Category Archives: Animals
Procession of the Species Celebration
Thanks, Berd!
Thanks, Kirsten
[blip.tv ?posts_id=3598967&dest=24295]
Definite Tiger Synchronicity Going on for the Year of the Tiger
Jusby’s Best of 2009
January – Honey the Clown is born! She attends (approximately) SEVENTEEN events with me in 2009!
February – Trish and I take “The Art of the Tease” class with Miss Indigo Blue and I start reconnecting with David Raffin upon reading his short story “Twilight of the Clowns”. He creates (approximately) SEVENTEEN works of art featuring me in 2009.
March – I continued classes in anthroposophical based clowning with Dawn of the Simple Fool school (of top secret esoteric clowning). Orion turned 5 with a Glow Golf party.
April – An old friend gets stuck on her way home to Alaska and gets the first mini-pie-in-the-face.
I turn 40 and eat fried crickets. I break the 100 pie mark. Honey and I clown at Procession of the Species.
May – Jusby the Engineer is born! Red Nose Brigade parade season starts. I get called into the ring to be an assistant at Circus Gatti! I get interviewed for Folkshine. Jusby the Agent is born.
June – The Timberland Regional Library now has 2 years of the clown magazine “the New Calliope” thanks to me (and the RNB). I order a whipped cream dispenser from e-bay so I can offer sugar free non-dairy organic pies in the face. Honey and I march in the Pride parade. Mish and I do a party in McCleary.
(c) Steve Bloom, the Olympian
July – Pied Monica Drake, author of Clown Girl in Portland… and her husband, and two of their author friends! I bought a red unicycle. I graduated from the Simple Fool school. We see orca whales in the San Juans. Jusby the Referee is born and I break the 200 pie mark!
(c) Greg Wahl-Stephens
August – I pie zombies! I construct the first two models of the flaming pie. The zombies survive.
August – I get a job at a school I used to work at. (I go into the interview with two letters of recommendation from members of the interview committee). They nominate me to lipsynch to Aretha Franklin’s “Respect” at the first assembly. I debut the unicycle. I pie a woman I haven’t seen in 25 years… and her 16 year old daughter. I buy a pair of size 20 shoes for $5.
October -I appear (4 times) in a huge photo collage at Fall Arts Walk in the window of Hot Toddy. Orion and I go to Portland for the Juggling Festival and I practice my unicycle for hours. The alley attends the Northwest Festival of Clowns. I take home three medals and $20 for my shoes (sold to a Belgian clown). I escort people through the Tumwater Halloween House three nights in a row.
November – I meet and pie (of course) Dingo Dizmal and his girlfriend, Olive Rootbeer. I also meet (again) Pamela “Fancie” Woods and her poodle, Olive.
December – I debut my new theme song and the flaming pie at a birthday in Portland. I pie David Raffin’s mother in Lacey. (The pie is not flaming.)
Circus themed birthday
I did my first double pieing the other night.
It was at the birthday of a twin, a gemini, but I didn’t pie her and her twin brother. I pied two girls who are dating, and they are both named Erin.
Mauren and her twin brother turned 33 (another symmetrical synchronicity!), and she decided to announce her party on #fcbk. Since she didn’t have a computer with internet at her house, creating the invitation fell to me. Since she had decided on a Circus theme I felt morally obligated to make the scene.
I convinced Heather “Honey” Duke to accompany me and assist with principal photography. heh.
Honey applies the bindi jewel to Maureen’s 3rd eye.
The birthday girl now sees all, and tells nothing. We gotta get her a red nose and clown character though, so she can start participating in the RNB alley events.
“Blaireau” did a great set with a street organ. He’s an actual French “organ grinder”.
This fellow wanted eyes like Siouxsie Sue. Sarah got a white dragon across the nose. How could I have forgotten to take a picture of the Temple kid who got a blue dragon?!
Glen had some great “chicken scratches” from prison.
The King of Olympia (in yellow pants) tried to pie me at one point, but I fended him off with my superior Clown Fu.
The two Erins. My first time doing a double shot.
Bil Fleming finally got his pie… a year in the making.
Before it got dark I got to show off my fan flipping to a beautifully costumed Dutch-Indo family. Who, of course, I didn’t get any pictures of… nor the other clowns! nor the half dozen weiner dogs in cute costumes! Oh, I was preoccupied. With pie-ing! Here’s ANOTHER double shot! Two men, one young and one not.
Tim “Big Mouth” the Ringmaster waited until sunset until he felt ready. Then the Little Prince seemed to want to get it too.
My second double shot EVER. Appropriate for the birthday party of a Gemini Twin.
Then the King set up a video projector and we watched UHF and Shakes the Clown projected on the side of Maureen’s house. Until the cops came.
Here was the epic fail of the night. After a flurry of twittering about inaugurating the new Organic pie-in-the-faces with a red 1/2 pint whipped cream dispenser delivered fast and cheap from e-bay…. it didn’t work.
The busted rubber gasket in my brand new whipped cream dispenser from e-bay. I wasted the first two NO2 cartridges before I realized it wasn’t keeping a seal. Sprayed Horizon Organic Heavy Cream and Agave syrup all over the dining room and Trish’s homework! The seller said “I don’t have spare parts. Call the company!”
The company website lists a spare gasket for $3, but they’re asking for $7 in shipping and handling. That would bring the total up where it would’ve been if I had bought the thing from Fred Meyer or the mall, but they didn’t have RED.
