Raves and Rants Along Forty Second Street

Showbiz David Out of the Past
originally posted 5/18/08


Penn Station, New York

“Another hundred people just got off of the train,” wrote Stephen Sondheim in his ground breaking musical Company. It felt more like a hundred million when I got off of the train on Wednesday at 5:07 p.m — and had to fight my way through a human version of freeway gridlock at rush hour. Try figuring out Penn Station — or the subways by night when track repair is under way — when even the locals don’t get it. And then it’s a city from hell.

My first goal was the Gershwin Hotel on East 27th. Nice people. Super rates. Only one cockroach so far (last visit). Maybe it forgot to check out before I checked in. Walls on every cool floor covered with art from the Warhol-Studio 54 era. Beautiful faces; how could we live without. And what a suave new lounge, where I began this post. Module furniture pieces across a spare landscape of black carpeting enlivened with abstract burgundy shapes. Piano standing by for jazz. Large head shot of Walt Disney in his extreme youth. He too was once cutting edge. .

Café 28, another golden Gotham find, just around the corner. Don’t let anybody tell you that New York dining is too expensive. Dine at a Deli and live.

After my Gershwin check in, I subway it up to half-price tickets. New York Theatre is an addiction, and I’ve got to see Broadway’s latest naughty darling , 2007 Tony winner Spring Awakening. Another ground breaker, raved the critics. Everything here has to be ground breaking. Here, the high culture snow job is a bunch of late 18th century German students railing against beastly societal repression and shouting to follow their hormones — all in the key of rock. And some of these songs do rock, no doubt about it. Among the audience pandering highlights: A wildly simulated act of man pleasuring himself; a dude and his S&M galpal going regular and so realistically, for all I know she is now on maternity leave. Somehow, the oddball premise, a bit forced and contrived and wrapped in pc trimmings, left me a bit unmoved.

What I love most about this great big metropolis that never lets me down are its rattletrap subways. Thrashing metal music to my soul. When I first came here in 1961 to visit my grandmother in Brooklyn, it took me three hours on a variety of ill-chosen lines before I found the Decalb Avenue stop.. What a ride! So ear shattering, so defiantly anti-digital.

Since then, I’ve learned the easy art of asking the helpful locals, who all speak English (how unlike L.A.). Chasing after an 8 pm. curtain in the Village for another “ground breaking” musical called Adding Machine, the young man who helped me figure out where I was going encouraged me to try seeing another new musical, In the Heights. “The guy who wrote it was a friend of mine in high school.” I was already intrigued..

After Adding Machine (starts out fiercely dramatic — woman hates accountant husband —then falls apart into woozy allegorical mush), Village life on a non ground-breaking summery evening offers more pleasure. Men playing card games in a small street corner park under real trees. People slipping into hip night spots. I take a touristly peek into Café Wa? where Ginsberg held court. You drop down a steep narrow staircase that feels like a psychedelic funhouse and enter a funky underworld of night.

South Pacific in revival: Glorious; everything the critics said it is. Not one vacant seat in the house.

If only ever-dying Coney Island could be revived like South Pacific. I take a ride out to check on its health. Now, school kids are bussed out to ride the Tilt A Whirl and its like behind barbed wire fences. And when the Cyclone opens, they all run across the street to line up for the thrill of a lifetime.

The Wonder Wheel, which once I rode, was not turning, nor the parachute dropping. I bought a Nathan’s original — bare dog on bare roll served in a box. Was that all there ever was? And along a bleak block of closed concession stands, there sat one lone concessionaire in his Bust a Balloon booth. Would love to have snapped him. I asked. He turned his head away and signaled me to leave him alone.

Queens is another world, so unlike the New York city feel. That’s where I take in the Big Apple Circus on a rainy Friday morning. Another average pleasure hailed by overactive critics? I left wowed by the artists, unthrilled by the show.

God bless the NY Public Library. With an hour to kill before In The Heights on Saturday afternoon, I drop by the performing arts wing to merely inquire for future reference about the Richard Barstow papers. Olive and staff favor me by pulling out a sample box, and what finds it contains — things about Barbette in the eyes of Barstow, and of John Ringling North very much alive and creatively active at a production meeting. More on these revealing fascinations later.

And then THIS: Among the old 3x5 cards Olive encourages me to peruse, I find a reference to something I self published in high school off a mimeograph machine titled Sawdust 1957 — one of my youthful rants. Incredible! I gotta go back. They have things there that you might not find in Baraboo or Sarasota..

Onto In the Heights: Jackpot! Truly affecting. Red hot salsa score. This is the one. This will sweep the Tonys.

