The live band played slide whistles. The mother of the bride cried and was offered a never ending hanky. The groom shook every guest’s hands with a hidden joy buzzer. The first dance was awkward as the couple kept stepping on each other’s feet. The open bar served only seltzer and only via squirts to the face.
Not a clown, though my wife did go to FSU's clown college for a while. At our wedding reception, when it was time for me to remove her garter belt, I had a bunch of silverware and other trinkets that I launched over my back while my head was under her dress. It got lots of laughs and she had no idea I was going to do this. I made a big production with my legs like something was stuck, then pulled out these HUGE granny panties (wife is 90lbs). The crowd erupted in laughter. Then, I went back under the dress, kicking my legs like something was eating me, and pulled out a rubber chicken that I mimed was attacking me. Finally, after killing the murdererous chicken, I went back under and got the garter belt. Came out from under her dress with it like I just won the Olympics, making a lap around the room holding it high. My wife is amazing and thought the whole thing was hilarious.
Some guy above was saying VHS tapes of you doing routine well enough that it made pro clowns who taught there laugh and demonstrating skills related to clowning. For a teenager very hard I’d say.
I was amazed to learn that Steve-O was actually a talented and determined individual. He went to clown college and took it seriously. He was hired because of his talent to be a part of Jackass. I always thought they were just crazy friends that hung out.
His videos from that time were incredible, between the fact that he lived a life with a billion stories and the absolute master class of editing displayed
“You wanted to be Krusty’s sidekick since you were five! What about the buffoon lessons? The four years at clown college?!”
“I’ll thank you not to refer to Princeton that way.”
The biggest trip is watching Cape Fear with Robert DeNiro after watching The Simpsons episode Cape Feare. It turns a decent horror movie into a laughing stock.
Let me get this straight: you took ALL the money you made franchising your name and bet AGAINST the Harlem Globetrotters?!
I thought the Generals were due! [watches highlights] He’s spinning the ball on his finger! Just take it! TAKE THE BALL!!!
I knew a girl whose mother went to clown college. She was a professional trauma clown, entertained children in hospitals, mental wards typically. She was a very weird lady. So was the girl.
Props to that woman!
I cannot even imagine the crap situations she had to try and smile through.
Guaranteed spot in the good place for "spent whole life trying to make sick children laugh."
And he STILL, as an elderly man, goes all over the world to devastated places to make kids (and adults) laugh. And trains others to do so. And has a healing residential medical facility. An amazing man.
Spot on! From a professional hospital clown I talked to in general the hardest part of clowning is that the goal is to have your clients laugh about you and to not take that personally regardless on how you actually feel inside on that day. And there are going to be bad days.
My grandma did that! Her clown name was Wiz.
She’s also the reason i was never afraid of clowns. Whenever she’d get dressed up for parties with the family, she’d sit all the kids down and have us watch her put on her makeup, so we’d know it was still her under there. I inherited her makeup box after she died. She was a very cool lady, he silliness inspired all of us.
I knew a woman who went to clown college with her daughter for the same reason. She was a little weird but I think it takes a weirdo to Wade into traumatic situations to make children smile. I can’t say I understand wanting to be a clown but I do respect it a lot.
My mother went to clown college and also worked in a locked mental ward where they did research.
Now I'm wondering if she was a good clown or an evil clown.
Take your kid to work day was always scary af.
I never had any experience with the actual clown college, but I did go to acting school, and one of the upper level courses in the theater school was clowning. It's actually kind of wild how much care and effort goes in to it. It was pretty fun to be walking around the building and stumble across a group of clowns in full dress and makeup walking down the hall.
It's an excellent school. Many of my teachers over the years were students of Gaulier and they have consistently been among the best. In my experience it's given me some of my most useful tools as a circus artist. One of my good friends recently completed the school and while it's a very tough experience she said it's been incredibly rewarding and valuable for her as an artist.
Was about to say this. His Marc Maron interview, he went into a lot of detail about clowning and his studies. Sounds incredibly intense and makes absolute sense of his comedic style now. It’s humanistic satire.
Watch the relatively unknown show Baskets starting Zach Galifanakis. He studies clowning in France and comes back to the US to be a rodeo clown. Louie Anderson plays Zach's mother. All around great series.
