Killer San Francisco Tiger: Blame the Victim?

In what is being reported as the first death to a U.S. zoo patron at the hands of an animal in decades, local officials are now raising the possibility that the victims may have provoked Titania into escaping the zoo confounds in order to chase them down in an act of violent revenge. One young man is dead, two others injured.The same tiger, a 4-year-old Siberian, last year caused injury to her keeper and the zoo was faulted and fined by the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health. This time around, ending up in a zoo eatery, she was shot dead by arriving police officers.According to the Washington Post, “The San Francisco Zoo's director of animal care and conservation, Robert Jenkins, said he had no idea how the tiger, which weighed...

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John Ringling North II to the World: Let There Be More Circus ... New Productions, New Acts & Tigers Promise a New K-M Look in ‘08 ...

Contrary to blogging rumors elsewhere that John Ringling North II is out of the biz after a year helming Kelly-Miller, the nephew of John Ringling North is actively at work crafting a whole new show for the 2008 season. For the first time in years, Kelly-Miller will tour a cat act. In an e-mail to Showbiz David, North writes:“I am still in the circus business, and, yes, we had a good season. We did have a truck burn up, but no one was hurt. We returned safely to Hugo after closing in Ardmore’North tells me, “We have 3 new production numbers and a lot of new acts.” He plans to be in Hugo come January to discuss staging details with his manager, Jim Royal. John Moss, whose services North evidently values, returns as ringmaster and performance...

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This One’s for the Very Much Alive Judy Finelli

She directed the Pickle Family Circus for a few seasons in the late 80s. In 1989, she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. For many heroic years since, Judy has faced her illness with evident dignity, courage and resolve. And somehow somewhere I gained a sense that she had passed on. Not so. Of the many errors I have made over the years in my books — and I’ve made my fair share — reporting about “the late Judy Finelli” is surely the worst. In fact, she has just witnessed me fall off a very high high wire...Judy called me yesterday ("David, this is Judy calling you from the grave..."), having heard from a reviewer with an advance copy of my book Fall of the Big Top, officially due out in February, asking Judy if she is still alive. Indeed, the valiant Judy is still very much alive,...

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Live Streaming from Sage, Somwhere Out There...

Hey, is this Showbiz David?Yeah, is that you, Sage. Where have you been?All over the lot, man. Look, things are going wild in the rumor mill. I'm out here mid America, and have I got an earful. Did you hear about ...Sage? Sage?...going all the way out to...Sage?(phone connection lo...

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Why Can’t L.A. Produce a Hit Broadway Musical?

Los Angeles Theatre Critics Toss Bouquets at Turkeys! That’s One Reason Why. You Want Others? The New York opening this week at the Public Theatre of Henry David Hwang’s new play Yellow Face to mixed notices --- some scathing and a negative from the New York Times --- is but another example of the great divide between the critics of Los Angeles and those of New York. Yellow Face tried out last spring in L.A. at the Mark Taper Forum to generally glowing reviews, which surprised me because I saw a very flawed work in need of major rethinking and rewriting. Although Yellow Face is not a musical, it’s journey from L.A. acclaim to N.Y. disdain is typical of what happens to new musicals that are born where stars are born and fade away ingloriously under the punishing lights of Forty Second Street.Interesting...

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The Barkers Who Lure Us In ... the Stars Who Lure Us Back

Circuses resort to all manner of hype and discount, pr and free tix blitz to lure us into their tents. Never an easy task. What we see, once seduced, may make us want to return ... Were it not for a newspaper discount coupon that gave my mother the will, she might never have taken my sister and me to see King Bros Circus when it came to Santa Rosa, and I would never have seen the great Truzzi — although I must rely on the word of others, for I recall so little about his act, I was so young then and so much more taken with a teeterboard display (new to my eyes) and with a group of acrobats running down a long ramp and somersaulting over a mountain of elephants.Less than a year later, fresh out of Luther Burbank elementary school one afternoon,...

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Australia’s Anti-Circus is Right at Home in Berkeley

Holiday Look Backs, this from 2007Circus Review: Circus Oz at Zellerbach Hall,Berkeley, Saturday, 2 p.m., December 1. $26 to $48I think it’s time for me and the anti-circus to part company. A no-fault divorce on principle alone. This is hardly a circus. This is a subversive and sometimes very funny stage show referencing circus acts in the act of deconstructing them, same way it takes glee in tearing down sexual norms and old-hat morality. We are not in a ring. We are in a moody underground night club for disgruntled losers somewhere on the outskirts of a world gone half-mad. Could it be that the Aussies behind this operation suffer the guilt of their own Nevil Shute having novelized the end of the world in his nuclear war tale, On The Beach?...

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