If you’re anything like me, you live in Houston, you like eggrolls, you design haunted dollhouses and you constantly hear people gushing about the Orange Show which “you-have-to-go-to-because-Oh-My-God-it’s-amazing!” So then after years of build up you finally go and you walk around and realize that it’s really just a cross between shitty and disturbing.
Apparently some guy built this bizarre monument dedicated to the orange (the fruit, not the color) about 30 years ago and it ended up some kind of folk art museum in the middle of a suburban neighborhood. It’s a cool concept but after the build-up I was expecting else. Like something that didn’t smell of wet cat. Something that wasn’t filled with disturbing mannequins that seemed to move every time you turned your back. Something that didn’t make me wish I’d brought my own exorcist.
Still, when Houstonians talk about the Orange Show with such reverence I always nod my head in agreement while secretly wondering what the hell is wrong with me that all I got out of the Orange Show was fricking creeped out.
But lately I’ve started to realize that maybe it isn’t the Orange Show that’s so cool, but the idea of the Orange Show. The thought that a single man could create such a monument to bizarre oddity that would last beyond his life. And maybe that’s the meaning of art; that the ideas and emotions evoked by the piece are so much more meaningful the piece itself. I’d like to think that this blog is like that. Less of a collection of dead rabbits and poorly-written cartoons and home-made porn and more of a representation of the inner-workings of a broken, under-medicated girl looking for salvation and relief.
Or not.
Sometimes an orange is just an orange.
Duuuuuuude. That would freak me out too. Creepy carnival type places remind me too much of horror movies and nightmares.
Isn’t that the way it is with all odd, artistic things? They SEEM really cool and everyone wants one in their town. But, up close, they are often just monuments to crazy people who had a really interesting idea that got out of hand.
It’s like that HBO show Carnivale, only more disturbing… 🙂
‘By the pricking of my thumbs
something wicked this way comes’
–William Shakespeare, 2nd Witch, in Macbeth, act 4, sc. 1, l. 44-5.
OK, Jen, if it creeped YOU out, I am definitely not going! Did Hailey like it?
Jeebus. My sphincter puckered a little when I saw that clown… was that out loud?
oh but my POEM scared you??!?! Jeebus.
I’ve never even HEARD of the orange show – and now I wish I hadn’t.
Clowns Never Lie? Clowns are made out of lies! Orange Show is so creepy I might just have to check it out myself.
I will have to come visit you and just talk about the Orange Show (and not actually visit it). There are many things for which I like the idea better than the actual thing. Like Hostess Ding-Dongs, for instance.
I’m still trying to figure out what a bride, a man on safari, and a native american have in common. But that’s just me. I’m a thinker. And also, Clowns DON’T LIE.
Have you thought of sending TAPS to investigate?
There are some bizarre and crazy people in Houston. You fit in nicely! I mean that with total love, ya know! ;0)
I never heard of it before now…
I think I see why my parents moved from Houston when I was six. I would however like to see the grape show, especially if it included wine.
Hmm, and amusement park dedicated to the orange turns out to be a bit of a disappointment. Boy, I didn’t see that coming!
According to their website, the guy who created it died 7 months after he opened it to the public. Maybe the reason you’re so creeped out by it is because you can sense his dead ass following you around.
Bwahahahahahaha!
totally freaky!
Very strange. It would’ve been cooler if it WAS a colour-based museum.
more like The Clockwork Orange Show
a psychic once told me i needed to bring more orange into my life.
i killed her.
Now,I have never heard of the Orange Show…
But I think I have you beat on the nightmare department…
Check out Canada’s answer to your wee Orange Show
http://www.carnaval.qc.ca/fr/index.asp
or in English
http://www.carnaval.qc.ca/en/index.asp
But the snowman is called the Bonhomme… tranlated to English… The Good man… Something is terribly wrong with that image…
Oh my God. That snowman.
I will never sleep again.
Umm wow, I was totally nodding along with you on the first line until “hear about the Orange Show.”
Never have ever heard of it.
I do my best to avoid freak shows and carnivals. Circuses. Places with clowns and crowds.
it’s the phobias.
I could take meds or undergo intensive headshrinking but…I could also just avoid. 😉
Plus, I’m afraid that were I sane I’d be a lot less interesting. I’m sure all the whackadoos say that but I really, really mean it.
😉
Julie
Using My Words
It is scary – I think because you’re looking inside someone’s mental illness.
I never under stood clown-phobia until now. I’ve never heard of The Orange Show (I do not run in cool circles like you, chica) but now I know it’s not something I am terribly interested in. Clowns never lie?? WTF?
