[Blake looks wistful.] I never hated anybody like I hated that prick.
I already miss him.
[The look of incomprehension on the kid's face is bothering him.] You never heard it?
[He puts his hooves together and leans forward earnestly.]
Okay. So.
See, there's this clown. The greatest clown there ever was. As soon as they smacked his ass they put a red nose on his face, and he's the kind of talent you don't see in a hundred years under a tent. By the time he's ten he can bullseye people with seltzer from a hundred yards, he can pie people in the face with his back turned, he can do things with balloon animals you wouldn't believe. He is fuckin' Mozart in rainbow suspenders. He goes to clown college on the Bozo Scholarship and graduates summa cum laude, nothing in the future but clear skies and party hats. And it's great, he's getting booked left and right. Birthdays, bar mitzvahs, that one circus place in Las Vegas that freaked the hell out of Hunter S. Thompson, he's everywhere his big floppy shoes can take him. But the years go by, and that's all there is. How far up is there to go? You can be the greatest clown in history and you're pulling the same county fairs as the twerp who can barely spin a bow tie. Clowns are a joke now, in not in the right way. People call him creepy. He sprays kids with his flower thing and they pitch a fit at him for getting their cell phone wet. One day he's in the middle of a kid's seventh birthday, he's just pulled off a thing with a unicycle that only three men on the face of the earth have ever done and a dozen've died trying, and he's catching his breath and smiling with that big red painted smile, and the kid just gives him this empty look and asks his mom if they can have cake now. And he says, I can't do this anymore. He walks out, packs up all his face paints and polka dot pants, he cashes in his 401k, and he goes out into the world to find what's missing inside him. Then at the same time, deep down in this jungle a thousand miles away, there's this tribe of cannibals. They're run by a chief who used to be wise and smart and fair, but one day his wife ran off with a National Geographic photographer and he's never been the same. Everything good in him turned withered up and ugly overnight. And the two sons, all they know is only one can be the boss once he's gone. Time goes by and the nastiest thing is these kids, they can remember, they know there was once a time when this bitter old bastard cared about them, especially the older one can remember and he fights so damn hard to make a scrap of that come back that he starts to hate his little brother, the one who everything comes easier to, the little clever one everybody likes. And eventually by the time they're grown up it's a cold war between them, and the whole clan's taking sides, and the old man, hell, he's just egging them on. Everything's a competition. One day they go out for a hunt to decide it once and for all, and the older one's been tracking this tiger for days, and when he finally catches up to it the second he's about to jump down from the tree and spear it an arrow goes right through it's head and it's his brother, the goddamn perfect little bastard, and he goes and does what he's been wanting to for years now and tries to spear him instead. And they fight and fight, there's broken ribs, there's broken noses, there's blood everywhere, until the older one drives the younger one off and he takes the dead tiger and hauls its skin back to town to show his father so he can finally be proud, but it turns out that while they were out hunting the old man's had a stroke, his rotted-out old heart is on its last legs, and when the son comes to show him he says for god's sake it doesn't matter, it never mattered. Everything they ever knew, it's going away. It's only a matter of time. There's phone lines tangled up in the vines now. The jungle's getting cleared for a highway two miles over that way and there's only so many surveyors you can have for supper before somebody takes notice. They're fighting tooth and claw to inherit something that won't last out the decade. So the older son, he drops the tiger skin on the floor of the hut and he walks away. He goes back out into the jungle that's been his home as long as he's been alive. And then he sees this clown. Who gives him a kind of tired, apologetic look, and asks for directions to a hotel. This guy who doesn't belong here, in his red nose and poofy wig, who just walks right in like he has a right, and suddenly the guy's full of this insane rage at luck and his village and the world that's moving on without him and it takes him over, all he can see is red, until he standing over a dead body. And he does what they're supposed to, what cannibals do, because that's tradition, and he'll stick by it to the end. And then as he's sitting there over the cookfire, he hears a rustling in the underbrush, and who comes out but his little brother. And it's over. All the hate never meant anything. He gestures to his side and that's all it takes to ask him to join him. And he sits by him, and as they share this together he looks at him, and for the first time in years instead of a rival for the tiny dead scraps of their father's love he sees the brother who taught him how to whistle through his fingers and how to climb trees, and he looks at him, and he says does this taste funny to you?
video;
I already miss him.
