HERE'S ONE FOR THE DOGS: They're "Stealing the Show" at Big Apple Circus, Reports The New York Times ... Hey, Ringling! Here's How to Make a Miraculous Trans-Canine Return

Ah,  how I love a good old fashioned real circus. Legit circus. True circus. Circus Circus!

As I have  written here, show me a dog and and I'll call you a  circus.  Well, Big Apple, YOU ARE CIRCUS. May the timid tenters out there, and they know who they are, follow suit and let some of our beloved animals back in.  

Feld of Felds, have you the guts to lead the way? Where is your courage?  Man Up, Circus Up! and let the circus back in the circus.  "Bailey" your bot is a pitiful symbol of self-evisceration.  A sad far cry from robust showmanship the world expected of Ringling .Is this how you want to be remembered?  Here is how to make Bailey the key to a true comeback.

I have the perfect story line, Disney be damned: Bailey accidentally spots some real circus mutts somewhere and is so excited, he longs to be like them.  Barks for his freedom from metal, for a trans-canine makeover.  Lights go dark, drum rolls, crashing symbols, and a great circus parade invades the arena.  Bailey is  leading it!  The excitement is so great, that he is inspired to do more things, more and more and then struggles, apparently up against mechanical restraint. Is he still really?  Miracle of miracles, lights down and up in blazing glory.  Bailey is now a REAL DOG.  

Crowds go wild!  The Gods of Circus sing Hallelujah!  And in parade the five Ringling brothers, John Ringling North and Irvin  Feld. 

WAITING FOR GODOT IN A PUP TENT? ... Celebrating Portable Amusements --- Carnie layouts to Irish Theater Fit-ups ...

              Laying down The Whip, at the fairgrounds in Santa Rosa.  

In my compulsively creative boyhood, the discovery at the county fairgrounds of how Foley & Burk carnival wagons were spotted and unloaded to form midway attractions utterly fascinated me. Rides went up in  portable sections. Wood frames for games were raised, joined together by open hinges, and covered in canvas.

My pet wagon was a quaint little thing when I first laid eyes on it, parked in front of the fairgrounds entrance.  What was it for? A few comical images and a small scrim I could barely see through posed a mystery.  When the wagon was spotted on the midway, its sides raised to form a two story structure, Thimble Theater appeared at the top. I was taken.  Had. Seduced. With the dark walk-through on the top floor, it would become my all  time favorite carnival amusement. 

Actually, Fun on the Farm, its manufactured name at birth, was trans-fashioned by Foley & Burk to feature comics characters out of the 1930s. Working parts powered animated images of them on the front facades, and within, rotating floor sections that produced the most wonderful grinding sounds. 

Infected with wagon-based zeal, I started out with my very portable red Radio Flyer wagon, a Christmas gift.  Once, I turned it into a covered wagon, another time, a cool aid concession .  And I built the portable frame for a fun house in the front yard, under scorching July heat.  Covered it with old rugs my mother had thrown out.  Shortly thereafter, the fire department paid us a courtesy visit. My most formidable creation was condemned before it could even open!

I can't remember what I was trying to bring off here.

Me with Tippy, and Patches our cat, sister Kathy to the left, brother Dick to the right..

Blame this portable blather on an unexpected article, Hollywood on Wheels, by Douglas McPherson in London, writing for The Stage. The subject is Fit-ups, as they were called in the UK, a tradition dating  back to at least 1839.  In a land of playwright giants (Becket, Synge, Shaw, Wilde, O’Casey)  ironically, there were pitifully few stages  upon which to play  Waiting for Godot in a pup tent?   This lead to Fit–up touring troupes that brought their own flats and drops, and proscenium arches, fitted them  in open spaces,  on village and school hall stages, to keep the show going.  Young actors and writers, toiling in Fit-ups (Harold Pinter, one),  were better prepared, I am supposing, to be less critical of “professional theater” working conditions.

My puppet shows went on tour, too. At Luther Burbank Elementary, I was asked to present a  show from from classroom to classroom up and down the halls. This called for the fitting-up genius of my.Uncle Teddy,  who designed and built for me a portable stage. With my record-player sound man, Ross Begley, we loaded it out on my Radio Flyer, and rolled it to school one morning. We were a big hit! 

