WELL, HELLO-O-O-O-O BETTY! That's the name of this comely clown who I met Friday evening during the Second Annual Clown Crawl through Old City during the booming First Friday art openings. Betty is a member of Carnivolution, a troupe of grease painted carney performers who swallow swords, eat fire, lie on beds of nails, lift cinder blocks with their ear lobes, and staple dollar bills to various body parts. They also perform in a kickass rock fusion band called The Hydrogen Jukebox, and they appear every second Friday evening of the month, from this Friday through October, at the Ellen Powell Tiberino Museum at 3819 Hamilton Street in the Powellton Village section of West Philadelphia. It's a freak show worthy of the $7 price of admission.

Actually, Betty and I go way back -- at least two weeks -- when we started to work as actors in a movie about the incredible Ellen (that's the nickname for the museum featuring the works of the late Ellen Powell Tiberino, her husband, Joe Tiberino, and their children Raphel, Gabriel and Ellen, accomplished artists all. In the movie under production on weekends and whenever the cast and filmmakers can get together I play the role of a TV reporter (don't I look like one in the photo above) who is investigating the influx of clowns who have migrated across the Schuylkill from subterrainean caverns and sewer inlets in Center City where they practice their clown craft in
secret.

Betty plays a beautiful and gifted clown who can swallow two-and a half feet of a stretched out wire coat hanger and then bend her head forward and look you in the eye with the hook part of the hanger sticking out of her mouth. And people ask me why I like clowns!