Wild Elephants and Cursed Eateries: Chaos and Calamity from India to Barabooooooo....

Your showbiz scrambler features foundering tycoons, a 4-star Canadian Fiasco, Wild elephants on a tear, Cursed Kitchens and Creepy Organ Music ... And Away We Goooooooooooo! ...

Disney Fights To Save More Disappearing Magic: ... Down there in the Magic Kingdom, the also-ran next-door California Adventure was a fizzle from the get-go. Burbank big shots plan to sink another 1.1 billion into the paltry park to make it more, well, more Disney. Adventure cost a billion to build; another million for post-opening extras that still failed to lure the Mickey Mouse masses ...Bad first impressions are hellishly hard to overcome ....


Canadian Circus Bites the Sawdust: First reported by Circusnews.com, up at Niagara Falls, Ontario, the collapse of another new-wave big top humbles fallible producers. Cirque X, parent of Cirque Niagara which staged a show named Avaia, now in bankruptcy and nearly 7 million in debt. Ouch du Soleil! Opened in may last year in a 60,000 square-foot tent in Rapidsview Park. First year tix sales boffo at 5 million; not so this year, down to 2.7 mil. Producers claim relentless raves all the way greeted the parade of imported Cossack riders, acrobats and the like from Mr. Putin’s ominously reascending Russia. Anybody out there ever heard of Avaia? They’re blaming the flop on plunging tourist trade. Reasons, we always need them ...

Wild Elephants Terrify Towners: 100 --- count 'em, 100 --- Indian bulls in a party mood swam to a river island in northeast India and rampaged about, knocking down homes like toothpick huts, feasting on sugar cane and terrifying helpless villagers. Clyde Beatty, a world whirling out of control needs you, your whip and chair!

"Retrieved" Animals Tossed Off Bridge; Here's another act you won't see at any circus, anytime soon: Cats and dogs seized by “animal control workers” (what a moronic oxymoron) and hurled off a bridge into a watery abyss below. This from Barceloneta in sunny Puerto Rico. City hired an outfit named Animal Control Solution to rid housing projects of mutes and puffers barred from the premises. Each retrieved animal earned its killer a nifty $60, another $100 for a drop off at a shelter that evidently remains animal free. “Irresponsible, inhuman and shameful,” says the mayor. And what say ye, PETA? Oh, that’s right, just as long as they aren’t spared for spangles and spotlights, death in any form is a noble end. Did anybody ever show PETA what the world is like under the ocean?

Creepy Eateries Cry Out for
Brit Make Overs: Restaurants from Hell supply the laughing and laughable angle for yet another reality tv tease called Kitchen Nightmares. Chef Gordon Ramsey takes charge of inept cooks and servers, teaching them how to replace warmed over garbage with haute cuisine. The episode I saw at the Old Stone Mill around PA (surely, no restaurant could be this bad?) showcased owner Dean’s fear of failure, taken on by our interventionist chef, who proceeded to convert the hapless cookhouse from spooky purveyor of kinky dishes to standard steak house. Fun, farcical and fake all the way.

Baraboooooo oooo oooo! At the force-darkened Al Ringing Theatre tomorrow night, keyboard virtuoso Bob Dewel will pump terrifying tones (“crashing organ music”) into the theatre where adults can stumble around in the dark through a spooky Halloween walk. Also on the thrill bill: Al Ringling’s will to be read aloud by somebody from one of the boxes on high. How Gothic ... How creaky. Doc Dewel concedes, “Pretty amateur stuff.” Heck and oooooo, so are a lot of the best Halloween movies. The Al Ringling almost looks haunted without special effects. Ooops, sorry, Doc ... No, please, don't curse me with root canal nightmares for saying that!...

And that’s a Baraboo ooo ooo wrap ... ooo oooooo ...

SUNDAY MORNING OUT OF THE PAST: Friday Night Flip Flops: Trivia (or Trauma) on Parade! ...

Steroids in Spangles? You may have heard of a certain baseball player named Bonds, a big deal across the bay in ironically provincial San Francisco. His final at-bats at the ballpark were mourned like nothing I can recall since Big Bertha herself (aka: Ringling-Barnum – are you with us, Craig?) gave up the canvas ghost in Pittsburgh, PA back in 1956 ... Never mind that Mr. Bonds is likely a steroid cheat, which is a long run-in to my wondering aloud: Do Great Circus Stars juice up too? .... Let’s see, the majestic marvel in motion Miguel Vazquez, a rail thin flyer. Juggler Alex Chimal, quite compact ... Sylvia Zerbini, lithe and taut. I’d rue the day when we see hideously bulked up ring stars. Not Codona. Not Bello. Not the hoop divers from Asia aplenty ... Circus, stay fit!

