A Clown By Any Other Name (with Eve L. Ewing)

breaking a class of girl. That is disgusting that It was literally the Gatorade commercials with not you a whole lot. Come on now, the money man turning stuff. You can't tell me. Boom boom, boom boom. There it is there, it is there. It is. Ladies and gentlemen, Welcome to another phenomenal episode of My Mama Told Me, the podcast where we unpacked we dive deep into the world of black conspiracy theories. Gonna Be finally worked to prove that Mr T did not cut his hair into that old hag.

The nigga just couldn't grow hair between his sideburns and that landing strip in the middle. He had a rare form of alopecia. It's called almost pecia, and the man has been crying out for help all these years. Help Mr t everyone, please, I'm your host, length and Kerman. I'm delighted to be here. I'm doing well. I'm pretty much just eating snacks and enjoying myself while the world tarns. It's it's the way I plan to live. I'm just gonna die in the apocalypse. Real silly. That's my pa.

My guest today. She's wonderful. I imagine she's gonna do a lot of cool things before the apocalypse comes, much more substantial than eating snacks and just letting things burn around her. She's amazing. She's a poet, she's a writer. She's an important thinker out in the world. You know her from her book Electric Arches. You know her from her work on Iron Her she is writing cool last comic books. She's amazing. Please give it up from my guest,

Miss Eve. You is Yes, we're excited. You got on a goosebump shirt and I think that's very fitting to the conspiracy theory that you sort of brought to us. That I think is really important that it hit home. It hit home for me in a way of sweet nostalgia that that made me excited. You said, my mama told me the legend of Owe me the Clown. Yes, yes, can I tell you all about it? Okay, So, first of all, I try to not be on a lot

of podcasts because everybody has a podcast. Every single week, people emailed me and ask me to be in their podcast. I'm so honored and grateful that people want me on their podcast. But if I said yes to all the podcasts, I wouldn't I would literally do nothing else. So I have had like a podcast moratorium for a long time now. But when your producers reached out to me, I said, okay, number one is lengths. I'm a big fan. But more importantly, this is time for me to speak my truth because

I have been trying. I have been trying for years to write about this, and nobody wants to hear me. Nobody wants to let me write about it. Various publications have reached out and said, oh, if you have any ideas, I'm like, I want to write about this time and they're like, oh, I don't know. They're you know, they're like from a living color and I'm like no, it's so much deeper than that, and so I was like, you know, Lengths and you and I are pretty much

the same age. You know, we're from the same place. And so I was like, Langston is going to be here for me to speak the truth to the people finding about Homie the Clown, And I knew that you would get it, So I'm here to expose the real real I'm so happy you're doing that. We often get these conspiracy theories that are very like big and sort of like widespread, and this is one that's so Chicago specific and local. It's it's the moving on of conspiracy theories.

I can't wait, So please tell the people what they need to know about Homie the Clown. All right, I'm gonna lay it on you, okay. So, first of all, when people hear Holming the Clown right away, you may be thinking of the iconic character from in Living Color, and so people are like, yeah, yeah, Holmi the Clown. But when we were kids, when we were coming up, we were told I'm saying we I'm assuming without you

even confirming that you were also included in this. Yes, yes, this was Chicago wide, yes fact, and specifically it's Chicago wide Black children and I think I think like children of color, because I've also heard this from like Mexican Puerto Rican homies, like kids of our vintage. We're told when we were kids, you need to watch out for a white van that is driving around Chicago and Homie the clown is in it and he's gonna kidnap you.

And there's variations on this theme, so people would say, always a white van, there's a white man driving around. And Homie the clown was not Homie from the TV

show Who We All Knew and Love. It was someone who had appropriated Homie's name and was using it to do nefarious deeds because a dude dress as a clown and Austin times also part of this would be that he had like a sock or a bag full of rocks or nickels, right, so he had like a sock of of rocks and he hits you on the head and he was going to take you away and kidnap you. And and and if I may murder and or molescue, you're not coming back. No, you're done, You're dune. It's

over for you. And furthermore, you know, obviously in the skit in in the sketch on a living color. That homie also hits people on the head and says, Homie, don't play that, which is his iconic line. But this homie is bad, so it's like it's like a tethered like underworld version of the other homie is good and funny. This homie is bad and scary. Right, this homie keeps little children awake at night, whereas the other one. It kind of becomes a bit that you do at school, like, ha,

we remember, we all saw that thing. And also the this knowledge comes to me despite the name of the podcast, this knowledge always came to me from older kids, right, and very very serious, like not older kids trying to scare you, but like older kids really trying to look out for you, right, and they want you to they really want you to not to not get got by Homie. And so then fast forward, I became a Chicaogo public school teacher. And I know you're also a former Edge cater.

And when I was in Chicago, but you were in high school. So I taught at a school that was fourth grade through eighth grade, and I used to have playground duty and taught in the school is a school on the South side. You know, I taught middle school, but the school went down as low as fourth grade, and I had playground duty, you know, once a week or whatever. And playground duty you stand around and you

talk to the kids that, um, they're not social. I'm trying to nice the kids, and these kids that I was right, So there, I'm into that because I'm also a dork. And so it would be the kids that like, they're not really trying to play basketball, and so they're kind of like hanging around you because to talk to you.

