Our County Fair Is the Best (if Not the Safest) County Fair ...

Can you imagine the Frake kids — Margy and Wayne — going to their state fair in Iowa (actually, to the Rodgers and Hammerstein version in the 1945 movie musical) and being patted down as they enter?That’s what faced my sister and I, neither of us currently on parole, as we passed through security at the entrance to the Sonoma County Fair in Santa Rosa a few weeks ago.Different world, isn’t it? They’ve been patting down fairgoers for several years now. Why people of our ages, I will not understand. The problem darlings are young gang members who, on the carnival midway, give vent to their worst urges. While sister Kathy and I were sampling a few spooky rides on the midway (they fascinate me still), around that time, we would later learn on TV,...

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Don’t Tell the Doors I Watch Lawrence Welk ...

If you live a long time, expect to end up knee deep in layers of culture. So much like music. All those moods, textures, rhythms. Some from childhood. Some from a lost love. Music from disco nights. From radio days. From cabarets and stadiums ...I hear Le D’s “Float” on a Comcast station and write it down. Must buy, whoever Le D is. So, too, one called “Kazumfumi Kodama & End” by D.J. Krust. In cafes, the occasional sound I can’t resist leads to CDs on my shelf: D. J. Shadow, Bombay Dub, the latter’s “To the Shore” the hook that sold me. In the beginning when my mom served us Ovaltine, I hummed along while the Sons of the Pioneers sang “See Them Tumbling” on a radio program. Patti Page charmed my ears with “How Much Is The Dogie In That...

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How Not to Run a Circus? Just Ask the Bloggers

When I read Ben Trumble’s Mud Show blog, mostly because (like the old Billboard magazine) it reports day to day business on the Kelly-Miller lot, I almost feel like a circus owner being apprised by an employee on how (maybe) not to run my show.Trumble, who himself aspires to own a circus, not only reveals crowd trends (so far this season, from spotty and sparse to the occasional straw house), but unstintingly shares his theories with us about what a good booking agent might do to avoid dry markets and concentrate on harvest dates. He praises the old-era advance men for savvy research. But they too erred. Tent trouping has never been easy.Says Ben, for example: “Business continues to be off in rural small town MI. A year ago the economic data...

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Midweek Madness Check-In ... Remember Vaudeville? Remember the Circus?

Okay, in a rush, here we go down the flats and off the runs. See the stranded wagon in the weeds marked Max’s Vaudeville? Been there since the thirties. Not even do I remember vaudeville, but its elements live on — singers, dancers, comics, strip teasers. So, I fear, the circus. Already here are the contorted spin offs, some on stages, some without rings. Theatre heavy, circus light. A table under the trapeze for you, sir? ... Ken Dodd wistfully asked me, “what happened to vaudeville, David?” and said nothing more. In denial he was not. So, too on the midway: Acrobats to Save-The-Planet here, jugglers and joeys addressing existential gloom over there. Daredevils without mechanics? Check out the BMX bike competions. Under our shriking circus...

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Circus Reviews and Why There Are So Few ...

Preface: Henry Edgar, who has held positions both as press agent and newspaper journalist, left the following very insightful information as a comment. I bring it to your center-ring attention, for I think it sheds light on the vexing issue of circus reviewing. Its honesty from an insider's point of view is admirable. david - regarding your comment about Ringling encouraging features rather than reviews -- this seems to be a general trend with newspapers today. they prefer to send someone to do a feature rather than an interview. i think it's a combination of both improved journalistic standards and taking the easy way out. the feature enables the paper to cover the circus without the inherent problems of a review. few papers have staff members who are even semi-qualified to review a circus,...

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How Good – or Bad – is “Over The Top!”? Is Ringling These Days?

After posting my own review, I searched cyberspace to see what others are saying about the show. The only review I recalled before writing mine was a favorable notice in a New York paper.First, cybercritics, among whom, I must skeptically assume, there are shills galore. Either blasting Ringling because they hate the sight of animals on parade or praising Ringling because, well, you know about the Feld press department. That having been said, here they are.Trip Advisor lends a fairly uniform impression of bitter customer disdain: “A waste of money!” “Worst circus I ever saw.” As with all sites, hard to know in every case which edition is being reviewed. Seems the Gold edition in particular has patrons cursing. But remember, these are impressions from questionable sources.Two ticketing websites,...

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Ringling-Barnum's "Over The Top!" is Another Ringless Grab Bag

Circus review: Ringling Bros. and Barnum & BaileyOver the Top!Oakland, August 16Running time: 2 hours, 25 minutes.Given a looming lawsuit over its disputed handling of elephants, reports of declining attendance and the understandable desire to redefine itself in the vexing age of Cirque du Soleil and PETA, what, indeed, is “The Greatest Show On Earth” to do? Go European and anchor itself to a star clown? Lay on more Disney? More Cirque? Back to the straight-ahead past with a no-nonsense parade of authentic circus turns? Whatever it is to do, Kenneth Feld’s smorgasbord approach continues apace, with a new emphasis on old-world clowning. This means that the art of circus per se must take a back seat to the hyperactive Feld framework. There...