Tricks, that’s what we pay to see, Mr. Big Top Boss.. Having been stood up at Circus Vargas by its headliner owners -- the Tabares Flyers who landed Monte Carlo gold and hype it to the heavens (they delivered a few modest tricks and then headed for the net in haste) I can suddenly appreciate the tyrannical demands of circus owners like John Ringling and Cliff Vargas, both variously known for throwing fits when their imperial darlings failed to deliver the goods... Heck, they will tell you that Mr V. hid out under the seats to secretly monitor the performance and fumed in the aftermath when facing lazy leapers and errant elephants ... As for Mr. John, he is said to have thrown cigar ashes in anger over the deletion of a single trick –- and we are talking circus tricks, thank you.... Which gives me grateful respect for both Ringling and Vargas. Crispy creme breaks may be okay for lawyers and dish washers on parole. NOT okay for acclaimed aerialists ...

The animals, juiced up? What an unkind and insulting thought. My apologies, dogie kingdom and kitty green room. These days, the mutes and the puffers (and disappearing lions and pachyderms) are pouring their hearts out to entertain us as once the entire show did. Hint, hint, Tabares — take a look at your own menagerie and recall when you might have dedicated each and every program to wowing the crowds, however small. ... The animal stars remind us of circus essential. They hold their own without makeup, mist or video replay.

Meanwhile, while a nation of pit bulls keeps the populace in a state of terror and bloody sadistic dog fights continue apace, well-cared-for circus animals continue to drive the animals rights crowd nuts. Up in Minneapolis, where the council came close to outlawing animal acts, Ned Kronberg (CFA’s Minnesota State Chairman) recounts how one overbearing PETA fanatic, in this case a lone city councilman, can steal the debate, in effect shutting down the other side. Listen here! “He dominated most of the discussions and when any one tried to present an opposite side, tried to end their discussion with lots of questions but would not let them really answer, but tried answering for them.” ..... That is exactly what John Pugh often faces, he told me during an interview. All it takes is one noisy apple; and your whole crate is near damned....

Big Apple Basics: What Washington Post critic Celia Wren most liked about this year’s new Big Apple Circus, on its way soon to Gotham, was a certain lack of mystic pretense. “What makes Celebrate! particularly refreshing is that the artists routines have not been tethered to some smart-alecky concept.” Go, Apple, go! Will “concepts” run their course. If audiences see more of them and less real circus action, I’d say YES.

And from Baraboo Barb, gliding down a golden trail on Ringling’s Gold unit, comes a shared regret. Scanning my grudging review of Circus Vargas left her a tad down: ”I feel sad as well that the Tabares weren’t up to their usual spectacular selves. They can be magnificent. Sigh.” Insider Barb references show-disrupting Stork calls. Yasmin, who works the roman rings, is due to have a baby “any time soon.” So is, if I understand Barb correctly, Yasmin’s fill-in on the rings, Katya. Barb offers a softer matronly perspective: “Try it again next season ... babies will be born, mom’s will be back in shape hopefully.” And, hopefully, not juiced up, as in Bonds.

By the way, Barb is enshrined in the Baraboo Hall of Circus Fame, notes Bob Dewel, the town's all-purpose docent. Back there at Ringlingville, things are not yet as Brigadoon-sleepy as I've previously hinted. “We haven’t rolled up the sidewalks yet,” says Bob.

And we trust that Doc Bob is not, in his ever-active retirement, hawking steroids to wire walkers or bow-wow acrobats. Stick to crowns for clowns, okay, Doc?

first posted October 12, 2007

Whirlwind Tumblers, Jugglers, Cats and Dogs Power a Padded and Slim Circus Vargas

Circus Review

Culver City, California, Fox Hills Mall, October 6 at 2 p.m. $40.00 top.

Entering the new Circus Vargas tent, I was struck by an enchantment I can’t recall feeling since I entered the Ringling-Barnum big top in 1955: a stunning image of blue canvas reaching skyward into a sublime darkness, silver cables in symmetrical arrangement, a quietness all around promising something magical and great.

They have the setting. They have an inviting midway. Good reasonable ticket prices. They have a classy staff, a winning web site design, and they express a sincere intention to revive a circus whose heyday came and went over twenty years ago. All they need now is the show. They are, with regrets I have to report, not all the way there yet, and the road ahead should be no less difficult than it was for founding dynamo, Cliff Vargas.

At its classiest, the new edition of Circus Vargas, produced by the Tabares flyers — now in their second season as owners — rides high on whirlwind tumbling, whether off a casting net, across a trampoline or around horizontal bars. Juggling, a secondary asset, opens the show on a high-voltage note. First, Jonathan dazzles in class a mode spinning and manipulating variously shaped silver cubes; then, in quick succession, a juggler, working fairly standard stuff, keeps the pace alive with speed and gusto. Two acts in a row — could it be, are we about to see a program totally unencumbered by concession pitches, overhead video distractions, or inanely half-baked story lines that go nowhere?

