Tag: reviews

The Spire Ate My Friday

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The goal of the game is to keep me playing. It keeps me playing by staying at the edge of my skill.

All I did today was play Slay the Spire 2. Not most of what I did. All.[1]

A game that can eat an entire Friday of a grown man’s finite life deserves an autopsy. Three findings.

First: I can watch myself getting better. The game has five characters, each demanding a different approach, and I randomize between them every run — I don’t know who I’ll be until the wheel stops. No settling into a groove. Every run I find a weakness in my play; next run I improve it and find another. A satisfying learning curve. 

Second: the difficulty rises to meet me. When I win a run, the next one starts with a handicap, along the lines of “start with 70% of my health”. Win again and the handicaps stack: tack on “only two potion slots instead of three”. The game keeps re-placing itself exactly at the edge of my skill, run over run over run.

One amusing wrinkle: the maps are procedurally generated, and someone once went looking and proved that at least one run of the original Slay the Spire is literally unwinnable. Which is fine — that’s the cost of procedural generation. But it’s funny, because I would never know. I’d just be disappointed that I failed.

Third: it’s meditative. The verbs are few and constant: select card, play card. Select room. Occasionally buy item or use potion. That’s the whole vocabulary. Die in room 40, start the next run immediately. It pairs well with music, which is to say it occupies exactly as much of me as I give it.

I’ve written before that when I’m playing a game I love, three things happen: I pay attention without effort; I want to improve; and when it ends, I want more. Slay the Spire 2 is those three sentences built as software. The attention is the meditation. The improvement is visible. And “when it ends, I want more” — well. See: my Friday.

Any further questions?

“How is it better than the first one?” Slower, more intentional drip of unlocks. More characters. Better balance. More distinct strategy paths within each character, depending on the cards you’re dealt. And the learning curve is fast because it builds on the first game: a fast learning curve on an already fast-to-learn game.

“Do you regret the Friday?” The goal of the game is to keep me playing. It kept me playing. It won. And I had a blast. 

Compare this to yesterday, when I played the demo of the Backyard Baseball relaunch. The demo exists to make me play more. I loved Backyard Baseball as a kid. But the demo was… meh? After playing through it, I had no interest in playing the actual game. Slay the Spire slays. Backyard Baseball flops. 

[1] This is the sort of hyperbole permitted to we practitioners of the creative arts. I also installed an A/C unit in my apartment and coached a client for ~2 hours and went to the gym. But I did play Slay the Spire for upwards of 8 hours. 

Cascade

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My new favorite cooperative game 

My family is obsessed with a game. We call it Cascade. Here’s how it’s played: 

Setup: 

-1. Ask each player whether they’d prefer to play the simpler, more social game or the more intricate, challenging version. Each player who chooses the simpler version will receive one hand; each player who chooses the more challenging version will receive two hands. 

0. Arrange between the players four sets of tokens (we wrote ours on scraps of cardboard). Each of these sets will contain one token for each of the hands in play, and be labeled with a number and word, either “Preflop”, “Flop”, “Turn”, or “River”. (So one set of tokens is Preflop 1, Preflop 2, Preflop 3, etc.) 

  1. Deal 2 cards to the players who want to play the simpler version and 4 cards to the players who want to play the more challenging version. 
  2. Ask the players with 4 cards to split them into two separate hands, any way they desire. 

The game begins (Preflop): 

  1. All acting simultaneously, move any of the Preflop tokens from the middle of the table anywhere you desire. Your goal is to, without talking or communicating too much (no nods or “mmmhmm”s), arrange all hands in rank order (according to poker ranks), with 1 being the lowest. You may assign tokens to other players’ hands, remove tokens from other players’ hands, return tokens to the center, etc. 
  2. Once all the tokens are stable (no longer being moved), ensure all the players are settled, and move on to the flop. 

