Category Archives: Tech
GI JOE Themed Party (~378 Total faces pied)
A client recently had me come for a 6 y/o boy’s GI Joe themed birthday party.
I went with the basic black topped with Grampa Del’s garrison cap, accented with a camouflaged belt from a long gone bathrobe. For extra fancy, I added the spats that came from Puck F.
On the way, I noticed someone had pranked a car in the OHS parking lot. I left them my card in case they wanted to get even.
Afterwards, I pied a bonus face back home. AJ had been visiting and took a large pie to the face.
The videos tell about the Magic Kombucha grenade fail.
Folkshine 2
Got a call one morning from author-educator Steve Eggleston. He had dreamed that he was doing another interview with me and found my number in the nightstand drawer. He called so he could make the dream come real. Technology has advanced enough in two years that he figured he could get the interview sorted in a day instead of several weeks.
He’d iphone it.
So I arranged to meet him after a mercy pieing… went to a party w/o a contract and essentially busked. Total noble cause tho: peace activist.
We met at the parking lot of the Olympian. I wore my Elvis shades. He had six questions typed on the iphone. I chose three and he took some snaps and a little video.
- Can a clown be political?
- When will we see a wikipedia entry for Jusby?
- Is there anyone you would discourage from clowning?
Makin’ Deals and Pieing Faces
An old college friend was in town recently and agreed to a pie in the face.
No wait, a fcbking friend who happened to go to the same college… and had a show on KAOS around the same time as me… and whose song I’d put on Dance O’ Dance… a friend of a friend really… in town for the other friend’s wedding… to which I wasn’t invited. Oh, dear, this is embarrassing. The friend getting married also had a show on KAOS and put me in her infamous movie (“Love is Stupid”)… but I’d dated several of her friends… and they might have been invited to the wedding, and since everybody else lives in different cities… oh, whatever, you just can’t invite everybody to your wedding when space is limited. I forgive you, Jenny Jenkins.
But we were talking about Caroline “Puck” Deutermann who agreed to the pie… casually, on facebook.
I take it seriously and send instructions to meet at the corner of Olympia and Washington at noon.
I splash on make-up and Oly-alt-hippy-organic-farmer costume (tie dye & overalls) and rush down there with Orion as assistant & photographer in tow.
Then I find myself waiting on the corner…. Puck didn’t take it seriously, and I forgot to bring her phone number. It turns out that she’s around the corner at Old School or Dumpster Values or drinkin’ Artesian Well Water or sumptin. So I decide to walk over to Whittle (the woodshop for imaginations of all sizes) and follow-up on my inquiry about custom folding fans.
Kyle decides that he can build one completely out of wood (replacing the metal pin with a wood dowel). Once we create a production system, we can make as many as I need and bring down the cost per unit. I let him borrow one of my Indonesian fighting fans as a model, give him $20 for some parts and labor, and he says he’d make the wooden frame if I get the fabric. Check back in three weeks.
We seal the deal with a handshake.
We have time to swing by the library and catch Jeff Evans doing his Aquafir Man routine for Take a Splash Read during the Imagination Celebration.
Then I head home and get Puck’s number from her fcbk info page. She’s running late for the wedding now, so we can only visit long enough for me to deliver the pie. Then she needs new stockings. We meet in front of the Tea Lady’s new location near my house.
On the 30th of June (11 days later), we’re called out of town on a family emergency. I’m back on the 11th (22 days later). I haven’t heard from Kyle, but I also haven’t found the fabric I want. By the 18th, I’ve obtained several yards of silk from Honey the Clown’s stash AND inspired Jerome at Rusty Cock Ridge to whip up a prototype in his shop. Still no call from Kyle.
Yesterday, I drove downtown to find out how it was progressing.
Whittle is no longer in the storefront on Capital Blvd!
The website doesn’t show a physical address anymore, and no one answered the phone.
Hey, no fair.
Well, that’s one less birthday party option competing for parents.