In the smallest of wee Irish towns, you could watch a different Shakespeare play almost every night, and on Sundays, be tickled by comedies, like The Importance of Being Ernest. On portable screens, flickering images of Rudolph Valentino and Charlie Chaplin charmed the simple masses. These road shows, about 60 in number at their peak, thrived into thee 1960s.  And then came television.  

 

In recent times, reports McPherson,  Fit Ups are making something of a charming little come back.  He quotes Geoff Gould who “was raised on tales of the fit ups by his mother and father,” throwing up his own company, Blood in the Alley (handball games), sixteen years ago.  Still on the road, they are spreading their brand of mayhem in halls, pubs, tents and in the open.

My model building, photo above, honors some of my favorite rides.  

Today’s portable amusements may be better engineered and easier to set up.  I’ll take yesterday’s very visible moving parts.  Their sweaty rise over a dry field of grass and weed. The grinding rumble of the shifting floors in the Thimble Theater. Oh, what a fabulous soundtrack.  What a fun house – human hands all the way!

And that’s a fitting wrap

3390 

Ken Burns on PBS, AD NAUSEAM ...

I have a love-hate relationship with Ken Burns. He can be straight forward. He can be  sanctimonious. I found his Vietnam War to be brilliant through and through. It had narrative thrust.

Now comes, or plods, The American Revolution (or Evolution),  and I am wondering if it took as long to happen as it does here on PBS (Pledge Break Society).  I loved the first episode, and was high and riding high ... Into the second and ... Replay now or later? .. Oh what else is there to watch???  I'm not defaulting yet to the Three Stooges.

I plowed my way through the third,well no, halfway through, and am suddenly suffering from  TMD (TOO MUCH DETAIL) . Maybe that is a good thing for civic-studies classrooms, Siberian shut-ins, or repellent aversion TV therapy.

It's drawing raves. I see the Wall Street Journal called it "static." The understatement of the century. 

Static. I'll give it another chance, I think, I may, I should.  Could get better.  And maybe if I am lucky, the final episodes will be scored by Andrew Lloyd Webber.  

Better yet, maybe Masterpiece will put out their own version of the tumultuous tiff on our side that sent the other side retreating into a very very long Ken Burns night

The Phantom of Plymouth Rock, anyone? 

Who Leads the Parade at Circus World? Here is what AI told me

 "Julie Parkinson was not let go from the Circus World Museum"
 

Oh, no AI?  Please do elaborate for the morons among us: 

 "Instead, she was named the new site director in April 2025, succeeding her father who previously held the position. Parkinson has a long history with the museum, as her grandfather founded its library and research center." 

I have done many searches.  Her firing only a few months into the job seems only to  have been reported by me, following a phone call to CWM, answered by a woman who confirmed that, yes, she was let go.

AI, as I have suggested, not the first to, is essentially stupid.  It grabs snippets out there and rapid fire assembles an answer.

Its most egregious failure, in my old fashioned brain:on.  It has no memory.  Although this could change as competed services race to produce the most intelligent version of AI 

Yes, it can dazzle you with split second answers that seem to reveal deft analysis.  But revise your search and try it another time.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bad Day in the Zoppe Bleachers for One Family

Preface:  It is not my policy to favor certain shows by withholding negative feedback  of them, be it a review or comment left  here.  This is a comment that was posted  yesterday at the end of my review of Zoppe's 2024 show, "Send Back the Dogs" I have never sat in the bleachers, so I would be hard pressed to comment myself.     

"We came to the circus yesterday with three families and three young kids (ages 1.5 to 4). We were the first ones to enter the tent. The seating is made of tall bench-style rows with wide gaps and no stairs, so you have to climb up each bench. As we tried to go up, my daughter nearly fell through one of the gaps — it’s genuinely unsafe for small children.

Because of that, we chose to sit together in the middle row, leaving three entire empty rows in front of us. We were sitting tightly together, not taking extra space. Someone from the staff asked us to move up, and we explained that the benches were unsafe for our kids and that adults and older kids should be the ones climbing higher.