Flop, Turn, River

  1. Flip over three community cards, then repeat the same process, but with the Flop tokens instead of the Preflop tokens. 
  2. Once all the Flop tokens are stable, repeat with two additional cards and the Turn tokens. 
  3. Once the Turn tokens are stable, repeat with one final card and the River tokens. 

End

  1. Once the River tokens are stable, reveal your hands one by one, in whichever order you think will be most dramatic. How accurate were your rankings throughout? It’s cooperative: the whole table wins or whiffs together. (Each hand is the best 5 from the hole cards + community cards, just like Texas Hold’Em.) 

That’s the game! 

We originally played with one hand per person and a Flop of 3 cards, Turn of 1 card, and River of 1 card, but learned many people prefer playing with two hands, and that the game is more interesting with a turn of 2 cards rather than 1. We’ve also played the game with 3-card hands instead of 2-card hands. That version is particularly enjoyable for the game nerds among us, but really puts a damper on the chit-chat and socializing.  

Why is it called Cascade? If you play it, maybe you’ll notice 🙂 

There’s a Fine, Fine Line Between Campy & Bad

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Bad + heightened + self-aware = camp. Bad + heightened – self-aware = bad.

Can you discern between campy acting and bad acting?

On Thursday, I watched a play. Half the actors performed camp; the other half were unskilled. Camp is the mimicry and affectionate mockery of bad. There’s a fine, fine line between them: to the untrained observer, camp could appear as bad.

Thus, the performers must train the observers.

What’s in a Play?

A skilled actor who cannot entertain is not a skilled actor. However, in this situation, I do not think the actors are entirely to blame. An actor in an uncurated environment can only do so much.

The director is responsible for show cohesion, just as a coach is responsible for team cohesion. (A football player can reasonably say, “I played my role perfectly; today’s loss is not my fault.”)

Thursday’s show presented individuals but lacked a bigger picture. Every actor played according to their ability. Some of those abilities were poor. The director failed to account for this gap. Again, I think this is a coaching issue. Plenty of highschool sports teams have bench warmers and waterboys. Plenty of highschool plays contain “tree #1”. (And New York City theater likely has far more people auditioning than available roles.)

Just as a comedian must wink at the audience lest we think him a liar, this play needed a wink. The play was a small-theater (but professional) production of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, a musical containing archetypes — archetypes that, as over-the-top portrayals, may not be authentic. Inauthentic acting done well may be camp. Done poorly? Amateurish.

When the actors first entered the stage, playing mock-audience members, one could have said, “This is going to be campy.” A director’s note in the printed programs could have said, “We lean into the camp.” Instead, the performances fell into the uncanny valley.

A Holistic Hole

A basketball coach must do more than ensure each teammate performs their role. They must ensure the team gets the ball into the basket. Otherwise, you end up with beautiful acrobatics but complete strategic failure.

Or, in this case, a play that audiences did not want to watch.

In Favor of Race-Ism

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Not that kind; the playful kind. 

Two days ago, Partner asked, “Are most games races?” 

As a lover of games and bad puns, I present to you: 

RACE-IAL DYNAMICS: a taxonomy of games if we assume all games are races.

Why Touch Upon Race? 

Race is a touchy subject. Why perform this taxonomy at all? 

Story structures come from games. Flirting often mimics tag. Political jabs often mimic “I’m not touching you”. 

Separating the races allows us a clearer vocabulary about the different race mechanics found in a game. 

If you’re playing game A, which has race dynamic Alpha, would the game be better with race dynamic Beta? 

What’s in a Race? 

A “race” is approximately a competition involving time. Common words/constructions include: 

  • “First to X” 
  • “Most Y in [time]” 

RACE-ISM is the categorization of games by their races. (People who subscribe to 

this categorization are therefore RACE-IST.) 

Segregating the Races

Some races are pure: reach the victory condition before the opponent. Most games contain some amount of RACE MIXING (the incorporation of different race-like components, which tends to create stronger games, as we’ll get into later). Let us attempt for a moment to see the races in their purest forms. 