And so I used to talk to kids in the morning and these kids I overheard them saying, you know, Missy, did you know there's a white van going around and there is a clown that is And this blew me because you know, this is like years and years later, and Homie was never talked about in like the media and except for there's one exception which I think will probably get into and to assume there's a notable exception here, I too, am a researcher, so you know I have

like the researcher. You're giving me far more credit than well that's but for the most part, this isn't the thing that most people know about right, And sure, my theory, my which is real, some might call conspiratorial. But I think that there is something about Homie that only kids can like see him or access this knowledge. There's something

about the culture. There's a there's a children's because Okay, as black people, we know that, like like all people, we have folklore and we have culture, right, so we have things that your parents tell you, your grandparents tell you, and it gets passed from generation to generations. But people don't talk about Homie in adulthood. So what I don't understand is how the transmission would happen between kids in the early nineties and kids in the twenties. Right, how

does that happen? You're giving me a lot to unpack here, and yeah, I list and I think about it. I'm excited. Let's start at the base of what you just premised. You're suggesting that there is a almost like mythical kind of quality to Homie. That this is if he is

in fact a real sort of like threat. It is not just a threat of a weird dude with a van, but has more of an it kind of quality where it's like kids are at threat and kids can see it better than adults, kids and only kids, that there's something that happens to you when you pass into adulthood that you can't see Homie anymore. And if you think

about it, Bill, am I going to solve my personal problem? Right? Well, I'm thinking about it a little bit like an evil version of like Peter Pan and the Lost Boys type of situation, right, Like there's something where you get too old and you can no longer access Homie, like you can't see him anymore. And maybe Homie was never evil, Maybe he was only I don't know he maybe there's something about his relationship to kids that we can't understand

as an adult, But I'm very fascinated with him. You're you're getting to something that I think is really interesting because they're uh, and I don't this feels pretty understood.

But there's no empirical evidence that Homie ever took a kid, correct, Like none of us know a kid that got took by the clown, But everybody knows a kid whose cousin wrote to school of us with somebody who used to talk to their friend from down the block who got taken, right, And And that's what's so I think that, Like, I'm very interested in my work, not to like be real serious, but I'm very interested in storytelling and has stories which stories get told, you know, And so I'm so fascinated

by Like, to me, this is an urban quote unquote myth because is it a myth we don't know, but if we were to call it an urban myth, it's one that only exists within the culture of children, and we could think about it. Also, I mean similar like the cousin to this, the white people's us into this is like Bloody Mary or Resurrection Mary, you know, which like is another Chicago story. And obviously Candyman the o g as well. Um, and so there's all these things

that specifically kids talk about but like me. And then the other really obvious thing that we have to mention is that there was a real clown, a real clown who murdered people, and that was John Wayne gayzy right right. John Wayne Gay is a white man though, and Homie is black. John Wayne Gay was a white man, but he killed everybody. He wasn't discriminatory in any kind of way. He took a white boys, but he got everybody. I'm curious to know because based off of the premise that

you set up. Are you suggesting then, that you do still believe in Homie. You just now are unable to see everything that a child is able to see in your belief, if that makes sense. I believe in Homie as much as I believe in America or any other type of mythological abstract concept. Right. So, I believe that there are things that humans invent to create sutures that buying together our culture and hold us away from the

threat of chaos. And those ideas include things like nation hood, like religion, right and so, and I believe that Homie is in that category. I believe that really honestly links and Homie is the only thing between us and the total like collapse of society. He's the glue. He's the glue that holds children's culture together, and that he does with all great urban myths do, which is there's like a moralistic tale, right, which is like you have to watch out, don't stray too far, don't stand over by

that fence. And the other amazing thing about the Homie myth is the white van, right, because Homie always has a white van. Now, white vans are just like everybody you know, they're in a city like Chicago, white vans are ubiquitous, right, because a white van is there somebody on their way to do whatever contract work or whatever. And it's also about like in the eighties and nineties,

there's all this like stranger danger of fear. There's all this like urban inner city, urban whatever fear, you know, to that sticker that they had on every door with the guy in the big trench coat and he could only see his eyes and the hat. He looked like Dick Tracy. But he's meant to be a sign that like, hey, kidnappings happened here, kidnappings happen. You know. Scruff McGruff is on TV at this time. Like everything is about scaring kids out of the idea and scaring kids into compliance

by letting them know that criminals are everywhere. Right. But the thing about Homie is also that like it's such a specifically like black and like Mexican American Chicago thing that I'm also I'm curious about, Like I've never heard white people talk about Homie the clown. You know. That's that's interesting because in the little bit of research that I did, and I'm sure yours is much more efficient,

but the research that I did. There are a lot of articles that sort of came out of white spaces basically affirming the same timelines and the same opinions and fears from white kids, suburban kids, like all kinds of communities outside of our own. I do think. I mean, I was a suburban kid, right, Like I grew up

in Oak Park. It wasn't as if like I was, And granted I was tapped into probably a different lexicon just being black in Chicago and my mom being you know, all over the place whatever, But like, I do think that some of this, just to your point, is allegorical there for it reaches further than even like race and culture, right, yeah, absolutely, And I think that it's just interesting that like real things that are empirically demonstrably real, like Damon Williams over here,

John Wayne Gacy over here, that those things get synthesized into you know, this mythos of homie that I think is so fascinating. I have to ask you, actually, I've been wanting to ask you. Did you do you feel like in Oak Park where people talking about homie, it wasn't a constant fear, if that makes sense. I think that I knew I've now like grown up and known people who were like on the South Side, and they were like no, no, no. We talked about it every day like that was like a thing that we were

constantly we're vigilant. And this is the other thing is that there's no phones during that, right, there's no phones. There's no spies, right, So part of this is also like you're just a kid on the playground. It's four degrees outside, right, Like you're just staying around waiting for the builders, which is like, what is there to discuss. I I truly am and maybe you'll feel this way. I truly am impressed that my parents kept me alive.

Like the the amount of times that I was sort of like meant to go home by myself, do things completely alone, with no way of contacting me, no way of assuring that I made it, say, flee from point A to point B. The fact that I survived is truly a testament. Oh it's miraculous. Yeah, it's a miracle. And yeah, that's why you need a homie the clown.

You need somebody to like constantly be like there is a murdering clown available to take you if you choose to not follow every sting that I'm laying out for you right, whether I'm there or not, because there's no find my iPhone, there's no GPS, there's no there's none of that, you know. And yeah, no I I got my own key to the crib when I was seven, so, you know, so starting at age seven, it was like, you know, you come and you let yourself in, you know,

And we had neighbors and there's a crossing guard. My mom was always telling me that the crossing guard was watching me, you know, but it was like it was real out here, and so without Homie, where would we be? Honestly, right, we just all kidnapped from less less silly reasons. We kidnapped for. It's not a clown, it's a grown man who wanted to I guess the same, but just meaner.

