There is nothing inherently wrong with clowns; by and large, they at least intend to create joy and happiness in the world. But certainly clowns must realize how unsuccessful they frequently are in this endeavor, terrorizing children and adults the world over. They are the subject of horror movies and real-world disorders and also a brief epidemic. That clowns would nonetheless continue to be clowns would imply some separation with reality prevalent among them. The existence of this separation is fortified by the fact that clowns “copyright” their clown-faces by painting them on fucking actual chicken eggs.
A new video for Great Big Story explores the British registry of clown faces via an interview with Debbie Smith, the nice-seeming “clown egg artist” who maintains the registry. The practice of painting clown faces on eggs began as a mere hobby—which is a strange concept barely touched on in the video—before it moved on to becoming an official record of “the unique make-up of each clown,” as the video puts it. If this causes viewers to stop and say, “Could there be that many different clown faces?” the video counters with this tableau:
Yes, there are many different clown faces.
For a further look at the eggs themselves—which individuals across Europe must yearn to introduce to a baseball bat, thus destroying the “record” of clown faces and ushering in a new era of clown-face innovation—here is a video from a few years ago. There are a lot of clown faces, and they are all smiling on eggs!
Glib Stateside readers should know that a similar registry exists in the U.S., and it is made with true American craftsmanship. In the late ’70s, a clown named Buttons heard about the British egg registry and decided to start a similar one in the U.S. That registry contains some 700 eggs at last count, and they are painted on goddamn goose eggs so that they are more durable. Here’s hoping that future videos uncover the way clowns copyright their names by squirting them in ketchup on the windows of sleeping children.