21 March 2010
Zing, Zang Zoom!
I was downtown to attend The Greatest Show on Earth last night, and I do not mean the Congress of the United States of America. The other circus, the treveling one is in town. Sarah 1 is a publicist for the Ringling Brothers, and gets to talk to Mr. Barnum and Mr. Bailey frequently. The theme for this tour is “Zing, Zang, Zoom!” which conveys the magic of the circus, which is also a heavy-duty business.
I was eager to see if we could actually talk to Mr. Bailey. He has been doing this since he took the show on the road in 1871, calling it "P.T. Barnum's Great Traveling Museum, Menagerie, Caravan, and Hippodrome." With customary modesty, he did not add the "Greatest show on Earth" part until later.
My God what a day is was! First one of Spring and the memory of the snow is almost gone. Shorts and flip-flops were on the partiers and the tourists. The demonstrators coming back from the Hill with signs protesting the Health Care Bill were dressed more severely.
Between the onset of Cherry Blossom season, the DC Marathon and the Tea Baggers who seem to think their opinion matters, the city is jammed. In order to join up with the group Sarah 1 was going to shepard through the “back of the house” I took the Metro to town. There is no place to part near the Verizon Center, where the circus has alit here.
The greater circus- maybe just a menagerie or zoo- is happening on the Hill, and something is going to happen this weekend. People seemed pretty passionate about it, but my passion was channeled toward getting to the more formalized traveling version.
I haven’t thought quite the same way about the train since 9/11 and the Madrid bombings, but there is something else since the big wreck last year that killed nine people, and has been knocking off maintenance people with some regularity since. The system is getting worn out, and the people running it don’t seem to be very bright.
The platforms were jammed, between young people out clubbing, tourists and protesters. The transit system is symptomatic of what is going to be coming in most or our lives in most things. Metro is facing a huge shortfall in funding, and have had to dramatically cut the number of trains. The infrastructure is aging and they can't retain quality people, so safety and reliability have suffered.
All the jurisdictions are broke- Maryland, Virginia and the District- so there is not option to increasing fares or cutting service (even in the face of clear demand for service) and that is just what we are going to have to get used to.
if the people at the Federal Reserve say there is no inflation, I would suggest they look at what is going on in every town, county and state in the land. Something has to give- taxes or services, and when they lay off all the non-federal government employees to stay within their revenues- well, you know what will happen.
The circus has been through all this. The Greatest Show on Earth is actually not just the greatest but the last.
If you pointed to a place where things began to go south, it would be the Hartford fire in 1944, where 100 people died in the conflagration under the canvas. The post-war boom for the rest of America did not happen for the big top. Television killed the canvas, and the last show under the canvas Big Top was in 1956.
They keep plugging though. The show must go on, and as a curiosity in the modern world, a link to Mr. Barnum’s, I was excited to see it. Now they are under attack from the animal activist community. The tiger is almost extinct, and the elephant community is in trouble.
I asked the man at the turnstile where the Press Entrance was, and he directed me around the back of the Verizon Center. Ringling Bros moving vans were lined up all down the block and security was heavy. I am not sure why- maybe it was the threat that activists would try to free the tigers and the elephants and there would be more chaos on the streets than usual.
Russians and Chinese cast members were smoking pensively, or bringing back food in Styrofoam containers to eat between shows. Sarah 1 was there in her big movie-star glasses and a cell phone as big as a brick.
“Are there real Roust-abouts here?” I asked.
Sarah 1 gestured casually at the people clustered around the Press Entrance. “From Russia, with love,” she said. “And China.”
She gathered her group and led us down the ramp into the bowels of the complex. It was wild. The little doggies were getting groomed in their trailer for the third show of the day. The elephants were behind their big fences, and we got quite the lecture from the Chief Elephant Man, and got to feed Asia, the star of the show.
We learned a lot about the Asian elephant, and all of us got to feed them. They brought out a bale of loaves of white bread, and we took turns ripping off hunks and presenting to the great animals. It was quite remarkable. I have never fed a real one, though of course we have all been feeding Republicans and those Jackass Democrats at out public trough all out lives.
The real animals reach out with their trucks, and can either grasp the bread they gave us with their trunks by curling right around it, or delicately grasping it with a prehensile lip right at the end of the nostril.
The politicians do it by reaching around and fishing out our wallets, but we have become resigned to their tricks, and there is nothing novel about them like the elephants.
Amazing.
One of the tigers was resting in a cage well back from the chain link. All the animals- the zebras, the Friesian horses and the minis- looked well cared for and the cages and enclosures were clean.
Sarah 1 walked us back up the ramp to the street, past the acrobats who were lifting weights in between acts, and the clowns with their red-rubber noses and partial make-up bustling by trying to get some chow before going back to work.
There was a van with some fancy graphics waiting by the curb when we got there. They accuse Mr. Ringling of mistreating the animals- quite emotional about it. Apparently they follow the circus around on the whole tour.
We crowded around the van to have our pictures taken, and the two women driving the van got nervous and sped away.
I could tell you about Sarah 1 leading us into the Clown College, and Asia the Elephant doing her artwork, but that was just the lead-up to the show. The arena wasn’t sold out, but it was a good crowd with lots of little kids.
Then we filed up to our seats and the lights went down.
I gotta tell you, there really was magic in the arena. Real people doing amazing things. I don’t know how it continues to compete against 3-D and computer-generated special effects, but there is something that is so human and connected about the circus that it makes you mourn for what we have lost.
Zing, Zang Zoom!
Copyright 2010 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
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