Clowns who sell shit

It doesn't take too many trips to the YouTube store to make you realize that Milky was far from alone in existing just to sell stuff.

He may have been more dedicated than most, wearing a bedsheet costume (hopefully, not used - whoa there, Mr. Milks) to match his product. But this Kedso creature, covered in mysterious spots and holding a tiny useless umbrella, is willing to take some major leaps for the corporation.

Live-action clowns are, of course, far creepier, like this Fizzies clown with the orgasmic facial expression. One of the worst aspects of clown closeups is the fact that we can see the guy's real eyebrows, lips, teeth, etc. - which was probably never meant to happen while clowns pranced around the circus ring at a merciful distance. This guy has the teeth of a rabid beaver or a most unfriendly hamster about to fasten itself on to the end of your index finger. Fun.

This is Clarabell, perhaps the most famous clown in TV history, and goddamn, is he mud-ugly! The makeup consists of two squares drawn above the eyes, and a gory-looking Satanic mouth ringed in white. The advantage is that he could probably apply his makeup in less than five minutes, but the disadvantage is that, this close, his creepiness is so extreme as to be nearly incomprehensible. Yet clowns are always described as "loveable". Might there be something a little bit wrong with a man who needs to do this every day?

Krinkles the Klown is downright disturbing, so much so that I had to make two gifs of him. Here he hands a bowl of his product to an unwitting victim. If he looks a little more peculiar than usual (for this isn't the first time I've giffed Krinkles), it's because someone, not me, mind you, but SOMEONE has slowed down the YouTube video just a hair, so that he looks glassy-eyed and stoned (I mean, more than usual).

This guy's upper lip freaks me out. Watch it while he talks, and when he chews his cud, it's awful. And the way he blinks his eyes, blink, blink. I want to rip the fake hair out of his fake skull and tear off his nose. Perhaps this is where John Wayne Gacy got his inspiration.

Post eventually replaced the oh-so-stoned Krinkles with something a little more animated. But might the boy have a sugar problem?

But for sheer incomprehensibility, we can't beat the first incarnation of Ronald McDonald, a goof with a crappy cheap clown suit, surgical gloves, and a box on his head. Yes, a box, with burger, fries and drink. At first I thought that was a toilet paper roll strapped to his nose, but now I see it's an empty paper cup. Does he anticipate a nosebleed, or a freshet of snot, or what? I apologize for the quality of this one - it was the best I could do with a badly-edited, flickering video so degenerated that it's nearly green. It's so cheaply made, so jerky, that one wonders how this could have been the genesis for Ronald McDick, a cultural icon second only to Chairman Mouse in universal appeal.

OMG: MORE new photos of Milky the Clown!

OK, so it isn't THAT great. Somebody put together a collage or montage of the few existing photos of Milky (unless someone, some day, discovers a cache of hundreds or even thousands of images of the Twin Pines clown, stashed away like reels of ancient movies from 1914). I did isolate two that I haven't seen:

I apologize for the bleariness of these, but this was another time. Meantime I did a little digging about the origins of Milky's "Pierrot" costume, which actually fits the category of a Pulcinella (in English, Punchinello, or Punch for short, a la Punch and Judy). Hard to believe that the original medieval clowns wore white. No rainbow wigs or slap shoes here.

Pulcinellas (or Pulcinellae, as I prefer to call them) were nasty little creatures in costumes made out of bedsheets, and this one seems to be holding a butter-churn (though most of them were troubadours and played lutes or flutes or whatever came to hand). They typically wore black masks with long curved beaks on them, raven-like. Like most clowns, like ALL clowns, there was a creepy element to them, and part of their mandate was to sneak up on people and scare the shit out of them.

When the Milkster dominated the airwaves in Detroit, the Pulcinella-style clown was rare, if not unheard-of. They're still pretty rare outside of Europe. But I think I figured it out: the Punch costume is white, like - well, like milk, of course! The only way a clown could wear a costume that matched the product he was flogging was to style himself like his nasty medieval forbears.  His dry cleaning bill must have been astronomical.

CLOP: must be Monday!

I find weird things on the net,  probably just because they are there to be found. At some point when I was rewriting my piece on Richard Correll, I wanted to find an image of a chimera - something elusive, secretive, and probably not even real, the sort of thing that exists mainly in your mind but tortures you forever.

