Join the Circus Like You Wanted to When You Were A… Ooh, Never Mind
June 17, 2008 by sanfot1Last Friday, my family and I went to the circus. Ringling Brothers? Nope. Cirque de Soleil? Afraid not. No, this was the Zerbini Family Circus, a true traveling circus, which means, in a word, that it stank.
I’ve never been a big fan of the circus. I don’t like clowns and I don’t like it when animals do tricks, so when the circus comes to town, I usually head in the other direction. But the Zerbini Family Circus came to our town for a very special reason: my daughter’s school read over 16,000 books this year and the circus was their reward for a job well done.
The circus was set up in a big empty field, under what I would describe generously as a “medium top.” They had a number of attractions outside the main tent, including a giant inflatable Titanic that was in the act of sinking into the depths of the Atlantic. We’re having some fun now! For three bucks, your child could scamper up to the “stern” of the ship (where Leonardo DiCaprio shouted “This is it!” to Kate Winslet) and then slide down into what presumably would be freezing water. Both my kids did it and had a blast. One of our friend’s kids froze in panic at the top and her dad had to go up and get her. Clearly, the thing was not designed to bear the weight of a grown man because he and his daughter wiped out spectacularly as they slid down together. “You could have made some money off of that video,” a spectator told his wife.
The first attraction under the Zerbini big top? The “Bleachers of Doom.” Picture about 200 parents and 500 kids all scrambling to get a seat on these rickety, slippery metal bleachers, which had no handrails anywhere. You could almost hear ACL’s tearing and ankles snapping. We climbed to the top corner of the bleachers, as far away as humanly possible from the clowns, who were warming up the crowd.
The circus started and the ringmistress introduced the first act… the Bouncing Brazilians! The act consisted of two girls and a guy jumping around and doing tricks on a trampoline. They eventually brought our “Little Ronnie,” billed as “the smallest living entertainer,” which is total horseshit, since he was about twice the size as the guy who plays Mini Me in the Austin Powers movies. Little Ronnie got up on the trampoline and the Bouncing Brazilians proceeded to bounce him up in the air over and over and over again. His little arms and legs flailed wildly. Oh, Little Ronnie, you poor bastard.
A few minutes later, another acrobat act was introduced… the Ling Sisters from China or something like that. It took me a minute, but I eventually realized that the Ling Sisters were the same two girls from the Bouncing Brazilians, just in different costumes. (Both looked Eastern European to me, actually.)
Little Ronnie then came out dressed as a clown, along with two other regular-sized clowns. They didn’t speak, of course, but they did blow whistles to communicate with the audience and with each other. After their act ended, the ringmistress announced that the clowns would be coming around the crowd selling whistles, just like the ones they had used.
“How much do you think we should sell the whistles for?” she asked one of the clowns.
“Five dollars!” the clown said, suddenly capable of speaking.
You could see all the parents noticeably relax. Even the most spoiled child would understand that five bucks was a total rip-off for piece-of-shit plastic whistle.
“No, no, no,” the ringmistress said. “That’s too much money!”
“Four dollars!” another one of the clowns shouted.
A few parents glanced up from their Blackberries.
“No,” said the ringmistress. “That’s still too much, don’t you think, boys and girls?”
The kids screeched their agreement. The vibe among the parents had shifted noticeably.
“Three dollars!” Little Ronnie shouted. The kids cheered. The parents fumed. What the hell do you know about the price of whistles anyway, Little Ronnie?
I won’t bore you with the rest of the story. Suffice it to say that the price of the whistles eventually dropped to one dollar and they sold a shitload of them. For the rest of the night, the arena was filled with the soothing sounds of several hundred kids blowing whistles really loudly. Another Friday night in paradise, baby!
The Zerbini Family Circus featured several animal acts, including two camels that looked as though they were about to drop dead right in the middle of the ring. It’s times like these when you hope that animals actually DON’T have higher order thoughts and feelings. They also brought out a small Shetland pony named Shamrock, who trotted around the ring a few times. (Like with Little Ronnie, the ringmistress claimed that Shamrock was the world’s smallest horse. Highly unlikely.)
The only act that really got my attention was the “King of the Malambos” (another ”Bouncing Brazilian,” I believe.) This was a guy who whipped around these two golf-ball-sized balls on the end of a long string. He could snap the Malambos down onto the floor and make it sound like a flamenco dancer. The ringmistress called on a Dad to volunteer to put a cigarette in his mouth and have the Malambo King try to knock it out, presumably without leaving the Dad with a massive concussion. Hilariously, the Dad who volunteered seemed much less concerned about his head than he did about his balls because his hands kept instinctively moving over his crotch as the King whipped his Malambos dramatically around in the air. Sure enough, the King knocked the cigarette cleanly from the Dad’s mouth, then tousled the Dad’s hair with the Malambos for good measure, which I thought was pretty cool.
At the end of the show, the performers — all six of them — came out into the middle of the ring waving American flags to the strains of Neil Diamond’s “America.” I thought they would do something dramatic, but, no, they just kept waving their flags, the song ended, and that was that.
We happened to be sitting right near the spot where the circus performers would leave the ring after every act. They would be smiling and waving to the crowd and then I would get to see them walk the final few feet into their dressing room, away from the spotlight. Their faces changed during those final few feet, friends, and, believe me, they didn’t get happier. The animal trainer looked particularly pained, probably because he was about 70 years old and had been chasing camels around for most of his adult life.
About ten seconds after the show was over, the carnies began taking everything apart. I’m sure they were playing in another town the next night and, no doubt, are playing somewhere in America tonight.
There is a wonderful Far Side cartoon from many, many years ago where two dorky-looking kids are shown crawling out from under a circus tent. The caption reads, “Ironically, Barnum’s and Bailey’s respective kids — Sid and Marty — both ran away one night to join corporate America.” Good call, kids.