Day 165/365 - The Circus Is in Town

I've always wanted to run away and join the circus just like Toby Tyler but I've never had the nerve, so tonight I just settled for going to the circus instead. The Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey circus was in town playing the Verizon Center and I had a front row seat. It was a pretty good show this year. You could see a few Cirque du Soleil influences here and there, but it still hung on to its good old cheesy circus charm.

The lion (or in this case, tiger) tamer is always one of my favorite parts. This year's tamer was okay, but nothing special -- no jumping through flaming hoops or sticking his head in their mouths. A friend and I once went to a psychic fair and a lady there 'read' my past lives for ten bucks. She told me I'd been a lion tamer in the circus as well as a chariot racer in ancient Rome, an Islamic scholar in the medieval mideast, and a female silk weaver. I'm 99.9% certain it was hooey (she probably has a list of lives thought out in advance and then picks a few at random to tell the suckers), but still it was cool to be told I'd been a lion tamer.

My other circus favorite is the human cannonball, but they didn't have one in this year's show. It's sort of an odd thing to have as a favorite. There's a five-minute build-up for a two-second payoff and it's really just a guy flying through the air into a net, but I love it. Even without the human cannonball however it was a fun time. I ate a couple hot dogs and a box of popcorn, saw the circus, and thought about running away with it for the thousandth time.

(Taken with my Nikon D80)