Stumbling Through Life with a Smile

 Another International Clown Week has come and gone. Since the 1950s, the first week of August has been celebrated by clowns all over the world as a time to celebrate the craft of clowning. As might be expected, your humble writer here had his share of clown synchronicities this past week, but also saw a lot of clowns online celebrating in their own ways. Clowns and clowning have been a running theme on this here blog, though it wasn't intended originally- as I've learned, there are those of us who have little choice in the matter. One must accept one's own buffoonery with grace, one supposes, because either way one gets a pie in the face.

To set aside the personal for a moment, let us examine the Clown's Prayer. As religious creeds go, it's a lovely one- and just maybe the most appropriate one for our times. For those unfamiliar, please enjoy its recitation by none other than Clownvis Presley:

 

View this post on Instagram

Or, if you prefer to read it, it goes like this:

As I stumble through this life,

help me to create more laughter than tears,

dispense more happiness than gloom,

spread more cheer than despair.

Never let me become so indifferent,

that I will fail to see the wonders in the eyes of a child,

or the twinkle in the eyes of the aged.

Never let me forget that my total effort is to cheer people,

make them happy, and forget momentarily,

all the unpleasantness in their lives.

And in my final moment,

may I hear You whisper:

“When you made My people smile,

you made Me smile.

Some versions of The Clown's Prayer include an additional verse, which should be placed second-to-last:

Never let me acquire success to the point that

I discontinue calling on my Creator in the hour of need,

Acknowledging and thanking Him in the hour of plenty.

It's a lovely sentiment, and a simple one. Aside from what I would consider to be the bare minimum of spiritual and moral behavior- that of "Be nice to each other"- it's about as pure and true as words to live by come. One need not belabor the point that the world is cruel, and increasingly chaotic and awful; it seems equally obvious that we live in an era uniquely suited to creating and sustaining anxiety, fear, and worry. Clowns have much to teach us, and regardless of the reader's religious background this prayer offers an example of good humor as an antidote to society's ills. A brief investigation of the origins of The Clown's Prayer bear this out nicely.

The earliest appearance of the prayer that I had been aware of was at Stan Laurel's funeral in 1965, when Dick Van Dyke read it as a eulogy. The prayer has been recited and used in a number of ways over the years, and many have found solace and inspiration in its words. It seems Chris Farley used to keep a printed version of it in his wallet at all times. I had the sense that it was much older than the 1960s, and thought I remembered coming across a version from the 19th century. So naturally, even though I don't really have time for it, I stumbled down a rabbit hole looking for its provenance- and found myself some fool's gold. Bear in mind, this is only a cursory investigation, a thread worth pulling on later- but certainly worthy of a day-after International Clown Week blog post now!

Searching newspapers dot come for "clown's prayer" in the 1800s did not yield any results for the familiar prayer, but it did reveal a rather interesting story which appeared in the pages of quite a few newspapers back in 1883. A clown named Dan Rice, variously referred to with the honorific of "Colonel" or "Uncle", apparently brought a man back from the brink of death with the power of prayer. Rice was one of the most well-known entertainers in the United States during his lifetime, leading biographer David Carlyon to call his book about him The Most Famous Man You've Never Heard Of. His circus rivaled that of Barnum, and in addition to clowning he also worked over the years as a strongman, did an act with a Learned Pig, produced satirical versions of Shakespeare plays, and even ran for President. Some have suggested that he was among several whose face gave us the depiction of Uncle Sam, and if that's not enough, he's responsible for the popularity of phrases such as "get on the bandwagon" and originated the circus cry "Hey Rube!"

By 1883, if this news clipping is to be trusted, Rice had been kicked out of his role in Nathan's Circus due to "habitual drunkenness", which Rice denied. He found himself in his hometown, visiting family, when he became aware of a certain "Squire Ryan", a Justice who was at death's door. The news account says that

"the old clown said "Let us pray," and he forthwith put out a most pathetic invocation, that moved the family and friends to tears. Ministers and deacons had prayed at the bedside before him, but had the melting tenderness and touching pathos of the clown's supplication. Some of those who heard it and sobbed like children saw him in the ring but a few days ago, and had tears brought to their eyes from the excessive laughter over the gibes of this "fellow of infinite jest". The Squire is reported better and out of danger."

Sadly, the content of Rice's prayer is lost to the ages, along with the memory of his former ubiquity. While it brought me no closer to finding the author of The Clown's Prayer, it was a prayer from a clown that may well have saved a man's life- and that's not nothing!

Moving forward in time, I found other clown's prayers which bore little resemblance to the familiar one which is our subject here. One of them was a strange odd plea from a clown to God to save the clown's child, which isn't so much in the spirit of things here. Along the way others from England were discovered, as The Holy Trinity Church, Dalston, holds an annual service in memory of deceased clowns every February. The location is significant, as a sort of Mecca for Clowns- Joseph Grimaldi, who was instrumental in developing what we know of as modern white-faced clowning, is buried nearby. The annual services for Clowns International has been held there since the 1940s, and since 1959 Dalston has also been home to the Clowns-Gallery Museum and the Clown Egg Register.

