Clownfield, or the Saga of the Tire

I've talked with several other clowns about how, when you really decide to pursue clowning, clown events start to occur in your life with much higher frequency. I call this a clownfield: it feels like you're surrounded by some strange, perverse energy that causes pants to rip and dishes to leap from the shelves. (My friend Nick calls it a mimefield, which is clever but--for me--not so accurate.)

Maybe the clown gods are trying to be benevolent by giving you material (and, clownlike, overdoing it) . Or maybe you have the same amount of strange events you always had, but now you're inclined to notice them more. No one seems to know. In any case, clown happens.

Case in point: The Saga of the Tire.

The roads are horrible in Chicago right now. The winter has been wretched; it's frozen and thawed and frozen and thawed, and the roads are constantly being salted, and so giant moster crater potholes have appeared everywhere. Everyone has had flat tires. But no one has a story like this.

Saturday:
1. Discover flat tire en route to roller derby with Jenn. Take a cab instead. Lose gloves.
Sunday:
2. My boyfriend Joe very kindly puts the spare tire on the car.
Monday:
3. Drive to work and back on spare tire.
4. Drive to Costco Tire Center to have tire fixed.
5. It's not just the tire, it's the rim. Mechanic says, "I'd go to a junkyard. You could also try Pep Boys."
6. Drive to Pep Boys.
7. Pep Boys doesn't have this rim. (They could order something, but it'd be really expensive; they only do glitzy pimp-your-ride rims.)
Tuesday:
8. Call junkyards.
9. Nope.
10. Nope.
11. Nope.
12. Maybe. Steel or chrome? 14" or 15"? All of those are standard.
13. Check car. 14" steel.
14. Call back.
15. Maybe. They'll call me back in about an hour.
16. Wait an hour. Cancel music mixing session.
17. Wait another hour.
18. Call junkyard.
19. Maybe. They'll have to call me back.
20. Wait.
21. Call again.
22. Oooh...yeah, no. That rim's no good.
23. Call more junkyards.
24. Yes! Yes! Yes! I'll be right there...
25. ...except it's on 123rd street, so it may take a while. GoogleMaps says 30 minutes, 45 in traffic.
26. An hour and a half later, at 5:15, pull into the parking lot.
27. Sign #1: OPEN 8-5.
28. Sign #2: YES! WE DELIVER!
29. Resist urge to start kicking and punching things. Drive straight to clown workshop in worsening rain. (The temperature drops from the high 40s to 0 in a matter of hours.)
30. Come out of clown into a blizzard.
31. Drive home from clown.
32. Skid in the snow.
33. Hit a parked car. Leave a note.
Wednesday:
34. Call junkyard from work. Ask them to deliver the rim to the Costco tire center.
35. Call Costco.
36. Costco says, "We don't take deliveries of any kind."
37. Call junkyard to say, "I'll be working at home Friday; maybe you should just deliver the rim there."
38. Junkyard guy says, "I don't deliver to homes."
39. Cry quietly in cubicle.
40. Call Pep Boys and ask if they have any rims, I don't care how they look, I don't care what they cost, that would fit my car.
41. They have one ("in gunmetal"). They will hold it for me until tomorrow morning.
42. Drive like a madwoman from work (n.b.: still on spare tire). Realize I'll actually have time before clown to go to Pep Boys, but just barely.
43. Pep Boys salesguy makes a big show of checking his binder to make sure that rim will actually work on my car.
44. Drive from Pep Boys to clown, with moments to spare.
45. Realize that my ride will now be one-fourth pimped. Everyone at clown loves this idea.
Thursday:
46. Toy with idea of leaving work early to go to Costco before clown.
47. Snow gets very bad and we are all told to leave work early.
48. Three hours and one appalling gas-station restroom visit later (when you're in city limits and the sign says "Restroom outside," isn't it reasonable to assume the restroom won't be a Port-a-Potty? or that its door might shut all the way? or that there will be light inside? and then even if all those things happen not to be true of this particular restroom, that your car won't freeze shut in the time it takes you to pee?), arrive at clown, almost an hour late.
49. End of clown. Drive home very, very slowly in deep snow, through a city that seems weirdly empty.
Friday:
50. Snow is very deep. Work at home all day.
51. Leave snow clogs at Actor's Gym.
Saturday:
52. City still a wreck. No driving. Go to Lecoq workshop (on train) and mixing session (on bus).
Sunday:
53. Drive to Costco tire center.
54. Cell phone rings as I'm shopping: "This rim doesn't fit your car."
55. Try in vain to persuade Costco guys to accept a delivery from the junkyard.
56. Get into car. Have total screaming meltdown in the parking lot.
57. Pull into Pep Boys with cheeks still wet. March up to door with the rim, envisioning pointing at my face and saying "THIS IS YOUR FAULT! YOURS! YOURS!"
58. Door is locked. They are closed. I realize that fixing the tire will take, at a minimum, one more visit each to the junkyard, Costco, and Pep Boys, bringing the totals to junkyard, two; Costco, three; and Pep Boys, four. All on the spare tire, a donut, which has now logged close to 300 miles.
59. It starts to snow again.
Tuesday:
60. Call junkyard. They still have the rim.
61. Drive to junkyard in freakishly little time. The guy is incredibly nice in person and has the rim waiting for me.
62. Drive straight to Costco, where they speedily install the rim and the tire.
63. Drive to Pep Boys for refund, expecting a fight, encountering profuse apologies instead.
64. Cast primary vote, again in record time.
65. Realize I am having a charmed day. Score last-minute appointment at the Aveda Institute and emerge with one of the best haircuts of my life.
Saturday:
66. The tire is flat again.
67. Costco doesn't even know what's wrong with the tire any more. It's still under warranty, though, so they order a replacement...
68. ...and put the spare back on.

An Experiment, Part the First

Does the world need another blog? Jesus, of course not. I'm starting this because many of my ideas seem to be in essay-ish form lately, but they're casual enough to invite commentary.

And because I hope having this gives me an impetus to polish some of those ideas into something fit for public consumption, much the same way as having a new notebook or a spiffy pen tends to give me a reason to write more.

And because the submit-to-obscure-literary-magazine-and-wait-for-months model of publication is intensely frustrating, and only frustrated writers read obscure literary magazines anyway.

So. The blog strikes me as an interesting combination of the written word and the immediacy of performance. I have no idea where it's going to go. That excites me too.