AWESOME dollhouse, J!
And oh my God, all I can think about is when I took C and R to a party with a clown and the clown picked R up and she screamed so hard she yakked up on him….
Clowns never lie.
But sometimes, they smell like toddler barf!
We once went here during a cross-country roadtrip.
IDK, it just looks lame to me. I think it’s so hyped because of the Art Car parade (love to see that part). But, the rest…I agree, it’s not much but strange (perhaps I’m not seeing it at the proper angle, but I forgot my strange-colored glasses today).
tee hee hee
yeah, i’m thoroughly creeped out myself.
what font is that on the pictures? me likes
Good to know that clowns never lie. I think I’m going to have nightmares tonight….
The font is either “King Cool KC” or “Laudromat 1967”. I always get them confused.
I have a sudden urge to go read something by Timothy Leary.
I love Hailey’s dress! At least she looked cute being totally creeped out. Now I must go and bludgeon my eyes out to try to get the image of that clown out of my head. Thank you so much for sharing.
WTF with that snowman…when did snowmen get such big-ass ears? When did snowmen get ears at ALL?
Can always count on finding the creepy here. mk
When I was in band in high school, we used to perform at an “Orange Show”. We did it for bucks as we were paying off our new uniforms. It was equal to yours… I wonder if my soul was sucked out….
How weird. What unfortunate things crazy people with excess money can do…
Shite.
In Georgia, we have a lot of “folk art for Jesus,” but it’s usually colorfully, sweet, and cheerful. Occasionally, it’s even profound. This “Orange Show,” on the other hand, is seriously bugging me out. What’s up with the plaque entitled purity and the dude in the safari hat? I would say this show looks like a cheap, bright David Lynch movie, but I avoid David Lynch movies so that I never encounter anything like this.
It is sort of so awful it’s kind of cool. Like outsider art.
I don’t trust clowns. Especially clowns that maintain they never lie. Liars.
I believe the safari guy is there to keep the giant stuffed dog and the rotting monkey playing cymbals (not shown) from leaving the confines and eating children at night.
I’m not sure about the purity plaque.
The trick to “getting” The Orange Show is to not TRY and “get it.”
My advice is to go there when they are having a concert (it doesn’t matter who) and just hang out, have a few beers and slowly take in the environment. That’s when you start to get it. You look around and see all the intimate details of one man’s brain working for 25 years.
Personally, I think that most people respond to the Orange Show because rarely do you see the tangible effort of one person who manifested their dream (no matter how crazy it may be).
Tampa = The Strawberry Festival.
I’ve never eaten a freaking strawberry in my life. Why should I be festive for them?
(no joke. i’m weird like that.)
Oh, and please tell me the bottom of that sign next to Creepy Clown Face doesn’t say “Clowns Never Lie”. I think I just shit myself.
Saskia’s last blog post..My mom’s new name is Captain Obvious.
Quote: Less of a collection of dead rabbits and poorly-written cartoons and home-made porn and more of a representation of the inner-workings of a broken, under-medicated girl looking for salvation and relief.
I love how you don’t have any links for the second half of that sentence 😀
OK, so I’m slowly working my way back through your posts, cuz you know, I’m OCD and stalker-y like that. But the godawful clowns in this post brought back one of my most awesomest, long-buried college memories. I know this may never even get to you given that it’s responding to a November 2007 post, but I had to comment anyway.
My friend Tim, in a supremely gin-soaked state, was sitting almost comatose on a couch while the rest of us were having a slightly less inebriated but much more active and enjoyable evening. Out of nowhere – I swear, with no clown provocation whatsoever – Tim stood up and said frantically, “Don’t call me a clown. I fuckin’ hate clowns” and then just as abruptly sat back down and retreated to his alcohol coma.
Awesome, right? And totally worth my stalking you. So, just promise me, no restraining orders this time, m’kay??
Christine’s comment 24: I hear ya. That is seriously creepy – that clown sign freaks me out.
I was at the supermarket the other day and there was some disturbed individual in a clown suit loitering in the fruit and veg section. It (cos they just have to be asexual or no one will ever sleep again) was making comments on what people were buying “decisions decisions” and “squeeze the tomato”.
I tried to explain why I came home with only the laundry detergent, some milk and nothing else and I was looked at like *I* was the one with the mental illness! Dude, I was harassed by a fucking clown in the supermarket!
We are twins, separated at birth, in the 70s, it could happen. I also made a haunted dollhouse….i even have pics of yours on pinterest from before I followed your blog. Halloween is my fave and I name inatimate objects. We should be friends…tooo bad I am an eastcoaster.