No, it can’t. What follows are nagging slowdowns when ringmaster Ted McRae pitches intermission photo ops or the clowns wear out a welcome mat. Filler. One centers around McRae’s live Python snake, introduced out of a black sack along the aisle. Other commercials push flashlights and more photo ops. Then there is the hyperactive approach taken by McRae, who takes old line oratory over the top. A good singer, he does a fine job selling an original number during the opening parade, but his labored efforts throughout the program only reinforce the impression of a skimpy enterprise being padded for time.

More momentary highlights: Marinelli’s trampoline workouts are exhilarating. So are the Yeromenkos from the Ukraine whirling around a trio of horizontal bars.

Vargas gives the Euro-centric clowns (including a funny band) plenty of time to please, and their antics seem to keep the moppets giggling. How good? I found myself giggling too — now and then — at some fairly amusing stuff a bit musty and tired at the edges. One of the comedy turns is a mock bullfighter, Mendoza, working with a dog standing in for the bull. This serves also as a set up for another intermission photo op. Performers wear multiple hats. The Argentine clown Pocho, a come-in charmer with illusion, turns into a balloon salesman at interval time.

The real ring stealers, though, are a prima cat and dog courtesy of another of those Russians, this one Vladimir, who have a miraculous way with getting furry pets to carry on like eccentric humans. The cat is a wonder, evidently in control of its own tail for posturing purposes, and able to roll about this way and that on cue. The dog waves his front paws for an extended period of time to the music. A pair of incredible delights. Loved ‘em! Let’s see, world, are the animals going out of their way these days to tell us, “Let us back in, American circus, for we can save the show!”

Other pace-retarding elements: hula hoops that do not impress and sluggish prop changes between acts. Nor does a taped soundtrack consisting mostly of intense disco-styled drone distinguish the program much. Only two acts, Jonathan’s cube juggling and the terrifically impressive Yeromenkos, work against the humdrum musical grain with music that feels contemporary yet not of the outside world.

Missing in action: Not just any wild animal acts or horses, but nothing in the air. (The Osmani Sisters, who work silk webs, did not appear. Neither did Roman Ring artist Yasmin or Juan’s circus ballet.) Are we merely at the end of a losing season marked by early exits? I’d hate to think so. How odd that a circus owned by flyers should offer nothing over sawdust. Ah, but you ask, how about the champion Tabares? They open the second half, commanding a ringmaster’s just bombast, “Winners of the Gold Clown at the Monte Carlo Circus Festival in 2004!”

This, I knew, was a moment worth traveling hundreds of miles to see. I sat right under the end net and what a thrill to watch them swooping through the air while they worked routine warm-up stuff and inserted flash and flair. I think I saw a single somersault, unlikely a double. And now — can you believe this ---- they are heading for the net! I was left utterly dumbfounded. Never have I seen so pitifully little accomplished on the flying return, and this from Monte Carlo Gold? When I cornered McRae on my way out, he told me “they definitely cut some stuff this morning.” This morning? Pardon me, the show began at 2 p.m.

Heck, they cut the entire act. An unpardonable sin these flyers would dare not commit were they not also their own bosses. What might have been a moment of redeeming glory was thrown to the nets. The next time the Tabares decide to crack a whip at under performing employees, the first to hear it should be themselves.

Want to see the Tabares in top flight form? Watch a video of them impress the Monte Carlo judges on the Vargas website, or call ahead to see if they might be in the mood to try impressing you.

The new Circus Vargas is in many ways like the old (or in limbo) Circus Chimera. Maybe, at most, a quarter of the seats were filled. No program magazine or sheet for sale, and several acts a no-show. Unlike Chimera, not a trace of advertising. A couple sitting behind me with their daughter said that had they not noticed the tent in the Fox Hills Mall parking lot, they would not have known there was a circus in their town.

And unlike Chimera, Vargas gives one a magnificent big top setting to remember. Sadly, under it during a heavily padded couple of meandering hours, simply too little happened.

Overall grade: **

Showbiz Showdown in Gotham — Little Tops Go to War ... Broadway’s Big Guns Test Troubled Tuners on Rocky Road ...Will South Pacific Soar Again?

What a lip-smacking good season looms ahead for surly sideliners like me ... A neat preview in the New York Times spills beans on two mega musicals failing to turn gush from out-of-town critics, both Broadway-bound shows flashing powerhouse names: Mel Brooks (The Producers) is back — or hacking back with his latest home-made tuner (in which he concocts his own tunes) — Young Frankenstein, now polishing his cakewalk out of town. The singing monster failed to ring every critic’s rattle in Seattle. Hmmmm. I wonder if Brooks, an amateurish tunesmith, is a one-score kind of guy? Brooks revived musical comedy. Question might be, can he revive vaudeville?

