What a weird couple of days. Nigga JP is dead. Some kid crashed off his bicycle this morning. I went to the dentist for major reconstruction. On my way to work a guy got hit by a truck and didn’t get up anymore.
The dentist told me that this was my seventh 3d-reconstruction and that I’d had second 2d-reconstructions. It was also my fourth and last wisdom-tooth they took out. The codeine is keeping me company.
So for the past two nights it’s been raining heavily here, and it woke me up. Now, those that no me know that I can pretty much sleep through anything, so I was quite perturbed the first night I woke up. The sound of rain beating down on the glas of the windows was just…loud. Loud to the point where I thought that there was a leak in my house. After a quick inspection I didn’t find anything and went back to sleep. Last night, same deal, and I wake up again. This time, I took a moment to wake up more than I had the previous night, so that I might conduct a more thorough investigation. Turns out that it’s not the rain beating on my windows that is making a lot of noise, but rather the rain beating on the domed sun-roof in the hallway of my building that’s making a fuckload of noise.
Elementary, my dear Watson.
For weeks now I’ve been taking the tram to work, and every time I get out at a nice restaurant, close to my work, called Dos. Across from Dos, there’s an apartment on the ground floor, that has a rather large window, with a window-seat. In that window, there is a stuffed dog. And those of you who know me, know that I find stuffed animals hilarious, a la Scrubs. So today, I walk by, and what the hell happens…!? The dog moves! It moved! It’s not stuffed, it’s alive, and it’s been that way all along. That devious little rasckal had me fooled all along!
I knew that dog looked too good to be dead. Just to be on the safe side, I’m going to have a look again tomorrow. I’ll bang on the window if I have to, but that dog will move.
Comedy Central Presents: 100 Greatest Stand-Ups of All Time:
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| Panelists: – Richard Lewis – Richard Jeni – Phyllis Diller – Pat Cooper – David Brenner – Dom Irrera – Judy Gold – Greg Giraldo – Mario Joyner #1 Richard Pryor #10 Eddie Murphy #20 Sam Kinison #30 Garry Shandling #40 Mort Sahl #50 Denis Leary #60 Jeff Foxworthy #70 Wanda Sykes #80 Bobby Slayton #90 Dana Carvey #100 Gallagher |
Yesterday evening, my father had arranged for tickets for the Russian State Circus, which were having their tour-premier not to far from where my mother lives, so we decided to all go. While, initially, I had thought I’d never gone to see a circus before, my father told me that I had seen one in France, when I was all of three years old. So for all intents and purposes, I’d never been to a circus. Now, when I hear circus, I immediately think of Carnivàle, and gipsies, and tigers and the trapese, tight-rope walking and clowns. Either that, or Cirque du Soleil, and while the latter far more…perfect, I guess, I’m guessing it doesn’t have the old world charm of an actual full-on circus.
Because it was the premier, Oleg Popov – for those of you haven’t heard that name, he is the uber-clown, the primordial clown against which all other clowns are measured – was there, flown in from Germany, where he lives. He got a standing ovation from the audience, and he didn’t even have to preform.
I was a little disappointed at the lack of wild animals (they only had an elephant, some massive, fuck-off large horses from Kazachstan, and a yak – Yeah, and actual yak! – who acted as the foundation on which some lithe, Mongolian chick did some crazy acrobatics), but I was told that the circus has two shows, both seasonal, and that the wild animal acts are all in the summer-show, since dragging these animals around during winter is a drag on them, as well as their caretakers. Not to mention the performers. Would you want to do a tiger-taming act with a 400 pound tiger who’s cranky because of the cold weather it has to reside in? Can anyone say Sigfried and Roy?
I could tell you about the acts I saw, and how amazing even the simplest of acts was, but what I’d rather tell you, is how I was so impressed with how imperfect it all was. It was real, you know? Trapese people fell, and fucked up. The guy on the suicycle slipped on occassion. The clowns improvised with people from the audience who were too emberassed to participate properly. It wasn’t rehearsed, shot fifteen times, edited, polished up, Photoshopped and sent across the airways to reach the passive-as-fuck audience at home. It was real. It was funny, it was cool, yet imperfect. All these artists knew that they could screw up at any moment, and they all had little routines that they did if and when they did, sort of as a comical apology to the crowd, before trying it again.
It’s a shame that circusses (circi?) are dying. Even during opening night, yesterday, the tent which could probably seat about 800 people, was only 80% full…and they were giving away free Russian beer and snacks, fer crissakes! While most of the acts have evolved together with the rest of the world (they have daring motorcycle acts as well now), you can still almost smell the sawdust on the floor, you can still almost pretend like this is 1892, and the people performing before you are Roman gypsies. Imagination and nostalgia are very closely linked, it seems.
