Clown mower featured in film

Local clown portrayed in lawn documentary

Back in August, 2006, a Canadian film crew was in town to shoot footage of Mark Alexander, aka Biz the Clown, principal of the lawn-care business, Two Clowns Mowing. Their documentary, “American Savannah,” which according to co-director Jean-Francois Méan, “is about lawns as an expression of American culture,” is finally finished and will be screened at the Little Art Theatre on Saturday, June 7, at 4:30 p.m. Admission is free.

According to Méan, he and co-director/cameraman Ian Lagarde met Alexander in Oct. 2005 at a mowing expo in Louisville, Kentucky, where they were looking for ideas for their film. They had originally conceived the documentary some three years before they started filming. They began by writing proposals for funding to CBC and Tele-Quebec and eventually won an annual competition for documentary makers. They hope the final product will be aired on Canadian TV, cable TV in the U.S. and shown at international festivals.

The movie wends its quirky way from Lousiville, to Las Vegas, to Fenway Park in Boston, by-way-of Yellow Springs. Some nine minutes into the film, after interviews with an anthropologist and a lawn historian and footage of lawnmower racing, the lens is turned on Alexander, who, wearing his clown pants and red bulbous nose, is driving his truck with two cow clowns on the roof to a mowing job on Kingsfield Court. In the ensuing scenes we watch him mowing, loading the clippings into his truck and clowning on mowers with clown number two, brother-in-law Rob Hoffman.

Besides poking fun at Americans love of turf and “cellular complexification,” the movie also deals with such environmental issues as insecticides and water usage.

Asked about his new-found stardom, Alexander said, “It was pretty cool, them pickin’ me and everything.” He was happy enough with the outcome to ask friend, Little Art owner Jenny Cowperthwaite-Ruka to hold a sneak preview.

A life-long resident of Yellow Springs, Alexander started his mowing operation in the spring of 2006, because he felt he wanted to run his own business. The idea for the name comes from when he and his friend, Rocky Jones, were rebuilding an old truck ten years ago. On a whim, they started referring to themselves as “two clowns working on an old truck.” When Alexander started his lawn mowing business, he decided to honor his friend, who passed away in 2005, by calling it “Two Clowns Mowing.”

One year later, the name’s promise was fulfilled when Alexander hired the recently retired Hoffman to man the second mower. In addition to mowing, they do tree work, tilling, and snowplowing. Since the filming, the business has taken off, and he now has two trucks on the road and three full-time employees and has expanded to landscaping.

A dozen years ago, Alexander took a course in clowning. Since then he has been known around town as “Biz the Clown” and is often seen entertaining the children around town. It was just natural that he combine his hobby with his work, he said.

Eight years ago, he purchased the first of his cow statues at an auction at Young’s Jersey Dairy. It sat in his living room for five years, he said, before he affixed it atop the Two Clowns truck. The second cow was purchased Young’s auction a few years later, “because the first cow was getting lonely,” he says in the film. In spite of the clowning, Alexander is serious about the lawn care business.

“We’re local and we try to do a good job for people,” he said. “We need to retain our customers.”

(This article by Virgil Hervey appeared in the Yellow Springs News and is subject to any copyrights they might hold.)

Back Story

The norhtern border of Thailand with Myanmar

More from the trip of a lifetime: You may have seen photos of this arch on the news recently. The cyclone that devastated Burma hit just a few miles from this spot. We are pictured with the parents of the exchange student from Thailand we are hosting this year.

