Go ask Milky

One spell makes you larger, and one spell makes you small. Go ask Milky, the Magic Clown.

A few years ago when I first revived my strange relationship with the dreaded clown of my childhood, I could find almost no images, nothing about him at all except on Ed Golick's fantastic Detroit kids' TV site. But since then, there has been a renaissance. This one even features the hand-puppet Creamy the Rabbit, for some reason looking at a drawing of a pig.

I mean, I just keep finding new stuff! Not really new, of course, because it looks pretty brown to me. But this ad, curiously, is from Texas, which is nowhere near Detroit. Wonder what happened there. 

Unless TExas was just one of those phone curiosities of the times, phone numbers beginning with letters that maybe indicated the region, i. e. ELgin 2-8994 (a number burned into my neurons which will be buried after my last gasp. Hopefully not before.)

It's always a thrill to discover a new Milkster photo. This one reminded me of the call letters WJBK, and the size of the camera reveals a lot about the technology of the late '50s - early '60s.

This must be some sort of game. I do remember, though vaguely, lots of games on these Detroit kids' shows. Poopdeck Paul had a limbo contest, and Captain Jolly was giving away something called OJ Squeeters (plastic things you stuck into an orange and sucked) for winning something-or-other. If you won something on Milky's show, the spectral figure with the Pagliaccio costume would allow you to stick your hand in a jar of pennies. Room temperature, I hope.

This is fan art, though I am unaware of the provenance of it. Believe it or not, there is lots more of this, but I won't post it. An artist named Mike Kelly has done a series of four (at least) portraits of His Milkness, at least one including the immortal Creamy. This is serious art however, not amateur stuff (though I would describe it as primitive, painted on pieces of plywood, particle board, etc.) But the point is, there has been a Milky art boom, or at least boomlet, just in the past few years. Awful repressed memories are emerging from the brains of people who were traumatized back in 1963. To cope with this, they're making art and creating Pinterest and Facebook pages.

I will admit, I fell into it myself. I started noodling around, and hey, if Mike Kelly can stencil a perfectly round likeness of Milky onto a scrap piece of wood, can't I use photoshop here and there? Andy Warhol used adulterated photos all the time, didn't he? It's my only real hope for making art of any kind.

"You can have worry-free. . . home de-li-ver-y. . . "

Post-blog ruminations. Call these philosophical ramblings, made late at night when I usually blog. I did find one more mysterious picture of His Milks with a boy scout (and when Milky isn't doing lame magic tricks with "crippled children" like Little Nancy, above, who by the way never gets to sit down but just spends the whole three-hour fundraising program standing, he's always shown with a boy scout), but I have no idea what he's doing. Strange are the ways of Milky. Is that a sandwich he's giving him, on dark rye maybe, or a huge square Oreo with the filling squishing out, or a book, or just some sort of lame magic prop from his lame magic prop storage room? Sorry, Nancy, I didn't mean "LAME lame". More like "lame-o".

Never trust a clown with a social disease

His Satanic Majesty, the Milkster, is back. All it took is one mis-reference in my last post (i. e. the title of a Harold Lloyd movie, The Milky Way) to trip off the awful synapses, releasing the nightmare miasma of my Milky memories.

Though Milky never actually inspired a suicide cult, he could have. You could just as easily put cyanide in Twin Pines milk, couldn't you? Actually, it might even be more pleasant to take. And there's something else about Twin Pines. . . 

IT'S MAGIC.

No one has figured out yet just HOW secretions from a cow's udder could have this sort of paranormal power.  No one has figured out yet, either, why anyone would have kept a festering old milk carton from 1962 which obviously has mold growing on the top. 

I have no idea what this is or how it got here. It just appeared like boils from a plague. It could be a very, very stained old tshirt, but why leave us hanging with such a motto? "Milky" Says - WHAT?? Maybe you turned the shirt over and it said "blow me".

I always suspected Milky had superior mathematical skills, and now I know it. Just look at this fraction here, it's unbelievable, isn't it? Never mind that it looks like his mother made that suit out of an old bedsheet. He was on a different system from all the rest of us.The system of clowns whose  brains had been eaten away by social diseases contracted during their low-budget Shrine Circus days. The system of hot dirty canvas and heaving sawdust and straining ropes. The stench of animal dung and the screams of little children.

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Milky-abilia: the archaeological dig

Everybody knew that Milky the Clown was in the dairy business. I suppose it could have been worse, but what do we really know about these Twin Pines guys (posing here with His Milks himself)? The girl is sweet enough, and her pleated skirt reads, "Mary Lou". Pierre (with a giant TP on his turtleneck, presumably for Twin Pines) is wielding what looks like an enormous loaf of French bread (but at least he's not wearing a beret). The friendly milkman is just that - the friendly milkman, the same kind of milkman I knew as a child with his glass bottles clinking away. Except that when I was a kid, the milk was delivered by horse and wagon.

Amazingly, these little hand-held games can still be had on eBay. It's sort of like a maze where you have to get little balls in the holes. They were given out as prizes on Milky's Party Time, in which they had a feature called Stars of the Future (baton-twirling, juggling, etc.) This was as forerunner of America's Got Talent.

Closeup view.

I don't know why this is posed on snakeskin. Looks a little ominous to me. I should look up the price on eBay.

Milky on a (milk) glass. Looks plastic, but they didn't really have plastic glasses back then. Cheers!

Milky's Fan Club official button. I never was a member, not much of a joiner.

Yes, you're seeing this right. It's a Milky the Clown ashtray. The little beggars had already seen Fred and Wilma Flintstone sucking on Winstons, so what harm could it do?

Then again, maybe it's a hoax, like my Scully and Mulder fridge magnet in the shape of a flower.


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