Carnival Reverie

Week two of the big circus plan went well. Last week, as you remember, we went to Circus Contraption and had a great time. This week, we went to Carnival Reverie, which was much less organized.

Basically, Carnival Reverie was a collection of vaguely circussy acts. The main reason we went was that Moonpenny Opera was playing, and we enjoyed their music as part of Circus Contraption. As Moonpenny Opera, they were four people, mostly playing banjo, accordion, violin, and stand-up bass. Sometimes they were ukelele, saw, violin, bass. Yes, "saw". You know, like playing them with a bow? They were quite good, and I bought their cd, which was charmingly simple. I like it when a band's official cd has been "labelled" with a Sharpie.

Another act we were excited about seeing -- well, maybe "excited" was the wrong word. We "thought it might be entertaining" to see Seattle Semi-Pro Wrestling. The only thing cheesier than independent pro wrestling? Semi-Pro Wrestling. Yeah. Did you notice that their URL is "itsallreal.com"? That's just brilliant.

The wrestling itself was about as good as you'd expect. The ring announcer did a good job of describing the chaos, which was useful since most of the crowd couldn't see what was going on. My favorite part was that one of the wrestlers' finishing move was "the air guitar", in which he unzipped a bag, pretended to take something out, played air guitar a bit, then popped his opponent in the back of the head. And the opponent sold it. They appear to have the right attitude about this sort of thing.

When we first got there, a Hobo Clown Band was playing. They were mostly rocking out, although they were somewhat hampered by the washboard/jug/wastub bass setup. We watched them for a little bit and then went up to the midway. Yes, midway! The venue is a huge and complicated one with two levels and, as far as we could tell, at least four fully-staffed bars. It was convenient, during some of the acts, to have places to sit that were relatively quiet and not quite sweltering. And in one part of the upstairs area, they had, in fact, set up a small midway where you could get ripped off by various games. I won a small vial of plastic ninjas and a hand-held ninja catapult!

They also had a bed of nails upon which one could lie down and get a picture for six tickets. And I did, as you can probably tell from the fact that there's a picture of me on a bed of nails right here. One of the random extra acts later on involved a bed of nails, and I have to say, as an act it's less impressive if you've just done it yourself for six tickets. Later on, though, they expanded on it a bit more, doing the old "smash a concrete block on the torso of the guy on the bed of nails. That was cooler, and now I wish I had a bed of nails of my own. Sadly, eBay is no help. What's the point of even having eBay if I can't impulse-purchase a bed of nails as soon as I get home from a crazy "adult" carnival?

Let's see . . . there was also a magician who I don't think quite understood how magic was supposed to work. He kept doing the magic just outside of the spotlight so no one could tell if magic was supposed to be happening. There was a band that, if you couldn't hear them, would have looked like the rockingest band in the world. The bass played and vibrophone player were fully into the funky Flea-style full-body headbobbing. And the trumpet player had an entertaining flowered hat! Unfortunately, the music wasn't that great, even though they started with a cover of the Muppet show theme song. And speaking of which, the Season 1 Muppet Show DVD set is out today. Can't wait!

Also, there was something that was billed as a "good old-fashioned freak show". It wasn't as expansive as the big Dime Museum I saw in Baltimore with Strega, but it wasn't terrible. As an interesting twist, they did have "real live freaks", but it wasn't that exciting. I mean, it's just people from the neighborhood, even if they are dwarves or misshapen or something. I see that one woman all the time at the supermarket! I guess it's different if you're paying money to see them. Oh! And the exhibits were a mix of standard stuff (a stuffed two-headed calf that looked exactly like the one I took a picture of in Baltimore, old ads for sideshows) and apparently random old stuff. There was an old box that had Magic cards in it. Not "magical" cards; I mean Magic cards. Not that fascinating, really.

After we'd seen everything we really wanted to, including a few minutes of Fyodor Karamazov (of the Flying Karamazov Brothers), we came home. There were still a few more acts to come, but it was really, really hot. And somehow we didn't think the introduction of a Fire Circus would make it less hot.

Frankly, we're starting to think that there's something about circuses that make it really, really hot. It seems like everywhere we go, there's a guy sweating through his greasepaint.