Title and Topic change....

Hey everyone, I will be leaving the old entries on here (because I still think they are interesting) but I will be changing gears from where I was to a more business side of what I'm doing, what I'm learning and perhaps what mistakes I make in the hopes that you may avoid making the same ones.

It will probably be a little easier for me to "find material to blog about" and won't be just rehashing material and links that can already be found all over the web.

I already gave a bit of background into how I became a clown in my first blog entry, but a question that I have seen posted now and then from new children's entertainers is how to come up with a name for your character.  I can't speak for everyone, but I can share how I came up with my own name...

Back in university (long before I had ever even met a clown let alone thought of becoming one) I frequented a little place called "the U of Moo" .... no, it isn't a real university.  It was a unix based, virtual community on a server at the University of Windsor.  To my knowledge the server is still running in some forgotten closet somewhere and may still be accessible if you feel like playing with unix for a bit.  In any case, in this little moo community, I developed a few online personae.  One of those, happened to be called "paranoia" and was an exaggerated extension of a strong personality trait of mine... yes, I am afraid of almost everything.  The character was described something along the lines of "a small figure cowering in the corner with a flashlight and a can of bug spray."

Fast forward to post-university days... As a mother of two who has not had a steady job in 4 years because it was cheaper to stay home than work for minimum wage and pay sitters, we needed more income.  I met Trixie the Clown, who is now a good friend and while I mean no disrespect to her skills and hard work (it IS harder than it looks), I watched her birthday party show and thought.... 'I can do that...'  So, skipping the whole story of deciding to be a clown and what not, let's keep going with the name thing...

So you want to be a clown? 
What's your name? Who are you? What are you like?
Oh my gosh.... hmmm.... ok. 
What will be the hardest thing for me to do as a birthday party clown? 
Go to someone's house where there is an enormous, horse-sized dog and have them expect me to be OK with that. 
Well..... if my character is SUPPOSED to be afraid, then..... hey, this could work! 
So, a friend of mine in university had shortened my "paranoia" handle to 'noia at some point.  I decided that Noia would be an ok name for a clown... but nobody got it, nobody knew how to pronounce it, the joke was completely lost. 
Oy. 
Para Noia? no, that's not a name...
Peri? ew, that sounds gross... wait, Perry is a name! 
It's a boy's name :S .... hmmm ... does it matter?
So, Perry Noia was born!  And since she is simply an extension of my own personality traits, it makes it much easier to stay in character.

Take a word, take a couple of words... change their spelling or pronunciation a little to make them sound like a real person's name.  I hope my little story can inspire a few new entertainers in their search for their own character.

Perry Noia the Scaredy Clown :D

PS - I added "the Scaredy Clown" because some people still missed the joke... and even with that added, some still do.