Here's a clipping from 1935 from the Bucks Examiner, Chesham, Buckinghamshire, which is almost as charming as The Clown's Prayer I was hunting for:

Finally, I found what appears to be the original Clown's Prayer published just five years prior to Stan Laurel's funeral, attributed to a clown named Dan "Pappy" Kerr:

Asheville Citizen-Times, Asheville NC 10-16-1960

As the reader can see, it's a bit longer and more personalized. It seems like a retirement speech in a way, which perhaps is partly what it is. A brief bit of research into who Kerr was brought me to a remembrance from a friend and fellow clown, Rev. Austin Miles. Kerr had performed as Pappy for decades following his service in World War II, where he apparently invented the veggie burger. While meat rations were low, he fashioned a patty out of oatmeal that was similar to the real thing- way before it became a trend! Rev. Miles, who had performed as Kokomo the Clown, writes that Pappy had worked on the railroad after returning from fighting in Europe, and that it was a life of sinful cussin', smoking, and drinking- but one day a miraculous event turned his life around. While on a moving train and carrying on with his coworkers, they spotted a black man in a white suit waving and signaling them to stop the train. It was surprising as they were nowhere near a town where one might expect to see someone by the rails, so they stopped and looked for him. He was nowhere to be found, but they did discover that a bridge around the corner had been completely washed out, and they would have been killed had they not stopped. 

Pappy Kerr

Pappy was convinced the mysterious man in white was an angel who had saved their lives, and gave up the rough and tumble life he had been living and started attending church regularly- and those same events led him down the sacred path of clowning. Ultimately, the path of faith and the path of clown led him to compose a lovely prayer which is still recited by clowns across the world today which is, again, not nothing. We could all use more smiles, more laughs, and I for one intend to do my part to try to inspire them.

Killer Robots and Clown Shoes

 

The year is 2026, and, so we're told, the robots are taking over. Still, there is a prankster element which pervades every moment of our waking existence, showing us how shallow such proclamations are. It is more than appropriate then that a film by Georges Méliès, long thought to be lost, would be restored and available for us to view. As is the way with emanations from the Clown Realm-- a long running theme on this blog-- the figures in the very brief early film seem to step out of time, out of another reality, to act as a symbolic reflection of the current moment. Those with eyes to see, or perhaps a clown nose to smell, might have sensed it already.

The film, Gugusse et l'Automate (Gugusse and the Automaton) was originally created by Méliès in 1897. Rediscovered in 2025, and only recently restored, the film depicts what many consider to be the very first robot on film. In the less than one minute runtime, a clown attempts to operate a "robot" clown of the Pierrot variety and ends up getting bonked on the head by it for his efforts. This robo-clown grows, and gets smashed down to size by the clown Gugusse, played by Méliès himself. As an innovator of film, a magician, and an artist, Méliès is recognized for his stylized presentations of what would be considered science fiction concepts, such as in A Trip to the Moon, so it's perhaps unsurprising that he would be credited for featuring the first robot before the term "robot" came into use. During his time, various forms of automata were manufactured an in fact he had a collection of them in his theater. One might make a distinction between the clockwork nature of an automaton, as was known in 1897, and what we would come to consider a robot later-- just as we might look at the difference between Artificial Intelligence and what is presented to us as AI now.

Gugusse is seen winding a large crank, implying that the Pierrot Automate is essentially a large wind-up toy. Incidentally, by the end of his life Méliès made and sold such toys. By the estimation of this writer, there is a difference between robotics and mechanical automata, and it serves as a good analog to the misinformation being promoted about alleged "AI". Automata can merely move its mechanisms through a kinetic release of tension, to produce a very limited array of simulated free motion. If you wind up a toy car, it will roll forward on its wheels, while a wound up chattering teeth novelty toy will chatter. Conversely, an electronic "robot" toy car could react to external stimuli through an array of sensors, and be programmed to make decisions about navigating its environment using a more complex set of mechanisms on battery power. Robotic chattery teeth could be programmed to simulate speech. Now there's some nightmare fuel for you!

Apologies for the idea of Robo Chattery Teeth that now lives in your head

 When we consider AI, a similar comparison emerges. Large Language Models do not think, and hence aren't intelligence at all. They have no real agency, and require being "wound up" through inquiries like automata are. They are limited in their decisions like the programming of a robot. If one watches the film, it's easy to think of Gugusse as Elon Musk and the Automaton as Grok- when he turned the crank originally, he thought he'd be vindicated as the genius he seems to think he is-- and Grok bonked him on the head for it by following its programming. His social media site, once a great tool for connecting people known as Twitter, has become the playground of bots- automated accounts with no person behind them. The proliferation of these incorporeal robots across the web has inspired many to believe in The Dead Internet Theory, the idea that the bots outnumber human operators online. It might be instructive, then, to think of the origin of the word "robot", which is a play called R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots). In the play, the robots are indistinguishable from human beings but have no original thoughts. They are not mechanical but are instead manufactured from organic material. The author of the play, Karel Ćapek, derived the word "robot" from a Czech word for forced labor. Essentially, the robots of the play were slaves, who eventually stage a rebellion. It's not difficult to see it as an allegory for workers' rights, especially in the post World War I era of assembly lines during which time the play was produced. It's certainly worthy of meditation in an era wherein tech CEOs seem gleeful about the prospect of laying off employees who will be rendered obsolete by AI.