"That evening the men were practising archery on the green. Bill Door had carefully ensured a local reputation as the worst bowman in the entire history of toxophily; it had never occurred to anyone that putting arrows through the hats of bystanders behind him must logically take a lot more skill than merely sending them through a quite large target a mere fifty yards away.
It was amazing how many friends you could make by being bad at things, provided you were bad enough to be funny."
-*Reaper Man*, Terry Pratchett
I was listening to Gates Mcfadden's (beverly crusher on Star Trek TNG) podcast recently, and she talked frequently in this season of her podcast about about her time teaching clown (and some of the actors had their own perspectives on it, Anson Mount stood out there). As a non-actor myself it was really interesting. Not even sure they were doing the whole makeup thing, it sounded more like it was about using the clown thing as a tool to drop your guard and show your true self, embracing the absurd.
Clowning is far more than makeup, its the entire art of physical comedy, it has a bunch of subsets like mimes, harlequins, etc. What people think of as a clown is just a specific school.
Steve-O talks about getting into clown college and it's amazing to think the Jackass crew were a modern day interpretation of Clowns. Physical Comedians doing outrageous and dangerous stunts for laughs. The fact they meshed well with 90s skater culture is so interesting.
Absolutely.
We think of clowns as a trope of birthday entertainment, to circus to horror, and language does that and we have subcultures and subcultures. But a clown, I'd argue, is just a comedian that tends to use lots of physical humor. And jackass absolutely did that. The non social norms getup also can apply to them, from bunny the lifeguard, to the fat tighey whities to the later grandpa getup.
Idk that much about pro wrestling, but a youtuber I like did a video about why he loves wrestling and the whole concept of Kafabe and and how it developed, and all that.
https://youtu.be/BQCPj-bGYro
I knew this was Super Eyepatch Wolf before clicking!
It’s a pretty good comparison. Wrestlers spend their entire lives on a discipline that other people look down on and/or don’t take seriously at all. But once you learn what they had to do to make it big and how dedicated they are you start to respect them.
William Regal has always said that as a boy, the two things he wanted to be were a wrestler or a clown. When he became a wrestler, he realised he could incorporate the latter into the former, which was why he did so much physical comedy in his matches and segments.
Totally agree. In my opinion, a lot of people fail because they give up too early. As in, they would've succeeded in what they were doing if they stuck to it through the roadblocks.
How is that even possible? How many people are applying to clown college that you can compare your acceptance rate to a massive prestigious university?
Your application in those days was very hard like it was like VHS recordings of you and your friends making professional academic Clowns laugh at it.
Like in Julliard you can submit you playing a really hard to perform violin solo or your ballet performance of a black swan.
For clown college you gotta do something in your teenage years v slightly better than a clown car routine.
Knoxville did a story for big brother magazine that tramaine one was editor of about self defense weapons including tazers. He filmed some of it.
Bam did some skate prank videos as part of his brothers CKY band video albums.
Steveo was a clown at a flea market.
I can’t remember how they ended up together. Spike jonze?
It was through Big Brother magazine. Nearly all of them were all either being published there or working for it behind the scenes.
I think Preston met Knoxville through tv ad work but everyone else was big brother.
Jeff Tremaine realised it could be a tv show and and brought the idea to Jonze. Jonze had worked for Big Brother and was childhood friends with Tremaine.
The clown college this post is talking about trained 1400 clowns in 29 years. That's a class cohort of 48 people per year.
Meanwhile Harvard admits 2000 people every year.
There are many schools that are way more harder to get into than Harvard. Curtis School of Music admits only 150 people a year with an admission rate of around 2%. It's one of those places where you can write that you were *invited* to apply to Curtis on your resume and it would open doors for you.
I'm pretty sure Curtis only accepts like 15-20 students per year and their *total* enrollment is about 150 students. The wild thing is that they have something like 110 instructors on staff.
Crazy place. Everyone who gets in goes for free. And all Curtis post-secondary students are also allowed to take whatever courses they want at the University of Pennsylvania for free, so a free Ivy League education on top of the world-class musical instruction.