Last stop: Saturday night at the Helen Hayes to see the funky and half-funny Xanadu, nights in roller rinks luring me there. Wonderful for maybe thirty minutes. After that, too much campy shop talk among the Gods grows tiresome and flat. Not even 90 minutes long, and it’s on Broadway. Were it not for the disco-era hits that this silly silly silly show rides high on, an instant turkey surely it would have been

And how like a tired turkey I feel. Miles of subway steps. Dozens of high powered Broadway songs. Amtrak, take me back to California.

Now let another hundred people have at you, New York

Sunday out of the Past: Circus on the Couch -- To Trick or Not To Trick?

This first appeared on May 8, 2008

His face aglow, his simple words surprisingly to the point: The essence of circus, he said, is about stunts. Is about “tricks.” What a refreshing declaration from Lu YI, who teaches ancient Chinese acrobatics at, ironically, the ultra-elitist San Francisco Circus Center. He also serves as the institution’s Master Teacher and Artistic Director. “I love circus,” says he.

He showed up on local television last night in a rerun of a feature piece on the school, originally aired over three years ago. And for the first time, I got to see him speak.

Another voice on the same program, a much younger voice, enthused about good circus having “a theatre aspect to it.” Implicitly earnest was he to make clear his dedication to something much deeper than mere tricks. That’s our younger, woefully misguided generation paying lip service to a dwindling circus movement perhaps more avidly preached in San Francisco than anywhere else. After all, this is Bohemia Central, and this is where the once functioning Pickle Family Circus was born and entertained — before it lost its way trying to equal the Montreal monster.

Why am I so smugly taking aim at “theatre” under the big top? Using a stage director to pace and shape a show can be a very good thing. But allowing the theatre to eat your magic alive is a futile exercise in abstract self-anialation. When, may I ask, have you ever heard somebody tell you after having just returned from a circus, “What a great story! You gotta see it!” When, World? These drama-obsessed pretenders fail to supply the character and conflict essential to their vague dramatic claims.

The once-promising Pickles lost their way when Cirque du Soleil bolted onto the scene in 1987. I remember well Judy Finelli’s “Luna Sea” in 2000 having Cirque envy all over it. And I knew then that the Pickles were in trouble, for they had neither the money nor the capitalistic savvy to duplicate a complex commercial phenomena. Years later, at best, they might put up a theatre-circus piece during the Holidays in San Francisco. “Circumstance” in 2002 was hip and cynical and ultimately so gloomy that I wanted to run. Chris Lashua’s theoretically brilliant “Birdhouse” in 2004 felt strangely still born. You get neither satisfying theatre nor compelling circus in the grip of these egghead experimentations. Of course, friends and kin of the cast and school toss kudos, the local rag, critical acclaim. And the show does not go on -- not, that is, beyond the city that cradles it with subsidies and cheer.

Now essentially an educational operation, the Pickles offer instruction for nearly nine thousand bucks a year, which strikes me as a form of the capitalism they shunned when they produced actual circus shows that actually toured. And what do they produce for those hefty tuition fees? From what I can tell, a graduate grounded in some fundamentals and full of dramatic aspirations, ready, I suppose, to advance to another circus school or land a real job under a real tent. Some have found employment. Circus Chimera hired a pair of matriculating clowns who showed a degree of promise. Outstanding acts from the Circus Center? I'm not aware of any.

A band of intellectuals, among them Finelli, Peggy Snider, and Dominique Jando, may passionately believe in the artistically impotent results you produce when you place circus in a trenchant theatre vice. What might they have done with a young Miguel Vasquez? “Well, Miguel, yes, your quads on the flying trapeze are technically impressive, but, we need more, such as, how can we help you realize a deeper emotional connection to some dynamic drama in the sky?” Is not a great circus act enough?

This dubious movement, however seductive to some, is not a classroom prescription for success under the bigger tops. Stranded somewhere between Shakespeare and Barnum, the young student with brains is well advised to pay more attention to a Chinese taskmaster than to the associate dramaturg.

“Tricks.” Yes, Mr. Lu Yi. I’ll smile to that.

5.8.08

The Ways of Cirque du Soleil ... My "Interview" That Went ssssss Into the Montreal Mist

Reader advistory: For all I know, they operate on another planet, and have their mail routed by space ship.