That's right. Let me ask you this, how many of the people in your life have you shared this theory with and do you feel like they would support this theory or are they going like Eve, you Wi don't write your books, but you're acting up you out here? Yeah? So I think you know, sometimes when you when you are a party to a difficult truth, it really hard to bear the burden, you know, within a generation to bear the heaviest, the head that wears the Homie the Clown,

as they say, and I think that I have. This is not something I have widely discussed with my loved ones. I have told my husband, you know that I have these these opinions about Homie. He's intrigued, he's fascinated. And from Chicago as well. He's from New Jersey. He's from North New Jersey. So they have their own it's you know, they have their own stuff going on out there. But one person I have shared this with, who I believe it's been a guest on the podcast is our our

dear mutual friend, Nathaniel Armstead Marshall Nate. And I told they, you know, I was I'm going on link since podcast and I'm going to talk about Homie the Clown. And he was delighted. He was thrilled, you know, because he shares my affinity for hyperlocal um hyper hyperlocal content. But yeah, you know, it's really hard. It's really hard when you know something that you know the rest of the world isn't ready for. Well, that's really it's really tough. I

have to imagine. It's also a hard part of sharing it is that because it's so localize, there's there's something almost crazy in that, right, Like it's like when people argue about fucking hot dogs. It's like, well, these are the best ones and these ones aren't good, but you don't. You don't have a way of communicating why it is the best or what makes it different. It just is. It just is. It's just facts. Yeah, but I didn't experience it, so I don't know you're chirping over. It's

like the pizza thing. The pizza the quote unquote debate really gets on my nerves because when people are like, oh, Chicago style pizza, you know, da da dada us this it is that it's like, we don't Chicagoans. We don't eat deep dish pizza on the regular, Like you don't. You're not like Friday night pizza. Right, It's like a celebration, like a cake. It's like getting a birthday cake. It's not a thing that you eat. We eat regularly, eat

tavern style, a little squares of pizza. That's the true Chicago The true Chicago style pizza that you will not get as a tourist is a little square you know that that gets cut up in sixty eight squares, tiny little, very small, very small squares, and you have to eat twelve pieces to feel like you've had a meal. You know, that's real Chicago style pizza. So I'm like, we're not

even entering on the same conversation. And with with with the Homie, with the matter of Homie, the damon Wayne's party makes it complicated because it's weird to say I'm going to tell you about something. You already have heard this phrase and already know what I'm talking about, but you don't, right, and then like and he hits you on the head, They're like yeah, Like David White is like, no, it's not the same. So yeah, it's very it's very complicated.

And as I said, I'm very grateful to have the chance to come in the show today and finally tell America to about Homie. Let me ask you this, do you think that part of what kids are seeing is intentionally being placed there by adults? Because that's that's part of where I'm trying to make sure that I'm understanding how the allegory exists. Does that allegory merely exists because we morally are sort of checking ourselves as children or is that something that adults are intentionally sort of like

planting the seed. They can't see it anymore, but a child's imagination allows them to build the world of the white van. That's such a good question. I think you are rehearsed it at home and you're a professional, you know, Okay, So I hope I'm not jumping the gun by bringing this up. But there's this article from probably and the newspaper article in Chicago, and it's about police investigating claims

of homie. Have you seen this article article? So it's from the early nineties, and it's kids were going to their teachers and to their parents and saying, I saw this white van and it's Homi the clown and police the Chicago police Partment was like, we are really, we are taking this seriously. We are looking into it. We have not found any evidence, right, And I think that that moment is funny because it's a moment where like

the lore of children crosses over into like actual law enforcement. Again, this is the nineties at the time everybody's scared of child abductions. They are they're trying to take this really seriously. There's like there's a what who? And then in the article they're like reports, you know, reports come from like you know, Avondale, Inglewood, Back of the Yards and roseland it's like all these flights is that are like nowhere

near each other. Right, It's like but which was also fascinating because on the one hand, it's kind of a till that like, maybe this story isn't quite what it seems to be because most child deductors I don't really I'm just talking because I actually don't want to talk about but I assume the most child deductors are not driving like literally all of it. You're driving a Chevy

ascro Can. You can find enough murderable kids and within the five city, but you go to one playground, you go to the one dayground where you know, the teachers aid like how don't take a slight break every two minute? You know, like you're not gonna drive from North Lawndale, you know, uh, to Pullman to find some kids. So anyway, to answer your actual question, I think that the role of like the older kid is really important here. Right.

It's like the kid who is like ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, Right, you're when you're five or six, or seven. That kid is old old, right, and so that kid is also still a kid, and so they're very susceptible to like

hearing and perhaps misunderstanding information. So I think that adults were saying scary things around kids, and that the older kid who was kind of like in this interwoven space between the young and the old, right between the child, childhood and adulthood, that they're the ones who kind of transposed this into the realm of myth, which they then bring as a cautionary tale dutifully to their younger brethren. I really like that. I think it hits home for me in a way that I'm the oldest of five,

but I'm substantially older than all of my siblings. The next in line is ten years younger than and so in that way, I know that there's like a lot of mythology that I probably handed down to my siblings that they then took as fact, even though it was just me being a kid and having my own fears and traumas that I'm attempting to unpack or figure out

in front of them. But it's like, no, I'm technically an authority figure and now I'm giving you this information and that becomes permanent in you and you pass it down maybe to a kid younger than you, and on the kindergarten, on the kindergarten playground exactly and forever, right, homie lives forever. I used to ride the bus for school to school, um, and the riding of the school bus is also where a lot of knowledge is like

shared among kids because there's no supervision. There's there's one adult, right, there's one adult, and it's not he's a bus driver. So they're trained to drive a bus. They're not trained to you know, managed kids. And if they were there in this position where like physically they can't see any of the kids, right, and they're also d literally driving

