Big Apple Circus Lays an Egg on the Big Screen, I Fear

 Update, 11/9:  This is not a review of the show, although I had hoped it would be.  I continue to believe, based upon my experience watching a tape-delay of the live performance, that it is a very tricky matter trying to review a circus in any other way than actually seeing it in person, most importantly from a fixed position.    I had hoped to feel differently, but I do not.   To its credit, the show is drawing great reviews from the New York critics. I can only hope these will translate into crowds far larger than the one on view during this particular show.

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Back from a modern movie house, the seats spacious and comfy, the decor fine.  Back from watching, as it felt to me (I hate to say this) Big Apple lay an egg in hundreds of movie houses coast to coast, into which its Saturday afternoon performance was streamed live.  On the West Coast, it was tape delayed.

First part of the show felt stillborn, even the opening charivari was woefully anemic.  Talky Talky.  When will circuses learn that audiences do not really want to be treated like children being told bed time stories or taught how to be this or that?  They want to be wowed.

Even the music, oftentimes a major asset at the Big Apple Circus, here seemed decimated, perhaps just an ineffectual score – or maybe a sound system that did not carry well in theatres.

Lots of audience participation,  and here is where, I hate to say this, we may be seeing a downside to artistic director Guillaume  Dufresnoy's ultimate vision for the show.  When he was appointed, I feared he  might give into his French side and follow more precious Cirque trends, narrative interludes, ultra silly clowning as only the French can get away with, elsewhere. Evidence of that abounds at Metamorphosis. 

I don’t like writing this first draft, which may well be what I will post.  I was shocked at how many seats in that tent, rows and rows of them, were empty, silent, dead.  And in New York, of all places.  Shocked that the company would not have stuffed the tent with shills – give the show away, if you have to in order to create the ideal picture, no?  I saw the usual concentration of kiddies and parents, and very few adults in singles or couples.  And then this sobering item came to mind:

A while back, on this blog, Paul Binder himself left a comment, related to my excitement about the show going into movie houses, Paul sharing a wistful hope that licensing royalties due BAC from  the venture might stave off the end of the road.  His tone sounded dire. All those empty seats.  All that dead space between a handful of very good acts. And I no longer feel certain about the show's future, not if they can't do better than this.  And that makes me genuinely sad.

I’d hate to see that happen, what Paul implied.  This latest looks a bit threadbare.  They have cast ringmaster John Kennedy Kane (too many unflattering closeups of the man) as the magician-in-chief, and handed him way too much dialogue; the program lacks any semblance of dynamic direction, with an air of wandering aimlessly about in the dark from one item to the next.  We are in the hands of people who have talked themselves into believing that something more intimate (say, like kids being entertained at school under the guise of magic and science demonstrations) will engage the audience in a new way.  When will the circus learn that Theatre is NOT its forte, never was, and never will be.

The clown, Francesco, was a  pre-show charmer, going through the seats and being silly.  That would have been okay, but no, he was far from done with us, and would return and all too soon wear out his welcome mat with more of the same.  Ho hum. All those empty seats left me wondering if the circus is merely suffering weak word-of-mouth?

Highlights that brought a little relief here and there: Fine work on risley, on rolla bolla, up there in the air, yes.   Again, I wonder whatever happened to Slowik's band?  Sounded like fewer musicians, augmented by pre-recorded music and/or a  mogue synthesizer (do they still make those?).  Slowik can put out a terrific sound. Not this time around, or, at least, not in this movie house.  Now, get ready for the Big Let Down:

Intermission came.  In the lush movie house room, seating capacity 230, there were a total of 8 customers, four adults and four kids. After intermission, only five remained. I vaguely recall a mother of two children being talked out of staying by one or both of them.

What were they thinking when they planned this show?  You can read, on  the post below,  J Kurt Spence telling us how much he loved what he saw (and I hope the others did, too, that I am wrong).  Kurt and I share one thing in common about this show -- we both saw it in ideally uncrowded circumstances.  Kurt says he was the ONLY person in the movie house. I feel some dry tears coming on.

I never felt authentically connected to the show, given constantly shifting camera angles moving my vision too frenetically this way or that.

