We’re All Bozos On This Bus

In the esoteric literature I tend to read the idea is put forth that we create our own reality and that there is no objective world. Everything in the world exists as an extension of us and somehow relates to us personally, everything. An entertaining illustration of this is the Firesign Theater’s album, Don’t Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me The Pliers where George Leroy Tirebiter stays up all night channel surfing and every show, old movie, news report and commercial somehow relates directly to him.

I’ve recently had an interesting experience that illustrates this concept. In the past month I’ve met with three old friends that I’ve known since fourth grade. That in itself isn’t necessarily strange since it is also a year when our high school was holding a reunion but all three of these guys were drummers in my bands over the years, starting with grammar school. But that’s not the weird part. The first of my drummers was the son of TV celebrity Chucko The Birthday Clown and when his father retired he became Chucko (click here for details) and has been a circus clown his whole life. What’s a strange coincidence is that my friend called me out of the blue after not seeing each other for thirty years and we arranged to meet for dinner on the same week when I was working on an episode of the TV animated series Curious George which just happened to involve George, the monkey, visiting a clown college.

The Curious George Show is based on the old children’s book character and I last worked on the show back in 2007. It just recently started production again (as far as I knew) and it’s the first time I’ve worked on a cartoon series in several years. Each episode involves George having an adventure and this week’s episode, which I would only have to work on for one week, just happened to be about circus clowns. I showed my friend the rough animatic of the show which I’m given to show me how the show should look, and he agreed that it was quite a spooky coincidence. Then a few days ago a favorite show of mine which he had said he also watches called Weeds, which is just starting a new season, had in its season opening episode a drug dealing clown.

I’m not particularly into clowns but to have three separate instances of circus clowns brought to my attention in the space of one week is more than I can accept as simply a coincidence.




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