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Desperate to be Loved, Talky Talky Circus Vargas both Excites and Irritates

Holiday Look Backs, this from 2008Circus Review: Circus VargasSan Francisco, August 13, 7:30 p.m.Running time: 2 hours, 20 minutes with intermission.Watching Circus Vargas is like sitting down at a fine French restaurant, the first entree magnificent, only to be interrupted every 5 or 10 minutes by one distraction after another — a man off the street with a pet alligator offering to let you touch it and to have your photo taken with it between the main course and desert; another fellow running up to your table, shouting “Are you enjoying your meal?” And still another wanting to pull you into the kitchen and teach you how be a star chef. After this going on half the night, you leave exhausted and irked, fighting to remember why you ever went...

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Midweek Mixorama: Rings of Promise Come My Way ...

At the edge of every vacant ring, I wax hopeful. This may be the One. This may be a tentbuster. Indeed, in my program, the most intriguing thing about the American circus is how unpredictable it can be — and I am talking ALL shows — from the tinniest to the tallest. In any, a star may appear ... If chasing the red wagons has taught me anything I can count on, it is that any show can drastically change from one season to the next, for a changing lineup of acts and other variables (direction or lack of) spell the dramatic differences that can leave you bored or thrilled ...Which is why the search for this nation’s or the world’s “best circus” eludes me, and makes no sense. (Yes, I'm waiting to hear from you, Wade.) Any circus company, no matter how established, will NOT deliver the same quality...

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May I Say this About Roller Skating and the Olympics...

As I behold the tremendously exciting bike races (over the finish line like Derby thoroughbreds), as was just evidenced with a Brit woman speeding victoriously into Gold, and when I think of what authentic athletic excitement a group of roller skaters could supply traversing the same breathtaking course across this most beautiful country (China), I think of how the IOC has relentlessly (likely bowing to payoffs from the ice lobby) kept the sport of my boyhood out of the games year after year, century after century. Most of all, I think of the Judas Iscariot of the IOC, former president Juan Antonio Samaranch, himself an avid roller hockey competitor in his youth who could have easily moved speed skating on roller skates into the games, but in the end turned on his own sport.To all the roller...

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Rising and Falling: End of an Era for Quebec? ...

Latitude Laliberte: A deal made in hell? Okay, I’ve poured over articles about Guy Laliberte selling 20% of his Cirque du Soleil empire to the state of Dubai — it owns the two firms who have each acquired 10 per cent. This leaves G.L. with 70% — closer, closer to a John Ringling North-style family feud ... WHY did he do it? WHY? (Crashing Wagnerian symbols and weeping violins please — yeah, I know, I’m revealing my chronic fanship). Laliberte claims, when pressed by Canadian reporters, “I don’t know why you’re thinking I’m selling Cirque du Soleil to the world. I’m not selling Cirque du Soleil. I’m giving up 20 per cent of the company.”Some of the more telling statements that I’ve raked up from press droppings:“Some reporters question whether...

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Showbiz David’s Annual Ring of Shame Awards

The following five inaugural inductees are this evening dishonored for their unwelcome acts against the American circusIngrid Newkirk. She leads the parade of infidels. A shameless animal rights activist and founder of PETA, for hypocritically inflicting untold damage on the circus world through malicious innuendo and smear tactics (on her below-the-belt "circus criminals" website), distorted and often misleading inaccuracies, and a relentless campaign on selected circus lots to harass and intimidate the public away from attending circuses.James C. Petrillo. Union tyrannizer who coerced musicians into expecting prohibitively expensive wages, in effect turning them into another world’s oldest profession. Petrillo’s money-hungry campaign was...

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MIDWAY FLASH ... MIDWAY FLASH ... Laliberte sells 20% of Cirque Du Soleil to Dubai Interests...

In what may be a harbinger of his eventual exit from the empire he built, owner Guy Laliberte is reported in Business Week (flashed to me by Don Covington) to have sold a 20 percent stake in his world-wide operations.Property developer Nakheel and an investment company, Istithmar World Capital, who purchased the shares, declined to disclose how much they paid.The agreement puts "to rest, for now speculation that the troupe would be sold outright."For now -- two operative words. This only confirms earlier rumors of some sort of a sale, and it leads me to ponder Laliberte's ultimate motives.Stay tuned for my paranoid speculations, to follow in the days to come...

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Ring of Shame Awards to be Announced Tonight, 9 p.m. PST!

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Sunday Morning Scramble: Phonies Unlimited

At the supermarket check out stand, I see that Dr. Phil’s wife is reportedly fed up with their marriage. Surprise! These so-called relationship experts are about as lucky in love (or lust), I suppose, as the head shrinks who make millions correcting the alleged (and very billable) psychic disorders of others. My late cousin once worked for a psychiatrist in Santa Rosa, who defined his job to her as “a paid friend.” Dr. Phil may be paying for “professional” advice for himself shortly. And did radio's reigning queen of morality, Dr. Laura, not also once suffer a set back or two in the boudoir of life?It’s all about entertainment. Even PBS (Pledge Break Society) has turned itself into just another midway of life-advice expects, some of whom,...

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