Speaker 1: Got Milk campaign totally created by the Dairy Farmers Association
Speaker 1: of America. Milk questionable in its health benefits? Actually right,
Speaker 1: I don't even know if it's questionable at this murder
Speaker 1: every other way. Yeah, it's really not good for you.
Speaker 1: And like most of us are lactose intolerant, you know,
Speaker 1: Like if you look back at those ads, those ads
Speaker 1: are blends because they have professional athletes then and they're like, oh,
Speaker 1: after I get my fam you ain't working out and
Speaker 1: breaking a class of girl. That is disgusting that It
Speaker 1: was literally the Gatorade commercials with not you a whole lot.
Speaker 1: Come on now, the money man turning stuff. You can't
Speaker 1: tell me. Boom boom, boom boom. There it is there,
Speaker 1: it is there. It is. Ladies and gentlemen, Welcome to
Speaker 1: another phenomenal episode of My Mama Told Me, the podcast
Speaker 1: where we unpacked we dive deep into the world of
Speaker 1: black conspiracy theories. Gonna Be finally worked to prove that
Speaker 1: Mr T did not cut his hair into that old hag.
Speaker 1: The nigga just couldn't grow hair between his sideburns and
Speaker 1: that landing strip in the middle. He had a rare
Speaker 1: form of alopecia. It's called almost pecia, and the man
Speaker 1: has been crying out for help all these years. Help
Speaker 1: Mr t everyone, please, I'm your host, length and Kerman.
Speaker 1: I'm delighted to be here. I'm doing well. I'm pretty
Speaker 1: much just eating snacks and enjoying myself while the world tarns.
Speaker 1: It's it's the way I plan to live. I'm just
Speaker 1: gonna die in the apocalypse. Real silly. That's my pa.
Speaker 1: My guest today. She's wonderful. I imagine she's gonna do
Speaker 1: a lot of cool things before the apocalypse comes, much
Speaker 1: more substantial than eating snacks and just letting things burn
Speaker 1: around her. She's amazing. She's a poet, she's a writer.
Speaker 1: She's an important thinker out in the world. You know
Speaker 1: her from her book Electric Arches. You know her from
Speaker 1: her work on Iron Her she is writing cool last
Speaker 1: comic books. She's amazing. Please give it up from my guest,
Speaker 1: Miss Eve. You is Yes, we're excited. You got on
Speaker 1: a goosebump shirt and I think that's very fitting to
Speaker 1: the conspiracy theory that you sort of brought to us.
Speaker 1: That I think is really important that it hit home.
Speaker 1: It hit home for me in a way of sweet
Speaker 1: nostalgia that that made me excited. You said, my mama
Speaker 1: told me the legend of Owe me the Clown. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: can I tell you all about it? Okay, So, first
Speaker 1: of all, I try to not be on a lot
Speaker 1: of podcasts because everybody has a podcast. Every single week,
Speaker 1: people emailed me and ask me to be in their podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm so honored and grateful that people want me on
Speaker 1: their podcast. But if I said yes to all the podcasts,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't I would literally do nothing else. So I
Speaker 1: have had like a podcast moratorium for a long time now.
Speaker 1: But when your producers reached out to me, I said, okay,
Speaker 1: number one is lengths. I'm a big fan. But more importantly,
Speaker 1: this is time for me to speak my truth because
Speaker 1: I have been trying. I have been trying for years
Speaker 1: to write about this, and nobody wants to hear me.
Speaker 1: Nobody wants to let me write about it. Various publications
Speaker 1: have reached out and said, oh, if you have any ideas,
Speaker 1: I'm like, I want to write about this time and
Speaker 1: they're like, oh, I don't know. They're you know, they're
Speaker 1: like from a living color and I'm like no, it's
Speaker 1: so much deeper than that, and so I was like,
Speaker 1: you know, Lengths and you and I are pretty much
Speaker 1: the same age. You know, we're from the same place.
Speaker 1: And so I was like, Langston is going to be
Speaker 1: here for me to speak the truth to the people
Speaker 1: finding about Homie the Clown, And I knew that you
Speaker 1: would get it, So I'm here to expose the real
Speaker 1: real I'm so happy you're doing that. We often get
Speaker 1: these conspiracy theories that are very like big and sort
Speaker 1: of like widespread, and this is one that's so Chicago
Speaker 1: specific and local. It's it's the moving on of conspiracy theories.
Speaker 1: I can't wait, So please tell the people what they
Speaker 1: need to know about Homie the Clown. All right, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna lay it on you, okay. So, first of all,
Speaker 1: when people hear Holming the Clown right away, you may
Speaker 1: be thinking of the iconic character from in Living Color,
Speaker 1: and so people are like, yeah, yeah, Holmi the Clown.
Speaker 1: But when we were kids, when we were coming up,
Speaker 1: we were told I'm saying we I'm assuming without you
Speaker 1: even confirming that you were also included in this. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: this was Chicago wide, yes fact, and specifically it's Chicago
Speaker 1: wide Black children and I think I think like children
Speaker 1: of color, because I've also heard this from like Mexican
Speaker 1: Puerto Rican homies, like kids of our vintage. We're told
Speaker 1: when we were kids, you need to watch out for
Speaker 1: a white van that is driving around Chicago and Homie
Speaker 1: the clown is in it and he's gonna kidnap you.
Speaker 1: And there's variations on this theme, so people would say,
Speaker 1: always a white van, there's a white man driving around.
Speaker 1: And Homie the clown was not Homie from the TV
Speaker 1: show Who We All Knew and Love. It was someone
Speaker 1: who had appropriated Homie's name and was using it to
Speaker 1: do nefarious deeds because a dude dress as a clown
Speaker 1: and Austin times also part of this would be that
Speaker 1: he had like a sock or a bag full of
Speaker 1: rocks or nickels, right, so he had like a sock
Speaker 1: of of rocks and he hits you on the head
Speaker 1: and he was going to take you away and kidnap you.
Speaker 1: And and and if I may murder and or molescue,
Speaker 1: you're not coming back. No, you're done, You're dune. It's
Speaker 1: over for you. And furthermore, you know, obviously in the
Speaker 1: skit in in the sketch on a living color. That
Speaker 1: homie also hits people on the head and says, Homie,
Speaker 1: don't play that, which is his iconic line. But this
Speaker 1: homie is bad, so it's like it's like a tethered
Speaker 1: like underworld version of the other homie is good and funny.
Speaker 1: This homie is bad and scary. Right, this homie keeps
Speaker 1: little children awake at night, whereas the other one. It
Speaker 1: kind of becomes a bit that you do at school, like, ha,
Speaker 1: we remember, we all saw that thing. And also the
Speaker 1: this knowledge comes to me despite the name of the podcast,
Speaker 1: this knowledge always came to me from older kids, right,
Speaker 1: and very very serious, like not older kids trying to
Speaker 1: scare you, but like older kids really trying to look
Speaker 1: out for you, right, and they want you to they
Speaker 1: really want you to not to not get got by Homie.
Speaker 1: And so then fast forward, I became a Chicaogo public
Speaker 1: school teacher. And I know you're also a former Edge cater.
Speaker 1: And when I was in Chicago, but you were in
Speaker 1: high school. So I taught at a school that was
Speaker 1: fourth grade through eighth grade, and I used to have
Speaker 1: playground duty and taught in the school is a school
Speaker 1: on the South side. You know, I taught middle school,
Speaker 1: but the school went down as low as fourth grade,
Speaker 1: and I had playground duty, you know, once a week
Speaker 1: or whatever. And playground duty you stand around and you
Speaker 1: talk to the kids that, um, they're not social. I'm
Speaker 1: trying to nice the kids, and these kids that I
Speaker 1: was right, So there, I'm into that because I'm also
Speaker 1: a dork. And so it would be the kids that like,
Speaker 1: they're not really trying to play basketball, and so they're
Speaker 1: kind of like hanging around you because to talk to you.
Speaker 1: And so I used to talk to kids in the
Speaker 1: morning and these kids I overheard them saying, you know, Missy,
Speaker 1: did you know there's a white van going around and
Speaker 1: there is a clown that is And this blew me
Speaker 1: because you know, this is like years and years later,
Speaker 1: and Homie was never talked about in like the media
Speaker 1: and except for there's one exception which I think will
Speaker 1: probably get into and to assume there's a notable exception here,
Speaker 1: I too, am a researcher, so you know I have
Speaker 1: like the researcher. You're giving me far more credit than
Speaker 1: well that's but for the most part, this isn't the
Speaker 1: thing that most people know about right, And sure, my theory,
Speaker 1: my which is real, some might call conspiratorial. But I
Speaker 1: think that there is something about Homie that only kids
Speaker 1: can like see him or access this knowledge. There's something
Speaker 1: about the culture. There's a there's a children's because Okay,
Speaker 1: as black people, we know that, like like all people,
Speaker 1: we have folklore and we have culture, right, so we
Speaker 1: have things that your parents tell you, your grandparents tell you,
Speaker 1: and it gets passed from generation to generations. But people
Speaker 1: don't talk about Homie in adulthood. So what I don't
Speaker 1: understand is how the transmission would happen between kids in
Speaker 1: the early nineties and kids in the twenties. Right, how
Speaker 1: does that happen? You're giving me a lot to unpack here,
Speaker 1: and yeah, I list and I think about it. I'm excited.
