haiku -- late winter sadness

layers of nothing

on top of less than nothing --

late winter sadness

the cloudy distance

puts bare rocks in stark relief

but does not soften

the sun pushes down

so the clouds start to push back  --

the mountain snow shrugs

Postcards to KSTU-Fox 13 News

Postcards to the Los Angeles Times

The Greatest Comedy Movie in the World

It was Chico, Chico Severinni, who kept pushing the idea on Steve Smith and I.

"A good comedy movie will make us rich!" he insisted, as we sat in the Ringling clown alley back in 1972, putting on our makeup and blowing up a dozen red and yellow Qualetex for the balloon chase. The show originally provided clown alley with cheap, thin, Chinese latex balloons, as part of our so-called 'performance budget,' but Mark Anthony, the Producing Clown that season, quickly tired of how often they burst long before we even began the balloon chase out in the audience and so he shelled out the money from his own pocket for the American-made Qualetex brand of balloons. They never burst prematurely, but were the dickens to blow up by mouth. By the end of the season Chico, Smith, and I had embouchures strong enough to play the Star Spangled Banner solo on a tuba.

 But in 1972 Smith and I didn't pay much attention to Chico. We were both secretly plotting to leave the show at the end of the season, to study pantomime in Mexico with our pantomime instructor from the Ringling Clown College -- Sigfrido Aguilar. Smith was looking for a higher art form in which to practice his winsome ideas of comedy, while I just wanted to capture belly laughs in complete silence -- as I had seen Red Skelton do with his broad pantomimes. So we saved up every peso we could and surreptitiously began practicing Spanish with each other.

"Que aburrido es nuestro amigo" Smith said to me, laboriously picking out each word from his Webster's Spanish/English dictionary. 

"Tienes razon!" I replied stoutly, having searched my own Webster for ten minutes before finding a good response. 

Smith and I left the show at the end of the season, the two of us politely turning down new contracts from the circus owner himself -- Irvin Feld. 

I have written of my Mexican pantomime adventures elsewhere; suffice it to say that our sojourn and study were cut short by girlfriend trouble on the part of Smith and persistent Mexican parasites on my part. We were both back with Ringling, as a clown team doing advance publicity, in the spring of 1974. 

And there was Chico, now the Boss Clown, insistent as ever:

"You guys, do you know how much money that movie The Sting made for Redford and Newman? Millions! And it wasn't even that good of a comedy, man. We just gotta write a comedy movie so we can cash in on the gravy boat!"

Despite his skewed metaphor, Smith and I were in a mood to listen now -- we both needed extra money. Smith wanted to get married, and I had sent in my papers to Salt Lake City to be called as a proselyting missionary, at my own expense, for a two year stint.

How hard could it be to write a smash comedy movie?

And so, while the show played Madison Square Garden for ten weeks that spring, Chico, Smith, and I huddled together into the wee hours of the morning, concocting a film script that was to be the greatest comedy movie in the world. Our working title was "Birdbrains."

I acted as scribe, writing the whole thing down longhand on several yellow legal pads, using a blue Bic pen. 

The plot, if you could call it that, concerned three wacky inventors who were determined to bring peace to the world through their inventions. 

Dialogue was not our strong point, admittedly. Although there were a few verbal gems (at least I think of them as brilliant -- since I created most of them.) In one a famous surgeon has a stubborn patient on the operating table who refuses to be stitched up. The surgeon shrugs his shoulders and mutters "Suture self" as he walks away. 

The other bit of dialogue is between two of the inventors, who we never got around to actually naming -- just calling them Inventor One, Inventor Two, and Inventor Three:

One: What did Jack say to the Beanstalk?

Two: I dunno, what?

One: I don't like your altitude.

On the other hand, I still think some of the gags we came up with are Grade A. Chico thought up downhill boots -- when soldiers put them on it was like marching downhill, and so the troops never actually felt like stopping to fight, but just marched away into the distance. I contributed the idea of barbed wire that replaced the sharp spikes with feathers, so warriors trying to get through it would come down with a fit of the giggles instead of getting sliced and diced. Smith came up with an interesting love angle for the three inventors -- three girlfriends who, due to a chemical explosion they were exposed to, turn into pink flamingos at sunset. See, that's why the name of the script is Birdbrains . . . 

Anywho. Our film ends with a tremendous pie fight at the United Nations, after which peace and plenty descend on the planet and the three inventors are made the Supreme Magistrates of the world. And another chemical explosion turns their girlfriends into vampire bats, which chase the three inventors off screen for the blow off.


