Clowns

[00:00:00] Your local McDonald's owners across Washington, DC, Greater Baltimore, and Eastern Shore

[00:00:05] are committed community members who all celebrate the diversity of the neighborhoods that they serve.

[00:00:10] Black History Month is a special time to spotlight the many African-American and Black

[00:00:14] individuals and organizations that have contributed to our area's growth and development.

[00:00:19] McDonald's sees, supports, and celebrates you now and all year long.

[00:00:25] Hey everybody, welcome back to Scared All the Time. I say what it is. So I guess I'll just say it today We're talking about clowns What are we? When are we? All the time?

[00:01:41] Join us, join us.

[00:01:43] Join us. Now it's time for

[00:01:45] Stand the water's out there podcast or Spotify and tell your friends we've got a month or so coming up with people gonna be on vacation they're gonna be flying they're gonna be driving and if they need some material to listen to let them know scared all the times got their back you know they can stream us wherever they want and let's see the ripples spread a little bit because you guys have been great it's been so fun on Facebook it's been so fun on Instagram and we just want to keep that

[00:03:02] growing and keep building this place for everyone to be weird and wacky yeah have a particular clown I was afraid of. And in fact, I'll say I admit, clowns are not as high on my own fear tier as I may be insinuated they are at the beginning. I think they're pretty, it's a context thing and it is so often happens later with the fear tier, but I'm telling you right now, if either of us were in the street at like midnight

[00:04:21] and there was a clown standing on the fucking yellow lines

[00:04:23] of the road, there's no version of that

[00:04:25] where you're not like reaching for your keys

[00:04:27] and running to the circus. I did. There's a family legend holds that when I was like five or six that I ran screaming from a Halloween parade when

[00:05:42] someone arrived dressed as Pee Wee Herman and. I felt very safe with Mr. Rogers.

[00:07:00] I did not feel safe with Peewee.

[00:07:01] I think Peewee maybe in a lot of ways

[00:07:04] mirrored my crazy 80D brain better

[00:07:07] than some other stuff did maybe. You just need to see them depressingly by the machine that runs the Ferris wheel, just ripping on a fucking dart to just be like, they don't fucking pay me enough for this shit. And then I'm like, yeah, all right. Now you sound like my dad. Oh my God, I, another scary clown I'm just remembering now, my uncle was like an avid comic collector, which kind of fueled my comic collection.

[00:08:20] But he used to have stuff from Zippy the clown.

[00:08:23] Are you familiar with Zippy?

[00:08:24] Who is?

[00:08:25] Oh yeah.

[00:08:26] He's got that big long cone head.

[00:08:28] Yep. understand why I thought this guy was a clown. There's a lot of different clowns to be afraid of. A shorter list might be, what are the clowns to not be afraid of? Do you want to make this a one-minute episode? Yeah. The big question, I think, to try to answer first though is why people are afraid of clowns. And there's a bunch of reasons, some

[00:09:42] of which are cultural and many of which are actually psychological. Yeah, like they purposely act in a way where you kind of can't tell what they're gonna do then They famously do a bunch of unpredictable things and when they show up places regardless of car size They show up with like a fucking gang of them. Yes So yeah, if they were not wearing clown outfits, you just be like what the fuck is about to go down right now?

[00:11:00] Well clowns are one of those things where one clown is scary more than one clown is even more scary

[00:12:02] They don't provide a safe atmosphere. Yeah, that's the unexpected aspect.

[00:12:04] You don't know what a clown's gonna do next

[00:12:06] and in a slightly exaggerated, scary way,

[00:12:09] maybe they'll pull a knife.

[00:12:11] Maybe it's the Joker and he has Smilux and his flower

[00:12:15] and you're gonna die with a smile on your face.

[00:12:17] But that's part of why there's an appeal

[00:12:19] to the stereotype of the sad clown.

[00:12:21] Cause there's an instant dramatic contrast

[00:12:24] between the painted on Happy Face

[00:12:26] and like you said not the drain of putting on a happy face It's that depressed people often are the biggest jokers They put on a happy face and they're really a guy named Joseph Grimaldi. Now according to an article that I found in the Smithsonian magazine, Grimaldi was the first recognizable ancestor of the modern clown. His clowning was based in the theatrical tradition instead of circuses, which will kind of get into the

[00:15:01] difference between those later, but he was so famous that he stock characters like Rich Old Ben and their lovers and their servants. And Gramealdi's great-grandfather immigrated in the 1730s from Italy to London, and he brought the whole family with him and continued to perform in these troops.

