Wednesday, March 05, 2008

under the medium top

The Boom A Ring edition of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus is a fun night out although much smaller than the circus I remember from childhood. My parents took my sisters and me to the circus at Madison Square Garden every year. My wife and I took our kids to the circus at the DC Armory and the Long Beach Arena. Instead of a dozen or so elephants, the show visiting Knoxville this week has two. Two is a lot better than none, which partly explains why I hated Cirque du Soleil.



Ringling's one-ring version tours smaller towns while the big shows go to the major markets. Audience reaction prompted them to add a tiger act to the show we got, making it automatically better than the last circus performance I saw. There was no scrimping in the tiger department, with six of the big cats in the ring.



They gave me seats near Doug Mason, who was taking notes and recording video, perhaps for his News Sentinel blog. I was also near WBIR's LaSaundra Brown and Russell Biven. Since today was Ben Senger's last day at Channel 10, I asked Russell if he had to start working the morning shift tomorrow. If so, he was already up too late. Fortunately he gets a few days off before his alarm clock rings unbelievably early on Monday.

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5 Comments:

Blogger Amelia said...

I grew up going to the same circus in Knoxville and it's nothing like it used to be. I think they've tried to split up the circus so much (into different tour groups) that it's hurt their overall performance.

3/06/2008  
Anonymous DeeJay-Sniffer said...

more sniff, sniff Frank

3/06/2008  
Anonymous Heather said...

Thanks for the heads up! Now I know what to prepare my kids for . . .

Growing up, my dad always took us to meet the train when they brought the circus in to town (Augusta, GA). He grew up in Sarasota, FL so the circus was a love of his!!

3/06/2008  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I agree 100%

3/06/2008  
Blogger Frank Murphy said...

Here's the link to Doug Mason's review of the circus. The video he shot is included.

3/07/2008  

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