1. Introduction
Hello, and welcome to the weekly Clown-Ministry mailing list. This is just a short note to let everyone who’s interested know about new additions to the site, and related information.
First, Happy Valentine’s Day! If you’re looking for clown valentine skits, don’t forget A Clown Valentine. Also, A Letter from God and God’s Love could be easily re-worked into Valentine’s Day skits.
Second, thank you to everyone who’s contributed to the web site, whether by prayer, skits or articles, or financially (donation buttons on the right hand side of ‘most every page). Clown-Ministry.com is not underwritten by anyone or anything, and I appreciate your support – and your prayers most of all. As always, if you have original articles or skits, please contact me via e-mail (tom dot raymond at gmail dot com is my new address – thanks to Valerie!)
2. New skits on-line
Several of Abbott & Costello’s classic vaudeville skits, which can easily be adapted to a clown skit. The Vitamin Skit, in particular, shows the ‘clownish’ mind of Lou Costello’s character. These are linked from the home page.
3. New Articles
Added a biography of Bud Abbott, a few articles written by Lou Costello about how he dealt with Rheumatic fever and the death of his son, and scripts for several of their famous skits – Who’s on First, Susquehannah Hat, Vitamin Skit, Slowly I Turned – all of these are linked from the home page as well as from the biographies of Abbott and Costello.
While I’m on the topic, let me take a moment and explain why I include biographies of famous clowns (such as Abbott and Costello, Chaplin, Emmett Kelly, etc.) First, any clown can learn by watching masters of their craft — if you’re too old to learn from another, you’d better check your pulse. In the same vein, I recommend watching other clowns perform live whenever possible – it’s amazing the things, large and small, that you can pick up. Another reason is that Abbott and Costello preserved a living library of old vaudeville routines, captured on both film and their TV series (which is now available on DVD – writing a series of reviews of the 13-volume set, which should be posted in the next day or two). One other aside – please understand that the purpose of these reviews is *not* to have you buy them from Amazon.com and put money in my pocket (although, if you want to do that, I’m not objecting to it :o) Seriously, the purpose is to let you know what’s out there — feel free to check the videos out from your local library, borrow from a friend, or get from some other local source. As an example, I picked up a DVD of ‘Africa Screams,’ one of Abbott & Costello’s lesser films, at my local Wal-Mart for 88 cents.
4. Questions
(sorry, too tired this time around – doing this on 2 hours of sleep :o)
5. Web Site of the Week
Something not quite clown-related (although somewhat). There is an Christian music festival held in Plainfield, Wisconsin for more 20 years called His Oasis (http://www.hisoasis.com/) — it’s a three day event, with an eclectic blend of music – everything from rock to folk to Jim Cole to celtic, all with the message of Jesus Christ. My wife Ellen & I will be performing clown ministry there this year for their children’s event on Saturday morning as Raynbow & Goofy Grape – if anyone is in the area, we’d love to meet you — or just invite you for a time of fellowship and ‘desert time’ with God that has never failed to bless us spiritually in the last 10 years that we’ve been attending. Profits go to Gospel for Asia.
6. Outroduction
This is a weekly e-mailing from http://www.clown-ministry.com/ — if you received this by mistake, or you just don’t want to receive it any more then simply reply to this message with ‘unsubscribe’ as the subject of your message, and I’ll gladly remove you from any future mailings. As always, feel free to submit your own skits, articles, ideas for articles, etc.
Thanks for listening, and bump a nose!
Tom Raymond
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http://www.clown-ministry.com/
“Clowns work like aspirin, only faster” — Groucho Marx