Photo Essay: Meat.

In twenty years all our meat will be plant-based protein or grown in Frankenstein's lab. I hope to be dead by then. So here's a look at real bone, sinew, fat, and muscle. Wrapped up in plastic . . . 

My soul delighteth

And also my soul delighteth in the covenants of the Lord which he hath made to our fathers; yea, my soul delighteth in his grace, and in his justice, and power, and mercy in the great and eternal plan of deliverance from death.
2 Nephi 11:5

Take delight, my weary soul,

that Christ the Lord hath made thee whole.

Hath made thee whole in true delight,

to save thee from the awful night.

The awful night when darkness reigns

and I have nothing but dark pains.

But justice, power, grace belong

unto my God -- so sing this song:

His mercy rescues me each day

if I but choose him to obey! 

Oh happy heart, oh beauty keen --

in Him my hope is ever green!

The Law of the Lord is perfect

The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul: the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple.
Psalm 19:7

Nothing lifts a man up more

than obedient valour.

Compliance to the living word

keeps the mind and heart unblurred.

Simple though a man may be,

observance brings perspicacity.

Never second guess the Lord;

'twould be a needle 'gainst a sword!

Memories of the Circus: The Pyramid of Cans

I was with the Ringling Blue Unit forty-some years ago and we were playing Madison Square Garden in late April, when my clown partner for come in (the warm up before the show starts) decided he wanted to do a solo act with his pet dog, and so left me in the lurch with nothing to do for twenty minutes while the audience was filing in. I tried the old rubber ball balancing on the edge of a parasol routine, but that was a lame gag a hundred years ago. I needed a new gag.

 There used to be a Greek place across the street from the Garden that made unrivaled bread pudding and sold a solid block of it for just a dollar. One day I was in there chowing down between shows, watching one of the proprietors stacking cans of black olives into a pyramid in their display window. It struck me that everyone who ever has watched some grocery clerk do that kind of thing secretly wished that the whole stack would collapse just as the last can was put on top. And BINGO, I had my new gag . . . 

I went dumpster diving in the Garden, collecting empty pop cans and rinsing them out. It was disgusting how many of ‘em had soggy cigarette butts in them. When I finally had enough empty pop cans in a big canvas sack, I dragged them out at the beginning of come in and went to work in center ring, making a broad can pyramid. It took some trial and error. They couldn’t be stacked straight across, otherwise they always collapsed after about the sixth row up -- so I learned to stack ‘em in a slight curve. I managed to take up the whole 20 minutes of come in patiently and stoically stacking up my cans into a pyramid. No mugging or waving my arms around -- this was a classic running gag, not what we called a one-off (a gag that developed fast and had a violent blow off.) So the audience could watch me for a moment to see what I was doing, and then let their gaze wander to the twenty other clowns demanding their attention, and then occassionally coming back to me to see how my can pyramid was progressing. You could feel the audience suspense growing -- is he going to make it? I zealously guarded my edifice from the other clowns, who would zoom perilously close to it on unicycles or in kiddy cars. 

Inevitably, just as the twenty minutes was up and the performance director got ready to blow his whistle to signal the start of the show, I proudly put the last can on top of my aluminum cairn -- while I surreptitiously gave the base a nudge with my clown show. The whole thing came crashing down as the whistle blew, and the audience gave a great audible sigh -- whether of sincere disappointment or “I knew it wouldn’t work” I never figured out. And then would come the biggest laugh I ever got in my professional clown career, and sometimes even a round of applause as I sadly scooped up the cans back into the sack and scrambled out of the way as the Opening parade of horses and elephants bore down on me. 

After we left the Garden I kept picking up all the spare aluminum pop cans I could. To increase the size of my Tower of Babel. I was kinda picky, and never used a beer can -- even though I’m sure no one in the audience could ever see what kind of cans I was stacking.

The boss clown told me that the whole thing looked too shabby for Ringling Brothers, and bade me cover each can with bright paint and sequins. I told him where he could put his glamorous idea -- and we left it at that. Back in those golden days Ringling management believed in a sort of benign neglect when it came to clown alley; as long as you showed up relatively sober for work they didn’t much care what you did. 

My gag was a hit throughout the Midwest that summer -- and some of the veteran clowns got hot under the collar. I won’t say they were jealous -- they just had trouble wrapping their old school comedy minds around the fact that I was getting the big boffos without resorting to dropping my pants or exploding something. Then in Kansas City my sack of cans disappeared. One evening they were leaning against my clown trunk in clown alley, and the next morning they were gone. Loudly exercising some of the mighty blasphemies that all true circus folk know, I started in dumpster diving again to rebuild my stock. But, alas, I ran into the curious and penny pinching folkways of the Midwest -- the building maintenance crews regarded all discarded cans as their own private property, and some shambling gypsy like me had no business dipping my mitts into their treasure trove. Whenever I managed to squirrel away a fair amount of cans, the overnight coliseum crew would divest me of my booty, and I’d have it all to do over again. When the show reached Denver I threw in the towel. Let the damn hewers of wood and drawers of mops have the damn cans. I could think of something else equally as risible. 

But I never did. I ended the season doing come in with a large yellow papier mache banana shoved in my ear, walking around and responding with a hand cupped to my ear as the audience yelled “Hey, you got a banana in your ear!” 

Does anyone still remember the original joke, I wonder? It was big in grade schools back in 1976.

