Whether it’s 3 a.m. after a bar closes, or wandering around during the day killing time, or me being vocal about having a cold, I constantly have eating pho suggested to me. I’m sick of the suggestion and I’m never eating that disgusting food again. Pho reminds me of when my grandmother used to babysit me and for dinner she’d throw every thing she found in the fridge and boil it in tap water, a habit I’m sure she developed during World War II and never was able to shake. I get it. Nazis are terrifying, and she had to gather root vegetables and curious sides of mystery meat to avoid dying. I applaud her for how industrious she is, but I’m an adult with no mortgage and no children and no Nazis (so far). I don’t need to willingly eat a bowl of hot rainwater poured over fish nightmares (to quote Kyle Kinane).

I’m tired of hearing about pho. Not in the way that I’m tired of hearing about some hot band or something. I’m tired of literally HEARING it said out loud, mostly because in North America, one out of every two people will pronounce it the apparent proper way, “fu”. Listen you oh so worldly gentleman, I hate to break it to you, but there isn’t anyone in Vietnam saying to each other, “Actually it’s pronounced ‘Baconnaise’”. Nobody’s impressed with your phrasebook-level pronunciation key, and you sound like you were trying to suggest we go for late night “fudge” but developed a lightning quick and temporary case of Bell’s palsy.

This is what happens with gourmets (I’ve resigned to never say “foodie” ever again, because I’m not brain dead): they frequent places that are upstart restaurants that find whatever the cheapest cut of meat is at the butcher, and sell it to the bourgeois as a hip, east side food, and charge up the urethra for it. As the new, low quality cut of meat becomes popular; the least popular takes its place. It’s a cycle. We saw it with brisket not too long ago. This is why whenever I express my complete disinterest with eating a hot bowl of salty brine poured over ass curd and boiled snake snout, someone inevitably tells me that I haven’t had “good pho” or that there’s some new pho place that opened up that I have to try (which is inevitably just a pho place without fluorescent lighting or anyone but white people, that charges $25 a bowl). Not only is pho served in dirty kitchens that are open all night for no particular reason, but also now it’s unavoidable for yuppie birthday parties.

You know how I know you don’t even like pho? You all smother it in that red, hot sauce and brown puzzle sauce. After the first spoonful, everyone who eats this garbage juice poured over vegetables (that are one day away from retirement) winces and drowns it in unlabeled, table sauces that are probably made from unfinished, fermented pho that’s thrown away by people who came to their senses the last time they were in the restaurant.

“No really, Trevor. This stuff is top notch!”

/empties bottles of vinegar-based, room temperature terror gravy over entire bowl

If you’re insisting on cheap, Vietnamese food, there are Bánh mì sandwiches everywhere all the time. It’s cilantro and meat and whatever vegetables on a baguette. The baguettes are usually toasted far in advance, so you kind of have to ash it like a cigar while eating it, but it’s usually fewer than four bucks. It’s pretty much the best thing that came out of the French occupying Vietnam. Eat those, and keep your compost puke stew away from me.

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I heard that the clown would never say a word. That he barely ever spoke, even to friends. That he chose to communicate through song, and all of his songs were sad. He was a really sad clown, sadder than all the others, and whenever he had something to say, it could only be cast through the baritone of his beautiful voice. Singing a cover of Lorde’s “Royals” had made him a famous clown, but he was still a shy clown, awkward and often timid in his surroundings. His reputation followed him like strings on balloons. He didn’t love people. He was cranky. He was sometimes hard to work with. He was known to pace silently onstage before he sang; he was known to glower; he recoiled at bright lights. He bristled at trivialities, like where to set his lantern. He had learned that to be seen in public was to make some people scared. He wore no big red nose, no goofy nimbus of hair, no long clown shoes that might make someone laugh if he slipped on a banana peel. He wasn’t just creepy, with dark eyes set off by white makeup that coated his face — he was straight-up scary, with a bald head and three black poof-balls dotting his pale white outfit, with a chiffon collar outlined in black; and he was almost 7 feet tall, and thin. No one could ever remember a time when he smiled, not even once, which can’t be said of even the most evil clown. His name — a name that evoked the last part of the rain, a word as gloomy as the clouds it came from — didn’t help.

But when Puddles the Clown sang his songs, something happened. He was no longer scary; he was no longer creepy; everything on the outside faded away. His voice was an equalizer. And a contradiction. The reason “Royals (‘Sad Clown With the Golden Voice’ Version)” was shared by millions on YouTube and so beloved at the end of 2013 was that, whenever he sang, the fear vanished, the awkwardness and the strangeness replaced by awe, because even though a lot of people are scared of scary clowns, no one is scared of someone who can sing.

♦♦♦

I heard him sing. He was standing on a bar top near a Flying Nun blowup doll strapped with a dildo. It was midnight; he was surrounded by a crowd of drunks. His head almost touched the ceiling, and he was singing the song that had made him famous. I heard him sing other songs, too, in more virtuous locales — Christmas songs, two hours’ worth, filtered through his heartbreaking timbre. I heard him sing while dads danced like dorks and while moms filmed with smartphones, and while babies wailed from beneath stroller lids and while kids climbed tablecloths and tore into presents like wolves. I heard him sing to himself. I heard him sing while people stood and chanted “PUDDLES!” while he played ukulele. I heard him sing while I held the lantern and the briefcase that he always carries everywhere, his voice melting the strangeness out of the room. I heard him sing and then watched him take pictures with children who were at first scared and then skeptical and then charmed. I heard his voice swallow someone who was singing beside him, a dude almost as tall, dressed in red velvet pants, named Really Big Santa. Puddles sang after he ate a handful of peppermints, he sang while I ate gravy and pork, and while my buddy John downed the last drops of a Genny Cream ale with a tear in the corner of his eye. He sang at a restaurant called Pallookaville, where the Christmas lights strung outside wilted in the winter Georgia heat, where the real-life Grinch petted a real-life Max, where a woman dressed in pajamas pretended to be Cindy Lou Who. I heard him sing from the speakers of my mother’s 10-year-old Gateway computer. His voice, big and deep, never ceased to be a revelation. The last place I heard him sing was from out the window of a green Subaru, missing all its hubcaps.

