We survived the Ringling Bros and Barnum & Bailey circus Friday night. My daughter could not stop talking about it for 2 days – elephants, horses, tigers, and bears (oh my!) Actually there were no bears, and to my disappointment no monkeys either. Somehow I thought those two were a requirement for all circuses? I need to write my congressman about that one...
As soon as we sat down, the vendors guys starting walking around selling their wares – are you ready for this? $12 for cotton candy (the kind from the $.99 store), $7 box of popcorn (how can popcorn be MORE expensive that a movie theater??) $15 for a snow cone (disclosure, it came a plastic horse head – which was pretty cool because it looked like you were eating “horse brain” – not sure if that was intentional or not), $20 for a plastic sword, and $3.50 for a regular bag of M&M’s.Can you guess what we bought? The M&M’s. And we shared it. Next time we're sneaking stuff in, just like a real movie theater.
Overall the show wasn’t half bad. In fact, you can tell "the canadains" (Cirque Du Soleil) have had some influence on the “real” circus because they had a live band, an overarching “light” story about a clown named “Bello”, skimpy outfit dancing girls (whoa! Don’t get too excited dudes, they were kind of "carnie-looking"), and Chinese acrobats that were all, like 3 feet tall and combined together to form a giant robot! I wish...They had the traditional tiger tamer guy (he yelled in Spanish – now, I don’t speak Spanish, but I swear he was cussing…), horses running in circles, elephant conga line, human cannon (a married coupled who looked like Bob and Helen from “The Incredibles”), clowns doing some Dancing with the Stars satire, and poodles turning all kinds of tricks (chika-chika, wa-wa! No not those kind.) Those poodles were VERY popular - I swear, when they were on, the kids sounded more like a bunch of screaming Elvis fans.
Since this was pretty much my first real circus (and the wife’s too) there were some things that kind of bothered us. For instance – they did some blatant product placement in the show (marshmallows?), we felt REALLY guilty about the tiger performance (they obviously weren’t smiling about being whipped around) and we weren't sure why they had zebra’s in the show (they didn’t do anything – shouldn’t they be running along with Timon and Pumba in the jungle frolicking, singing or something…?) And there was no tent; it was actually in the arena. O.K. first no monkeys and then no tent!? Now I’m no expert on circuses but isn’t that breaking all kinds of circus rules?I couldn’t help but think what kind of acts I would do if I had my own circus:
1. Roller-skating Monkeys. Maybe to the Bee-Gee’s or ELO.
2. Kittens out of Cannons. They can wear capes, crash helmets, sport curly mustaches, and have crazy French names like Monsieur Pierre-Louis Lefèvre and Alice.
3. Live ska performance by The English Beat. They can sing Tears of a Clown with REAL clowns.
4. Circus tent made out of bed sheets --like on “The Little Rascals.”
5. Monster trucks that get eaten by that giant robot, crusher, truck eater.
6. Bears with tutu’s, sunglasses, and umbrellas on unicycles. Or just humans in bear costumes.
7. REAL Freak show. Like a dude on a bed of nails, the elephant man’s 12 children, some bald guy named "Rusty" that can spit fire balls and knock down beer cans, little ponies with little riders parade (and they all can have mustaches. Even the ponies!)
8. Midget Ringmaster with a voice that closely resembles Barry White. Or just David Hasselhoff (the real one.)
If you know of anybody that can do any of these, or maybe you have some talent or act that you'd like to add - leave a comment.
This is going to be the best circus....ever!