Lightning Rod Gets The Zot

The Poet's Eye ^ | Lightning Rod

[Lrod]

A character like Christine O'Donnell presents a unique problem for a humorist. Few elaborations are called for since the caricature is self-embodied. All that is needed is a dead-pan Jack Benny look. You know, the one where he just stares blankly at the audience without saying a word and eventually someone titters and before you know it the whole place is in hysterics? Her very existence as a major party candidate for US Senate is the kind of comedy which arrives ready-written and would only be spoiled by embellishment. I mean, what can you add to rabidantimasturbationtarianism, rats with fully-functioning human brains and her famous Witches of Eastwick campaign ad that looks like it was produced by Tim Burton? I had fully intended to leave Ms. O'Donnell to the other comedians and the pundits who were wearing her out on cable TV. But then came the most recent revelation that she has claimed that her father was Bozo the Clown. Here I had to break my silence, not in the name of humor, but in the cause of veracity. This is a subject I happen to know something about.

Long ago, for one magic season, I was related by marriage to Bozo the Clown. I'm not making this up. My father was a semi-notorious lothario in the television and advertising business. Sometime after he turned 50, he married the 17 year-old daughter of one of his professional colleagues, Larry Harmon, the guy who owned the franchise to Bozo, the Most Famous Clown in the World. He was Bozo Primero, not one of the many FauxZos who were franchised in every major media market. I was much closer to the power center of the Bozo world than Ms. O'Donnell ever dreamed of being. It gave me an intimate glimpse into the backstage life of clowns. I knew little of the inside workings of the clown business in those days. Like a naive child, I had assumed that, you know, Bozo was Bozo. It never occurred to me that there was a school, like a Bozo boot-camp, where imposters went to learn how to walk like a Bozo and talk like a Bozo and draw the red rictus of a smile on their faces with greasepaint. It was like learning a dirty family secret and it was a big disappointment. When you go to see Bozo, you want it to really be Bozo, not some guy dressed up in a Bozo costume.

I hadn't thought about my brief inclusion in greasepaint royalty for years until Ms. O'D surfaced with her claims of actually being a blood relative of Bozo the Clown. The marriage between my father and Princess Bozo, which was chronologically challenged to begin with, barely outlasted the honeymoon. They had about as much in common as Christine would have in common with the 99 other US Senators. Suddenly the whole subject bubbled from my subconscious and made me wonder about franchises and politicians and the authenticity of clowns.

Since John Quincy Adams carried forth his father's political legacy, American politicians have campaigned on the richness of their family's past public service. Roosevelt and Kennedy and Bush all represent minor dynasties and it is entirely in keeping with this tradition for Ms. O'D to claim descent from Bozo. Clowning is as present in the current of American politics as populism, liberalism or conservatism. But in light of Ms. O'D's penchant for resume enhancement, she fibbed about her college career and has downplayed her wiccan studies, her claims to clownly ancestry are also suspect. While she seems like a natural and can certainly get a laugh and works well in the side-shows, one has to wonder if she is really ready for the Big Top, the center ring.

The US Senate is the Big League of Buffoonery. Even pros like Colbert have trouble hanging there. It's a tough room. Notice that Al Franken, even with all his years of practical comic experience, has been keeping mum in deference to the mime-masters of the Senate. These clowns can juggle, ride unicycles, do pratfalls and get shot from cannons, all with the perfect dead-pan of their painted-on media faces. They are consummate clowns adept with all the tricks, the seltzer bottle, the pie-in-the-face, the filibuster. I don't want to get all Stephen King on you but these aren't nice clowns. Ms. O'D should think twice before she alienates her witch constituency, she may need some strong juju to avoid the dunking stool. They'll make her the senator-punk-clown. Every troupe of clowns has one, the smallest clown, bottom of the pecking order, the one who all the other clowns slap and when there is no smaller clown for her to slap, she turns to the audience with her out-turned palms and pitiful Emmett Kelly frown and says, "I am you."

Two of the greatest Senatorial Clowns, Lloyd Bentson and Dan Quayle, in their famous vice-presidential debate in 1988 demonstrated the type of cut-throat comedy these jokers are capable of. When Quayle set the joke up by comparing his inexperience to the inexperience of Jack Kennedy, Bentson spiked it with this punch-line, "Senator," he said, "I served with Jack Kennedy. I knew Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you are no Jack Kennedy."

