Word: clowning
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...truly a hardscrabble upbringing. Abandoned by his father, he bounced from school to school, finally cutting his losses after failing the ninth grade three times. Two of his uncles committed suicide. Forced to forge new acquaintances so often, he found himself torn "between being the class clown and being the shy kid" bullies pounded on - and wound up inhabiting both characters. Out of the struggle to continually remake himself sprang three distinct on-stage personas: Marshall Mathers (his real name), who raps earnestly about the joys of fatherhood and the oppression of celebrity; Eminem, "the emcee who goes onstage sober...
...school, he said, he was the class clown. "I could never do the plot or the character descriptions. But if I could add to something with a joke, it would work.... If it seems funny to me to make a side remark while I'm discussing a serious subject - simply because of the sound of the words, or the sound of the thought - I think it's legitimate." He was briefly at Berkeley, then transferred to Stanford, where he took a drawing class. In his early 20s he went to Washington, D.C., where Leslie had a practice. There Manny took...
...race was over at the turn, but this time, Usain Bolt didn't clown around. No chest beating before he crossed the finish line. No mugging for the millions on TV. Believe it or not, for Bolt, that astounding 100m win Saturday night was just an afterthought. The 200m world record was the one he always wanted...
...fascinating thing about Madonna is that she is all-real and all-fake -- in other words, pure show biz. Girlie Show -- at once a movie retrospective, a Ziegfeld revue, a living video and an R-rated takeoff on Cirque du Soleil -- opens with Smokey Robinson's Tears of a Clown and closes with Cole Porter's Be a Clown. Pierrot is your silent host; the calliope music announces that this is a three-ring circus of clowning around. And Madonna, once the Harlow harlot and now a perky harlequin, is the greatest show-off on earth...
DIED Though he wasn't the original Bozo the Clown, Larry Harmon was perhaps the best. First portraying Bozo in 1952, Harmon later acquired the rights to the character and trained others to portray him. As his wife Susan recalls, "At one time he had 183 different Bozos all going at the same time in this country!" His dedication to the icon and ability to make people laugh were pervasive. "You would be sitting at dinner, and he would do the Bozo laugh for you," his wife says. "He was a born entertainer." Harmon...