Speaker 1: Let's start at the base of what you just premised.
Speaker 1: You're suggesting that there is a almost like mythical kind
Speaker 1: of quality to Homie. That this is if he is
Speaker 1: in fact a real sort of like threat. It is
Speaker 1: not just a threat of a weird dude with a van,
Speaker 1: but has more of an it kind of quality where
Speaker 1: it's like kids are at threat and kids can see
Speaker 1: it better than adults, kids and only kids, that there's
Speaker 1: something that happens to you when you pass into adulthood
Speaker 1: that you can't see Homie anymore. And if you think
Speaker 1: about it, Bill, am I going to solve my personal problem? Right? Well,
Speaker 1: I'm thinking about it a little bit like an evil
Speaker 1: version of like Peter Pan and the Lost Boys type
Speaker 1: of situation, right, Like there's something where you get too
Speaker 1: old and you can no longer access Homie, like you
Speaker 1: can't see him anymore. And maybe Homie was never evil,
Speaker 1: Maybe he was only I don't know he maybe there's
Speaker 1: something about his relationship to kids that we can't understand
Speaker 1: as an adult, But I'm very fascinated with him. You're
Speaker 1: you're getting to something that I think is really interesting
Speaker 1: because they're uh, and I don't this feels pretty understood.
Speaker 1: But there's no empirical evidence that Homie ever took a kid, correct,
Speaker 1: Like none of us know a kid that got took
Speaker 1: by the clown, But everybody knows a kid whose cousin
Speaker 1: wrote to school of us with somebody who used to
Speaker 1: talk to their friend from down the block who got taken, right,
Speaker 1: And And that's what's so I think that, Like, I'm
Speaker 1: very interested in my work, not to like be real serious,
Speaker 1: but I'm very interested in storytelling and has stories which
Speaker 1: stories get told, you know, And so I'm so fascinated
Speaker 1: by Like, to me, this is an urban quote unquote
Speaker 1: myth because is it a myth we don't know, but
Speaker 1: if we were to call it an urban myth, it's
Speaker 1: one that only exists within the culture of children, and
Speaker 1: we could think about it. Also, I mean similar like
Speaker 1: the cousin to this, the white people's us into this
Speaker 1: is like Bloody Mary or Resurrection Mary, you know, which
Speaker 1: like is another Chicago story. And obviously Candyman the o
Speaker 1: g as well. Um, and so there's all these things
Speaker 1: that specifically kids talk about but like me. And then
Speaker 1: the other really obvious thing that we have to mention
Speaker 1: is that there was a real clown, a real clown
Speaker 1: who murdered people, and that was John Wayne gayzy right right.
Speaker 1: John Wayne Gay is a white man though, and Homie
Speaker 1: is black. John Wayne Gay was a white man, but
Speaker 1: he killed everybody. He wasn't discriminatory in any kind of way.
Speaker 1: He took a white boys, but he got everybody. I'm
Speaker 1: curious to know because based off of the premise that
Speaker 1: you set up. Are you suggesting then, that you do
Speaker 1: still believe in Homie. You just now are unable to
Speaker 1: see everything that a child is able to see in
Speaker 1: your belief, if that makes sense. I believe in Homie
Speaker 1: as much as I believe in America or any other
Speaker 1: type of mythological abstract concept. Right. So, I believe that
Speaker 1: there are things that humans invent to create sutures that
Speaker 1: buying together our culture and hold us away from the
Speaker 1: threat of chaos. And those ideas include things like nation hood,
Speaker 1: like religion, right and so, and I believe that Homie
Speaker 1: is in that category. I believe that really honestly links
Speaker 1: and Homie is the only thing between us and the
Speaker 1: total like collapse of society. He's the glue. He's the
Speaker 1: glue that holds children's culture together, and that he does
Speaker 1: with all great urban myths do, which is there's like
Speaker 1: a moralistic tale, right, which is like you have to
Speaker 1: watch out, don't stray too far, don't stand over by
Speaker 1: that fence. And the other amazing thing about the Homie
Speaker 1: myth is the white van, right, because Homie always has
Speaker 1: a white van. Now, white vans are just like everybody
Speaker 1: you know, they're in a city like Chicago, white vans
Speaker 1: are ubiquitous, right, because a white van is there somebody
Speaker 1: on their way to do whatever contract work or whatever.
Speaker 1: And it's also about like in the eighties and nineties,
Speaker 1: there's all this like stranger danger of fear. There's all
Speaker 1: this like urban inner city, urban whatever fear, you know,
Speaker 1: to that sticker that they had on every door with
Speaker 1: the guy in the big trench coat and he could
Speaker 1: only see his eyes and the hat. He looked like
Speaker 1: Dick Tracy. But he's meant to be a sign that like, hey,
Speaker 1: kidnappings happened here, kidnappings happen. You know. Scruff McGruff is
Speaker 1: on TV at this time. Like everything is about scaring
Speaker 1: kids out of the idea and scaring kids into compliance
Speaker 1: by letting them know that criminals are everywhere. Right. But
Speaker 1: the thing about Homie is also that like it's such
Speaker 1: a specifically like black and like Mexican American Chicago thing
Speaker 1: that I'm also I'm curious about, Like I've never heard
Speaker 1: white people talk about Homie the clown. You know. That's
Speaker 1: that's interesting because in the little bit of research that
Speaker 1: I did, and I'm sure yours is much more efficient,
Speaker 1: but the research that I did. There are a lot
Speaker 1: of articles that sort of came out of white spaces
Speaker 1: basically affirming the same timelines and the same opinions and
Speaker 1: fears from white kids, suburban kids, like all kinds of
Speaker 1: communities outside of our own. I do think. I mean,
Speaker 1: I was a suburban kid, right, Like I grew up
Speaker 1: in Oak Park. It wasn't as if like I was,
Speaker 1: And granted I was tapped into probably a different lexicon
Speaker 1: just being black in Chicago and my mom being you know,
Speaker 1: all over the place whatever, But like, I do think
Speaker 1: that some of this, just to your point, is allegorical
Speaker 1: there for it reaches further than even like race and culture, right, yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: And I think that it's just interesting that like real
Speaker 1: things that are empirically demonstrably real, like Damon Williams over here,
Speaker 1: John Wayne Gacy over here, that those things get synthesized
Speaker 1: into you know, this mythos of homie that I think
Speaker 1: is so fascinating. I have to ask you, actually, I've
Speaker 1: been wanting to ask you. Did you do you feel
Speaker 1: like in Oak Park where people talking about homie, it
Speaker 1: wasn't a constant fear, if that makes sense. I think
Speaker 1: that I knew I've now like grown up and known
Speaker 1: people who were like on the South Side, and they
Speaker 1: were like no, no, no. We talked about it every
Speaker 1: day like that was like a thing that we were
Speaker 1: constantly we're vigilant. And this is the other thing is
Speaker 1: that there's no phones during that, right, there's no phones.
Speaker 1: There's no spies, right, So part of this is also
Speaker 1: like you're just a kid on the playground. It's four
Speaker 1: degrees outside, right, Like you're just staying around waiting for
Speaker 1: the builders, which is like, what is there to discuss.
Speaker 1: I I truly am and maybe you'll feel this way.
Speaker 1: I truly am impressed that my parents kept me alive.
Speaker 1: Like the the amount of times that I was sort
Speaker 1: of like meant to go home by myself, do things
Speaker 1: completely alone, with no way of contacting me, no way
Speaker 1: of assuring that I made it, say, flee from point
Speaker 1: A to point B. The fact that I survived is
Speaker 1: truly a testament. Oh it's miraculous. Yeah, it's a miracle.
Speaker 1: And yeah, that's why you need a homie the clown.