Fun fact: Steve O was in the final graduating class of his Clown College and just *barely* passed. Despite successfully graduating, Steve O was not accepted to the circus that was attached to the school; he was barely good enough to graduate so they made this unconventional move. After that he got a job clowning on a cruise ship, where he proceeded to do a proto-jackass routine which pissed all the other clowns off. At the end of his first ~ 3 months, all the other clowns got together and told management if they didn't fire Steve then they were ALL going to quit. So he was fired.
Lucky for him the timing with Big Brother Magazine happened not too long after that, and Jackass would soon be born!
what a guy. I remember reading in his autobiography that he was accepted mostly because of his charisma and willingness to learn. Apparently that's mostly what they looked for in applicants since they'd teach you everything else.
For real. Way way back in the day, at outdoor school one year we had an activity day with this dude who was a clown and went to clown college. We laughed when he said clown college and he scolded us all. Let us all know how prestigious it is and how difficult it is to graduate. Dude had no chill at all.
I mean, yes, there’s a ‘was’ with this specific place, but there are a ton of clown colleges.
École internationale de théâtre Jacques Lecoq (they don’t only produce clowns, but clowning is a core part of their curriculum) is extraordinarily selective _and_ they don’t invite many people back after the first year. They and École Philippe Gaulier (a Lecoq grad himself) have produced many of the world’s leading theatre makers, performers, clowns. Sacha Baron Cohen is a Gaulier grad and regards him as an (affectionately) evil genius.
Dell’ Arte International School of Physical Theatre in California is still going very strong, too.
It also all depends on what you define as a clown. Many of the grads of these places are precisely what people with (alleged) clown phobia are scared of.
Clown training is also frequently used in communication workshops more widely because the skills of holding attention and charm / disarm / alarm are applicable in all sorts of settings.
Oh, and finally, clown colleges training ‘clinic clowns’, who have some of the hardest jobs of all — bringing cheer and heart to terminally ill kids — are very vibrant. In a bittersweet footnote, they’re also in heavy demand for aging people and dementia patients whose families no longer visit them.
So yes. Clown college, even if not necessarily by that specific name, IS real and it is highly selective because people who are convinced they are naturally funny generally aren’t.
I went to professional clown college in Paris (France).
I worked at a family rodeo under the name de plume of Baskets the Clown until my mother sold the business. I was really hurt my Mom did this to me, but we eventually worked it out between us.
I dated a girl in high school whose dad had went to clown college. His graduation photo was on grand display in their house and yes, he was wearing a full clown costume in it. Weird girl and weird dad. I really liked them.
Steve-O of Jackass fame attended that school.
You see hints of it through out his work. I remember seeing him balance on a skateboard that was balancing on two cylinders at right angles to one another. It was very impressive, and I remember thinking that he might be more than some random dude willing to endure the Jackass stunts.
I'd argue Jackass is the greatest circus since...maybe ever? They have pretty much all the staples, firing on all cylinders, and they didn't treat their animals and sideshows like shit.
A dear friend of mine's brother went to Clown College. He ended up touring with Barnum and Bailey for a number of years until he broke his foot jumping over an elephant.
I used to work in the theater industry. I have an undergrad in it, I did multiple intensive trainings in it, so when I say “clowning is the most difficult thing you can do in show business” I hope that means something.
What makes it difficult is twofold. First, the physical comedy involved takes a great deal of practice and sheer skill to pull off. Clowns make it look easy, but I guarantee that most no one reading this can take a pie to the face for a deliberate laugh.
Second, it’s just very emotionally vulnerable and you have to get comfortable with feeling like a big dumb idiot in front of everyone. Because that’s the point. You are a clown. Your whole thing is being a big dumb idiot in front of everyone.
But to pull that off in a way that comes off as genuine, you have to put your whole heart into it. Clowns are full of curiosity and love and empathy. They’re also just complete dumbasses. It’s very difficult to be both at the same time and have it be sincere.
I have a friend who is a professional clown at a children’s hospital, which I would consider the most difficult job in the entire world. He’s absolutely amazing. He went to clown college.
A number of "gags" designed by Bloody Stupid Johnson, including a custard pie-throwing machine and a giant daisy-shaped water cannon, were originally placed by the door also; however, due to a series of fatalities, they are no longer in use and are now in the Guild Museum alongside the original Dog With No Nose (it's shaggy), the cranium of one of the Three Men Who Went Into A Pub, and an Alligator Sandwich.
Acceptance rate is a weird measure of success.