♦♦♦

The clown eluded me, though. Before all that happened, I waited and waited to see him.

Puddles lived in Atlanta, as I once did. But I wondered: Where did he actually live? So I went home. “What are you doing, again?” my parents asked when I dropped in before Christmas, because I hardly ever visit anymore, and because I would be crashing with them for an inestimable period of time. They asked for me to elaborate pretty much every day I was there.

“I’m doing a story about a 7-foot clown named Puddles, who has a beautiful voice,” I told them, and repeated it for two weeks while waiting to hear from him. They always wanted more — what did he sing like,²⁸ where was he from,²⁹ a clown — what?³⁰ — to an incessant degree, my dad folding laundry, grim-faced and unsatisfied that this was a real assignment, my mother repeating the word “clown” so much in a confused, breathy voice that it became my “Rosebud.” My mother asked me — and I have no idea what the hell she meant — “This isn’t some heroin thing, is it?”

Yes, he was real, guys. Puddles was a local phenomenon, and an Internet sensation, but he was also a very large mystery. To find a clown, you have to find a guy who knows him, and I met Mike Geier through his website, simply by Googling “Puddles the Clown.” Mike responded that he knew Puddles and spoke about the clown in the third person, even though there was a picture of Puddles on Geier’s website, which is how I landed there. He told me if I wanted to see Puddles, I would have to be patient. That he, Geier, would notify me, not Puddles, probably out of the blue. I watched “Royals (‘Sad Clown With the Golden Voice’ Version)” over and over. I watched an interview with Puddles on a local Atlanta station, the only TV interview that exists, and the clown never spoke — he just walked on the sidewalk carrying his suitcase and lantern, wrote his answers on scraps of paper, and sat there frowning the whole time with what looked like a painted tear rolling down his cheek. At the end of the segment, he stood up and started to sing. Then, without a word or a tip of his little gold crown, he walked out.

Mike said Puddles randomly showed up at different places, at bars and on stages and at restaurants and at Waffle House, that he liked the warmth of people sitting together and sharing that golden light. So I offered to meet him at any of the million Waffle Houses within driving distance.

I got a text from Mike, one night at ten: “Puddles has a mission for you. He asked me to contact you: Tomorrow night … we rage!”

Then: “No go. Location was compromised by itchy characters.”

♦♦♦

Then, the corn dogs. Fourteen inches and thick with jalapeño batter. We were eating them, and drinking green-apple sodas, and taking shots of hot chocolate with rum. Me and Mike Geier, sitting at the long wooden bar at Pallookaville, a circus-and-clown-themed establishment in Avondale Estates, Georgia, a suburb about 10 minutes from downtown Atlanta, nearly a week later. He was telling stories about Puddles. And each time I swiveled my head, I saw some new, wondrous thing that took my mind off the conversation, like a monkey smiling at me on the ceiling, giant plastic ice cream cones, framed pictures of Colonel Sanders, big clown faces, walls full of toys, a replica Creature From the Black Lagoon head on the bar. Mike was nearly 7 feet tall and bald, with a strangely familiar, rich, low voice, a row of perfect teeth — the kind of guy who shaves his head with a razor, leaving the shadow of a full head of hair, because being bald is part of a performance.

“Where is Puddles from?” I asked, feeling small enough to be a child sitting at Big Mike’s knee.

“River City,” Mike said in his deep voice. “Yeah … River City, I think.”

I asked where River City was, and Mike just shrugged.

“Where did you meet him?”

He chewed on a tater tot.

“Halloween. At the Star Community Bar [in Little Five Points, in Atlanta]. That was ’98. I was down there, working the bar, listening to the jukebox. It was Ray Charles singing ‘Hard Hearted Hannah,’ and Puddles walked in the door. He was wearing overalls that day, or coveralls. And this big, nutty tie. I guess it was his Sunday-go-to-meetin’ outfit. It was more of a refined look then.

“Sat at the bar, wanted soda water. He was just aloof. Like, you know … what else you gotta be? Giant clown comes walkin’ in. If anyone’s allowed to be aloof, it’s that guy. I just played it cool. I figure, sometimes a guy wants to come in and chill out, you know, and not cause a ruckus. That’s the kind of place it was, an old-man bar. Don’t bother the guy, he wants to sit here and look at his drink. You see those guys in bars, looking at their drink, figuring out what their next move is — thinking, I wonder what she’s up to. It’s been 20 years since I saw her. Whatever.”

Why doesn’t Puddles talk?

“Well, he talks … but just a tiny bit. He chooses not to. Another thing I’ve learned from Puddles is a lot of people talk too much.”

Mike was grinning, and measuring me with his eyes. Mike knew everyone at Pallookaville. He knew and shook hands with the tatted dudes sitting at a table further down from us, and he knew the waitress in a white uniform and hat behind the bar, and he knew the manager, who on a slow afternoon was wearing a sleeveless T-shirt. Mike knew Jim Stacy, the owner of Pallookaville and the corn dog king of Atlanta, a bear of a man with overalls hiked up to his chest and a beard so wild that it looked alive, who once cooked Thanksgiving dinner for Jay Leno.

