Gravity Will Get You Smiling

​A clown is a poet and also an orangutan. I first started being a clown back in the ancient times, forty-odd years ago when we came to Berkeley.

​Some doctors at The Oakland Children’s Hospital knocked on my door and wanted me to go and cheer up kids. I wasn’t sure, but someone handed me a red rubber nose and I was invisible. I’ve never taken it off.

​I’m the guy that ties balloons to the barbed wire. I’ve been arrested as a clown with my giant shoes on. They chased me down in this ravine, and to climb up I had to do the herringbone. I was arrested as the Easter Bunny at The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. There were a bunch of cops there and they did not want to be photographed busting a bunny. I was walking directly towards the lab and also had a life-sized human foot draped across me on a chain. All of a sudden one of the cops screamed, “Bust the bunny!”

​It was then that I whipped out my “Get out of jail free” card, laminated. Everyone’s got a monopoly set. Go and laminate the card and use it any time you get pulled over. You must get it laminated; there’s something about lamination that really impresses the police. I’ve been pulled over for stuff from time to time, and that laminated card always brings a smile to their face.

​One time I was flying into Chicago to do a benefit for The Chicago 8. I was wearing a World War I jump suit and an aviator hat with a duck beak that squeaked. These cops dove on my ass. They wanted to see some ID, and the only thing I had was a picture of me in the San Francisco Chronicle dressed as a hamburger. It caused the cops to crack up. They wanted to take me downtown, not to arrest me, but to show me to the other cops. I got them to relent and they let me off in front of this practical joke store.

​I went in and bought a three-foot plastic banana. I blew it up and started walking across Chicago. These cops came up and asked, “What are you doing?” I answered, “I’m walking my banana.” They didn’t want to talk anymore after that; they just drove off.

​Laughter is the valve on the pressure cooker of life. Harpo Marx used to say, “If all else fails, stand on your head.” I maintain that if you stand on your head, gravity will get you smiling.