Tortures you forever, for this particular chimera keeps getting its horn stuck in the ground. 

These gif images are part of a game - at least I think it's a game - called CLOP. I don't know how to play it because I have never played an internet game in my life, nor will I ever, I don't think. I don't particularly like games - they seem stressful to me, and a waste of time, when you could be doing something much more enjoyable, such as eating.

This unicorn does not strike me so much as a chimera as, well, myself. The course of my life has been sort of like this, a rough gallop with periodic nasty spills, from which I must try to pick myself up. Each time, a little more damage is done. But like an idiot who never learns, I always get back up, and for the most part things aren't any better. Lather, rinse, repeat.

This gif is particularly strange because while the unicorn seems to be advancing - the tree and the mystery person slowly disappear stage right - we can't see how it could ever propel itself in this manner. It seems to be sliding along on its nose, hind legs kicking frantically in the air. A state I know all too well.

Here, the unicorn is having a really bad day. Must be Monday.

Determined to move forward nonetheless, the unicorn encounters a flight of stairs. Stairyway to freedom? Or at least uprightness?

He's doing OK, folks. . . let's cheer him on. . . 

Now we KNOW it's Monday.

Know Your Poe: The Happiest Day

The Happiest Day

The happiest day–the happiest hour
My sear'd and blighted heart hath known,
The highest hope of pride and power,
I feel hath flown.

Of power! said I? yes! such I ween;
But they have vanish'd long, alas!
The visions of my youth have been–
But let them pass.

And, pride, what have I now with thee?
Another brow may even inherit
The venom thou hast pour'd on me
Be still, my spirit!

The happiest day–the happiest hour
Mine eyes shall see–have ever seen,
The brightest glance of pride and power,
I feel–have been:

But were that hope of pride and power
Now offer'd with the pain
Even then I felt–that brightest hour
I would not live again:

For on its wing was dark alloy,
And, as it flutter'd–fell
An essence–powerful to destroy
A soul that knew it well.

You thought I was kidding, didn't you? DIDN'T you? - that I would ever run a series about Edgar Allan Poe? No, I was deadly serious, as serious (and deadly) as I could be about such a topic.

I don't know all of his poetry, and to dip into it is difficult, for it's melancholy and dense and written in that Victorian way, full of morbid verbal bric-a-brac and swirling emotional effluvia. So I cast around for something a bit lighter. Ah! This must be it, The Happiest Day! Even a morose bugger like Poe must have had a little fun, even though it's said he never had sex with his wife, and perhaps not with anyone. Maybe he liked to play canasta or enjoyed chilled melon balls or something, I don't know. But when I found this poem and realized it was relatively short, I thought, aha, here's one I can analyze line-by-line without busting my brain or bursting into tears.

Wrong. This guy just never lightens up.

Analyzing poetry is an awful thing, really, because it should mean exactly what it means to the reader. If it's really good, the poem reads you. It pulls uncomfortable stuff out of you, the stuff we shove aside in order to get through the day and deal with its noise and tussle. Whilst all this slimy stuff lurks beneath.

So I will let this poem read me. It seems to be saying - and here I am reminded of Oscar Levant's statement, "Happiness isn't something you experience, it's something you remember" - that what we call happiness is so evanescent that it melts and evaporates even as we experience it. The poet, who was maybe 22 when he wrote this, feels his life has already peaked and it's all a downward slide from here on in (though little did he know he'd only make it to forty).

It's a short poem, after all, certainly short for for Poe - but he packs a lot into it, or rather sneaks it in. Two weighty words repeat almost as alarmingly as those infernal "bells, bells, bells, bells, bells, bells, bells": "pride" and "power":

The happiest day–the happiest hour
My sear'd and blighted heart hath known,
The highest hope of pride and power,
I feel hath flown.

Is the poet in some sort of disgrace here? Or has he missed out on something? "The highest hope of pride and power" - this isn't about happiness at all, but about position, worldly position! Loftiness, almost. And because he fell off his high horse, he's whimpering about it: "sear'd and blighted" seems to imply some sort of assault from the outside, a burn, a rotting on the vine, which is a vastly different thing from internally-generated grief.