At the outset, let me put this into global context, kids: I am on record as naming three seminal forces in circus performance art during the last century: Anatoly Lunacharsky, a close friend of Lenin’s who, following the Russian revolution of 1917, elevated Soviet circus art to new heights; John Ringling North, who did the same for three rings in 1938; and Guy Laliberte of Quebec (when he is visiting earth), the ultimate mastermind behind the modern-day phenomenon known as Cirque du Soleil. So ...

November 25, 2004: I send both a letter and e-mail to Mr. Laliberte , seeking an interview and offering a number of options including meeting him in Los Angeles at a future time when he might be there.

Guy Laliberte does not reply.

March 22, 2005: I e-mail him once again, this time asking if he might respond to a few questions, one being “Have you EVER seen a circus without animals before starting up your own show or during your first formative years in operation?” I am hoping, without putting the words in his mouth, that he might mention the time, circa 1986, when, according to Larry Pisoni, he saw Pisoni’s Pickle Family Circus in the Los Angeles area and after the show went back to compliment the company. This would have drawn a strong aesthetic connection between the Pickles and Cirque. I also raise the option of his having a spokesperson speak with me.

April 7, 2005: I send an e-mail to vice president of Creation Giles Ste-Croix, essentially requesting the interview that I am so far unable to secure from his boss. I express a strong interest in at least speaking with him by telephone for 10-15 minutes.

No reply.

May 28, 2005: I e-mail Mr. Laliberte a third time. Here I am afraid, rhetorically speaking, I throw caution to the wind, resorting to both praise and satire in a futile effort to capture his attention (Sometimes, this approach works; so far, it has not landed me in jail). No luck.

Still not a peep from planet Cirque.

June 15, 2005: I write a letter to Mr. Ste-Croix, referencing my e-mail. I suggest a tape-recorded telephone interview or my e-mailing him a set of questions, believing this would be the easiest way for him to reply.

June 27, 2005: THEY RESPOND. Lyne DesRoches, Marketing Project Manager, e-mails me six questions, one being “how big will be Cirque du Soleil part in the book (10% 20%)?” Not since my efforts to quote some Stephen Sondheim lyrics in my earlier book, Broadway Musicals: A Hundred Year History, have I been asked for such intrusive, potentially controlling information. Even then, I reply as best that I can without in any way promising them any amount of a percentage of coverage. Nobody other than publishers and editors have any say in the development of my work.

November 3, 2005, one year after first approaching them and when my manuscript is now nearly ready to be sent out, I receive an e-mail from Karine Hachey, Office of the Vice President of Marketing:

“My colleague Lyne DesRoches has transferred your request to me. In regards to your interview request, I am pleased to inform you that Mr. Giles Ste-Croix, Vice President, Creation, will be available to answer your questions. Chantal Cote, our senior publicist, will contact you in order to arrange the interview.”

November 29, 2005: Needing to move things along, I send Ms. Hachey a thank you reply (via NASA), seeking either to meet with Mr. Ste-Croix in S.F. or L.A, at the same time including 10 questions for an easy reply. I have just seen the less than exhilarating Corteo, and so I take the opportunity to shape some of my questions around it. For example: “In Corteo, you are moving into a more theatrical-fantasia direction where circus acts are even more secondary in importance. Was this a conscious decision on the part of Mr. Laliberte and/or his Italian director?”

In the positive, I ask, “What are the chances, in your opinion, that the Cirque form of circus will, in years to come, be duplicated by more and more American circuses, in essence becoming a new standard by which all circuses are judged?”

I hasten to end with, “In closing, with all due respect, I must tell you that if you are unable to address these questions in weeks rather than months, your response might be too late for any interpolations into my evolving text.”

December 6, 2005: Only seven days later, Chantal Cole, Corporate Public Relations, e-mails me:

“My colleague Karine Hachey forwarded your email to me. Thank you for sending some questions intended for Giles Ste-Croix. I’m afriad Mr. Ste-Croix will not be in a position to answer your questions. When you first approached us back in June this summer (not so, it was back in November, 2004), you requested an interview with Giles Ste-Croix to discuss the modern-day circus scene and have his perspective on how circus arts evolved in general over the years. (Again, wrong – also, about his “days with Cirque du Soleil”) In those questions below, we see more a focus on Corteo and your personal appreciation of its content, which we evaluate as a review of the show and not as an overall interest in circus arts which is legitimate but does not reflect the initial proposal.”

My “personal appreciation”? ONLY could Cirque du Soleil have resorted to such euphemistic blather. Perhaps they had help from the Vice President of Creation on that one.

End of Story.

New Book Due Proclaims American Circus Heyday "Largest Showbiz Industry the World Has Ever Seen" --- Go, USA!

