skinny and for having a large nose. He sat behind me, the better to throw erasers at my unoffending head and poke my behind with sharpened pencils. If I dared complain of his unwanted attentions to the teacher I could be sure of a pummeling by him during recess. He finally received his comeuppance in sixth grade, when he made the mistake of mouthing off to Mr. Berg -- a case hardened veteran of the Korean War who did not suffer weisenheimers gladly. I still recall with great satisfaction how Mr. Berg picked David up by the scruff of his neck and bodily threw him out into the hallway. He was not allowed back into class until he meekly offered an apology in front of the whole class. That knocked the wind out of his sails but good, and I never had to worry about his threats or kicks again.

In high school there was a gang of bullies who preyed on the weak and handicapped. They roamed the halls in a sinister pack, like ill-bred wolves, looking for the boy on crutches to trip or the homely girl to taunt until she burst into tears. They marked me early on as an easy target, since I never pushed back. I was tall and thin, with no sense of self worth to stiffen my spine. They frequently grabbed my homework and threw it in the toilet in the Boys Room. Or dropped mashed potatoes on my head in the lunchroom. It was a tough blue collar school, where everyone expected you to stand up for yourself and not be a crybaby. But I was a crybaby, a dedicated coward who prefered to hide in the janitor’s closet when I saw them approaching. When cornered by these momsers I instinctively used zany humor as my last ditch defense, falling on the floor to do the Curly runaround and whimpering “Woo woo woo!” This saved my bacon on numerous occasions, as they would sneer “retard” at me and melt away.

Their fate was sealed one day in gym class when they decided to gang up on one of the deaf kids who were included in our school programs. This hard of hearing colossus was six foot and weighed three hundred pounds. His glabrous face made him appear to be a placid idiot, but he was full of pent up frustrations waiting for an outlet -- when the bullies started in on him he simply mopped the floor with them, hurling one of the meanest against the horizontal wooden bars that lined the gym walls and pinning him there until several of the wooden doles cracked in half. Mr. Ciatti, the gym teacher, watched the massacre with calm approval, and when the bullies finally cried uncle he took them down to the principal’s office and had them expelled that very day. It was a heart-warming experience for all of their many victims.

I considered everyone in clown alley as my friend, or at least as being disinterested in using me as a punching bag. But as that first season rolled on one of my fellow Clown College chums, who was portentously nicknamed Don deBully, developed an intense dislike for me, based, most likely, on the fact that I was very popular with the veteran clowns and he was not. Whatever the reason, he began to refer to me as ‘Norman the Mormon’ and to snap his towel at me, inflicting vicious little welts on my arms and legs. He thought this was enormously funny. I bore these as stoically as possible, but when he saw I would not fight back he began flicking his towel in my face, with the possible intention of depriving me of an eye. Humor was no defense against his onslaughts -- since he was a circus clown just like me. Tim Holst intervened several times on my behalf, getting in the bully’s face and growling “Cut it out -- he’s only a kid.” Since Holst was short and squat and very muscular from having spent the year before Clown College dipping railroad ties in creosote, the bullying would abate for a while. But Don always started up again.

I would like to be able to report that I eventually turned the tables on him, serving him up a dose of his own medicine in that satisfying way Harold Lloyd often did in his silent films. Or to write that one fine day he got too close to the big cats and they ripped him to shreds in a satisfying Grand Guignol way.  But such was not the case.

He was brought down in the dust by bad teeth. His upbringing apparently never included any dental hygiene to speak of, and by the time he joined Ringling his open mouth gave the appearance of a neglected graveyard, with blackened headstones leaning every which way. He had to have several root canals during the season, eventually losing over half of his non-pearly whites. His jaw became so tender that the slightest touch made him groan in pain. He and Rubber Neck did a vigorous slap boxing routine that was a bona fide crowd pleaser, but he finally begged boss clown LeVoi Hipps to be released from this torture -- every time one of the flat leather gloves so much as tapped him gently he bellowed in torture, which only added to the crowd’s merriment, since they thought it was part of the act. LeVoi, who shared the veteran clown’s dislike for Don, wouldn’t let him out of the gag -- pointing out, rightly, that it was one of clown alley’s biggest hits that season. Don was soon reduced to a quivering shadow of his former self, and, like a bull with a ring embedded in its nose, could be easily controlled by the mere wave of a hand near his face. I only had to wave at him once to send him scurrying away.

