SPRING IS HERE, so they say, and I shiver as never before, wondering where “global warming”ever went. I ask a smug wokish friend who impatiently replies, “No, it’s now climate change” But hasn’t the climate always been changing? Was there not once an Ice Age, not caused, I assume, by gas pumps on the moon?
IN MY ADVANCED kiddiehood when the climate evidently never changed, nothing could match the excitement of reading about the spring arrival of Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus at Madison Square Garden. I thrillingly read in The Billboard of the latest new wonders, new production numbers, costumes. John Ringling North loaded the rings with “First Time in America” imports. Grandma in Brooklyn sent me news clippings.
THEY CALLED IT The Big One, Big Bertha, The Big Show. And some seasons they packed all 14,000 seats in the Garden on the best of days during a six-week run.
FAST FORWARD to the grey sinking present: The new Ringing acrobatic show played three days across the Brooklyn Bridge at the new Barclays’ Center. Count ‘em, THREE. And of the twenty New York critics who reviewed Water for the Elephants on Broadway, not a one of them reviewed Ringing. Why? Has anybody out there an answer? Has anybody out there a pulse?
DEFERRING TO DUBIOUS showmanship, I might Lyft it up to Vallejo (CA) when Garden Bros Nuclear Circus works the town (and would I go nuclear, too?). Last time I can recall getting suckered into a Garden concession pit, it was Sterling and Reid at the Cow Palace. I walked out at intermission. Canada may have given us Cirque. It also gave us Dick Garden, whose tent, dazzling to behold in photos, is now drawing slightly better Yelp reviews than Ringling. No, I don’t make these things up. What I see in video teases are streams of fairly basic though solid-appearing acts.
AROUND MOST AMERICAN rings these timid times, it is no longer quite the ever-changing, never-changing circus as once defined by my favorite circus writer, Earl Chapin May. Less varied. Less risk-taking. Less real. AI (hate those letters) knows no limits out here in the State of Insanity. Down in LA, they’re giving the OK to driver-less cars (as opposed to cars driven by drivers who can’t drive) I feel sorry for the Lyft drivers who share with me their fear of being replaced by chips at the wheel, and I can hear the hurt in their voices. Are the ultimate outcomes of this obsession what we really want? Allow me for deferring to the smartest thing I have heard from the mouth of a world leader in decades:
“IF IT’S POSSIBLE TO USE HUMAN LABOR, do not use machines and mobilize local residents to do the jobs” — Chinese premiere Xi Jinping.
ONTO THE FLASHING platforms of New Ringling. Kenneth Feld might take a crack at becoming The Greatest AI produced Show on Earth. He’s got that fake dog, and I’m wondering if he’ll re-sign it for next season (assuming there is to be one), maybe give the mut a trans partner? Media adoration guaranteed. BTW; How do you “celebrate” someone’s’ sex change unless they wear a badge revealing it? How about, then, a retro-hertero coming out day? Hopelessly Straight Heathens on Parade?
LESS AUTHENTIC EVERYWHERE. I look for a certain safety wire attached to a certain Cirque du Soleil aerialist currently appearing in a TV ad. And then receive a relevant e-mail from Sir Douglas of McPherson, over yonder Pond, recounting his recent interview with a Cirque performer. She told him, “In training we wear a harness. In the show, the harness is off and you just go for it!”
HO HO, NO NO.
ROBOT RINGMASTERS? Robot Critics? (please, no cracks). Circuses may be going hybrid on us – part human, part other. For kinky laughs, our new faceless clowns could spoof wild mishaps in the technologically challenged air these days -- mad airplanes fraught with runaway parts, leaving passengers stuck to the ceiling, others gasping for air, while a recorded voice says, “You may claim your soul upon check out.”
HOW LIKE A SCENE in a nightmare sci-fi flick pitting the emerging power of AI against a human society no longer able to control it. AI scripted. AI scored And before that world blows itself up, let me list the star ratings for three circuses, as recently reviewed by Yelp consumers, assumed to be real.
Zoppe Family Circus
4-1/2 stars
Garden Bros. Nuclear Circus.
2 stars
The Greatest Show on Earth
1-1/2 stars
It may end not with a bang, but a bum review.
1 comment:
Don't forget the Roman Warm Period when it was so hot all those Romans were running about in mini-skirts and sandals, growing grapes in the North of England.
Horse farts from all those chariots to blame for that, no doubt.
Incredible that not one critic could make it along to Ringling.
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