My, does that make me feel good, especially since it's coming from outsiders looking back at our three-ring extravaganzas. I kind of all along felt that without ever trying to confirm my hunches. (Okay, we'll overlook Hollywood in the forties luring into movie houses 90 million people every week.)

The book, due out in June, is so clinically titled -- The Circus: 1870-1950 -- that considering its touted sweep, I would have called it The Circus: 1871-1956, but then I quibble. It bears the work of one (only one?) editor, two authors -- outsiders named Dominique Jando (now a San Francisco resident) and Canadian Linda Granfield -- and a "contributing author," fact checker extraordinaire Fred Dahlinger,Jr., once of the Circus World Museum library.

Pages? 670. Photos? count 'em -- 900, many by the legendary shutter masters.

Price: $200.00. This looks like a monumental. In fact, like a museum. Books of this daunting visualality tend to render me weak and helpless in their presence, and for sheer survival I settle by default for the photos. And what visuals these promise to be! Hard to imagine, in the discriminating vain, 900 top-notch images, although history needs mediocre photography, too.

But, once I can get my hands on a library copy, I will be most eager to see what "they" say, looking back at "us." I wonder if they will understand how we on this side of the Atlantic took all those great acts they sent our way and cast them so innovatively in such spectacular shows ... Europe had the talent, but little presentational pizazz. We never had nearly the talent, but we had showmanship of all angles and spangles --- from Coup-Barnum-Costello to John Ringling North.

[photo above, from Taschen books website: The glory that was Ringling: On the midway, circa 1955, during the John Ringling North era. Do I see Henry Ringling North -- the man with the tie?]

Giving Circus Critics Around the World Their Due...

In a recent post about my brief flirtation with a casting agent from NBC’s Celebrity Circus who told me that I am about the only real circus critic out there, I took gleeful flight in flaunting my agreement with the guy, Ashton Ramsey. If I lent the impression that I was dismissing serious circus scholars and critics around the world, that would not be the first time I’ve been boastful or stupid — or both.

I must say, I do not see critical circus reviews in this country — that is, outside of the occasional big city newspaper based movie, theatre or dance critic now and then filing a real review of a circus. When I looked in one issue of The White Tops, I did not see it other than, to be fair, a review by Dominique Jando of the New Pickles Traces. His was a tactfully worded critique of the show, surely as valid as the more sledgehammer approach which I have sometimes taken (ouch! My tea cup just attacked my finger...)

Raffaele De Ritis sent a fine comment explaining a very different situation in Europe where many “critics” labor to keep alive the conversation about circus art. As for the U.S., Raffaele points justly to author Ernest Albrecht. Now, notwithstanding his quarterly Spectacle (which I’ve not seen), I have tended to regard Mr. Albrecht as a very articulate advocate for what he calls “the new American circus” rather than a critic, per se. And I could be off base here. Albrecht’s book, The New American Circus, chronicles with passion and support the intricate artistic developments behind many of the changes we have lived through in the most turbulent chapter in circus history. I quote from three of its insightful interviews in my recently published Fall of the Big Top: The Vanishing American Circus. Of particular value, Albrecht’s passing along Guy Caron’s reaction to the Moscow Circus (“this is it!”) absolutely nailed my long-held perception that Cirque du Soleil sprang from Russian sawdust.

I just don’t quite agree with Albrecht’s embracement of a form of circus that, in my skeptical view, is drawing ominously closer to what I call circus ballet. Moreover, I think Mr. Albrecht nearly welcomes the demise of animals in circus. But, of course, this alternative form in which Albrecht seems to find promising value could well end up being what “circus” becomes in a future devoid of animals and human daredevils. Indeed, he addresses a sphere of evolution under big tops that is full (it would appear) of new ideas and deeper direction. And I am all for innovation.

I also quote the English scholar, Helen Stoddart, from her intellectually penetrating book, Rings of Desire, which luckily I chanced upon at the local library. Ms. Stoddart and I evidently see the essence of circus in very similar ways. That is, a very real enterprise that rides high on risk taking.

Were I a rich bon vivant and/or not so chronically adverse to air travel (blame it on a bad flight back from the Soviet Union in 1979), how I would love to hang out in Europe for a few months, taking in as many circuses as possible. What a book that might make. Does Greyhound go over there?

Anyway, here is Raffaels's mini-essay in full, well worth bringing to the forefront, for he pays tribute to many people who, as he proudly points out, do look at circus art critically. And I am all for that!

