Austin in the house

I live in a 1922 bungalow that rents two bangin' rooms out to Air B&something...Every few days we meet new forks from everywhere-elsistan and do what we do.
Last week was a couple from my home state.
I hit it off with the fellow right away as he had just been on a pot safari all over town and we had something to talk about right off. We sat in the dark on the front porch for hours, watching the people walk by, smelling the flowers and talking about our favorite places in Austin.

It was great to talk to a metro-texan because that made it easier to tell him about places in town he would like and how to navigate.
One of my favorite attributes of Austin is something that can be found many places in Texas.
The smell of pecan trees and river rocks...and dirt.
Those smells have been intoxicating to me my whole life.
I was pleased to hear about the Austin bike scene and the happinin' things going on there.
He gave me the lay of the land too as my Austin referenced were dated (1990s).
Austin is a magical place to me because I was never there in bad company.
I was always with people I adored so I see the place as a gem in my mind.

The last day for the Texans came. We were filming something out front as we said goodbye.
We are single serving friends so this time I had no idea what the dude looked like nor he, me.
We had only sat in the dark exploring each others heads and roasting bowls. It was funny seeing him in the light and realizing he didn't look like who my imagination thought he looked like (close but no cookie), He was surprised too with wide eyes "What are you doing on that huge frikkin bike!!!???"

Olive and LIL A are gardening.

They have been tight for many years.
 I just heard Olive ask her if she has ever ridden a tallbike. Lil A and I had an act where we would ride fast in a tight circle and she would jump off her bike (and onto mine)while I steered both. She would then pull out a bucket of soapy water from my cargo space and wash both our bikes before jumping back on hers. It was always harrowing and a guaranteed crowd pleaser. 

We never collided (unintentionally). It's interesting that Olive's relationship with a real Clown House denizen has never had anything to do with anything but mutual admiration...and gardening.

Wheel lights install day (and gardening).

Wheel lights install day (and gardening). 
Our lights came by bike courier (olive), by delivery truck and by Susan. 
They all arrived today Now we have our make up designs among many others lit up inside our wheels. 

We also got a box of battery powered string lights for our clothing. 
Our son was so stoked as we took a ride in the dark. A
ll four wheels were set to randomly display lots of fun shapes. 
People on the street were hooting and hollering. So cool.
Thank you to the kind folks who donated to oliveanddingo.com. 
You folks made our parade. Next week we will be practicing with the float we are escorting in the Starlight parade
.I'm inscribing the names of our patrons on my bike so they can roll in the parade with us.

My art on a thing. :)

first catch of the day notebook
by chixland

Revisiting the spot (33rd. and Killingsworth) where I was in a movie.

 During the Clown House years a Hollywood film crew invited us to be in their doc about buskers. 
They had me re-do my favorite experiment for their hidden cameras. Here is how it goes.

 I perform as three different kinds of common busker. First I spent 30 min. playing and singing "House of the rising son" in my best voice. It has complicated chords and I played it on a gut-string (classical) guitar. Then I just sat out there with a broken guitar for 30 min. straight begging, then I was the crazy guy, no guitar, only a tin cup that I had. I just banged on the street with the cup and muttered about peeing my pants. 

At the end of the hr. and a half, the beggar made $15 and the other two nothing. One person dropped a $5 and the guy who dropped the $10 only did so after griping me out for being an able bodied beggar. It was easy to stay in character while he was hollering at me because I knew several really good cameras were collecting comedy gold. After that guy was done reading me the riot act, he stormed into the grocery store. A production assistant ran after him. They couldn't use the footage without him signing a release. I followed behind the crew watching the guys reaction as he discovered it was a set up. His face went from concern to a big smile and laughter as he signed away his images. 

It was neat to revisit the spot today and remember this episode. This experiment came to me by accident as I was often a busker and noticed that the people who need it most get help the least. 