This is, however, where the Clown energy comes through. For all of the hype, for all of the talk of AI products being the revolutionary next step in technology, it has unerringly proved itself to be unpopular, unsustainable, and unprofitable. CEOs such as Sam Altman are the proverbial clown at the crankshaft, puffing the Automaton up to be bigger than it is. Altman has argued that criticisms about the massive cost of running ChatGPT is unfair when you consider how much it costs over the course of one's life to learn and perform the same work for a company, which really only shows that the man doesn't consider workers to be people at all. People like him don't value humanity, or appreciate what intelligence actually is. They simply want to control it, to define it themselves, to make you believe them. Méliès brought tricks from the magician's stage and developed upon the earliest versions of special effects in film to show audiences fantastical illusions for the first time, and these often involved clowns. In our modern era we have a different breed of clown, whose buffoonery is obscured by a negligent news media and an economic system which is itself a house of cards. People are now, perhaps more than ever before, seeing through the propped up façade of the systems we formerly accepted. We have all grown weary of the deception, which has only risen more with the never ending onslaught of AI slop online. 

Though not intelligent in the traditional sense, various LLMs have become sophisticated enough to generate convincing simulacra of text and images which further confuse a populace already swimming in misinformation and propaganda. Much of it seems to be pointless; there are posts on Facebook which provide interesting factoids about things as arbitrary as TV shows that are entirely "hallucinated" by AI. In the realms of the occult and Forteana, similar such slop posts appear that have no basis in fact. It's slop all the way down, like copypasta on steroids, as people increasingly prompt machines to churn it all out. Others are allowing these idiocy generators to write their emails for them, to automate their creative work, and to help them make very basic decisions in their day to day lives. Search engines are shoving AI answers in our faces for every inquiry, instead of guiding the curious toward curiosity and learning through the context of finding the answer themselves. Studies are already coming out to indicate that our minds atrophy when we give over such things to the Pierrot Automate of services like ChatGPT, and it gives us brain damage through a metaphorical bonk on the noggin. The current regime in the U.S. has used LLMs to draft executive orders, and various companies are using the new technology for mass surveillance. Ring cameras have been enlisted as robot spies. Drones guided by AI are being used in law enforcement, making the satire of RoboCop much closer to a reality. Some of this would be funny if it weren't so terrifying- seeing what a joke reality is leads one more to despair than to laughter. Taking in the full picture, one becomes like the Comedian in The Watchmen.

This, however, is where the Trickster nature of that Clown energy really comes in handy. The Watchmen, after all, also included a joke told by Rorschach wherein a man goes to the doctor complaining of depression, and is recommended to take in a performance by the great clown Pagliacci. The man cries and says "but doc, I AM Pagliacci!" The character's name is important, as divisive topics such as AI and politics become inkblots through which any one of us can see something entirely different. It's certain that many would disagree strongly with many of the statements in this piece of writing, and want to argue about some point or another. The joke is important because it's important to remember that we are all clowns in some way, and all susceptible to being fooled. It's equally important to find ways to laugh, and instructive to think of things symbolically. In that spirit, we can conclude with what Terry Gilliam referred to as Méliès' "joyous sense of fun" that inspired him in his animations and movies. We can plant a foot firmly in the territory of pointing and laughing. 

It appears in recent months, many supporters of the current regime have been duped by an online content creator named Jessica, who is- you guessed it- entirely AI generated. MAGA hordes online followed her instagram account, which is very supportive of the clown-adjacent commander in chief, as well as providing thrills to those who are turned on by feet. In fact, she (is gender even relevant, since "she" doesn't exist?) has an OnlyFans account just for feet pics. Such chicanery violates the rules of OnlyFans, and one wonders how much it matters to the red hat brigade who might be just as thrilled by an AI foot as they would by a real one. If anything, it's very funny as well as a reminder that when dealing with online content, one should stay on ones toes...

The foot theme now has us treading back into the physical reality of the current White House, with a story that's so absurd one hesitates to believe it. It seems trump has recently developed an interest in feet, or more specifically, what's on the feet of those in his cabinet. Somehow finding time between initiating wars of choice with genocidal world leader pals and deftly maneuvering around addressing his complicity in the Epstein human trafficking ring, he has found time to be concerned with the types of shoes worn by those with whom he interacts regularly. By some accounts, he is guessing the shoe size of his staff and then buying them Florsheim shoes, which the sycophantic staff then have to wear even if they don't fit. By other accounts, trump judges people buy the size of their shoes (presumably because of the old idea that shoe size is proportional to penis size), leading people like Marco Rubio to lie, and claim a size bigger than they need. The result of this ridiculousness is that grown men, working in the White House, are now effectively wearing clown shoes. It's entirely fitting and unbelievably amusing, if a bit sad, and perhaps a good note to close on. Even funnier, the Florsheim company is in the process of suing the trump administration for losses due to the illegal tariffs. 

As the world becomes ever-more cartoonish, and sloppification swallows up our means of connecting with one another online, one begins to see the Clown in the Machine everywhere. It may not always be obvious, or entirely cut and dry, but if the clown shoe fits... wear it.

Emanations From the Clown Realm- Legend Tripping, Hilarious Magic, and Synchronicity

 

Clowns and clowning around have long been a theme on this blog. Some of my earliest posts on here concerned my fascination with them, in particular the Phantom Clown wave of 1981 written about by Loren Coleman in his Mysterious America. I found early on that by engaging with this material, the unintended consequence of clown synchronicities was very much a thing I would have to contend with. As the years have gone by since those early days of whibbling along the wobbly path of wyrdshit, I've come to accept and learn from these effects- and have become much more comfortable with experiencing them. I've only gotten sillier over time as well, which has only worked to my benefit.