David,
few notes about living circus critics. I think that, according your experience, your knowledge of history and present, your honesty and your writings, you are surely a very important reference circus critic in the true sense of term. It is also true that, fortunately, others deserves the same status so you are not alone in your hard role.
For example, Mr. Ernest Albrecht is a very competent critic, with a solid theatre background too, editing the only real circus critic magazine in the Usa, and constantly travelling personally Europe in the major festivals and circuses.
And, even if not born in America, you have in the country Dominique Jando. By his long and unique experience, I consider him the greatest living critic and historian in the world, for circus past and present. I don't think that in America there are today circus scholar with his knowledge of the subject. Crossing the ocean, there are many other circus critics. Pascal Jacob, in France, is known worldwide in the business and is the most prolific circus writer today, having signed dozens of book for prestigious publishers in his country. Christian Hamel, in France president of Club du Cirque, is a very competent critic, widely recognized in the continent. Don Stacey in Great Britain is the world veteran of the circus critic, and David Jamieson (King Pole editor) is not les competent in his country. Artur Hofmeester in Holland signed in decades hundreds of honest critics about the most important circuses in the world.
Frederic Bollman in Switzerland is by 30 years one of the most respected circus critics in the world. Jordi Jane, in Spain, is at my knowledge the only circus critic in the world having a weekly circus column on a national daily newspaper. In Italy, Alessandro Serena teaches circus at the university of Milano and regularly debates and reviews about circus in many papers. And I permit to add myself, having signed hundreds of articles for all the majors circus magazines in the world, and of specific books . The same can be said for Julio Revolledo Cardenas in Mexico, or Mark St.Leon in Australia.

If you ever was at the Monte Carlo Circus Festival, the press office hosts yearly at least 50 circus writing specialist from all over the world.
And I think is a good thing for the circus.

Thank you, Raffaele

Never Date a Movie Just Once

This first appeared on April 27, 2008


You haven’t lived until you’ve read The Great Gatsby, they told me. In junior college, I lived. It was captivating. Many years later, the thrill was gone.

Many years later, too, listening to tapes of old Jack Benny radio programs makes me wonder why we laughed our heads off on Sunday afternoons. That funny?

Our reaction to a show depends a lot on our attitudes and life experiences at the time. When I first saw "I Love Lucy" at a neighbor’s house in the early ‘50s, THAT was the event of the week. THE funniest show anywhere. Today? Usually I strain to feel amply amused. It’s the going back that sort of charms me.

Comedy may be the hardest thing to create; harder still to stand up through time. Ventriloquist Edgar Bergen’s Charlie McCarthy and Mortimer Snerd are as funny now as they were then. So is Gale Gordon of "Our Miss Brooks." He could make it on any planet with the windy blast of his umbrage alone.

Never date a movie just once. Go back and you might belatedly fall in love — or curse whatever it was that took you for a ride in the first place.

There’s something about the dreadfully mediocre Ring of Fear that is finally getting to me. Yes, me, who recently called it Ring of Drek. Now, I’m settling into its oddball story and atmosphere. A little of Clyde Beatty’s natural charm, those okay circus acts, the pensive background music and that mad spurned man bent on wrecking the marriage of the women he lusts after and tearing down the show. And the big riotous laugh it gives us when we hear a tiger going after him for dinner in a box car.

For years, I carped about Wuthering Heights as being insufferably dull. I saw it recently, and was totally absorbed. How stupid was I? Once I gushed over Jimmy Stewart in Harvey. Saw the film a few years later and found it so cloyingly cute, I had to turn it off and escape into a reality show. Blame it on my mood?

A few rare movies never let me down, like my favorite movie musical, Bandwagon, or Hitchcock’s The Birds — an utterly brilliant evocation of the natural world turning upside down against the human race and leaving a huge Question Mark on a scorched horizon. Niagara Falls is a moody film in which Marilyn Monroe turns in a terrific performance that makes me believe she can actually act. How novel.

My estimation goes up and down. Only luke warm for Dinner at Eight one sit; red hot for the same flick a couple of years later.

And I’m so high on two recent discoveries — 1934's Midnight and 1939's Murder in the Private Car, I wonder what I’d think if ever I go back.

So, it’s about time I make another date with the Great Gatsby. I long for the infatuation I felt when first I encountered F. Scot Fitzgerald. And I need to make a personal pledge, when next it appears, to commit four or five hours of my life in front of Gone With the Wind. Many years ago, I waded through the bloated thing in a movie house. Blame it on downtown Oakland. Blame it on something in the wind I drank that day.

[photos, from above: Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon in Wuthering Heights; Gale Gordon; Ring of Fear; Midnight.