a bus through the streets of Chicago. And so the other thing about the school bus for me is that I went to a Magnet school and so the school I went to was very racially and socio economically diverse. But then your bus is based on where you live, right, And so the bus people is like the people who are from um, your neighborhood and there, and they know all they know your business. They know that one time, you know, your parents push you out and it was

you didn't have. You know, they know everything about you and your situation and where you live and what your building lists like and what your block looks like and all of that stuff. Um and so. And it's a totally age right. It's kindergarten through eighth grade. My school bus with kindergarteners through eighth graders on one bus and so, um, yeah,

that's where a lot of knowledge, knowledge gets. And I will say it sounds to me like that also is how that knowledge sort of cross pollinates with communities that otherwise would not have had it right exactly snitching to these other magnet school kids exactly take it to their

neighborhood that's very far from where you live. And now we all got homie we previously maybe did not in our Even if you think about, like the way a conversation happens on the school bus is that there's two people sitting next to each other talking right or there. Maybe you're talking across the aisle to your friend and you're talking to your friend who sits next to you on the bus, and then there's other kids listening through like a leather seat, you know, and you can't see

each other. Like, the more I think about it the more of an extremely bizarre social experiment. This is because and also when we were kids, it was like you did not wear a seat belt. None of us wore seat belts. They have them, well they have well, I've I've been a chaperone. I've chaperone some field tricks, and sometimes they do have the kids wearing the seat belts. Now, yes, while here, you know, but they're also those types of they're not full seat belts that go across the front

of you. So it's a kind of seatbelt that might half metal and uh the buck around yeah, you know, yeah, and it might save your life, but it also might bisect your entire It was probably in half if this dude stops to slow right right anyway, all right, well we're going to take another break and no you and more of my mama told me, and we are like teenage girls when you say teenage, how are we talking? Yeah, we're back here with more reviewing, more immacing. I'm missing

at R Kelly. You're wrong for that. You're wrong for that. We're still talking about Homie the Clown, the legend of Holmie of the Clown, be him real or fake, and certainly the massive effect it had on our childhood, childhoods and the childhoods that followed many You've got to be thinking about R Kelly now and the way that R Kelly is related to hold Me the Clown, And I'm

so disturbed. Oh, tell me about this connection. Well, because part of it is like the thing about so we already talking about, like all myths exists as cause Mary tales against real threats, right, And so we tell ourselves, we tell kids, we tell people in our society about mythological pseudo real things too, as a controllable way to warn them about real things. And you know, R Kelly really was out here right praying on young people. And so I'm just thinking about and using schools as a

space to do that. So I'm just thinking about and I'm just that's just like a bizarre connection. And I'm also thinking about the fact that R. Kelly had tried to have his laptop while he was incarcerated in said he was going to make music. Hey, come on, my man, gotta make beats. He can't, can't. And then how that that woman who was a preschool teacher posted all that money to bail him out, and just I have I'm just I never felt upset about R. Kelly. He's so exciting.

I do think that at a certain point we just have to settle into the fact that like what is done is done, and hopefully now finally some version of

justice gets served. But I am especially interested in what you're saying about the way that like these myths take on a form and so uh and maybe even transfer forms that in some ways, Homi the clown is R Kelly right, that like we are afraid that your kids get snatched or that you could be taken away, and instead of facing the actual monster, which is the dude that's singing on the radio, exactly mythical one that you know, has a big class, that's more controllable, right, And if anything,

like the figure of somebody like Homie the Clown also lets somebody like R Kelly do what he does. Because if you think that what a child abduction looks like is that dude in a clown suit is going to jump out of a van and hit you in the head with some rocks, right, uh, then you are less And I think that that is still like when it comes to sexual assault and like kidnapping in our country,

that's what a lot of people think it is. They think it's most likely to be a stranger jumping out of a bush, and those things do happen, but it's just not as common as you know, the dude who yeah, or somebody that you know very you well exact partner all of that. So anyway, I'm sorry I ruined your comedy podcast, but you did it. You brought r Kelly into it for those Now, this is my fault and I made mistakes and I got to own up to that.

Let's get into this research. I think that one of the things that you've hit on all the important parts that it's around, that this sort of figure starts to emerge Homi the clown, and largely it's becomes connected to the in living color character from Damon Wain's but a

much more sinister version. One of the things that I ended up finding was that there was basically a ship ton of media that in Ish that started to at least try to address the thing, and to your point, it becomes this really fascinating thing where it's similar to the way that like the FBI eventually had to just acknowledge that everybody was saying Milannia wasn't the real Milannia, you and me. They have to answer. It rises to the level that has to be addressed. It has to

be addressed by the way. That is not the real Milannia. I'm just gonna that is not Milannia. Milania. That is the Milania. That's all I have to say about that. All right, well Milannia, That's what I'm voting for next time. But I will say that, like, it's that same energy, right of so many people are talking about this. It's so widespread, so many children are being haunted by it,

that we're starting to see it in the media. So in on October nine, wlf L D t V ran a thirty second there you go saying that the police were treating Home with the Clown as an urban legend, which while they're denying it, they're also acknowledging, like, hey, that ship you're scared of is legit, right in that the police have to release a statement about it exactly.