We managed to finish the script just as the show finished up at Madison Square Garden. Since I had a Remington portable typewriter, I promised Chico and Smith I would type the whole thing up, and then we could send it off to somebody or other in Hollywood and our fortunes would be made . . . 

I put the yellow legal pads into a small footlocker where I kept my growing collection of Pocket Books paperbacks -- and promptly forgot about it for the next forty-five years. 

Last week, as I was repacking my circus journals into a new plastic bin, several brittle yellow legal pad pages fluttered out onto the floor. They were all that was left, apparently, of the old Birdbrains movie script. I have no idea where the rest of the script might be, or how these few scraps survived the ravages of time and neglect.

There were six pages. But I felt they really didn't belong to me, and I didn't want to keep them. They made me tired and sad. I stuffed them in an envelope to mail to Steve Smith, who now helps run the Circus Center in San Francisco. He probably knows where Chico Severinni is -- I don't anymore. 

I still like the idea of feathered barbed wire; the world is sadly more in need of it today than back in 1974. 

Memories of Carson & Barnes Circus

During the winter of 2006 I worked as a warming house attendant at Van Cleve Park in Minneapolis. My job was to keep homeless people out of the warming room, keep track of where skaters left their regular shoes, and help kids who didn't have any ice skates find a pair that fit from the dozens of pairs donated to the Park over the years. I had grown up skating at Van Cleve Park myself, so it was kind of a homecoming -- a miserable one. As a kid I swooped around the rink in a hilarious, carefree, manner. Now, getting fat and already divorced and behind on child support, I could barely manage to hobble out on the ice, and my stipend was even less than what McDonald's was doling out.

Desperate for a change, I applied to several circuses for the upcoming spring season:  "Circus Clown -- Have Rubber Chicken, Will Travel."

The only show I heard back from was Carson & Barnes Circus, out of Hugo, Oklahoma. But they didn't want me for a clown -- after reading my resume and hearing my voice over the phone, the owner, Barbara Byrd, asked me to be the Ring Master. With a very handsome salary. 

So in 2007 I became the Equestrian Director (as ring masters were known in the horse & buggy era) for The Mighty Carson & Barnes Five Ring Circus.

Their tent was the length of two football fields. There were actually only three rings, and in between the two middle rings was an open area where additional acts could perform -- so, by stretching things, you could call it five rings. Still and all the same, it was the largest tented circus extant at that time. Tickets were four dollars for adults, and three dollars for children. Infants under two years were free. Patrons got their money's worth. The show lasted nearly three hours and included lions, tigers, tightrope walkers, trapeze artists, jugglers, acrobats, contortionists, the Wheel of Death, a human cannon ball, horses, camels, a pygmy hippo, a dozen elephants, clowns -- and one green ring master. Altogether, we carried nearly three hundred people from town to town. Everyone worked who traveled with the show -- even the toddlers were given coloring books and snow cones to hawk during intermission. 

I started the season with a stack of index cards several inches thick, on which I wrote down the name of each act and a quick punchy intro -- such as "High above the hippodrome track, please give a hearty welcome to . . . The Fearless Flying Fernandos!" 
(Little did the audience suspect that not only did the Fernandos flit about on the trapeze, but they also took care of the porta-potties in-between and after the shows; it was part of their contract; an old circus tradition, called Cherry Pie, wherein every act has a second job on the circus lot -- my second job was as on-lot publicity director, giving local bigwigs a tour of the circus attractions and getting them a free meal at the cook tent.) After the first month on the road I was able to toss my cards, having learned all their names and settled on how much schmaltz to butter them up with.

I was the only gringo on the show, outside of Barbara Byrd and her family -- who ran things. And the elephant trainer, Captain Jingles. Like most mud shows, Carson & Barnes contracted with South American entertainment exchanges for all their performers, plus a crew of experienced roustabouts (tent riggers.) 'Mud show' is not a derogatory term to circus people; it simply means an outdoor show, one that has to take its chances with the weather. 

I got along well with everyone, since I made the effort to learn Spanish and often gave rides to performers who wanted to prowl the local pawn shops for musical instruments. Apparently there was a thriving market for trumpets and clarinets down in Argentina and Chile -- a bunged up and out of tune bugle purchased for ten dollars in Kalamazoo could bring close to a hundred dollars down in Santiago. Trombones were especially sought after; the members of the Flying Fernandos assuring me that a band of slide trombones was a requisite for bull fights up and down the Southern Hemisphere. 