Of power! said I? yes! such I ween;

But they have vanish'd long, alas!
The visions of my youth have been–
But let them pass.

Here we get a clue. We get a clue what this guy is really all about, what turns his crank. What he dreamed about as a youth. What he hoped for. Longed for. And it ain't a pretty picture. He argues with himself for a moment, as if somewhat incredulous: Power? Are you sure that's what did it for me? Then (after using the almost supernatural term "vanished" to describe the loss) he dismisses the whole thing, though there are several more stanzas to come.

And, pride, what have I now with thee?

Another brow may even inherit
The venom thou hast pour'd on me
Be still, my spirit!

Now here's a mysterious couple of lines: "Another brow may even inherit/The venom thou hast pour'd on me". Who is this "other", and is "inherit" to be taken literally? And how can pride - whom I assume he is addressing rhetorically - pour venom on someone? Or perhaps it's the loss of pride?  Again, it's the external assault, the snakebite from the bluff. "Be still, my spirit!" may not have been quite as histrionic then as now, but it's still an obvious play for sympathy.

The happiest day–the happiest hour

Mine eyes shall see–have ever seen,
The brightest glance of pride and power,
I feel–have been:

"The brightest glance of pride and power" - but now we begin to see the vanity at the core. Bright glances, ah, those too must come from the outside - glances of approval, we must assume. Or is the "glance of pride and power" really his own? I can't figure this man out! Whichever it is, it's revealing that this is the thing that made him happiest - a happiness he is certain will never come again.

Or does he not deserve to be happy?

But were that hope of pride and power

Now offer'd with the pain
Even then I felt–that brightest hour
I would not live again:

Now is he really telling us here that, given the chance to relive it,  he would turn away the brightest moment of his life? Is this sour grapes - who needs this shit, anyway? - or is he so far into his own self-pity that he actively chooses pain over pleasure?  I'd murder the guy, if he weren't already dead.

But he's not saying that at all.  He is saying "the HOPE of pride and power" - and a hope isn't the same thing at all, it's just a desire, unfulfilled. Something that was never real to begin with. A fantasy. 

And then he tells us - if I'm digging anything real out of this at all - he tells us he wouldn't want to experience that hope again because he KNOWS it would be followed by some awful, shot-sparrow, plummeting despair. This is some sort of definition of soul-destroying melancholia.

For on its wing was dark alloy,
And, as it flutter'd–fell
An essence–powerful to destroy
A soul that knew it well.

I can't help but feel, as this densely-written, enigmatic thing comes to a screeching close, that it's really about the old Biblical warning, "Pride goeth before a fall". Certainly the image of the falling bird (or bat? Ewwwww!) seems to imply that all his lusting and yearning for power and approval will eventually bring about his downfall. I don't quite get the "alloy", which is a sort of metallic reference that does not fit with shot sparrows or ravens or whatever-it-is (though it is a dandy rhyme with "destroy"). Alloy seems to indicate two elements fusing together. Pride and power? Poe and status, perhaps literary status? Is this alloy the "essence" which is so powerful (oops, that's ironic - power IS the problem) to destroy? It's unclear if the alloy is an external element this time, or something inextricably bound up with his own heart. Which would mean that the poet has, in contemporary terms, sold out. 

But the kicker is that last line. "A soul that knew it well" - knew what, the shallowness of power trips and pride, of drawing-room debate over which poet has scored the most literary Brownie points (or pale waxen virgins gently expiring on velvet divans)? Has he been playing worldly games all along, and being utterly seduced by them? Is he afraid to re-enter the Eden of his youth, because he knows damned well he'll just be thrown out of there again?

Oh, not another original sin poem! Anything but that!

POST-BLOG NOTE. I was amazed but not surprised, in trying to find tasty images of Poe, that I kept coming up with pictures of John Astin, the actor who portrayed Gomez Addams in The Addams Family. It seems he has played Poe on the Broadway stage, and my goodness, they wouldn't need to put much makeup on him! He's a dead ringer for the man (except too jolly by half).  I think Astin must be, oh, God in heaven, 80 years old by now if he's still around, and Poe croaked (so to speak) at 40, so it must have been a long time ago.  I will do more research on this fascinating topic once I've had some sleep.
Sleeeeeeeeeeep. . . . . . . .)

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