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THE HORROR: Clown-themed album covers
08.17.2018
05:38 am
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01clownlp.jpg
 
Coulrophobia is a neologism used to describe a fear of clowns—or really by the word’s derivation, a fear of stilt-walkers.

I can attest for the fear clowns can instil in some people. I once worked as a clown. My job was handing out fliers for an electrical showroom. I had to hit on unsuspecting families: give the kids a balloon, then hit the parents with a too-good-to-be-true hire-purchase deal on TVs, radios, Walkmans, fridge-freezers, cookers, that kinda thing. Thinking about it now, my job was in many ways a fair description of what makes a clown—someone who seems to be ultra-friendly and fun but is in fact a devious and calculating fuck with unimaginable intentions.

Starting at the feet: I wore black size-thirteen comedy boots. I had a frilly red, white and blue costume with three big pom-poms on the front. I had padded white gloves that made my hands look cartoonish and made it exceedingly difficult to hold balloons and peel-off fliers. I had a multi-colored wig and a red hat. But I didn’t get the make-up. That was way too pricey. Instead, I had a disgusting and well-used (who knows what for..) old rubber clown mask, that someone had embellished with grotesque clown make-up which was beginning to flake off. It kinda made me look like a zombie clown who’d just escaped the crypt. Of course, I had to have a name, so I chose Pogo the Clown—which no-one seemed to appreciate other than thinking it was me just adding a couple of “o’s” to my initials. This was the west coast of Scotland not Cook County, Illinois. Not only did I look horrific, I had that grim moniker too.

But companies don’t give a shit about things like that when there’s money to be made. Off I went, down the busy high street, zooming in on families on their day out. I had no idea what to expect, other than feeling none too keen on twisting the arms of moms and mads into spending money they didn’t necessarily have. Times were hard. Money was tight. Unemployment at an all time high. Thankfully, I was not on commission otherwise poor Pogo would have starved. However, what I did not expect was the look of sheer unadulterated horror on some kids’ faces when I greeted them. These poor lambs would struggle to break free of their parents grasp and sometimes run as fast as they could in the opposite direction. Their foolish parents would laugh and joke and coo about it being just Pogo the friendly clown, and drag their traumatized offspring back to shake my unwieldy hand and get a free balloon. If you were one of those poor damned kids, well, tough. At least you gotta free balloon and an experience you’re still paying an analyst to fix.

Anyhoo…

In my innocence, I never knew the sheer dread, the sheer horror, the sheer pant-shitting terror clowns cause some people. And I’m fairly sure, these kind of poor unfortunates won’t have any of the following classic clown-covered vinyl in their record collections. And I don’t blame them. For who in their right mind would have this shit in their home other than serial killers and clowns.
 
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More ghastly clown vinyl, after the jump…
 

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Posted by Paul Gallagher
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08.17.2018
05:38 am
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Send in the clowns: The Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army wants you!
01.22.2018
11:31 am
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Trigger Warning: if you are coulrophobic (suffer from a paralyzing fear of clowns), this article is probably not for you. Select another wonderful piece written by the great contributors here at Dangerous Minds, as you will not enjoy the information I am about to relay to you. If you have no fear of Ronald McDonald or Bozo and their ilk, you will be quite interested to find that beginning in the mid-2000s, a clown army was established in order to fight for our right to party.

Okay, so maybe they weren’t exactly fighting for our right to party as such, but CIRCA—the Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army—was most certainly established in order to keep The Man from trying to keep us down in a variety of ways. To quote from their now-defunct-but-Internet-Archived-website, CIRCA’s aims were highly political but filtered through the theatrical. They state:

CIRCA is reclaiming the art of Rebel Clowning, it’s combatants don’t pretend to be clowns, they are clowns, real trained clowns. Clowns that have run away from the anaemic safety of the circus and escaped the banality of kids parties, Fools that have thrown away their sceptres and broken the chains that shackled them to the throne.
CIRCA aims to make clowning dangerous again, to bring it back to the street, restore its disobedience and give it back the social function it once had: its ability to disrupt, critique and heal society. Since the beginning of time tricksters (the mythological origin or all clowns) have embraced life’s paradoxes, creating coherence through confusion - adding disorder to the world in order to expose its lies and speak the truth.