Damage control.  I rather like the idea that not many people will have seen the Big Apple Circus in a so lackluster a shape.  Grandma, come back!

 

Francesco:  The charm wears thin well before the gig is up.  

Posting in the Dark: Perfect Pleasures and Crushing Let Downs in the Big Apple

DATELINE: New York

The best of company: Niece Lisa and her son, Noah ("Mister McFiddle" by me)

Sounds exciting.  Truth is, I am hacking this out on my laptop on another of Amtrak's charming milk trains, the LakeShore – no, make that the LateShore Limited, bound someday for Chicago.  Must hurry, for once there, I will post this via e-mail.

Gotham the Great and Glorious is still a draw, but I've had it with Amtrak, and doubt I'll be returning for a long time, if ever, unless I can break my fear of aerial commuting.

The Gershwin Hotel, my home away from home, went from $139.00 a night to three hundred (new cold-hearted owners), so I found a little room without even a chair at the Hotel Newton, nice enough, on the upper East Side..  My niece, Lisa, who arrived a day later, found fabulous quarters in Times Square Area at Candlewood Suites, for about the same price!  Hers was like a mini modern apartment.

On my own, I looked forward to taking in the Monopoly board game exhibit at the Forbes Gallery, not knowing till I got there that all those cool looking people entering the building  were going to work on upper floors at Forbes magazine.  And then, once the gallery opened, I learned the Monopoly set and all the toys had been sold a few years ago! .... Onto to another museum I've wanted to see, the Guggenheim and, boy, am I glad I finally saw it.  What I loved about Frank Lloyd Wright's circular layout is how it guides you on a clear path up up up, from one display to the next.  They're showing work from the Italian Futurism era, a rare discovery that I can see helped set the stage for the radical violence of Hitler and  Mussolini. ... One of the best special exhibitions  I've ever seen ... So good, that only a few steps into, I took the free reference ear phones, etc, that came with it, back to the front desk and got rid of them. I'll take the art as it strikes me without somebody telling me what to think, thank you, world of superfluous technology.

New York: How Disgustingly Hollywood of You! ... For lunch, I revisited Café 28, around the corner from where the once bohemian Gershwin Hotel once stood.  Then to the Gershwin, to savor the atmospheric front lobby, drenched in seductive shades of red.  But, once inside, all I could see were panels blocking that space from passage.  I was mortified to learn that the lobby  has been gutted!  Something else is to go there - maybe an extension of the Sex Museum down the street.

 

At the gutted Gershwin, were rooms went from $139.00 to $300.00 - yes, I went somewhere else.  Beyond the  temp panels, gone is the red lobby and all the art work in the halls and rooms!

I talked to a young doorman.  "It is all gone," he said, "all the paintings on the floors, everything."  The woman who owned the Gershwin sold it a few years ago, how could New York have allowed this to happen?  I thought such a rape only occurred in Tinsel Town. 

Disney's Newsies, I grabbed a half pricer ($92 – can you believe?). Show tells a great little story, really more a play, the dialogue scenes are so strong, with so-so songs and terrific dance work, and like so many bloated tuners, too long.

This kid is so much fun to hang out with and watch cavort through toy stores.

.... All of this amidst the ever-present threat of rain.  Now comes the Big Letdown.  Niece Lisa's great expectation was of our seeing the hot new show After Midnight. She nabbed three tickets, for me, her and her little bright boy, Noah, all of eight.  We got there, high expectations.  Woman scanned our tickets, made a face.  Looked again.  "These are for last night."  My poor niece nearly fainted, so I went into consoling mood, and we regrouped (heartless box office manager would not do anything, although the tickets can be re-used under certain conditions).  Out into the rain we straggled, losers before midnight, to an ice cream sit down, to sugar away our tears.  I took Rocky Road. 


Next morning, we played my game, still in development, Can't Stop Shopping.. Here is how good it has become, and this was NOT scripted: While Lisa was offering me valuable feedback  on the wording of the rules and images on the Act On Coupons, Noah, I thought, was buried in a bed pillow and sleeping. But, no, said Lisa, he is with his little  i-Something playing a video game.  And, then, he wanted to join us to be the banker for second play of the game, and THEN, he wanted to play the game!  How honored I felt that he, with a mind of his own, would break free of his thickening electronic addictions for a board game – which, ironically, could end up someday, if commercially lucky, being sold as a mobile board game.  And then Noah can play it in bed.

