I just wanted to get back to water coloring. It’s relaxing and fulfilling. Once I get into it. So just do it, right?

That’s easier advice for selling sportswear but not so effective when it comes to readying pigments, brushes, water containers, palettes, the right texture and size of pape… Read full post »

[My badge and the schedule for the 2012 convention of the Circus Fans of America]

Most likely I sent myself to the circus to grow up. A month ago I attended a circus of circuses, as it were, the convention of the Circus Fans Association of America.  At virtually every/… Read full post »

[Oh?]

How grateful we should be for the fickleness of our pundits. They take their ephemerality seriously, yielding to whatever geopolitical tick nudges their instincts about our own curiosity. Here today; there tomorrow. So good riddance to the easy “commentary” and outrigh… Read full post »

[Original comic writing, even about tap dancing baby elephants could fall flat till it landed in the hands and energy of performers like Steve Coyle. Royal Lichtenstein Circus 1979-'80]

He had learned to read my eyes (having given up on mind-reading years before). And I caught on to his… Read full post »

We know a lot. Data abounds in our culture. Even the common denominator of non-college graduate vocabulary suggests that we’ve been pressured as a culture to find an expanded lexicon because we simply have more to talk about. Besides the obvious conduit of data fed to us via the Internet, we… Read full post »

[Our winner, Dan Rice, "with it" through the finish line.]

Early last week I took a chance. All education, even the “continuing” kind a seventy-two-year old undertakes involves risk. So I dove. “Bill, I have a favor to ask. I wonder if you can make the Kentucky Derby i… Read full post »

Here it is, seventy two years later. I hope it's as enjoyable a reading-ride as it was fun a-writing. I found the website www.weberwords.com easily navigable and they even give you a teaser from the first chapter.

Yes, everybody has permission to laugh at wh… Read full post »

[Never was a student's need to understand so obvious on his face. That's Steve Aveson wondering "What in the . . .?" his old teacher is up to. Royal Lichtenstein Circus, Santa Clara University, Summer 1971]

When does a high school kid know a teacher admires his talent and trusts… Read full post »

[Jackie LeClaire, a clown who "was there." Clown Hall of Fame inductee 1996. On to the moneylenders but a fine, funny and gentle soul.]

At the recent Circus Fans Association convention I attended in Florida, a very famous retired Ringling clown quipped, “Not even money lenders tru… Read full post »

“You folks have lockers?”—By then I might have known better but the website did list such an amenity.

“Oh, no man. Nobody steals stuff here. You really don’t need to lock anything up. If there’s something really important you can leave it in the office.”… Read full post »

Here I am blustering about an "almost circus" on a blustery day at the University of San Francisco. That's the port side of Carlo Pellegrini holding up the tiny backdrop. Spring 1972.]

By the time you read this, I am supposed to be in a sales room at the Circus… Read full post »

[John Hadfield graces the cover of our best brochure, 1983.]

Anyone who has ever even reluctantly made room for a computer in their living space knows the abundance of wires such an arrival entails. It is a seldom lovely spaghetti tangle leading to and from multiplex plug-heads and surg… Read full post »

“So Nick, how you think those angelicals are gonna vote?” He’s a trigger-tempered retired rent-a-cop and part-time security guard who lives in our building. He’s one of those lucky guys who can unwittingly make you pool your own wits to think stuff you haven’t entertaine… Read full post »

It’s a tough holiday. It isn’t that expectations run high. Right from the get-go, the beginning of the religious story, expectations were troubled, running low, if anything. And then the surprise. Not like Christmas adventure where from the outset there was nothing but surprise.

Maybe it&… Read full post »

[That tiny rope line is a few feet in front of our 6-inch high ring curb. Only indicators. Nothing could have prevented the exchange of imaginations transpiring during this mid-Seventies performance of the Royal Lichtenstein Circus.]

It’s a wonder we buy toys, games or TV&rsq… Read full post »

It is barely dawn as I put fingers to keyboard on my feast day. Actually, I have three such days: my name day, December 6^th, and November 3^rd, All Holy Relics, and today April 1^st. The last two I chose; the feast of Saint Nicholas chose me.

I don’t think I’ll… Read full post »

Archie is on the left enjoying his ride with friend Mr. Blue. No one could miss their physical beauty; their voices were another matter. Yes, that pole is on my chin; no, the obvious embarrassing problem never occured. Boston U., 1989]

There’s perhaps an hour or so of calm. I&rsqu… Read full post »

Kevin Curdt, Fool, allowing me to think I'm working magic with that broom. 1988-89 tour.

Kevin Curdt, always a philosophy student, Boston U. contemplating what needs to be improved before our Boston U. performance. 1987-88 tour.--These days, 25 years later, he contemp… Read full post »

As she opens her eloquently human portrait of Montaigne, Sarah Bakewell references our culture’s ubiquitous and non-stop bloggers in comparison with her book’s subject. And lest any of our viral swarm of opinionators imagine our offerings as significant as those from the eminent author of… Read full post »

I have no more Irish blood in me than did St. Patrick and I spent hours of adolescent consternation shaking the brogue out of God the Father’s voice as delivered by his Irish Jansenist missionaries to California. Besides, I don’t like bars.--So what’s a guy like me to do on (and… Read full post »

“Don’ know what’s goin’ on dere but sumpin is. All over out dere. Don’ like sittin’ in da front of the bus, but what is justice? Hahaha! There’s all kindsa justice! Oh my yes! All kinds.”

All this to no one and everyone after the Number Ten’s west… Read full post »

 This student began to shine in musicals with a voice that was clearly bigger than she was. Determined that her intensity of purpose was going to “hit her marks” as deftly as her notes, she commanded attention. So did her parents. They were always at hand when the “front end&rd… Read full post »

I fell in love with the front end of the theater before I had met much of what really makes it work. Even as an adult I can remember saying “I’d pay just to see a theater’s curtain open.” And I’d grown up around auditoriums only equipped with “travelers” who… Read full post »

“The sonofabitch counts my cookies!”

Relax dear reader. (You, too, Sister Theodora, wherever you may be, dear lady.) It was just my friend chirping because in fact I had noted the number of raisin-oatmeal goodies he’d chased with his morning coffee.

And we are friends. Because we ar… Read full post »

Recently I had one of those “Well, duh!” moments as pleasurable as it was embarrassing. It began with reading a reference to a Seventeenth Century essayist, then leaped to my Dad in the exact middle of the Twentieth Century, and then skipped two decades later. England, northern California… Read full post »