Daizy the Clown tries to keep 'em laughing.

CLOWNING around allows Tegan Cohan, owner of Laizy the Clown and Co., enough financial freedom and emotional security to deal with the blows of L.A.'s acting world, but it also has left her in many unusual predicaments. She's gotten a traffic ticket while she was dressed as a mermaid, for example. She's also been treated like a human pinata and once received a gift of a bag of pacifiers. For a clown, it's all in a day's work.

"I had been living as an actor in Los Angeles for almost a year. I ended up getting a small job as an entertainer at a birthday party. (The boss and I) became friends and I learned how to run the business. Now, I run it with my mother. We work from home and service all of Los Angeles, and go to Orange County, Pomona or Thousand Oaks.

"Daizy sells games, goofy clown magic, face painting and animal balloons for up to 15 children in an hour. If you have more kids you can eliminate an activity or add more time. But sometimes if people ask to accommodate 19 kids in an hour, we'll just bust it out.

"Performers go out with a big party bag. My bag has a colorful parachute, balls, puppets, collapsible limbo stick, face paint glitter, balloons, scarves and balls to juggle. Others might have items like musical instruments. We come prepared to do anything and we always have a token gift for the birthday child;

"It's $95 for a clown-for an hour and $135 for a character--we do princess characters and things like that. Birthday parties are really kind of the bread and butter and sustain us all year. We do about 30 birthday parties per week. Mind you, that goes from four a week in January to 56 on a good weekend in July.

"We walk into people's homes and we see how they live and how they treat people. Sometimes that's not welcoming. I have walked into a cloud of marijuana smoke or there's the drunken uncles harassing the Arabian princess. But sometimes we leave with plates of food and it's very heartwarming. And it's usually the latter.

"The people who work for me experience the same thing. They're mostly actors. This counteracts the ego onslaught of the acting world. We're silly and we get paid for it. It's brilliant."