And then two days later, the Chicago Tribune ran an article called police take in clown sighting seriously, which is where they're yeah, they're completely disrupting the attempt the police made to be like no, this is we're not dealing with it. But then the Chicago trubing was like, I don't know, these motherfucker's look like they're taken too seriously to me. And then my beautiful hometown. On October six, Park in their Wednesday Journal ran the headline police dismissed

youth sightings of deviant clown as unfounded. We read that, read that headline again, youth sightings specifically, Yeah, this is deep. This is deep. Police dismissed youth sightings of devian clowns as unfounded. What an amazing They're like, these kids, right, they don't know what they're talking about. Deviant clown, all the other clowns totally, the clowns that are on a

straight and narrow very real devian clown false. Well, it's so funny that you should bring that up, because there's I read a few things that sort of talk about the fallout that came with Homy the clown for all of the other clowns around town in Chicago, clowns around town, Crown Listen. They didn't like any of the rhymes. They were very outset with what was happening. There was this there was like happening on the ground. I remember a penny. I'm in for a poun o, Canada, get it all out,

just get okay, here we go. There's a quote from this dude, Cleo the Clown, who was a long time clown in Chicago, apparently very reputable, very respected, not deviant at all, at least you know by his own claims. Who knows what Cleo the Clown is doing in his personal time. But he said, I do remember kind of arise, especially in black and Latino neighborhoods, a backlash and negative response.

It was discrimination against clowns in general. People crossed the street when they saw him come and called him names, including Homie. Oh no, this sad, poor Cleo. He was discriminated again. He said it was now so Cleo the Clown is a black clown. I'm black clown. That's right. Okay. So he said, this discrimination against clowns in general, This is so sad. It is sad. But then it gets it gets funnier and sadder because he goes on to say, I used to say Homie to clown carries the stock, right,

I carry a Louisville slugger. I say Tom, I'm Homie's older brother. I'm I'm from the hood, homies not from the hood. How far do you think homie would get on your block before people would take that sock and beat him with it. It's like contest too much, right, Cleo? What exactly? So Cleo started out being like, it's really sad how people are scared of me because they think that that clowns beat each other, which I totally will do. If you cross me, I will beat you with a

baseball bat. He was like, something way harder than right. It sounds like Cleo has a different beef, and he's not quite willing to admit it, but it sounds like Cleo's real beef is that he feels like he got swagger jacked a little bit, you know, like he feels like HOMEI as a bier and he feels like he's the O G hood clown, right, Like hood clown has been his identity and he had a sacrifice to cultivate

that identity. He had to be out here at these backyard parties for years, putting in work, maybe risking being mugged from time to time, carry his Louisville slugger to protect himself. Maybe Cleo, you know, cut somebody from time to time as needed or just you know, let the threat of cutting somebody being a presence in his interactions. And he did all that work just for Damon Wayne's to ride off the tad tails of his family name, get on television and claim the mantle, put in his

clown around, go to this tech clown around town. And Cleo is not He's not here for that. So I think that Cleo is at that point it was personal for I. You love what you're saying. I've always maintained that, Cleo, if you're listening, I support you. I'm sorry for what happens. I think that Chicago is a city filled with haters in the most beautiful, majestic way, that we really are

a bunch of haters. And I think that Cleo is exactly that he's seeing Damon Williams get off on the character that he's fucking perfected for years, and this dude's doing it as a throwaway for a three minute sketch. He's bitter and he's angry, and then it becomes fucking violent. Now I losing work now, the work off of this. Yeah no, it's it's so real, and you know, for a Chicago and the number one insult is he ain't even from Chicago. You ain't even from here. He is

out here. How he's not even you didn't even he's from you know that? Good? Whatnot like? So that's rough. I'm sorry, tough look for my guy, Cleo. Cleo, if you're listening, I hope you're still clowning. Shut up, shout out to clear the clown. So one of the things that that I became particularly in turst it in and you you sort of brought this up earlier about like sort of like the weird relationship that Chicago has with clowns. Right, So first we have the Bozo Show. Bozo a Chicago original.

Chicago original goes from nineteen sixty to two thousand one. If ever you wanted to watch kids throw balls in a cup in the morning, you can watch Boso and his homies do that every single morning. And so that's a a kind sweet relationship in some ways they have with clowns. But then we also have John Way Gaycy who murders thirty three young men and boys and then like basically burries right in the seventies. That's right, But one of the things that is argued in terms of

I started to think about, like why a clown? And this goes to your mythology of it all. Why are we picking a clown? And where is this fear of clowns coming from? And there are plenty of people who argue that this sort of like active fear of clowns that exist today is born in the seventies from like the Stephen King novels. And that's all these other parts, right, that's really deep, you know. I I want to say, I want to say shout out to Bozo. I love Bozo. Bozo.

I used to watch Bozo every morning before school, and when it was time for the Grand Prize Game, that's when I knew it was time to go catch the school. But yeah, no, not the grand prize game, the Grand March.

So after the Grand Prize Game, which is which we just called Bozo buckets, right, which is throwing a ball into a bucket, then there's the Grand March, which is the closing parade where Bozo and all his friends march around the TV set and all the kids who've been in the audience get in the parade and they march around. And it's so funny to me because I feel like a lot of people like, obviously everybody knows Krusty the clown, right, but Krusty is Bozo, right. It's like the idea of

like the kids in the audience. I think a lot of people don't know that that is a Chicago thing. It was w g N. It was nationally syndicated and as you said, it ran all this time. So I love Bozo and Bozo buck It's this game of like standing behind the line and trying to throw a ball into a bucket. Going back to my time as a teacher, this was also something we would do it every field day, at every like a birthday party. It would be like, where,

you know, what games are we going to play? We're gonna play tug of war, We're gonna play kickball, We're gonna play you know, sixteen in softball, and we're gonna do Bozo buckets. We got you gotta do Bozo buckets. And and then the other thing I want to say about Bozo is that I was in the audience of the Bozo Show, and I was in kindergarten and we got to go sit My mom knew a guy, who knew a guy, and we got to sit in the audience and watch the Bozo Show, did you? I did

not make a batch in the grand prize game. It was a Halloween show, and so I was wearing a Halloween costumer. I was back Girl, and which was a pair of footie pajamas that my mother had sowed a yellow Batman logo onto. It was great, and a Zoro mask and had a Zoro mask. That was my costume. Was like the pajamas, a mask and a Batman logo because you know, the Tim Burton Batman had just come out like two years prior. I was killing the game. Yeah,

I was riding away. I was Backgirl for like four years. I love that. I'm not mad at that. That's beautiful. So I got to meet Bozo, and I don't remember anything from the show other than the grand march at the end, and I remember that my mom tried to tell Boso like who their mutual friend was, and she was trying to talk to him while the show was happening,

and I was embarrassed by that. Som No, she was trying to be like Boso, you know, like you meant, you know, like when people are trying to tell you, Oh Langston, you know, I know. I went to you. You don't know me, but you know your cousin is at work. He ain't trying to process law on a camera is rolling like so I remember being like kind of embarrassed by that, and that was that's that's the main thing I remember from the show. But it was it was iconic. It's an iconic moment in my childhood.