Then the person who appeared to be the owner or announcer came over and started shouting at us, saying things like “This is my circus, this is my show,” and threatened to make us leave if we didn’t move. His tone was aggressive and completely uncalled for, especially in front of small children. I honestly started shaking — it was that upsetting. One of the adults in our group asked him to please calm down because of the kids, but he continued.

Ironically, the show wasn’t even full. Many benches stayed empty throughout. There was absolutely no need for the confrontation.

This was supposed to be a fun family outing, and instead it turned into a really frightening and stressful experience. I would never return. The way we were treated was rude, unprofessional, and completely unnecessary, and the seating setup is unsafe for young children."

ZOPPE'S LATEST PARTY A FALTERING AFFAIR: Mediocre Lineup and Superfluous Clowning Miss the Magic Mark.

Circus Review
Zoppe Family Circus
Redwood City, CA November 8
$31 tops at ringside

 

A clown for all rings: Giovanni at the opening number

How to review a circus so less than what it was the last time you saw it?  Had I lived through a two-season long Zoppe golden age?

Full disclosure: I am not a fan of audience participation.   The Zoppe audience laps it up like honey. Maybe because it has special appeal to the kiddies. Go figure, while I lay down some kind of a review.  So, let's start with some feel-good highlights, and work our way down. Feel free to leave at any time.  

Top of the pack, a fellow working from an upright ladder, leans way way  back, lets go and lands on a small  a pad below that springs him somersaulting across the ring.  Daring. Dynamic.  Dashing.   Audience ate it up.

Two robust Cossack trick riders meet our expectations well enough, and a dog act delights in the key of sufficient.  A young juggler takes the ring with such force and authority, it’s a big let down to see so many items dropped.  And my favorite for style and flash —  a fellow working a web more like a single trapeze. Wish he could have given us more.

Impressive new feature: A live three piece band, yes, LIVE,  that wraps the show in festive scoring, maybe a decimal too high. I heard a lyrical passage that calls to mind Fellini.  Kudos to these salty windjammers!

Okay, as for all the rest: In-between the acts, and sometime during them, Giovanni, a gifted creative clown, yet seems always to be there, unable to let go. Always hovering.  And since he is the owner, there is nobody to reign him in from hovering — or invading.

For example, wanting to grab hold of a cloud swing too high to reach,  he takes his sweet time combing the audience for a suitable understander. Takes a heavy set fellow down into the ring, and proceeds to climb aboard the man’s bent backside so that, finally, he can reach up and grab the swing. And show off.  And I am all the while wondering if both have life insurance.  Unless the man was a plant, I find the whole thing highly questionable.  And I can't remember a big giggle payoff, as he has produced in the past. Pointless?

 

           

Critically Missing: Three figures who gave last year’s charmer rare sheen and a Big Heart: Giovanni’s two sons, Julien and Ilario, both missing in action.  Ilario does manage to sneak in at the very end, out of a trunk, but minus clown face, costumed to demonstrate the skills of an equilibrist. All at the age of around four or five.  

The third figure most missed: The mystically wordless  ringmaster, Patrick McGuire, who gave this show such class.  In to replace him, a fellow in black who refers to himself as the manager, and whose sole function is is to eject the ever intrusive Giovanni. They perform a scripted exchange that strains to be funny. 

Too much padding.  Intermission hypes photo ops with one of the dogs and face painting..  As before, you  will not find a single photo of any of them on the website.  I hadn’t the will to try digging beyond.   

Zoppe is catering to adults wishing to take their kids to a real circus.  But the slim crowds suggest either the market – or the show — is limited. Tent, they say, seats 500. There once were two rows around the ring curb. Now, only one.  Of the last three Zoppes I’ve taken in, I’d guess they drew around on average two hundred plus customers. 

They have a special place in the American circus scene. May they endure. All circuses have their ups and downs.  Maybe the best thing about Zoppe is their ability to change.  You can go not exactly knowing what to expect. I will hope that little Ilario comes to his senses and rejoins clown alley.    