Thus ended the reign of terror of Don deBully in clown alley. And that, my dear kiddies, is why I highly recommend good dental hygiene to one and all from an early age. Unless you happen to be an unpleasant browbeater -- then my advice is to gorge on sweets and never brush your teeth.

Bachelor Party in Clown Alley

I have only ever been to one bachelor party. It took place in the Ringling Blue Unit clown alley way back in 1972, when Chico and Sandy tied the knot. They had been an item ever since both graduated from Clown College in 1971 and went to work on the Blue Unit, along with my humble self.

The wedding itself, handled with all the tawdry bravura that Art Ricker and his minions could muster, was held in center ring in a blaze of publicity that had Chico and Sandy’s nuptial photographs featured in every major newspaper across the world.

There was an unfortunate glitch in the captioning of most of the photos -- the photo showed the best man, Steve Smith, kissing the bride after the ceremony, and identified HIM as the groom!

The bride and groom sat atop two elephants as the minister nervously performed the ceremony while planted firmly on terra firma. It was executed in lieu of come in, with a huge crowd filling the arena to watch the fun. Even though the pachyderms had been urged onto their hind legs prior to the nuptials, in order to let gravity empty their bowels, the minister’s fears of an unseemly event that would mar the holy ritual proved to be well-founded. Just as he pronounced them “man and wife” one of the elephants let go with a thunderous discharge -- its way, no doubt, of expressing an opinion about the whole idea of matrimonial bliss. As the roustabouts quickly moved in to clean things up, Chico and Sandy dismounted and were escorted by clown alley to the clown car, where Swede, acting as chauffeur, drove them off to start their honeymoon at Niagara Falls. We had made sure to festoon the back of the clown care with strings of empty Stein’s Clown White makeup tins.

The night before this stupendous event, clown alley hosted a bachelor party for Chico. Holst and I had discussed the advisability of skipping this dubious bacchanal, since it was sure to feature a fleshpot tour de force, but in the end we decided that our friendship with Chico demanded our presence -- if only for a little while.

The evening started with a bang when Swede Johnson passed out cigars from the S.S. Adams Company. Holst and I politely passed on the stogies -- which was fortunate, since they were of the exploding variety. When the smoke finally cleared a cake was brought in. It was an interesting model of part of the male anatomy, and its slicing provoked a maelstrom of predictable innuendoes. Strangely enough, no intoxicating beverages were served at this male entertainment -- not so much out of any temperance scruples but because the kitty for this shindig had been got up strictly by donation, and clown alley was not prone to financial extravagance. So we toasted the groom with bumpers of Vernors, which was Chico’s favorite soft drink.

Bob Zraick, alias Barnaby Bumbershoot, set up a projector to run some 8mm stag films -- and that’s when Holst and I skedaddled, after shaking hands with Chico and wishing him all the best.

The next season, when Holst got married, he was pressed to attend a bachelor frolic on his own behalf but firmly turned down the offer. I was in Mexico at the time, studying pantomime, but years later he told me that clown alley had still managed to stage a charivari in his honor by filling his suite on the circus train with an obscene variety of marital aides, and smothering the honeymoon bed with a generous layer of shaving cream.

I thought I would avoid all such claptrap when I married Amy, who came from sturdy no-nonsense North Dakota farming stock. But I had misjudged those earthy peasants -- when we got into our Ford station wagon after the wedding breakfast there was a distinct odor of cow manure emanating from the back of the vehicle. A gunnysack full of the stuff had been thoughtfully left overnight inside the station wagon for our benefit. Eyes watering and nostrils quivering, we drove off without acknowledging the pungent wedding present. It took months for the stink to subside, despite our best efforts at fumigation.  

The Woolly Mammoth

A woolly mammoth would seem nice

Trudging on the tundra ice.

But if we can make distinction

And reverse their sad extinction

I would vote for dodo bird

As a critter less absurd.

I’d prefer a dodo spree

Than have a mammoth step on me!

Van Gogh

This nut who was lacking an ear

The art world considers Shakespeare.

At auction he brings

The ransom of kings.

I think I’ll start painting this year . . .

The Pie and I

Ringling publicity maven Art Ricker was always looking for little puff pieces about the circus that he could use for press releases. The show churned out about two hundred releases each season back then. But newspapers were getting wary about using them whole, so Art came up with the idea of circus 'essays.'

