And it came to pass that we lived after the manner of happiness. (Dedicated to Gai Sutita)

And it came to pass that we lived after the manner of happiness.

2Nephi. 5:27.

The manner of happiness seems

to be such a matter of dreams

that few find it here

amidst hate and fear;

to find it you follow God's memes.

Remembering Elmo Gibb

In 1997 I went back to work for Ringling Brothers on their Blue Unit as a clown. I had just returned from my proselytizing mission in Thailand and had tried going to the University of Minnesota to get a degree in Theater. Their theater department was world-famous, with Frank Whiting running the Show Boat on the Mississippi River each summer -- featuring old fashioned melodramas and vaudeville olios that I thought would be just perfect for my hammy buffoon abilities. Alas, I was wrong -- as usual.

Even though Dr. Whiting was a member of my church, and, in fact, I was his Home Teacher, he cut me no slack during my audition for a part in Moliere's The Imaginary Invalid. Halfway through my reading I sneezed violently because of all the dust in the fore cabin of the Centennial Show Boat; Dr. Whiting immediately ended my audition with a kindly thank you and a gentle nod towards the door to speed me on my way. 

Thinking perhaps I could increase my theatrical skill set by working as a stage manager at one of the little theaters scattered throughout the Minneapolis campus, I took on the task for an experimental piece where the actors sat on black wooden cubes and talked dirty to the audience. It got great reviews in the student newspaper, The Minnesota Daily, but the University administration shut it down after just one performance. Not because of the filthy language, they said, but because the actors smoked onstage during the performance, which violated thousands of Fire Department regulations.

My classes bored me; my books cost a fortune; and my parents, initially so encouraging when I began my college career, started to drop unsubtle hints about paying a little something for my room and board (admittedly, I ate more than the two of them put together.) For all these reasons I decided that college life was not for me and rang up Irvin Feld at the circus home office in Washington D.C. to ask for a clown job. He was only too happy to put me back on the Blue Unit, where the clowns were in a state of muted mutiny against the Performance Director, Charlie Baumann, because he had started demanding kickbacks for not reporting tardiness and other minor offences to the home office. Also their new boss clown was going through a marital crisis and became so distracted and melancholy that he stopped caring about laughter -- always a fatal mistake with a boss clown. 

So when I arrived at clown alley in the middle of the season I found it to be in a sad state. And I'm glad to say that after my arrival I did my best to make things even more chaotic.

I immediately started sparks flying with the inimitable Elmo Gibbs. An Ivy League grad with a puckish sense of humor, Elmo thought my whiteface clown makeup was a Kabuki mask and began analyzing it in excruciating detail -- using terminology I had never heard before, and which I suspect was completely made up. When I told him to please shut up about directing me in a modern version of The Forty-Seven Ronin he took it amiss and began needling me about my religion. His idea of a Socratic dialogue about my faith usually went something like this:

So, Tork, you really think the Book of Mormon is not a Barnumesque imposture stemming from the frontier dialectic?  (He really talked like that, honest to Betsy!)

Will you let me eat my corn dog in peace, for the cat's sake?

Ah, I see you want to construct a straw man so that you can avoid a direct challenge to your weltschmerz concerning the untenable practice of polygamy -- am I right?

You, sir, are an ale-soused apple john. (I could sling the occasional double decker phrase around myself!) I have no intention of debating you on the merits of historical Mormonism. When we play Salt Lake I'll be glad to take you to Temple Square where you can ask the guides all the questions you want. Right now I just wanna eat my lunch before the matinee. 

That's the trouble with all you Mormons -- you brainwash so easily. Will you just answer me this -- Why was Joseph Smith a Freemason but Brigham Young forbade members to have anything to do with Freemasonry? 

Swoosh. (The sound of me leaving clown alley to eat my now-cold corn dog up in the bleachers.)

