A+E

You think I'm joking about the clowns? Read the national police blotter. In January Pennsylvania's Jazzbo the Clown—off his pom-pommed tits on booze and cocaine—launched a year of clown mayhem by slinging his ex-girlfriend out of a moving car.

Armed clown robbers struck in San Francisco, Memphis, Chicago, Yakima, Washington, suburban Texas and Queensland, Australia. Antiwar clowns attacked a recruiting center in Oakland and broke into a nuclear launch site in North Dakota. Mafia godfather Joey "The Clown" Lombardo was arrested by the FBI in Elmwood Park, Illinois. In England, Sparky the Clown attacked frightened animal-rights protestors while in full costume. And a whole crop of clowns were arrested on kiddy-fiddling charges in places as far apart as San Diego, Cape Cod and New Jersey.

The clown depravity doesn't stop there. In February, neo-Nazi nutcase Jacob Robida assaulted customers in a New Jersey gay bar with a hatchet and a pistol. Later, after murdering his female companion and an Arkansas cop, Robida died in a hail of police bullets. On his MySpace site, the 18-year-old described himself as a "juggalo"—a "scary clown" fan of the rap-metal band Insane Clown Posse. Then came the infamous Washington state clown wildings. In June a hatchet-waving mob screaming, "Woo! Woo! Juggalo!" ran through a park in Tacoma, robbing, threatening decapitation and thrashing their victims with sticks.

If 2006 has taught us anything so far it is that clowns are murderous, thieving, child-porn-watching, nuclear-missile-sabotaging criminal scum. And there's one now. In your front yard. Making your son a balloon giraffe.

1.) A precise map of Tim Allen's film career; the splotch at bottom right represents The Santa Clause 3, out this week.

2.) The aggregate response of 100 pollees to the prospect of reading Jonathan Peters' recent 186-page poem Zero's Sphere (Blackbird Whistling Press, $19.66), which is about "relation, dynamics and dimension ... a philosophy of relatedness."

3.) Jim Gibbons.

Answer: This is psychology, so there is no correct answer. But No. 1 is close.

FROM HIPSTER HAIKU BY SIOBHAN ADCOCK (BROADWAY BOOKS, $9.95)

My sardonic wit

Doesn't translate in e-mail

That's why I'm alone

Sanitation guys

Don't understand fierce street art

Picked up on trash night

While he sleeps, I spy

Ann Coulter on his bookshelf

Slip out quietly

Will I look old if

I keep my Friendster page up

and don't use MySpace?

Why are you dancing?

Just stare gravely at the band

Act appropriate

I was wandering through Lorenzi Park last Saturday when I stumbled across a gathering of vendors for the disabled and cronies of political candidates making last-minute plugs. It would have all been forgettable if it were not for a "talent" display featuring very young kids singing and dancing. Some in the audience applauded them for their pluck and determination, but as I watched one after the other, it made me wonder, when do we stop cheering for the attempt and clap based on, you know, talent? That's gotta kick in somewhere down the line. Worst of all, I didn't enjoy seeing a little girl, maybe 7 years old, wearing a tight little black dress doing a karaoke number along the lines of "Hey, Big Spender." Creepy.

Is there any gay-friendlier basic-cable channel than Home — Garden Television? Doubtful. In show after show—whether it's makeover programs such as Curb Appeal or lifestyle numbers such as Small Space, Big Style—HGTV routinely showcases same-sex couples in upbeat, utterly placid domestic settings. By not calling a pixel of attention to the fact that the homeowners are, say, two burly, effeminate men—each is simply labeled "homeowner," just as the hetero couples are—HGTV does for basic cable what the voters of Nevada and other states have decided against doing in real life: accord gay couples equal normalcy.

What do you think of The Killers?

"I hate that new album. When they were ripping off The Cure it was all well and good and it was a guilty pleasure, but this notion that they're gonna do Born in the USA is just absurd. And I can't look at [Brandon Flowers] now without thinking of Kyle MacLachlan in Showgirls, 'cause he's such a nerd, but he's trying so hard to be this sleazy, cool lizard."

— Rock critic Jim Derogatis, who’ll be reading at the Vegas Valley Book Festival.