[00:16:21] So there was the legacy of performance and comedy

[00:16:25] in Gramealdi's background. the zany, but they represented the more like rural farming communities where a comedian Del Arte was kind of working its way through to give them someone to relate to. Oh thanks so much said to people from the country. Thanks for giving us a mirror image of ourselves as you see us. Yeah. I want to keep moving the fucking carnival down the road, huh? Well the only makeup that these

[00:17:40] original clowns would sometimes wear was they would put rouge on their cheeks

[00:17:44] to portray themselves as like flush and drunk. That was the makeup that they must have thought of a blue mohawk for real. It's just, cause blue's not anywhere in nature, right? So that is like a fully unnatural color and then you have an unnatural haircut. Yeah. And your face is insane. And he would do all kinds of things. Like he did a lot of physical comedy, he did a lot of satire. Did a lot of the audience. He did a lot of the audience, I'm sure.

[00:19:02] He had comic impressions and like big,

[00:19:04] ribald songs that were, I guess at the time,

[00:19:08] probably pretty, you know. what Pee-wee is. So I think it's kind of interesting. Yeah, fuck. Yeah, so it's not in drogenous. It's just, if there was a word for, like we have in drogenous where you can't tell if it's a man or a woman, I guess, but that word means. But what's the word for if you can't tell if it's a boy or an adult or a child or an adult? Do we have a word for that in the English language? Jail bait. That's, I guess you're right, fuck.

[00:20:21] Okay, well, yeah, he was that.

[00:20:23] He was that.

[00:20:24] He was that.

[00:20:25] But, and people, but yeah, I mean, it's I think it was therapy through puns was the yeah What he was doing, but I mean this would be like if Chris Rock went on stage and was like got slapped I was gonna say it would be like if Chris Rock got on stage. It was just like yeah You know what I'm Chris and I rock like that's the level of joke that I am grim all day

[00:21:43] But make you laugh at night. I guess if you had a little money coming in you could have a lamp lighting accident stamp but you basically just had to use one of the two it's funny that you say Dickensian because wouldn't you know it guess you was in charge of editing from all these memoirs tiny Tim Charles Dickens okay that makes more

[00:23:05] sense one was a fictional character yeah but yeah Charles Dickens was in Wow, okay, but I didn't know if he was like, hey, take Chuck. I hired you to work on my memoirs with me and is this how you see me? Like this is insane pages you turned in. He's like, no, no, no, that's for something else. That's for something else. That's for the biography I'm writing of your son. You're better. I wrote your description as well painted clean and not scary at all.

[00:24:23] Yeah.

[00:24:24] Dickens took the story of Gromaldi quote, consisted of the clown's vulgar jests. Emphasized was still more vulgar and suggestive

[00:25:40] gestures. At the time, clowns also subverting gender norms to their big giant titties, they also had circuses that featured a separate tent

[00:27:02] that contained what was called a cooch show

[00:27:05] where male patrons were invited I fucking love it. It just means that like, if some audience member is nude, this is maybe a place you can come. Yeah. And like, and see some dick you long for, and just be like, ah, I was tricked. I was tricked in a scene all this dick. Yeah. But it's kind of like a little wink and a smile. Like, you kind of know what this tense for. Exactly. It's, well, you would go, there's a great pitch-a-tent joke in there somewhere.

[00:28:20] Yeah, this is the tent to come and do in pitch-a-tent.

[00:28:23] Not that hard.

[00:28:24] No pun intended.

[00:28:24] It was actually PT Barnum's idea to bring your family around. Well, yeah. And so PT Barnum might go like, hey, are you sick and tired of the circus coming to town? And then like, all your daughters are pregnant, all your sons are gay, all your fucking, all your jewelry's been taken. Like, that's not gonna happen at PT Barnum, right?

[00:29:41] No, exactly.

[00:29:42] It's a three-ring circus.

[00:29:43] And these three rings are,

[00:29:45] I actually don't know what the three rings are, you said, aha, I will create the look of Bozo the clown by doing this, but that's essentially. No, he probably didn't. I mean, he bought Ringling Brothers and stuff too. If anything, he stole it from somebody. I know he did say a sucker is born every day. So like, yeah, that's all you need to know about him. Every minute. I'm sorry, yes. I wasn't as ambitious as him in my quote.