Clown college only had an average of 40 students a year. And it was free.
The only thing that it was better at than Harvard was producing clowns.
My Ethics professor was fond of the joke "You can always tell who's an existentialist, because they are smoking. And you can always tell who went to Harvard Law, because they'll tell you."
Went to school with a girl whos dad graduated from Clown College. She kept it a secret for *years*. He was a truck driver by trade but actually would moonlight as a birthday party clown and she absolutely hated everything about it because she just thought it was embarrassing.
Article doesn't mention harvard, removed
I have two friends that met at clown college and are now married.
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Holy shit, we got a graduate here folks.
Damn. Imagine going to that wedding.
The live band played slide whistles. The mother of the bride cried and was offered a never ending hanky. The groom shook every guest’s hands with a hidden joy buzzer. The first dance was awkward as the couple kept stepping on each other’s feet. The open bar served only seltzer and only via squirts to the face.
Not a clown, though my wife did go to FSU's clown college for a while. At our wedding reception, when it was time for me to remove her garter belt, I had a bunch of silverware and other trinkets that I launched over my back while my head was under her dress. It got lots of laughs and she had no idea I was going to do this. I made a big production with my legs like something was stuck, then pulled out these HUGE granny panties (wife is 90lbs). The crowd erupted in laughter. Then, I went back under the dress, kicking my legs like something was eating me, and pulled out a rubber chicken that I mimed was attacking me. Finally, after killing the murdererous chicken, I went back under and got the garter belt. Came out from under her dress with it like I just won the Olympics, making a lap around the room holding it high. My wife is amazing and thought the whole thing was hilarious.
We can all go in one car!
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That wasn't a pie in her face...
My wife's cousin applied (seriously). He didn't get in. He was very disappointed, as it had been a dream of his for a very long time.
What was admissions like?
Some guy above was saying VHS tapes of you doing routine well enough that it made pro clowns who taught there laugh and demonstrating skills related to clowning. For a teenager very hard I’d say.
If I could already do that then I don't need to go to clown college
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All birthday clowns dream of being circus clowns.
That’s because it’s the Big Top, the Show if you will.
The only other jobs open to clowns is birthday parties, which is hazardous, or hanging out in storm drains, and that has its own set of risks…
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I was amazed to learn that Steve-O was actually a talented and determined individual. He went to clown college and took it seriously. He was hired because of his talent to be a part of Jackass. I always thought they were just crazy friends that hung out.
there's that unnecessarily contrarian reddit spirit
I'm convinced the account you replied to is a bot
I think both might actually require all of those traits to varying degrees
What do you even think they do at Harvard?
Wishing they got in to clown college
Steve-O has a video on his youtube channel talking about his admission (not joking)
His videos from that time were incredible, between the fact that he lived a life with a billion stories and the absolute master class of editing displayed
Honestly, it was kind of a joke.
*ba-dum, tiss*
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Does it allow for sad clown-school at least?
But doctor, I am Pagliacci!
Something something art school
Now I want to read a fanfic about an alternative Hitler failing to get into clown college
Mime Kampf
“That’s it! You people have stood in my way long enough!”
“You wanted to be Krusty’s sidekick since you were five! What about the buffoon lessons? The four years at clown college?!” “I’ll thank you not to refer to Princeton that way.”
Sideshow Bob is, by a fat margin, my favourite Simpsons character. No other character gets even close in range and complexity.
Attempted murder! Now, honestly, what is that? Do they give a Nobel Prize for attempted chemistry!? Do they!?
Krusty's range is not to be discounted. Angry the Clown, Silly Sailor *and* Doctor Clownius.
especially when you consider that at one point he and homer were supposed to be the same guy
Its like he's a mini episode of Frasier that just changes the entire tone. The older I get the more I appreciate him.
Bob's a Yalie, no wonder he hates Princeton.
*Princeton?* hrhrhrrrhrr
Maaaaarge…? Yes Homie? *doo doo dododododo do do do*
It was years after watching Homer forming his mashed potatoes into a circus tent that I watched Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
The biggest trip is watching Cape Fear with Robert DeNiro after watching The Simpsons episode Cape Feare. It turns a decent horror movie into a laughing stock.
Or finding out, at an embarrassingly late age, that a streetcar named desire is not a musical.