Speaker 1: You need somebody to like constantly be like there is
Speaker 1: a murdering clown available to take you if you choose
Speaker 1: to not follow every sting that I'm laying out for
Speaker 1: you right, whether I'm there or not, because there's no
Speaker 1: find my iPhone, there's no GPS, there's no there's none
Speaker 1: of that, you know. And yeah, no I I got
Speaker 1: my own key to the crib when I was seven, so,
Speaker 1: you know, so starting at age seven, it was like,
Speaker 1: you know, you come and you let yourself in, you know,
Speaker 1: And we had neighbors and there's a crossing guard. My
Speaker 1: mom was always telling me that the crossing guard was
Speaker 1: watching me, you know, but it was like it was
Speaker 1: real out here, and so without Homie, where would we be? Honestly, right,
Speaker 1: we just all kidnapped from less less silly reasons. We
Speaker 1: kidnapped for. It's not a clown, it's a grown man
Speaker 1: who wanted to I guess the same, but just meaner.
Speaker 1: That's right. Let me ask you this, how many of
Speaker 1: the people in your life have you shared this theory
Speaker 1: with and do you feel like they would support this
Speaker 1: theory or are they going like Eve, you Wi don't
Speaker 1: write your books, but you're acting up you out here? Yeah?
Speaker 1: So I think you know, sometimes when you when you
Speaker 1: are a party to a difficult truth, it really hard
Speaker 1: to bear the burden, you know, within a generation to
Speaker 1: bear the heaviest, the head that wears the Homie the Clown,
Speaker 1: as they say, and I think that I have. This
Speaker 1: is not something I have widely discussed with my loved ones.
Speaker 1: I have told my husband, you know that I have
Speaker 1: these these opinions about Homie. He's intrigued, he's fascinated. And
Speaker 1: from Chicago as well. He's from New Jersey. He's from
Speaker 1: North New Jersey. So they have their own it's you know,
Speaker 1: they have their own stuff going on out there. But
Speaker 1: one person I have shared this with, who I believe
Speaker 1: it's been a guest on the podcast is our our
Speaker 1: dear mutual friend, Nathaniel Armstead Marshall Nate. And I told they,
Speaker 1: you know, I was I'm going on link since podcast
Speaker 1: and I'm going to talk about Homie the Clown. And
Speaker 1: he was delighted. He was thrilled, you know, because he
Speaker 1: shares my affinity for hyperlocal um hyper hyperlocal content. But yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, it's really hard. It's really hard when you
Speaker 1: know something that you know the rest of the world
Speaker 1: isn't ready for. Well, that's really it's really tough. I
Speaker 1: have to imagine. It's also a hard part of sharing
Speaker 1: it is that because it's so localize, there's there's something
Speaker 1: almost crazy in that, right, Like it's like when people
Speaker 1: argue about fucking hot dogs. It's like, well, these are
Speaker 1: the best ones and these ones aren't good, but you don't.
Speaker 1: You don't have a way of communicating why it is
Speaker 1: the best or what makes it different. It just is.
Speaker 1: It just is. It's just facts. Yeah, but I didn't
Speaker 1: experience it, so I don't know you're chirping over. It's
Speaker 1: like the pizza thing. The pizza the quote unquote debate
Speaker 1: really gets on my nerves because when people are like, oh,
Speaker 1: Chicago style pizza, you know, da da dada us this
Speaker 1: it is that it's like, we don't Chicagoans. We don't
Speaker 1: eat deep dish pizza on the regular, Like you don't.
Speaker 1: You're not like Friday night pizza. Right, It's like a celebration,
Speaker 1: like a cake. It's like getting a birthday cake. It's
Speaker 1: not a thing that you eat. We eat regularly, eat
Speaker 1: tavern style, a little squares of pizza. That's the true
Speaker 1: Chicago The true Chicago style pizza that you will not
Speaker 1: get as a tourist is a little square you know
Speaker 1: that that gets cut up in sixty eight squares, tiny little,
Speaker 1: very small, very small squares, and you have to eat
Speaker 1: twelve pieces to feel like you've had a meal. You know,
Speaker 1: that's real Chicago style pizza. So I'm like, we're not
Speaker 1: even entering on the same conversation. And with with with
Speaker 1: the Homie, with the matter of Homie, the damon Wayne's
Speaker 1: party makes it complicated because it's weird to say I'm
Speaker 1: going to tell you about something. You already have heard
Speaker 1: this phrase and already know what I'm talking about, but
Speaker 1: you don't, right, and then like and he hits you
Speaker 1: on the head, They're like yeah, Like David White is like, no,
Speaker 1: it's not the same. So yeah, it's very it's very complicated.
Speaker 1: And as I said, I'm very grateful to have the
Speaker 1: chance to come in the show today and finally tell
Speaker 1: America to about Homie. Let me ask you this, do
Speaker 1: you think that part of what kids are seeing is
Speaker 1: intentionally being placed there by adults? Because that's that's part
Speaker 1: of where I'm trying to make sure that I'm understanding
Speaker 1: how the allegory exists. Does that allegory merely exists because
Speaker 1: we morally are sort of checking ourselves as children or
Speaker 1: is that something that adults are intentionally sort of like
Speaker 1: planting the seed. They can't see it anymore, but a
Speaker 1: child's imagination allows them to build the world of the
Speaker 1: white van. That's such a good question. I think you
Speaker 1: are rehearsed it at home and you're a professional, you know, Okay,
Speaker 1: So I hope I'm not jumping the gun by bringing
Speaker 1: this up. But there's this article from probably and the
Speaker 1: newspaper article in Chicago, and it's about police investigating claims
Speaker 1: of homie. Have you seen this article article? So it's
Speaker 1: from the early nineties, and it's kids were going to
Speaker 1: their teachers and to their parents and saying, I saw
Speaker 1: this white van and it's Homi the clown and police
Speaker 1: the Chicago police Partment was like, we are really, we
Speaker 1: are taking this seriously. We are looking into it. We
Speaker 1: have not found any evidence, right, And I think that
Speaker 1: that moment is funny because it's a moment where like
Speaker 1: the lore of children crosses over into like actual law enforcement. Again,
Speaker 1: this is the nineties at the time everybody's scared of
Speaker 1: child abductions. They are they're trying to take this really seriously.
Speaker 1: There's like there's a what who? And then in the
Speaker 1: article they're like reports, you know, reports come from like
Speaker 1: you know, Avondale, Inglewood, Back of the Yards and roseland
Speaker 1: it's like all these flights is that are like nowhere
Speaker 1: near each other. Right, It's like but which was also
Speaker 1: fascinating because on the one hand, it's kind of a
Speaker 1: till that like, maybe this story isn't quite what it
Speaker 1: seems to be because most child deductors I don't really
Speaker 1: I'm just talking because I actually don't want to talk
Speaker 1: about but I assume the most child deductors are not
Speaker 1: driving like literally all of it. You're driving a Chevy
Speaker 1: ascro Can. You can find enough murderable kids and within
Speaker 1: the five city, but you go to one playground, you
Speaker 1: go to the one dayground where you know, the teachers
Speaker 1: aid like how don't take a slight break every two minute?
Speaker 1: You know, like you're not gonna drive from North Lawndale,
Speaker 1: you know, uh, to Pullman to find some kids. So anyway,
Speaker 1: to answer your actual question, I think that the role
Speaker 1: of like the older kid is really important here. Right.
Speaker 1: It's like the kid who is like ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, Right,
Speaker 1: you're when you're five or six, or seven. That kid
Speaker 1: is old old, right, and so that kid is also
Speaker 1: still a kid, and so they're very susceptible to like
Speaker 1: hearing and perhaps misunderstanding information. So I think that adults
Speaker 1: were saying scary things around kids, and that the older
Speaker 1: kid who was kind of like in this interwoven space
Speaker 1: between the young and the old, right between the child,
Speaker 1: childhood and adulthood, that they're the ones who kind of
Speaker 1: transposed this into the realm of myth, which they then
Speaker 1: bring as a cautionary tale dutifully to their younger brethren.
Speaker 1: I really like that. I think it hits home for
Speaker 1: me in a way that I'm the oldest of five,
Speaker 1: but I'm substantially older than all of my siblings. The
Speaker 1: next in line is ten years younger than and so
Speaker 1: in that way, I know that there's like a lot
Speaker 1: of mythology that I probably handed down to my siblings
Speaker 1: that they then took as fact, even though it was
Speaker 1: just me being a kid and having my own fears
Speaker 1: and traumas that I'm attempting to unpack or figure out
Speaker 1: in front of them. But it's like, no, I'm technically
Speaker 1: an authority figure and now I'm giving you this information
Speaker 1: and that becomes permanent in you and you pass it
Speaker 1: down maybe to a kid younger than you, and on
Speaker 1: the kindergarten, on the kindergarten playground exactly and forever, right,
Speaker 1: homie lives forever. I used to ride the bus for
Speaker 1: school to school, um, and the riding of the school
Speaker 1: bus is also where a lot of knowledge is like
Speaker 1: shared among kids because there's no supervision. There's there's one adult, right,
Speaker 1: there's one adult, and it's not he's a bus driver.
