What's A Bigger Cliche: "I Hate Mimes!" Or "I'm Scared Of Clowns!"

Clowns have never bothered me.

So the clown cliche is worse, because it doesn't make sense. There have only been a few scary clowns. But almost all mimes wear those high-waisted stretch pants.

http://www.lutterworth.com/lp/images/mime.jpg

Mimes are scary. Clowns are not. Mimes are silent = creepy.

*silhouettes on a wall show a security guard getting clobbered on the head by some nefarious person*

SERVO: When Mummenschantz goes bad.

See? Creepy!

Seriously are they mimes or clowns or something else entirely?

In Montreal there was a group called "Clowns without Frontiers." One of them professed to me, already scarred by above incident, that if everybody just smiled a little more, the world would be a better place. I'm not a man driven to violence but....

And: "Mime is money." Shields and Yarnell anyone? They're still going I believe.

x-post

You should have been a Mummenschantz, Ned.

I'll take the money, sure! And nobody would know who I was!

(or maybe they have noh-fear)

... and the problem with that is?

do you think japanese teens roll their eyes and say, "oh my god, Kabuki is, like, sooooo creepy". Maybe its universal.

I made an album in a style I called 'Spooky Kabuki' in Tokyo in 2002. When I took it in to play the A+R woman at my Japanese label, she said 'Momus, you have to be careful using this kabuki music. We Japanese don't like to hear it. We associate it with very old people, and compulsory school trips, and ghost stories, and museums.' (Of course, this is exactly what I like about it. For me, pop music never has enough death in it.)

Naturally I meant Michael Jackson.

A bit like Leo Sayer? (*shudders*)

No, what you described was Michael Jackson; I'm just trying to verify intent.

In the lyrics, Tim declares that he hates clowns as much as he hates mimes, perhaps indicating that mime hatred is older.

Having studied theatre, I have to say a lot of the stuff associated with mimes technically can be pretty impressive as far as movement-based acting goes. (And in many cases studying mime is considered a very good thing to do for all actors... Sort of how football players may study ballet to increase strength and different kinds of coordination.) Certainly this doesn't make "trapped in an invisible box" any more interesting to the audience, but it's worth noting.

Clowns, on the other hand... Bah! It's really too bad that the classical notion of a clown has been replaced what we know as a bunch of chumps with white makeup and big red noses and floppy shoes. The clown (i.e. the character who tries very hard to entertain and fails so the audience laughs with him because they can see that he is genuinely trying and failing) can be quite funny, but it has nothing to do at all with making balloons into the shape of retarded bulbous giraffes.

Related to the classical clown figure, search also the buffoon: the character who is so obviously insane (and often also physically deformed) that he can make fun of your mother to your face and get a laugh instead of a left hook out of you. Now that's entertainment if you ask me.

This explains the failure of The Centuries to really catch on with the kids.

Clowns, however, are freaking sick. Yes, they're avoidable, but they're still just frightening as fuck.

The April 1, 1995 issue of Datamation featured a column of ridiculous and humorous stories that were clearly April Fool's jokes. (Clear, Crypt News guesses if you're not _too_ asleep at the wheel.) In addition to the virus jokes there is a news brief on the League of Information Systems Professionals or LISP, a "group" working to ensure that "Dilbert" is carried in all local newspapers. LISP is also said to be working for "the reinstatement of the slide rule, especially in belt-mounted leather cases . . ."

If this wasn't sufficiently absurd, consider that the FBI cited
numerous additional Datamation's April Fool's jokes in its national study on computer crime. In addition to joke viruses, the FBI also published news of a government dragnet in which federal agents arrested a dangerously successful hacker gang which victmized mimes.

"The hackers reportedly broke into a NASA computer responsible for controlling the Hubble telescope and are also known to have re-routed telephone calls from the White House to Marcel Marceau University, a miming institute," reads "Trends and Experiences in Computer-Related Crime."

"In one episode, the hackers broke into a NASA computer responsible for controlling the Hubble telescope, aimed the telescope at Earth and then proceeded to spy on a nudist colony near Camden, Maine. In another shocking case, the hackers rerouted telephone calls from the White House to Marcel Marceau University, an institution for mimes, based in Inabox, Montana," reports Datamation in the April Fool's Day issue.

Marty Moore at Datamation magazine laughed on recollection of the April 1, 1995 issue. "You mean someone published the . . . 'Marcel Marceau University' in a paper? Oh, n-o-o-o-o!"

The original on this is long and not overly concerned with mimes although it is a good example of academic and offical stupidity.

www.soci.niu.edu/~crypt/other/quant.htm

!

An interviewer from the Guardian asked him about it when he was on a interview tour of England in February and he fell completely silent. Just waited for the next question. You can get copies of the script on-line though - actual physical shooting scripts off eBay, or digital facsimiles, usually for free

yes I am somewhat obsessed by this

http://www.jerrylewiscomedy.com/film_hardly_working.htm

Of *course* you did

oops

somebody take this vodka away from me b4 things get out of hand

This is part of the reason I find them sinister. I always think they must be very sad creatures, doomed from birth to exist as clowns, never to feel the true warmth and love of a family and relying on public self-harm in order to get laughs - the only type of appreciation they have ever received.

Madchen to thread (and Jonnie I think - who is also a little petrified of clowns) to verify my screaming like a girl and running away when I spotted a clown stacking shelves in Sainsbury's once