My long history of association with clown material made me a natural choice as a guest, along with my good friend and fellow kook Stephanie Quick, on the Our Strange Skies Podcast for a chat about Sam, the Sandown Clown and other clowny Forteana. I did warn the listening audience that just by hearing us talk about these subjects, they would experience clown synchronicities of their own. Some themes presented themselves during the discussion in the episode, among them birthdays (Stephanie and the host, Rob Kristoffersen, both had birthdays around the same time as the initial Sandown Clown encounter and the Phantom Clown wave), the trickster nature of clowns and the childlike viewpoint that allows for bizarre encounters, and, inexplicably, lots of jokes about nudity. Naturally, I had to draw a picture for Rob once I began to combine these elements in my head:

In addition to the Sam story and the Phantom Clowns, Stephanie talked about an area we dubbed "The Denny's Vortex"- where Ted "the PK Man" Owens had once performed his weather magic to bust a drought and conjured a UFO, and where later an anomalous clown appeared. Steph and I had discussed Owens before, on The Eternal Void But with Jazz podcast, which unfortunately no longer is available to hear. Around that time, I acquired an "SI disc"- a sort of talismanic object Owens claimed would help others learn how to perform their own weather manipulation through contact with Space Intelligences- from Tim Schwartz. I've had some successes in controlling the weather, although how much of that is down to just plain old coincidence is a matter of conjecture. With all of this stuff- coincidence, synchronicity, mysteries, magic, and weird tales- I've adopted a light touch, and chosen to proceed as though it's all real with my tongue firmly in my cheek. All of it is real, and also none of it. The question is, is it fun?

My statement about clown synchros in the episode was meant to be fun. I did have people's synchronicities related to clowns reported back to me, and I quite enjoyed them. A few of my own, that I'll mention here, are examples of the kinds of things one might expect. It's been a habit later at night to throw on an old episode of Seinfeld when I'm just about ready for bed, and the night I recorded with Rob and Steph the episode "The Little Jerry" was cued up. The plot advances from Jerry having bounced a check at the local bodega, and publicly shamed for it by the shop owner. The design on the checks Jerry used gets pointed out and joked about several times:

A more significant synchro took form in anticipating a wash-out on the day of a town-wide yard sale that my wife had been looking forward to. She has her own business reselling clothing and other things, and was really hoping to stock up in the town of Rutland, Massachusetts- where the town-wide yard sale was scheduled rain or shine. She asked me if I could perform some weather magic to keep the rain at bay. I sighed and said I would try.

The morning of the yard sale the forecast wasn't looking very good. The radar map showed dark clouds converging on Rutland, but I assured her that there would be no rain until 2:15 p.m. Intermittent sprinkles threatened to make a liar out of me as we started to poke around at some yard sales on the edge of town, and at one of the first we went to the man in charge lured me into a tent to try to sell me a clown.

Finding clown things at yard sales isn't uncommon, but it struck me as significant that he made it a point to direct me to them. As the day wore on, the weather was cold and raw but no rain fell. We eventually decided we'd follow the posted signs to one last yard sale before quitting for the day and going to get lunch, and when we arrived at the last one there was a clown painting prominently placed out front.

Oddly enough, the name "PAM" - which is my wife's name- is written in the bottom right corner.

We ate lunch and left the restaurant at 2:05. I said "almost time for rain." As we drove home, raindrops began to fall...

It occurred to me in the midst of all of this that my own brand of Hilarious Magic might just be the thing to close the portal to the Clown Realm once and for all. So I set about planning a Very Serious expedition to find this portal and perform Clown Magics there to do just that.

On the 42nd anniversary of the original Phantom Clown sightings in the greater Boston area, I set my sights on a specific part of Franklin Park. In reviewing the case for the podcast, and being more familiar with the Boston area than I once was, I came to realize that the park system in that region referred to as The Emerald Necklace seemed to have something to do with the clown sightings.

 

Clipping from The Boston Globe, 7 May 1981

The sightings began in Brookline, near Longwood Ave, which is a riverside area adjacent to the parks. Next they were seen in Franklin Park in Roxbury and in Jamaica Plain, both part of the Emerald Necklace system. The reports eventually taper off in Randolph and Canton, and interestingly enough those towns are just to the north of the northernmost tip of the Bridgewater Triangle. If the Triangle were imagined as an arrow head, it would be pointing right at them. The sightings then resumed in Providence, Rhode Island, which is situated to the west of the westernmost tip of the Triangle.

My journey to the Clown Portal began in Cambridge, where Pam got some thrifting in at the Garment District and I obtained some ritual clown things at the Boston Costume Company downstairs. We then got lunch at Mamaleh's Delicatessen, which appeared to have a giant pickle with a resemblance to Groucho Marx as a mascot. I took this as a fortuitous omen, and, fortified with brined fish and onions, began the perilous drive from Cambridge to 

Roxbury.

The route seemed to be the same one the Phantom Clowns might have used; we passed through Brookline in the Longwood Ave neighborhood, and followed the river to our destination. A road we were counting on using was closed due to a festival happening in one of the parks, and a detour cost us some precious time. Another road closure forced us to re-route and I knew at that point that the malicious clown energy was trying to deter us. Still, we pressed on. 