“Me trying to describe Puddles to you is like trying to [describe] the sunset,” Mike said. “Just watch the sunset.”

Mike had been performing in Atlanta for years, through the guise of various characters and in various bands, first in what he described as a noir-swing band in the ’90s called the Useless Playboys. He then dabbled in the restaurant biz while also playing his music, emceed a burlesque show at the infamous Clermont Lounge, fronted his own band Kingsized, and was still playing music all over town, including some corporate gigs, playing nearly every instrument known to man. He and his wife, Shannon, had their own studio in Avondale Estates. In the Atlanta arts scene, Big Mike was known by his characters: He was Elvis and he was Kingsized and he was a naked Kabuki artist that I heard had to be seen to be believed and …

“Puddles,” Mike said. “He’s … It’s OK to feel bad about things. It’s OK to feel sad. He just resonates with people. I’m never sure when he will make another appearance. So … yeah, he just goes where things take him. You know, if you went down to the railroad yard, didn’t know anything about the train — and hopped on a train. You just go where it goes. That’s Puddles. And man, he lives in a sad, beautiful world.”

♦♦♦

A clown showed up at the front desk of Scott Bradlee’s apartment building in Astoria, Queens, probably the most frightening clown in the world. It was October, and the clown held a lantern in one hand and an old suitcase in the other. According to Scott, who was upstairs, the clown simply would not speak when addressed.³¹ He stared at the desk attendant, tiny crown tipped forward on his forehead. “Who are you?” the attendant asked. “Who are you here to see?” The clown — frowning, of course — pointed a white-gloved finger at a piece of paper, with the name “Scott Bradlee” written in pen. The attendant buzzed up to Scott, who was waiting. “The giant clown?” Scott said. “Let him up!” Puddles ducked his head into the elevator.

Scott Bradlee is a trained pianist and plays a variety of cover songs. He has made dozens of covers, all reimagined through the music of the past. He films the songs from the living room of his apartment, which overlooks the East River, and puts the videos online, under the name “Postmodern Jukebox: An Alternate History of Pop Music.” He wrote a doo-wop “We Can’t Stop” and a Motown take on “Roar” and “Just (Tap) Dance,” a ’40s-esque cover of Lady Gaga; millions of people have listened to these songs. Scott is the guy going crazy on the keys of the Yamaha small grand piano in the left corner of each video.

Scott first saw Puddles at Sleep No More, a show in Manhattan. Puddles ambled onstage, where he paced nervously, staring back at the crowd. The clown said nothing, sang nothing, for at least five minutes; 400 people stared silently back at him and wondered what was going to happen. “And then he started to sing,” Scott says. “He sang ‘Lonely Guy,’ his signature song; and that voice … that huge, rich, voice, coming from someone who looks so timid and scary, but him just as scared as all the people who are scared of him. The audience was blown away.”

Scott wanted to capture that experience for Postmodern Jukebox. So he reached out to Mike Geier and asked him to pitch Puddles on a cover of Justin Timberlake’s “Mirrors.” A year passed, because you have to be patient with Puddles. “Royals” was then the most popular song on earth. And because it’s a song written by a 16-year-old outsider, Scott thought, Who better to sing it than a very sad clown?³²

Although it took only two takes, the video was not the easiest shoot. Puddles didn’t talk to anyone in the room, at all. Neither Scott nor the four other musicians — a bassist, a drummer, two backup singers — knew what to expect. There was something unnatural about it, about being all crammed into the living room with the clown while the light from outside was blotted by the blinds.

Puddles was so tall that it was almost impossible to fit him into the frame of the camera. Scott used the widest lens. And there was an actual discussion among the musicians about where the lantern and suitcase would sit and not block anyone’s head. Puddles put his suitcase on top of the bass drum, and his lantern on the piano, as though he couldn’t care less. The microphone, with its large diaphragm condenser, had to be pushed precariously to the very tallest setting. There was some nervous laughter. Puddles sang, then, in his dramatic baritone. Even before the last note cut out, he picked up the lantern and suitcase and left abruptly, frowning. And that’s just how it happened. He was gone.

“It was scary,” Scott says. “Just a giant clown, capable of anything. He seems like he just doesn’t really understand the world, and is lost. I think him storming out is his way of showing confusion.”

The initial response to the video was: giant clown — funny. But upon closer inspection, people heard the song, and it began to register; anyone could latch on to some part of it. Maybe the sadness, maybe something else. “Even people who are afraid of clowns, and don’t like clowns, see humanity in him,” Scott says.

In his haste, Puddles left a box of tissues behind.

♦♦♦

The story goes, there used to be this weird old house in the Cabbagetown neighborhood of Atlanta, a house that was tilted, a house with a mirror for a roof, not a single right angle in any of the rooms. One of Puddles’s neighbors couldn’t be sure, but he swore the house moved three feet closer to downtown Atlanta nearly every year. Because the roof was a mirror, helicopters and airplanes refused to fly above it. This was a strange situation for the people on the street to deal with, but they made the best of it — sometimes avoiding the house at all costs. Puddles played music at odd hours, and the sound would envelop the other houses like a film. The music was always loud — curious choices, like funeral dirges in the morning. When he did go outside, he raked his leaves and mowed his lawn with a shriner’s cap tipped on his head, grimacing at the children.

The guy telling me this is named Dave Willis,³³ who says he used to be Puddles’s neighbor. Dave, aside from being a concerned father with children growing up next door to a big scary clown, has written for Space Ghost Coast to Coast, Aqua Teen Hunger Force, and Squidbillies.