[The look of incomprehension on the kid's face is bothering him.] You never heard it?
[He puts his hooves together and leans forward earnestly.]
Okay. So.
See, there's this clown. The greatest clown there ever was. As soon as they smacked his ass they put a red nose on his face, and he's the kind of talent you don't see in a hundred years under a tent. By the time he's ten he can bullseye people with seltzer from a hundred yards, he can pie people in the face with his back turned, he can do things with balloon animals you wouldn't believe. He is fuckin' Mozart in rainbow suspenders. He goes to clown college on the Bozo Scholarship and graduates summa cum laude, nothing in the future but clear skies and party hats. And it's great, he's getting booked left and right. Birthdays, bar mitzvahs, that one circus place in Las Vegas that freaked the hell out of Hunter S. Thompson, he's everywhere his big floppy shoes can take him. But the years go by, and that's all there is. How far up is there to go? You can be the greatest clown in history and you're pulling the same county fairs as the twerp who can barely spin a bow tie. Clowns are a joke now, in not in the right way. People call him creepy. He sprays kids with his flower thing and they pitch a fit at him for getting their cell phone wet. One day he's in the middle of a kid's seventh birthday, he's just pulled off a thing with a unicycle that only three men on the face of the earth have ever done and a dozen've died trying, and he's catching his breath and smiling with that big red painted smile, and the kid just gives him this empty look and asks his mom if they can have cake now. And he says, I can't do this anymore. He walks out, packs up all his face paints and polka dot pants, he cashes in his 401k, and he goes out into the world to find what's missing inside him. Then at the same time, deep down in this jungle a thousand miles away, there's this tribe of cannibals. They're run by a chief who used to be wise and smart and fair, but one day his wife ran off with a National Geographic photographer and he's never been the same. Everything good in him turned withered up and ugly overnight. And the two sons, all they know is only one can be the boss once he's gone. Time goes by and the nastiest thing is these kids, they can remember, they know there was once a time when this bitter old bastard cared about them, especially the older one can remember and he fights so damn hard to make a scrap of that come back that he starts to hate his little brother, the one who everything comes easier to, the little clever one everybody likes. And eventually by the time they're grown up it's a cold war between them, and the whole clan's taking sides, and the old man, hell, he's just egging them on. Everything's a competition. One day they go out for a hunt to decide it once and for all, and the older one's been tracking this tiger for days, and when he finally catches up to it the second he's about to jump down from the tree and spear it an arrow goes right through it's head and it's his brother, the goddamn perfect little bastard, and he goes and does what he's been wanting to for years now and tries to spear him instead. And they fight and fight, there's broken ribs, there's broken noses, there's blood everywhere, until the older one drives the younger one off and he takes the dead tiger and hauls its skin back to town to show his father so he can finally be proud, but it turns out that while they were out hunting the old man's had a stroke, his rotted-out old heart is on its last legs, and when the son comes to show him he says for god's sake it doesn't matter, it never mattered. Everything they ever knew, it's going away. It's only a matter of time. There's phone lines tangled up in the vines now. The jungle's getting cleared for a highway two miles over that way and there's only so many surveyors you can have for supper before somebody takes notice. They're fighting tooth and claw to inherit something that won't last out the decade. So the older son, he drops the tiger skin on the floor of the hut and he walks away. He goes back out into the jungle that's been his home as long as he's been alive. And then he sees this clown. Who gives him a kind of tired, apologetic look, and asks for directions to a hotel. This guy who doesn't belong here, in his red nose and poofy wig, who just walks right in like he has a right, and suddenly the guy's full of this insane rage at luck and his village and the world that's moving on without him and it takes him over, all he can see is red, until he standing over a dead body. And he does what they're supposed to, what cannibals do, because that's tradition, and he'll stick by it to the end. And then as he's sitting there over the cookfire, he hears a rustling in the underbrush, and who comes out but his little brother. And it's over. All the hate never meant anything. He gestures to his side and that's all it takes to ask him to join him. And he sits by him, and as they share this together he looks at him, and for the first time in years instead of a rival for the tiny dead scraps of their father's love he sees the brother who taught him how to whistle through his fingers and how to climb trees, and he looks at him, and he says does this taste funny to you?