Speaker 1: So they're trained to drive a bus. They're not trained
Speaker 1: to you know, managed kids. And if they were there
Speaker 1: in this position where like physically they can't see any
Speaker 1: of the kids, right, and they're also d literally driving
Speaker 1: a bus through the streets of Chicago. And so the
Speaker 1: other thing about the school bus for me is that
Speaker 1: I went to a Magnet school and so the school
Speaker 1: I went to was very racially and socio economically diverse.
Speaker 1: But then your bus is based on where you live, right,
Speaker 1: And so the bus people is like the people who
Speaker 1: are from um, your neighborhood and there, and they know
Speaker 1: all they know your business. They know that one time,
Speaker 1: you know, your parents push you out and it was
Speaker 1: you didn't have. You know, they know everything about you
Speaker 1: and your situation and where you live and what your
Speaker 1: building lists like and what your block looks like and
Speaker 1: all of that stuff. Um and so. And it's a
Speaker 1: totally age right. It's kindergarten through eighth grade. My school
Speaker 1: bus with kindergarteners through eighth graders on one bus and so, um, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's where a lot of knowledge, knowledge gets. And I
Speaker 1: will say it sounds to me like that also is
Speaker 1: how that knowledge sort of cross pollinates with communities that
Speaker 1: otherwise would not have had it right exactly snitching to
Speaker 1: these other magnet school kids exactly take it to their
Speaker 1: neighborhood that's very far from where you live. And now
Speaker 1: we all got homie we previously maybe did not in
Speaker 1: our Even if you think about, like the way a
Speaker 1: conversation happens on the school bus is that there's two
Speaker 1: people sitting next to each other talking right or there.
Speaker 1: Maybe you're talking across the aisle to your friend and
Speaker 1: you're talking to your friend who sits next to you
Speaker 1: on the bus, and then there's other kids listening through
Speaker 1: like a leather seat, you know, and you can't see
Speaker 1: each other. Like, the more I think about it the
Speaker 1: more of an extremely bizarre social experiment. This is because
Speaker 1: and also when we were kids, it was like you
Speaker 1: did not wear a seat belt. None of us wore
Speaker 1: seat belts. They have them, well they have well, I've
Speaker 1: I've been a chaperone. I've chaperone some field tricks, and
Speaker 1: sometimes they do have the kids wearing the seat belts. Now, yes,
Speaker 1: while here, you know, but they're also those types of
Speaker 1: they're not full seat belts that go across the front
Speaker 1: of you. So it's a kind of seatbelt that might
Speaker 1: half metal and uh the buck around yeah, you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: and it might save your life, but it also might
Speaker 1: bisect your entire It was probably in half if this
Speaker 1: dude stops to slow right right anyway, all right, well
Speaker 1: we're going to take another break and no you and
Speaker 1: more of my mama told me, and we are like
Speaker 1: teenage girls when you say teenage, how are we talking? Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're back here with more reviewing, more immacing. I'm missing
Speaker 1: at R Kelly. You're wrong for that. You're wrong for that.
Speaker 1: We're still talking about Homie the Clown, the legend of
Speaker 1: Holmie of the Clown, be him real or fake, and
Speaker 1: certainly the massive effect it had on our childhood, childhoods
Speaker 1: and the childhoods that followed many You've got to be
Speaker 1: thinking about R Kelly now and the way that R
Speaker 1: Kelly is related to hold Me the Clown, And I'm
Speaker 1: so disturbed. Oh, tell me about this connection. Well, because
Speaker 1: part of it is like the thing about so we
Speaker 1: already talking about, like all myths exists as cause Mary
Speaker 1: tales against real threats, right, And so we tell ourselves,
Speaker 1: we tell kids, we tell people in our society about
Speaker 1: mythological pseudo real things too, as a controllable way to
Speaker 1: warn them about real things. And you know, R Kelly
Speaker 1: really was out here right praying on young people. And
Speaker 1: so I'm just thinking about and using schools as a
Speaker 1: space to do that. So I'm just thinking about and
Speaker 1: I'm just that's just like a bizarre connection. And I'm
Speaker 1: also thinking about the fact that R. Kelly had tried
Speaker 1: to have his laptop while he was incarcerated in said
Speaker 1: he was going to make music. Hey, come on, my man,
Speaker 1: gotta make beats. He can't, can't. And then how that
Speaker 1: that woman who was a preschool teacher posted all that
Speaker 1: money to bail him out, and just I have I'm
Speaker 1: just I never felt upset about R. Kelly. He's so exciting.
Speaker 1: I do think that at a certain point we just
Speaker 1: have to settle into the fact that like what is
Speaker 1: done is done, and hopefully now finally some version of
Speaker 1: justice gets served. But I am especially interested in what
Speaker 1: you're saying about the way that like these myths take
Speaker 1: on a form and so uh and maybe even transfer
Speaker 1: forms that in some ways, Homi the clown is R
Speaker 1: Kelly right, that like we are afraid that your kids
Speaker 1: get snatched or that you could be taken away, and
Speaker 1: instead of facing the actual monster, which is the dude
Speaker 1: that's singing on the radio, exactly mythical one that you know,
Speaker 1: has a big class, that's more controllable, right, And if anything,
Speaker 1: like the figure of somebody like Homie the Clown also
Speaker 1: lets somebody like R Kelly do what he does. Because
Speaker 1: if you think that what a child abduction looks like
Speaker 1: is that dude in a clown suit is going to
Speaker 1: jump out of a van and hit you in the
Speaker 1: head with some rocks, right, uh, then you are less
Speaker 1: And I think that that is still like when it
Speaker 1: comes to sexual assault and like kidnapping in our country,
Speaker 1: that's what a lot of people think it is. They
Speaker 1: think it's most likely to be a stranger jumping out
Speaker 1: of a bush, and those things do happen, but it's
Speaker 1: just not as common as you know, the dude who yeah,
Speaker 1: or somebody that you know very you well exact partner
Speaker 1: all of that. So anyway, I'm sorry I ruined your
Speaker 1: comedy podcast, but you did it. You brought r Kelly
Speaker 1: into it for those Now, this is my fault and
Speaker 1: I made mistakes and I got to own up to that.
Speaker 1: Let's get into this research. I think that one of
Speaker 1: the things that you've hit on all the important parts
Speaker 1: that it's around, that this sort of figure starts to
Speaker 1: emerge Homi the clown, and largely it's becomes connected to
Speaker 1: the in living color character from Damon Wain's but a
Speaker 1: much more sinister version. One of the things that I
Speaker 1: ended up finding was that there was basically a ship
Speaker 1: ton of media that in Ish that started to at
Speaker 1: least try to address the thing, and to your point,
Speaker 1: it becomes this really fascinating thing where it's similar to
Speaker 1: the way that like the FBI eventually had to just
Speaker 1: acknowledge that everybody was saying Milannia wasn't the real Milannia,
Speaker 1: you and me. They have to answer. It rises to
Speaker 1: the level that has to be addressed. It has to
Speaker 1: be addressed by the way. That is not the real Milannia.
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna that is not Milannia. Milania. That is
Speaker 1: the Milania. That's all I have to say about that.
Speaker 1: All right, well Milannia, That's what I'm voting for next time.
Speaker 1: But I will say that, like, it's that same energy,
Speaker 1: right of so many people are talking about this. It's
Speaker 1: so widespread, so many children are being haunted by it,
Speaker 1: that we're starting to see it in the media. So
Speaker 1: in on October nine, wlf L D t V ran
Speaker 1: a thirty second there you go saying that the police
Speaker 1: were treating Home with the Clown as an urban legend,
Speaker 1: which while they're denying it, they're also acknowledging, like, hey,
Speaker 1: that ship you're scared of is legit, right in that
Speaker 1: the police have to release a statement about it exactly.
Speaker 1: And then two days later, the Chicago Tribune ran an
Speaker 1: article called police take in clown sighting seriously, which is
Speaker 1: where they're yeah, they're completely disrupting the attempt the police
Speaker 1: made to be like no, this is we're not dealing
Speaker 1: with it. But then the Chicago trubing was like, I
Speaker 1: don't know, these motherfucker's look like they're taken too seriously
Speaker 1: to me. And then my beautiful hometown. On October six,
Speaker 1: Park in their Wednesday Journal ran the headline police dismissed
Speaker 1: youth sightings of deviant clown as unfounded. We read that,
Speaker 1: read that headline again, youth sightings specifically, Yeah, this is deep.