As a clown, Elmo had a very stiff body. It didn't bend very easily or ever look at ease -- as if he had a . . . well, come to think of it, Prince Paul said he DID have a, um, something stuck up his . . . ah, somewhere or other. Anyway, he waddled like a duck. It was a peculiar walk, but not particularly funny. He liked to think that if he got in your face with the audience that was funny, too. But it scared a number of small children -- him grinning like a madman two inches away from a terrified two-year old. Elmo was cursed by his Ivy League sheepskin -- it kept him from ever asking for help from the veteran clowns, who knew more about building a laugh than Noah knew about building an ark. 

By the end of the season he and I were not on speaking terms, and when I left the show (for good, it turned out) I shed no tears over Elmo Gibbs. I thought he would quickly fade away to become just another has-been. 

But he surprised me by becoming one of the best advance clowns the circus ever had. Not with Ringling, but with smaller shows like Clyde Beatty-Cole Brothers. They hired him to do publicity as a clown for the show and by golly he got more ink and airtime than any other clown in circus publicity history, I think. That's because he amped up his confrontational skills, which he had honed on me, until he simply had to show up at a school or a newspaper and immediately something controversial would happen, which garnered the front page of the local paper and the lead story on the six O'clock TV news. He insulted mayors, scorned cute little kids, and blustered so much when being interviewed that in a few years time he was nicknamed 'Hurricane Elmo' by the press. He became a welcome rara avis for the hungry media -- guaranteed good copy. An erudite Don Rickles in baggy pants. 

I don't know if he ever really got belly-laugh funny. I doubt it; but I have to hand it to him -- he kept the concept of the caustic buffoon alive much longer than I ever could, or did. 

The Tweets of Trump

When a politician admits that “We’re not going to make America great again,” there doesn’t seem to be much reason to ever vote for him. This could be a career threatening statement by Andrew Cuomo, with many wanting him to resign-he will get higher ratings than his brother Chris! @realDonaldTrump

You can't make America great

with people who constantly prate

about the drawbacks

of nitwits and hacks

who run ev'rything in the State.

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Wow! Big pushback on Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York for his really dumb statement about America’s lack of greatness. I have already MADE America Great Again, just look at the markets, jobs, military- setting records, and we will do even better. Andrew “choked” badly, mistake! @realDonaldTrump

I've made this fine country so great

it's all very prime real estate;

from mountains of coal

to crooks off the dole,

the world should my thought emulate!

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In speaking with some of the world’s top business leaders I asked what it is that would make business (jobs) even better in the U.S. “Stop quarterly reporting & go to a six month system,” said one. That would allow greater flexibility & save money. I have asked the SEC to study! @realDonaldTrump

We need to cut down on reports

before prosperity aborts.

Just write the stats on chalkboards clean

and you'll account for ev'ry bean!

Prospering continually

And now there was nothing in all the land to hinder the people from prospering continually, except they should fall into transgression. 3 Nephi. Chapter 6. Verse 5.

To prosper without money is my goal in life today;

To feel the richness of the earth because I do obey

the laws of God and wisdom while I struggle here below

to bury greed and bigotry, and let my spirit grow.

It takes but very little all my wants to satisfy;

and so I feel most prosperous as my brief days go by.

Is Coffee a Health Benefit or a Poison?

In March, Judge Berle ruled that coffee had to come with cancer warnings, and the coffee companies geared up for years of appeals. But in June, the World Health Organization concluded that there was “inadequate evidence” that drinking coffee caused cancer, reinforcing earlier findings by a panel of experts.  NYT.

Is coffee any good for you,

or with your body does it screw?

If you are Mormon then you know

it's devil's brew, from down below.

But when a deadline looms today,

"Make it large and black" we say.

I think they ought to mark it thus:

"The price would cause a Saint to cuss."