Formed in the UK in 2003 by activists John Jordan, L.M. Bogad, Jen Verson and Matt Trevelyan, CIRCA’s creation was catalyzed by George Bush’s visit to London. The group’s practice of rebel clowning was intended to call into play ideas of the foolish, silly and ridiculous, all of which caught authority figures like policemen and the military completely off-guard (pun intended). Nothing like a massive crowd of clowns demonstrating to make a public official feel trivialized or have their dominance questioned. The CIRCA protests were designed to fulfill the group’s stated principles which, as John Jordan wrote, consisted of the following:

Use absurdity to undermine the aura of authority
Ridicule and absurdity are powerful tools against authority. To be effective, authority has to be perceived as such, otherwise people would never obey its commands. On the other hand, who ever takes a clown seriously? Rebel clowning used this slippery dichotomy to great effect, turning the tables on authority in the street by posing in mock-serious fashion next to lines of cops, as well as at the highest levels of power, by pointing out the clownish behavior of George W. Bush and other authority figures.

Get arrested in an intelligent way
Watching police handcuff and bundle clowns into police vans is always entertaining for passersby, begging the question: What did the clowns do wrong? What is this all about? An arrested clown also makes for very mediagenic images. By staying in character during the whole process of an arrest, including giving their clown army names (e.g., Private Joke) and addressees (e.g., the big top in the sky) as their real identity, rebel clowns caused much mirth and havoc in the police stations.

Reframe
Rebel clowning helped reframe the media images of protests during the big summit mobilizations of the mid 1990s. A colorful band of disobedient clowns could easily capture the limelight and shift the narrative away from “violent clashes” and smashed windows.

The kind of Bakhtinian splendor that CIRCA produced on the streets of the UK for Dubya didn’t stay there. The numerous “Operations” they conducted are listed here, along with some passionate communiques from clown leaders such as General Anesthetic, General Confusion and Colonel Oftruth. Operations like the Engagement with CRAP (Capitalism Represents Acceptable Policy) which took place in Leicester Square in 2004 or the various Scottish skirmishes, and the time they informed CIRCA members that they would be “giving hugs to the needy, playing games with all our friends, and other similarly militant activities. We request full cooperation from the public for this operation.”

This kind of thing doesn’t just remain in one place of course. What began in the UK spread. There was the Dutch Clown Armythe Belgian Clown Army, the US Clown Brigades and so forth. It went global, and CIRCA members appeared en force at political events like G8 and elsewhere. For some reason, it’s gotten a bit quiet recently. We’ve really been lacking in the clown army department, so hey—members of CIRCA—any division—if you’re reading this—we could really use a clown manifestation right about now. This time it really IS time to send in the clowns.
 

 

 

 
Much more after the jump…

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Posted by Ariel Schudson
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01.22.2018
11:31 am
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Killer clowns: Kooky pulp novels & magazines featuring gun-toting, knife-wielding circus clowns
03.16.2017
10:26 am
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The cover of ‘Uncensored Detective’ 1946.
 
Oddball vintage publications are one of my favorite things to write about here on Dangerous Minds—and like many of you just when I think I’ve seen it ALL (whether I wanted to or not), some “new” vintage weirdness comes across my radar. People often ask me how we find all the high octane, low brow goodness that we feature here on the blog every day. Unfortunately, the answer to that question is also the same as the answer to the first and second rules of Fight Club. Besides, you should consider yourself lucky as these eyes have seen some really, really weird things. (Things no one should see!) Which is a perfect introduction to the subject of this post—bizarre vintage pulp novels and magazines that feature circus clowns gone bad on their covers. And when I say bizarre I mean gorilla-shooting, sneaky, knife-throwing, clowns.

Though most of the fictional clowns on the covers of the various pulp novels and magazines posted below are up to no good, there is at least one that preferred to behave like a Robin Hood of sorts known as “The Crimson Clown.” Created by playwright, novelist and screenwriter Johnston McCulley—the man behind masked swashbuckler Zorro—the Crimson Clown stories were really popular with the detective lit-lovers set since his first appearance in Detective Story Magazine back in 1926. The Crimson Clown would steal from people he deemed “too rich” giving half of his booty to charity and keeping the rest for himself. He was also known to carry a syringe full of some sort of drug that would render his victims unconscious. But just because he was vigilante who liked to help out the needy doesn’t necessarily make the idea of a clown with a syringe full of cuckoo-juice running amok any less terrifying. Nope. Nothing creepy about that at all. I’ve posted the covers of all the clown-oriented vintage pulp I could dig up and man, there was a lot. Of course, if you are at all coulrophobic, you might want to look at the images below in your “safe place.” See you under the bed!
 

‘Detective Magazine’ 1948.
 

‘Detective Novels Magazine’ February 1944.
 