The laziest thing you can do is feed money to a bum or someone holding a sign by the freeway. The real way to earn those self pats on the back is to investigate, vote, invest in the community and get involved. Anything else is just thanking yourself for supporting the cig and malt liqueur companies. I never did see the movie. Making movies is hard but who knows. Maybe someday it will be made and or released and we can see how well my memory was.

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We like taking pics of people taking pics.

"I'm relinquishing my hot clothes to Olive."

I got an indirect gift the other day.
At a party I was loading to leave when one of the Moms handed me two trash bags full of clothing.
"I'm relinquishing my hot clothes to Olive." This was shocking to me. She is a very attractive woman. I said "That's shocking to me, you are a very attractive woman."
She said "I have two little ones and I'm looking at at least 15 years of hardcore mommy-ing..I don't think I need any half shirts and cheerleader skirts for a while."
Well who am I to say what she does.
She knows what she wants and needs, power to her and good luck.
Now I'm stuck having to watch Olive try them all on. She passed a lot of the stuff to others (like ya do). Now I'm hoping a Dad will approach Olive.
"I'm giving up my sweat pants to Dingo so he can look as dumpy as me." and she can say "He already has that exact same pair."
Dumpy Bruthus!

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Thank you Lars.

 After our toddler rock show today (at Know thy Food), we were hanging out with some of the folks who hadn't left yet. 
Lars from next door brought out a flat of mushrooms to gift us and our fans. He sells berries and other organic Oregon grown foods. That was very nice of him. 
We have been doing this show at Know Thy Food for 8 years now. Good times. 
If you want to get into some farm fresh veg and other goodies please stop into Know Thy Food. 
They support parents, agriculture and of course clowns. :) http://knowthyfood.coop/

Murdering a greasy burrito in the furniture section of Goodwill today.

You know it's good when it's under $3 and half translucent. This is how we splurge our donations from oliveanddingo.com Burritos and Britches.
 I got some new threads to stay fresh looking for the folks. Thanks to the folks who pitch in.
 Especially when their kids have long outgrown us or those who don't even have kids or go to our shows. 
I thought we bought me some sunglasses but it turned out to be Sony 3-D glasses. They have a battery and display the world in crazy colors. 
I knew I wasn't tripping but couldn't understand why the ground was technicolored. The sky was purple when looking North, blue when looking South and all the cars looked like those metallic-looking beetle shells. 
I didn't know what they were till I got home and looked them up.

back in the day, I pitched in a lot to the country without an identity.

In the 90's (outside of Texas) I had no name or backstory a lot of the time.
I wasn't even deliberately trying to hide my identity, I just couldn't hang on to an ID card with my rough and tumble road-punk lifestyle.
I was a good enough con-man to be whomever the person talking to me wanted me to be. I was good at "cold reading" and could assume many identities based on who I was around.
Fo Sho I was honest enough not to use those skills for ill.
I did get jobs I wasn't qualified for though (like driving a gas truck).
I drifted all over the country having adventures and pretending.
I would get jobs but I never had an ID.
So when I got paychecks It was really difficult to cash them.
Eventually it became a fun challenge.
I wanted to know how long I could maintain being a non person. Lots of times I worked for companies that took out taxes on payday but couldn't have been credited to me because the employer didn't even know my real name.
Sometimes my deceptions were discovered by law enforcement/military police. Luckily I didn't and still don't have a record or warrants so it was never a problem outside of cashing paychecks.
Not voting was the only part that really sucked.
It was worth it to be able to move around the country in invisible mode.
I developed a strong respect for the illegal workers who did great work but couldn't be credited with contributing to the country for technical reasons.
They had no choice.
I was just pretending. :)

Fun clown trick: If you need help at a grocery store but can't find an employee, go to the condom section and look at the security camera.

