We made it to the Murakami exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum. Success! If we hadn’t gone today we would have missed it because it will close while we are in Montana. I wanted to see it because I have clown reasons to relate to the cuteness and corporateness and scariness, the Japaneseness of his art. A year after graduating from The Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Clown College (registered trademark) I found myself working as a clown and stiltwalker at Nagasaki Holland Village which can be compared to Main Street USA at Disneyworld, only it’s Dutch and in Japan. I spent most of my time posing for pictures with Japanese schoolgirls who shouted “Kawaii” (“cute!”) and crowded around me holding up their hands in a peace sign and smiling for the camera. At the time my clown wore overalls with a sash with a big bow at the back (“Nice obi.” commented one of the tech guys) and another bow in my orange clown hair. I bore a striking resemblance to Hello Kitty. On one of our days off we visited the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum and Peace Park. That same week George Bush The First ordered the bombing of Iraq.