4.27.08

Mid Week Scramble. We toss, you catch ...

Okay, in no particular order, I’m taking one piece of paper at a time, off the top and working down, and if you sense a roll of wagons off a train oddly loaded last night, trust me, we’ll get the tents up somehow...

A one-word note “Logan” reminds me to wax rustic about Logan Jacot's new rabbit act in training, which has me enthrall. At county fairs, I’ve often spent quality time gazing into little cages housing mature bunnies of all facial expressions, and read into every one a whole different attitude. So much fury fun. I’d reach a finger in to touch the little darlings, feeling as brave as Clyde Beatty in the Big Cage.

The World is never far away from this humbly rising blog. At any given point, as many as a quarter of my stampeding patronage (oh, maybe about two or three) are checking out my stand, and not all of them goggled in here by mistake. From France (I feel smug) and the big UK, Israel and the Ukraine, Tokyo to Finland, Athens to Mexico, Quebec to Colombia, they come. Search words that get ‘em here? “Circus” often does the trick. Random reaches spell out “Alex Chimal 2008," "David Joy in NC” (who he?); “circus pay,” and “circus barkers,”“Bellobration” (big) and “zoo tragedy.” However you got here, World, welcome inside and, by the way, what are you thinking? Cotton candy or imported Chinese tea for your comments ...

We know what a few are thinking. Wade Burck recently commented with working authority, stating what seems rational: “Although I know better than to give an animal human emotions....” And yet Me the romantic is a sucker for the John Pugh school of being able to sense an animal’s emotions. You have company, John — Here’s a found item from the Seattle Times in 2005 suggesting that “a growing number of scientists agree that animals are conscious and capable of experiencing basic emotions.” Nailed! Having interviewed a number of trainers, I’ve gotten a feeling that they can understand the moods of their charges. And there is something mystical about how they do communicate, or is it all in the edible payoffs?

Don Covington, amused at my tenuous connection to the NBC Celebrity Circus (so tenuous, I feel like one of hundreds of names on a Hollywood Rolodex), sends me news about the sudden death of the other version that was in the works at ABC. No surprise to me, but rather uninspiring to learn of actors spending so little time trying to resemble circus performers. Idol delivers virtual pop stars. A circus show? If they can avoid the hula hoop, I offer advance accolades ...

All of which randomly reminds me, the stars of vaudeville might have lost vaudeville, but they kept it alive first on the radio then on early day television. Those who argue that big tops are going the same road fail to account for the primal power of true circus talent; this I know, it will live on in some form — if not inside a plastic tent, maybe in a renovated chicken coup. But oh, how the crowds have shrunk. In days gone by when our circuses came to town, the whole world was there. Now, only the angry animal crowd who belong, in my opinion, behind bars.

Smaller is better? What a day this would be for John Strong, the master of the little little one ring show. So many one-ringers might now be competing for his rare ringmastering charms.

One visitor, chancing belatedly upon my posting about the Jim Judkins Chimera tour cancellation due to the visa glitch, states anonymously, “I find it hard to believe that, in a country of 260 million people, he can’t find any US citizens for his unskilled labor positions (roustabouts). There are many young men in our cities who would love a chance to work and travel with circuses. Did he advertise?” Well, if he did, he’d have to offer a lot more money than what, I suspect, most shows get away with paying. He’d have to compete against more lucrative welfare dept. payouts.

Lastly, feeling a desire to send you out in a gallery frame of mine (Buckle’s big top and Bill’s Yesterday’s Towns, you know), here’s my best shot for the moment. And what, you ask? No, that’s not a Ringling float from a Western spec. But gaze upon the hallowed ground. On that very spot, I once stepped of a Greyhound bus going south from Santa Rosa, and beheld the muscular drive of men and wagons thrashing across weed and grass and mud, dispatching Al G. Kelly & Miller Bros. tents into the air with gusto. And might the old codger that I fondly recall riding about on a small rig have been one Obert Miller? Great day under a long narrow push pull canvas top. How wonderful it once was to be guilt-free in one’s unequivocal admiration for animals and the wondrous things they did in star-laden rings. Long live Logan’s performing rabbits!

Into the Last Sawdust Night ... With a Fanfare or a USDA Escort?

(correction, 4/19: I erroneously reported animal problems with Circus Vargas; The show is Circus Vazquez)

Update 4/21: Read Ben Trumble's comment at the end of this post, stressing that local Los Angeles County officials, not the USDA, banned the animals.

“Not with a bang, but a whimper,” this is how the world ends, wrote poet T.S. Elliot. And the circus? With a Merle Evans Crescendo? --- or the last episode of the last reality show making fools of actors pretending to be ring stars?