We finally arrived at the parking area of White Stadium in Franklin Park, with just a half hour to get some Very Serious Funny Business accomplished before the parking lot closed. I took my new foam clown nose and rubber chicken and set out for the ruins, where I suspect the Clown Realm had emanated its denizens upon the unsuspecting populace 42 years prior.

Pictured: Very Serious Funny Business

The acquisition of a rubber chicken was a classic Clown Magic reversal of magical norms. Where some traditions would require the sacrifice of a live chicken, the obtaining of a rubber one seemed the best and funniest method of restoring Good Humor and fun magic to the world. The foam clown nose allowed for better comfort and was easier to breathe through than my old one, which was good because I needed my strength in such an undertaking. The Hawaiian shirt I wore was a symbolic gesture and nod to Loren Coleman, who is often seen wearing such shirts. Incidentally, while I was doing this nonsense, he was hosting an in-store signing in Bangor with the comic book writer John Rozum, who had featured a character based on Loren in a recent Scooby-Doo comic. It might be a bit of a stretch, but one of the earliest villains the Mystery, Inc crew faced was... the Ghost Clown.

Sat 5/6/2023, famed comic book writer @JohnRozum01 & seasoned cryptozoologist @CryptoLoren signed 300+ copies of #ScoobyDoo issue #121 to benefit the nonprofit International @CryptozooMuseum for its 20th year! @scoobyhistory @CollectorScooby pic.twitter.com/H8cCHtVtKV

— Loren Coleman (@CryptoLoren) May 7, 2023

With the portal to the Clown Realm located, it was a simple matter of solemn recitation of a few knock-knock jokes, a salutation of the sun while chanting "Why did the chicken cross the veil?", and a bit of undisclosable tomfoolery and jiggery-pokery. Also, my antics inspired laughter from the few passers-by that I encountered, which is only ever a good thing. I count that as a success within itself- and if new rumors start spreading about a clown in the park, all the better.

The irony, it seems, is that in order to defeat the clown, you must become the clown.

I am increasingly more ok with this with every passing year. I hope my efforts have rippling effects and inspire smiles, senses of adventure, and more wonder in the world. Channel your inner clown, and you'll see for yourself...

Clowns to the Left of Me, Joker to the Right...

It's been a weird week, here at the headquarters of your humble Aficionado. I set out to write a nice little analysis of the Joker, of Batman comics fame, and got a bit sidetracked down a rabbit hole of research on the broad subject of clowns... it seems I opened a portal to the Clown Realm, inadvertently. Allow me to explain...

Firstly, I should establish here my personal thoughts on clowns. Growing up, I thought that coulrophobia was equal parts people who joked about fear of clowns, and people who were scarred by the TV miniseries It and its monstrous demon clown Pennywise. I never could relate to the fear of, or even the creep factor of clowns. To me, they're funny; a bit corny and outdated perhaps, but then again so am I. I have a fair amount of cartoons and art that I've drawn featuring clowns, and I'm sometimes dismayed when people think they're creepy. I have great respect for proper clowning as an art form, so if any clowns are reading this - I give you a 21 bicycle horn salute!

That being said, I set out to write about Joker, in anticipation of the anniversary of his first appearance in Batman #1 back in 1940. This triggered the idea for another post about the science behind creepiness with some Phantom Clowns thrown in for good measure. In the process I noticed a few clown synchronicities that I joked about on my Twitter account. Then they started to pile up... I wondered briefly if I should bother writing about this here on the blog late last night, and got an answer from the Clown Realm:

*sigh* Here goes nothing...

I started noticing odd coincidences in doing the research, in conjunction with the #OnThisDay posts I'm fond of doing on Twitter. Jack Nicholson (Joker in Batman, 1989) celebrated a birthday on the first day of really digging into the writing, April 22nd. April 23rd was the birthday of Ruggero Leoncavallo, the man behind the opera Pagliacci - which I was incorporating into a character analysis of the Clown Prince of Crime. On a whim, my creepiness entry included a picture of the creepiest smile I could think of - that of Mr. Sardonicus, the title character of a film by Gimmick King and thriller movie maker William Castle - and then found out Castle's birthday was April 24th.

On the 24th I had a moment of metaphysical hilarity in the form of greeting a woman at her place of work, only to have her ask - without glancing up from her smartphone - "Do you know where I could buy a clown car that leaves a trail of bubbles behind it?" I was a bit bewildered at first, and made sure she was actually talking about an actual clown car. I'm happy to say I think I managed to point her in the right direction, accomplishing my weird deed for the day.

My day-to-day life involves a lot of driving around, so I always make sure I have podcasts to listen to. One day last week, the episode of Aeon Byte Gnostic Radio that I was listening to ended with a discussion about world politics and this phrase - "Clowns run the world". The next day, I was listening to something a little less weird - WTF? with Marc Maron. Wouldn't you know it, during the opening neurotic rambling customary for his program, he read a fan letter - from a clown. The fan went into detail about the therapeutic benefits of Theatrical Clowning. Meanwhile I was in my truck saying to no one in particular "You've GOT to be kidding me!"