Equity and Justice

. . . and there was great order in the land; and they had formed their laws according to equity and justice.
3 Nephi 6:4

When equity and justice flourish, then will God delight

in blessing the inhabitants and scattering all blight.

An orderly society is what He has decreed,

where all are held accountable for their own word and deed.

Don't look to man for justice or an understanding broad;

base your laws and confidence on everlasting God!

Postcards to my President

Photo Essay: Provo City Center Temple. Christmas Day. 2019.

Throwing Cabbages.

I got sick and tired of repeating my life story years ago. I don't like talking about it now. I'd rather hear about other people's lives -- well, that is if they can make it interesting and coherent. Most people can't. At least the ones I run into. I seem to be imprisoned with a crowd that can only boast "I worked hard all my life, saved my money, and then bought a band saw." I would love my neighbor better if they had bought an opal mine in Australia instead.
The trouble is when I tell the truth about my past, that I was a circus clown, I get all sorts of breathless responses like "I bet that was fun" and "What a wonderful life you must have had!" 
Wasn't all that wonderful to me -- lot of hard work, elephant dung everywhere, lousy pay, and consorting mostly with egomaniacs. Of which I was certainly one. Am still one.
Then people get really obnoxious, because they either demand "Make me laugh" or ask in deadly earnest "What was it like?"
If they demand a free gag, I just tell them if they want a real laugh to go look in a mirror. But for the longest time, trying to be polite and get along with society instead of taking after all the poltroons with a machete, I would respond to requests for a circus narrative by telling a string of yarns that were true, mostly true, while I inwardly retched at the repetition -- and get this, many times people asked me to tell them about the circus, oh please, not just once, but every stinking time I met them. Did they forget I already told them that elephants love to eat cigar butts, that clowns used to concoct their own makeup and it gave them lead poisoning, that Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd stole some of their best gags directly from circus clowns? 
So, for a while, I stopped telling anybody about my old clown life. Except the grand kids, of course; I always laid it on thick with them. But now they're pretty much bored by it, just like me, so they don't ask for circus stories anymore. Now I tell them of my lascivious experiences when I was an ESL teacher in Thailand. They like those better, I think, and the stories certainly get me excited.
But the other day someone inevitably asked me what it was like being a circus clown, must've been fun, yeah? Instead of clamming up and pouting, I decided to open up and tell them the first thing that popped into my mind. Which was . . .
"Well, the biggest laugh we ever got on Ringling was with throwing cabbages at each other. Not firm cabbages, mind you -- those could knock your teeth out -- but cabbages that were overripe and falling apart. Those babies would explode right in your face like green shrapnel, and the crowd would laugh themselves sick. Sometimes we did nothing but throw soggy cabbages at each other for twenty minutes at a time."
No clown in the entire history of the circus ever threw a cabbage. They might have had cabbages thrown at them by the audience, but no clown would ever throw such a solid object at another clown. It would probably be construed as attempted murder.
This fairy tale satisfied my interrogator, and it made me kinda happy too -- I enjoy lying through my teeth to strangers, family, and friends alike. 
So now I'm anxious to tell people about my life as a circus clown. Because I tell them nothing but fabulous hooey, with no basis in reality. And who's gonna argue with me? Nobody can contradict me, cuz they weren't there, they don't know. The sense of power this new attitude gives me is intoxicating. I am creating new worlds from my imagination, like Charles Dickens or Donald Trump!
The next person who asks me what it was like being a circus clown, I'm gonna tell them that cotton candy is made from recycled newsprint; that Emmett Kelly was a spy during World War Two and gave the Russians the secret formula to Coca Cola; and that clown alley always refers to the bathroom as Republican Headquarters -- as in "I gotta go to Republican Headquarters for a while, cover for me in the next gag will ya?"
The truth will set you free, no doubt; but a tall tale is like filet mignon after a month of nothing but tomato soup.

**********************

A very insightful response to this piece by BYU Associate Professor of Humanities Bruce Young:

If I'm reading your tone right, this is a straightforward piece about being anything but straightforward, a truthful report of lying and fantasy-spinning. Assuming it's truthful, it's also an expression of a degree of bitterness--and as with most such expressions, it's really a mixed bag of desires and disgusts, intentions and resistances and evasions. 

If I'm discerning aright, something like the following may be going on. You like the attention but you don't like the naivety or predictability or the endless repetition of the questions posed by those who display some interest and seek to give you some attention. You're interested in novelty but find most people incapable of providing it. Part of you wants people to understand what your life has really been like, but you're tired of talking about your life, maybe tired of thinking about it, having to remember it. You're maybe even tired of reporting on the interesting realities of circus life and of the history of comedy, because you've reported so often that the facts feel stale to you, even if they may be new to your newest inquirers. 

The one relief you seem to have found from a dull, stale, tired stream of human interaction is to tell tall tales. I bet that sometimes you enjoy the delight others find in those tales. But you also report telling such tales with the express intent that your listeners will think you are telling the truth--which gives you both the delight of creative fantasy and the bittersweet satisfaction of pulling something over on your listeners, at whom you can secretly, silently (maybe contemptuously?) laugh. 

We should perhaps publicize more vigorously your current claim to a degree of fame and a good deal of achievement: your role as poet, humorist, fantasy writer, and raconteur. Then you might have some greater variety in the questions getting posed: what inspires your efforts? what are your practices and aims as a poet, etc., etc.? What are your favorite rhyme schemes, motifs, etc., etc., etc.? 

Plus, by making your role in these creative efforts better known, we'll guard your listeners against necessarily taking anything you say at face value.