[00:31:01] So yeah, I'm sure he did probably, you know,

[00:31:03] if it wasn't his idea, he probably found a way

[00:31:06] to make it a popular thing. the popular clown figure. The theatrical clowns sort of died out, although I would argue that the lineage of the theatrical clown eventually evolved into silent film stars and then physically dexterous screen actors like Peter Sellers or Jackie Chan or Dick Van Dyke. I mean, Buster Keaton and Harpo Marx were essentially clowns. Well, yeah, that's what I said. The lineage evolved into silent film stars

[00:32:21] and then into Charlie Chaplin and yeah,

[00:32:23] Buster Keaton was silent and then yeah,

[00:32:25] Harpo would have had sound, years earlier on the same stage. Where if you tried to bring Grimaldi to fucking Lincoln Center right now, you'd just, first off, no one would go, unless it was an actual time traveler. As I even saw that Cirque du Soleil's numbers are down, as they should be, it's fucking weird. But clowns are not a huge draw as I'm getting it. Right, clowns in the face painted,

[00:33:42] theatrical or circus sense are no longer huge draws,

[00:33:45] but the evolution of their art formss in the 40s and 50s. But yeah, there was this resurgence of clowns in the 20th century and they were beloved by children all over the world. But you know who else loved clowns, Ed? I bet you it's a super awesome person. John Wayne Gacy. Wrong again.

[00:35:00] John Wayne Gacy loved clowns. And this crimes while dressed as pogo That detail and the fact that there is multiple photos of this vicious

[00:36:22] Serial killer dressed as a fairly creepy looking clown Stephen King doesn't think of the idea that Pennywise has connected to John Wayne Gacy, the coverage of Gacy as a clown was so omnipresent in the early 80s that I'm sure it got in there somewhere. Oh, which a clown that assaults children? Yeah, I'm pretty sure.

[00:37:40] Yeah.

[00:37:41] Like it's probably in there somewhere.

[00:37:42] Also, this I learned while researching this episode,

[00:37:46] John Wayne Gacy, is itpered the clown beat boy today? Or was it like he was

[00:39:00] on stage in some kids? Like, you suck and threw of God Yeah, so means a Vox article. It's probably the first thing that came up when you googled it Like it was just a man in the street interview. It's just like hey you there afraid of clowns I think so I highly doubt it was yeah, like I don't think there was a diagnosis involved I think it was just asking people are you afraid of clowns. I would bet and I'm surprised the numbers as low as it is

[00:40:24] I thought it was gonna be a hundred percent of people

[00:41:25] not scary. People would still be like, no, no, I'm terrified. Where like sharks, you know, that book did, I'm sure we're gonna do sharks at some point, but I don't think Peter

[00:41:29] eventually set out to let shark fin soup be unregulated for as long as it was, you know,

[00:41:35] but it created a level of fear that is insane and we're definitely gonna do sharks all that.

[00:41:40] But I'm glad I brought this up now though because now I'm dreaming of a clown week.

[00:41:44] Like I want to see a clown week like shark week on Discovery General. the government and climate change in it, above clowns or near clowns. And it just shows like, holy shit how things have changed. In the 1950s, people trusted the government. They didn't think about climate change and they never heard of a terrorist and clowns were beloved. And now clowns are right in the goddamn same list. So that's crazy. Yes. Well, and what starts to get really crazy,

[00:43:01] so you have to remember,

[00:43:02] and I'll get into this in a minute,

[00:43:03] but 2016 was the year that people started seeing clowns

[00:43:07] all over the country. So, you know, the high numbers, even though Ed thinks that they should have been higher, those high numbers might have been juiced a little bit by the fact that this was the middle of something. But I was curious what responses about clown fears might look like in a normal year without a clown scare. And I found a Chapman University poll from 2021 that lists clowns as a fear of only about

[00:44:21] 5% of the population.

[00:44:24] But that seems-

[00:44:25] Do you think it's just too much time has passed?

[00:44:26] Like out of sight, out. Just a clown cackling atop his throne of flesh and money. Yeah, he is a real creepy. They have never hit it out of the park with mascots. It's Ronald McDonald, who is terrifying, but I guess the company is old enough that it

[00:45:45] hearkens back to a time when clowns are beloved and popular. But all these numbers got me wondering more about this clown scare from 2016. Do you remember this happening, Ed? I sort of do in don't. And the way I say I sort of do in don't is I keep a folder of like dumb seeds, like seeds of ideas. If I like see an article or I see a thing and it makes me laugh, I think it might be

[00:47:01] interesting to put in something or think about further.