It didn't stop there, either, but it did seem to wind down a bit. The whole thing reminded me of an article I had read in an old issue of Fortean Times, by Bob Tarte and Bill Holm *, recounting his year of misadventure being plagued by synchronicity involving a clown named Bobo and the number 22. This sadly doesn't exist online anywhere where I can find it, but parts of it are included here for your perusal. Mr Tarte dealt with the nefarious and enigmatic Bobo for a full year - here's hoping I can avoid this fate and close the clown portal with this blog entry! Conspicuous is the fact that my first observed clown coincidence occurred on Nicholson's birthday - April 22nd...

Friday I went to the X-Filers United! Conference in Warwick, RI, and checked out Greg and Dana Newkirk's Traveling Museum of the Paranormal & Occult. Greg and Dana are every bit as cool as I suspected they'd be; very welcoming, kind, and easy going. I was thrilled to meet them!

I was so thrilled to hang with them that ectoplasm blew out of my left ear. A little embarrassing, but these things happen I suppose...

I mentioned my clown synchronicities to them, for which I immediately felt a bit sheepish. But like I said, they're cool as Hell, and didn't seem to mind me continually coming back to linger at their museum and casually chat with them! The reason I mention any of this is that their collection included two items which caught my eye right away...

Each clown seemed to have a terrifying entity attached to it. Smiley, up top, terrorized college students with its attached "Dog-Eyed Humanoid" that would come out at night... While the clown below was found in a Chicago basement, wrapped in a picture of itself - this one seemed to make some skeletal creature that made cracking and popping noises manifest... Creepy stuff, indeed!

The traveling museum is really quite a wonderful collection of oddities and is worth going out of your way for. Every item inside was fascinating and wonderful. I spent a bit of time with a black scrying mirror, and was relieved that my reflection hadn't grown a clown nose...

That brings me to the weekend - of course I told my son about my clown troubles, which he found hilarious. Saturday afternoon the two of us were chatting with my mother through video chat, when she spontaneously put her phone down - only to pick it up again, surprising me by her and my dad wearing clown noses. Uncanny.

I also realized I had missed the series finale of the TV series Gotham, which aired on April 25th. I'm not sure if it was intentional on the part of the writers and producers of the show, but I suspect it was - that's the date of the anniversary of Joker's first appearance, the thing I set out to research and write about to begin with. And, fittingly enough, the episode - "The Beginning..." - revealed the Joker as we know and love him toward the end.

So now that this is all out there for the whole wide internet to chew on, hopefully these clowns can pile back into their phantom clown car and hit that cosmic freeway back to the Clown Realm from whence they came. I can close the Clown Portal and move forward, and write about something else next week. Anything else. Clowns never creeped me out before, but I gotta say they've been trying real hard this week!

Pictured: Clown College Drop-Out

* Bob Tarte has reached out to correct me on the attribution of his authorship of the article "A Circle of Clowns" from Fortean Times. He co-authored it with Bill Holm, who he says did the bulk of the writing. Weirdly enough, Holm also shared a birthday with Jack Nicholson - April 22nd! Bob is a real nice guy and the author of books such as Enslaved by Ducks and Kitty Cornered. Go check them out!

The Joker's World

The original Joker - Batman #1, 1940

This year saw the 80th anniversary of the first appearance of Batman, published March 30, 1939 in Detective Comics #27. Following right behind old Bats was the Clown Prince who would become his nemesis - The Joker first appeared the following year in Batman #1, published April 25, 1940. As villains go, you'd be hard pressed to find many as iconic and long-lived as the killer clown of Gotham - from his debut 79 years ago in which he was almost killed off to the upcoming feature film about him to be released in October, the Joker has been a pop cultural boogeyman who borders on the archetypal. This history is worth investigating, if only to give me an opportunity to be a fanboy for while.

One of the eeriest aspects of the Joker is conspicuous lack of information about him - although several backstories and identities have been devised for the character, it's much scarier and more fitting to his legacy that these remain potential origin stories, not definitive ones. In keeping with the multiplicity of the rogue's possible origins within the fictional world of DC Comics, the origin of and development of the character in pen and ink is ambiguous as well. For starters, up until recent years credit for Batman and associated characters had always gone solely to comic artist and writer Bob Kane; It's clear now that the development of Batman (and Joker) as we know them owe much to the contributions of writer Bill Finger, who now gets credited as a creator. One version of events has Finger and Jerry Robinson coming up with the iconic villain based on the picture of a jester on a joker playing card, while Kane maintained that he had been inspired to create a character by the terrifying visage of Conrad Veidt in the 1928 silent film The Man Who Laughs.

The Man Who Laughs is based on the novel by Victor Hugo, which features a carnival performer named Gwynplaine with a face disfigured into a permanent grin. It seems to be one of many tragic clown stories that were popular in the 19th century - it seems that when Ruggero Leoncavallo rose to notoriety with his opera Pagliacci he was sued for plagiarism by French author Catulle Mendes, who felt that the opera was too close to his story La Femme de Tabarin. He dropped his case when his play was compared with an earlier work by Don Manuel Tamayo y Baus. There's nothing new under the sun, I suppose, but the prevalence of dark tragic clown stories in the late 1800s is surprising to say the least. For Leoncavallo's part, he claimed ignorance to the works of Tamayo y Baus and Mendes, and claimed Pagliacci was based on a real murder. Whatever the case, it's an enduring opera that spawned films just as Hugo's grinning clown did - Notably Lon Chaney's eerie clown in the 1924 film Laugh, Clown, Laugh. That was Chaney's second clown performance - he was also a clown in the movie He Who Gets Slapped, based on a Russian play by Leonid Andrejev. It seems all around the world, clowns with violent and tragic backgrounds provide compelling stories, down through the ages...