When taxes give reporters bread

IN JUNE, THE NEW JERSEY LEGISLATURE  invested $5 million in local news initiatives . . . In other countries, this wouldn’t be news. Per capita, Western countries spend an average of $86 annually on public broadcasting, but in the U.S. that number is about $3. The distaste for government money in journalism runs on both sides. American journalists tend to bristle at the idea; terms like “state-run media” get thrown around.  CJR

When taxes give reporters bread,

objectivity is dead;

writers then are maleable

to opinions fallible.

Starving journalists do mean

that their consciences are clean.

From John Schwartz -- Jennifer Bendery -- Donald Trump

Before long, looks like we'll be asking who DIDN'T tape Trump. @jswatz

An audiophile from Kankakee

recorded politicians, see?

He didn't tell a single soul

about his documenting role.

So now he has a book of quotes

that brings him large and green banknotes.

Surely there will be a mass wave of denunciations from Republicans in response to their party leader referring to a woman of color as a dog. @jbendery

Referring to women as dogs

is something that surely befogs

the gender debate

with fear and with hate --

and makes of supporters fat hogs.

Fired FBI Agent Peter Strzok is a fraud, as is the rigged investigation he started. There was no Collusion or Obstruction with Russia, and everybody, including the Democrats, know it. The only Collusion and Obstruction was by Crooked Hillary, the Democrats and the DNC! @realDonaldTrump

Hillary Clinton is crafty;

her alibis always are drafty.

The Democrats, too,

are like a corkscrew --

and Peter Strzok is a daftie!


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Our Country was built on Tariffs, and Tariffs are now leading us to great new Trade Deals - as opposed to the horrible and unfair Trade Deals that I inherited as your President. Other Countries should not be allowed to come in and steal the wealth of our great U.S.A. No longer! @realDonaldTrump

My Tariffs make Uncle Sam strong;
Obama had got it all wrong.
Nobody should steal
from our commonweal --
except my Republican throng.

A Crazed Crying Lowlife

When you give a crazed, crying lowlife a break, and give her a job at the White House, I guess it just didn’t work out. Good work by General Kelly for quickly firing that dog! @realDonaldTrump

The lowlife dogs that hang around the White House nowadays

are looking for a handout and a bit of fulsome praise.

They're such a nuisance that I've called exterminators for

clearing them from woodwork and the carpets on the floor.

Treat a cur too kindly and they simply bite your hand;

Who said "Get a mirror?" I will have their bottoms tanned!

Wacky Omarosa

Wacky Omarosa, who got fired 3 times on the Apprentice, now got fired for the last time. She never made it, never will. She begged me for a job, tears in her eyes, I said Ok. People in the White House hated her. She was vicious, but not smart. I would rarely see her but heard....
...really bad things. Nasty to people & would constantly miss meetings & work. When Gen. Kelly came on board he told me she was a loser & nothing but problems. I told him to try working it out, if possible, because she only said GREAT things about me - until she got fired! @realDonaldTrump

Wacky Omarosa did the dirt to me and mine.

She begged me for employment, promising to stay in line.

I gave her such a good job that it made her cocky, so

my staff of her was jealous and made her feel like guano.

She missed most of her meetings and was tardy all the time;

she started treating me as if I'd done some awful crime.

Even tough guy Kelly couldn't bring her up to scratch,

and so I had to dump her as a terrible mismatch.

 And now she's wrote a crummy book that revels in its lies;

if slander were much honored she would win the Nobel Prize!


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Trump gets loud ovation while criticizing media during speech to troops at Fort Drum, N.Y. @DavidNakamura

If you want a good lynching mob,
abusing the press does the job.
You'll be a hero
although you're a zero --
emerging an eagle from squab.

The Tweets of Trump

“Seems like the Department of Justice (and FBI) had a program to keep Donald Trump from becoming President”. @DarrellIssa @foxandfriends If this had happened to the other side, everybody involved would be in jail. This is a Media coverup of the biggest story of our time. @realDonaldTrump

The intrigues against me are rife.

But I am immune to the strife.

Though writers attempt

to show me contempt

I'll have an extended shelf life!