Disney’s Drowning Mermaid? Trouble in kiddie land began when Tarzan flew to Broadway and got all tangled up in a lot of scenery and — more scenery. Public not charmed. First Disney flop, that. ... Here comes the next?... Mermaid’s first dip under water in Denver nearly capsized, hardly rescued by a scathing pan from Variety’s man on-the-spot. Local critics, kinder, although some harboring same mouth-dropping reservations. Lifeguard, please! ... What shocks me is to read of a dozen new songs composed by Alan Menken, who also scored the movie with his late great partner Howard Ashman. They delivered a wondrous set of songs, so why all these add-ons? A glut of melody suggests an over-wrought script signifying too big a pool, or just plain professional desperation.

Nobody stands tall forever on the Great White Way. Forty-Second Street minus another Disney blockbuster could spell the return of the garden variety porno that thrived where George M. Cohan once sang before Beauty and the Beast arrived .... Beauty, by the way, is gone — as all of you trend-setters who read this blog (well, all five of you out there) will smugly know.

Circus! Didn’t mean to slight the war of the big tops. Big Apple uncorks its latest, a 30th anni bash at Lincoln Center, and not too far down Broadway comes about the same time that monster Genius from north of the border. Cirque du Soliel’s latest, Wintuk something about a young man in search of something, moves into the theatre at Madison Square Garden for a long run largely overlapping Big Apple’s. And the same show is slated to run for 10 weeks each winter the next five years! ... Garden big shots, unenchanted of late with Ringless brothers in free fall, had been angling for a slice of the Montreal magic. ... Anybody care to remember when the Big One sometimes packed ‘em in during five- and six - week seasons at the old bold Garden?

Post Update Flash: That's not all, folks! Here comes the gifted ringmaster (formerly of Universoul Circus) -- Casual Cal onto the stage of the Apollo in Harlem, beginning November 23, with his brand new Get Your Circus On! Promises a wild mix of acrobats and illusionists, and a 75-year-old "rapping Granny." Proclaims Cal, "Soul is not a color. It's a collection of experiences to start the heart, speak to emotions, and move on." New Yorkers, take note and move on: You have options.

South Pacific to be revived , finally, for the first time since it wowed ‘em back in ‘49. That does it. I’ve got Damtrak reservations. How could I miss all this drama, even if half of it folds by the time I ge there. That is, if Damtrak arrives at all ... New York! New York! Whether I get there are not, you’re a helluva town!

Three Rings of This & That ...

Sunday Morning, Looking Back: First posted September 29, 2007
. A cool Baraboo air over Oakland, and in New York that spells the beginning of a new circus season. Come November, three shows compete -- Big Apple, Cirque's Wintuk, and the new Get Your Circus On! at the Apollo Theatre. New Yorkers, you have choices! ... Back in Baraboo where the town nearly slips into a Brigadoon-like trance, late-blooming Ringlingphile Bob Dewel, who monitors my every word concerning the town’s most famous family, checks in with this about notoriously self-serving John Ringling, mentioned here in unflattering terms a while back: “Only John failed to show for the Al Ringling Theatre opening in 1915, with Al dying.” True to form, and how sad; I’ve sometimes wondered, was John the Yoko Ono of the group? (Beatles fans will understand.) And am I getting carried away? Bob, see you a little later for more dissing ... Okay, how about somewhere else, like oh, say Sarasota ....

Down there in circus city, Joan Griffith, a close personal friend of the late John Ringling North, whom she dated for a number of years, pens a column for the magazine Attitudes, and ruefully she reports on the recent passing of Allan Hill, who once briefly dated Joan’s daughter. Joan's preparing a tribute for Hill (past owner of the Great American Circus), who back in the late '80s, she amusingly reminds us, "had Tiny Tim starring in the show!" Hill also helped raise money for the American Cancer Society. “An above average Good Samaritan,” writes Joan, “quietly helping others.” And only 58.

Only whatever age we are.Only whatever circuses we are lucky to see. Run before cities like Minneapolis try 86-ing the wild animals
off the lot. Yep, almost happened up there. City Council, smarting with PETA ire, nearly toppled Jumbo’s tent ... Big Apple Circus(here's Cong Tian), premiering its latest opus in DC to a sunny notice in the Washington Post, heads for New York in late October with cats and horses ... I don’t expect a big cage in the Apple ring, but why not a flying act? They’ve featured the greatest in seasons past — Vazquez and Gaona, to drop golden names ...

