How to STOP driving yourself crazy

There is someone in my class whom I'll call Mr. Silly. Mr. Silly is sweet and lovely, quite smart and articulate, but doesn't seem to see any of this about himself. Mr. Silly is also quite recent to the world of having friends. This year, Mr. Silly seems to have noticed that when he does funny things, people laugh with him, that people like these funny things, and (though I'm not sure about this) perhaps that people like him when he is funny.
I... am not too happy about this. I'm not all that excited about Mr. Silly thinking that the only way to make friends is to be silly. I'm also not all that excited about Mr. Silly... being silly. Because Mr. Silly, is being silly... publicly. He is doing things to make other people laugh, while I am teaching.
I've had class clowns in the past, but Mr. Silly is a little different. Mr Silly's attempt at comedy is intensely focused on getting the attention/ acceptance of a certain someone whom I'll call Mr. Distracted. Mr. Distracted... is easily distracted. Even in the front row, with me standing in front of him, Mr. Distracted's attention is easily drawn away from any task at hand by, basically, anything.
So, you can imagine my dilemna at having the two of them in one class. It looks a little like this:

Mr. Silly: "Poop!"
Mr. Distracted quivers with giggles and turns around to see what Mr. Silly is doing. Mr Silly is overcome with excitement at getting the attention of Mr. Distracted and starts giggling himself.
I attempt to refocus Mr. Distracted because he is in the front row (while Mr. Silly was intentionally placed in the back row so that he couldn't visually get the attention of Mr. Distracted) while also trying to give Mr. Silly a stern look to show my disapproval of his disruption. Mr. Silly is embarrassed by this stern look, by the idea that he might be in trouble, and this makes him feel a little more insecure, so he giggles some more.
I get frustrated and get verbally stern with Mr. Silly. "You need to stop!"
"Oh! Kaaaaaaay!" Mr Silly sings with a big smile on his face and the entire class laughs.
"Do you need to go to the back table?" I ask.
"No no no no no!" he genuinely pleads, and then tries his best to be good, for about five minutes, until he feels compelled to get the attention of Mr. Distracted again.
This is how it goes- a continuous cycle of attention getting, redirection, embarrassment, apology, and attention getting again. It drives me crazy. Literally, it does. I actually go "crazy" in this situation. I know what's going on with Mr. Silly, I know he's feeling insecure and wanting acceptance, I know my public admonishment of him makes him feel more insecure, and I even know that, in the same way that his silliness disrupts our lessons, my attempts to make him stop by staring at him, verbally directing him, threatening him with removal to the back table are just as disruptive as his silliness. I know all of this yet, when this cycle starts, I actually lose all of this knowledge and go "crazy:" I yell, I lose my patience, I waste time on trying to control him and the class, I get personal with kids and cross the line of respect, and I make up ridiculous rules that have nothing to do with learning or teaching, all in reaction to whatever it is that's going on between me and Mr. Silly.

This has caused me a lot of suffering, so I have been trying to "figure it out." I tried setting an intention to be "encouraging" of Mr. Silly. I've tried to shower him with praise. I've tried to whisper in his ear to redirect him. I've tried to help him draw his attention to his need for Mr. Distracted's acceptance. I've tried to help him see that the kids like him even when he isn't funny. I've also tried being stern with him, having consequences that he hates, removing him from the room and have threatened to "call home."
So far, none of this has worked. Not one of these things has stopped Mr. Silly from calling out, from reacting to my redirection by being even sillier, from giggling uncontrollably, or from distracting the class. Not one of these thing has changed him. He still does it, basically, every day. But one day, this week, I stopped going crazy about it.
I don't know what made me do it, I wasn't really trying to do it, (though I have been experimenting with and noticing myself around issues of control in my classroom, so maybe that's where it came from). But one day, this week, when Mr. Silly called out, I did nothing. He called out, Mr. Distracted laughed, Mr. Silly giggled some more, and then it was over. Two minutes later, it happened again. And again, I did nothing. A few minutes later, it happened again and still, I did nothing. I let it happen, let it rise and fall, and kept right on teaching. I didn't teach over Mr. Silly, I didn't ignore Mr Silly, I just let Mr. Silly and Mr. Distracted do their thing, without going crazy about it. I didn't try to control them, I just let them be.
And here's the most amazing thing:
Mr. Silly's calling out and Mr. Distracted's response turned out to be really small. Their stuff only takes up, like, ten seconds of class time, and then it stops. It definitely comes up again, way more than I would like, but still, it's really small in the whole of our day.
It turns out that what was big was me trying to control them. What was big was me stopping the class in an attempt to change their behavior. What was big was my reaction to them.
And when I stopped reacting to them, I stopped going crazy. Literally, I stopped "going crazy". I stopped yelling, I stopped getting frustrated, I stopped making up random rules, and I stopped publicly admonishing Mr. Silly. I stopped doing all those things that were causing me such suffering.
I didn't stop Mr. Silly and Mr. Distracted. They're still doing their thing, every day, but I'm not going crazy about it anymore.
I thought it was them, I thought it was what they were doing, but it was me who was going crazy, and all I had to... was stop.