The Poet's Eye would like to say to Christine O'Donnell in this same spirit, "Ms. O'Donnell, you say your father is Bozo. Well, I knew Bozo. Bozo was briefly my step-grand-father-in-law. Christine, your father was no Bozo."

Yes I’m stuck in the middle with you, and I’m wondering what it is I should do. It’s so hard to keep this smile from my face. Losing control yeah I'm all over the place.

Clowns to the left of me! Jokers to the right! Here I am stuck in the middle with you. ---Joe Egan and Gerry Rafferty

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[Darksheare]

Something akin to the bizarre happenings that occur in my immediate vicinity?
[Lights flickering, radios going weirdo on people, cell phone reception dropping out in previously solid signal areas?]

[ThomasThomas]

The first year I was in Fort Worth it snowed. There was only I few inches so I thought no big deal. I learned about snow in the SoCal Mountains. When I saw the traffic on the freeway, before I got on the freeway luckily I went home. Only about 1/3 of the car were going the right direction. It turn out to be the coldest winter in about 100 years. Forth Worth - Dallas area doesn’t have much snow removal type equipment.

[Anoreth]

Jake will help. He is a good cleaner. Or so he informed me the day I cleaned the kitchen.

[sionnsar]

More snow coming. Also 50mph wind again.

According to animated radar nothing is headed your way right now, though we're about to get more down here. A little came down overnight, but no accumulations.

[Darksheare]

He stopped, startled by what his eyes beheld.
There in the half-light he spied the outlines of a door, but it was not a door.
Etched into the rock face was an engravure or a chiseling of immense proportions whose shape and dimensions hinted at an unwholesome and revolting terror half remembered in the lowliest of memories of mankind passed down.
It had a most peculiar angularity and wretched non-symmetry that was both eye catching and repulsive at one and the same time.

[sionnsar]

Everyone is freaking out over the snow. Boring.

Don't sneer at it. PNW climate conditions can make snow a lot more treacherous here than it is elsewhere.

I've seen folks from the midwest laugh at the locals' reaction to snow, only to learn the hard truth for themselves. The Christmas Eve snowfall two years ago was so slick I could not even stand on the road below the house without holding on to something.

The first car you see sliding down a hill, completely out of control, is kind of funny in a way. The tenth, not at all.

[Tax-chick]

No, not as weird as that.

[Darksheare]

Drats, I was hoping I wasn’t the only one who could do that.

[Tax-chick]

That makes me think of Anoreth’s tagline.

(Note, we’ve never had a basement.)

[sionnsar]

Crud. Fired up the ancient laptop. Only an 18G drive, with 700M free space. Nowhere near enough for my work files. I’m still shut down.

[Darksheare]

I was writing a story short based off of H.P.Lovecraft called “The Gate of the Gods.”
I stupidly wrote it out on paper, then promptly lost said paper.
*guh*

I have a basement, and her tagline fits what is down there.
We have a slime mold that goes from orange to white as it moves around.
Hand dug basement that was hand concreted, still showing the original stone walls, and outlines in the floor.
I’m half expecting to dig in the basement and find a giant elbow and end up having to pour five carboys of sulphuric acid in on it.

[sionnsar]

Snowing again. And it’s sticking.

[Tax-chick]

Do you know why we always say snow is “sticking,” instead of “not melting”?

[sionnsar]

Ummm... no.

[Monkey Face]

Today’s trivia question on the early morning news was: Why didn’t the Pilgrims use forks on the first Thanksgiving?

Anybody?

[ColdOne]

Forks not invented yet?

[Dead Corpse]

A meat fork was a serving utensil, but most folks weren’t using the smaller version to eat with until well into the 1700’s.

At most they might have had a spoon and/or a knife. The rest they ate with their fingers.

/blacksmith history lesson

[Monkey Face]

Forks had not been invented, as near as historians know. Finger food is not a 20th Century invention, since “way back when,” only knives and rude spoons (paddles) were used in cooking and eating.

The diners had large bibs to keep their clothes “clean.”

There is also a religious dispute about forks. Some believed that forks symbolized the devil (horns), and therefore, would invite the devil into the home.

You guys are smart!!!

[Anoreth]

It’s snowing now...

[Tax-chick]

Some believed that forks symbolized the devil (horns), and therefore, would invite the devil into the home.

Were those the same people who believed taking baths was Satanic? (I think Tom's a follower of the anti-forks, anti-bathing sect ...)

68 and sunny here - I ran a mile and a half.