Speaker 1: This is deep. Police dismissed youth sightings of devian clowns
Speaker 1: as unfounded. What an amazing They're like, these kids, right,
Speaker 1: they don't know what they're talking about. Deviant clown, all
Speaker 1: the other clowns totally, the clowns that are on a
Speaker 1: straight and narrow very real devian clown false. Well, it's
Speaker 1: so funny that you should bring that up, because there's
Speaker 1: I read a few things that sort of talk about
Speaker 1: the fallout that came with Homy the clown for all
Speaker 1: of the other clowns around town in Chicago, clowns around town,
Speaker 1: Crown Listen. They didn't like any of the rhymes. They
Speaker 1: were very outset with what was happening. There was this
Speaker 1: there was like happening on the ground. I remember a penny.
Speaker 1: I'm in for a poun o, Canada, get it all out,
Speaker 1: just get okay, here we go. There's a quote from
Speaker 1: this dude, Cleo the Clown, who was a long time
Speaker 1: clown in Chicago, apparently very reputable, very respected, not deviant
Speaker 1: at all, at least you know by his own claims.
Speaker 1: Who knows what Cleo the Clown is doing in his
Speaker 1: personal time. But he said, I do remember kind of arise,
Speaker 1: especially in black and Latino neighborhoods, a backlash and negative response.
Speaker 1: It was discrimination against clowns in general. People crossed the
Speaker 1: street when they saw him come and called him names,
Speaker 1: including Homie. Oh no, this sad, poor Cleo. He was
Speaker 1: discriminated again. He said it was now so Cleo the
Speaker 1: Clown is a black clown. I'm black clown. That's right. Okay.
Speaker 1: So he said, this discrimination against clowns in general, This
Speaker 1: is so sad. It is sad. But then it gets
Speaker 1: it gets funnier and sadder because he goes on to say,
Speaker 1: I used to say Homie to clown carries the stock, right,
Speaker 1: I carry a Louisville slugger. I say Tom, I'm Homie's
Speaker 1: older brother. I'm I'm from the hood, homies not from
Speaker 1: the hood. How far do you think homie would get
Speaker 1: on your block before people would take that sock and
Speaker 1: beat him with it. It's like contest too much, right, Cleo?
Speaker 1: What exactly? So Cleo started out being like, it's really
Speaker 1: sad how people are scared of me because they think
Speaker 1: that that clowns beat each other, which I totally will do.
Speaker 1: If you cross me, I will beat you with a
Speaker 1: baseball bat. He was like, something way harder than right.
Speaker 1: It sounds like Cleo has a different beef, and he's
Speaker 1: not quite willing to admit it, but it sounds like
Speaker 1: Cleo's real beef is that he feels like he got
Speaker 1: swagger jacked a little bit, you know, like he feels
Speaker 1: like HOMEI as a bier and he feels like he's
Speaker 1: the O G hood clown, right, Like hood clown has
Speaker 1: been his identity and he had a sacrifice to cultivate
Speaker 1: that identity. He had to be out here at these
Speaker 1: backyard parties for years, putting in work, maybe risking being
Speaker 1: mugged from time to time, carry his Louisville slugger to
Speaker 1: protect himself. Maybe Cleo, you know, cut somebody from time
Speaker 1: to time as needed or just you know, let the
Speaker 1: threat of cutting somebody being a presence in his interactions.
Speaker 1: And he did all that work just for Damon Wayne's
Speaker 1: to ride off the tad tails of his family name,
Speaker 1: get on television and claim the mantle, put in his
Speaker 1: clown around, go to this tech clown around town. And
Speaker 1: Cleo is not He's not here for that. So I
Speaker 1: think that Cleo is at that point it was personal
Speaker 1: for I. You love what you're saying. I've always maintained that, Cleo,
Speaker 1: if you're listening, I support you. I'm sorry for what happens.
Speaker 1: I think that Chicago is a city filled with haters
Speaker 1: in the most beautiful, majestic way, that we really are
Speaker 1: a bunch of haters. And I think that Cleo is
Speaker 1: exactly that he's seeing Damon Williams get off on the
Speaker 1: character that he's fucking perfected for years, and this dude's
Speaker 1: doing it as a throwaway for a three minute sketch.
Speaker 1: He's bitter and he's angry, and then it becomes fucking violent.
Speaker 1: Now I losing work now, the work off of this.
Speaker 1: Yeah no, it's it's so real, and you know, for
Speaker 1: a Chicago and the number one insult is he ain't
Speaker 1: even from Chicago. You ain't even from here. He is
Speaker 1: out here. How he's not even you didn't even he's
Speaker 1: from you know that? Good? Whatnot like? So that's rough.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, tough look for my guy, Cleo. Cleo, if
Speaker 1: you're listening, I hope you're still clowning. Shut up, shout
Speaker 1: out to clear the clown. So one of the things
Speaker 1: that that I became particularly in turst it in and
Speaker 1: you you sort of brought this up earlier about like
Speaker 1: sort of like the weird relationship that Chicago has with clowns. Right,
Speaker 1: So first we have the Bozo Show. Bozo a Chicago original.
Speaker 1: Chicago original goes from nineteen sixty to two thousand one.
Speaker 1: If ever you wanted to watch kids throw balls in
Speaker 1: a cup in the morning, you can watch Boso and
Speaker 1: his homies do that every single morning. And so that's
Speaker 1: a a kind sweet relationship in some ways they have
Speaker 1: with clowns. But then we also have John Way Gaycy
Speaker 1: who murders thirty three young men and boys and then
Speaker 1: like basically burries right in the seventies. That's right, But
Speaker 1: one of the things that is argued in terms of
Speaker 1: I started to think about, like why a clown? And
Speaker 1: this goes to your mythology of it all. Why are
Speaker 1: we picking a clown? And where is this fear of
Speaker 1: clowns coming from? And there are plenty of people who
Speaker 1: argue that this sort of like active fear of clowns
Speaker 1: that exist today is born in the seventies from like
Speaker 1: the Stephen King novels. And that's all these other parts, right,
Speaker 1: that's really deep, you know. I I want to say,
Speaker 1: I want to say shout out to Bozo. I love Bozo. Bozo.
Speaker 1: I used to watch Bozo every morning before school, and
Speaker 1: when it was time for the Grand Prize Game, that's
Speaker 1: when I knew it was time to go catch the school.
Speaker 1: But yeah, no, not the grand prize game, the Grand March.
Speaker 1: So after the Grand Prize Game, which is which we
Speaker 1: just called Bozo buckets, right, which is throwing a ball
Speaker 1: into a bucket, then there's the Grand March, which is
Speaker 1: the closing parade where Bozo and all his friends march
Speaker 1: around the TV set and all the kids who've been
Speaker 1: in the audience get in the parade and they march around.
Speaker 1: And it's so funny to me because I feel like
Speaker 1: a lot of people like, obviously everybody knows Krusty the clown, right,
Speaker 1: but Krusty is Bozo, right. It's like the idea of
Speaker 1: like the kids in the audience. I think a lot
Speaker 1: of people don't know that that is a Chicago thing.
Speaker 1: It was w g N. It was nationally syndicated and
Speaker 1: as you said, it ran all this time. So I
Speaker 1: love Bozo and Bozo buck It's this game of like
Speaker 1: standing behind the line and trying to throw a ball
Speaker 1: into a bucket. Going back to my time as a teacher,
Speaker 1: this was also something we would do it every field day,
Speaker 1: at every like a birthday party. It would be like, where,
Speaker 1: you know, what games are we going to play? We're
Speaker 1: gonna play tug of war, We're gonna play kickball, We're
Speaker 1: gonna play you know, sixteen in softball, and we're gonna
Speaker 1: do Bozo buckets. We got you gotta do Bozo buckets.
Speaker 1: And and then the other thing I want to say
Speaker 1: about Bozo is that I was in the audience of
Speaker 1: the Bozo Show, and I was in kindergarten and we
Speaker 1: got to go sit My mom knew a guy, who
Speaker 1: knew a guy, and we got to sit in the
Speaker 1: audience and watch the Bozo Show, did you? I did
Speaker 1: not make a batch in the grand prize game. It
Speaker 1: was a Halloween show, and so I was wearing a
Speaker 1: Halloween costumer. I was back Girl, and which was a
Speaker 1: pair of footie pajamas that my mother had sowed a
Speaker 1: yellow Batman logo onto. It was great, and a Zoro
Speaker 1: mask and had a Zoro mask. That was my costume.
Speaker 1: Was like the pajamas, a mask and a Batman logo
Speaker 1: because you know, the Tim Burton Batman had just come
Speaker 1: out like two years prior. I was killing the game. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was riding away. I was Backgirl for like four years.
Speaker 1: I love that. I'm not mad at that. That's beautiful.