We had also taken in the Big Apple Circus out in Cunningham Park, which I will review upon my return.  Lovely ride out to Queens, such a different world, so airy and evergreen.

About the Big City, the best thing I can say is this.  These New Yorkers are so friendly and outgoing when asked for directions — even when they sense you are lost and go out of their way to assist.  All of them.  One young guy, who had helped me at a subway ticket window figure out how to get to Forbes, a little later came running down onto a platform after me:  "Sir, you want the other side!" .... My take?  Together, the residents share a great pride in and love of their city, and each may feel that how they treat a tourist will reflect upon their home. They are A Number One.  Top of the Heap.  Blue Ribbon Boffo.

How I'd love to go back.  Not on Amtrak.  I've had my fill of endless delays. Of squeezing myself into and out of the claustrophobic closet-sized  "sleepers" outrageously overpriced.  How I wish this railroad ran like those of my lucky youth, when I rode the Shata Daylight, the North Coast Limited, the Super Chiefs, the real California Zephyr.  I've given up on a hopeless wish for modern age rail. 

I'll be posting this during my shortened Chicago layover.  Train is now two hours late; its NY-bound counterpart that limped past us yesterday was then six hours behind schedule, and counting. I'm posting safely via my e-mail, because with XP windows, as some of you will know, I dare not go on-line lest the "bad guys" come after me.

So... once  I press "send" on my e-mail, I will have no way of checking how this looks on my  blog..  And If you got here, that means the entire mess got through — Be kind; I walked this wire without a lifeline. 

Au Revoir, New York New York.

New York Weary

NEW YORK, library at the Gershwin Hotel. Tables and chairs now buzzing with the ambitiously young, aswim in conversation and filtration, I assume. And me, not too ambitious but vaguely having fun at the back of a near full room on a long narrow table, pecking this one out.

Downstairs in the suave red lobby, they are performing Handel’s first opera. The place is packed. Gershwin clientele shimmer in the hues of sophistication, which makes me not so embarrassed holing up in a place whose frugally appointed rooms are anything but sophisticated. Respectful hardwood floors, I guess; over each bed a huge reproduction, heavily framed, of a master. Picasso, the usual master, missing this time. In his place a fetching modern abstract. I ask room service to remove these monster threats to my sleep (I come from earthquake country) fearing a dangerously short stay should the city shake and rattle or worse ...

Today darkened down into a little party of thunder and lightening, with teasing splashes, and then all was gone. When you get wet in a Gotham summer drench, in an hour or two you are dry all over again, ready to continue apace. I retired to my plain not very well lighted room, to rest, rather than force my haggard body, a pedestrian workhorse, into half price Broadway ticket land. The lure of that Great White Way has finally lost its grip on my soul, as even these discount ducats grow outrageously higher with each passing season. As I have come to appreciate even more that you can see great-enough theater back in your own backyard, yes, Dorothy, back in places like the Sixth Street Playhouse in Santa Rosa, Ca, where, a season or so ago, I was finally introduced to the brilliant stage version of Cabaret ...

City is reliably full of proud New Yorkers, ready to point you in the right direction. The Big Apple has an almost womb like quality. Walking Lexington, after returning from the Big Apple Circus on the F Line and looking for a place called Food Emporium, whilst glancing upon my opened MTA map, a couple of local residents -- man and wife team, it appeared -- asked me if they could help and they did. New York! New York! I shouted. They smiled, proud. I should have broken into song. Where is that old bad attitude town? Somewhere, somehow, the place buckled under to the collective coddling of tourists. One day, they will erect a statue to honor Rudy G.

Typing this out up against a wall, I need only pull a red curtain aside to peer down through a large window upon the lobby, itself transformed into a small theatre of gratefully engaged patrons, honoring an ancient composer. The zeal of opera lovers to me is more impressive than opera itself, I once observed during my only trip ever to an opera, sponsored by a friend hopelessly hoping to convert me, which he did not ... Tomorrow, I’m free of pre-slated things to do. Free to walk and look. On past visits, I’ve strolled all the way to the top of central park on both its East and West sides. What next ...