Who’s Racing, How & When? 

  • SIMULTANEOUS RACE
    • “I race while you race” 
  • SEQUENTIAL RACE
    • “I race, then you race” 
  • ASYMMETRIC RACES
    • “Can I X before you Y?”
  • ANTIPARALLEL RACE
    • “You want to go in one direction; I want to go in the other” (e.g. tug of war). 

Race Physiognomy 

  • RACE-RACE
    • “First to X”. 
  • SLOW RACE
    • “Who gets there last?”
  • SCORE RACE
    • “Most points wins” or, for golf “least points wins”
  • QUALITY RACE
    • “Best X within [time]”, where X is about quality traits, not numerical (e.g. the Great British Bake-off or gymnastics.) 
  • ENDURANCE RACE (or SURVIVAL RACE)
    • “Who quits last?”

Race Ends

The word “end” can mean either culmination (“the end of my work shift”) or goal (“you are working to what end?”). As this piece contains copious puns, I shall employ the word to mean both. 

  • RACE CULMINATIONS
    • TIME-ENDED RACES
      • A clock concludes the race 
    • PLAY-ENDED RACES
      • A player action concludes the race
  • RACE OBJECTIVES can be
    • the SAME
      • (“first to touch the tree”)
    • DIFFERENT INSTANCES OF THE SAME
      • (“first to checkmate the opponent’s king”)
    • DIFFERENT
      • (“can I tag this runner before they get to the base?”)
    • SUBJECTIVE
      • (“most satisfying to X person”)
    • OBJECTIVE
      • (“Highest measurable count of X”) 

Race Mixing

Most people only watch footraces at the Olympics once every four years, which implies we find them less interesting than other sports. Football, for example, contains:

  • An antiparallel asymmetric race
    • (offense vs defense) 
  • with mini asymmetric antiparallel races
    • (cornerbacks guarding wide receivers; offensive line protecting the quarterback while the defensive line attempts to pressure and/or tackle the quarterback), 
  • with multiple race ends and sub-ends
    • (the game itself concludes after the clock runs out of time (time-ended race), but the clock can pause due to various in-game mechanics)
    • (the number of downs is a play-ended race, influenceable by both teams) 

Football’s different races require different skills: speed, strength, and hand-eye coordination of course, but also time management, rapid-fire decisionmaking, and balance of risk-taking. Since games parallel the skills we use in the rest of our lives, the simple ones tend to be less generally valuable, just as the ability to perform one simple task (picking up a pencil) is less valuable than performing a more complex task (writing a biography). 

Inferior Races 

There are no inferior races. RACE-IAL PREFERENCE is a matter of taste. 

For example, my favorite type of race happens in cooking: One person speeds to finish the rice before another person can toast the marshmallow, all before the oven is pre-heated. As an added benefit, at the end we enjoy a tasty race krispie treat.

A Game You Can’t Decline

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The goal of the game is to play well. You play well by knowing you’re playing.

Last night, friends came over. They’d baked cookies. They brought the cookies in a Tupperware container. As they were leaving, Partner went to retrieve the Tupperware and hand it back at the door.

I winced internally. I should have said something. 

Here’s the game I saw and Partner didn’t: you don’t return the Tupperware at the door. You keep the Tupperware. Eventually, you need to return it – which means you’ll see them again, which means there’s an open thread between you. The Tupperware is a mild promissory note. Yes, we’ll have you over, or you’ll invite us, or we’ll see you at the thing – because also, here’s your Tupperware.

Returning the container at the door closes the loop transactionally. Everyone walks away even. But the loop is what builds the relationship. Even is not what you want when starting a relationship if the other person would find you returning the tupperware weird.

When I mentioned it to Partner afterward, she got it instantly. She’d just never thought of it that way. We also agreed that it isn’t logical. Of course they want their Tupperware back. The whole thing is illogical. Most social dynamics games are.

