Quote:
Originally posted by Replaced_Texan
A friend of mine has clown fear.
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One of the most surreal nights of my life was at a clown-themed art exhibit in Waco. A friend's ex-girlfriend talked us in to going: "These guys are crazy, everybody there's so much fun." We took her at her word at attended a la college.
The paintings alone were disturbing enough. Clowns wearing gas masks, clowns placing tornado magnets under mobile homes. Even worse, we stood out, Due to the insularity of the Waco art community, or perhaps our youth and permagrins. I was holding together well until people tried to actually talk to us, or rather my usually articulate friend.
Waco Art Patron: So what do you think of the show?
Usually Articulate Friend: I think it's great.
WAP: Which piece do you like the best?
UAF: Uh, I think they're all pretty good.
We were invited to an afterparty and we were assured that it would be mellow. After stopping for beer at a gas station with a loudly playing police scanner, we arrived at the party. There were a couple of guys in the yard playing catch with an ax.
The artist took us on a tour of his garage studio. Instead of clowns, the motif seemed to have changed from clowns to mangled bloody baby dolls. Baby dolls impaled on antlers. Baby dolls embedded into dashboards. All viewed to the spoken word recordings of a collaborative effort called Big Snuff and a 10-year old kid in clown makeup separating the clear ice from the cloudy ice in the beer tub.
After the party ended, we toured Waco looking for a hotel. No rooms were available because of a skeet shooting tournament in town that weekend. At the outskirts of town, the parking lot of the Mardi Gras Motel seemed to be empty except for a couple of large dark Mercedes sedans. The door to one of the rooms was open and I could see several bright photograpy-style lamps set up and a couple of scantily clad women running around the room, giggling.
As I approached the front office, a man got out of one of the sedans and intercepted my path. "All the rooms are full. You need to go somewhere else," he told me. He pointed to another hotel. "Go to that one over there. It's very nice. Tell them Luis sent you, they'll give you a good deal." The other hotel had not heard of Luis, and we were forced to continue down the road.
I have not been to Waco since. But I still enjoy clowns.