Fun clown trick: If you need help at a grocery store but can't find an employee, go to the condom section and look at the security camera.
 Folks don't normally shop by looking at all the cameras. It get's their attention.
 Condoms are one of the most shoplifted items. 
They are watching that aisle. Someone will ask you if you need help really quickly. 
Then you get to take a long walk with them to whatever part of the store you were really trying to find something in. 
:) I do this all the time.

also if you are in clown drag a
t the grocery store, they won't search you even if the electronic theft alarms go off. Eric Bang showed me this amazing trick when he sewed a magnetic theft strip (from a book) into his clown clothes. Then filled his pockets with sex toys and clown props yet couldn't get searched no matter how many bells were ringing. 
Presumably this because no employee gets paid enough to have "strip search clown" in the job duties.

oliveanddingo.com

The second woman to ever ride my bike is also the first.

My bike recently got a handlebar upgrade.

While getting used to it, we dropped in on our Friend Rauchelle.

Her kids got to cheer her on as she mounted and rode my bike again!

Well played.

This is how you ride my bike like a boss!

burning a bit of sage.

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Spit on by a guy shooting blanks.

Spit on by a guy shooting blanks.
We had a much needed huge show today at Hammer and Jacks.
Our last three gigs were duds so we needed the flow. Also as we rode around we were getting mad love from all the citizenry and stuff.

We kept hearing the word "Iconic" in reference to us. People stopped us for hugs and to introduce us to grandmas and such.
Lots of love, honking and waving. That always makes me wait for the other shoe to drop.
We know that when that many people are positively reacting to us then there will be a small percentage that will react really badly to us.
Then it happened.
A guy in the passengers side of a beat up old truck tried to spit on me as he passed.
But when the moment of truth came, he had no spittle to spit HAHAHAHA!
Nice try ya Dingdong. I howled at him laughing.
Our eyes met and I quickly observed he was all the bang but no fireworks.
He caught me slippin' but was shooting blanks HAWHAW!

We then rolled down a side street.
Three ladies were parked in the lane looking at phones. A
s we came up on the car, we could see and hear then thru their sunroof.
One of the ladies said "Ya need to pull over so the cyclists can get through."
We heard the driver say "They shouldn't be in the street anyway, bicycles belong on the bike trails."
What a rube.
:)
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"We're outta here! Let's go Bitches!"

Well, we were 15 min. early for our gig. 
Then we crossed paths with this thing and ended up being 10 min. late. Good call on Olive's part insisting we circumnavigate. 

I didn't mind being slowed down by the train. It's very fun for me to see all the other cyclists pooling at the gate looking concerned and also late for things. We saw the end of the train but just before it got to us, it stopped.

 HAHAHA! Olive said "We're outta here! Let's go Bitches!" 

She always calls me "bitches" it's a throwback from her high school days as a basket ball power player. Other cyclists must of heard her because after we were under way I noticed others decided to follow us. 
We rolled about 10 blocks to get around the train and at Powell street we saw the train still blocking everything. 
Good call Olive.

pics Olive took

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We like interrupting the hard hats.

Today we were dropping coloring books off at Microcosm publishing.
While riding on Williams street we were slowed to a crawl by a construction project.
I glanced over and saw 10 or so Hard Hats all smiling ear to ear at me.
The only one without the orange vest told me "Very good. You made me smile today."
Then the man next to him nodded saying "It's a big deal, he hates everyone."
That's when Mister Clean jeans turned to his colleague and said
"Jason. What are you doing Jason?"
Jason: "the bolts"
"Then keep assembling the-"
by then, I had rolled past so I don't know what happened to Jason or the bolts.
We will rebuild.

I ate about a pound of mostly cooked human placenta the day my kid was born.

I ate about a pound of mostly cooked human placenta the day my kid was born.
It was perfect energy boost food for humans. Just the right amount of nutrition paired with frikkin nasty.
It was great because I was crushing it with the chef skills but it was also the gift that keeps on giving since I can bring it up at the table every Thanksgiving. "I ate afterbirth...any questions? No?"

burning sage on my bike.

oliveanddingo.com   
Donation station

Pics from our show last night

Pics from our show last night opening for Curtis Carlyle at Dante's. He has a great kickstarter designed to bring live circus love to places that normally can't afford it like senior centers and schools. I put a link in the comments. Great idea Curt, nice seeing you. :)