I’m reminded of a buddy of mine this past summer. A woman had stayed over at his apartment. Now, she wanted her ring back. He told her to retrieve it from his roommate. No, buddy! She left it so you have to see her again! 

I once had a 9 AM appointment with a doctor. Due to a series of errors made by his office and lab, my appointment ran until 2:30 PM. Around noon, I mentioned wanting to grab a sandwich. He gave me cash and offered to pay for mine as well.

Something felt wrong. I bought both sandwiches and gave him the cash back.

I suspect he didn’t even register the move. But Partner had the same instinct I did when I told her: pay for his sandwich, refuse the cash. The discomfort was real and shared, even if neither of us could immediately articulate why.

Here’s why: the cash created an obligation flow that didn’t match the relationship. He had spent five and a half hours of my day on his office’s mistakes. The appropriate flow was him owing me. His offer to buy me lunch was a way to pay down his debt of guilt. But not an appropriately-sized one.

Buying the sandwich, refusing the cash, was the right move. It accepted the kindness implicit in offering food while refusing the implicit power-move. Imperfect, but instinct steered correctly. 

And as we left his office, he apologized at least 8 times for the delay. By the end, he said, “I’m done apologizing. If I apologize again, hit me.” That’s the appropriate obligation for someone who’s wasted 5 hours of your day. 

Recently, I made a friend who pocket-vetos any activities that are emotionally intense for him. He only plays the games he wants to play, in the ways he wants to play them.

It’s no surprise this correlates with power and resources. As friends have gotten more powerful, more of them have developed this stance. No explanation, no apology, no negotiation. Generally no answer, not even a “No”. 

If you’re young and broke and unattractive and awkward, you can’t pull this off. People stop inviting you. Every social interaction has to be navigated, every gift has to be reciprocated, every obligation has to be honored. The poverty of optionality forces you to play every game offered. 

As you accumulate power and resources, you can decline games without consequence. People still invite you. People still want you around. They accept this trait because you’re still worth it. Like the celebrity who’s notorious for being prickly in interviews, the rudeness becomes a feature: a filter mechanism.

Three observations: 

1. Refusing to play is itself a move. 

  • A recurring claim of this blog. It holds here.

2. Not-playing a game requires winning sufficiently in other games, or people will stop playing games with you entirely. 

  • The friend’s pocket-vetos work because the rest of his social game is in order. He’s not refusing because he doesn’t understand the games; he’s refusing because losing this game doesn’t matter for him anymore. If Warren Buffett never set a schedule, only meeting with people willing to show up at his offices in Omaha, people would still gladly sit in his office for hours, waiting for the possibility to talk with him. 

3. Winning generally comes from choosing which game is being played and at what level. 

  • Most of us learn how to act in specific spots in specific games. That’s a fine level one, but it misses out on level two (shifting the odds in your favor) and level three (dictating the battlefield). 

One more thing: the move I should have made about the Tupperware was overruling Partner in real time. I saw the game. I knew the right move. I let her make the suboptimal one because I didn’t want to interrupt.

That’s a habit of mine – letting people make moves I see as wrong, then discussing afterward if it matters. The discussion-afterward version doesn’t recover the move. It just generates retrospective alignment for next time.

Sometimes the right move is to interrupt. Saying wait, I’m gonna eat all those in the moment would have been weird. It also would have been the right move. Weirdness is sometimes the price of playing well.

[It’s late. I’ve read this one too many times to like it. The daily-publishing game is hard tonight. I hope I like this post in the morning. Sigh.]

Selections & Sewage (Apr 13 2026)

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In which Our hero explores options. 

Click here for the accompanying video. 