Some say it will vanish like vaudeville. Others, like barely 20-something Logan Jacot, say not at all. Read on: “I have great respect for the circus industry,” writes he on his new blog, Sawdust Nights. “They have conquered all odds and somehow the circus is still alive and well in the twenty first century though it was pronounced dead over fifty years ago.” Sawdust Nights. Love those two words rhapsodically linked, Logan ...

So let us of the aging class take hope and raise our Dragonwell tea — or, well, whatever it is you raise — to a thousand more sawdust nights. Link in a blink to Logan’s log — you’ll find it right here to your right. It merits serious attention.

Logan tells us he is now training a complete rabbit act! He speaks promisingly for the younger generation, defending big tops against their PETA-centric foes. This smart kid smartly advocates more websites and blogs pushing to get out the circus side of the story: “We need to really start focusing our efforts to stop the propaganda and lies about the circus industry and I really believe everybody that supports the circus needs to start focusing more on the internet.” Amen and a crashing fanfare to that, Logan!

Specifics? Urges, he, “Upload more pro animals videos to YouTube and other video hosting sites.” Okay, you’ve got your marching orders, people. Know what? It’s about time I see how and if I can load videos onto this here midway....

And how our battered big tops need more vocal and visual on-line defense. Simply awful is the news out of L.A. (by way of media watchdog Don Covington) about the eviction from Circus Vazquez of five tigers who nearly decapitated, earlier this spring, a female tiger when all shared the same cage overnight. Tiger died. And that’s not all: Banned, too, are three Vazquez elephants from Panorama City, whose keeper, Will Davenport, was cited for “having recently violated federal animal welfare laws,” according the L.A. Daily News. I don’t know how much in violation of the rules Vazquez actually was (the show did not return phone calls for comment from ABC news), but it doesn’t look good. And for it to happen in a town where three is a news camera on nearly every corner. My heart grieves for all circus owners who do everything they can to right the wrongs of the past and present animals under ideal conditions.

Not with a bang but a USDA eviction. Let’s go somewhere else, okay? Here’s chirpy Marilyn Hardy, fondly recalling the high she got back at Madison Square Garden in 1957 when ringmaster Harold Ronk sang “Open the window wide and let the sun in!” In her own words: "High hat and arms raising a cape like great black wings, he captivated my young spirit with the dynamic energy of that song." The tune was composed by John Ringling North projecting a new day sans big top. Ms. Hardy is doing a film about songs of the sun, and she wants to include North's contribution. I hated to tell her it wasn't a favorite of mine. And it struck me a few days ago, so much of the North music that I loved from the under canvas years was played by Merle Evans. All of the songs for the indoor years were conducted by the very different Izzy Cervone. Could that be why? I know, Cervone has his fans who make solid arguments in his favor. But, somehow either he or North failed in the asphalt mode.

Not with a bang but a reality show blowout? Noting the premature demise of ABC's Circus of the Stars, Don Covington asks me, “David, your new career may be in jeopardy? Do you think NBC will follow suit?" Not quite yet, Don. Ashton Ramsey just called. So my tenuous hold on tanbark celebrity is still tenuously holding. Maybe not with a bang, but half a whimper from a full wimp.

The Circus Vazquez Matter --- Another View from L.A.

Note: I am reprinting in its entirety the following comment from Alex Smith, which appeared on Topix, to give another view of the situation and how it may have developed. Text highlighting is my own.

"This is sensationalizes nonsense. CIRCUS VAZQUEZ was already in LA playing Huntington Park for 3 weeks. All permits and inspections by LA City, Fish and Game, and USDA were cleared DAILY. It wasn't until the animal rights PETA people showed up in Panorama City to protest that this occurred.

They inspected the elephants and equipment head to toe and even followed the trainer and the elephants during the show with a camera to make sure there was no abuse and THERE WAS NONE.

A rule enacted only 6 weeks ago that claims any trainer with a negative cite from USDA (the agency responsible for enforcing the Animal Welfare Act) in the last 5 years can't perform in the city limits. The violation this trainer made was several years ago and had to do with fence size in the enclosure. It was not abuse! That's like giving a you a moving violation on your driving record for a parking ticket.

CIRCUS VAZQUEZ has been in LA for 3 weeks and inspected every day and passed. There is no proof of abuse and the trainers were very diplomatic in agreeing with the LA City permits a process which began over 8 weeks ago.