Who had more artistic discretion, John or Charles Ringling? Bob Dewel returns to favor Charles, believing that Charles showed better taste in both his home and yacht. Gosh, I find myself in provisional agreement, having never quite known what to make of the fascinatingly outlandish Ca’d’Zan. A grand clash of styles. Charles, by the way, would be my choice of the brothers to meet and interview. In one of the early group photos, he shows a more open heart, and I think he would be more expressive of what really went on ... He was the soul of the enterprise...

Soulfully we rank the circus web sites, and soon! My sister, “Honorable Judge Kathy” in Omaha, as she calls herself, has sent me her scores. Mine are set, and we await the numbers from "Sazzie" Jon Pult, who lives way down Dixie in New Orleans, a grad student in creative writing. He’s putting the polish to his prose. Once I’ve got everybody’s ordinals, I add ‘em up and we list in order, best to ....

Anybody ever see The Dark Tower, an English film made in 1943, with the help of one Reco Bros circus? Neat flick. Held my interest. Central character is a demented hypnotist who uses his powers to remove a romantic rival from his path. A few good acts, a suspenseful story.

You who may be heading east to the upcoming Gotham circus festival, here’s a travel tip from Showbiz David. A great economy hotel (you can get a decent room with very good bed, clean if tiny bathroom -- okay, I spotted only one lone cockroach -- for around $130.00 a night) is the bohemian Gershwin near the Empire State. Superb round-the-clock deli around the corner, Café 29, a park only blocks away, and easy access to those ever rattling subways that give the big town a pulse all its own. Ah, I can almost smell the ancient grease down there in the holes. New York, New York!

And that’s a cool sunny Autumn wrap here in Oakland Oakland.

9.29.2007

Circus Out of the Tent ... Buddha or a Snow Job?

Cirque du Yoga: Enter citizen Jamie Corydon, who reached her new inner self on a lyra at the Sandou Theatrical Circus School in Las Vegas, founded by two former Moscow Circus performers -- the brothers Sergei and Konstantin. Corydon fell in with some former Cirque performers who are associated with the school. They got her into a trapeze frame of mind and she felt reborn at a festival in Austria, “Is this the secret of the Cirque du Soleil artists —they are Yogi???” asks our dithering dame, Judy Dieli, who sent me the story. Claims Corydon, who teaches the art that gave her wings, “No way could I have done it without Yoga.”

Ringling, a little Yoga for you, too? Or perhaps a few weeks off at the Church of Scientology?. Anything, I’d say, to get in touch with your inner spirit, what’s left of it, so that you can win back the bottled water crowd in picky places like San Francesco -- a city you have, by the way, shunned for two Yoga-less seasons. There by the Golden Gate, aerialists and clowns do okay in bohemian settings that are ringless. Geoff Hoyle (alias Mr. Sniff off the old Pickle Family Circus) is now clowning around the tables at Teatro Zinzanni. Even waiters and waitresses, as pictured in Teatro’s fetching ads, fly over patrons. Maybe all the thirsty patron need do there is shout sky high, “More booze please!!!”

...This being once the city of acid, NO, leave that alone, David. ... We can, however be quite proper at a fund-raising fashion show hosted by Macy’s, where a Cirque character appears, standing alone on a table with a baton in one hand, a partial mask over her anonymous face ... No, Dame, she is not practicing Yoga. She is posturing "in the moment" ...

Down the coast about four hundred miles at the Hollywood Bowl, where mutes are still allowed to cavort with wild abandon, the Peking Acrobats will be working the same bill with Moore’s Amazing Mongrels , themselves beyond meditation, and “the Ditty Bops” — whomever they are. Dogs have a way of bringing us back to circus central. Of rendering mute all abstract allusions to some cosmic revelation lurking behind a fog machine....

Get down, circus, get down! That’s the message from Casual Cal, who will be throwing up his latest big top-type bash at the famed Apollo Theater in Harlem. Get Your Circus On is out to prove that “soul is not a color.” Cal, who ringmastered with rare flair for UniverSoul, grew uneasy about the company’s preoccupation with intensely black markets. So good luck, Cal, and may your company succeed without group therapy ...

Global warming this winter? Not, I suspect, while Cirque plays the Big Apple with a story, Wintuk, about a little boy searching for snow. I can imagine a big payoff at the theatre at Madison Square Garden where the Montreal monster begins an annual ten-week holiday gig. Andrew Lloyd Webber gave us the falling chandelier. I predict Cirque will smother the house in dry ice. They just can’t break the special effects habit. It could suffocate them yet.