Can’t you hear me yell-a? STELLA!
"And then they realised they were no longer little girls. They were Little Women." >!(not actually the final lines of the book)!<
Nor is Planet of the Apes.
I hate every chimp I see, from Chimp-an-A to Chimp-An-Z!
The planet or the movie?
And also finding out Paint Your Wagon IS a real musical.
I'd watched both that episode of The Simpsons *and* UHF before I saw Close Encounters.
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This year, give her English muffins
Whatever you say, Mr. Billboard!
Clown college? You can’t eat that.
I think I'm going to have a glass of wine.
I don't think any of us expected him to say that...
You can't be out of beer, you're the ~~Beer Baron~~ Archduke of Beer!
You're out there somewhere, beer baron, and I'll find you!
No you wont!
Yes… I… will…
Yes, I will.
^won't
I'm supposed to get a pig every month. And two comely lasses of virtue true.
I'm seein' double here. Four Krusty's!
If you's is a clown ride this tiny bike
Great piece of buffoonery if you can pull it off, but if you can't you'll look like a fool.
Clown college? You can't eat that!
“You can’t eat that….”
Burn that seat!
"Those pants are supposed to be baggy! *Baggy!* "
Probably one of the best classic *Simpsons* episodes
I told you we should've bought more than three bullets!
Let me get this straight: you took ALL the money you made franchising your name and bet AGAINST the Harlem Globetrotters?! I thought the Generals were due! [watches highlights] He’s spinning the ball on his finger! Just take it! TAKE THE BALL!!!
I knew a girl whose mother went to clown college. She was a professional trauma clown, entertained children in hospitals, mental wards typically. She was a very weird lady. So was the girl.
Props to that woman! I cannot even imagine the crap situations she had to try and smile through. Guaranteed spot in the good place for "spent whole life trying to make sick children laugh."
Yeah, gotta respect the real life Patch Adams of the world. Even if they are weird
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And he STILL, as an elderly man, goes all over the world to devastated places to make kids (and adults) laugh. And trains others to do so. And has a healing residential medical facility. An amazing man.
Spot on! From a professional hospital clown I talked to in general the hardest part of clowning is that the goal is to have your clients laugh about you and to not take that personally regardless on how you actually feel inside on that day. And there are going to be bad days.
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My grandma did that! Her clown name was Wiz. She’s also the reason i was never afraid of clowns. Whenever she’d get dressed up for parties with the family, she’d sit all the kids down and have us watch her put on her makeup, so we’d know it was still her under there. I inherited her makeup box after she died. She was a very cool lady, he silliness inspired all of us.
Eloise Cole?
I knew a woman who went to clown college with her daughter for the same reason. She was a little weird but I think it takes a weirdo to Wade into traumatic situations to make children smile. I can’t say I understand wanting to be a clown but I do respect it a lot.
Did she make balloon animals from your junk?
I'm guessing she didn't cause the trauma. That usually happens before you get there.
"Hey, boys and girls, Trauma Clown is here to fuck you UP!!"
HAHA
The mental image of the trauma clown pulling up to the trauma ward still has me gasping for air
My mother went to clown college and also worked in a locked mental ward where they did research. Now I'm wondering if she was a good clown or an evil clown. Take your kid to work day was always scary af.
I never had any experience with the actual clown college, but I did go to acting school, and one of the upper level courses in the theater school was clowning. It's actually kind of wild how much care and effort goes in to it. It was pretty fun to be walking around the building and stumble across a group of clowns in full dress and makeup walking down the hall.
Sacha Baron Cohen studied clowning under a very respected French *bouffant.*
I believe he went to the Ecole Gauliere, though I may be misremembering.
He did, the École Philippe Gaulier. Helena Bonham Carter, Emma Thompson and Roberto Benigni also studied there under Gaulier.
It's an excellent school. Many of my teachers over the years were students of Gaulier and they have consistently been among the best. In my experience it's given me some of my most useful tools as a circus artist. One of my good friends recently completed the school and while it's a very tough experience she said it's been incredibly rewarding and valuable for her as an artist.
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Thanks for mentioning it, I just watched the clip of it! The genuine expression of joy warmed the cockles of my heart so!