Today, Partner and I visited an appliance showroom. Here’s what we learned: 

  • Shower heads come with flow rate limiters. The national legal maximum is 2.5 gallons per minute. You can remove your flow rate limiter, as the salesman at the showroom once did. His shower subsequently shot water with such force that it knocked the shower door clean off and flooded his bathroom. 
  • If you buy a thermostatic shower handle, you can have infinite separate shower heads all pointing at you. The shower heads are each limited at 2.5 gallons per minute. The thermostatic valve caps out at 14 gallons per minute. So even with three shower heads you won’t lose water pressure! All you have to do is ensure you’re shipping the showerhead to a state that does not have more restrictive requirements (California and New York both cap showerheads at 1.8 gallons per minute)
  • Some faucets cost $150. Some cost $800. Some cost $2400. They all dispense water. The $800 vs $2400 is cosmetic. The $150 vs $800 can be functional. 
  • The cheapest toilets and the expensive toilets both will ultimately contain sewage. The cheapest toilets don’t have glazed piping, so over time the sewage will accumulate in the pipe. The mid-range vs expensive toilets are functionally equivalent, just with different aesthetics and different ease of cleaning the part that doesn’t touch sewage. 
  • No one makes a bidet seat in black. 
  • Everyone likes a toto toilet, especially if you’re getting one with a bidet. I’m not convinced. I enjoy a vigorous stream when shooting water around my anus. The toto toilets I have used are disappointing in this context. 
  • Linear drains (long, thin rectangular ones) in New York City are much more expensive than normal, square drains since they must legally be made of more expensive materials. 
  • Steam showers cost $5k, minimum. 
  • Neither Partner nor I like rain head showers. Our dislike, according to the showroom attendant, is a common perspective. 
  • I will likely be able to realize my dream of three showerheads all at once. Bully for me! 
  • One model of toilet costs just over $26,000. It is not made of gold. I did get to sit on it.

Clown School Break Day 12: Poker vs Clown

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In which Our Hero manages his emotions (and plays poker because, with a broken foot, what else are you going to do?)

If clowning is about managing your emotions in service of giving pleasure, then poker might actually train part of that muscle. The emotional management is enormous.

Earlier today I lost three spots in a row.
One I misplayed slightly.
Two were just unlucky.

I assumed my strategy wasn’t working.

But it was.

I do this in clowning, too: I try a thing, it doesn’t land, and I immediately abandon it. But that’s rarely the answer. Sometimes you need to push the thing farther. Sometimes you pivot to a different game. But the one thing you don’t need to do is collapse inward and quit. You don’t just give up and take your ball and go home.

Instead, check your fundamentals.

In poker: Is this still a good game? Am I playing well?
In clowning: Have I found the game? Am I playing it?

Yet the two arts couldn’t be more opposite.

Poker is about hiding.
Showing nothing.
No emotion, no tells, no generosity.

Clowning is the opposite: openness, earnestness, authenticity, giving.

Poker is selfishness.
Clowning is generosity.

At one point today I was down $650. I kept playing because I was playing well—and because, in theory, I’d been winning the whole time.

That’s another key difference: poker has theory.
Clowning has only practice.

Poker’s truth reveals itself over hundreds of thousands of hands.
Clowning’s truth reveals itself instantly.

If everyone’s laughing at you at the poker table, you’re the fish.
If everyone’s laughing with you on stage, you’re the clown.

—

I was also especially open with my family today. That was nice 🙂
Time and place, boys. Time and place 😎

Clown School Break Day 10: The Arbiter of Fun

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In which Our Hero demonstrates he visited a casino today.

“The person on your left determines how much fun you have.”

A friend said this about playing poker at a casino.

In poker, the player on your left acts after you. So in marginal spots—hands that could go either way—they get to decide how much intensity to apply. They can re-raise you (the aggressive choice) or fold (the friendly one). Since the spot is marginal, it doesn’t meaningfully affect their win rate; it just affects your experience.

Improv works the same way. Your job is to give gifts to your partner. “Pimping them out” (putting them in a tough or absurd situation) is the aggressive choice. Establishing clear relationships, objects, or stakes is the friendly one.