More killer clowns after the jump…

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Posted by Cherrybomb
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03.16.2017
10:26 am
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Transfixing masks that transform you into an old man, clown, ghoul, or Donald Trump
03.08.2017
01:32 pm
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A clown named “Ron.” A realistic silicone mask by Igor Velgach.
 
Based in Glenview, Illinois mask maker Igor Velgach is the artist behind the all-to-realistic silicone masks you are about to see in this post. I highly advise you have a good pallet cleanser—such as a video featuring kittens or puppies frolicking in a tub full of flowers nearby because you’re going to need it.

According to Velgach, all of his masks are carefully constructed starting with a prototype made of plasticine which eventually becomes in many cases, a sinister looking silicone creation that is so startlingly realistic it is nearly impossible to tell that you are looking at a faux face. The talented artist can make a mask based on any request—though Velgach notes that to do so requires that a mold is taken of your head in order to guarantee that it fits correctly. This kind of expert craftsmanship does not come cheap and Velgach’s masks, which he sells over at his Etsy shop The Masker, run from $499 to $1399 a pop. I’ve included photos of Velgach’s masks below which include two terrifying silicone masks in the image of our 45th president that look even more lifelike than the real thing. Yikes.
 

“Viking Björn.”
 

“Smiley Fred.”
 
More masks after the jump…

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Posted by Cherrybomb
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03.08.2017
01:32 pm
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Meet Tuttii Fruittii and Toni Tits, the ‘drag clowns’ of London
05.23.2016
02:21 pm
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The memorably named Tuttii Fruittii and Toni Tits—Tuttii’s the one on the bicycle above—are inclusive clowns for the generation that has decisively rejected the imposition of restrictions on gender identity. Operating out of the Deptford neighborhood of London, they go by the name Jûngølā Klöwñz, and they are an “experimental comedy art duo” inspired by a generous grab-bag of sources, including drag, clown, and tribal culture.

Tuttii and Toni both cut their teeth at the Haus of Sequana, a women-only group inspired by the tribal practices of the African, South American, and Asian diasporas that after “rampant orgies of imagination and joyous mashings of minds” created a group of performance artists that liberally uses body paint, movement, and chanting “to challenge patriarchal norms and prescribed gender roles.”

In what passes for “regular life,” Tuttii is a hair sculptor and Toni is a video artist. Photographer Poem Baker has been capturing the duo as they go about their business for over a year, and that time has culminated in the colorful series of pics seen here.

On the Klöwñz, Baker writes, “Their psychedelic creations being so entrenched in their daily lives has made it impossible to distinguish between persona and performer, between art and life.” The two clowns have given Baker an occasion to ponder why she does what she does too: “London is my home, and I love photographing all its wonderful, colorful characters— the eccentrics, the artists, the crazies, and the the bohemians.”
 

 

 
More after the jump…....

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Posted by Martin Schneider
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05.23.2016
02:21 pm
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Unsettling vintage clown portraits
03.08.2016
09:06 am
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I’ve never been a big fan of clowns. I don’t exactly find them terrifying like some people do, I just never really found them all that amusing or funny. Run of the mill local clowns at the country fair were no hilarious Buster Keatons in my book. They bored and annoyed me. When I was a kid what I didn’t like were the amusement park-employees dressed in character animal costumes who always wanted to hug me or put their arm around me. I was definitely terrified of those furry freaks No thank you very much. Get away from me you sweaty weirdo dressed as a happy hedgehog. Don’t touch me.

If you do suffer from some type of clownphobia, these portraits are not for you. Sadly, I’m not 100% sure of the provenance of these portraits. They don’t look like mugshots or else they’d be black and white. Were these taken at a clown convention? Maybe these are yearbook photos from some sort of clown school?

I’m just going to assume they were taken to scare the snot out of children and adults alike. I think it might be safe to assume that some of these guys spent time in prison either before or after these photos were taken.

Don’t trust clowns. I’m just sayin’.


 

 

 
More after the jump…
 

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Posted by Tara McGinley
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03.08.2016
09:06 am
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Creepy slow-waving clown in Chicago cemetery caught on camera
07.24.2015
11:39 am
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Julia Graham and her husband were driving past the Rosehill Cemetery on Chicago’s North Side at 10pm when they saw something straight out of a David Lynch film (or else a low-budget straight to VHS 80s clown slasher flick, take your pick, either is equally valid here): A man dressed as a clown running towards the historic graveyard before scaling a 7-foot-tall-gate.

“When we get closer, we realize it’s a clown, which is super weird,” she told CBS Chicago’s investigative reporter Dave Savini:

It got weirder. When Julia and her husband hung around to get a better look, the clown was not deterred or afraid. He waved slowly at the couple. Incidents like this one aren’t isolated. A video of creepy clowns surprising people on the streets of California went viral last year. In New York, a clown was seen making a daytime excursion last year while holding some balloons.