"Our performers are a well educated bunch" he'd say to reporters. "They write all sorts of essays about the circus environment!"

To which reporters always replied "Oh yeah? Show us some!"

This left Art in somewhat of a bind, since circus performers were, for the most part, nearly illiterate when it came to anything except their own act. Luckily, I happened to overhear Ricker talking about his dilemma and offered to write up something for him.

"About what?" he asked, cocking his cigar at a cynical angle.

"I could write about making the goo that goes into pies" I said brightly. "I bet reporters wanna know all about that."

"Okay, pal. Give it a whirl -- if it clicks I'll see that you get a little something on the side."

And so I wrote the following, which, I must report, was never accepted by reporters anywhere as a circus 'essay' and never saw the light of day in a newspaper. So I guess this is it's World Premier. Anyway, here it is:

Throughout the history of silent film comedy there were pies everywhere, whizzing through the air like gooey bumblebees.  Their purpose was to smash into the faces of cinema clowns, such as cross-eyed Ben Turpin and walrus-mustached Chester Conklin, as well as straight men like Mack Swain and Bud Jamison, not to mention innocent beauties like Mabel Normand or the statuesque Marie Dressler.

Whether the product came from the Mack Sennett Studio, Hal Roach, or the Christie Educational Studio, hardly any slapstick film during the 1920’s was complete without someone getting a foamy pastry right in the kisser.  Audiences expected it, demanded it, and laughed uproariously when it was delivered. 

The most famous cinema pie fight of all time was undoubtedly Laurel & Hardy’s 1927 short film, Battle of the Century.  Stan and Ollie, along with an entire neighborhood of deranged people, plunder a pie truck of its contents and send them hurling about with hilarious accuracy.  No one has ever been able to count exactly how many pies were used in that film, but it could not have been less than  several hundred!

How did the movie technicians make those pies?  Were they real custard or fruit filling?

No, they were not!

As a circus clown, I know how those pies were made, and are still made today when clowns want to toss them around under the big top.  The old clowns I worked with told me that the formula has been the same for the past 110 years.

You see, if you were to throw a real pie, a pie with a thick filling of custard or fruit, into someone’s face, you’d probably break their nose!  The next time you are at the supermarket, just go ahead and lift up a fruit pie.  Heavy, isn’t it?  Should you hit someone with something that heavy, there could be some real damage.  Besides, the filling is not very photogenic – on black and white film it looks rather gray and dirty.  It can’t be wiped delicately out of the eyes with just the fingertips, the way Oliver Hardy would do it; it is too thick and pasty for that.  Custard and fruit filling does not make the spectacular spatter you see in the old slapstick movies when the pie makes contact with the victim’s face.  Besides, do you know how difficult it is to clean up after a direct hit with a generous helping of custard or fruit filling?  You can’t do too many retakes using real pies.

At this point you may be thinking, “Oh, right – it must be shaving cream!”

Well, yes and no.

It is shaving cream, but not the kind that comes out of a pressurized can.  That stuff won’t keep firm for more than five minutes, especially under the hot lights of a circus tent, or a movie studio.  It melts into a thin, runny stream of sweet smelling  bubbles.  It looks like milk.

To make the goo for a good slapstick pie, a pie that will sail across the room and land with a satisfying ‘plop’ in someone’s snoot, splattering all over the place, you first start with a dozen bars of hard shaving soap.  The kind that your grandfather put in a ceramic mug and stirred with a brush for a thick, sturdy foam to lather up his chin.  Next, use a carrot grater to grate up all twelve bars into a large galvanized trash can.  When all the hard soap is grated into the garbage can, add cold water from any water source handy until the can is a third full.  Add one full pint of glycerol.  Glycerol is what gives the goo its body and keeps it springy and foamy for up to an hour.  If you want, you can add food coloring to change the color.  Then whip the mixture with a paint mixer on an extended rod, like the old-fashioned malted milkshake mixer.  It will need to be mixed for a good fifteen minutes, after which you will have a whole garbage can full of  aromatic and creamy pie filling.  You can put it in pie tins, buckets, fill syringes with it – it’s very versatile!  This shaving cream filling stings a bit in your eyes, and is not very pleasant to swallow, but it has no permanent aftereffects and is relatively easy to clean up.