There was one unfortunate contretemps when we played Winona, Minnesota, on the Fourth of July. A garland of small American flags was rigged up around the entire inside of the tent. Halfway through the matinee one end of the flag garland came loose and was playfully grabbed by a clown. He proceeded to pull the entire string of flags down and then let them trail in the dirt as he skipped about and did cartwheels. I don't think he did it out of disrespect, but the audience suddenly went very still, and I heard a few Nordic imprecations.  I quickly gathered up the string of flags into a ball, shoving the clown away and giving him a hearty kick in the rear of his baggy pants so the crowd would think it was part of the act. 

But after the show, when I tried to explain to Pepito, the flag desecrator, why I had kicked him without warning, he chose to not understand my action and told me there was now bad blood between clown alley and me. I was no longer welcome to sit at their table in the cook tent during meals. They would no longer set up my microphone or put out my director's chair and carafe of lemon-honey water. And they absolutely refused to let me work in any of their clown gags. Up until then I had been a willing stooge, the perfect straight man, in several of their gags -- using my pompous ringmaster authority to tell them to leave the ring so the next act could start and being pelted with confetti for my pains. I really enjoyed that -- I felt like I was giving Edgar Kennedy or James Finlayson a run for their money. Now that was all taken away from me.

I finally managed to patch things up with clown alley towards the end of the season when the show played El Paso, where a Catholic priest came early one Sunday morning to celebrate mass inside the main tent. This was a rare event, one that the performers looked forward to with great fervor. Most of them were practicing Roman Catholics. They almost never had the chance to go to mass.

The night before mass the priest had come by the lot to ask for a few voices to sing Dona Nobis Pacem, a section of the Agnus Dei  much beloved by South Americans. Since I had sung it as a kid at Saint Lawrence Catholic Church back in Minneapolis, I volunteered. It's a pretty easy tune to carry.

After the mass I was given a group abrazo by clown alley and welcomed back into their fellowship. Anyone who could sing Dona Nobis Pacem like that, like an angel, could be forgiven any blasphemy, any outrage.

And so I ended my one season as ringmaster for Carson & Barnes Circus back in a shower of clown confetti. 

Postcards to the New York Times

Postcards to the Wall Street Journal

Writers are no longer needed

Researchers at the non-profit AI research group OpenAI just wanted to train their new text generation software to predict the next word in a sentence. It blew away all of their expectations and was so good at mimicking writing by humans they’ve decided to pump the brakes on the research while they explore the damage it could do.

Gizmodo

Writers are no longer needed.

With text generation all seeded

to write up our fiction

without any friction

and so make of poets unheeded.

Postcards to the Washington Post

Pizza, My Pizza

Peter Regas, a Chicago researcher with a pizza focus, is attempting to rewrite New York City, if not global, pizza history. He says his findings show that Lombardi’s, a dining fixture in Manhattan’s Nolita neighborhood that calls itself America’s first pizzeria, can’t rightfully claim that honor.

Lombardi’s has long touted its historic status, saying the restaurant essentially gave rise to a new category of dining in America when it was established by its namesake, Italian immigrant Gennaro Lombardi, in 1905.

In turn, pizza lovers in the city and beyond have come to accept that as fact, with the restaurant drawing a large number of tourists and curiosity-seekers. Ultimately, a line is often drawn from Lombardi’s founding to what is now a $45 billion pizza industry in the U.S.
Charles Passy writing for the Wall Street Journal

Columbus sailed the ocean wet

the tasty pizza to beget.

The natives, puzzled by the crust,

at first did view it with disgust.

The Founding Fathers, furthermore,

all foreign food did quite abhor.

The Civil War had not increased

the cause of pizza in the least.

But then Lombardi's in New York

the pizza craze did so uncork

that ever since that brilliant day

the pizza pie holds noble sway.

A Yankee who is worth his salt

the pepperoni will exalt.

Even West Coast hippie dudes

know it is the best of foods.

Served for breakfast, lunch, and tiffin,

any palate it will stiffen.

Smothered in a thick red sauce.

of all the food groups it's the boss.

It's good with bacon, ham, and eggs;

with pineapple and French frog legs.

The anchovy brings out the zest

and black olives will make it blessed.

Lombardi's is a shrine to me,

no matter the true history.

If eating pizza is a sin

then heaven I will never win.