Opera Aisle Five

Living in a big city one can't help come across signage of all kind: billboards, street posts, community boards, posters. The list is forever. After a while, one learns to ignore most distractions and see only select images; or things that are the most arresting, despite if they arrive windblown in snowy pile on the sidewalk. As that was the case, who would have thought a typical Saturday stroll to the corner market would have given me this:


First off, "Ahhh!" Where's my mommie? Second, kudos PETA, hat's off. Taking a sacred, even blessed, childhood bastion and revamping it into nothing short of all the paranoia and fear people hold about clowns, well that just takes balls, the big kind too. Bozo, It, Joan Crawford move over, Ronald's come to play ball and has the incisors to prove it!

Granted, I wasn't concerned entirely with the PETA campaign itself; in fact, I didn't even read the article on the back. I simply looked at the picture in a bit of artistic stupor. Why does this image seem so familiar, as if the muses were whispering, "you know this." I gently folded the flyer, placed it in my bag, and went to get my milk and eggs.

Some where between peanut butter and salmon steaks something brilliant and serendipitous punched me in the mouth. I was humming vesti la giubba, the ever-popular hit from Ruggero Leoncavallo's Pagilacci. But Why? I don't sing that. I'm not some love-crazed show clown blinded by jealously who kills his wife in a fit of confusion and rage.... Wait a hoot. Did a little bit of opera magic find me as I shopped for peas?