So there you have it – the next time you chuckle over some hapless silent film character getting walloped with a pie and spluttering with rage, remember it’s just good clean fun with shaving soap! 

The Clown and the School Teacher

(continued from Amy Meets a Clown)

One thing the Ringling clown alley never taught me about was love. But then, clown alley is the natural and logical opponent to everything that is fine and noble -- it takes every great sentiment known to man and turns it topsy turvy for a belly laugh. Underneath that belly laugh, it might be said, the audience is acknowledging that fine things like love and patriotism and piety can be corrupted and used for foul and hurtful purposes. And so a good laugh at the expense of romance or politics is a healthy cynicism that all free and wise people should exercise constantly. And thus the buffoon in his particolored uniform with a slapstick at his shoulder, ready to do battle against the inconsistencies of the human heart.

When I met Amy for the first time in Williston I wanted to fall in love. I wanted to embrace the complete beauty of a fulfilling physical, emotional, and spiritual relationship. Heaven knows my own parents never had such a thing when I was growing up -- they had simply grown used to each other over the years and found it easier to fight than to disengage. In clown alley all finer emotions were carefully camouflaged, if they existed at all, with a cunning patina of crude humor. Only at church did I find any celebration of love and marriage. And time was passing. All my companions from my LDS mission in Thailand were by now married -- the wedding announcements had trickled in over the past two years, showing bride and groom silhouetted against the Salt Lake Temple. I was the last holdout.

So it’s possible I was simply brainwashing myself when I looked at Amy and immediately told myself that I was going to marry her. But what does it matter how or why I loved her? Love is the only mystery we never finish exploring. And enjoying. And hating.

She is the oldest daughter of Alice and Fred Anderson. The family is a huge one. There were twelve children, with Amy being the oldest daughter. They all lived, at that time, in a former funeral home in Tioga, North Dakota. It was the only building big enough to hold them all. And they certainly needed holding. The Anderson kids ranged in age from two to twenty-nine. They were notorious for showing up, en masse, at church picnics and Sons of Norway dinners like a swarm of locusts -- eradicating anything edible in their path. They liked being mobile, and like so many other rural kids back then they had a collection of derelict jalopies they were constantly resuscitating to take them up and down the washboard gravel roads of Williams County. Amy was the first one in the family to get a college education, and her parents doted on her.

They did not like it when I started seeing her. I was not a local. I was tainted with a circus background. And I wrote her a poem every day. I began writing to her every day after our second date, and continued to do so for the next fifteen years. The Post Office owes me a medal, considering the fortune I spent on stamps when I was away from her traveling with the circus after we married.

Amy was not impressed with my cooking, when I had her over for dinner. She thought my bacon/potato casserole rather greasy and fattening. She knew I couldn’t afford to take her out to the movies or to a restaurant very often. I was being paid 700 dollars a month. So she usually came over to my place with her lesson plans for the next day to get my input on them. She’d bring a green salad and some of her mother’s whole wheat buns and chokecherry preserves for our dinner and we’d work late into the night trying to figure out how to interest her Special Ed pupils in learning to tie their shoelaces or opening and warming up a can of soup.

Inevitably she asked me to come to her school in Tioga to do a clown show. At that point I had sworn off clowning forever. The memories of the laughter and the thrill of the crowd were too painful to revive again. And the debacle with Becky Thingvold over my clown academy still rankled.. So initially I hemmed and hawed and stalled Amy until she played her ace in the hole:

“But Timmy, I thought you liked me . . . “

I did like her. Dammit, I loved her! So I agreed to pull out the old gladrags one last time.

She had me do the show in her classroom, which was narrow and smelled strongly of Pine Sol. Her Special Ed kids, all in their late teens, paid no attention to me whatsoever, and when my back was turned for a moment they snatched up my makeup kit to smear themselves with warpaint. They muddied up all my colors, ruining a complete tin of Stein’s clown white.

But when it was all over I warmly thanked Amy for the chance to use the talents God had given me for the benefit of others. Just as I had cynically suspected, this moved her to the point of  embracing me and landing a long lingering kiss on my rouged lips. I reciprocated, and by the time we broke our clinch her face looked like she had roseola.

It was now official:  Dusty the Clown had a Girlfriend!     

(to be continued)