A habit for tanbark tradition around a real ring, pre-Perrier, still afflicts, thankfully, the Lords of the Big Apple Circus. At least when last we checked. ... And then, a few months later, comes the reductive Ringling-Barnum in its littler, less greatest mode. But the animals acts they defiantly refuse to retire give them an increasingly attractive edge. Oh, sorry, I gotta go. My Yoga instructor is at the door... You might soon see me flying high — precocious senior finds non invasive lipo suction on a lyra.

SUNDAY MORNIING OUT OF THE PAST: Bandwagon’s Incessant Spell ...

Showbiz David from out of the past

A rush of memories down the track whenever I read a new Bandwagon... Circus Kirk —- the lead off story — I know a little about, having “interviewed” (my first with a tape recorder, I think) back in Clymer PA on 8/7/75 a few of the kids. A couple are quoted in my forthcoming Fall of the Big Top ... So many rings ago, and memory stirs them back onto muddy and grassy lots ... Clyde Beatty’s cage boy, Manuel “Junior” Ruffin, neatly profiled too, joined the show the same year I saw it in Santa Rosa, 1952 ... "Hoxie" Tucker, for whom Ruffin later worked (and whose nasty moods he suffered), once insulted me big time, and why? I took a break from press agenting for Sid Kellner’s James Bros. in 1969 to take in a Hoxie performance. The little big top boss, learning of my employer, glared at me, “What the hell are you doing chasing circuses when you are supposed to be a press agent?” That’s a paraphrase of his uncouth reprimand. ... Later he saw me standing in line with a bought ticket in hand and said nothing ...

Another acid tongue? Sid Kellner, who veered from charming to vile... Another year (1972), I sold Mr. K. on hiring me to work some Chicago area dates for his George Matthew's Great London, for money and an all-America bus ticket in hand I could use — in case we parted ways. .. The moment I stepped off the greyhound in the windy city, I went into the depot and from a pay phone called the local ABC outlet and right there booked prime TV time.... Later that afternoon, on the lot, big crowds showed up, which I was told were unusual — like rain upon a famine.. Kellner made it clear, to me, “Hey, you had nothing to do with this!” .... This after my venturing into the empty top yet to be opened and discovering my boss brawling verbally after a stunned sponsor, spitting out ugly profanities ... Few days later, I came down with a horrible cold, and from my Chicago hotel room called Kellner, and appealed to nice guy Chester Cable — might they have somebody drop off my first week’s pay to the hotel when next in the city? I was put off and off, and treated terribly ... With overdue check finally in hand and the Greyhound my way out, I declared my “temporary” gig over and continued eastward ...

... Circus Kirk was a lovely little student tenter, full of energy that almost made up for the amateur performers, with a nifty big band ... The kids, nice, the Doc ever so congenial. ... Buckles Woodcock’s Bandwagon photos feature Steve Fanning, who worked a dozen elephants for King Bros. in 1950 ... Oh yes, King Bros. -— it crawled that season into my hometown of Santa Rosa minus the seats. My Mom, with discount coupons in hand, took me and my sister to the lot. We stood on the midway for what seemed hours. I’d glance up at side show banner lines that seemed to stretch clear up to heaven. Inside the tent at last, seated on make-do chairs from a local church, the first circus I ever saw under canvas enthralled me, though I was not yet self-consciously a circus fan. In another few fateful Santa Rosa months came Polack Bros. to the fairgrounds pavilion with a killer lineup. My addiction was born ....

Lastly, there’s a letter in Bandwagon from Barnum as in P.T. — whose handwriting calls to mind the similarly flairful sprawl of another tanbark titan: John Ringling North.... They enter and exit at lucky intervals. How we need them ... Even the Sid Kellners on good- mood days... That ultra-charismatic man -- when he chose to be -- had so much promise, but the phone rooms were his tragic flaw ...

So many rings ago. So many rings still ringing in the midways of my mind... Once you’ve fallen under the sawdust spell ...

First posted 9.19.07

Saturday Night Showbiz Take-Outs: Fighting Over the Fat Lady; A Dog and His Man; A Funeral for Laughs; A Backyard Lady Tells All ...

While we hover on the edge of ringless lots hoping not to see more tents tumble, let’s recall those five fabulous brothers from Baraboo who started out so united, and as time went on, splintered off into a million fractions that somehow miraculously held together. Here, for example, is a curve that could have felled weaker partners: The incredible nerve of John Ringling voiding a fat lady contract signed by Al for her to appear with Ringling, which Al and Charles ran —— so that greedy John could ink the same dame for Barnum & Bailey, which he and Otto ran. This juicy disclosure amazed me in Jerry Apps’ excellent tome, Ringlingville. The author, though, makes little dramatic uproar over such disturbing incidents, preferring I guess to hold up the glossy image of the Big Five forever in collegial lockstep. As we have long known, it turned uglier by the year as one by one the boys passed onto the Big Lot, leaving only John and Charles to battle it out in a sad escalating rivalry. And what a farce that turned into. A must read for all Ringlingphiles