“Oh, that’s super weird,” says Graham, when shown the New York video. “That is like making light of a cemetery.”

Eventually, the clown caught in the headlights of Graham’s car turns around and, without saying a word, takes off into the darkness of the cemetery. “I just think it’s creepy and wrong,” Graham says.

I don’t know if I would like it if something like this happened to me. I’ve pondered it, but could come to no conclusion. Maybe under the right circumstance and with the right person. A person who is armed, perhaps…

In any case, what did this guy achieve with this “activity”? Maybe it’s his kink? An art prank? He just always dresses like this or is a professional party clown and cutting through the cemetery is his shortcut home from work? None of the above? Who knows? And who can say besides the creepy clown guy himself? Creepy slow-waving Chicago clown guy, if you are reading this, please leave us some clues as to your “motivation” for this in the comments. Thank you in advance!
 

 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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07.24.2015
11:39 am
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Demented clown portraits by Elo Perfido
05.04.2015
12:38 pm
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God, I wish whoever was behind Jared Leto’s laughable “look” as The Joker (some suspect the make-up was a “troll”) took some pointers from French-born photographer Eolo Perfido‘s photo series “Clownville.” The portraits are a perfect mixture of demented and grotesque.

Make-up by Valeria Orlando.


 

 

 

 
More after the jump…
 

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Posted by Tara McGinley
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05.04.2015
12:38 pm
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Creepy organ-playing clown found in sex offender’s home
02.19.2015
04:23 pm
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Louie the Clown by KSN-TV
 
Missing for over ten years, Louie the Clown, a 50-year-old mannequin that once ‘played’ a Wurlitzer Military Pipe Organ at the now defunct Joyland Amusement Park in Wichita, Kansas, has been found. As it turns out, he’s been hanging out at the home of Damien Mayes, an imprisoned child sex offender and former Joyland employee, who stole it prior to his incarceration. Police were recently tipped off to the creepy smiling mechanized entertainer’s whereabouts, which then prompted a media briefing. Louie is guessed to be worth around $10,000.  Who’s laughing maniacally now?
 
Louie the super-creepy clown at his media briefing
 

 
via KSN News

Posted by Rusty Blazenhoff
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02.19.2015
04:23 pm
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Experience ‘Clown Fucker,’ the perfect Morrissey parody
07.03.2014
08:52 am
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Clown Fucker
 
On the most recent episode of his podcast, veteran standup and former Simpsons writer Dana Gould explored what is and isn’t mentionable in comedy—the title of the episode is “You Can’t Say That!” In the service of making a different point, Gould happened to play a clip (about 10 minutes in) from his 1998 album Funhouse, a clip that has the most spot-on, deadly accurate impression of Morrissey I’ve ever heard.

Through sheer imaginative brio, Gould, who hails from Massachusetts, manages to nail the exaggeratedly maudlin quality of Moz’s lyrics, his affectation of turning the last word of every other line into a four-syllable affair, his achy-breaky way of singing every word in a different register…. all, of course, by showcasing content that would be very unlikely to make it into a Morrissey song: the saga of a one-night stand with a circus clown. Brutality can do wonders in comedy, which explains the song’s title (and chorus): “Clown Fucker.”

Here are the lyrics, but you have to hear Gould’s version to get anything like the full effect:
 

He awoke in the morning and to no surprise
The man of last night had fled
Stains of white greasepaint on her body that ran
From her toes to the top of her head

The alarm stung her ear, she rolled over to spy
Much to her chagrin and her dread
A crumpled red nose and two oversized shoes
Strewn by the side of the bed

chorus
“Clown fucker! Clown fucker!” That’s what they said
“Clown fucker! Clown fucker!” That’s what they said
“No, never fuck a clown, dear,” that’s what mommy said
“Never, never fuck a clown, dear,” that’s what mommy said

She went to the bar and she started to drink
She drank and she drank and got drunk
She walked up to him and said, “How could you leave?”
But all he could do was honk

She knew it was over, it sunk in just then
It was time to say “it’s the end”
He walked out the door and stepped into a car
With forty-eight of his friends….

