Category: UPSETTING DAY
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Twenty five years ago, a simple woman named Catherine Perkins had a simple idea: clown kids. Tiny children, dressed up and performing as clowns. You’re saying how? Fucking why? No, fuck you, why? Great questions, but slow down. I don’t want to spoil the ending of The most excellent book of how to be a clown with easy step-by-step instructions for a brilliant performance.
When your whole idea is “someone needs to show children how to dress up like clowns,” it’s tough to stretch that into a book. So Catherine didn’t. Her book, which is again called The most excellent book of how to be a clown with easy step-by-step instructions for a brilliant performance, is only 32 pages long. So to be clear, a book publisher heard the pitch “children clowns and nothing else,” from a woman with no previous writing experience, and instead of saying, “you’re insane,” they said “great.” Then she handed them a 32 page manuscript and instead of saying “okay, you’re insane,” they said, “okay, great.” When you’re this bad at spotting danger, you shouldn’t be publishing books. You should be screaming, “Oh no, not again” from a cage in an abandoned amusement park.
This is the table of contents, and I’m including it mainly to prove I wasn’t exaggerating about this ending after 32 pages. Catherine knows less about being a ten-year-old clown than Dennis Miller’s electric razor knows about Philips Norelco’s return policy, babe. She named her chapters things like THE CLOWN’S COSTUME, CONFETTI BUCKET, and YOUR CLOWN’S FACE which seem like things a child clown would hiss if you asked, “How long are you going to keep me in here? Where am I supposed to go to the bathroom!?”
The chapter, “Choosing your CLOWN” takes you through all both of the clown choices– The Auguste, The Whiteface, and this is not a book with a lot of depth. Picking the right one really depends on how much shrieking you, the child clown, want to be doing when you’re biting off someone’s fingers. Look, it may seem like I’m making cheap scary clown jokes, but I honestly think that any child in 1996 who used this to become The Whiteface grew up to be and is currently a murderer.
Take a moment and imagine a child asking, “Can you buy me a clown instruction manual along with hundreds of dollars worth of props and also dedicate dozens of hours of your time to develop my mime act?” If you don’t have the parenting skills to say no to that, it’s no wonder your shitty kid wants to be a clown. If Bill Cosby’s dad was alive he’d tell you, “Thank you. This mime child of yours makes me feel better about the monster I created, zabobba goobo.”
When your intended audience is grade schoolers very interested in mime, your book doesn’t have to be good. But I fucking dare you to come up with something less useful than this vague suggestion of zanyness. This sounds like someone trying to destroy a robot by asking it to define “silly.” It’s like a police statement given by a child after something killed his third birthday party.
To express yourself, you want to make your expressions clear and exaggerated, which means it’s only the third piece of advice and Catherine is already repeating herself. I didn’t expect this book to be good. No one could have! But I am sort of shocked how even the most remedial possible instructions on how to be a clown runs out of steam the moment your audience knows what a clown is. Is the entirety of clown school really someone saying, “Clowns must be silly and exaggerated, and thank you for coming. Mr. Boi-oing will notarize your course completion licenses on your way out.”
The chapter called “Your Clown’s FACE” delicately shows you how to put on clown makeup, which is something a Walgreens Halloween costume assumes you can handle on your own. It’s vaguely nightmarish, and it’s hard to picture this child saying anything other than a parade of snakes out of his mouth. I don’t know, there’s something about a lifeless grin, clown makeup, and eyes filled with malevolent blackness that unnerves me.
CASTING CALL: Child needed for clown book photo shoot. Models must have completely black eyes and two or more Vietnam deployments. APPLICANTS MUST PROVIDE OWN KNIFE.
Let’s look at “More Crazy FACES.” For The Cheery Clown, carefully blend the red face paint to create the illusion of a boy clown with most of his face torn off. Tell your “audience” (see Page 32) you’re looking for your face, looking for your face. One of them has it!
