Clowns: The Public Response

MOJO CITY, Oct. 9, 2002 - In an apparent protest to Councilman Bob (Trust Me) Meyers' call for a city ordinance outlawing clown costumes in Mojo City, twenty-one citizens disguised in clown costumes showed up at the council meeting in which the ordinance was being debated.

[The above lead graf sucks in terms of Associated Press news style, but we like it and this is our own paper, not the AP's. Cody Barstow's report ranges more into the "feature-oriented" style newspapers are not supposed to get into, but some subjects require that kind of writing. To not use the proper style to give the right impression of the event would be to not tell the truth of the event. Think about how the blood, the very meaning of the following would be eliminated if it were written in accepted news-style].

The scene was rather bizarre. Every last one of the clowns had a smile painted on his or her mouth. They all sat as a group on the hard wooden benches we have in council chambers, rocking in place to ease the hardwood-pain on the butt.

The incredible variegated colors of their costumes were to the right of fantastic, with a brilliant emerald almost clashing with blood-reds, yet rescued by the sudden appearance of a pastel purple as a clown shifted silently in her seat, and the color balance is thus restored.

It was a moving feast of colors and smiling faces, because it seemed that The Twenty-one had made an agreement to never let this sea of colors be stilled. Someone at one time or another was always moving, and the group appeared like a collection of nervous butterflies in a tree, ready in an instant to take flight and cover the sky.