Trying to maintain a rich tradition of Halloween themes which have poor taste, social irresponsibility, and no redeeming value (you know, kind of like this election), I believe this year we met our goal.

Every year we deliberate over a number of ideas for Halloween. Invariably we choose the worst of the worst; this year was no exception. With deserved scorn being shown around the country towards clowns, and in some municipalities an outright ban on clown costumes, what did we say? Game on.

The carnival featured three clowns: Pervis (Perv), Randy, and Crusty. We were fortunate to obtain these seasoned professional clowns – lucky for the neighborhood and us! The neighborhood kids will need to get some counseling, though, after last nights performance.

We wanted to capture the essence of what lazy clowns would do at their own carnival. Juggling perhaps, but not too aggressively. How about balloon caricatures?   Well, let’s not go over the top.

We offered a Dunk the Clown game, but since lazy clowns don’t want to get wet, sadly we had “mechanical failures”.

How about hang gliding for the kids? Yup, we constructed a ladder kids could climb and sail back to earth using a simple, ordinary umbrella. Oh yeah – every parents’ nightmare. Once again we were stymied with technical difficulties.

We did offer pony rides, but we couldn’t find our way into the corral.

The only negative of the night is we received a visit from the police. Fortunately, we were only cited with excessively funny. Still, it was a $200 fine.

And of course Dottie made her debut performance as a cowgirl. Giddyup girl.

We had a steady surge of visitors to our carnival.

And the scariest part of the night? We had people lined up to have their pictures taken with the clowns. Yikes!

Chock up another year to irreverence.