I’m not sure I get “Funny BODY.” Do you need a master’s degree in stupid to appreciate clowns? If I saw a child clown roll up his sleeve it wouldn’t even occur to me he’s hilariously making his arm grow. It shouldn’t occur to anyone. It’s like a magician pulling a deck of cards from his pocket and being done because he was hoping you’d never seen pockets before. But let’s say it works. Say, by some miracle, you are good enough at pulling up your sleeve that you’ve convinced someone you’re a child clown with grotesquely long arms. In that moment, they are feeling the absolute opposite of joy. If you took that weirdly long clown arm off with a machete, a 911 dispatcher would send the police to give you an emergency medal.
Catherine explains how to do nine gags like “The WEIGHT LIFTER,” which is pretending a fake dumbbell is very heavy. I feel like if any person, even one who never aspired to be a clown, closed their eyes and pictured things clowns do they would write the exact list with the exact instructions. Pretend a bucket has water in it, but it turns out to be confetti. Juggle. Hunt the boy who took your cheery face. I’m not sure what my point is. I guess it’s that the audience for this book can’t conceivably exist. You don’t know anything about clowns but desperately need a job as one? And you’re four? Living in a civilization that allows full costume amateur child clown shows? What a strong clown! What a strong clown!
Catherine’s advice on how to run face-first into a wall is pretty good. You pretend to walk through a wall, bow, run into it twice, and TA DAH!
There are little touches in the book that sort of spell out, “You were right the whole time– we are criminally insane.” Like in “A Clown’s BEST FRIEND,” where it shows you how to pretend a stiff dog leash is attached to an invisible pet, someone took the time to add a little phantom dog to the photo. What could this be other than a nod to other maniacs? This ghost dog is either the child clown book equivalent of a murder club secret handshake or nothing makes sense. It’s like when a conservative convention stage is shaped like a nazi symbol. They’re not Nazi nazis, but, you know, wink! You don’t need this explained; at this point it’s been said again and again how right wing politics are exactly like dead dogs haunting child clowns.
There are a lot of uniquely deranged elements in The most excellent book of how to be a clown with easy step-by-step instructions for a brilliant performance, but look at this index. The term “mime” appears on 12 of the book’s 30 indexable pages, and Catherine decided to list eight of them as “14, 15, 16-17, 18-19, 20, 21.” Hey, Catherine, in the non clown community we pronounce that “14-21,” you miming lunatic. This is how a child clown holds your mouth open and counts your teeth. You could have just put “mime: most pages.” Catherine, if this isn’t some kind of activation code for tiny clown operatives, fuck you. And fuck you if it isn’t, Catherine. Look at what you’ve done. Look at this goddamn abomination you’ve created. This book has been leering at me from my desk since March 8th-11th, 12th, 13, 14th-15th, the 16th, and 17th through the 18th. Also the 19th, and 20th. 21, 22, I’m the one who has your boy clown faces, Catherine. Come and get them. I’m ready for you on the 23rd. The 24th-26th. 27. The 28th through the 30th, 31st.
…
This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme, Children Love the Meat Milly, and you knew it had to be this one, Milly. You knew this was your article.
Categories
Upsetting Day: Sarazanmai š
I wrote about Revolutionary Girl Utena a while back, which as near as I can tell was about schoolgirl lesbians finding love in their shared sword wound fetish. There was a lot of talk in that show about desires and connections, so itās clear the creator, Ikuni, was trying to communicate some truth about life before his anime gland exploded and he hemorrhaged Earth Chickens and Destiny Apocalypses onto the page. But now heās trying again with a series called Sarazanmai, and it does feel like heās dialing this message in:
The show opens with a thesis statement about exploring the connections between human beings, while the art reduces those human beings to stickman caricatures with only our protagonists fully realized:
Because thatās how these characters see the world: Themselves as complex islands, and other people as simple sketches — at once vacant and so impossibly dense they could never be understood. Thatās some prime arthouse anime stuff right there, and my worry now is more that this will be boring, and less that I wonāt fully get the metaphorical significance of the Earth Chicken laying an egg that is the Nega-World.
Letās get into the setup: A social media idol accidentally takes a selfie in front of a kid breaking into a car.
He doesnāt want evidence of his crime posted on social media because this was pre-2021 before we celebrated that practice, so he chases the idol around a corner. He loses her, and instead finds the young boy from the intro praying to a strange statue. He asks where the girl went, and our hero is uncooperative, so itās time to murder him.
The statue is destroyed, and out pops the prince of the Kappa – Japanese turtle monsters that, based on context so far, must be somehow associated with desire and connection.