Imperfectly in tandem, a man and his sweet dog. You’ve heard it said how a mute can resemble the man who feeds it. Here is one for the books, made in tinsel town. Seated outdoors At Fred 62 on Vermont, a man dining across from me had a cute little dog, sitting up nervously at his feet in a limping manner “He really is devoted to you,” I commented. “No, he wants some food,”said the man. Sure thing, once favored, the mute turned his gaze upon me. And a little later when the man got up to walk away, the little dog limped off. So, too, in a more pronounced manner, did his keeper. So utterly touching. A sight I will never forget. Only in L.A.

Rating the Circus Web sites: This time around and to my great delight, I’ll be joined on a three-judge panel by my own sister, Kathy, who will bring an outsider’s point of view. Then there is Ron “Sazzie,” like I, a long-running circus nut. Each of the sites will be graded in six categories: first impression; routing information; visuals of the show; ticketing; press or customer feedback; and last impression. The three of us will score individually (without consulting or comparing notes), and the sites will be ranked in order by simple adding up of our numbers. The most points any circus can receive, if they get a perfect “5" in each of the six categories, is a victorious 30. Three critics times 30 equals 90 points max. A few peeks reveal to me that some shows have made changes, warranting a second look by Showbiz David, Consumer Courts Division.

Death at a Funeral: A fabulous new flick ... Is this the funniest-cleverest movie I have ever seen? Call it a comedy gusher full of brilliant surprises from those witty Brits. It has quirky suspense, revealing insights into the precarious social customs that sometimes keep fragile human beings together long enough — maybe, almost – to honor the passing of one of their own. It is nearly perfect in script development, I can’t say enough. Unless you are put off by the ever-changing sexual landscape, Go see it!

Let’s end this with a cozy little visit to Baraboo Barb, who reports having struck occupational gold working a day & nite job at concessions on Ringling’s homey Gold unit; That’s how contented Barb makes it sound, in her own words: “I actually truly love what I do. The public is a hoot, when it’s crazy (2500 people trying to buy in just one hour) I have fun. The downside is a show’s tour ending and a new one being reborn ... people scattering isn’t something I’ve ever been comfortable with...I enjoy the ease of knocking on a trailer door to see what someone’s cooking. I’m flattered when a kid comes knocking on my door.”

Ah, the simple joys of trouperhood. I’m envious, Barb!

And that's a wrap, this one for Billy. Hey, luv, can you hear us up there? What are you cooking up just now?

... Page Proofs Coming ... Presses Humming ...

Could be today. Could be tomorrow. UPS will deliver page proofs for my book Fall of the Big Top; The Vanishing American Circus, and I will see it finally in print. That’s always a thrill — photo images on pages, type style selection, chapter headings. Here comes my LAST CHANCE to make any changes. Few will be made at this last-see point. A real regret is that since I won’t see Circus Vargas until after I examine, pass on and return the proofs to McFarland, there won’t be the chance I had hoped for to add a line or two about their current edition ... And what if it’s wonderful? Another spangled sliver from the ever changing big top waiting for somebody’s next book to capture it forever ...

I try to root out redundant word usage (I can hear some of you laughing). I look for this and that. But at this point, this and that will have to remain fairly pat. McFarland has given me plenty of opportunities to revise and hone, and still, I will likely live to regret certain things — a sentence can be written a thousand different ways. Once off the press, it’s up to reviewers and readers to decide. Since I can dish it out, I should be able to take it, right? ... Dame Dither, where are you out there in Cyberspace? ‘Twas the Dame (a.k.a.: Judy Dieli) and her now ailing hubby, Salnatra (he sings like Frank), who first handed me down a pc they were ditching for a newer model. And here I am, blogging a few years later ...

Once bound, a book is a book is a book. You can’t go back ... The only work of mine that I would never change a single word of is my first, Behind the Big Top. It is to me so rough and raw, so much like the old tent circuses I have fondly experienced ... Not for one reviewer was it a pleasure, though. He termed my brand of big top prose “junk journalism.” Carped he, I failed to evoke the sights and smells of the circus, so I sent him a special Smell Edition, complete with sawdust and pachyderm poo off the Ringling and Carson & Barnes lots. The photo down below was sent out to 300 news outlets. My publisher (A.S Barnes), belatedly learning of the stunt, was aghast. The book sold out its first printing in around a year, but did not return to the presses. Brashness can backfire.