This is an example of PETA and other groups influencing the right people. This circus is an excellent show and a favorite for local audiences who were disappointed that there would be no elephants.

You people that think this is such a great decision might ask ED BOKS why it took him three weeks to get the elephants out of the city? My hypothesis is that there was no abuse and PETA influenced him. The same PETA that's on the FBI terrorist list."

To read all 21 comments posted, go to:

http://www.topix.com/forum/science/agriculture/T91G55GNLP2VDHDLV

NBC to Me: Do You Want to Judge “Celebrity Circus?”

Out of the past: From April 16, 2008
Showbiz David hit the rails today to follow some arrows

Monte Carlo is one thing. A bunch of Hollywood actors trying to look like circus artists, quite another. (BTW: whatever became of David Nelson on the flying trapeze?)

Still, ego is ego, and so when somebody calls me (as they do every two or three years), my own inflated sense of superiority goes for a wild ride. Usually, to nowhere.

This time, it was an e-mail from one Ashton Ramsey, his name right above “NBC’s Celebrity Circus.” He wanted to talk to me “about maybe being a judge” (Yes, I know, that headline above that got you in here was a shameless tease.). I called back.

“So, you’re the only real circus critic there is,” he began. Immediately impressed, and hardly feeling vain, I told him, yes you are correct. After all, who else is there out there? White Tops? One of the blogs that selectively picks on Ringless Bros? ***

Ashton had been background checking me, digging around in this here blog, and he seemed somewhat intrigued to have discovered my murky existence. We talked about that critic thing for a while. “Yeah, I’m your Simon Cowell of the big top.” I told him I’ve been mouthing off since I was 14-years old, when I was first published (of all places, in the White Tops).

We talked about who the other judges might be. He ran some names past me. One is a retired and much loved aerialist. Another is a well paid star with a very large U.S. show, whose work I recently reviewed not exactly falling for all the show-generated hype. (I’m purposely not mentioning names because, believe it or not, I still have a shred of ethics and I don’t wish to derail the prospects for any potential non-circus judge.)

But as for me, the next thing they needed — and fast — was a mock “interview.” Said Ashton, they would call me up in the next few days and while I answered the questions, I would record it and then send the recording to them to review.

There was a problem. I don’t own a video recorder.

“You must know somebody who has one,” said Ashton, expecting me to administer a screen test to myself!

So much for that thing about my being the only true living circus critic. In the eyes of Hollywood (aka: Ramsey Casting), I guess I’m ranked somewhere between Pretentious Novelty from the lost big top to Game Show Contestant .

“And be sure it’s a DV, not a DVD”

Oh, I see.

Every three or four years, something like this happens. PBS has called a couple of times — independent film maker wanting me as talking head for some project on spec. Please send resume. Resume sent. Silence thereafter from the other end.

I was about to be mock interviewed on camera for The Learning Channel — until I learned that Feld Entertainment was partly funding a circus documentary that would be sold on its midways. No thanks, Jose, said I to Jose. I don’t flack for veiled Feld promos. I was sorry to reject because I liked Jose.

Back to NBC. To the savvy Ashton, whom I enjoyed talking to, I e-mailed my ambivalence. Such as not feeling to good about sitting next to a performer whose work I have refused to acclaim as do some of the fans. Such as wondering if Celebrity Circus might be scripted — as I’ve heard some so called reality shows are. I offered to do an audition interview up here if they could send somebody. (That’s what TLC would have done)

In hasty reply, he wrote — “ Yeah, let’s just work on the camera and not get ahead of yourself. No, we are not going to script you. No, xxxx [star] isn’t signed on. And yes this show would help you sell a lot of copies of your books! So baby steps.”

So goo goo and da da. I have yet to see or hear of a camera at my door. Know what I think? When an Ashton calls, most people chase the chance to get their mugs on a TV show.

But I leaped ahead and took a few daring adult steps. And reigned in my ego and mellowed out to refit myself into a bigger saner picture. And I had an idea. Since I would be coming to Los Angeles in three weeks to board a train, I e-mailed Ashton an offer to meet him Union Station for a test interview. And I waited for his reply. Which never came. Not another world.

I started out many years ago with a big ego. Believe it or not, over time, it’s gotten a lot smaller. If Ashton calls you, remember, baby steps first....and have your personal film crew standing by.

*** Update, 5/21/12: Belated apologies for unintentionally slighting Ernest Albrecht and his Spectacle magazine. He puts out thoughtful circus reviews; blame my omission on temporary megalomania. Celebrity Circus, a hopelessly humdrum drag, was a short-lived six week flop. End of story.

4.16.08