Does clowning have a similar dynamic?

Maybe the parallel is playing at versus playing with. Playing at your partner is fun for you, but it’s not oriented toward maximizing their pleasure.

And in clowning, the audience is a partner, too. That’s one of the big surprises of clown school: realizing that you play with the audience just as much as you play with the other performers.

In clown, maybe the major determines how much fun everyone gets to have. Can the major establish a clear, joyful game? That’s their job. The minor can always destroy the game, of course, but it’s hard for a minor to create a bigger game than the major has already laid down, at least not without stepping on the major’s toes.

So in clowning, just like in poker, the person on your left might still determine how much fun you have. The difference is that in clown school, you might actually enjoy being the sucker getting hosed for everyone else’s amusement.

Clown School Weekend 6.2: The Rules of Clowning

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In which Our Hero attempts to eff the ineffable.

For weeks I’ve been trying to reverse-engineer what we’re actually doing in clown school.

There are moments in class when something works—a laugh, a tiny eruption of joy—and the teacher says, “Yes, that.” And then there are moments when the entire room goes still and we all collectively realize the joy has petered out.

Our teachers keep highlighting the importance of the game. I kept wishing there were actual rules. Not to restrict play—but to name what’s already happening.

So I wrote them.

This document is the clearest articulation I’ve managed so far of how the “game” of clowning works in the Gaulier school of thought: the goal, the metrics, the tactics, the traps, the physics of pleasure, the difference between Major and Minor, how to avoid killing your own play, why dignity matters, why heaviness kills the audience, and the one rule that seems to underlie everything: maximize total pleasure without harming yourself.

If you’re in clown training, or theatre, or comedy, or anything requiring presence and sensitivity, you may find this helpful. Or validating. Or confusing in a way that becomes helpful later. That’s typically how this school works.

Here is the full writeup. Comments are enabled in case you’re curious or want to poke at any element:

The Rules of Clowning

It covers:

  • What the “goal” of clowning actually is
  • What makes someone an attractive player
  • Why the audience’s pleasure outweighs your own
  • How to find a “good game”
  • How to play it without destroying it
  • Tactics for impulse, aura, dignity, lightness
  • The mechanics of Major/Minor
  • How to play beautifully with partners
  • How to avoid hurting yourself—physically, emotionally, professionally

If you’re not a clown and don’t plan to be one, it still might interest you. Clown logic rhymes with life logic more than we admit: be sensitive, be generous, be open, don’t force things, play the game that’s actually happening instead of the one in your head.

And share your pleasure. People open to you when you do.

Clown School Weekend 5.1: Toddler Logic

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In which Our Hero discovers a new kind of intelligence.

Yesterday I saw a clown show. The second-year students performed scenes they had been rehearsing, and one moment in particular brought the house down.

Two clowns were locked in a strange duel of one-upmanship using nothing but bananas. The first clown sat down for dinner. The second pulled out a banana. The first summoned a waiter to bring him two bananas on a silver platter. The second peeled his banana with quiet superiority. The first snapped his fingers again and had the waiter grind fresh pepper over his bananas like they were a Michelin dessert.

And then came the pièce de résistance.

The second clown peeled a banana, attached a vacuum hose, and sucked the fruit straight into the machine. He then opened the vacuum’s little plastic compartment—the one where attachments live—and inside was a perfect, ready-to-eat banana. The crowd exploded. It was ridiculous. It was ingenious.

And I sat there thinking:

How can something be this dumb and this smart at the same time?

A friend of mine likes to say, “Clowning logic is toddler logic.”

I’ve mused on this for weeks. Yesterday, it finally clicked. It’s a theory. A remarkably precise one.

It explains why the banana gag was both silly and clever. It wasn’t adult intelligence at work. It was toddler intelligence.

1. Logic That Doesn’t Work (But Feels True)

In clown logic—just like toddler logic—objects don’t always behave according to physics or reason. But they do always have a logic.