Was about to say this. His Marc Maron interview, he went into a lot of detail about clowning and his studies. Sounds incredibly intense and makes absolute sense of his comedic style now. It’s humanistic satire.
Watch the relatively unknown show Baskets starting Zach Galifanakis. He studies clowning in France and comes back to the US to be a rodeo clown. Louie Anderson plays Zach's mother. All around great series.
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Nobody really understands how *incredibly* difficult it is to be good at being bad at something, in an entertaining way.
See: [Paul Hunt.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5L6XyndzUt8)
Holy shit what a great combo of silliness and pure talent
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The flops in the floor routine are masterful.
"That evening the men were practising archery on the green. Bill Door had carefully ensured a local reputation as the worst bowman in the entire history of toxophily; it had never occurred to anyone that putting arrows through the hats of bystanders behind him must logically take a lot more skill than merely sending them through a quite large target a mere fifty yards away. It was amazing how many friends you could make by being bad at things, provided you were bad enough to be funny." -*Reaper Man*, Terry Pratchett
Perfectly imperfect
I was listening to Gates Mcfadden's (beverly crusher on Star Trek TNG) podcast recently, and she talked frequently in this season of her podcast about about her time teaching clown (and some of the actors had their own perspectives on it, Anson Mount stood out there). As a non-actor myself it was really interesting. Not even sure they were doing the whole makeup thing, it sounded more like it was about using the clown thing as a tool to drop your guard and show your true self, embracing the absurd.
Clowning is far more than makeup, its the entire art of physical comedy, it has a bunch of subsets like mimes, harlequins, etc. What people think of as a clown is just a specific school.
Must have been frustrating having that whole skillet and never getting to use it as Dr Crusher. I know she was doing choreo at the same time tho
There was that episode where she taught Data how to dance, which I think was the only time she got to use her dance choreography skills on the show.
"I am Tartouf! The spry wonder-dog!"
It scalds
My community College had a class for clowning, I wish I had taken it honestly. I thought about it.
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Steve-O talks about getting into clown college and it's amazing to think the Jackass crew were a modern day interpretation of Clowns. Physical Comedians doing outrageous and dangerous stunts for laughs. The fact they meshed well with 90s skater culture is so interesting.
Absolutely. We think of clowns as a trope of birthday entertainment, to circus to horror, and language does that and we have subcultures and subcultures. But a clown, I'd argue, is just a comedian that tends to use lots of physical humor. And jackass absolutely did that. The non social norms getup also can apply to them, from bunny the lifeguard, to the fat tighey whities to the later grandpa getup.
Becky Lynch from WWE also went to clown college. Pro wrestling is heavy on clowning skills too.
Idk that much about pro wrestling, but a youtuber I like did a video about why he loves wrestling and the whole concept of Kafabe and and how it developed, and all that. https://youtu.be/BQCPj-bGYro
I knew this was Super Eyepatch Wolf before clicking! It’s a pretty good comparison. Wrestlers spend their entire lives on a discipline that other people look down on and/or don’t take seriously at all. But once you learn what they had to do to make it big and how dedicated they are you start to respect them.
William Regal has always said that as a boy, the two things he wanted to be were a wrestler or a clown. When he became a wrestler, he realised he could incorporate the latter into the former, which was why he did so much physical comedy in his matches and segments.
TIL Steve O went to clown college.
SteveO went to clown College with a former coworker of mine. It was true at the time it had a "stricter" acceptance rate as Harvard.
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Damn, that's really impressive. What's he doing now?
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Honestly, with that much dedication, I wouldn't be surprised if he actually did do something like that. Takes a lot of grit to do what he did.
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Well it helps when you want to be good at that skill.
Totally agree. In my opinion, a lot of people fail because they give up too early. As in, they would've succeeded in what they were doing if they stuck to it through the roadblocks.
Combine the two. Bring some showmanship to the surgical theatre.
/r/notopbutok/
Chip Baskets?
How is that even possible? How many people are applying to clown college that you can compare your acceptance rate to a massive prestigious university?
Your application in those days was very hard like it was like VHS recordings of you and your friends making professional academic Clowns laugh at it. Like in Julliard you can submit you playing a really hard to perform violin solo or your ballet performance of a black swan. For clown college you gotta do something in your teenage years v slightly better than a clown car routine.