“I would come down and knock on his door,” Dave told me in a phone interview. I could hear laughter in the background. “And I’m very sympathetic to artists trying to live their life, you know, but I have to put my kids down to bed. And he’d come to the door in greasepaint, in a onesie with giant pom-pom ball buttons, and I would say, ‘Could you please turn it down?’ And he would make that sad, frowny face. You know what that means. He was disappointed. Usually he would turn it down a little bit.”

Puddles never talked. Although Dave never had a conversation with his neighbor aside from telling him to turn down the music, he did somehow communicate with Puddles enough to get him to perform in a series of Aqua Teen Live shows a few years ago, as an intermission act. Shows in New Orleans and New York and Philly. Puddles would throw bananas at a lady in a bikini, just hurl bananas everywhere. He’d play the ukulele and sing the hell out of “Lonely Guy.” After the song, he’d go out into the crowd and lay a big, fat tongue kiss on someone. The crowd would explode.

Dave moved from the neighborhood. Puddles moved from the neighborhood. “Condos now,” Dave said.

“Puddles is a big part of Atlanta,” he said. “If he moved to New York or L.A., he would just get pigeonholed as one more freak. I think Atlanta is vastly underrated; if you don’t live near here, don’t understand it, you might think that it’s just a place with an airport that gets you en route to somewhere else.

“Aside from the fact that it doesn’t have an ocean, I think Atlanta has an awesome creative community, lots of musicians and writers, and a specific point of view from a lot of different people. Puddles is one example of that. He can just go to a street corner, turn on his little old suitcase with speakers, and perform. And it’s like … you know, and I’ve seen him do it. And I’ve seen him get arrested. Well, no, but I’ve heard tell of it.”

Back when they were living next to each other, Dave used to stare at Puddles staring out at him from his downstairs window. After a while, Puddles would close the invisible drapes.

♦♦♦

Hoping to set up an interview, I kept texting with Mike. But it was leading nowhere, though he was a nice guy. It didn’t feel like there was any Puddles in my future. A week passed, maybe more; the days ran together. I was living with my parents, remember, so essentially I was, like, 16 again. I’d been forced to borrow my dad’s Toyota, and to stare at the ancient pictures of myself wearing high school ties and too-big shirts and all my shitty art they still had framed on the walls. Puddles had bailed a couple times, I can’t even remember why. I only wanted to meet him. Two weeks had bled together, and everything had started to become so horrible.

Out of desperation, I went to see Mike perform at Trader Vic’s tiki bar late one night, during a thunderstorm. The bar was on the bottom floor of the Hilton downtown, the official hotel of the 2013 SEC championship game. A lot of drunk people there from Columbia, Missouri, and Auburn, Alabama, whooped along with as one of Mike’s many bands — Tongo Hiti — played distorted beach music, whiny guitar mixed with drums and chimes. And then moved on to contemporary fare. I was with my friends Tom and John, who are brothers, and we were eating a pupu platter and drinking $8.50 mai tais beneath huge turtle shells and tiki masks.

Mike was wearing white boat shoes and thick, cool black glasses. He walked offstage, into the crowd. He’d been standing, singing while playing the drums. For one song, he blew into a conch shell.

“Tiny bubbles … I feel fine … Tiny bubbles in the wiiiiine …” The voice was beautiful, and familiar.

Mike was taking requests. “Devil Inside.” “Dancing Queen.” “Werewolves of London.” A rendition of “St. Elmo’s Fire.” (He held out the “Fiiiiiiiiiiiiiieeeeeee-yuh” so long that we stood from our booth.) A heavy-metal version of Celine Dion’s “My Heart Will Go On.” It was a ridiculous and immense set list. He made them all his own, sang until his baritone wiped the words away. He paused and took out his phone and started filming us, the crowd.

A lady near us, sitting with a group that seemed to know Mike, shouted: “You were abducted by Puddles!” Mike said, “I pawned the clown off on someone else tonight.”

He went up to the bar — dancing, twirling, slinking, his shaved head shimmering under the pink light.

♦♦♦

I held a small advertisement in my hands, my eyes wide. “The Official Pallookaville Really Big Santa and Puddles Pity Party Holiday Sing-A-Long Songbook.” 8 p.m., December 22, 2013. As far as I knew, the only advertised public performance Puddles had agreed to. By now, I had gone home to Indiana, tired of waiting on Puddles. Another week had crawled away. So I drove eight hours back. It was three nights before Christmas, too hot for December, and my buddy John and I waited an hour to get a table at Pallookaville.

We saw him through the window. John gurgled, “Look!” through a mouthful of poutine. I glanced up from my circus-themed menu and unclenched the mustard bottle I was holding. The clown was outside, holding an umbrella. The umbrella glistened. There are regular umbrellas, and then there was this one. A patio umbrella painted in the colors of a rainbow with a parasol big enough to shield 10 people. He carried his suitcase, and his lantern, the little blue flame cutting a path for him in the dark. He lumbered toward us. In white-and-black saddle shoes, through the puddles on the sidewalk, to the double-glass front door, that ridiculous umbrella wobbling on the shoulder of his clown suit. He was the tallest clown I had ever seen.

Pallookaville couldn’t hold anyone else, people four deep drinking chocolate milkshakes and peppermint sodas at the long wooden bar, a line of the unseated bottlenecking toward the door.

Puddles tried to enter the door. The umbrella was much too wide. He bounced off the glass, looked at the people waiting on him inside, backed up, and came toward the door again. The umbrella was again too wide. He stared at the door, then the umbrella, confused. He came forward again, no use. He had to put it down. There was a jar of peppermints on the register counter and Puddles went to them, immediately. We were sitting near the peppermints.

I turned in my chair. The clown saw me, stopped, and his eyes narrowed. He was frowning. He mimed something. I had no idea what he meant.

