I hate clowns

 (In dishonour of my returning nightmares of Milky the Clown, and because I don't feel like writing anything, here is a pre-summer repeat of a kind-of-favorite/not-too-bad post.)

I hate clowns, I hate clowns,  I truly hate clowns,

They always depress me and drag my soul down.

When somebody puts on such strange things to wear,

The human condition is truly laid bare.

I ask, what's the point of all this tom-foolery?

It triggers in me a deep incredulity.

Now here is a clown who caused me great dread.

In childhood this creep rented space in my head.

His name was Milky, which was awfully scary,

Just clowning and whoring for Twin Pines, the dairy.

Before John Wayne Gacy came ambling along,

There was this guy here. And he was just wrong.

He wore stars and stripes for some unknown reason,

Though flag mutilation's a high form of treason.

Back when I lived near old Detroit town,

I saw a strange act performed by a clown.

When he mounted his friend, to my child's mind, 

of course he

Was riding on Bozo, just playing at horsey.

When I saw this old photo of black-and-white clowns,

I climbed on a bridge and just threw myself down.

There's Milky and Bozo, the two that were lovers,

Jingles, and Whatsis - who cares, they're all mothers.

This clown guy I mentioned, and those of his ilk

Did a lot of hard-selling by sucking down milk.

In Milky the dairy thought they would invest - right?

Then found out that he was a flaming transvestite.

Twin Pines weren't aware that they'd started a fashion.

Soon clowns 'round the world drank their milk with a passion.

And poor Pagliaccio was filled with a rage,

So he drank milk, then  killed his poor wife right on-stage.

With hijinks like this, some dark force was released.

The ringmasters shot themselves: all were deceased.

Clowns threw nasty fits, banged their heads on the wall:

These Komedy Kapers weren't funny at all.

If this gets much weirder, I'm going to be sick.

I've never laughed once when a clown did his trick.

I can't speak for you, but I think this is rude -

I never knew clowns were this nasty and lewd.

Milky is dust now, and Bozo is dead.

Their romance still haunts me and lurks in my head.

I hate clowns, I hate them, I'll never be free,

They never will get one guffaw out of me.

Oh rapture!: New Images of Milky the Clown

It's not every day I find a  new image (new to ME, I mean - these were likely taken 50 years ago) of the source of my childhood nightmares, Milky the Clown. Milky was the surreal symbol of Twin Pines Dairy, sponsor of Milky's Party Time and other lactitious Detroit children's programs.

This one I haven't seen before. Like a nun's habit, Milky's costume covers everything but his face, which is thickly plastered with white greasepaint like something from a movie made in 1917. And his hat. . . his hat isn't like any other clown's hat, unless you look back about 100 years.

Milky wasn't a clown of his times. This was why he was so scary. He seemed like the nightmare reverse negative of an old Betty Boop cartoon, jumping not out of an inkwell but a vat of Twin Pines milk.

Was this magic, or a form of sorcery? Was his baggy monochromatic white costume and dead-white face a deliberate attempt to mimic the ancient itinerant carnival clowns depicted by Leoncavallo in Pagliacci?

Well, maybe. Except for the pompoms.

And this one is no less than Enrico Caruso, the most famous tenor of all time. Wearing Milky's costume, or a close approximation of it.

What's the magic word? . . . Twin Pines! ("But that's two words," I used to protest, provoking offended stares.)

And never mind that Pagliaccio, upon whom Milky based his classic white pointy-hatted costume, murdered both his wife and his romantic rival, leaving a pile of bodies on the stage. The little tykes won't know anything about that, will they?

We hope not.

 

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This is it (so you'd better listen!)

Well, this is it. I promised myself I wouldn't post 29 versions of Vesti la Giubba, so I had to choose one. So many of them have things to recommend them. Bjoerling even had tears streaming down my face from his tender pronunciation of  "Columbina" (the wounded core of the aria) and the tiny, bewildered, hopeless head-shake that went with it. Kudos also to Placido Domingo for staging it "properly", not IN costume but looking at his costume (and himself) in utter contempt.

Most of these don't have a visual, which meant I wasn't as distracted, and most also have shitty sound quality, which is too bad. I try to imagine this one with pristine modern acoustics. More than that, I try to imagine being in the room with him. I've never experienced it, but I have heard the power and beauty of being close to a superb singer is unbelievable.