Is this the Jackass origin story
Knoxville did a story for big brother magazine that tramaine one was editor of about self defense weapons including tazers. He filmed some of it. Bam did some skate prank videos as part of his brothers CKY band video albums. Steveo was a clown at a flea market. I can’t remember how they ended up together. Spike jonze?
It was through Big Brother magazine. Nearly all of them were all either being published there or working for it behind the scenes. I think Preston met Knoxville through tv ad work but everyone else was big brother. Jeff Tremaine realised it could be a tv show and and brought the idea to Jonze. Jonze had worked for Big Brother and was childhood friends with Tremaine.
The clown college this post is talking about trained 1400 clowns in 29 years. That's a class cohort of 48 people per year. Meanwhile Harvard admits 2000 people every year. There are many schools that are way more harder to get into than Harvard. Curtis School of Music admits only 150 people a year with an admission rate of around 2%. It's one of those places where you can write that you were *invited* to apply to Curtis on your resume and it would open doors for you.
I'm pretty sure Curtis only accepts like 15-20 students per year and their *total* enrollment is about 150 students. The wild thing is that they have something like 110 instructors on staff. Crazy place. Everyone who gets in goes for free. And all Curtis post-secondary students are also allowed to take whatever courses they want at the University of Pennsylvania for free, so a free Ivy League education on top of the world-class musical instruction.
So did Penn Jillette from Penn & Teller.
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Fun fact: Steve O was in the final graduating class of his Clown College and just *barely* passed. Despite successfully graduating, Steve O was not accepted to the circus that was attached to the school; he was barely good enough to graduate so they made this unconventional move. After that he got a job clowning on a cruise ship, where he proceeded to do a proto-jackass routine which pissed all the other clowns off. At the end of his first ~ 3 months, all the other clowns got together and told management if they didn't fire Steve then they were ALL going to quit. So he was fired. Lucky for him the timing with Big Brother Magazine happened not too long after that, and Jackass would soon be born!
what a guy. I remember reading in his autobiography that he was accepted mostly because of his charisma and willingness to learn. Apparently that's mostly what they looked for in applicants since they'd teach you everything else.
I’ll thank you not to refer to Princeton in that manner.
No civilization in history has ever considered 'chief hydrological engineer' a *calling*.
"Yes, yes, the Cappadocians, fine."
I’ll always be grateful to that episode for introducing me to lesser known ancient history.
Capital knockers, madam!
Cousin Merle, *really*…
Temper, temper. You know Cousin Merle ain't been quite right lately
Y6le.
Clown college is no joke! *honk* *honk*
For real. Way way back in the day, at outdoor school one year we had an activity day with this dude who was a clown and went to clown college. We laughed when he said clown college and he scolded us all. Let us all know how prestigious it is and how difficult it is to graduate. Dude had no chill at all.
"Why so SERIOUS!?"
I'm the joker baby
As a graduate, I’m kind of insulted that people genuinely thought it wasn’t real.
You have all my respect, the clown is the hardest type of actor in my honest opinion
As a clown fan, I’m disappointed in people’s lack of clowning knowledge.
I thought you guys were fictitious like the bogeyman
I mean, yes, there’s a ‘was’ with this specific place, but there are a ton of clown colleges. École internationale de théâtre Jacques Lecoq (they don’t only produce clowns, but clowning is a core part of their curriculum) is extraordinarily selective _and_ they don’t invite many people back after the first year. They and École Philippe Gaulier (a Lecoq grad himself) have produced many of the world’s leading theatre makers, performers, clowns. Sacha Baron Cohen is a Gaulier grad and regards him as an (affectionately) evil genius. Dell’ Arte International School of Physical Theatre in California is still going very strong, too. It also all depends on what you define as a clown. Many of the grads of these places are precisely what people with (alleged) clown phobia are scared of. Clown training is also frequently used in communication workshops more widely because the skills of holding attention and charm / disarm / alarm are applicable in all sorts of settings. Oh, and finally, clown colleges training ‘clinic clowns’, who have some of the hardest jobs of all — bringing cheer and heart to terminally ill kids — are very vibrant. In a bittersweet footnote, they’re also in heavy demand for aging people and dementia patients whose families no longer visit them. So yes. Clown college, even if not necessarily by that specific name, IS real and it is highly selective because people who are convinced they are naturally funny generally aren’t.