[00:47:04] And I have forever since 2015, I have probably like Warner Brothers sent it for it promotion. Well, I still think we'll get into it in a bit, but I think that may explain some of what was going on. But right around October of 2016, these stories about clowns were fucking everywhere. There were literally headlines I found that were like out of a parody news show.

[00:48:21] There was one headline,

[00:48:22] everything to know about clown attacks,

[00:48:24] and then literally another headline

[00:48:27] that was Clown Panic Yeah, no. I think at the time I was doing late night packets and stuff, so I was kind of sifting through a lot of news articles and shit. And so I remember this being one that I had put aside as like, oh, I can probably write a joke about this. Yeah.

[00:49:40] But then I just took those two elements out and put it into like this document and I was

[00:49:43] like, there's nothing to be done here.

[00:49:45] It's very funny.

[00:49:46] Yeah.

[00:49:47] Which sounds like a monologue joke. short film, then unreleased short film that was featuring gags the clown. I'll see, there you go. But then things start to get weird. On August 21st, 2016, about 20 days later and like halfway across the country, rumors started spreading around Greenville, South Carolina that clowns were living in an abandoned house in the woods near an apartment building.

[00:51:01] Local police were not able to substantiate these claims made by children. where the clown nest was said that she saw a clown outside around 2.30 in the morning. It was a large figured clown with a blinking nose standing under a light near the garbage dumpster area. It waved at her and she waved back. No, don't wave back. Don't wave back. Don't initiate with this.

[00:52:20] The suspect did not approach her or harm her.

[00:52:23] Or maybe you do wave back.

[00:52:24] We have to watch whatever clown week discovery channel special on like what to and don't do. in a house near a pond at the end of a man-made trail in the woods. And according to the police report, Greenville County Sheriff's Office Master Dept- this guy's got so many titles. Greenville County Sheriff's Office Master Deputy Ryan Flood said that they investigated the house that found no clues. Flood said it's abandoned. Every time deputies have gone there, they have

[00:53:41] not been able to find clothing or anything else that they just had masks on. Like fucking trench coat and a mask. Fucking be somebody. Yeah. In another incident that was not reported to police

[00:55:02] but was reported by residents to a local news station,

[00:55:05] people said that they chased clowns were actually harming anyone. They were a threat but it wasn't like 15 kids got sacrificed by a clown. It was just they were around and they were scary which in a way makes it seem more real because there isn't this you know supernatural element to it. It's just these people working.

[00:56:20] Well speaking of that I did find the original, it's happens to be in Wisconsin as well, but it does seem to predate the 2016 epidemic of clown people.

[00:57:42] Well, there have been a variety of clown clusters throughout the years.

[00:58:45] freaked out. Now, it's just so baffling to me after doing our couple of episodes on Satanic Panic that anyone would ever believe a child.

[00:58:49] Like, again, this is another story where it's like, oh I heard there's a nest of clowns

[00:58:55] in the woods who, you know what I mean? And that didn't sound like it came from adults.

[00:58:58] Well, and then that little story starts bopping off across the playground and now next thing

[00:59:03] you know, it's like we got the SWAT team breaking into an abandoned house. back into the woods. And then the next day... Is there any evidence of that? No. I mean... You know why there isn't? Because fucking... You ever try and walk through the woods? We're both from pretty rural areas. Mm-hmm. You ever try and walk through the woods in regular shoes? It can be a fucking pain in the ass. Like trying to go through the woods over twigs and through little like, creeks and stuff and big ass floppy shoes. That's suspect.

[01:00:20] Yeah.

[01:00:20] And then like,

[01:00:20] Oh, I chased the clown with a machete

[01:00:23] and you didn't catch up to someone in clown shoes?

[01:00:26] Like, that's on you, Belle.

[01:00:27] You slow pieces shit. up you and your clown friends to bother people. Yeah, that's true. We should like, you know, when people swat people, we should swat Scott and have the SWAT team show up looking for a red clown wig and yellow shoes. Wait, people swat people? Is that like a public service? Can we just use a SWAT team? No, it's super illegal, but you've never heard of this. It's video gamers do it to prank each other where like, if you're playing like modern

[01:01:43] warfare or whatever or FIFA and you get in a test of the emergency disclaimer system. After all of these initial reports, rumors really started to fucking clown bridges. I know, it was the first time that it happened since the characters' 1963 debut. They said, quote, McDonald's is mindful of the current climate around clown sightings in communities. And as such is being thoughtful in respect to Ronald McDonald's participation in community

[01:04:23] events for the time being, which is a PR speak way of saying we don't believe the hype and don't be afraid of the clowns, which I think is a good main message to have. Yeah, but also like he's, we're talking about North Carolina. We're talking about Wisconsin. You go to New York City and the guy's like, other problems here. Like we have people not dressed like clowns doing all of those activities already. Sure. I just in general think don't believe the hype and don't be afraid of the clowns is

[01:05:43] generally a good main message for cops to have.