I donāt actually know much about Japanese mythology, and I hate being dismissive of another culture just because Iām unfamiliar with it, so I generally assume that when anime shows me eighteen straight minutes of crying mushroom schoolgirls rolling around on giant testicles, itās actually a clever and subtle reference to folklore that I just donāt have the cultural grounding to understand.
So with that in mind, I canāt tell you why the Kappa is so immediately interested in two unattended young boys, or why heās always suggestively sucking on a cucumber. I will generously assume this is not exactly what it looks like, and that the rest of this high-budget arthouse anime is not going to be based around butthole violation.
Anyway, weāve got this Ghibli-esque setup going and if weāre holding true to the myth structure, one of the boys must make a mistake in dealing with the folk character and become stuck in his world.
Sure enough, our hero accidentally calls the turtle prince a frog, and he is infuriated.
You see where this is going: The Kappa Prince flies into a rage, rockets across the courtyard, and sucks the young boy in assfirst until he is devoured, and then transforms into a cake-ass turtle exoskeleton with a traumatized child for a pilot.
I donāt know what youāre confused about. Thatās literally the plot to Evangelion, probably. You canāt fuckinā prove me wrong!
So now that our main character has been devoured, the Kappa Prince’s designated asshole-sucking organ sucks this childās asshole until his soul comes out. Again, I donāt mean to assume anything about the proud and noble nation of Japan, but this cartoon is telling me they believe the soul is stored in the butt.
Thatās fine!
No judgment!
…
Some judgment!
The soulless turtle husk that used to be a promising young man is then shat out by the Kappa Prince, whose rosy cheeks and carefully animated poop shivers will haunt me to my grave.
To my very grave.
Now, Iāve thrown a lot at you — most of it butthole-related — but I do think itās important to once again explain that this is not pornography.
Well.
This is not intended as pornography.
This is definitely weird, itās definitely niche, but itās on TV and not bottom-shelved behind a bead curtain in a gas station/video store.
I also think itās important to note the extreme trauma on that freshly rear-birthed turtleboy. This is not a fun entrance to a whimsical fantasy world for him. You just watched a therapist buy a boat in that childās eyes.
The kids are seriously just ruined by this process. Two more childrenās assouls are devoured before the Kappa Prince explains their fate:
Thereās a famous art meme about this tiny muscle in the human forearm thatās only visible when you extend your pinky – and yet Michelangelo thought to depict that in his statue of Moses.
Look at that animation above, that facial expression on the newest turtleboy. This scene is complete. It has missed nothing. You understand everything that poor kid is going through. Heās realizing that, from this moment on, all he can ever be is shit. Once youāre shit out of something, thatās it. Thereās no unbecoming shit. All you can be from that point forward is exceptionally goodā¦ for a piece of shit.
Itās such a powerful and emotive moment that you almost miss the bloodstreaks in his hair from the Kappa Princeās ruptured hemorrhoids.
Mosesā pinky muscle!
Hi, if youāre just joining me, what a weird thing to do: open an article and jump halfway down to read the worst line out of context. I donāt know why youāre doing this — maybe youāre trying to shake the Internet Cops based on a wild misunderstanding of how tracking cookies work — but I should explain that weāre still in the opening of the show.
If youāve been with me this whole time, the horrified Bastian to my long-suffering Atreyu, I know you feel like youāve gone through a Biblical amount of unease already, but youāve only just finished meeting the main characters.
See, we need those empty-assholed turtleboys because demon seals are stealing everyoneās Amazon packages and Iāve just checked: My wife is indeed making toast. I did not have a stroke. Thatās really what the show is about.
These packages represent the recipientsā deepest desires, so the devil seals are effectively robbing the human world of the ability to dream.
The Kappa Prince was going to just ask the boys for help with this problem, but itās ultimately a good thing theyāve been rendered feces because now they, too, have the ability to plunder assholes.
So they meet their enemy and sing a song about taking back desire because —
Oh right, itās also a musical. Did I forget to mention that?
I did. I totally did forget to mention that the butthole turtles sing. They sing little songs about sucking desire out of an asshole as they fight. I really should have mentioned that right off the bat. To be fair to me, I didnāt want to.