Bent Pot Turkey Chili (con carne)

Bent Pot Turkey Chili (con carne)

Ingredients (substitute freely):

2 tbsp vegetable oil
1 medium onion
salt
ground black pepper
garlic salt
Mexican chili powder
1 lb ground turkey
1 16 oz can stewed tomatoes
2 16 oz cans mexican chili beans
2 oz beer
Tabasco sauce

Preparation:

Peel and dice the onion roughly, allowing some larger pieces to remain. Brown in the vegetable oil in the bottom of an old bent pot, adding salt and pepper, mostly so the cook can enjoy the aroma this will produce. Careful – not too much salt as garlic salt will be added later. Once the onion is browned, add the ground turkey and brown it too, being sure to break it up into smaller bits. Once the turkey is browned, stir in the stewed tomatoes and all the liquid from the can. Cook for five minutes before adding the beans, as it takes longer for the tomatoes to soften . Stir in both cans of beans and all the liquid. Add a couple pinches of garlic salt. Cover the mixture with a layer of chili powder and stir it into the mix, then repeat this procedure at least once more, tasting to see if you will have to add more to suit your taste. Somewhere during this procedure you will want to add a couple dashes of Tabasco, also to suit your taste. Cover and let simmer on medium-low heat for one half-hour, then stir in the beer and cook for five more minutes.

Suggestion:

Open a bottle of beer when you start cooking and sip it throughout, being careful to leave two ounces for the recipe. If you accidentally finish the entire beer before it is time to add it to the chili, you will have to open and consume another. Repeat this procedure until you have successfully managed to get two ounces of beer into the mix. This last part explains how the pot got bent in the first place.

Grandma Maberino's Tomato Gravy

Grandma Maberino's Tomato Gravy
(“Tomato gravy” is what Italians from Brooklyn, NY call spaghetti sauce)

Ingredients (all amounts are approximate as my grandmother never measured):

3-4 tbsp olive oil
1 large onion
salt
ground black pepper
1 peeled clove of garlic
½ tsp garlic salt
1 tbsp dried oregano
2 tbsp dried basil
1 32 oz can of tomato puree
1 32 oz can of peeled tomatoes in puree
2 tbs sugar (my mother is rolling over in her grave)

Preparation:

Peel and dice the onion roughly, allowing some larger pieces to remain. Brown the onion in the olive oil in the bottom of a large pot, adding a dash of salt and pepper as it browns. Add the garlic, garlic salt, oregano and basil before adding the the puree and the tomatoes in puree. Stir in the sugar. You may want to add more to taste later. Simmer in a loosely covered pot for 2 ½ hours.

Confession:

My grandmother and mother never made this recipe without meat. When I decided to make a meatless version, I realized that to have some texture, I would have to chop the onion roughly and substitute a can of tomatoes in puree for one of the cans of puree. For the authentic version, dice the onion more finely, brown one pound of mixed beef and pork, finely ground, and use a second can of puree instead of the tomatoes in puree.

Serving suggestion:

Serve over spaghetti #8 (never use angel hair or fine spaghetti) and add liberal amounts of grated cheese (mixed Romano and Parmesan). For “Spaghetti La Luna” top with liberal amounts of shredded mozzarella cheese and melt in the microwave for one minute on high.

Note: My friend Vito from Queens once told me taht they call this tomato gravy there too. Then we hugged and called each other “gumba.”

Recommendation: See the movie “Moonstruck” with Cher, Nicholas Cage, Danny Aiello, and Olympia Dukakis.

Recipe: Joe's Fried Rice

Joe's Fried Rice (or the world's simplest known recipe):

Ingredients:

2 tbsp vegetable oil
1 medium onion
2 cups of cooked white rice
ketchup

Preparation:

Peel and finely dice the onion – brown lightly in the oil in a large skillet. Stir in the rice with a few dashes of ketchup – just enough to turn it a pink color. Cook for 5-10 minutes over medium heat. Do not cover.

Note: Joe used to cut our hair at Coast Guard Loran Station Miyako Jima. He also had a restaurant and supplied the local teahouses with black market food items, such as fried chicken, which he made like I have never seen anywhere else. He fileted a chicken leg, so the meat hung from the thigh end of the bone and fried it with the bones sticking up – kinda like a chicken pop. He has a saying that he repeated as he cut our hair, “In Miyako Jima everything grow tall, sugar cane grow tall, peter grow tall.”