Big Top Bits: The White Tops Promises Criticism, Kelly-Miller, More Silence, Cirque, More Fog ...

We begin with my "death" which never happened ... Hamarstrom is not Hallberstam, thank you. Across the years I’ve been confused for the much richer, more famous and prolific writer named David Hallberstam. Tragically, this well-revered author of numerous books on politics and society died in a car crash not far from where I live ... A few people contacted me with guarded concern ... Robert Mitchell's phone message ended, "talk to you later — I hope ..." A mystically inclined e-mail correspondent invited me to "Reply the best way you can." Hmmm. Were I the other Hammarwhatever, an outreach seance back to planet earth might have been in order ...Talk about being mistaken for someone we are not, seems the new and graphically improved White Tops...

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Dream Dressage from England ... Pure Circus and Take That, PETA!

The Circus That Once Reigned SupremeRide this link to the most amazingly intrepid dancing horse you will likely ever see – Matinee!http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKQgTiqhPbw&eurlThe 9-year-old mare, ridden by Andreas Helgstrand, dazzled Brit crowds at the World Equestrian Games in the Musical Freestyle Dressage competition. Here is a link to a video of Matinee's tanbark triumph — a revelation — sent me by my SoCal correspondent, Dame Dither of England. "Poetry in Motion – The Real McCoy," writes the Dame, gushing as rarely she does. Indeed, tally ho, pip pip and a dozen dizzy encores!There on English soil where the circus was born, behold one sterling example of the mastery that once reigned victorious over pure sawdust — before fog machines, unidentified crawling objects, special effects...

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DVD Discovery: The History Boys is Rich and Riveting

>Brilliant in so many ways, The History Boys, written by Alan Bennett (who also wrote the stage play up which it has been adapted) centers its searing drama and comedy on the question of why we learn. Set in England in 1984, eight grammar school lads have scored well enough to apply for Oxford or Cambridge. Their heady headmaster is so madly determined to get them in and enhance his reputation that he hires a young teacher, Irwin, to badger the boys into edgier test-taking attitudes.Irwin sells out for the chance to land a permanent position at the school by recklessly urging the boys to cease being so factually "bland" and, instead, fabricate their answers to test questions. This sets Irwin in callous contrast to quaintly aging Hector,...

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Coming Soon! Consumer Courts, Showbiz David Division, Rates Circus Websites!

You, too, can be a judge!Send me your favorites or a list of them all ranked from best to worst. And I will reference them in some way when mine are posted.Only circus websites (NOT circus blogs) apply. Only shows touring regularly in the U.S. (examples: Carson & Barnes, Cirque du Soleil).My final scores, already set, reside in an envelope with Dice and Daughterhouse, and will be announced on April 30.Send me yours in the comments section of this post, or e-mail them — click on "view my complete profile" (you’ll find it on the sidebar to your right) to access my e-mail link.Step right up! Rate the Sawdust Sit...

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Spring Big Top Bits: Royal Breaks Silence with Message from North II About Production ... Early Season Reports (or Hype?) Promise Better Big Tops

We take them all with a grain of salt, we must, for too often hype parades as honest criticism ... But ... there is reason to believe that America’s big tops are at least sharpening their acts, adding some novelty, still fighting to bring the public the animals it says it wants, and maybe turning the tanbark excitement up a notch ... So, here — hype or honesty — from the field of dreams ...Sarasota Central has already checked in on Ringling’s latest — the greatest show on earth, claims SC, is back on track, back from the abyss of that Ringless thing it offered last year that a lot of fans are still carping about ... Over on the New Cole Bros. lot, one circus fan is raving about John Pugh’s latest, complete with winning vocalist, a mini-aerial ballet, and a motorbike cage that breaks open!...

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MIDWAY FLASH ... MIDWAY FLASH ... John Ringling North II Responds to Showbiz David Regarding "Production Numbers" on Kelly-Miller Circus

I've just received an e-mail from show manager Jim Royal, forwarding me a message from John Ringling North II on the matter of his having promised to add production numbers to the show.Before I publish it, I am hoping to obtain more detailed information from Royal.Once he replies, the message will be shared with visitors to this bl...