There are many versions of Lanza singing this, since it's kind of the old nag of opera, and he sounds different in each one. I think "classical" singers scorned him because he "went Hollywood", made a whole lot of highly sentimental films (still worth watching for the singing) and record albums of popular music that sold like mad.

I don't know what I think of him as a person, and he died awfully young, his health destroyed mostly by booze and food. Some of the singers I heard today had better (smoother, more melodious, or even more powerful) vocal equipment, and a few were better actors (Domingo!), but this version has a nearly-crazed quality, a sense he is about to break loose and do something absolutely terrible. Which is what Pagliaccio is all about. He just sings it, letting the music produce the drama. Bravo, bravissimo.

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Laugh, laugh, I thought I'd die

Recitar! Mentre preso dal delirio,                                

non so più quel che dico,                                              

e quel che faccio!                                                        

Eppur è d'uopo, sforzati!

                                                                             

Bah! sei tu forse un uom?                                            

Tu se' Pagliaccio!                                                      

       Vesti la giubba,                 

e la faccia in farina.                     

La gente paga, e rider vuole qua.     

              

E se Arlecchin t'invola Colombina,                            

ridi, Pagliaccio, e ognun applaudirà!

                                                                               

Tramuta in lazzi lo spasmo ed il                                

pianto;                                                                    

in una smorfia il singhiozzo                                        

il dolor, Ah!

Ridi, Pagliaccio,                                                      

sul tuo amore infranto!                                            

Ridi del duol, che t'avvelena il cor!                            

                                                                               

To recite! While taken with delirium,

I no longer know what it is that I say,

or what it is that I am doing!

And yet it is necessary, force yourself! 

Bah! Can't you be a man? 

You are "Pagliaccio"! 

Put on the costume,

and the face in white powder.

The people pay, and laugh when they please. 

And if Harlequin invites away Colombina 

laugh, Pagliaccio, and everyone will

applaud!

Change into laughs the spasms of pain;

into a grimace the tears of pain, Ah!

Laugh, Pagliaccio,

for your love is broken!

Laugh of the pain, that poisons your

heart!

POST-POST. This is a strange one, a discovery that happened late at night. I

NEVER used to stay up so late, so I'm not sure what's happening to me. I get a

little delirious.

Clowns obsess me, and most of them creep me out. His Milks, Milky the Clown, has to be the creepiest, in part because he wears a traditional Pagliaccio white ruffled costume with a pointy hat that reminds me of nothing more than a KKK uniform.

While dredging through old files to see what might be worth resurrecting, I came across a strange thing: the Italian words to Vesti la Giubba (perhaps the

best-known operatic aria, sometimes known erroneously as Laugh, Clown, Laugh) down the left side of the page, with a line-by-line English translation

on the right.

I was struck by the symmetry of it, and the startling nature of the literal

translation. "Recitar!" literally means "recite", or in a broader sense, "tell

it" or "perform it" (a "recital" isn't reciting, after all, but a public

performance). Put it out there, not just the clown show, but - tell them, or

perhaps (I don't know enough Italian) "tell them your story, you cowardly

bastard (referring to himself). I may be way off in all this, of course, in

which case "recitar!" says it all.

I decided to dig up some old footage of Caruso, if it existed, and hit pay dirt

right away, with an eerie clip of him performing Vesti in full Milky the Clown

garb. This footage has a dreamlike quality that I played around with, reversing

the video in places to make a sort of loop. Then I thought of the heartbreaking

performance of Placido Domingo, who stages it the RIGHT way for once.

Instead of coming onstage already wearing his "motley", he picks up the limp rag of costume and looks at it in loathing, nearly tearing it apart at the end before dragging it offstage behind him like chains. While he sings, he looks at himself in the mirror and smears white greasepaint on his face in despair. Though my Italian is limited to three words (amore, Lamborgini and Chef Boy-Ar-Dee), even Ican tell that "vesti la giubba" is in the imperative: "put on the costume, you idiot, it's time to get out there again even if your heart is falling out of your chest". This betrays, heartbreakingly, Pagliaccio's 

self-loathing and despair.

This is a slightly different version of Vesti. It's silent. Well, why not? Why

can't we have a silent aria? Because it's idiotic, no doubt. The music is

everything. So here, I present the Other Side.

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