Kelly Miller Circus Website to Runaway Clowns Steve Copeland and Ryan Combs: Come Back, Please! .... Well, How Do You Read it? .... Hey, I've Got More Big Top Bits to Go -- Come Back, Please!

 Not 1, not 2 or 3 or 4, but 10 photos of Steve and Ryan appear on the Kelly Miller website

Something about Kelly Miller’s quirky website, capriciously out of sync with the PRESENT tense, that keeps me wondering why Hugo Central features photos of long-departed jesters Steve Copeland and Ryan Combs?  Hardly a space for the new replacement clown.  Here’s why, guessing:  They’re either falsely luring repeat customers into the tent by promising more antics from the dynamic duo, or this website is morphing into a picture gallery of  K-M performers, yesterday, today, and maybe tomorrow --- or none of the sideways.

Might John Ringling North II rue his having nudged the guys to speak with Circo Hermanos Vazquez about work? That's where they ended up going.  Will be interesting to see if they stay the course next season, or giggle elsewhere.

Okay, so that didn't grab you?  So let me try harder: How deadly the naive assumptions of a school  teacher posing as an animal trainer? She, not named, while taking her students to the Monaco Circus in Cusco, Peru, dared to enter the big cage, intent on demonstrating that the lion in there was not aggressive. Oh, sure, teach!  A big NO. Demonstration turns into horror show when teacher, once inside, gets viciously grabbed by the not-mild beast, dragged out of the cage by its teeth, and dangled around the ring “like a rag doll,”as reported by Chuck Burnes in Circus Report.  Good grief!  A teacher that stupid?  The show's real trainer applied a rod against the overly flirtatious beast  and managed to subdue its terrifying courtship. If only Dr. Phil had been there, all parties might have behaved better. at least until Jerry Springer could intervene ...

Music is in the ear of the beholder, and the bigger the ear, the better.  These elephants are making it their own way, so maybe it's time to revive Johnny North's  whimsical elephant ballet?  This takes us to North Thailand, where sixteen mammoths who make up the Thai Elephant Orchestra play especially designed instruments.  Three CDs released so far.  What next for the prima pachyderms? A stint on Bangkok's Got Talent?  Dancing with the Stars?  Beethoven under the big top?

Big Apple’s date on big screens,  nationwide, is fast approaching.  A goggle search reveals the show will be seen in about 25 movie houses in and around the epi-center of entertainment, that being L.A.  Most venues tape delaying (a wise box office move) rather than streaming live, 9:30 PST.. This is a big excitement, and I can’t wait ...  But, maybe not quite unprecedented, as previously I poised.  In back checking some of my own more sobering work, sans the silly dots, I see that a complete performance of Ringling- Barnum was televised from the Garden in New York in 1948 (and why am I wondering if this really happened?), at the bonny dawn of television.  Most of those tuning in were likely New Yorkers boob tubing it inside bars, where the new magic screens were being shown around then, to jump start early patronage.

END RINGERS: Peter Peke, in exit mode from a visit to Cirque du Soulei’s terrific Varekai, being asked by a fellow, “So, how did you like the plot?”  Pausing, pickled, and by this posting pardoned, a thematically challenged Pepke piped,  “I wasn't aware there was one.”   Neither was anybody else, except for Cirque’s most  self-deluded fans, having to hallucinate in order to find and follow the Big Theme ... Billy Barton's first posting for Circus Report, back in October, 1975, reprinted by the same: “Greetings from the first column by the Rex Reed of the circus.  Nothing is sacred, kiddies, and inasmuch as we all love secrets, I promise not to keep any.”  When reading CR, I always save, for last, the best part, reprints from old Barton columns.

 Swinging singer, Franchesca Cavallini, sings "I am the circus."

...  Carson and Barnes, from reports, surely looks more than one notch higher in creative production, what with a singling aerialist Franchesca Cavallini, and dancers who look like dancers..  I wish the Byrd of Byrds would fly west next season.  I promise to buy peanuts!. ...  Don Stacey thumbs upping a new DVD that sounds divine.  Sixty three minutes of footage, World Circus, from visits by Moon Productions to eleven countries, following “five top international circus acts.”  Interviews, also included, feature the likes of Kenneth Fled, Paul Binder, Tim Roberts, and other big top luminaries.  Here’s a link to buy: www.worldcrcusculture-movie.com 

OFF THE LOT, ACROSS THE STREET: Football Maximus, drop dead and let Big Bang Theory back on Monday Nights! I'll take Sheldon and his goofy friends any day over the sorry spectacle of young "athletes" prepping for a life of brain damage and pain. ... Did you read about those London tunnel thieves, digging holes to reach up into shops bearing ATMs and expensive loot?   They're even "digging" above ground ... .Ooops, there’s my bus!  See you next time! ...