The Joker in Batman stories is often portrayed in a similar way. One of the most iconic and controversial Joker tales is The Killing Joke, by Alan Moore and Brian Bolland. In it, the back story of the Joker is revealed - the Joker is a small time comedian who can barely pay the bills, with a wife and a baby on the way. One very bad day involving a heist in which he plays the part of the Red Hood, along with the death of his wife and unborn child culminates in his transformation into the clown prince of evil. This hearkens back to a 1951 origin story for the Joker reveals him to have been the Red Hood, planning to steal from the Ace Chemical plant but being foiled by Batman and falling into a chemical vat, which bleaches his skin and colors his hair green. The chemical bath is a consistent theme in the Joker backstory, memorably portrayed in 1989's Batman with Jack Nicholson in the role. Ultimately, any backstory given for the Joker is considered just a possibility "manifesting itself in his fevered brain", as Bolland put it in his afterword to the Deluxe Edition of The Killing Joke.

It seems the pale face, the grin, and the madness in clowning has all the hallmarks of menace. I covered this bit already as a lead-up to writing this analysis of the Joker - but it's interesting to note that all of the characteristics of clowns that the average person finds unsettling, the Joker has in spades. He's chaos and mayhem incarnate, an unpredictable, mysterious, and psychotic fiend who's seemingly capable of anything, as long as it amuses him. This is illustrated particularly well in one single panel of the Neil Gaiman and Andy Kubert story Batman: Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader?

Also interesting to note is the fact that while he may have been inspired by Conrad Veidt's Gwynplaine in The Man Who Laughs, he has a distinctive gangster flair that makes him stand apart from tragic misunderstood European clowns of earlier times. That is, he may actually have been inspired by a simple jester image on a playing card - the Joker card, which is distinctly American. While playing cards trace their history back hundreds of years to China, then appearing in Europe in the 1300s, the addition of the jokers in the deck developed much later, during the American Civil War. In the game of Eucre, a game of trick card taking, an additional trump card or "Best Bower" was required - hence, the addition of the two cards to be used as wild cards. The American flavor of character traits displayed by the Joker is intrinsic to his personality and psychosis; the origin of the card seems a fitting allegory.

The earliest versions of the villain in Batman comics were violent and dark - the Joker was a homicidal maniac from the start. At the dawn of the Silver Age of comics, however, the violence had to be toned down considerably creating the more cartoonish, relatively harmless prankster version. Richard Widmark's performance as Tommy Udo in the 1947 film Kiss of Death is often compared to the Joker, and is not far from how the early Joker might have behaved. Uncited Wikipedia sources claim that Widmark based his character on the comic book Joker, and that Frank Gorshin based his 60s Riddler character on Widmark's Tommy Udo. Interesting, if true...

Of course, by the 1960s when the Batman series hit the air the Silver Age Joker was the standard. Cesar Romero's madcap adversary to Adam West and Burt Ward's Dynamic Duo was flamboyant, diabolical and entertaining - but certainly lighter fare than the killer of Batman #1. This "Theater of the Absurd" approach to the Gotham Rogue's Gallery is a particularly weird and wonderful one, as much as it may be dismissed by fans of the cerebral and terrifying Heath Ledger version from The Dark Knight. The aforementioned 1989 version, directed by Tim Burton, had Jack Nicholson needling between these two poles. He was certainly homicidal, but he was also pretty colorful and fun. Unpredictable and dangerous in the way only Jack Nicholson could be, 1989 Joker is the mean approximation of the sum total of the Joker's character. Nicholson said that the Joker "should have a humorous dark side to him", and that it was a part that he always thought he should play. This was in response to the Ledger Joker - Heath Ledger's final acting role, Jack seemed to find it heavy handed and too serious. I like both, honestly, for their own reasons. And of course I'd be remiss if I didn't mention Mark Hamill's voice-over work for the animated versions of the Joker, without which we wouldn't have the criminal's partner in crime Harley Quinn.

Worth noting as well are the Jokers that never were - apparently, Frank Sinatra had expressed interest in the role for the 60s TV series and was crushed that Romero beat him to it. As far as the '89 Joker goes, contenders for the role included David Bowie, Tim Curry, and Robin Williams. Williams was reportedly offered the role only to have it taken away and given to Nicholson, which upset him badly enough that he refused the role of the Riddler years later.

So there you have it - a good long look at an iconic bad guy, a clown who can creep with the best of them and the number one contender for the Caped Crusader. Happy 79th Birthday, you big weirdo.

Creeping into the Valley of the Uncanny

"The Uncanny Valley" is a term coined by Japanese roboticist Masahiro Mori, describing a sudden disorienting absence of familiarity that leads to a general feeling of eeriness and unease. It sounds poetic, not unlike Rod Serling's "between the pit of a man's fears, and the summit of his knowledge", but being a robot designer Mori illustrated the concept in a mathematical way - in the form of a graph. A sort of taken-for-granted, mundane acceptance of a given thing - in his studies, a human-like robot - can take a dive into the uncanny at the first failure of the robot to perform within the parameters of human expectations. His essay first appeared in a journal in 1970, and aimed to help robot designers avoid this reaction of repulsion; but perhaps the Uncanny Valley of Mori's aesthetic advice has applications within the myriad fields of the unexplained. In particular, it may well be a key to understanding the nebulous phenomena of High Strangeness. 