And I have a lot of love Proboso extremely iconic show, especially I think for Chicago kids who had a TV to watch in the morning before they had to get on a bus or school, and I think there it's a fascinating turn of clowns where in nineteen sixty clowns

are cute and suddenly make this transformation. Now there are researchers who say that the bad clown mythology actually goes all the way back to ancient Greece, that like they're they're used to be, and that these ancient Grecian clown people actually influenced like the court jesters and the harlequin

characters that followed years later. And they even point to in the fifteen hundreds the conception of Punch the clown puppet and Judy exactly who used to beat his his lady Judy over the head with a stick, so much so that that was his whole name. He was named after what he did, what he did to the woman that he spent No, I think I don't think punches making it through the me to movement. Punch is a bad clown. We're gonna have an infographic on Instagram after

the show Good Clowns and Bad Clowns. R Kelly, Bad Punch, bad clown, good good clown. Crusty. Crusty is in between. Krusty has proves that there's truly no borders in life. That's tire. We can we can shout that sec right, Wow, that's crazy. This is where I think it gets even more interesting because you started to talk about how your students were still actively sort of living in this mythology even years after and how did they get it? Where

did they year from? Well, it's it's an interesting because I don't know if you remember this, but in there was there became like this nationwide resurgence of yes, yes, people all over the country, really Chicago being a place where it was happening a lot in in partly because of that homy the clown sort of legend. People dressed up as creepy clown ounce and go stand in the woods and parking lots, sometimes driving cars and threatening people

or at least making people massively. I totally forgot about that. I mean partially because, like, you know, a lot else was happening. Sure, wait, that wasn't the biggest issue of people. I forgot about that, you know what. A lot of that. So I've never seen or read it, and so I always like, I obviously know penny Wise the character. I've always like a little bit like it's always a little bit above my head when people. And then I also

links and kind of tell you the real secret. I actually really like clowns, Like I really I really like clowns. To stop you right there, that's how they get That's how they get you. I really like clowns, and so I think that like whenever people are like, oh, clowns are scary clowns, and I'm always like, yeah, but I really actually really like clowns. I think clowns are fun and funny, and I until you know, when they it's good.

They shut down Wringling Brothers because they had those elephants living in like New York apartments and whatnot, like Facebook that that's not good. But I used to love to go see the clowns, and I love the Universal Circus and I love I just think clowns are funny. I don't know, I'm just like a kind of a loser. So you see a creepy clown, one of these resurged creepy clowns standing somewhere, and you're not haunted. This doesn't Oh no, I mean those plounds are intentionally very frightening.

But I think that, like the I think that it's a little sad in our society much. I think I agree with Cleo here, you know, our man's Cleo that, like, I think it's a little sad that it used to be. I think it used to be that like clowns, most people were like clowns good, and then a minority of people were like I have a clown phobia, where I'm I really have a thing with clowns, which was okay, fine,

people have all type of phobias, I haven't. I have an aunt who is definitely I'm not even kidding with this, very serious, like she has a deep phobia of paper clips, which is like a like and if you ask her about it. She says, it's like the way that the way they are shaped is very disturbing to her. And when I was a kid, I used to think it was really fun to torment her about this, and then as an adult, I realized this was like a literal, very real phobia. So people have all types of phobias.

And it used to be that it was like most people were like, clowns are good, but some people were like, oh, clowns, I have a clown phobia. Now I feel like the idea that clowns are creepy or bad is more like the default in our pop culture. And when a lot of people think about our talk about clowns, now that's like where they go to Now. Granted I don't like go to a lot of children's birthday parties, and so maybe there's a corner of the world where um clowns are still a okay, But I think it's like I

think he's really taking a hit. Yeah, I don't know that. I it's certainly no adults in my life, and we're both at an age where like we have friends and family who have children and are like raising full families, and right, I never see a picture of like here's my kid's second birthday. I got them the clown. Yeah

that I don't think that that culture exists anymore. And I think part of that might come from like this constant fear that we have about like bringing strange adults around you, right, which is going to be after COVID even more of a thing. Yeah, like literally nobody that isn't tested and blood related it is probably ever going to meet a child. But but but people still go to Santa, People still take kids, and they put their kids on a stranger's lap, and which maybe they like pictures.

Are kids crossed traumatized by the experience. I was thinking about that the other day. I was like, y'all, really getting these viral photos off your kid is like scarred fight No, I think I think like clowning is it's a hundreds you know, hundreds of years old. That's an art form, and I think it is actually really sad.

