…costarring her pet hippopotamus, Vern
CatCon4: Day 4 We perform musically for Yazoo City, Mississippi, then make a quick escape…Clowns are viewed…We enter New Orleans
If you are going to do “The Time Warp” in full costume with pre-recorded musical backup, where and when better to do it than in Yazoo City, Mississippi on a Sunday morning in an intersection where there is a church on every corner just letting out after services?
In fact, it was two flavors of Baptist, one Methodist and a Catholic church. There were a couple of other churches within earshot. There were pickups with gun racks everywhere. We had a big old hippie bus disgorging a bunch of made up people and animals. Our Destination Sign read “Transexual, Transylvania”. Loud rock & roll music was playing out of 10 speakers.
What could possibly go wrong? Actually, for most of the song, not a whole lot went wrong. I was singing the Riff Raff part, Mary was Magenta and her daughter Miranda did the Columbia part (with tap dancing!). Everybody else was a Transylvanian. There was plenty of pelvic thrusting, which seemed to render the good churchgoers of Yazoo City speechless. It went well until the end, when silence fell, the audience began an ominous murmuring and we heard police sirens getting closer and louder.
At that point it was back on the bus and out of town with just a short teleport via someplace that was on top of a high desert mesa. We popped back into our dimension 10 miles outside of town and only 2 minutes ahead of when we teleported. I commend Joe on his skill with the quantum whatevers.
(Winker: That was fun! I’m sure that Mom is wrong and we will someday be able to visit Mississippi again. They wouldn’t really hang Dad.)
About two hours later, in the small town of Wesson, we saw a sign reading “Clownland! Only 3 Miles ahead! Bring the kids!”. Since we were all still hyped up and full of adrenaline from our little musical production,we decided to give it a look.
What you find in Clownland are clowns in a clowny looking village. Scarecrowy clowns, big fiberglass clowns, carved wooden clowns, garden gnome sized clowns and about 50 real live clowns. The deal is, the founder of this little village, Hobart Franks, was a retired circus clown who had inherited the land. He started inviting other old clowns to move there and they started building the clown town. Soon, younger clowns began coming here for vacations or during the off season (who knew clowns had an off season?). By 1987, Clownland covered 45 acres of land and, if our Sunday visit is any indication, gets a fair stream of visitors.
The entrance fee is $4.00 and to tell the truth, the whole affair has a pretty high creep factor due to A: Clowns are creepy anyway and B: Old (and by the smell, alcoholic) clowns are even creepier. We stayed about 30 minutes. They had t-shirts, postcards & fridge magnets, so…well, you know.
At 4:00 PM we rolled into New Orleans and began trying to eat the town clean of food while also seeing as much as we could, all to a soundtrack of jazz music.
Tomorrow, we begin the long haul to the con, with at least 4 roadside stops along the way. More bloggage later.
Music: Nawlins Jazz!
Destination Sign: Barad Dur
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