Da Dingo Dizmal Digest : November 2015

Tuesday, November 24, 2015

Good times doing our charity event for Safeway

Saturday, November 21, 2015

Doing a charity event. One of our fans made us a groovy press release.

Olive Rootbeer and Dingo Dizmal, Portland Clowns, Perform at Thanksgiving Holiday Benefit Hosted by Safeway and St. Ignatius 

Portland, OR: Sunday, November 22nd, 2015 at the Safeway store on 3930 SE Powell Blvd in Portland. OR, Olive and Dingo will perform and offer balloon twisting to attendees who wish to support the Portland community to fundraise for free holiday meals for those in need. All you have to do is come laugh and play, ask for them to twist your favorite balloon animal and make any donation you possibly can.  All proceeds from Olive and Dingo's show will go directly to this benefit.    

Dingo states "It is our hope to twist so many incredible animal and rainbow balloons, and raise so much money for our community, that no one goes without food this holiday season."  Olive notes "We love using what we love to do to help our community.  Clowns have often represented the underserved and created relief for those in need."

Portland is exactly the kind of city where one would expect clowns to provide daily entertainment to dynamic children and their hip parents.  Parents regularly choose to attend play cafes- cafes where everything is arranged to enthrall inquiring young minds. Additionally, adults can find a moment of solace or comfort while sipping lattes of locally roasted coffees and watching their children climb boulders, or play in a sandbox, or listen to a story read by Olive and Dingo.  Play cafes, in part, exist in a sustainable way due to revenue generated by attendees to regular performances by local artists. They build community bonds between parents and families and children who might not otherwise interact.  

In Portland, Olive and Dingo are favorite performers. They are like a weekly television show for local children-  the performance begins with their arrival on giant welded, 3 story tall bikes painted in radical colors with patches of rust.  Their costumes are layered with hope and humor.  The lessons they impart through the stories they read and the songs they sing are actually profound-  they want children to know their ABC's, and they want children to hear the song in a storybook, or how to use color to create comedy. Olive and Dingo are more than clowns in the proverbial sense-  they are emblems of emotional freedom.  The history of clowns and all they represent is portrayed in Olive and Dingo.

If we delve into memories of our younger selves what we will remember about having fun has a lot to do with clowns.  It has a lot to do with balloons and the things created from song, dance, color and art.  For centuries the heritage of clowns has carried with it a lot of hard work, and Olive and Dingo are no different. Dingo has been a clown for more than 18 years, having joined the circus at the young age of 17 years old and later settling in Portland, OR to continue professional clowning. Olive has always had a strong interest in humanity and arts and she brought balloon twisting into their performances.  

Olive and Dingo would like to personally invite you to make this Thanksgiving Holiday an incredible experience for helping those who are in great need.  

You are cordially invited to attend the event at Safeway this Sunday to laugh, play and to give back to your community.  

For questions about Olive and Dingo, you can visit them directly on their website: oliveanddingo.com.

Friday, November 20, 2015

The time I was attacked by a Middle Eastern radical .

Ok since you didn’t ask me I will tell you. Here is the story of the time I was attacked by a Middle Eastern radical .

Dateline: 1990’s, it was my second tour of living in Minneapolis Minesnowta.

I found myself a job in a pizza joint owned by Kuwaitis masquerading as Italians and a Libyan who liked telling black kids “We are all Africans” and trying to sit with them. This would often make the teens decide against having pizza slices.

Watching the neighborhood react to the owners fighting with each other was very entertaining.

It was also neat seeing very chic, sophisticated Italian dudes saunter through a dining room then once in the kitchen sitting on the floor together around one huge pizza pan full of just the toppings.

This restaurant served pizza but also had gyros and some pretty good Mediterranean and Middle Eastern dishes. After a while I got pretty good at cooking real deal Saudi style cuisine. Great food, bad music (for a texican punk rocker anyway).

The dining room music was Sade, the kitchen, Arab techno.

All of that music was annoying to me but the techno made me giggle.

Sounded like an old school Atari game set to Casio beats. LOL that was a riot to watch grown men dancing to but I gotta admit, sometimes I miss it.

Once an owner ordered us to attack the other owner.

I had to give the man a little civics lesson about how we don’t do things like that around here (We did but it was the other guys order we would have followed).

My best friend was my co-worker Murat. He is Kurdish, from Turkey.

Rad dude Murat, I liked him a lot. Funny guy in two languages, mild mannered and a real fast learner.

He had a lot to teach me as well. I learned a lot about his people and home town Istanbul.

I got to watch him have an American ride for the books.

He dropped into this country to get away from ethnic persecution, then within a very short time he found himself a job then a roll in a feature movie.

The Movie “Little Big League” was shooting just outside and they hired him. I was bummed that they didn’t hire me too but glad to see my bro get a break.

The great treatment he got never went to his head. He is that kind of rad guy.

After he was done shooting he just went into the back and washed dishes like he had been doing.

What a rad dude. We started learning more and more of each other’s languages. Our place was often slammed with business so we had to depend on each other as the only two employees.

It was great; until…”the unpleasantness”.

We were closing the pizza shop. Dude was in the back washing dishes and I was up front doing the day’s books.

After hearing a deluge of Sade and other breeder hits, I decided to put a bit of the old Slayer “Reign in blood” on the house system.

I had to clear my palate before tackling a ton of math. It got to the song “Altar of sacrifice”, I dropped my pen and started head banging Beavis and Butthead style with the fingers in the air. Just as my buddy was walking out he sees me dancing and howling like a wolf the words “Praise hail Satan!” Now Murat had no frikkin Idea that when I head bang a yell “Praise hail Satan!”, what I really mean is “I don’t like Sade’s music very much right now.” I don't subscribe to Christianity; so all the characters and theories I had pounded into my head only exist as expletives in my mind.

Understandably what he thought I was a saying was “Praise hail Satan!”

Thinking I was possessed, he dropped the rack of glasses and tackled me. Hard (for a little guy).

I didn’t know it was him so I bit him and we threw down in the glass. We struggled like our lives depended on it. Life in the big city.

Glass was piercing my back as I was grappling with his ears, uselessly yelling for him to chill out. It wasn’t fun for Murat but he never looked at me the same again (knowing I could become a werewolf late at night. We talked about it some. He never thought Slayer was any kind of music. I eventually was fired (for smelling bad/not rocking cologne) but we did get to say good by. He is a rad guy, who knows how to attack radically. I hope it turned out for him.

If you wanna see what Murat looks like, he is in that movie in front of a fruit stand during a crane shot.