 

 

Posted by Martin Schneider
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07.03.2014
08:52 am
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Screw haunted houses. This Halloween, let’s all go to Grampa Jerry’s Clown Museum!
09.27.2013
01:33 pm
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Clown Museum
 
When I worked in a daycare, one of our “special guests” for the preschool-age children was a volunteer clown who often visited children’s hospitals to cheer up sick kids. I have no idea why there’s this whole sick kids and clowns thing. The majority of children are scared shitless of clowns, because children have a natural and understandable aversion to the grotesque. This woman’s/clown’s act had a very clever component, though. She actually arrived with no make-up, and talked to the children as she applied it, explaining that clowns are actual people underneath the wigs, and face paint, and rubber noses. Clowns are human, too!

All well and good, but I feel like we could have cut out that step entirely by banning clowns outright. Most adults are creeped out by clowns, so why should we attempt to eradicate the healthy fear of them residing in childish minds?

To some, however, clowns are symbols of joy and levity, which is why Grampa Jerry’s Clown Museum is such a labor of love for its curator. The roadside attraction, located in small-town Arriba, Colorado off the side of a desolate highway, is literally a pink shack filled with an estimated 5,000 pieces of clown iconography, and you couldn’t pay me enough to go in there alone. But while the idea of a damn clown mausoleum chills me to my bones, the story behind it warms my heart.

“Grampa” Jerry began started his collection in 1978, and just kept on going, right up until his death in 2010. His wife, Dale Ann, now runs the museum and continues adding to their collection, cheerfully archiving clown after clown. You can hear the genuine love in her voice as she reflects on her husband’s eccentric opus below. While she’s gone on record saying she understands the uncanny nature of clowns leave some folks a little shaken, for her the museum is a connection to a man she clearly loved very deeply.
 

 
Still though. Neither bribes nor threats nor liquid courage could get me into that accursed building. One of the clowns is made from a cow’s hairball! You cannot convince that doesn’t have some kind of dark voodoo power. Nope. No damn way. Not enough tequila in the world.
 

Posted by Amber Frost
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09.27.2013
01:33 pm
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‘The Day the Clown Cried’: Behind the scenes of the infamous Jerry Lewis film
03.14.2013
03:24 pm
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This is a guest post from Tabitha Vidaurri, a writer and comedinette from Brooklyn

In 1971 Jerry Lewis infamously directed and starred in a film about the Holocaust titled The Day the Clown Cried.  For reasons that are still unclear, Lewis chose to depart from his trademark slapstick formula and play the role of Helmut Dorque, a German circus clown who ends up leading Jewish children to the gas chamber.

The film was never finished or released for obvious reasons (not even the French were behind him on this one). Apparently Lewis has refused to talk about Clown in interviews, which I find odd—you’d figure a comedian famous for falling down and making stupid faces would jump at the chance to discuss his utterly humorless movie about a clown in a WWII German concentration camp!

In the behind the scenes footage (see below) we get a glimpse of Lewis fulfilling his duties as a director: leading the film crew, checking the cameras, and dancing around wearing a neck brace. Ambient sound has been added to enhance the overarching sense of alienation, except it isn’t really necessary because this is footage of Jerry Lewis talking to Nazis.

This slideshow of rare production stills shows a gratuitous number of photos of Lewis in full clown makeup, and to escalate the creepiness of him posing with children he presumably later leads to their deaths, the sequence is set to doo-wop music performed by Jimmy Beaumont and the Skyliners.

Since the videos are absent of dialogue, here’s an excerpt from the script  to give you a little taste of the abyss:

HELMUT
(screaming at top of voice)
Come back, damn you, come back.  The
children… they’re laughing.  They’re
laughing. I am a clown.  I am a clown.


He turns back to the children and again bows.  He quickly leans down, looks at his reflection in the puddle, and scoops up a handful of mud which he plasters on his nose to make a bulbous, artificial proboscis.  He turns back to the children and in pantomime, pretends to see a fly buzzing about and tries to swat it.  The imaginary fly buzzes closer.

The CAMERA MOVES UP TO—CLOSE SHOT—HELMUT

As the “fly” lands on his nose.  He looks cross-eyed at the mud blob, then swats at it.  The blob falls off.


To cleanse yourself of this massive, historical failure I suggest taking a shower and then watching The King of Comedy.

This is a guest post from Tabitha Vidaurri. Follow Tabitha on Twitter
 

 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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03.14.2013
03:24 pm
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Creepy John Wayne Gacy items for sale on Craigslist
04.21.2011
01:00 pm
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image
 
A creepy John Wayne Gacy clown suit and painting are for sale on Craigslist for “$1,000 up to $10,000.” I’m not vouching for the authenticity here, just pointing it out. Clown suit, anyone?

j.w.gacy items for sale - $1000 (chicago)

Thanks (I think), James!

Posted by Tara McGinley
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04.21.2011
01:00 pm
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