SUNDAY MORNING OUT OF THE PAST: Big Tops Battered Round the World: Ramos Circus Patrons Fire Bombed ... West Bank Clown, a Terrorist? ... Come In at Your Own Peril, and Don't Trust the Popcorn!

 Crashing the tent in San Bernardino, 2015: That's where these fanatics took their anger.

War Zone Midways:  Customers exciting the big top following a  Ramos Bros. Circus show in Las Vegas were forced to dodge a Molotov cocktail lobbed in their direction. Luckily, the fire bomb missed its human targets, hitting a truck and shattering into pieces.  The show has been drawing volatile opposition from animal activists, causing cancellation of some dates.

In San Bernardino last year, clowns fought off protesters crashing the tent during a performance.  One of the hot heads threw a megaphone in the face of show owner and ringmaster Oliver Ramos, splitting his lip. Two clowns were injured, two protestors arrested.  “They’ve been getting more aggressive,” Ramos told a reporter.

Snarling Protests in the Big Cage?  Ramos believes he was being harassed by animal fanatics.   I have an idea for a new act:  Those protesters should hire themselves out to circuses as a new breed of wild animal — ready to hiss and snarl and HAVE AT IT in combat with a trainer’s whip, gun and chair -- and in the big cage, of course while the band plays ''Give Peace a Chance."

According to the website Samidoun, a growing international  drive is on to free Abu Sakha.  Several European countries are participating.

Closet clown terrorist?   On the ever-tranquil West Bank, a Palestinian clown, juggler and rope walker, Mohamed Abu Sakha, detained by Israeli police since last December for “renewed activity” with a Palestinian group fighting for liberation from their overlords in Tel Aviv and opposed to peace with them.  Sakha runs a circus school for mentally challenged for kids ... Hard liners seeing more than mirth to his act.  Israeli security forces defending their action for dubious associations. “Abu Sakha was arrested because of intelligence about his recent activities on behalf of the Popular Front.”

Incredible to believe that a circus clown would ever be up to undercover mayhem, claim his defenders.  But, roared back a realist leaving a comment, “What on earth difference does it make that he worked as a clown??? Are all clowns automatically good people???"

Good question, I suppose. Of late, the answer would have to be NO.  Many are the wackos out there who find the funny face a convenient disguise. Stop the show, I want out before my peanuts explode.

No, it’s not funny.  Whatever it is, and it never ends,  pray that somebody out there with the right brain cells can liberate these groups from their perpetual war, and I will tactfully say no more. 

END RINGERS: Will Cole ever roll again?   Nothing up there yet to suggest it will. Website still down, waiting word that the Fat Lady won’t be singing any time soon ... Wild speculation: I wonder if some fans close to Johnny Pugh (the website message -- WE'RE NOT DEAD YET! -- suggests a fan at work) are urging him to take the show out on the road, or others are scrambling to raise money to fund a season reboot or take over ownership or management of the circus. Sir Harry of Kingston:  Sorry but it doesn't look good  ...  Here’s what does not make sense: Why Pugh pushed his pachyderms onto an unfriendly public for so long?  He endured numerous problems and protests, and had to pay a huge fine for something having to do with the transfer of elephants in or out.  

On the big show bandstand, continued:  About my item on Merle Evans and his musicians who advanced to other venues as well as those from the outside who sat in as guest players, Don Covington remembers how the Evans band was considered “one of the finest musical organizations for its day.”  The maestro, Don tells us, kept in touch with hundreds of musicians in every state, and  many of them were “thrilled to play the show when the circus was in town.” ...  New York Philharmonic's Buster Bailey spoke of his guest time in the band as "a highlight of his career" on the drums ... How much fun drumming under the biggest big top must have been! ...   Looking through my old Ringling-Barnum route books, in a photo of the '55 band I count 26 windjammers .. .

  
Is that all there is?  Or ever was?   Let's  take a look at Kelly Miller, just for the fun of it: Okay, please, Shirley North II, look the other way.  I dunno.  The not very new edition, a holder over from last year, itself a holdover from the year before, looks rather thinly rehashed.  No?  Lots pinned on their new clown in his second tour, the funny to look at (for sure) Fajolino.  If only he had a better script writer .. . On K-M's Facebook, I found this photos of the old All G. & Kelly Miller Bros. Circus when it came to my neighborhood in Northern California.  How well I recall those festively painted trucks and the dramatic unloading at dawn ...Those were the days -- before circus goers risked fire bombs on their way out, and clowns were not suspected of embarking on suicide walkarounds.

Sorry, Shirley.  Ill try being nicer next time.

first posted March 26, 2016