Three Rings of This & That ...

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.)...

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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...

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Bandwagon’s Incessant Spell ...

Showbiz David from out of the pastA 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...

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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...

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... 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...

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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....

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