Speaker 1: So I got to meet Bozo, and I don't remember
Speaker 1: anything from the show other than the grand march at
Speaker 1: the end, and I remember that my mom tried to
Speaker 1: tell Boso like who their mutual friend was, and she
Speaker 1: was trying to talk to him while the show was happening,
Speaker 1: and I was embarrassed by that. Som No, she was
Speaker 1: trying to be like Boso, you know, like you meant,
Speaker 1: you know, like when people are trying to tell you,
Speaker 1: Oh Langston, you know, I know. I went to you.
Speaker 1: You don't know me, but you know your cousin is
Speaker 1: at work. He ain't trying to process law on a
Speaker 1: camera is rolling like so I remember being like kind
Speaker 1: of embarrassed by that, and that was that's that's the
Speaker 1: main thing I remember from the show. But it was
Speaker 1: it was iconic. It's an iconic moment in my childhood.
Speaker 1: And I have a lot of love Proboso extremely iconic show,
Speaker 1: especially I think for Chicago kids who had a TV
Speaker 1: to watch in the morning before they had to get
Speaker 1: on a bus or school, and I think there it's
Speaker 1: a fascinating turn of clowns where in nineteen sixty clowns
Speaker 1: are cute and suddenly make this transformation. Now there are
Speaker 1: researchers who say that the bad clown mythology actually goes
Speaker 1: all the way back to ancient Greece, that like they're
Speaker 1: they're used to be, and that these ancient Grecian clown
Speaker 1: people actually influenced like the court jesters and the harlequin
Speaker 1: characters that followed years later. And they even point to
Speaker 1: in the fifteen hundreds the conception of Punch the clown
Speaker 1: puppet and Judy exactly who used to beat his his
Speaker 1: lady Judy over the head with a stick, so much
Speaker 1: so that that was his whole name. He was named
Speaker 1: after what he did, what he did to the woman
Speaker 1: that he spent No, I think I don't think punches
Speaker 1: making it through the me to movement. Punch is a
Speaker 1: bad clown. We're gonna have an infographic on Instagram after
Speaker 1: the show Good Clowns and Bad Clowns. R Kelly, Bad Punch,
Speaker 1: bad clown, good good clown. Crusty. Crusty is in between.
Speaker 1: Krusty has proves that there's truly no borders in life.
Speaker 1: That's tire. We can we can shout that sec right, Wow,
Speaker 1: that's crazy. This is where I think it gets even
Speaker 1: more interesting because you started to talk about how your
Speaker 1: students were still actively sort of living in this mythology
Speaker 1: even years after and how did they get it? Where
Speaker 1: did they year from? Well, it's it's an interesting because
Speaker 1: I don't know if you remember this, but in there
Speaker 1: was there became like this nationwide resurgence of yes, yes,
Speaker 1: people all over the country, really Chicago being a place
Speaker 1: where it was happening a lot in in partly because
Speaker 1: of that homy the clown sort of legend. People dressed
Speaker 1: up as creepy clown ounce and go stand in the
Speaker 1: woods and parking lots, sometimes driving cars and threatening people
Speaker 1: or at least making people massively. I totally forgot about that.
Speaker 1: I mean partially because, like, you know, a lot else
Speaker 1: was happening. Sure, wait, that wasn't the biggest issue of people.
Speaker 1: I forgot about that, you know what. A lot of that.
Speaker 1: So I've never seen or read it, and so I
Speaker 1: always like, I obviously know penny Wise the character. I've
Speaker 1: always like a little bit like it's always a little
Speaker 1: bit above my head when people. And then I also
Speaker 1: links and kind of tell you the real secret. I
Speaker 1: actually really like clowns, Like I really I really like clowns.
Speaker 1: To stop you right there, that's how they get That's
Speaker 1: how they get you. I really like clowns, and so
Speaker 1: I think that like whenever people are like, oh, clowns
Speaker 1: are scary clowns, and I'm always like, yeah, but I
Speaker 1: really actually really like clowns. I think clowns are fun
Speaker 1: and funny, and I until you know, when they it's good.
Speaker 1: They shut down Wringling Brothers because they had those elephants
Speaker 1: living in like New York apartments and whatnot, like Facebook
Speaker 1: that that's not good. But I used to love to
Speaker 1: go see the clowns, and I love the Universal Circus
Speaker 1: and I love I just think clowns are funny. I
Speaker 1: don't know, I'm just like a kind of a loser.
Speaker 1: So you see a creepy clown, one of these resurged
Speaker 1: creepy clowns standing somewhere, and you're not haunted. This doesn't
Speaker 1: Oh no, I mean those plounds are intentionally very frightening.
Speaker 1: But I think that, like the I think that it's
Speaker 1: a little sad in our society much. I think I
Speaker 1: agree with Cleo here, you know, our man's Cleo that, like,
Speaker 1: I think it's a little sad that it used to be.
Speaker 1: I think it used to be that like clowns, most
Speaker 1: people were like clowns good, and then a minority of
Speaker 1: people were like I have a clown phobia, where I'm
Speaker 1: I really have a thing with clowns, which was okay, fine,
Speaker 1: people have all type of phobias, I haven't. I have
Speaker 1: an aunt who is definitely I'm not even kidding with this,
Speaker 1: very serious, like she has a deep phobia of paper clips,
Speaker 1: which is like a like and if you ask her
Speaker 1: about it. She says, it's like the way that the
Speaker 1: way they are shaped is very disturbing to her. And
Speaker 1: when I was a kid, I used to think it
Speaker 1: was really fun to torment her about this, and then
Speaker 1: as an adult, I realized this was like a literal,
Speaker 1: very real phobia. So people have all types of phobias.
Speaker 1: And it used to be that it was like most
Speaker 1: people were like, clowns are good, but some people were like, oh, clowns,
Speaker 1: I have a clown phobia. Now I feel like the
Speaker 1: idea that clowns are creepy or bad is more like
Speaker 1: the default in our pop culture. And when a lot
Speaker 1: of people think about our talk about clowns, now that's
Speaker 1: like where they go to Now. Granted I don't like
Speaker 1: go to a lot of children's birthday parties, and so
Speaker 1: maybe there's a corner of the world where um clowns
Speaker 1: are still a okay, But I think it's like I
Speaker 1: think he's really taking a hit. Yeah, I don't know that.
Speaker 1: I it's certainly no adults in my life, and we're
Speaker 1: both at an age where like we have friends and
Speaker 1: family who have children and are like raising full families,
Speaker 1: and right, I never see a picture of like here's
Speaker 1: my kid's second birthday. I got them the clown. Yeah
Speaker 1: that I don't think that that culture exists anymore. And
Speaker 1: I think part of that might come from like this
Speaker 1: constant fear that we have about like bringing strange adults
Speaker 1: around you, right, which is going to be after COVID
Speaker 1: even more of a thing. Yeah, like literally nobody that
Speaker 1: isn't tested and blood related it is probably ever going
Speaker 1: to meet a child. But but but people still go
Speaker 1: to Santa, People still take kids, and they put their
Speaker 1: kids on a stranger's lap, and which maybe they like pictures.
Speaker 1: Are kids crossed traumatized by the experience. I was thinking
Speaker 1: about that the other day. I was like, y'all, really
Speaker 1: getting these viral photos off your kid is like scarred
Speaker 1: fight No, I think I think like clowning is it's
Speaker 1: a hundreds you know, hundreds of years old. That's an
Speaker 1: art form, and I think it is actually really sad.
Speaker 1: I think that clowns need a resuscitated campaign. I think
Speaker 1: that people need to be reminded of the good clowns,
Speaker 1: not the homies, and you know the many hard working
Speaker 1: clowns all across this world who are really just trying
Speaker 1: to bring lighthearted spirit, although can I tell you a
Speaker 1: bad clown story? Okay, So a few years ago, so
Speaker 1: my niece, she was probably like maybe three years old,
Speaker 1: and my mom was like, let's go to the Universal Circus, right,
Speaker 1: and which is really fun. You gotta go every couple
Speaker 1: of years. It's wild. It's like it's as much a
Speaker 1: party as it is as it's ridiculous. It's a it's
Speaker 1: a circus in a different type of way. Right, So
Speaker 1: we go to the We go to the circus, and
Speaker 1: my niece is like, I want to take a picture
Speaker 1: with the clown and I'm like, okay, now if you
Speaker 1: were I don't know the last time you've been to
Speaker 1: the Universal Circus. Really, a lot of the clowns are
Speaker 1: essentially bucket boys with like a wig on a lot
Speaker 1: of the clowns like they're just beause we gotta translate something, okay,
Speaker 1: bucket boys, okay boys to the listeners with that. So
Speaker 1: a bucket boy in Chicago is a young person, almost
Speaker 1: always a boy, young man who is on a corner
Speaker 1: and who is raising money by performing like drumming on buckets.
