Obviously, my week-long fugue here reveals a subconscious resistance to the topic I have to address now, but only because I have so much love invested in the crucial second part of the Clown Ministry Video. The payoff. The kickback. The point at which the narrative of the clown mission reaches its inciting incident. The moment when pious but directionless clowns reach tha crossroads and begin tha journey.

They choose “Nursing Home” and it’s oh so clearly the correct decision, at least of the three choices they could see with the middle whiteface sprite blocking all other options.

The only clown who ever seems to choose the third from the bottom is Ronald McDonald.

(Occasionally Ron’ll find himself on the losing end of an argument with a disgruntled subchapter vee-pee dressed in a cow outfit who, when curtly reminded by McDonald that hamburgers do, in fact, grow on trees, will find his red nose meeting the business end of a tofu cream pie.)
The video’s guru lists about 73 reasons why nursing homes make the best location for clowns to make their congregative cotillion society debut, but only three of them don’t involve the sad-but-true observation that elderly people need someone to haul their ashes. Those non-bootylicious reason are, and here I add my own words:
1. They have cataracts and their eyes look at clown make-up and see real Jell-O on tonight’s menu instead of Desserta imitation gelatin.
2. They’re dehydrated and 400cc of seltzer water helps get the daily pill regiment down (or up) easy.
3. They are routinely confusing the Bible with the Shrine Circus, and need to be reminded that not all parables are accompanied by Sousa. Sometimes they sound like Ligeti. Or women’s roller derby.
Oh, I guess there is actually a fourth reason. Clowns, as I said before, remind everyone that there’s always something worse than being what you are. You could be a clown. Though most clowns are fully capable of touching themselves without outside altruism.

(In saying that, I’m obliged to acknowledge the video guide’s dissenting opinion on clown onanism .)
Old people’s energy levels ain’t what she used to be, but they still find a way to mysteriously usurp outside energy, and, according to the guide, clowns’ levels are notoriously easy to access . Be sure to tote Flava Flav in your clown posse.

Speaking of clown posses, this segment of the video comes with probably the single most useful piece of wisdom: Do not stand in a large cluster of clowns.
Witness what effect such a spectacle can have on the delicate constitutions of the unsuspecting elder.




Just because there’s so much ground to cover, here’s the first part of the nursing home segment in its partial entirety. Take notes if necessary.
Back to touching… Rule number 5 of the remaining 68: Always make a memorable entrance.


Another benefit of plying your goofy, religious trade in nursing homes: you can never tell if your subjects are smiling or dying of horror.

Usually the distinction gets even more cloudy when you invade the personal bubble for more of that essential touching.




Happiness or death, who can say? Administer the last rites anyway.

The best thing about clown liturgy is that it means nothing, like the 2005 revision of the ELCA statement on human sexuality, drafted so that Lutherans could sound it from the hills that they are, in fact, aware of the concept that homosexuals exist. But what more can you expect from a doctrine that results in convoluted streams of almost-consciousness like this.
Or this.
The centrality of the strident paradox in Lutheranism is what I hold primarily responsible for those prodigious moments when I bore anyone foolish enough to listen to me with statements like “well A is true, but then again the opposite of A is also true,” feigning profundity, masking the fact that I don’t know how to string together theorem with proof. Perhaps you’ve seen me on my weekly television show?

Maybe I’m just scatterbrained as a result of my time spent incarcerated in a nursing home. Whenever clowns came mounting each other at my door, I’d always beg them to touch me, but upon hearing my request, they’d always pull away saying “Whoa! Our instruction video told us we weren’t supposed to fulfill any of your requests.” I tried reverse psychology, asking them to not kidnap me and to not brain me over the head with stolen bowling trophies. Sure enough…


The woman in this video is way more lucky. She gets invited to pull the whiteface’s floppy handkerchief phallus…



What’s the surprise in that sock? Healing, Gaye-style.

A clown condom.

I can feel her trembling excitement vicariously.

And, like her, I’d probably peak prematurely too.

Again, because the density of the text is, in this case, too heady to be summarized in pictures and captions, here’s the second part of the nursing home segment. Take aphrodisiacs if necessary.


I couldn’t help but notice that most of the traffic on this blog today came from searches adamantly inquiring “is Evan Lysacek homosexual” or variations on that theme. Maybe we can double those digits by examining the question just a little further.










































