OTUS THE HEAD CAT

Riverfest attendees risk encounters with clowns

Gov. Mike Beebe reacts with fear, horror and revulsion when confronted last year by a clown lobbying to be included in Riverfest.
Gov. Mike Beebe reacts with fear, horror and revulsion when confronted last year by a clown lobbying to be included in Riverfest.

Dear Otus,

We were planning to come to Riverfest this year, but I read there was some problem with clowns. I find them kinda scary. Will there be clowns?

  • Tom Bolton, Stuttgart

Dear Tom,

It was wholly a pleasure to hear from you and, yes, there will be clowns at Riverfest, which is under way as we speak.

Riverfest began Friday, and continues today through Sunday evening. There were an estimated 400 clowns on hand yesterday, all confined to the North Little Rock RV parking area.

Riverfest’s clown problem actually began in 1998 when Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey closed its Clown College in Sarasota, Fla., citing a surfeit of unemployed graduates (more than 1,500).

The old campus is now the winter home of Cirque du Soleil’s La Nouba show. La Nouba is the resident show at Walt Disney World Resort in Orlando, Fla. It employs more than 250 clowns and clownlike performers.

The function of the college, which was founded in 1968, was to train the next generation of circus clowns.The crisis heightened when the art form seriously waned after 1981, when Red Skelton, in the guise of his famous clown persona, had his HBO TV special Freddie the Freeloader’s Christmas Dinner (co-starring Imogene Coca and Vincent Price).

When the college closed the Florida campus, it eventually opened 14 less expensive “satellite” campuses across the country and, more recently, on the Internet.

In 2008, Pulaski Technical College in North Little Rock became affiliated with Clown College and offered a two-year Associate of Arts degree in Applied Clownology. The 62 credit hours are fully transferable to the University of Arkansas at Little Rock’s College of Arts, Humanities,and Social Sciences, Department of Political Science.

The popular program has been highly successful. Twenty-eight members of the recent 89th General Assembly have taken clown courses through UALR and all report the knowledge gained came in handy during the session.

Pulaski Tech has already graduated 276 clowns. There are 37 clowns in the current class, and the vast majority are using their newly acquired skills to entertain at children’s parties, bar mitzvahs, wedding receptions, bachelor and retirement parties and other special occasions.

Riverfest, with its annual estimated 250,000 patrons squeezed in along both sides of the river, is prime contact ground for clown activity.

And therein lies the problem.

As you may know, all performers at Riverfest - from headlining musical acts, tumblers and dance troupes, to Super Retriever dogs and the 30-foot mobile barbershop - are fully sanctioned and carefully allotted space and time so as to spread the fun over the three days and prevent artistic conflict. To have it otherwise would result in chaos.

But controlled chaos is the preferred realm of clowns. They operate best in noisy, crowded venues and relish vulnerable, slow-moving family groups with small children.

Three years ago, Riverfest began seeing the results of so many locally unemployed clowns. Unregistered, unvetted “rogue” clowns began popping up at Riverfest. These unsanctioned entertainers frequently traveled in packs of six or eight, disgorging from vintage Volkswagen Beetles in front of unsuspecting families and frightening small children.

Last year, the Riverfest medical and psychological aid facility located in a large tent near the Arkansas Select Buick GMC Dealers Stage reported a 158 percent increase in patrons suffering from acute coulrophobia.

Coulrophobia, which can be crippling, has afflicted Gov. Mike Beebe since his days as attorney general. Last year, when Beebe sought to sign a proclamation banning clowns from Riverfest, the highly militant Emmett Kelly Chapter of the NCA (National Clown Association) sent a representative to persuade him otherwise.

The clown produced a quarter from behind the governor’s ear, mussed up his hair with a giant fly swatter, and made him a souvenir dog out of three long, thin balloons.

Beebe, visibly shaken, folded like a cheap suit. He even signed a National Clown Week Proclamation honoring clowns for their “rich tradition of lifting spirits and boosting morale.”

At least the Riverfest Committee has taken steps to ameliorate the problem. This year, if you want to be proselytized and creeped out, you’ll have to go to the north shore clown holding area.

Until next time, Kalaka says it’s OK to punch out anybody who sprays you with a squirting flower.

Disclaimer Fayetteville-born Otus the Head Cat’s award-winning column of humorous fabrication appears every Saturday. E-mail:

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HomeStyle, Pages 36 on 05/25/2013

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