The natural enemy of the Kappa, as anyone can tell you, is a neon cardboard box giant.
You donāt exactly need a 10-minute YouTube walkthrough to find his glowing weak spot.
Presenting like an apologizing baboon does not seem like an excellent strategy when you store all of your secrets in your ass and you are facing opponents whose special ability is extracting things from asses. And indeed, it is not.
The three kappas link up into living anal beads and plunge into the cardboard box zombieās asshole, which is a sentence I sure hope nobody ever remembers I typed…
And this happens.
Iāll do you a favor and not talk about that.
Once inside, the kappas seize the ass marble that, again, I guess is what the Japanese think of as a soul? The series does explain that itās actually the organ that processes desire, but the rest of the show is about how that desire is what makes us people and without it, the boys literally lose their human forms. So yeah, the essence of mankind is located about three inches inside the rectum, and this cardboard box giantās soul is helpfully labelled āBUTT.ā
Real quick reminder that none of this consensual, if thatās our bar. I donāt even know anymore.
Now, Iāve spent years thinking in story structures and seeing in narrative arcs. If youāre anything like me, you get a few minutes into a show and you just sort of feel where it must go next.
Thatās right, one of the turtle monsters becomes stuck in the cardboard zombie giantās rupturing neon asshole and his friends, blinded by digestive spray, have to pull him out.
By working together they do manage to extract the giantās butt soul, which explodes.
Wetly.
Revealing all of the giantās closely guarded secrets. So what secrets does this naked box-headed creature have?
But… the giant was a naked guy in a stolen cardboard box helmet. His secret was that he was a naked guy in a stolen cardboard box helmet? This didnāt need three shitwarriors and a musical number about desire to solve, you could crack this mystery with functional eyeballs and no respect for knocking.
Itās not quite over yet! The Kappa Prince then demands the boys ādo the sarazanmai.ā
Which apparently translates to āthree nude young men synchronized skate while ripping a curl.ā Itās weird that Japan has one word for that concept, but I guess it might be context-sensitive. Like if Jared Fogle mentioned loving the Tuna Special, you would know just by the strategically placed serving tray that this is what he meant.
None of the boys know that this choreographed water dance will actually reveal one of their secrets by — did you guess it?
Of course you did.
Itās anal rupture again!
While I appreciate the heads up, slapping āthis is whatās about to happenā over the iconography of three teen boys absorbing each otherās anal leakage is like when people use their turn signal only as theyāre turning. Itās not a warning anymore. If anything, itās like a taunting exclamation point.
The price for delivering the anal secrets of a boxed stranger is one of your own being revealed. In this case itās that the protagonist is also the girl from the beginning. Heās been crossdressing on social media, and thatās all the shame our Kappa Prince needs for seasoning. Now the assoul marble is ready to eat.
So this is actually a story about how the soul of humanity lies in our desires, and being ashamed of and hiding those desires turns us into monsters. Only by sharing them — even if it terrifies us and opens us up to judgment — can we be true to ourselves. Thatās actually a pretty good theme to explore, and the message did come across despite the many anal ruptures in the delivery system.
Thereās a lot to take into account when you absorb a story from another culture. Japan canāt show human sexual penetration in even hardcore porn sold only to adults, but it can slap the inner workings of a boxgiantās rectal mysteries on primetime, no problem. Itās a strange mix of body acceptance and sexual denial. And buttsucking turtleboys seems like a crazy way to convey the liberation of sexual repression, but itās that lack of cultural grounding again. If I lived in a society that believed the soul was tied to desire and then shoved directly up the asshole, and there existed a folklore monster that robbed butts, it would only make sense to use that as my framework. Itās right there. Itās absurd to think youād invent a new device to talk about sex, shame, truth, and desire when somebody already went through the trouble of inventing a cucumber gobbling water-headed turtle pervert just for this purpose.
So I understand, Japan. I understand why you did this to me. I can forgive it. What I canāt forgive, what was entirely superfluous and spiteful and has made enemies of us to the bitter end, is those lovingly animated poopshivers.
That was on you. You chose to do that. And though my body will die, please understand that my hate will live forever.
ā¦
This article was brought to you by a hot tip from Ferroday, who also accepts all blame and legal responsibility for this article.