2 - ½ stars.  To see my two last reviews of Zoppe, enter "Zoppe" in the search box above  left.

SATURDAY NIGHTMARE IN NO-SHOW OAKLAND: LIFE ON THE EDGE OF A CITY THAT ONCE WAS ...

Oakland, in better days gone by,: In front of my apartment building on 1800 Lakeshore Avenue, where I wrote my first book, Behind the Big Top.  Now living half a block from Piedmont, I avoid Oakland lake the plague.

A message I sent yesterday to Laura, my neighbor in the building where I live, which she once managed, after returning from m trip to Zoppe Family Circus. 

OMG, a Lyft driver bringing me back from Redwood City on the freeway, his car starts  making bangs, I ask Luis if it’s the car, and he seems to say yes (speaks almost no English, possibly recruited at the Southern boarder, pre-Trump), but keeps on driving. Then I smell rubber burning and he exits onto Broadway, near maybe second street, goes into the trunk to get out tools. I get out and flea up Broadway  wanting to get another Lyft home.  I keep walking, looking for a place where it would be easy for Lyft to FIND ME, which is something you'd think they could and should do, rather then directing me across the street or up to an interaction. I settle on Grand Avenue, and from there summon a Lyft for home.

What is wrong with the picture I have just walked through? On the ghostly vacant street, a black man or two every block or three.  Old Asian lady with cart  waiting at bus top.  Any whites? Maybe a couple. And it dawns on me, that I was in DOWNTOWN OAKLAND on a Saturday afternoon. DOWNTOWN.  I see no people going into or coming out of the the lower level shopping mall across from where DeLaurs  newsstand once operated. I remember when there was Swansons.  When Oakland was such a wonderful place.

The last time I went down there, to the lawn bowling greens at the lake (I used to love watching the games), one of the greens was totally neglected and weeding out. No bowlers showed up, so I went to call for a Lyft, but thought, I will have to stand in front of a store, without the luxury of being able to move on if something coming my way looks like parole city pride.  So, as with yesterday, I kept on walking, up to a sane and prospering location.
    
I much prefer confining myself to the delightful city of Piedmont Avenue.  

D / upper wastelands 

MIDWAY FLASH!... MIDWAY FLASH! ...SUSPECT IN CARSON & BARNES MURDER REVEALED: ARMANDO CACERAS

Originally reported  here on 10.30.25 

Traci Byrd, daughter of Barbara and Geary Byrd, has been murdered.  Am awaiting news of her assailant. 

My heart goes out to the family.

 UPDATE (11/5/25) — FOX 23 NEW: The McIntosh County District Attorney's Office identified the victim and suspect in a homicide near Council Hill on Tuesday.

The DA's Office said 53-year-old Traci Byrd of Hugo was found dead in a wooded area near Highway 72 and Highway 266, close to Council Hill.

The suspect, 47-year-old Armando Mustafa Rojas Caceras, also from Hugo, was found in a barn nearby with injuries consistent with struggle. 

********************************************** 

The story as reported in the HUGO NEWS fails to mention Caceras. 

Alex Smith first brought this to my attention.

Circus and Baseball ... I Felt a Rare Connection ...

Before the parade passes by this morning when the Dodgers take a victory lap down in L.A, a few raves for Japanese Baseball.   

Honestly, I haven't been as fully thrilled by any event in the wider world of entertainment since spring days in the 1950s when John Ringling North's latest edition of the Greatest Show on Earth opened at the Garden in New York. Just to read about it. To learn of new acts from foreign lands. To awe over color photographs of new Miles White costumes filled me with wonder.

I grew up around rings of imported magic, when the words FIRST TIME IN  AMERICA  appeared in bold under the names of acts in the Ringling program magazines.

And a little of that other worldly mystique captured my spirits while watching the Los Angeles Dodgers in the World Series.  Call this team the Japanese edition. They are calling Shohei Ontani the greatest baseball player ever.  He bats them out of the park with the ease of a kid with fly swatter   He can pitch in a pinch, too.  

But the MVP award is going to another dynamo from over there ---  Yoshinobu Yamamoto, a pitcher who sends the ball with incredible indifference to big league players hoping to touch it a little.