[edit. update. kyle replied via email: “Things hapened quickly when we got the offer for the new space. This doesn’t affect your fans, except tha it will be a couple more weeks for me to get completeply set up. If that’s a problem, let me know. I’ll call you first thing next week.” YAY, new space! Fans in a few weeks!]
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.)
Halloween House 09
I brought Honey along to help guide tours!
Now where’s my head?! Where’s the Devilman?!
I lost my stinking head in the maze! and the Devilman got away.
But I found someone’s Driver’s License. I guess I better get it back to them.
Converted ALL the halloween mix tracks to 128kps for smoother playback, to avoid annoying skipping/ artifacts/ dead air from 200+kps & stinking VBR. I will also avoid embarassment at future b-day parties when the music won’t play! way to troubleshoot, Jusby! [It’s still a mono system tho *ahem*]
86 Tracks totalled 4.2 hours… which continued even through the power failures. As did the Green Laser!
However, it did require additional AAA batteries from Mike.
The tracks included: Arrington de Dionyso, Angelo Badlamenti, Eliot Smith, Baby Gramps, Bo Bell, Depeche Mode, Diamanda Galas, Dub Narcotic Sound System, Echo & the Bunnymen, Frank Zappa, Gabrielle Roth, Jugala Orchastra of Sunda, the Residents, and Gyoto Monks among many others.
Here’s a comment I got on Olyblog:
Thanks a ton
My young daughter (Wren) really appreciated your guided tour of the haunted house. She knew from last year that you led the less-horrifying tours. She’s a spunky kid in real life, but doesn’t like the buckets-o-gore of this type of show. Her best friends insist they absolutely looooove it, and torment her if she doesn’t go with them on the tour. So she has to go, even though she really doesn’t like it.This year she sought you out discreetly (for a 10 year old) and attached herself to one of your tours. The un-clueful friends followed along behind her. They didn’t seem to notice EVEN THE TINIEST BIT that they’d missed the full-on horror treatment this year. Afterwards, as the girls resumed trick-or-treating in the neighborhood, Wren dropped back from their pack to rave about what a big favor you were doing, how your abbreviated tour let her save face with her ghoul-tolerant friends for the first time, how smoothly you signaled the performers to let them know to hold back on the monstrousness… She went on for half a block, until her girlfriends interrupted us to tell me how SCARY the CLOWN GUIDE was.
Apparently you were terrifying. Congratulations. What a performance.
Flaming Pies, Mach II
I spent the afternoon with Luke shopping for the new flaming pie hardware. We went to Home Depot for an hour. Then we stopped at Ace Hardware for the white gas (aka Coleman fuel). We walked to the dollar store and got cutting boards, red oven mitts, a red checkered tablecloth, and plums (for Orion). Then we had to go back into Ace Hardware for more screws and washers to attach the boards and mitts where scrap lumber had been.
Luke handled all the drilling and screwing from that point. They were done in time for me to rush down to the Midnight Sun and talk with Elizabeth Lord about the possibility of flaming pies in her upcoming Vaudeville show.
What was expected was “an audition”.
Two groups were before my conversation. A couple did a drag Mary Poppins / Chimney Sweep lipsynch and dance. I wasn’t familiar with the version, but it took aim, in part, at Disney. Then the woman had another partner do a Flamenco duet.
I told Elizabeth frankly that my new flaming pie act had never been tried, but I proposed a Clown-lesque act of approximately 5 minutes. If I felt I could not safely perform flaming pies indoors I was willing to work outside, perhaps during intermission. I was sure to light them up later that evening. We would be in touch.
Here they are soaking in white gas. Neighbor Aaron advised, after the fact, mixing the white gas with paraffin lamp fuel, to lower the flash point and mellow it out overall.
A fully soaked pie. Aaron also demonstrated how it is wise to shake off the excess fuel… before lighting it.
They lit up good!
So I did a little dance.
Then I consented to an interview with David Raffin.
Here’s the video
http://blissfulremembrances.com/br/videofolder/ClownFire.mov
Happy Birthday, Cousin Kim!
Born August 28, 1952 in St. Louis, MO
Now residing in Los Angeles, CA
Visit her at http://kimabeles.com