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Sunday Morning, Looking Back: Huell Howser’s California is Television Gold

This first appeared on April 19, 2007In the age of spin and sleaze — when hip hoppers go criminal to boost record sales and international hookers become cultural icons in their death – what a pleasure to watch Huell Howser’s California’s Gold — that is if you live in the golden state and hunger for a semblance of reflective sanity in the shadows of nature and history. Howser is a big tall guy from Tennessee who gets awe-shucks excited over sunsets and old abandoned docks, over off-beat museums and restored windmills. He takes the time to savor the unrushed moment, and for this we thank the various PBS stations on which his excursions, as refreshing as a drink of pure spring water, are aired.. Howser deserves a slew of Emmys.Here he is, talking...

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Feld versus North Lawsuit Revives Ringling Family Wars of the ‘40s

Rechanneling the Ringlings: Part One of TwoIn the beginning, the word was RinglingAnd the word multiplied by five to produce the brothers from Baraboo, Wisconsin who formed an unwritten pact to start a circus. They argued loudly in private over business matters, took votes, accepted the majority will and reentered the public sphere with placid lockstep. They were the force.Were there unspoken alliances between any of them? Al and Charles, the two most loved of the brothers, shared an affinity for opera. Intellectual Alf T. was at home with either.That leaves us with two oddballs: Lackluster Otto, a loner who handled the finances and read books, and unlike the other four never married; and the egotistically flamboyant, deal-making John. It made...

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Little Big Top Bits ...

All quiet down the sawdust trail? Counting em’ up — we’ve got two little bigs — Big Apple and UniverSoul and ... is Kelly-Miller a little big? ... Circus Chimera is a little big- plus ... How about Giants? Carson & Barnes, on a diet, too, leads the diminishing pack, still clinging to a trio of rings .... Please consider California, Barbara Byrd, before you too go solo.... John Pugh’s New Cole is — or was — another ringless affair, he having apparently started the trend even before Kenneth Feld gave up on the circus’s most enduring stage set ... In 2005 on the Willow Grove, PA lot, I saw Pugh’s tenter reconfigured into an amorphous oblong performance area ... Beware of rearranging the deck chairs ...How amusingly topical, and this from Big Bertha dreamer, Craig Johnson: You might know that...

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The Lookout: Dramatic New Suspense Flick is So Much More than a Bank Robbery

A young man at the wheel of an expensive auto feels the deceptive thrill of youth. He is a star hockey player, has designer looks, a winning smile and the seemingly perfect girlfriend by his side. It’’s all there —— or it was. The young man is Chris Pratt, who stupidly pushes his luck by pushing the pedal to impress, racing his car with its headlights off into a devastating collusion. Chris’’s back seat passenger friends will die, his girlfriend will survive minus one leg, and he will spend his entire life paying the price in the mental damage he now struggles valiantly to overcome. Each day, he makes notes to himself in order to function. Now and then he thinks he sees his estranged girlfriend in the distance, but is unable to reach out. At...

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Sunday Morning in Tinseltown: My L.A. in 54 Hours

Into Los Angeles, the almost-on-time Amtrak bus drops me off at my cathedral-in-waiting, Union Station. The day is perfect. No city is more inviting under the sun — nor more ominous by night than Hollywood ...I hop a Dash (little busses that feel like living rooms on wheels) to the town’s newest icon, the Disney Concert Hall. There, I land a ticket for tomorrow morning’s Philharmonic. Onto my motel at Sunset and Vermont. After many sleepovers, they are getting to like me. Surprise, they even know how to smile. "You are one of our regular guests!" A King size bed downstairs for King David, complete with my first live-in cockroach, and I mean the first at this Travellodge. With wash cloth in hand, I stomp it flat and toss the cloth with it to...

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Remarkable Cinema Discovery: First Asian-American Film Directed by Marion Wong, Mother of Arabella who Starred on Broadway in Rodgers and Hammerstein’

Documentary film maker Arthur Dong was invited to a house south of San Francisco. A family wondered if some old nitrate film they had might be of interest to Dong and the film community.Dong discovered and was handed historical gold: two surviving reels of the first Asian-American silent film made in the United States: The Curse of Quon Gwon: When the Far East Mingles with the West (1917) Or so speculates, with impressive scholastic authority, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.Last Thursday in Hollywood, the Academy screened the digitally restored movie at the Linwood Dunn Theater on North Vine Street, accompanied on the piano by Michael Mortilla. Arthur Dong provided background information on his rare find and gift to the Academy.Curse opens in a deceptively charming manner,...

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