I think that clowns need a resuscitated campaign. I think that people need to be reminded of the good clowns, not the homies, and you know the many hard working clowns all across this world who are really just trying to bring lighthearted spirit, although can I tell you a bad clown story? Okay, So a few years ago, so my niece, she was probably like maybe three years old, and my mom was like, let's go to the Universal Circus, right, and which is really fun. You gotta go every couple

of years. It's wild. It's like it's as much a party as it is as it's ridiculous. It's a it's a circus in a different type of way. Right, So we go to the We go to the circus, and my niece is like, I want to take a picture with the clown and I'm like, okay, now if you were I don't know the last time you've been to the Universal Circus. Really, a lot of the clowns are essentially bucket boys with like a wig on a lot of the clowns like they're just beause we gotta translate something, okay,

bucket boys, okay boys to the listeners with that. So a bucket boy in Chicago is a young person, almost always a boy, young man who is on a corner and who is raising money by performing like drumming on buckets. And it's a lot of them are super super good and super talented, and it's really hard and they drew do this drumming really fast, and they get money for doing that. But like, I guess what I'm saying is

a lot of the clowns of the Universal Circus. They're basically like they look like kind of like around away boys, and they can dance, and they have the bare minimum makeup and they have a wig on. So so those clowns are cool. My niece was like, I was like, okay, which clown, Let's go take a picture. And then she's like that one and she points to the most I'll send you a picture of this after the summer. The most grimiest, scariest, pervious, sketchiest looking clown I have ever

seen in my life. And he wasn't one of the young dancer. He was just I was actually like, is this just a dude who's terrifying, super scary? And I was like, what about a different clown? She's like, no, that out and so then so I go down and I was like, sir, can we take a picture with you? He's like absolutely, So my niece looks like me, right, She's like, she looks like she could be my daughter.

And so I'm holding her on my hip and we take this selfie and he leans all into me unnecessarily, and then he looks at my niece and he goes, tell your mommy, I'm gonna be your new daddy. Jesus, Okay, we're gonna Can I go now. It was so terrified, and I was like, and she didn't really hear, you know, she he said it to me, but he was looking at her obviously he was talking to me. I was like, my worst fears about this clown were absolutely confirmed. And the thing I can't I can't tell you how much

I hope that that was Cleo the clown. I hope this links and leave him out of this. But it was so crazy because like, as we were walking down there, I was like, if you are prejudiced against this clown, like you are judging him just because you know his particular makeup doesn't look as good as you know. He's

just out here trying to make a living. And then in our fourth second interaction, he was like, how can I maximize the creepy predatory nature of this if we take it a picture, baby girl, let's talk, Let's do it. Let's get this get done. Okay, let's get on with it. Get on so um. But I still I still maintain, I still maintain my positive clowns. I think it's beautiful and I think it's it's impressive given this, how little good news is coming out from clowns. I'll hit you

with a little bit more research on this. But apparently after the two thousand sixteen resurgence, a number of like media outlets then decided that the year later they would like preemptively write a bunch of articles warming people about the possibility of the Killer Clowns showing back up in

various places. So much though, but the following year someone actually gets murdered because they're doing the killer clown ship pretending to be an evil clown and somebody in New Jersey he just stabs the ship out of him in like self defense from what possibly could be like a mortal threat. See here's my thing. I have a rule in life. I don't do anything where if I die in the process of doing it, my parents are going to have to be embarrassed like my death for the

rest of your life. This is a rule that I live by. When I'm about to do some people like if you want to go you know, I'm like, if I get killed, and people say to my mother for the next you know whatever, her natural lifespan is right a decade, she got decades ago, knock out right prayers up. Oh my god, your daughter. Oh that's so sad. What happened? Oh, she was dressed as a clown at a gas station.

It hillside your jersey, and she got sad because she thought it was funny to run up on somebody trying to make a character. I just thought it was funny to try to make, you know, viral videos on the internet. I tried really hard not to put myself in that situation, to embarrass, to bring shame to my family. Al I p that person though. That's that's it's very sad, And there are there are a couple other incidents where violence sort of takes transpires because of these kinds of situations.

But it made me think how much of this is rooted in sort of like the response to Homie So hear me, I think that there's a possibility that a bunch of kids grew up like us, hearing this legend of Homie the Clown, particularly white children, are hearing this legend of Homie the Clown in their own community and that's necessarily feeling the threat that black kids felt in the way that because it's not as scary when you truly aren't out walking the street having to get yourself

to and from a place rependently. And so then they grow up and they go, you know, it would be funny if I was Homie the Clown, if I and then they go out and dress up as the thing and become the haunting thing that was sort of born

from our our own brains. If that, if you yo, that is so deep and so real because the thing is like the other very serious backdrop of it for us is that you know, when you're a black kid, you also really do know that you could get kidnapped and nope, nothing, nobody is like you won't get found, right, And so like there's there's stories and the news about black kids that really do go missing. And you are not going to be on the cover of USA today.

You are not going to be You ain't even getting on the milk big boy, you got milk money, We're just gone. And and so it's really like and like you said, also, if you're a latch key kid during this time, if you're just a kid who has to be in your neighborhood, you also know that there really are scary people that you actually do have to navigate on a daily basis, that you really have to learn

those skills. And so it's really not funny as a kid, right, And I totally and it your theory, Like it plays so well to me because there's so many other things like that. I have a colleague who's a sociologist in Washington, and he writes about this is the phenomenon of living the wire. So he writes about like white people in d C who will move to certain neighborhoods a d C and they'll tell him like, oh yeah, like somebody

got shot on my block this week. But there they say it in this like kind of hushed tone of excitement, right, whereas black residents are like, I'm actually very afraid of violence. And so I think that that's that's just like so deep.

It also reminds me of being at the protests and like the way like certain white people will run up on police and just be like yeah, and it's like, okay, buddy, all right, I'm not trying to do to death, right, this still got a gun, like and so yeah, that's so real to me though, it's like literally putting on a costume of something that for us is like a mortal fear that's deep. Yeah, it's happy and it's sad, but it also good. If that's the person that gets stabbed,

I'm okay with it, I'll make peace. Well, I'm still I still hope that some clowns are listening to this and take my advice that we need a pro clown movement in this country. And it's for clowns to to take back, take back, take back your culture. You deserve it. Take back your culture, you you idiots. And also, don't walk around in public with the makeup on. Maybe just show up at the place and then get dressed. But you know that's even worse. You have to show up

as the clown at the party. You can't show up and be like, can I at least use your watching? Hey I'm James. Can I get into bad or worse? You're changing in the van? That's you know what. Maybe clowns are a thing of the past. Yeah, maybe it's just a thing that used to be and it's no more. Well, you you heard it here first, you had first, we were rooting for you. Now we're saying, your job is

the world. It's a cold world. All right, We're gonna say one more break, We'll be back with more, eing more. My mama told me that we're not gonna let Joe Biden and Kamala Harris cut America's meat. That's that on that, that's that on that. Yeah, we're back here kind America's meat. It was like when Mike Pence was like going places and trying to reassure Americans that, you know, whenever you hear Mike Pence talk, I'm like, I have no idea who that is, because he don't be talking his own