Staring at us, he took his briefcase and lantern to the corner of the restaurant, to a microphone stand, and on his way, he stooped at some of the tables, frowning at children. Really Big Santa was indeed really big, with a beard like a terrified animal. And then they both sang Christmas songs: “Frosty,” the Grinch song — the Grinch was there, petting little Max — and “Silent Night,” and the song from A Charlie Brown Christmas. An hour in, Santa asked everyone to stand and join in. And John and I just sat there, not taking part. Puddles walked through the crowd to us, stood before us, and mimed that we stand and sing. The whole restaurant was staring. So we got up. He was really not happy. A lady behind us, who didn’t have a table, said, “Y’all just got served.”

After the show, when the music was over and Pallookaville half cleared out, children asleep on shoulders, a different woman approached. She introduced herself as Shannon, Mike Geier’s wife. “Puddles has a message for you,” she said. “Wait here.”

Puddles was in the corner, drinking a sriracha milk shake. He walked over and began miming again. We stared up at him, unsure of what he wanted. He handed me his suitcase, and he handed John the lantern, and we followed him outside, where he opened that ridiculous umbrella. We all walked beneath it, the rain thumping the rainbow stripes, to a green Subaru station wagon without hubcaps.

Puddles got in the driver’s seat. I was sitting behind him and grunted when the chair scooted back and pinned my legs to my chest. It was raining still, and he turned the wipers on and started to drive.

Clowns have a rep for being crazy drivers, which Puddles reinforced. We were on Marietta Street, headed downtown, zigging to and fro, the lights hazy and distorted by the rain on the windows. He was swerving, stopping on a dime, and Shannon, in the passenger seat, yelled, “Puddles, be CAREFUL, PLEASE!” We pulled up in a dark alley, and Puddles parallel parked.

We were at the back entrance of Sister Louisa’s Church of the Living Room & Ping Pong Emporium, a famous bar where celebs play table tennis upstairs when they’re in town filming movies. Shannon and John and I walked in the back; Puddles took his suitcase and lantern and walked around front to make a grander entrance. We fought through the crowd. There was no room; people shouldered together. The owner, a guy named Grant Henry, himself a local celebrity, was wearing a velvet robe that exposed his chest hair, spilling out. Grant, like everyone else, knew Puddles.

It was the three-year anniversary of Sister Louisa’s. Grant was an artist and Ping-Pong champion, holding a regal court beside the bar. It was almost midnight. “Come on in, precious,” Grant said to Shannon.

The place was full of people in suits, people in jeans, the old and young, the beginning of the night for many of them, the night starting to spin for some, like the disco ball above the bar. John and I were standing beneath a nun doll with a dildo hanging down. Shannon said, “Puddles likes to make his own entrance.”

Puddles came in through the front door, and the crowd parted for him, with his suitcase, people grinding against him. He stepped behind the bar. “Pour Some Sugar on Me” was playing. Grant stopped the music. Puddles took an iPhone out from one of his clown pockets, but — with white gloves on — couldn’t get it to recognize the heat from his finger. So he mimed to us that he needed scissors, and Mike Geier’s wife gave him a pair, and he cut a hole in his glove.

A “Puddles!” chant broke out. The crowd quieted when someone yelled, “Shut the fuck up!” Then Puddles climbed onto the bar, stood beneath some crosses with lights. Grant said, “Give it up for Puddles the CLOOOWN!”

And he sang his famous cover in the silence, then got a round of applause. Then most people went back to whatever they were talking about, and drinking. A few came up and patted Puddles on the shoulder, Puddles frowning, but agreeing to some pictures. And then we left.

Shannon drove us home. Past Christmas lights. And a Waffle House. Past empty MARTA buses glowing from the inside. Puddles was scrunched in the passenger seat. John and I sat quietly in the back. Out of nowhere, Puddles began to sing. “O Holy Night.” He had no suitcase. No lantern. There was no shtick. It was hard to see his makeup in the dark. The green of the dash reflected onto the window, the windshield wipers squeaking against the glass, smearing the water like clown tears, and his voice, his voice, his voice! — it built and carried, and out of all the weirdness, it was the truest thing, him holding the notes out until they rattled the insides of us, and I forgot that we were with a clown, and I closed my eyes, listening, straight till we were back at Pallookaville; and even then, even after we got out of the car, and gave him an awkward handshake, and a more awkward hug, as we watched the car with the missing hubcaps start to drive away, the window was down, and Puddles had his head back on the seat, and I could still hear him singing, right then the only sound in this sad, beautiful world.

The CW

After giving us a taste just a few weeks back, The CW has released some new promotional images from The Flash that show the scarlet speedster in full costume for the first time. The final result seems to be a nice blend of the version featured in comic books and what we’d possibly see in reality. Something like Olympic athlete meets Hollywood street urchin. It’s already a lot better than the costume from that other Flash series and that makes it a success.

As for the series itself, it is currently in the pilot phase and hoping to find success alongside the other popular DC properties at The CW. From Newsarama:

The show spins-off from The CW’s successful DC Universe launch, Arrow, where Barry Allen made a two-episode guest stint in December 2013, ending in him getting fatefully doused with chemicals and struck by lightning, echoing The Flash’s classic origin. Just as Arrow has consistently added to the DC Universe on TV, Flash looks to continue that trend, with supporting cast members including a couple of people with the last names of “West” and “Thawne,” amongst others.

I’ve never been much of a DC comics guy outside of Batman and The Flash, so it’s nice to see him getting some love. Judging from what I read and hear about Arrow, the chances are high that it’ll be a quality series and some waste of time like Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. has been for Marvel.

