Welcome to Showbiz David: Five Years Today

Telling it like it is from Broadway to the Big Tops!



Note: Today marks the fifth "anniversary" of this blog. At first, it also went by the name "Stage and Sawdust." Slowly it continues to grow. Mostly, it's a hobby, a time filler when I'm bored or inspired. A place to vent. I have no idea where or how long it will go. I let fate move me in whatever direction feels exciting and relevant. Thanks for visiting now and then. This first post sounds rather pretentious (maybe they all do), and I don't even relish printing it, but it's where I started. And here, now, is where we are, wherever that is ...)



From your independent showbiz critic David Lewis Hammarstrom (aka: David H. Lewis), my occasional reports, reminiscences, reviews (and rantings -- maybe) on the ever-changing world of the performing arts. Hey, this might be fun!



You want puff? Sorry, I don't do puff. Want rigged feel-good reviews from press flaks on the take parading as critics? Sorry, you're on the wrong lot. In my book, a hit is a hit and a turkey is a turkey. How can this be? Well, I also pay for my own tickets.



I've been dishing out opinions (and being dissed in return) since the age of 14 when I first got published nationally in The White Tops. From there up a many spangled trail I have traveled, landing articles in The Christian Science Monitor, Australia's The Outdoor Showman, American Skating World, and peaking in the pages of Variety --- when Variety was Variety, edited out of New York.



Some of you may be familiar with my books: Behind the Big Top ... Circus Rings Around Russia ... Big Top Boss: John Ringling North and the Circus ... Roller Skating for Gold ... Broadway Musicals: A Hundred Year History ... Fower Drum Songs: The Story of Two Musicals... And I have a new one in the works on the modern-day American circus scene -- [Fall of the Big Top: The Vanishing American Circus]. More about this in the days to come.



So, how about we meet up sometime soon on the midway? This new website I'm fronting has just arrived on the blogspot lot. They're yet to raise the tents -- still unloading the horses and the red wagons down at the railroad yards by the old ice house. Still waiting for the police to escort them through a band of protestors, some self-chained to the elephant car, shouting, "Reparations for Jumbo!"



You'll bear with me, I trust, as I navigate my way through cyberworld to bring you the essential me in this new and very happening format.



So standby for the Big Show!



[8/24/06]