He's got his own little weird melisse. So you know what I heard this podcast where they said that when Mike Pence was they were trying to convince forty five to pick Mike Pence as a VP. Yeah, he was like no because he has too many pets, like somehow like Trump thought it was like very low class that a person would have like multiple you know, my friends, has like a family, you know, and he's like a kind of like I guess, like a pretty normal Indiana human,

you know, yeah, except for the electrocuting gay people. I said the normal Indiana, human Indiana. I'm sorry to the state of Indiana, but you know what do you have to own? Y'all have to own your situation from Chicago. I hear people say bass about where I'm from all day every day. The Indiana people, you just have to take it. I'm sorry. Yeah, I think that's fair. You'll get no judgment over here. All right, let's play a game. This is a fun game that I like to call

white ugly. You're disgusting, I'm gonna kill you. Give me two white lines. It's a fun game in which I'm going to introduce to you a a widely believed white conspiracy theory, one that was spreading in the white community. And what I would love for you to do, eve is unpacked where you think this conspiracy come from? And more importantly, why do you think the white man believes in it? Would be here? From other? Fucker's up to

I'm so here for this. Here we go. This is a fun one and it it's actually somewhat new to me, although it makes sense how this would happen. But there were arguments back during UH and you'll remember this that the ice Bucket challenged say was in fact really a Satanic ritual. Oh God, that this was a mass trick to get a bunch of people to follow through with Satanic ritual and basically all like basically welcomed the devil back to the earth. Did I miss a step? Two?

There is there? It's like it's that one. Not really, it was basically it was like a basically like a move towards homage, really towards like human sacrifice that us all participating in it. It was a Santanic ritual that would like merge us with the devil. And of course it makes perfect sense. Anyway, I question for you, why do you think the Whites believe in this one? Oh? I already know. Okay. The reason is because so, first

of all, ice bucket challenge ridiculous. I hope you. I mean it was this on my head because I was doing a cross room puzzle yesterday where the answer was a l S and like disease helped by the white ice bucket challenge. So literally, I twenty four hours ago I thought about the ice bucket challenge for this time in years. Okay, here's what the ice bucket challenge is really about. There is a thing where when you live

a life of privilege and comfort. You want to bring unnecessary and bizarre torment, physical torment into your life to experience a thrill, right to feel something anything, right, And so I think that like a lot of white suburban people were dumping ice all over their bodies as a way of like feeling something after like basically deadening their senses and their empathy for human suffering in the rest of their lives and not having everyday risks, right, the

fear of death that I you know, that we all fear like every time we go outside. So now the thing about feeling something is like there's a kind of puritanical route to white American culture that wants people to you know, that goes back to literally the Puritans and earliest you know, folks that consider themselves settlers of this country that were actually you know, engaging in violent settler and their religious practice is also about like deadening the senses, right.

And so the idea is if you feel too much, that that is inherently devilish. Is really just about like this, there's this idea that to feel anything is devilish, right, that the idea of feeling emotion or sensation right, like related to sex, related to joy, related to anything that

that's like hedonistic or devilish. And so I think that it is the puritanical origins of white American culture that makes people susceptible to the idea that dumping ice all over your skin and the thrill that it presents is somehow satanic in nature's psychoanalysis of that old Oh man, you just hit something I that was great. I'll say this, You hit a few things that I that really make a lot of sense for me. Number one, just the

instinct of the ice bucket challenge. Like I think the original conception was somebody saying that this was the closest you could get to the feeling of a ls of life. See, I don't even know, because there's no None of these people wanted to even talk about that. And that's what to your point, that's what makes it so complicated, right, is that it's conceived with like empathy in mind, and then a bunch of people skirt the empathy. They removed

the pictures of the people suffering from the disease. They don't ever really even connect some of the links to remind people to pay for the ship or help pay for the ship. They just are pouring buckets of vice on themselves to numb the feelings, and in doing so, they are quote unquote doing or rather the argument would be a satanic ritual because everybody is wincing and feeling something. Yeah, it's shocking, and you feel thrilled, if you feel anxiety,

you feel anticipation. All those things are like very forbidden feeling. Yeah, very devilish and satanic feelings through this worldview. And it's also like anytime you say I'm doing this to quote unquote bring awareness or something, that's how you know what you're doing is face. If your all plan is bring awareness, you need a plan. Yeah you we're aware. You were aware? Right, Wow, I forgot about that. This is beautiful. You did a You did a beautiful job and this was a great episode.

Could you tell the kind people at home where they can find you and what cool stuff you've got going on? Why? Sure? Thank you so much. So you can find me on Instagram at eve dot you and E W I N G on Instagram. I am still technically on Twitter, but I don't really be honor like that. But my Twitter name is Viewing and I go by the name of Wikipedia Brown, which some people think is my government name? Funny people? Not smart? Not smart people. Um, And I have my next book that's coming out. I have a

book coming out in July. It's a book for kids. So if you want to read something to your kids that doesn't involve clowns, you can check out my book for children called Maya in the Robot, which is coming out in July. And you can read my Marvel comic books not it And you won't see me on the street because it's COVID times and I'm staying in my crib, so hell yeah, read these books. She's great. This was a great time. And as always, follow me at Langston Kerman.

And please, if you want to send us stuff, you can send it to my mama pot at gmail dot com. I would love to hear all of your thoughts, your nonsense, your drops, whatever the funk you can send me. I ain't got nothing else going on, so send it to me, all right, Get the funk out of here by step my f the oastal players, Ohostly money versions, many turkey stuff. You know. I can't tell me nothing. My lo