This time, I might crack a trek right up the middle. And then rattle back down on a subway ride, mostly to take in the screeching opera of wheels against tracks banging it out in loud shouting matches that refuse to be subdued by modern technology. Amazing to feel like you’ve bolted across half of Manhattan when you’ve only covered seven or 10 blocks ... The illusion forever works ... Is this filler or what? To my right, resting on a book shelf is a copy of Crimes Against Nature by Robert F Kennedy, Jr., and sadly I wonder, is he, too, a tragic Kennedy statistic? Hard to keep up on them all. The Kennedy family -- now there's the stuff of grand opera crying out for a composer ...

My sister, niece Lisa and her six-year-old son, Mister McFiddle (my nickname for the kid, his real name Noah) due in on Monday to share a little of the town with me. Am I glad I stayed down this evening. A mild headache is now gone.

Weary of my morosely illuminated room, whilst dabbling on foot into the Chelsea district. I inquired at a very modern hotel as to rates (I could live without Picasso hanging over my bed), thinking how nice it would be to have a cool room not reminding me of the old cheap spaces I rented chasing after circuses and flacking for them on the advance, the kind of rooms I am reminded of when I look at the old austere steam heater in my semi-affordable Gershwin suite (a non-functioning antique, I suppose). How nice would be upscale accommodations, sure, but for $250.00- plus a night? By NY rates, the trendy Gershwin is a miracle.

Library is now closing. They are asking us to leave. End of discretely consumed chocolate chip cookie. End of blog. Not much, I know, but gotta keep up on my typing practice in the city that never sleeps, or stops typing ...

New York! New York!

My sister Kathy, right, had never been to the Big Apple. Now that she lives relatively near, down in Luray, Virginia, close to her daughter, Lisa, they drove up on Memorial Day to spend a day with me in the city and take in a few of the sights. Here they are, outside the Gershwin Hotel on East 27th. Free parking jackpot -- directly across the street! They had driven for 5-1/2 hours and there it was, a vacant spot. That spunky little kid, as you shall see, is Lisa's firstborn, Noah, whom I sometimes call Mister McFiddle. Lisa retired from United Airlines as a flight attendant to raise Noah, her one and only child. The family's dad, Captain Brian, was somewhere high in the sky that day piloting a big United bird.



Meanwhile, back on the ground, Noah, who just turned six, is something of a self-produced circus himself, forever doing things. Seemed like he was constantly teasing my camera to look his way. Although he harbors a wish to be a pilot like his did, I don't exactly see this acro-clown in any cockpit.


My three guests in the lobby of the Gershwin Hotel. I like to sit there in the late evenings and listen to the moody background music, suggesting the gradual fadeout of a subtly scored discotheque.


First stop: Near Times Square on Broadway and 33rd, we played Can't Stop Shopping, the game I created with my friend Boyi Yuan.


The Wonder Wheel lives again! It's the centerpiece, if I am correct, of a glitzy new carny zone at Coney Island with some fantastic looking rides. Coney seems to have rebuilt itself to a decent degree. Not Disney or Great America. But a few steps above the seedy gang infested place that it was for too many years.


Mother and son on their first Wonder Wheel ride. Kathy and I rode it many years ago when I was Noah's age!


Noah was not tall enough to ride alone ... so, his slightly taller great uncle was recruited. Other than some near head-on collisions -- No, Noah, No! -- Great fun!


You have to be of a certain age to appreciate the remarkable endurance of this classic ride. Kathy and I qualified.


Subway showoff, on our way back to Manhattan. Going out, we took the wrong train, one that goes under the river. So on our return, we kept waiting to see light and the Brooklyn Bridge appear. Finally, it did, and we got our rattles worth.


When I asked Kathy what she might like to see in NY, she said "Saks Fifth Avenue." She was also keen on seeing the bright lights of Broadway by night. So, after returning to the hotel, we boarded Lisa's SUV, and she drove fearlessly through Times Square, through a sea of rushing taxis, occasionally getting honked at, feeling like aliens surrounded by little yellow blobs. It took a while to find a way onto Fifth Avenue. Amidst all the brilliantly illuminated fashion shops, we could hardly see Saks as we passed by. There it stood in the shadows, an older building without the lights that adorned other shops, remarkably distinguished in restraint, so sure of its legacy, apparently, as to shun all such flashy illumination. Saks Fifth Avenue you've got class.