The 1980s were very worried that Satan was trying to get at their kids through nerd shit. Comic books, cartoons, and Dungeons and Dragons were all being influenced by the devil, because he needed dorks in hell to help invent the internet. The 1990s were very worried that our nerd shit would become Satan, and this mostly manifested as movies about the evils of virtual reality. None represented that extremely stupid genre as boldly and with their pants down as Lawnmower Man, a movie about your garden-variety idiot who becomes the digital devil thanks to video games. But weāre not here to talk about that.
The rogue video game scientist was played by Pierce Brosnan who brought a lot of class to this movie about evil polygons stealing our town dullards. The slow-witted Lawnmower Man was played by Jeff Fahey, and the movie handled mental disability with all the grace and subtlety one could expect of the ā90s.
Maybe thatās fine. The movie isnāt making fun of a specific birth defect or anything. They donāt specify whatās wrong with him, heās just medically dumb as shit. Exactly smart enough to mow lawns, no more, no less. Like thereās a whole breed of maintenance dummies who like the taste of paint and keep Americaās infrastructure sound. They call him the Lawnmower Man because he mows lawnsā¦ and also because he lives in a garden shed, and also because he prays to a cross he made out of lawnmowers, because this was originally a Stephen King joint and I love the man, I honestly do, but heās never met half an idea he didnāt think could be 47 pages.
But again, weāre not here to talk about that. Weāre also not going to discuss how Pierce Brosnanās character gets so excited about finding a largely unclaimed idiot that he immediately straps him into a VR rig and starts making him smarter by firing up the Make Smarter program, which consists of a brain and a hand that you use to grab Smart from the menu and drop it onto Brain.
Smart is the little red blotch. Be careful not to drag Grail onto the brain or youāll wind up with a deluded video game messiah, possibly even some kind of Cyberchrist. Oh, and obviously donāt drop Mantis on there. Honestly, I donāt know why Mantis is even still on that menu — how many fat-fingered video game scientists must be pincered in half before we move āForge Mantis Manā to its own menu?
Iām sorry. We arenāt going to talk about any of that. We certainly wonāt cover how all VR in the film has to take place while wearing a Tron suit in a spinning gyroscope.
The VR so complex it has to be run by military-grade supercomputers even though it looks like a screensaver that came pre-installed on a Ukrainian bootleg Dell.
āIs Doll computer; is just as good! You will be eight-tittied purple balloon in world of Peeps. You will love! $40. Follow to alley.ā
Oh man, we are definitely not going to talk about the bored housewife who canāt wait to molest a yard dope.
At this point enough Smart has been dropped in Lawnmower Manās brain that heās not getting lost in closets, but he is still way below the line of informed consent and the bored housewife knows this. She has to teach him how to kiss, even though sheās clearly still sticky from a threeway with Dunning and Kruger, because she thinks kissing is when one person sticks their tongue out like a curious earthworm and the other glomps it down like a hungry robin.
Then she stops sucking off his tongue like a frightened anime girl trying to placate a Decepticon and starts teaching him basic concepts:
And none of this is played for horror, or even laughs — itās supposed to show the audience how much heās grown: That he finally hit a maintenance groupieās low bar for molestation, the ultimate goal of all grass morons and pool dipshits. Hereās the very next scene!
Letās not talk about that.
I bet you think weāre going to talk about the VR sex scene, where Lawnmower Man lures his new girlfriend into the virtual world so he can segue out of real sex and into clumsy cybersex, the exact opposite dream of every computer engineer who worked on this film.
It looks like you wiggled the N64 cartridge while the intro was loading. Like something youād see rendered by a water-damaged demo 3DO in a shuttered K-Mart. It looks like you failed a puzzle in Myst, but I assure you thatās supposed to be hot. Even when they grind so hard they meld together into a sexual cyber-dragonfly…
The soaring and explorative soundtrack tells us: This right here, this is the beauty of love in the age of computers, and not an unpopular Moby video that even MTV2 wonāt play.
Then Lawnmower Man gets so carried away with gyro-boning that he turns into an Oddworld enemy and barfs stupidity on his girlfriend-
Until she turns into a bed idiot.