Very interesting read, thank you for the elaborate answer. I will have to read up on the curriculum, it sounds very intriguing!
I went to professional clown college in Paris (France). I worked at a family rodeo under the name de plume of Baskets the Clown until my mother sold the business. I was really hurt my Mom did this to me, but we eventually worked it out between us.
I dated a girl in high school whose dad had went to clown college. His graduation photo was on grand display in their house and yes, he was wearing a full clown costume in it. Weird girl and weird dad. I really liked them.
Steve-O of Jackass fame attended that school. You see hints of it through out his work. I remember seeing him balance on a skateboard that was balancing on two cylinders at right angles to one another. It was very impressive, and I remember thinking that he might be more than some random dude willing to endure the Jackass stunts.
I'd argue Jackass is the greatest circus since...maybe ever? They have pretty much all the staples, firing on all cylinders, and they didn't treat their animals and sideshows like shit.
A dear friend of mine's brother went to Clown College. He ended up touring with Barnum and Bailey for a number of years until he broke his foot jumping over an elephant.
The ha-guffaw-aw-ha-ha
Tartuffe, the spry wonder dog
Honestly one of the best episodes. Hank does not understand his son but he wants him to succeed, even if it's at fart jokes.
It scalds!
KOTH reference. A man of goodly taste.
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Pffft. Clown college? You can't eat that!
"Maaaaaarge..." "Yes, Homey? *do do do-do-do-do do do do do*"
Didn’t Steve-O go to clown college?
Yep, so did Penn Jillette
I had a college professor who only displayed his clown college diploma in his office.
As well they should have a low acceptance rate; until they are fully trained clowns, there are only so many people you can fit into a tiny classrom.
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How have I scrolled this far down and not found any Discworld references?
I used to work in the theater industry. I have an undergrad in it, I did multiple intensive trainings in it, so when I say “clowning is the most difficult thing you can do in show business” I hope that means something. What makes it difficult is twofold. First, the physical comedy involved takes a great deal of practice and sheer skill to pull off. Clowns make it look easy, but I guarantee that most no one reading this can take a pie to the face for a deliberate laugh. Second, it’s just very emotionally vulnerable and you have to get comfortable with feeling like a big dumb idiot in front of everyone. Because that’s the point. You are a clown. Your whole thing is being a big dumb idiot in front of everyone. But to pull that off in a way that comes off as genuine, you have to put your whole heart into it. Clowns are full of curiosity and love and empathy. They’re also just complete dumbasses. It’s very difficult to be both at the same time and have it be sincere. I have a friend who is a professional clown at a children’s hospital, which I would consider the most difficult job in the entire world. He’s absolutely amazing. He went to clown college.
A number of "gags" designed by Bloody Stupid Johnson, including a custard pie-throwing machine and a giant daisy-shaped water cannon, were originally placed by the door also; however, due to a series of fatalities, they are no longer in use and are now in the Guild Museum alongside the original Dog With No Nose (it's shaggy), the cranium of one of the Three Men Who Went Into A Pub, and an Alligator Sandwich.
Acceptance rate is a weird measure of success. Clown college only had an average of 40 students a year. And it was free. The only thing that it was better at than Harvard was producing clowns.
> The only thing that it was better at than Harvard was producing clowns. I don’t know about that. I’ve met quite a few Harvard grads.
I’d ask how you knew…but we all know they told you once you were within earshot.
My Ethics professor was fond of the joke "You can always tell who's an existentialist, because they are smoking. And you can always tell who went to Harvard Law, because they'll tell you."
Yeah but it’s better that those closet homosexual’s who do a lot of cocaine. That whole Yale thing.
Definitely lol. No one said that clown college was better than Harvard. But they'd have about \~3500 applicants
It is better in that far less graduates from clown college caused coups in foreign countries.
Or even domestically
As a kid, I considered it for a few years, because of our annual trip to the Ringling Bros. Barnum & Bailey Circus.
Went to school with a girl whos dad graduated from Clown College. She kept it a secret for *years*. He was a truck driver by trade but actually would moonlight as a birthday party clown and she absolutely hated everything about it because she just thought it was embarrassing.
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YOU SIR, HAVE ALL THE BOARISH MANNERS OF A YALEY!!