The full image is below and you are welcome to judge for yourself. If it doesn’t succeed past the pilot phase, which I can’t see happening, we can at least rest peacefully knowing the suit doesn’t look like total sh*t.

The CW

(Via Newsarama / The CW)

Pat Robertson is still kicking and hosting The 700 Club from time to time, despite his advanced age and numerous bullsh*t claims about natural disasters. He’s one of my favorite forms of entertainment and the last of a dying breed, making bold proclamations about demons and the end of the world while telling weak willed men to send their wives to Saudi Arabia so they’ll listen better. He’s a real peach.

The video above provides a perfect recent example of his demon fascination, as Robertson attempts to explain to a lowly viewer how the darkness is able to enter our lives through a viewing of x-rated features and the “macabre” parts of our media. I’m assuming that was the big meaning behind “darkness becomes you” on True Detective. From The Raw Story:

The TV preacher pointed out that he doubted demons had caused the car crash in this case, but it was possible.

“A few years ago I heard about a teenage girl who was demon possessed, and people began to deal with the demon and try to cast it out,” he recalled. “And you know what the demon said? ‘I had permission.’ And the permission was granted when this child had gone to some double-X-rated movie, or whatever it was, and had allowed this thing to come into her.”

“I know this sounds kind of otherworldly, but that’s the way it is,” the televangelist insisted. “So, could it have happened to you? Yes. I don’t think it did, but could have.”

If porno and horror movies are allowing demons into our lives, I’m f*cked. I’m shocked I haven’t wrecked my car, killed my dog, gone to prison and mixed my colors with my whites at this point. The fact that I’m not walking around with a bunch of pink underwear must mean that my demon is quite patient.

Or maybe it is not there yet, which is understandable. We did just find out the identity of that Duke Co-Ed porn star after all,  and with the things people search for daily on the internet, demons are probably working overtime.

In the end, my main curiosity with Robertson and his exclusive club is how he fools these folks into working for him. What is going through the mind of his co-host when he goes on a tangent about macaroni and cheese or Buddha? Are they like him or are they just trying to wait him out and ascend to his throne?

Better get comfortable. Pat Robertson is the Avon Barksdale of the religious pundit world and “the king stay the king” as they say.

(Via The Raw Story)

This is fun. L.V. Anderson and Jess Fink of Slate started with a simple observation—Americans consume more meat per person than any other nation on earth (except Luxembourg, those gluttons), yet most of our official state foods are not meat—and have created a map that assigns a unique meat or meat-based dish to each state in the union. Some of the results are what you'd expect (Texas gets brisket, of course), some are surprising (Washington gets salami because Mario Batali's dad owns a meat shop there), and some (OK, just Maryland's) are horrifying, but the whole thing is a gas.

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“There will be no viewing since his wife refuses to honor his request to have him standing in the corner of the room with a glass of Jack Daniels in his hand so that he would appear natural to visitors.”

After Walter George Bruhl Jr. died Sunday, his family discovered an obituary that he had written himself.

"It was a complete surprise to me," Bruhl's grandson Sam told BuzzFeed. "I couldn't help but cry and laugh hysterically through the whole thing."

Sam Bruhl / Via reddit.com

Sam Bruhl uploaded his grandfather's obituary to Reddit on Monday, where it quickly became one of the most popular links of the day.

Reddit

"I knew immediately that it needed to be shared," Bruhl said. "People need those little bits of inspiration each day, and I know my PopPop would love to be that for people."

Martin Bruhl, Walter Bruhl Jr., Sam Bruhl, and Walter Bruhl III.

Courtesy of Sam Bruhl for BuzzFeed

Via reddit.com

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It isn’t possible to have enough Jon Hamm in your day, especially on his birthday. We covered where you might’ve seen Hamm prior to Mad Men a little earlier, but did you know you might find him invading your family vacation photos? Neither did these visitors to Rockefeller Center.

Jimmy Fallon invited Hamm to take part in “Celebrity Photobomb” and the duo ran with the concept, chowing on hoagies and acting foolish behind unsuspecting families at the Top Of The Rock. The segment adds to the Hamm mystique and continues Fallon’s hot streak on The Tonight Show, even if many would say he’s using a lot of crutches.

No matter what you think, it’s a damn entertaining segment. I’m just upset these folks had a better NBC experience than I did. The NBC tour is not the magical experience they advertise it to be, but I did get a “Tracy Jordan Meat Machine” shirt for my trouble.

(Via The Tonight Show)

Via Ronald Woan

We might get to see Terry Crews amusingly shouting “Sweet Christmas!” in Marvel’s Luke Cage Netflix series after all. Crews took himself out of the running long ago during movie speculation because (in his words), “it was people trying to pit people against each other. Idris [Elba] versus Michael Jai [White] and I’m like, ‘Wait a minute, this is not even greenlit! Can we talk to Marvel? Why are you talking to me? Don’t put me against my homeboy for a movie that’s not existing.’ I said, ‘Take me out!’”

The 45-year-old NFL star turned scene-stealer in Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Idiocracy, and more has changed his opinion since the Netflix series was greenlit. He tells Collider:

“I heard [it's greenlit] but I haven’t gotten any calls. I’ve been hearing stuff like, ‘oh you’re too old,’ and I’m like, ‘Man do my workout 20 years ago and we’ll talk about who’s too old’. Like I said, anything can happen, I never rule anything out. I’m game. There are no rules. What’s up, Marvel? I’m right here, baby. I ain’t goin’ nowhere. You know where I live!”

We suspect Netflix has already cast their Luke Cage, considering the production is about to begin in New York City, with 13 one-hour episodes of the Luke Cage series culminating in The Defenders, a mini-series combining the casts of the four separate Netflix shows based on Luke Cage, Daredevil, Jessica Jones, and Iron Fist.

