Got your popcorn and Milk Duds?
Dim the lights, turn off your cell phones, sit back and relax, because it’s time for Clown Day: The Movie!
If you want to watch it in widescreen, please view it at YouTube.
Enjoy!
Clown Day was a huge success, except for the fact that students on our campus couldn’t have cared less that a clown walked among them. I’m still calling it a win because no one threw a pie at me.
I’ll recap the day and then let you enjoy the movie trailer we produced to commemorate events. I’m submitting it to Sundance. They take everything.
The day began with my clown assistant sister Marlene collecting me at my house. I made a peanut butter and jelly sandwich to eat later, and she immediately chastised me for putting too much of everything on the bread. I can’t do anything right.
We piled in the car and headed to work, getting noticed by no one. We clowned around in my office with everyone who came to get an eyeful. Took video and pictures and then headed out to our first stops.
No one said anything to us. And I looked like this. I don’t get it either.
Students, if anything, simply glanced and put their heads back down. Only one student spoke. “Run! Run away!”
Wow. Tough crowd.
We headed for visits to various buildings on campus, stopping at my satellite office, where I followed a grad student back to hers, saying “Would you mind if I followed you back to your desk? in the creepiest way possible. Until I told her who I was, she would not look me in the eye. Note to self. Creepy is only fun for the clown.
Before we knew it, lunch time! We headed to a deli nearby, where I had my first and last PBJ sandwich. I know I made it wrong. I know I used the wrong jelly (strawberry), but that didn’t matter. I was a “mouth feel” thing. Jelly too slimy. Make clown sad.
So my videographer graciously offered me half his BLT sandwich. Bacon good. Make clown happy.
The rest of the afternoon was more of the same: Students not caring, but friends and co-workers loving it.
By 3PM, my clown assistant and I were exhausted. Clowning is much harder than I thought it would be. You always have to be ON. We felt OFF by then and decided to head home.
Made a quick visit to my clown assistant’s workplace for pictures. Found out that her co-worker’s son is a campus police officer where I work and got the email that I sent warning that a clown would be on-campus (can’t be too careful).
Can you imagine the morning briefing? Be on the lookout for a clown today. She’ll be unarmed and hilarious.
So what did I learn by clowning all day?
Thanks go again to my sister for helping me with picture-taking and lugging all my clown paraphernalia around. Clowning is hard, but I think clown assisting is harder.
Jason Slipp, my good friend and co-worker, filmed and edited the following movie trailer. Thanks for your creative spirit, time and talent! (Movie to come in a later post).
Here you go!
Many of you know that this Friday, January 20th, is Clown Day.
The day I agreed I would go to work dressed in full clown gear after you donated so much to my food bank fundraiser.
Let me tell you, it’s hard being a clown. But it’s also some of the most fun I’ve had in my life.
In the past weeks, I went shopping for just the right clown suit, makeup, a wig the size of a basketball, white gloves, a dozen balloons and a tote bag to keep all my girly clown things secured.
It took me four attempts at a face to land on one I’m happy with. YouTube videos helped, and so did pictures on the Internet and makeup packaging. I started out with a dreadful Joan Crawford face, but wound up with much more cheerful one in the end.
I took my clown self for an “in public” test drive yesterday, visiting my mother first. I had to call and warn her that she would not recognize my fully-painted face and to please not attack me with a baseball bat.
I drove around town before and after and waved at anyone who would look at me. If you have a bucket list, put clowning on it! It’s a laugh a minute!
All but one person waved back or smiled.
That one person who didn’t?
He flipped me the bird at an intersection.
I think he needed a hug. If you can’t smile back at a clown, you’re dead inside. That’s all I have to say about that.
So that you can all follow along with my clownal shenanigans, I’ve set up a Facebook page that you can “Like.” I’ll post pictures and updates as often as possible.
I’ll also blog about it after, with plenty of photos and video.
You are as much a part of this as anyone I run into that day. I hope you enjoy following along with me for the ride.
Thank you again for making the food bank fundraiser a huge success!
Kauai, Hawaii – A distraught chicken was responsible for the delay of two flights out of a Kauai, Hawaii airport today after blocking passengers from boarding their flights until his travel complaints were addressed. One passenger was injured.
Charles “Chuck” Poulet, of Duluth, Minnesota, was scheduled to meet his long-time girlfriend, Marie Fowler, at Hilo International Airport, but his Air Pacific flight was rerouted to Kauai a short time before scheduled landing due to poor weather conditions.
