Scandals and Animals

*This blog is dedicated to Beth Z. Oh yeah, you know what's coming!

One of my favorite Seinfeld episodes is when Kramer gets the Merv Griffen show set in his apartment. He does a "show" titled "Scandals and Animals"


"It's the Merv Griffin set."
"How did you get this in here?"
"You just bring it in sideways and hook it."
"So where are you gonna sleep?"
"Backstage."
- Kramer and Jerry, in "The Merv Griffin Show"

Tonight I was at a large family focused picnic that involved some scandals and animals. Scandals with the clown competition and animals as in balloon animals. Here is how it went down:

A balloon animal creator was there making a large variety of balloon animals. Snakes, swans, rams, giraffes to name a few. There was also a face painter there who was quite talented. Finally a clown arrived. With balloon animals! The face painter turned out to be a clown as well and she seemed to be a little on edge that we hired her competition to clown. The balloon animal lady was on edge cause here is this great clown making balloon animals (I don't think she could make a ram though. Ram's are pretty cool). They all kept to their own corners and played it cool and the kids seemed to be happy (except my kid who is deathly afraid of clowns *sigh*). So scandals and animals right! Well there is one more scandal and animal to report.

The balloon animals were fragile, as all balloon animals are, and the would pop. But even while popping, some of the animal would stay in tact. We learned when the body and back two legs of a dog are left after the front legs and head pops it is really quiet obviously inappropriate. So now we have a little boy and his mother, with the bottom half of a dog, which looks, well, like the bottom half of a dog and a group of very offended adults (and by offended I mean laughing so hard tears are pouring out of their eyes and making every imaginable joke they can).

So lessons have been learned. Make sure your clown, balloon animal maker and face painter all all friends and make sure if the front half of your dog pops to hide it before the children start asking questions.