If Netflix hasn’t cast their Cage yet, though, Crews would be a great choice. He can keep Hell’s Kitchen clear of all piñata-based threats.

Terry Crews also holds the distinction of thinking he had superpowers as a child because of an accidental electrocution. Power Man, indeed.

But will brides actually buy it?

This is H&M's new $99 wedding dress.

It's an affordable alternative to typical wedding gowns, which cost, on average, $1,053, according to the Association of Bridal Consultants.

washingtonpost.com

The gown includes a fitted waist and beaded embellishment along the neckline.

It'll be available later this month.

H&M

This isn't the brand's first foray into wedding dresses, but it is its most affordable.

Their 2006 Viktor & Rolf collection included a wedding dress that retailed for $349. That's not super expensive for a wedding dress, but it isn't particularly affordable for H&M, either.

H&M / Via pauvre-lola.livejournal.com

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The gator was no match for the river otter.

These incredible pictures were captured by keen photographer Geoff Walsh at the Lake Woodruff National Wildlife Refuge in Florida.

Geoff Walsh/Barcroft Media

The encounter took place in 2011 but the pictures remained unseen on Walsh’s computer until recently.

Geoff Walsh/Barcroft Media

The sequence shows the otter biting into the juvenile alligator’s neck before dragging it out of the water.

Walsh’s wife Kitty said: ‘At first glance it just looked like it was a couple of raccoons but when we noticed it was a fight we couldn’t believe it.

Geoff Walsh/Barcroft Media

‘The otter dragged the gator into a bush and then we just heard bone crunching.

Geoff Walsh/Barcroft Media

View Entire List ›

Getty Image

Last week, Cleveland Indians pitcher John Axford shocked the world by going 18-for-18 with his Academy Awards predictions, calling everything from a Best Picture win for 12 Years A Slave all the way down to the winners for Best Editing and Best Costume Design. The man knows his stuff.

Once you have familiarized yourself with Axford’s bulletproof understanding of the film industry, please read the follow-up conversation, aka today’s Dugout.

The Dugout

	**Online Host** Welcome to the Cleveland Indians Bullpen Chatroom!
	KluberLang: Great job going 18-for-18 on your academy awards picks, johnny, that’s the coolest thing to happen in Cleveland in like 65 years
	TJHouseOnThePrairie: WHAT’RE YOU A PRECOG OR SOMETHIN
	HorseKetchup: I played with a precog in San Diego. Tommy Medica. He can hear shapes!
	EverythingIAxford: it wasn’t that hard, guys, didn’t need to be a einstein to know “uptight sci fi by acclaimed nerd director” would win a bunch of awards and “movie says slavery was bad” would win the rest
	EverythingIAxford: the other stuff was just me paying attention, like ‘let it go’ winning best song. have you talked to a child in the last year
	TJHouseOnThePrairie: THAT OWL CITY SONG FROM THE CROODS WAS ROBBED
	EverythingIAxford: oh my god is that a thing
	KluberLang: look, I think it’s pretty suspicious that an Indians pitcher could do something successfully … what’re the chances you could do it again?
	KluberLang: no, no … the 2014 MTV Movie Awards are coming up next month, and if you’re a true student of film you’ll be able to replicate your performance there.
	KluberLang: basic science
	TJHouseOnThePrairie: OH FLIP WE JUST STOPPED BEING POLITE AND STARTED GETTING REAL
	EverythingIAxford: do you have a list of nominees or do i have to tweet hashtag nominees at deez underscore nuts MTV so they’ll get shaun white to tout them to me
	KluberLang: nope, got them right here, I’ve been refreshing ONTD_awardzbitches all afternoon
	HorseKetchup: Should we be practicing baseball?
	KluberLang: first up, Best Picture, although they call it “least ratchet torrent”
	EverythingIAxford: alright
	KluberLang: the nominees are 12 Years A Slave, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, The Mortal Instruments: City Of Bones: The Search For Curly’s Gold Part 2, the Justin Timberlake ‘Mirrors’ video and a Doctor Who episode from seven years ago about the Weeping Angels
	EverythingIAxford: hmmmmm
	HorseKetchup: do children care about slaves?
	TJHouseOnThePrairie: CHILDREN DON’T CARE ABOUT ANYTHIN OR ELSE THEM CROODS WOULD’VE BEEN NOMINATED
	EverythingIAxford: welp Jennifer Lawrence is probably the biggest star MTV can get now that Will Smith has turned into the black Don Knotts and they’re gonna want the awards simulcast on Tumblr via captioned GIFs, so I’m picking The Hunger Games
	Outmander: is Macklemore featuring Ryan Lewis going to be at the show at all
	KluberLang: next category, Best Actress
	HorseKetchup: what do they call that one?
	KluberLang: Queenest Bitch
	EverythingIAxford: also JLaw, unless Beyonce was in a movie
	EverythingIAxford: as an important aside, Beyonce is the new Chuck Norris … the minds of babies, gay men and lonely 20-something caucasian females default to BEYONCE IS GREAT SHE HAS DOESN’T HAVE A CHIN SHE HAS ANOTHER FIST UNDER HER BEARD at all times
	KluberLang: the next category was Best Beyonce but I guess I’ll skip that one
	KluberLang: Best Kiss, aka “most liked mouth selfie,” your nominees are JLaw and Whoever in The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, The Slave and The Calendar Maker in 12 Years A Slave, Jonah Hill and a Fart Monster in Hollywood’s 70th Attempt At Making Jay Baruchel A Star, and Kevin Hart and Ice Cube in Ride Along
	EverythingIAxford: JLaw
	EverythingIAxford: put me down for “JLaw” for every category featuring JLaw, the mtv movie awards are gonna be on jezebel the next day so hard
	Outmander: Macklemore featuring Ryan Lewis is probably my favorite new act some people say I look like him or one of them or both
	HorseKetchup: Justin Masterson just got ran over by a lawnmower, we should probably pay attention to the game …
	Outmander: he is a great artist and not mean and vain like all other rappers
	KluberLang: up next is best musical performance
	TJHouseOnThePrairie: THE FOCKEN CROODS
	KluberLang: … but since this award features music, it won’t be shown on MTV
	EverythingIAxford: i see what you did there
	KluberLang: yep, I am hilarious
	KluberLang: last award is the hashtag “this could be us but you playin” award, but the nominees are Will Smith, Grumpy Cat, 12 Years A Slave and hashtag True Detective Season 2 so I legitimately have no idea what this is about
	EverythingIAxford: you just aren’t down with the youth culture, doge will do a run-in and much win
	TJHouseOnThePrairie: WOW
	Outmander: I have his haircut under my hat
	EverythingIAxford: don’t come at my 100%, bro, i wasn’t playing
	KluberLang: all right, well … think you can do it with the Kids Choice Awards?
	EverythingIAxford: “child i have never heard of who makes me feel old and disconnected from society” wins all awards
	KluberLang: shit