[01:05:46] And you know, we've been,, lake boys, the Grimaldi 5.

[01:07:00] Sounds like a great jazz troupe, honestly.

[01:07:03] But Ed, so what the fuck do you think was going on here?

[01:07:06] Why were there so many the graduating class of 2016?

[01:08:20] You know, what's the commencement speech where it's like, listen, you're entering a world

[01:08:22] of people who hate you.

[01:08:24] And it's going to be difficult that it's. You know, all the kind of stuff that you would say if you were actually spending most of your time luring children into the woods with vast sums of money to take them to your bounce castle. I think part of the reason it was so surprising to me was because in October of 2016,

[01:09:41] people were really preoccupied with the election.

[01:09:44] And so it really shocked me how... someone I can't imagine anyone really putting that much marketing oomph behind 31 But certainly I could see Warner Brothers trying to do some viral clown stuff that maybe got a little out of control Or inspired people to do clown costumes and then they backed away from it because they were like ugh This is not a good look. No. Yeah delete those emails shred all that paperwork

[01:11:03] We were never doing anything clown related as like the third clowns beaten to death

[01:12:05] clowns lurking in vans all around the city trying to lure them inside with promises of candy. So there were a bunch in Brockton. Hey, that's where my dad was born. My dad's from Brockton,

[01:12:10] Massachusetts. Ask your dad if he remembers 1981. No, he moved out of Brockton pretty young to

[01:12:15] place with my birth, Bridgeport, Connecticut. So these clown sightings spread all around the

[01:12:18] country and were dubbed at the time Phantom Clowns by a man named Lauren Coleman, that's the history of scary clown sightings. And I don't know when the next will be. I'm sure the 2016 clown panic will not be the last clown panic that our country experiences. I mean, in a lot of ways, you know, every four years we get a clown panic. I guess you could say the release of the in-cell film Joker was a bit of a clown panic.

[01:13:43] That piece of shit.

[01:13:44] But yeah, I guess he makes a clown a clown. And so they can't even help themselves. And I usually don't find them funny and I usually don't find them endearing. That's true. We didn't even talk about the fact that I don't think I've ever seen a funny clown. I've seen a lot of annoying clowns.

[01:15:01] Well, there is actually one funny clown.

[01:15:03] I have seen more than once actually in Los Angeles

[01:15:07] named Puddles, Puddles pity party No, it wasn't French. It was like a made up, it was like, it was like, simlish or something, you know, like the sim language. Like it was made up gibberish. And they were like bringing out these giant, like animal looking things and slaying them. It all just felt very sacrificial. And like, I felt like I was watching something I wasn't supposed to be seeing. And I was like, I do not like this at all.

[01:16:22] I mean, physical specimens, the people who perform in that,

[01:16:26] oh my goodness, like unbelievable,

[01:16:27] some of the things. It must be real. You don't know what a clown is gonna do with that bucket. They might be carrying a bucket and you don't even know what's inside it. You might think, oh, that's hot piss and shit in that bucket and maybe it is or maybe it's just like

[01:17:41] a bucket full of ribbons and it'll look really pretty

[01:17:44] when they dump it over your head.

[01:17:45] But maybe not.

[01:17:46] And that's part of what'm honestly surprised that clowns are not a sleep paralysis demon. Right. They really feel like they would fit every bill of that. They're old enough. They've been around long enough. Yeah. They're maligned in society. They're creepy when they're in your bedroom. That's maybe when they're at their creepiest. I would add to my fear tier, is the clown wearing clown shoes or is the clown wearing

[01:19:04] like Reebox? and giant shoes and thousands of fucking clown who drives a van. I'd say it's incumbent upon you to make sure that van is well kept and cleaned on a regular basis. Has windows. And has windows, yeah. Without curtains. Yeah, look, there's certain things that you just need to understand. You need to be responsible for if you're a responsible member

[01:20:20] of the clown community and one of those things is a clean van.

[01:20:23] Yeah.

[01:20:23] So that's our show this week.