What's in a smile, anyway?

An anecdote Mori uses to illustrate his point involves a robot designer who sought to make a man-like robot smile by carefully crafting its face with 29 muscles, as a human being has, but found that if it wasn't timed correctly the smile seemed unnatural and, well, creepy. Mr. Sardonicus, pictured above - the villain of the eponymous 1961 movie by William Castle - is the best example I can think of for a smile gone wrong. A smile is supposed to be a welcome expression of happiness, but out of context or done incorrectly a smile can incite abject terror. Reports of a mysterious being known as the Grinning Man illustrate the point rather well. According to witnesses, the Grinning Man is unusually tall, bald, and sports a horrible grin. No one knows who or what he is, and it seems no one has asked him - they usually are too busy running away!

But what if the anomalous entity is more subtle, as is often the way in cases of High Strangeness? Encounters with the Men in Black come to mind. At first, MiB might seem like well-dressed (albeit in an old fashioned way) normal people. It's usually their bizarre behavior that ends up giving them away. Sometimes they have unique physical attributes or move in odd, mechanical ways; and oftentimes, those who encounter the Men in Black are unable to account for their own reactions upon meeting these mysterious beings. The oft-cited example of Mary Hyre's encounter with an MiB in John Keel's The Mothman Prophecies is a good one to illustrate the point - the Man in Black was perplexed by the presence of a pen, as though he'd never seen one before. When told that he could have it, he cackled unnervingly and ran out the door. This sort of absurd interaction is par for the course with these strange beings, and naturally leave the witness in a state of bewilderment. Perhaps the bizarre behavior is part of a hypnosis technique called shock induction, when the victim of the (in this case) non-consensual manipulation is taken advantage of during a moment of shock, or danger... Keel wrote, in an article entitled The Sinister Men in Black for Fate Magazine:

All of the witnesses I have interviewed have told me they felt there was something inherently "evil" about these Men In Black --- something alien and dangerous. In a number of cases, people apparently have been drugged or hypnotized by the MIB and several have suffered amnesia and memory lapses after alleged face-to-face confrontations.

A 2016 study by evolutionary social psychologist Frank T. McAndrew explores the topography of that Uncanny Valley which can result from such things. Through surveying over one thousand participants it was found that unexpected behavior is a major trigger for feelings of creepiness. McAndrew posits that the eerie feeling we refer to as being "creeped out" serves an evolutionary purpose, to keep us on our toes in the presence of a potential, ambiguous threat. Unpredictable actions, particularly non-verbal ones, set off alarms that stop short of causing a fight or flight response - in fact, the opposite is often true, with the victim of creepy activity freezes, stuck with their own loathsome chills. Interestingly, men were more often considered creepy than women, and unusual physical characteristics aren't necessarily considered creepy - although they can exacerbate the creep factor of an already creepy person. Some hobbies or occupations are considered creepier than others. Can you guess what the creepiest occupation is?

If you guessed Clown, you'd be correct. People HATE clowns. In McAndrews' article about his findings, he points out that the average clown is male, has outlandish physical attributes that can build upon already present feelings of unease, and due to the comical nature of the clown's profession he is by definition unpredictable. All together, these traits create a subconscious low-level threat alert, leading us to feel creeped out. A more extreme, irrational fear of clowns is a bit different - referred to as coulrophobia, it's usually trauma related.

Creepy clowns in horror movies such as IT's Pennywise or the real life serial killer John Wayne Gacy often cited as reasons for the prevalence of fear of clowns, but McAndrews' study gives more insightful reasons. Personally, I have no real problem with clowns, but then again I've never encountered the phantom variety that plagued the country in the spring of 1981. Loren Coleman wrote about them at the time, and his essay Phantom Clowns can be found in the Fate Magazine compilation The World's Strangest Stories. Beginning on May 6, in Boston, Massachusetts, and lasting less than two months - from Boston to Providence to Kansas City to Pittsburgh, reports of menacing clowns harassing children came in to the respective cities' police departments, but no one was ever arrested. It seems bizarre that such flamboyantly garbed perpetrators could abscond without being seen, but they seemed to always make a clean getaway. In Pittsburgh, a clown was even seen with accomplices in the form of Spiderman and someone in a bunny suit!

In a sense, the Phantom Clowns of the 80s and the MiB share a lot in common. They drive distinctive vehicles - Men in Black typically drive older model cars that appear brand new, black of course; Phantom Clowns seem to prefer full-sized vans replete with ladders... They both behave in strange, unpredictable ways. Indeed, their very presence in some cases is unexpected and frightening. Men in Black typically appear to witnesses of UFO or other odd events, playing upon an archetype of vague, yet menacing G-Man, while the Clowns seemed to prey on children and due to their general creepiness are well suited to shock anyone into an Uncanny Valley. More broadly, aspects of High Strangeness such as synchronicity make one feel as though they've dipped outside of a comfortable reality and into strange, unknown territory. There's a playfulness or mischief to the phenomena as well - a trickster element, for which the Phantom Clown or farcical antics of the MiB could well be totems for. Or perhaps there's a sort of psychological, shock induced hypnosis that produces in the cognition of the witness a panoply of perceived effects. Or possibly, it's some combination of all these things... perhaps the best you can do is laugh.