Speaker 1: And it's a lot of them are super super good
Speaker 1: and super talented, and it's really hard and they drew
Speaker 1: do this drumming really fast, and they get money for
Speaker 1: doing that. But like, I guess what I'm saying is
Speaker 1: a lot of the clowns of the Universal Circus. They're
Speaker 1: basically like they look like kind of like around away boys,
Speaker 1: and they can dance, and they have the bare minimum
Speaker 1: makeup and they have a wig on. So so those
Speaker 1: clowns are cool. My niece was like, I was like, okay,
Speaker 1: which clown, Let's go take a picture. And then she's
Speaker 1: like that one and she points to the most I'll
Speaker 1: send you a picture of this after the summer. The
Speaker 1: most grimiest, scariest, pervious, sketchiest looking clown I have ever
Speaker 1: seen in my life. And he wasn't one of the
Speaker 1: young dancer. He was just I was actually like, is
Speaker 1: this just a dude who's terrifying, super scary? And I
Speaker 1: was like, what about a different clown? She's like, no,
Speaker 1: that out and so then so I go down and
Speaker 1: I was like, sir, can we take a picture with you?
Speaker 1: He's like absolutely, So my niece looks like me, right,
Speaker 1: She's like, she looks like she could be my daughter.
Speaker 1: And so I'm holding her on my hip and we
Speaker 1: take this selfie and he leans all into me unnecessarily,
Speaker 1: and then he looks at my niece and he goes,
Speaker 1: tell your mommy, I'm gonna be your new daddy. Jesus, Okay,
Speaker 1: we're gonna Can I go now. It was so terrified,
Speaker 1: and I was like, and she didn't really hear, you know,
Speaker 1: she he said it to me, but he was looking
Speaker 1: at her obviously he was talking to me. I was like,
Speaker 1: my worst fears about this clown were absolutely confirmed. And
Speaker 1: the thing I can't I can't tell you how much
Speaker 1: I hope that that was Cleo the clown. I hope
Speaker 1: this links and leave him out of this. But it
Speaker 1: was so crazy because like, as we were walking down there,
Speaker 1: I was like, if you are prejudiced against this clown,
Speaker 1: like you are judging him just because you know his
Speaker 1: particular makeup doesn't look as good as you know. He's
Speaker 1: just out here trying to make a living. And then
Speaker 1: in our fourth second interaction, he was like, how can
Speaker 1: I maximize the creepy predatory nature of this if we
Speaker 1: take it a picture, baby girl, let's talk, Let's do it.
Speaker 1: Let's get this get done. Okay, let's get on with it.
Speaker 1: Get on so um. But I still I still maintain,
Speaker 1: I still maintain my positive clowns. I think it's beautiful
Speaker 1: and I think it's it's impressive given this, how little
Speaker 1: good news is coming out from clowns. I'll hit you
Speaker 1: with a little bit more research on this. But apparently
Speaker 1: after the two thousand sixteen resurgence, a number of like
Speaker 1: media outlets then decided that the year later they would
Speaker 1: like preemptively write a bunch of articles warming people about
Speaker 1: the possibility of the Killer Clowns showing back up in
Speaker 1: various places. So much though, but the following year someone
Speaker 1: actually gets murdered because they're doing the killer clown ship
Speaker 1: pretending to be an evil clown and somebody in New
Speaker 1: Jersey he just stabs the ship out of him in
Speaker 1: like self defense from what possibly could be like a
Speaker 1: mortal threat. See here's my thing. I have a rule
Speaker 1: in life. I don't do anything where if I die
Speaker 1: in the process of doing it, my parents are going
Speaker 1: to have to be embarrassed like my death for the
Speaker 1: rest of your life. This is a rule that I
Speaker 1: live by. When I'm about to do some people like
Speaker 1: if you want to go you know, I'm like, if
Speaker 1: I get killed, and people say to my mother for
Speaker 1: the next you know whatever, her natural lifespan is right
Speaker 1: a decade, she got decades ago, knock out right prayers up.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, your daughter. Oh that's so sad. What happened? Oh,
Speaker 1: she was dressed as a clown at a gas station.
Speaker 1: It hillside your jersey, and she got sad because she
Speaker 1: thought it was funny to run up on somebody trying
Speaker 1: to make a character. I just thought it was funny
Speaker 1: to try to make, you know, viral videos on the internet.
Speaker 1: I tried really hard not to put myself in that situation,
Speaker 1: to embarrass, to bring shame to my family. Al I
Speaker 1: p that person though. That's that's it's very sad, And
Speaker 1: there are there are a couple other incidents where violence
Speaker 1: sort of takes transpires because of these kinds of situations.
Speaker 1: But it made me think how much of this is
Speaker 1: rooted in sort of like the response to Homie So
Speaker 1: hear me, I think that there's a possibility that a
Speaker 1: bunch of kids grew up like us, hearing this legend
Speaker 1: of Homie the Clown, particularly white children, are hearing this
Speaker 1: legend of Homie the Clown in their own community and
Speaker 1: that's necessarily feeling the threat that black kids felt in
Speaker 1: the way that because it's not as scary when you
Speaker 1: truly aren't out walking the street having to get yourself
Speaker 1: to and from a place rependently. And so then they
Speaker 1: grow up and they go, you know, it would be
Speaker 1: funny if I was Homie the Clown, if I and
Speaker 1: then they go out and dress up as the thing
Speaker 1: and become the haunting thing that was sort of born
Speaker 1: from our our own brains. If that, if you yo,
Speaker 1: that is so deep and so real because the thing
Speaker 1: is like the other very serious backdrop of it for
Speaker 1: us is that you know, when you're a black kid,
Speaker 1: you also really do know that you could get kidnapped
Speaker 1: and nope, nothing, nobody is like you won't get found, right,
Speaker 1: And so like there's there's stories and the news about
Speaker 1: black kids that really do go missing. And you are
Speaker 1: not going to be on the cover of USA today.
Speaker 1: You are not going to be You ain't even getting
Speaker 1: on the milk big boy, you got milk money, We're
Speaker 1: just gone. And and so it's really like and like
Speaker 1: you said, also, if you're a latch key kid during
Speaker 1: this time, if you're just a kid who has to
Speaker 1: be in your neighborhood, you also know that there really
Speaker 1: are scary people that you actually do have to navigate
Speaker 1: on a daily basis, that you really have to learn
Speaker 1: those skills. And so it's really not funny as a kid, right,
Speaker 1: And I totally and it your theory, Like it plays
Speaker 1: so well to me because there's so many other things
Speaker 1: like that. I have a colleague who's a sociologist in Washington,
Speaker 1: and he writes about this is the phenomenon of living
Speaker 1: the wire. So he writes about like white people in
Speaker 1: d C who will move to certain neighborhoods a d
Speaker 1: C and they'll tell him like, oh yeah, like somebody
Speaker 1: got shot on my block this week. But there they
Speaker 1: say it in this like kind of hushed tone of excitement, right,
Speaker 1: whereas black residents are like, I'm actually very afraid of violence.
Speaker 1: And so I think that that's that's just like so deep.
Speaker 1: It also reminds me of being at the protests and
Speaker 1: like the way like certain white people will run up
Speaker 1: on police and just be like yeah, and it's like, okay, buddy,
Speaker 1: all right, I'm not trying to do to death, right,
Speaker 1: this still got a gun, like and so yeah, that's
Speaker 1: so real to me though, it's like literally putting on
Speaker 1: a costume of something that for us is like a
Speaker 1: mortal fear that's deep. Yeah, it's happy and it's sad,
Speaker 1: but it also good. If that's the person that gets stabbed,
Speaker 1: I'm okay with it, I'll make peace. Well, I'm still
Speaker 1: I still hope that some clowns are listening to this
Speaker 1: and take my advice that we need a pro clown
Speaker 1: movement in this country. And it's for clowns to to
Speaker 1: take back, take back, take back your culture. You deserve it.
Speaker 1: Take back your culture, you you idiots. And also, don't
Speaker 1: walk around in public with the makeup on. Maybe just
Speaker 1: show up at the place and then get dressed. But
Speaker 1: you know that's even worse. You have to show up
Speaker 1: as the clown at the party. You can't show up
Speaker 1: and be like, can I at least use your watching?
Speaker 1: Hey I'm James. Can I get into bad or worse?
Speaker 1: You're changing in the van? That's you know what. Maybe
Speaker 1: clowns are a thing of the past. Yeah, maybe it's
Speaker 1: just a thing that used to be and it's no more. Well,
Speaker 1: you you heard it here first, you had first, we
Speaker 1: were rooting for you. Now we're saying, your job is
Speaker 1: the world. It's a cold world. All right, We're gonna
Speaker 1: say one more break, We'll be back with more, eing more.