And finally, just in time for the Queen's Diamond Jubilee. Ooops -- you say it's in London? Not in Central Park? Oh, golly! ...



A night to remember: I have always been entranced by the spectacle of these horse drawn carriages ambling around and through Central Park. Finally, the moment to climb aboard was mine and theirs! The end of a great last day in New York city. Whenever I see the carriages now, I will think back upon that magical evening, and of how I imagined the bounce of the carriage being similar to what the horse feels over its hoofs in graceful motion.



We lucked out with the perfect driver -- suave charming Mario from Italy ...

Au Revoir, New York, au revoir!

Coney Island, The Ghost, Lingers Sadly On ... and On ...PBS Sheds A Few More Tears ...

Luna Park

Amazing that any of it is still there. As a wee kid once, when my Mom took us to Brooklyn and we lived with my grandmother on Hart Street for a couple of months, we got to run through the sand, get lifted high over Coney inside the giant Wonder Wheel, feel the sudden heart-pounding drop strapped into a Parachute Jump chair. Thousands of people all around. A real amusement park of major rides, each distinctively different. Production rides. Not the smaller carny ones that came to the county fair.

Years later at Steeplechase Park (1897-1964), I rode a steel horse and tried pretending it was a wild race. The aging apparatus needed more than oil. The park came down in a season or two. Today, minor league baseball games are played in the same space.

On a poignant PBS documentary taking a look at the Coney Island's dim prospects for survival, somebody noted the "diversity" of those old attractions, of the inherent architectural values. Amen to that. Perhaps more than any other amusement park, Coney was a wondrously atmospheric place. Indeed, its architectural charms were as much a draw as were its individual amusements. I grew up on the other coast entranced by glorified images of it on post cards, by the mere sounds of Luna ... Steeplechase ... Dreamland.

But now, irony of ironies, people both older and younger than myself are ruing the recent demise of, yes, the oddly jumbled, hardly memorable Astroland. Atmosphere? Totally not. Perhaps its only redeeming virtue was that it stood in the shadows of the famed Cyclone roller coaster, arguably one of the best ever built. New Yorkers had the savvy and resolve to save this classic wooden thriller. But the claustrophobic carnival package of generic midway rides offered by Astroland, itself ultimately fenced in for security reasons, was no match for today's modern version of an amusement park. Walt Disney changed all that, Brooklyn. At the end of 2008, your Tilt-a-Whirl made its final run.

What had unfortunately followed the faceless Astroland into Coney were years of seedy gang warfare. So eerie was the place, that on visits to the Big City, I would ride out there on the subway, hoping to find what had only even half-way remained when I was a kid, take a brief walk across the street, look around at creepy teenage figures, maybe grab a Nathan's Hot Dog, hurry back across the street for the return to civilization over the mighty Brooklyn Bridge.

Dreamland

Not all seaside midways last. San Francisco's Playland-at-the-Beach, across the street from where I was raised, slowly fizzled away, the Big Dipper coaster condemned in 1956, an inferior set of carnival rides inserted as a last-ditch drive to keep death alive. Playland's own version of Astroland, indeed. Now, where in better days sailors and their momentary girlfriends screamed through the fog down rickety Big Dipper drops into a forest of white lumber, there stands a bland two story condominium complex. Even up the street at the new and "improved" Cliff House, the old commercial museum of Playland-era piano players and slot-machine games, which occupied a space under the old Cliff House, has been 86d. There's not a trace left of the beach side glitter in which I grew up. The Boardwalk at Santa Cruz has been intelligently preserved. The boardwalk at Santa Monica has been "saved," but only a merry-g0-round and a few of the old eatery shacks. The rest is a modern spread of newer rides.


And Coney? Even the Felds could not revive old glories. A two year all-summer stint of Ringling under canvas was a long shot. Circuses don't do well hanging around too long. Ringling has ditched Coney for a new arena under construction near the Atlantic yards.