Airport officials attempted to book Poulet on another flight to Hilo the next day, but Poulet insisted the airport get him on an earlier flight so he could meet Fowler on time for a surprise marriage proposal.
Kauai Airport customer service representatives reported there were no flights scheduled that would get Poulet to Hilo any earlier than the following morning.
Poulet said he’d been planning this trip for months, since Fowler gave him an ultimatum. She told me last year “If you’re serious about our relationship, you betta put a ring on it,” Poulet said.
Poulet and Fowler have been long-distance dating for five and a half years.
“I started planning this thing where she and I would meet in Hilo for a trip of a lifetime. Hawaii. The ultimate, right?” Poulet said. “I wanted to make it something special, you know? And now it’s all clucked up.”
In addition to landing at the wrong airport, Poulet complained that he was not given adequate time or assistance to retrieve his carry-on luggage, bags that contained not only his preening equipment, such as specially-designed combs and gel products, but also the carry-on that contains the tiny opal ring that he plans to present to Fowler.
“I have to have that stuff. If I don’t show up with a ring and if my feathers aren’t just so, I can’t face her,” Poulet said. “I’m a mess over this.”
Flight attendants could not be reached for comment. However, airport policy states that all luggage, carry-on and checked, must be unloaded for any re-routed passengers who are booked on later flights.
Poulet reportedly nipped at the heels of nearly all passengers waiting to board their flights to other Hawaiian islands, in protest to what Poulet felt was subpar customer service.
Katherine Johansson, of New York, New York, required first aid for an injury she sustained when Poulet repeatedly pecked at her flip-flopped feet. “The guy’s insane. I mean, everyone suffers some kind of delay at airports. People, chickens. Everyone,” she said. “I’m sympathetic to his situation, but weather’s weather. It happens. But now my feet are bleeding.”
Poulet also allegedly flew around the airport in spurts of 10-12 feet at a time, in an effort to disrupt two Hawaiian Airlines flights attempting to depart in the hours after his flight landed.
“We can fly if we need to,” Poulet said. “It’s tough, but it’s possible. If only I could fly to Hilo.”
Poulet confessed, “I didn’t mean to scare other passengers. I just wanted to get on an earlier flight. They said they would pay for a shuttle to get me to another airport, but man, what a hassle.”
Poulet’s behavior caused delays for both flights, 30 minutes and 20 minutes respectively, until airport officials could secure the check-in areas.
Air Pacific officials were eventually able to convince Poulet that he would make it to Hilo within four hours of his original flight arrival time, taking a shuttle van and then a puddle jumper flight to the island. Poulet agreed to the arrangement and accepted vouchers for his flight home to Minnesota on January 18.
No charges were filed.
Public relations director, Andrew Fenton, reported that Poulet was put on a van and given all of his luggage, which Poulet inspected carefully before departing.
“The ring is dazzling, isn’t it?” Poulet said. “She’ll be one happy chick.”
*photo credit: Billy Ayers
Today my sister Marlene and her husband treated me to lunch at a place I’ve only ever gone to before for ice cream.
When we pulled up to the place, I asked Marlene if instead of a real meal, I could just have ice cream for lunch.
She shut me down before I could make my case for chocolate chip cookie dough as an entree. “No, not unless you eat something healthy first.”
Poop on you!
I said “Yeah, that’s like Mom always said when I wanted junk food. Remember? She’d say ‘First you have to have meat, cheese, tuna fish or egg.’” Apparently, protein buys you cookies later.
“No, I don’t remember and how specific is that? Geesh,” Marlene replied.
I told her I loved Mom’s stock answer for its nonsensical quality and if I ever wrote a book, that’s what I was going to call it. Meat, Cheese, Tuna Fish or Egg. It doesn’t make any sense without explanation and surely, anyone reading the title would be compelled to pick up my book and flip through its pages.
And then they would laugh themselves silly reading random portions of the gem in their hands, be in awe of all the rock star authors who gave it rave reviews and wonder why my creation was deep in the bowels of the bookstore, when it should be right at the front door all by itself on an easel, with a spotlight shining upon it and a velvet rope around it.
A dreamer I was.
What I want to know from those with mothers who say weird things…. let’s have it.
Tell us your favorite motherly sayings, admonishments, crazy rules or regulations that you remember to this day.
The less they made sense, the better.
Go!
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