... My Barnes editor had handed my manuscript for copy editing over to a somebody who, maybe bored, changed only a few phrases, caught not nearly enough misspelled words (it contains dozens), and let the messy thing live. And I thank that whomever. In the wrong hands, the life might have been drained out of my personal favorite literary effort, Behind the Big Top ... Miraculously, 26 years later, Fall of the Big Top lucked out with a similarly light editing treatment — all except for grammatical errors corrected and my spelling which has been tamed. It feels almost transcendental --- as if fate itself intervened to let Fall live as Behind did. I take that as a good omen. Today, at least.

On a royal typewriter I once hammered happily away. Now, after long handing the first draft on yellow lined pads, I report to a Brother electronic from my L.A. days, then it’s show time on the computer. What a ritual. Maybe I’m each time following an evolutionary path traveled by writers who first used hand-held instruments and then advanced from one mechanical device to the next...

UPS could ring my bell any moment now. And after the initial read-through a couple of times, then comes the one task in this business which I will admit to hating: the INDEX. Even with the enormous assistance of WordPerfect, I hold my nose, buckle down into a marathon mode, and keep on going till I get to the bitter end.

Proud of my junk journalism, I’m ready for the presses to roll ... Still a thrill ...

Sat. Nite Showbiz Take-Outs: Porno Puppets a Vegas Flop; "Paid" Plaintiff a Ringling Suit; Dame Dither a You Tubie -- Have You Something Better?

Punch, Meet Punch. Risque puppet musical Avenue Q took Broadway for some Tony’s, went to Vegas and did not take the strip. Too few voyeurs over a losing one-year run. “Exclusive North American tour,” shot. Now, it’s on the real road, not exactly turning them away at San Francisco where I caught a Wed. matinee, with plenty of seats to spare ... It's bold, fresh, inventive -- a winning little subversive charmer starring hand-held puppets worked by actors walking about the stage. A pair of offbeat romances (one straight, the other gay and very funny) get down and dirty at times, like big people going at it like jackhammers on a kitchen table after having just met at the super market. I didn’t see one kiddie in the house. This is very New York. I'm told it spoofs Sesame Street -- about which I know nearly nothing.

No wonder it failed the Vegas test, where family audiences are now the norm. Avenue Q is not for kids, and maybe too smugly sophisticated for mid-America audiences. Too insistently pc-hip. To its credit, the show is remarkably human and touching despite its raunchiness ... Quibbles? When you sit close to the stage as I did, while the actors move and turn about, the puppets in their arms are not always visible. Nor were all the lyrics easy to understand. Remember, before built-in mikes, when singers had to project? I could have done without the Gary Coleman character (one of a few non-puppets in the cast), pushing a loud-mouthed stereotype. Still, on balance, I would like to take a second look at this party, but only in a much smaller theatre where it belongs.

“Turner Classic Movies”? A lot not, some well worth watching: How did it take me so long to discover the genius of Spencer Tracy (Bad Day at Black Rock, Father of the Bride)? And why does it take so long to get through Boredom on the Orient Express, which I have never gotten through since first surviving it in a movie house? Other night, I enjoyed Roy Rogers and his gang in a fun-bundled Rainbow Over Texas, songs and action, hokey romance with Dale Evans (a year away from being the real Mrs. Rogers), Roy’s good nature, and the curiously charming old Gabby Hayes that I fondly recall from my boyhood. A rare “western.” ... Not so good, but glad I stayed awake through a slow so-so silent from Buster Keaton called College, for what a terrific pay off! He’s trying to win the girl of his dreams by proving himself an athlete; finally he does, by rescuing her from the grips of a jealous suitor, suddenly showing super Olympic skills in one of the most fantastically exciting action sequences I have ever seen. In real life, Keaton was an athlete of sorts who refused to have stunt men stand-ins.

Ringling Fights Back: Feld Entertainment files a lawsuit against various animal rights groups, claiming they’ve violated numerous no-no's of the RICO anti-racketeering statute. Thanks to Don Covington, who e-mailed me the details. In particular, one Tom Rider, ex-Feld employee, is accused of taking “regular payments” as alleged payoff for serving as a “paid plaintiff.” Rider and others said to have engaged in “various illegal acts, including bribery, obstruction of justice, wire fraud and mail fraud." The war of words continues ...

Let’s leave the troubled big top for a moment, okay? Here's Dame Dither, my So Cal connection, linking us to a dazzling collage in You Tube motion of Hollywood’s femme icons ... Mesmerising & dreamy ... This way to Women in Film ... Here is the link; copy and paste it to your address window above ...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vEc4YWICeXk

And did you want paper or plastic? And, oh yes, here's a free ticket to test your brains on TV's latest reality romp — “Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?” If you haven’t seen Avenue Q, you'd better not risk it. Punch! Get out of that men's room before Judy calls the cops and big puppet Lucy spills the beans on you!

[photo above: "Lucy the Slut," from Avenue Q website]