You know me pretty well. You almost certainly thought I was going to talk about that. I am not. Iām also not going to cover the way Lawnmower Man develops psychic powers by playing video games two hours a week:
And oh shit, I would love to talk about the time Pierce Brosnan says…
And Lawnmower Man ominously whispers…
But thereās no time to even mention it!
Because immediately afterward he turns fully evilā¦
And burns a priest in his church using the power of computer-fire.
Lawnmower Man gets revenge on his gas station bully — natural predator of the maintenance idiots — by mowing the manās brain with his VR powers, which canāt be exactly what it sounds like, surely, but it is.
It is.
Obviously Lawnmower Man turns into a floating virtual head.
Of course he kills a man by turning him into bubbles.
It almost goes without saying that he attacks a private security team with cyberbees.
If you can follow narrative arcs at all, youāve already assumed that Lawnmower Man uploads himself into the supercomputer — which actually withers his body in real life since computers drink blood — because he wants to be the internet.
Only he winds up looking like an early Aphex Twin video and moving like a puppet whose master is fighting off cyberbees.
We cannot discuss any of that stuff, itās all irrelevant, because what we absolutely have to talk about is the chimp murder.
Zoom in on a lab at night, two scientists arguing:
Theyāre fighting about the ethics of science as an engine of war. Weāre led to believe this is a super soldier training program, and then…
No, itās so much bigger than that. Theyāre deciding the fate of the best damn chimp Pierce Brosnan has ever had the pleasure of knowing. He loses the argument, of course, and we smash cut to a supercomputer using virtual reality to train a chimp for cyberwar.
Listen, what does a chimp care for graphics? Everyone knows the chimp eye canāt see above 10FPS. Why burn out your supercomputer rendering his little chimp hands when itās widely known that great apes only care for gameplay? Strap the little bastard into that K-Mart waterlogged 3DO and heāll be all-
I mean if you want to see something really funny you can make a little Tron suit for his chimp body and strap him into a gyroscope. If you wanna mess with an ape, that is like the second best way to do it. The best will always be basic sleight of hand. You ever done magic for an ape? They love that shit! Whereād the banana go? They have no idea. They donāt even have a guess. They just assume youāre a fruit wizard and they go nuts. But this is pretty hilarious, too:
You know this chimp fucking dominates at LAN parties. Little screeching son of a bitch hauling a gyroscope and an 8-ton supercomputer down the basement stairs just to dominate Devon at Quake II. Look how tiny that hitbox would be. Itās like heās always Oddjob.
But whatās the number one danger in teaching a chimp how to use a gun? Right. Itās that you taught a chimp how to use a gun.
So when the chimp picks the lock on his own cage and dresses up in his best mallsoldier gear, you know somebodyās about to get their ass shot and their face torn off.
He fires up his APE HUD, which is weirdly full of human words instead of icons of different tire swings and various states of chimp genitalia.
Then he steals a rent-a-copās gun…
And hereās the best scene in movie history.
Remember, this is not within the VR program. This lab actually designed an augmented reality helmet just for combat apes, and then left it around unattended. You canāt even blame the chimp for this. This is an elaborate suicide-by-chimp scheme gone awry. Pierce Brosnan was two offices down with a half-empty bottle of bourbon and an insurance plan that pays double if a zoo animal accidentally discharges a gun in the workplace and heās wondering whatās taking Mr. Tickles so long when heās never been more ready for the void.
Combat Ape flees for the exitā¦
But oh no, another security guard spots him, takes aim…
And itās game over, Combat Ape.
RIP, we should have known you better. This movie should have been called Combat Apeās Big Adventure, like a hyperviolent Curious George, and it should have ended with you bringing video games back home to your troop. But instead the saga of the digital murderchimp has ended in tragedy.
Then the title pops up.
THEN THE TITLE POPS UP.
All of this happened before the title! This is the cold open for Lawnmower Man! Scientists trained a warchimp to destroy robot gorillas in virtual reality so it stole a mallcopās gun and murdered its way out of the lab, only to die at the exit.
But thatās not what I wanted to talk to you about. I only want to talk to you about the combat apeās adorable little āwhatās up now, motherfucker?ā head nod before he pulls the trigger.
Isnāt that just the cutest?
Iām glad we could talk.