I’m checking locally with Espresso Parts to see if their gaskets are compatible. And I’m geeked to collaborate with them on a Barista Clown idea.
Absconded with Chuck’s hat at the end of the night. I’m keeping it hostage until my missing lucky spatula is found.
More McLane pics pt. 2
Thanks to Teacher Hollie for these. Again, this was a Deluxe Visit Donation to the McLane Elementary Community to honor their 125th birthday (as an institution, not necessarily at that address or in that physical building!).
Crashing into the assembly at the bitter end to help sing Happy Birthday.
Balancing “Snowball” the white pie-rat on the medium stick
One balloon dog for 50+ kids to share! They never guessed I would talk about ancient animal sacrifice!
Here’s one more (from Jen Flo of the PTSO).
That’s Old Man McLane who started this whole deal!
[Still looking for another batch of pics from Teacher Julie…]
Meeting Colors the Clown
[edit 2012: http://www.colorstheclownandco.com/ is up and running. I found out because after the comment below I thought I should check again. I hope Colors can come to your party, Haley!]
After we saw Mike the Mime perform we decided to go back through the Chelsea Summer fest toward the car. We discovered that we’d just missed the stage show of Colors the Clown, but I stopped her for a photo op and gave her my card. She didn’t have any of hers left, but she said that she was ‘in the book’. I told her that I wanted to get together and share clown info as I put together my business plan.
Here’s her pig. She’s got a traveling petting zoo.
Sadly, I had to google her because ‘in the book’ didn’t mean the Chelsea Yellow Pages. It meant the Ann Arbor Yellow Pages. She wasn’t quick enough to grab the domain colorstheclown.com that went to a clown in New Jersey. She got the rather wonky (but included with tuition at Washtenaw Community College) address of http://stu.wccnet.org/~dbraun/hw/index.html at least that’s what google shows as #1 hit.
However, if you swim upstream against those forward slashes you can find a “Donna Braun Final Project” that shows improvement in some areas, but the e-mail link is to colortheclown@hotmial.com instead of colorstheclown@hotmail.com which the original had… and bounced back anyway!
Long story short: it seemed like she’d be the closest clown to visit, only 20 miles from Grumps’, but I never heard back from her. And she seemed like such a professional: 250 shows a year with 85% repeat business.
Library Tricksters
I love the library. There was a time when I wouldn’t set foot in one, but I love the library too much to stay away.
I’ve been bringing home trickster tales, world mythology, and relying heavily on the books librarians have displayed on top of the shelves. We can do a library run in five minutes and leave with 20 items. That’s important if we’re going to read 20 minutes before bedtime and not repeat ourselves over and over and over.
Here’s Confrere Lapin, the Cajun Brer Rabbit trickster. “Lapin Plays Possum” adapted by Sharon Arms Doucet.
Of particular interest to me is this book of Indonesian Fables of Feats and Fortunes. On the cover you see the trickster mouse deer convincing an alligator to roll over.
Edit: I’ve now got a Good Reads shelf for even more Trickster Tales> http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/1314613-justin?shelf=trickster-tales
Best of 2006
Tante Tia came to visit us.
Trish & Orion flew on an airplane to visit friends and family in Memphis. DeeDee came to visit us. She and Trish took a car trip along the coast.
GRUB gave us 3 raised garden beds and we grew herbs and vegetables. In the back yard, Justin cleared ivy and blackberries to create a Secret Garden with a tunnel. Our fruit trees produced plums, pears, and apples. We made several gallons of applesauce and ate it at every meal.
Orion had his birthday party at our house. We removed our dingy grey living room carpet and had wood laminate floors installed. In the process we added two yellow accent walls.
Justin got his business license and began clowning professionally. He continued work on Red Nose Brigade projects and was elected Historian/ Pencil Pusher. Orion participated in his first parades and the by-laws now include accommodations for a Junior Joey category member.
Orion’s progressed from tricycle to scooter to bicycle with training wheels. He also took swimming lessons. Orion’s vocabulary has increased considerably and includes numerous Latin phrases such as “Lumos Maximus!” and “Wingardium Leviosa”. We have continued to use sign language as well.
Trish spent part of summer working at Sol Duc hot springs in the Olympic National Forest. She also coordinated the massage practitioners who volunteered at the cancer research fund raiser Relay for Life. Trish has had 7 – 10 clients in her private practice most every week. Her office got painted with lime-based, hand-made paint.
Orion had a Dedication ceremony at the Olympia Unitarian Universalist church and was welcomed into the congregation. We welcomed a new member to our family, “Peach Tortatilla”, a peach-faced lovebird.
Justin acted in two commercials and an MTV show. He helped produce 12 more episodes of Dance O’ Dance and eventually decided to officially return as producer for the 2007 that will mark ten years on the air.
Many of our digital pictures finally got printed and framed or put in albums. Justin worked on a number of websites and appeared as a guest on his first podcast. “Uncle Luke” cobbled together several computers for us from parts he gleaned from the Evergreen dumpsters. The last incarnation included two operating systems: Windows 98 & Ubuntu (a Linux kernel). The day after we set it up Oma Barbara arrived with an early Christmas present: a new computer system running Windows XP media center 05!
Mimi Terry gave us a new washing machine with a Super Large capacity basket. We especially appreciated it because Orion made the transition from diapers to Big Boy Underwear. Yes, our biggest and bestest success of 2006 was Toilet Training!