I feel for those New Yorkers who cry for Coney. But the free market, both beautiful and bitter, ultimately decides. Certainly in the Big Apple. Unless they can get Disney to install its magic, the best they might hope for is a consortium of high rise condos cradling a compact little fun zone featuring the Cyclone and a few other upscale amusements. I can already envision the Museum of Nathans. In it, please, a vast panorama of life-sized photographs of old Coney. That fantastically colorful world was already on the wane when I first experienced a precious few of its residual delights. Oh, what an exciting place it was, and it ain't never coming back.

New York Impromptu: Gotham Gloats over Arnold and Maria's "Bed News" ... Spiderman Back in Previews as Zarkana Approaches Opening Night

GERSHWIN HOTEL LOBBY, NEW YORK -- A bunch of animated French kids/students (ok, they look French, and this is the French-friendly Gershwin) all around here in the region of red. Lush red. Somber red. Radiant red. Rueful red. And a young keyboard virtuoso at the piano. I can't stay away from this hotel, no small reason being the decently reasonable rates ($169.00 per night), a deal to seal in New York ... Paintings all over the place, up and down the old halls and in the rooms. Cafe 28 around the corner, my one-stop eatery.

This morning, I walked from East 27th up to the top of Central Park where Harlem commences, about 85 or a thousand blocks. A nice ambling stroll, the scenery is camera ready, and I still fail most of it on the frame. I could have walked back down. But I had clowns to see before another step, and clowns to see before I slept.

Nearly 10:30 PM, and I'm blissfully exhausted, having survived another complicated transit haul to seek out another circus, this one Cole Bros, the place -- North Brunswick, somewhere over there in the "garden state." The Brunswicks up close are lovely places with stately old small town atmosphere. Amtrak seems to specialize in touring through junkyards and urban war zones. New Jersey Transit knows where the charm lies.

About Gotham gloating (my tenuous main theme), The NY Daily News had a blast today gleefully treating the sheets evidently shared by two women connected to The Terminator, only on separate occasions, as far as we so far know. And then there's that infamous money man who feasted on a hotel maid and is now paying a step charge for his reckless recharge: "French Big to Stroll on $1M Bail." Big Apple tabloids turn out terrifically clever headlines; wish we had such a beast in the Bay Area. Sorry New York Times, when I walk the streets of Gotham, they just don't feel or jump like your kind of pages. Think about this, all around, somebody among these young may be the next Bernstein or Picasso -- or Liberace.


A little circus is everywhere in this great city. Here in the lobby, a young dude is trying to impress another young dude with fancy footwork tossing a ball between the two. Cirque du solei's Zarkana posters plastered abundantly on buses and in subway dives. This one's got to be not good but great, if CDS is to be spared another Manhattan meltdown, so close to that banana fiasco. The CDS product is thinning out in the public's mind, so they aren't as eager as before to embrace anything bearing those three magic words.

Pianist turned around. He's an Asian. Why did I assume French? Asians steer clear of the vulgarity of American slop pop in favor of, parentaly enforced, the suborn safety of the classics, god bless their violins and horns ... What was I saying back there? In a way, Ringling, one of whose many directors, Phillip William McKinely, has just restaged Spider Man, will, in an intriguing sense, be competing with Cirque's Zarkana, due in at Radio City Musical Hall next month. Both are working stages using degrees of circus craft, rigging. Spiderman II now back in previews. Two dudes back bouncing the ball between there feet, as a background of midnight disco beats wantingly on ... A different pianist, he favoring Ravel, perfect counterpoint. Circus, where did you go? This should be interesting to see if either Zarkana or Spiderman can make it on the Big Boards.

It's getting late. Ravel is gone, so are the kids. Some honky tonky tune is mucking up the ambiance. I'm looking forward to a circus-free trip here next time. Chasing just one circus can consume nearly a day. New Jersey, ya ain't so ugly after all!

Good night, World of woozy wonders.

Clowns to Cows; Broadway to Brewster ... Photos, Photos -- Step Right Up!

Out of the past: From July 1, 2010


This I snapped during my walk down the east side of Central Park from top to bottom, 110th to 59th. So comforting a sense of community along the way.


In the afternoon, I was tempted to walk back up on the west side, but a little too hot. Maybe next time.