Photos link to player info. The Dugout

Remember ice cream? Oh man, ice cream. There are so many wonderful things to remember about ice cream, but first and foremost—more than the carnival of flavors and colors; the various zany, luxurious toppings and swirls; the fun presentations (Sundae! Banana split! Ice cream cone! Ice cream cake! Root beer float!); the twinkle-eyed fun of a mild, mostly harmless transgression against dietary discipline, the balm to a searing summer's afternoon—is the bitter grief and weeping.

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On Thursday, the New York Times, America's controversial monocle pamphlet, made waves when it announced the sizzling new trend among monocles, which is: for people to be wearing them.

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Stock Photo via Getty

The Huffington Post interviewed three college sex columnists in hopes of learning what the hottest trends are in students f*cking, apparently, and learned that college kids today are all about doing it in the butt. This is obviously very important information that we all needed to find out about, so kudos to HuffPo for “getting behind” this issue. Speaking of, let’s see how many euphemisms for anal sex we can collect in this article, shall we?

Abigal Student wrote a column at Washington State University encouraging her fellow students to learn more about “the road less traveled.”

There’s one.

“Modern men and women have gone off the beaten path by moving their entry point two inches south from that of their forefathers,” Abigail said on HuffPost Live. “Modern American couples have normalized the practice of anal sex. In the words of Frost ‘the road less traveled by’ has gained some serious traffic.”

It’s basically the same euphemism, but is it OK to count it twice? I’m going to count it twice.

Indigo Trigg-Hauger, whose column is written in the form of Q&As from University of Washington student-submitted questions, says she receives a couple questions a months regarding anal sex.

“I get a lot of questions about it, so it must be something people are interested in,” Indigo said. “I think people are trying to find validation about it.”

Another student, Nicha Ratana-Apiromyakij, has little doubt anal sex is happening at Brown University.

I too, have little doubt that anal sex is happening at Brown University.

Oh no! America! We have to fix everything that is wrong with the environment and stop climate change RIGHT NOW or else Chipotle, the country's best purveyor of sort-of Mexican food that isn't Taco Bell, may stop serving guacamole altogether.

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There has been much hay made about the supposed impending demise of the extra point try, with even Roger Goodell coming out in favor of eliminating the vestigial gimme from the game. But no one in a position of power had offered a viable alternative–until now.

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Via Bill Goldberg

Move over, Jose Canseco. A more sane and less hilariously inept former professional athlete has adopted a goat as a pet, and that man is former NFL player and WCW and WWE star Bill Goldberg. The Garage Mahal host proudly Tweeted on Friday that he had become a new pet daddy again, as he had apparently taken a small goat into his home. But the best part of any news involving someone’s new pet is the name, because people can only go one of two ways in naming a pet – awesome or really stupid. Goldberg chose the former and named his new adorable furry friend Goatberg.

Via Bill Goldberg

Really relevant personal anecdote: A friend of mine bought a pygmy goat a few years ago because he has a drinking problem and often has ideas that he thinks are great but end up being terrible, and we convinced him to name it Goatse. It lasted four whole days before someone told him to Google “Goatse.”

Naturally, where there’s celebrity goat news, there’s TMZ, and things haven’t been all roses and tiny poop pellets for Goldberg and his wife.

Goatberg has issues. He’s peed all over the floor and munched on ritz crackers … without invitation. Short story … the goat’s a terror, but the Goldberg’s couldn’t be more in love.

Bill Goldberg tells TMZ … his wife is a huge animal lover and when he found out her horse trainer was trying to unload the goat — he took it off the guys hands.

TMZ should adopt a goat and name it Unnecessary … Ellipses. Seriously, it would be adorable.

Oh hey, the Oscars are on Sunday night! And congratulations to America's celebrities for enduring another painfully long and arduous awards season. YOU POOR THINGS! Being shuttled from red carpet to red carpet, forced to wear nice clothes, asked the same dumb questions over and over again ("How's it feel to be nominated?") ... it's just such a grind, isn't it? Who has the energy to open ALL those goody bags?

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Brittney Cason, a radio host based in Charlotte, thought she had verified every aspect of the supposed reporting gig offer for the Winter Olympics in Sochi. The situation still felt sketchy to her, so she searched further, and that may have saved her from being a victim of human trafficking.

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