Here’s your weekly clown update,
and it’s a full one. They scare the crap
out of me, but I feel obliged to face my coulrophobia and report on the good
news, the bad news, and the purely typical American news. First, the good news: The Staten Island
Terror Clown, which was standing around on street corners, holding a balloon,
begging to get punched, was apparently just a film stunt by a bunch of hipsters. That may be why he wasn’t
actually punched. They were making a
movie about a clown and decided to play on the fears of those people scared of
clowns, and played up on the English clown who was actually just standing
around on street corners, begging to get punched (or head-butted, because it’s
England and that’s how they roll). They put the pictures on Twitter, created some buzz, then came out with it. I
figured there was no place in the United States more likely to punch a clown
standing on a street corner looking terrifying at night than Staten Island and
wondered why the butt-whipping hadn’t happened.
Hipsters. That’s why it hadn’t happened. They were apparently filming the whole time
and a scary clown being filmed by a bunch of hipsters is less scary than a
clown just standing there. So, there you
have it. Perhaps Staten Island has lost
some of its edge after Hurricane Sandy.
You would have thought that a bunch of Hipsters – probably from Brooklyn
- filming a terrifying clown in Staten Island were even more likely to get
punched. But, it’s your new New York.
Beside this mess, it has once
again been reported that the Clown Union in England is down from 1000 members
in the 1980’s to 100 members. This was
reported a month ago, in the same newspaper. Apparently, the clowns were mocked
enough that they came back to try to explain why no one liked clowning anymore.
We said it then, and they say it
now, as if they’re surprised. They actually
said this: 'For some reason, clowning has been
jumped upon as being unfashionable and the scary clown bandwagon has been
particularly jumped upon. The
clowns cite Steven King’s IT, and the Joker, as played by Heath Ledger,
allegedly creating an increasing view of the entertainers with children
relating to them as villians.
News to
the clowns: John Wayne Gacy did all that to you three decades ago. Then
the hit-clown in Mexico confirmed it again this year,
as did the guy in a clown outfit who dangled a kid from the railroad
tracks. And the screwdriver attack clown, also this year.
So,
against that backdrop, it’s not hard to figure why parents might not want to
hire someone dressed in makeup, who may or may not be a serial killer, to
entertain their kids at a party. In fact, in the UK, this year's annual
gathering of clowns at Butlins in Bognor regis was cancelled this year after
the holiday camp withdrew its sponsorship. No sh*t.
Yet,
it was also reported that in Maine, a local clown college had its final exam ata mall, probably terrorizing the crap out of all the local kids. Apparently, at the local clown college, you need 52 credits to graduate. No telling how many terrified kids that
is. It also begs the question of whether
clown college costs money, and whether that tuition is subject to financial
aid. I wouldn’t be surprised. According
to this recent expose on the spiraling cost of student debt in the US, it’s at
$1 trillion dollars, with a “T”.
No telling
how much of that is from clown college. The
article profiles a law student who is hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt,
going into an overcrowded legal field with a shrinking work base. Sounds a lot like clowning.
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