I was tempted to go for an on-the-spot sketch of myself. Every year, the potential artistic result becomes ever more sobering.


If you like modern art, MOMA is heaven. I went there to see the wonderful work of photographer Henri Cartier Bresson.




I was over this way to take in the NBC Studio Tour. What a rip off. $16 for seniors and kids (guess I qualified for either). Just two studios, too much promo talk about Dr. Oz, and we pay them so they can try getting us to have a mini video made that we can buy on the way out?


Mama Mia, whatever became of the great Broadway songwriters! The "juke box musical" still thrives. Audiences want songs that appeal, and for too many seasons, the school of Sondheim did not deliver. Thus the profitable reliance, a la Mama Mia, on crafting shows around already existing hit songs from the last thirty years. When I went to the ill-directed revival of West Side Story (some of the lyrics and dialogue in Spanish), the music and dance still electrified. This was possibly the most ground-breaking of all musicals, daringly created more than fifty years ago by true New York theatre pros. And yet by the end of the overly ambitious evening, I felt a strange let down; either time or too much tinkering had enlarged second act flaws and rendered the work less real than I recall it to be when it thrilled me in my youth.


I've grown to admire the new Times Square makeover. Once during the 1980s, out from my pocket slipped a one-dollar bill to the ground. Instantly, competing human vultures swooped down to claim it. I hurried on. Such a scary, sleazy place then, I didn't go back for years. Now, New York is one of the safest cities in the U.S., and such a hard place to stay away from. It has so much to offer.






How lost that losing billboard looks. What do New York and China have in common? Neither venue has awarded Cirque du Soleil with the kind of near-automatic crowds it has easily counted on in other places.


Took a train up to Brewster Village an hour and a half out of the Big Apple, boarding it at the gloriously restored Grand Central Station.

I went there to see Kelly- Miller Circus. Since rain had been forecast for the late afternoon, my paranoia, in collaboration Kelly Miller's reputation for frequent encounters with bum weather, convinced me that I was about to trudge through a lot from hell, sinking helplessly into mud, quicksand, slate and snow, cracked peanuts and runaway tigers, scored by the dark sinister laughing sounds of crazed troupers, and end up on the emergency flood control crew. "showgrounds" was littered on the front end with mobile homes. No umbrella in hand. High tailed it to the ticket wagon, then to the front door. Rain drops started to fall, THAT moment had arrived. At least I'd get into the tent dry. Raindrops ceased. Sun returned. Green grass stayed green. All things considered, Norman Rockwell all the way. A lovely lot!

The following evening, out to Coney Island for the opening night of Ringling's Illuscination.








Master illusionist David DaVinci doing a pre-opening night TV interview.


Guess whose backside you're glimpsing? Through a series of incredible flukes (a tale to be told in full sometime down the road), I ended up at Illuscination sitting only one seat from the aisle, directly across from which sat he. I didn't discover this until intermission, and then was not about to ask him for a photo. When he turned around, I could not resist the urge to remove my new compact little Canon SD 780 IS, aim and shoot. My paparazzi target: Kenneth Feld.


Down to Luray, Virginia: My niece Lisa, sister Kathy, and little Noah greet me at the nearby Culpeper train station. What a contrast! Lisa, her husband Bryan and son Noah moved up here just a month or so ago from Ft. Lauderdale Florida. Bryan was away piloting United Airlines passengers here and there; he prefers shorter domestic routes because he likes take-offs and landings the most.




Noah is a fun little kid to hang out with. He even insisted I read him a bed time story -- new experience. I read something I hardly understand, fearing he'd ask me all sorts of questions. I pushed at lot of drama into it, and he never said a word, his eyes all a twinkle as he gazed up at me.


Then we had fun playing "Can't Stop Shopping," a new game which was first played recently in China by its co-inventors Boyi Yuan and myself. Kathy and Lisa made some constructive suggestions at the end of play, which Boyi and I have since discussed, leading to slight design changes and some tweaking of the rules.


From flight attendant to purser, Lisa flew for United for 20 years, and then retired to have her first child, Noah. Surprised us all. What a dramatic life lifestyle change, and she loves it.


Swanee
Cows are mooing
Crops accruing,
My dear old Swanee!


Au Revoir, Luray!

7.1.10