A banana is shaped like a gun → so it can be a gun.

A banana is shaped like a phone → so it can ring.

An unpeeled banana enters a vacuum hose → the vacuum outputs peeled bananas.

The logic doesn’t hold, and yet it feels inevitable.

The clown isn’t being stupid. He’s using a different rule set.

2. Infinite Positivity and Grit

Toddlers fail to do the same task twenty times with unwavering optimism. They pick the block up wrong, drop it, pick it up again, grin, try again. They don’t even know someone might be embarrassed or self-conscious.

Clowns do this too. Failure is not a setback; it’s an ingredient. The clown delights in trying again and again. It’s part of the charm. The audience roots for them because they never sour, never collapse, never scold themselves.

A clown can fail joyfully, a kind of emotional intelligence most adults have misplaced. (Is this why we love to watch someone embrace the flop? Perhaps it’s just failing joyfully.)

3. Lack of Control; all is Fate and Luck

A clown sits at home. Someone rings his doorbell. The clown opens the door. He gets pied in the face. The door closes. The clown returns to his chair.

Three seconds later: ding-dong!

The clown opens the doorbell again, just as excited as before.

Clowns operate in this same looping causality. No matter their behavior, they’re going to get pied in the face.

A friend’s baby hates bath time. He will wail and scream, sometimes strategize and connive. But whatever happens, he always ends up in the bath.

4. Repetition With Heightening

Toddlers adore repetition. Say “boo” ten times, and the tenth might get the biggest laugh. Their neurons seem to knit new connections in real time.

Clowns use this too. A repeated joke—with slight heightening each time—lets the audience see the clown’s mind working. Each repetition says: “Look, I’ve learned something!” At some point it might stop being funny. Why knows why? But bring it back up later in an unexpected way? Hilarious.

The game grows because the player grows.

5. Invented Rules That Aren’t True

Toddlers create miniature physics for their world:

“Only mommy can open drawers” (perhaps because mommy said this one time)

“If I hop, you must clap.”

“Dogs are male, and cats are female.”

Clowns do the same. Everything cone-shaped is an ice cream cone. A microphone, a traffic cone, a wizard’s wand: all delicious. Entire scenes arise from treating objects according to invented, toddler-esque rules.

These rules create friction, miscommunication, and comedy because the audience watches the clown operate inside a world only the clown understands.

The Banana Returns

So why did the vacuumed banana land so hard?

Because the clown applied toddler logic with adult-level precision.

He located an absurd rule—”in the vacuum” means “in the vacuum”—and committed to it fully. The magic wasn’t the trick; it was the conviction. The childlike law was obeyed so faithfully that the result felt surprisingly “smart.”

And then, later, the same clown tried to feed cake ingredients into the vacuum and produce a cake from offstage.

This time, the audience didn’t bite.

Why?

Two reasons:

  1. We’re doing bananas, not cakes.

    The world of the scene had already established a rule: we’re playing with bananas. Switching to cake is like arriving to the toddler’s wizarding world as a sci-fi character. You tried, but it’s the wrong game.
  2. The cake came from offstage, not from the vacuum.

    The previous joke worked because in the vacuum means in the vacuum. Pulling a cake from offstage wasn’t “the logic continuing”—it was creating new logic that doesn’t even make sense. (If they had put bananas and a strawberry into a blender, then pulled out a strawberry-banana yogurt from that same blender, that would have worked.)

The banana moment worked because it honored the rules.

The cake moment didn’t because it ignored them.

The Closing Thought

Maybe clowning can appear stupid because adults forget how to use toddler intelligence.

Toddlers aren’t dumb. They’re just operating a different operating system—one built on delight, mischief, repetition, and possibility. And one where the rules of the world aren’t yet solidified.

A clown steps onstage and reactivates that OS.

And for a few minutes, the audience gets a fresh start too.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, my banana is ringing.