Three Rings of Magic: Shohei Ohtani, Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Roki Sasaki 

Watching this electric World Series— lifting me to the gods of glory one moment, dumping me into despair the next, I, a certified wimp, walked out of the two games that fell into overtime, fearful of the worst, only to wake up the following  morning  to jubilant images on TV of Dodges players celebrating victory on the field.  I clapped my hand. I smiled up at the beyond. My body tingled with joy. 

And it helps me understand and respect how the most avid sports fans can, in fact must, ride so many emotions And why they can't stay away. Call it a healthy habit.  I’m sticking to baseball, a sport that they say is dying, yet a sport that drew the greatest attendance ever this season in one ball park. Guess which one? 

And in a few hours, I’ll be watching the World Series champs two times in a row parade down in Los Angeles.  (You can stream it on KTLA)

And next season, I can’t wait to step into the Giants ballpark in the city for the first time – to watch the Los Angeles Dodgers play.  

Buy a cap?  Around here, that could get me lynched.

Ringling by Feld Still Struggles to Click in Circus-Less Makeover ... Self Evisceration Has Its Limits ...

    READING THROUGH an article in The Boston Globe, by Matthew J. Lee, about the current plight of Ringling, there is an implicit sense of failure in the air.  A puzzling failure dogging the Greatest Show on Earth as it once more, in the barn for almost a year, tries to concoct yet another performance formula that may fill more seats. 

    CHILDREN IN PARTICULAR seem to be their greatest concern, as they focus more on teaching them circus skills through You Tube. This, they believe, will grow a bigger fan base for whatever it is they are up to.  Not much in the story about the new show, other than that a live DJ will  spin poplar music.  And that Bailey their bot mutt and a big hit, will be returning. I WONDER WHY?  Nothing better illustrates more than a fake dog, the producing timidity behind this strange self-eviscerating makeover. Is that Irvin Feld I hear screaming from his grave? 

    CONCEDED CEO JULIETTE FELD Grossman to Lee,  they face “a bit of an identify problem. We were out of the market for a number of years, and in that time a new generation of kids was born and families found new rhythms and different places to go for their entertainment experiences.When we brought  back the touring unit, we had done a lot of soul searching.”

Is the Big Show stuck in the wrong venue?

      BIGGER PICTURE:  Years ago, a circus could count on a higher percentage of American to patronize it.  In Santa Rosa when Polack came to town for two days, up to half the town may have seen it.  There still is a market, but apparently not nearly what it was

    IF I TOLD YOU that New Ringling drew six to eight thousand people per show in L.A. last summer, you might be impressed. But in the 18,000 seat Crypto arena, the optics were unflattering.  

    WHEN JOHN RINGLING NORTH ordered the circus indoors back in 1957, a far higher slice of the American landscape still favored circuses.  Not so much now.  And this may be the Feld's biggest problem – would they, could they to go back under canvas?  I doubt it.

“Something New happens roughly every three seconds.”

      A TRULY BIZARRE PROMISE from Grossman — is she out of her mind?  No, she’s taking a cue from the speed at which her Monster Truck Shows rip and tear.  Rapid Ringling, the new rage?   
  
    QUERIED ABOUT LAST YEAR'S BUSINESS,  answered Grossman “ticket sales were strong for the first  tour.” I’ve read that in some of their last dates, they were begging for customers.  Scathing Yelp Reviews were of little help.
                                        
    ABOUT ALL THE NEW CHANGES going on at the circus that no longer dares  speak its name,  writes a sympathetic Lee,   “That hopefully will lead to ticket sales for the show.”

For  “the show” — hopefully, if not the circus.

     PERSONALLY, I HAVE ALL ALONG  believed that Ringling should have led the way in showing America a true circus still, yes, without exotics but with dogs and ponies and camels and  horses, etc.  They are failing to do what other circuses around the world, such as Zoppe Family, are doing. The irony is that they may be by far the richest organization and have all the resources to do it, including valid experience in putting out one-ring tent editions. We are living through the saddest chapter in Ringling  history.

Thanks to Don Covington for the link.