Speaker 1: My mama told me that we're not gonna let Joe
Speaker 1: Biden and Kamala Harris cut America's meat. That's that on that,
Speaker 1: that's that on that. Yeah, we're back here kind America's meat.
Speaker 1: It was like when Mike Pence was like going places
Speaker 1: and trying to reassure Americans that, you know, whenever you
Speaker 1: hear Mike Pence talk, I'm like, I have no idea
Speaker 1: who that is, because he don't be talking his own
Speaker 1: He's got his own little weird melisse. So you know
Speaker 1: what I heard this podcast where they said that when
Speaker 1: Mike Pence was they were trying to convince forty five
Speaker 1: to pick Mike Pence as a VP. Yeah, he was
Speaker 1: like no because he has too many pets, like somehow
Speaker 1: like Trump thought it was like very low class that
Speaker 1: a person would have like multiple you know, my friends,
Speaker 1: has like a family, you know, and he's like a
Speaker 1: kind of like I guess, like a pretty normal Indiana human,
Speaker 1: you know, yeah, except for the electrocuting gay people. I
Speaker 1: said the normal Indiana, human Indiana. I'm sorry to the
Speaker 1: state of Indiana, but you know what do you have
Speaker 1: to own? Y'all have to own your situation from Chicago.
Speaker 1: I hear people say bass about where I'm from all
Speaker 1: day every day. The Indiana people, you just have to
Speaker 1: take it. I'm sorry. Yeah, I think that's fair. You'll
Speaker 1: get no judgment over here. All right, let's play a game.
Speaker 1: This is a fun game that I like to call
Speaker 1: white ugly. You're disgusting, I'm gonna kill you. Give me
Speaker 1: two white lines. It's a fun game in which I'm
Speaker 1: going to introduce to you a a widely believed white
Speaker 1: conspiracy theory, one that was spreading in the white community.
Speaker 1: And what I would love for you to do, eve
Speaker 1: is unpacked where you think this conspiracy come from? And
Speaker 1: more importantly, why do you think the white man believes
Speaker 1: in it? Would be here? From other? Fucker's up to
Speaker 1: I'm so here for this. Here we go. This is
Speaker 1: a fun one and it it's actually somewhat new to me,
Speaker 1: although it makes sense how this would happen. But there
Speaker 1: were arguments back during UH and you'll remember this that
Speaker 1: the ice Bucket challenged say was in fact really a
Speaker 1: Satanic ritual. Oh God, that this was a mass trick
Speaker 1: to get a bunch of people to follow through with
Speaker 1: Satanic ritual and basically all like basically welcomed the devil
Speaker 1: back to the earth. Did I miss a step? Two?
Speaker 1: There is there? It's like it's that one. Not really,
Speaker 1: it was basically it was like a basically like a
Speaker 1: move towards homage, really towards like human sacrifice that us
Speaker 1: all participating in it. It was a Santanic ritual that
Speaker 1: would like merge us with the devil. And of course
Speaker 1: it makes perfect sense. Anyway, I question for you, why
Speaker 1: do you think the Whites believe in this one? Oh?
Speaker 1: I already know. Okay. The reason is because so, first
Speaker 1: of all, ice bucket challenge ridiculous. I hope you. I
Speaker 1: mean it was this on my head because I was
Speaker 1: doing a cross room puzzle yesterday where the answer was
Speaker 1: a l S and like disease helped by the white
Speaker 1: ice bucket challenge. So literally, I twenty four hours ago
Speaker 1: I thought about the ice bucket challenge for this time
Speaker 1: in years. Okay, here's what the ice bucket challenge is
Speaker 1: really about. There is a thing where when you live
Speaker 1: a life of privilege and comfort. You want to bring
Speaker 1: unnecessary and bizarre torment, physical torment into your life to
Speaker 1: experience a thrill, right to feel something anything, right, And
Speaker 1: so I think that like a lot of white suburban
Speaker 1: people were dumping ice all over their bodies as a
Speaker 1: way of like feeling something after like basically deadening their
Speaker 1: senses and their empathy for human suffering in the rest
Speaker 1: of their lives and not having everyday risks, right, the
Speaker 1: fear of death that I you know, that we all
Speaker 1: fear like every time we go outside. So now the
Speaker 1: thing about feeling something is like there's a kind of
Speaker 1: puritanical route to white American culture that wants people to
Speaker 1: you know, that goes back to literally the Puritans and
Speaker 1: earliest you know, folks that consider themselves settlers of this
Speaker 1: country that were actually you know, engaging in violent settler
Speaker 1: and their religious practice is also about like deadening the senses, right.
Speaker 1: And so the idea is if you feel too much,
Speaker 1: that that is inherently devilish. Is really just about like this,
Speaker 1: there's this idea that to feel anything is devilish, right,
Speaker 1: that the idea of feeling emotion or sensation right, like
Speaker 1: related to sex, related to joy, related to anything that
Speaker 1: that's like hedonistic or devilish. And so I think that
Speaker 1: it is the puritanical origins of white American culture that
Speaker 1: makes people susceptible to the idea that dumping ice all
Speaker 1: over your skin and the thrill that it presents is
Speaker 1: somehow satanic in nature's psychoanalysis of that old Oh man,
Speaker 1: you just hit something I that was great. I'll say this,
Speaker 1: You hit a few things that I that really make
Speaker 1: a lot of sense for me. Number one, just the
Speaker 1: instinct of the ice bucket challenge. Like I think the
Speaker 1: original conception was somebody saying that this was the closest
Speaker 1: you could get to the feeling of a ls of life. See,
Speaker 1: I don't even know, because there's no None of these
Speaker 1: people wanted to even talk about that. And that's what
Speaker 1: to your point, that's what makes it so complicated, right,
Speaker 1: is that it's conceived with like empathy in mind, and
Speaker 1: then a bunch of people skirt the empathy. They removed
Speaker 1: the pictures of the people suffering from the disease. They
Speaker 1: don't ever really even connect some of the links to
Speaker 1: remind people to pay for the ship or help pay
Speaker 1: for the ship. They just are pouring buckets of vice
Speaker 1: on themselves to numb the feelings, and in doing so,
Speaker 1: they are quote unquote doing or rather the argument would
Speaker 1: be a satanic ritual because everybody is wincing and feeling something. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's shocking, and you feel thrilled, if you feel anxiety,
Speaker 1: you feel anticipation. All those things are like very forbidden feeling. Yeah,
Speaker 1: very devilish and satanic feelings through this worldview. And it's
Speaker 1: also like anytime you say I'm doing this to quote
Speaker 1: unquote bring awareness or something, that's how you know what
Speaker 1: you're doing is face. If your all plan is bring awareness,
Speaker 1: you need a plan. Yeah you we're aware. You were aware? Right, Wow,
Speaker 1: I forgot about that. This is beautiful. You did a
Speaker 1: You did a beautiful job and this was a great episode.
Speaker 1: Could you tell the kind people at home where they
Speaker 1: can find you and what cool stuff you've got going on? Why? Sure?
Speaker 1: Thank you so much. So you can find me on
Speaker 1: Instagram at eve dot you and E W I N
Speaker 1: G on Instagram. I am still technically on Twitter, but
Speaker 1: I don't really be honor like that. But my Twitter
Speaker 1: name is Viewing and I go by the name of
Speaker 1: Wikipedia Brown, which some people think is my government name?
Speaker 1: Funny people? Not smart? Not smart people. Um, And I
Speaker 1: have my next book that's coming out. I have a
Speaker 1: book coming out in July. It's a book for kids.
Speaker 1: So if you want to read something to your kids
Speaker 1: that doesn't involve clowns, you can check out my book
Speaker 1: for children called Maya in the Robot, which is coming
Speaker 1: out in July. And you can read my Marvel comic
Speaker 1: books not it And you won't see me on the
Speaker 1: street because it's COVID times and I'm staying in my crib,
Speaker 1: so hell yeah, read these books. She's great. This was
Speaker 1: a great time. And as always, follow me at Langston Kerman.
Speaker 1: And please, if you want to send us stuff, you
Speaker 1: can send it to my mama pot at gmail dot com.
Speaker 1: I would love to hear all of your thoughts, your nonsense,
Speaker 1: your drops, whatever the funk you can send me. I
Speaker 1: ain't got nothing else going on, so send it to me,
Speaker 1: all right, Get the funk out of here by step
Speaker 1: my f the oastal players, Ohostly money versions, many turkey stuff.
Speaker 1: You know. I can't tell me nothing. My lo