Ladies and Gentlemen, Boys and Girls...

...Children of All Ages! Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey proudly bring to you The Greatest Show on Earth!

I had the great pleasure of going to the Verizon Center yesterday and see the circus that had come to town. My recurring impression of it every time I think about it is that is was just so...pleasant. I mean, I really, really enjoyed myself. I know that a lot of it was corny and a sort of scripted sentimentality, but I have to admit I fell for it. It may have had something to do with the fact that I hadn't been to a circus in a long, long time. A quick rundown of what they had to offer:

Chinese Acrobats

I learned a long time ago that there's no point in clapping for Chinese Acrobats. They came to perform at NSU several years ago and put on a show. Here's how I remember it:

They do something incredible, so you clap. Then they do something even more incredible, so you clap harder. Then they do something that beats that by a mile and a half so you clap as hard as you can. They they do something better than that and you stand up and clap and cheer. Next time you go absolutely nuts. Then they do ten more things, each one more amazing than the next. So where do you from there as an audience member? It's a dilemma, I tell you. They got on each other's backs and flung hats around. They jumped from swings onto ropes and through cages and went all over the place. They flipped each other and tumbled and built human ladders. All the stuff you'd expect. "Don't they fall?" No. Of course not. They never, ever fall.

Herkules

The Strongest Man in the World! Sure. He stretches springs that two normal men can't budge. He pulls an elephant about 15 feet. And he lets a jeep drive over his stomach very quickly. Kind of boring, but it's nice to see they still use one of the old standards.

Horses

And not just horses, but horses being ridden by "Cossack Warriors". One or two of the "warriors" looked like they were from South America, but that's okay. They ran in formation and one of the really pretty white horses did some high-stepping and "waving" to the crowd. Later on some of the riders did acrobatics on the horses' backs. When the last one came out, I though for a moment that it was a riderless horse. It was actually a case of the rider being underneath the horse and crawling his way back on top. Pretty impressive.

Elephants

Stand up. Sit down. Roll over. Lean on each other's backs. Spin around on the turning stools. Carry the clown in your mouth. They're big, they're fun to watch, and the bit where they grab each other's tails gets me every time. Not terribly exciting, but I think it's probably against the law to have a circus without elephants.

Food Fight

One big pie-in-the-face gag. I'm a fan. Not actually that exciting, but I'll never say no to cream pies being thrown in people's faces. And if somebody ducks at one thrown at them and it hits someone else, even better.

Dogs

Dogs jumping through hoops. Dogs jumping over hurdles. Dogs knocking over hurdles. Dogs poking clowns on the butt. And dogs jumping through a rolling barrel being pushed by another dog. Short and sweet.

Super Silva

The only high-wire type act I saw that didn't use any sort of safety wire or net. There was a mat below him, but it was still a long way down. It wouldn't have helped that much if he'd fallen head-first. He did some trapeze work and then "walked upside down", putting his feet through straps and going back and forth across the scaffolding. Pretty neat.

Smashcar

Clowns in little go karts racing around the place. Breakdowns, zany equipment, clown mechanics getting into the act. Pretty fun.

QUICK NOTE: My sister asked if they had a bunch of clowns exiting a tiny car. And you know what? They didn't. I wasn't disappointed in anything about the show until I realized that. No clown car. Hmph.

Motorcycles in Cages

Craziest thing of the show to me. There may be some trick to it that I don't know about that makes it less dangerous than it looks, but I doubt it. It's great timing and execution. Around and around they go, following each other, intersecting each other, coming this close to annihilating each other, but it never happens. They start with four and make their way up to seven. Great stuff, easily the most exciting thing in the show.

I'll say again how pleasant I thought the whole thing was and how good it made me feel. A good time was had by all.

If you'd like to read a much less favorable review, click here.

Chalk

Interesting episode of Bones tonight. Boneless bodies and boats headed to the Caribbean. Plus, they brought out the wonderful, the marvelous, the fantastic James Hong to play the owner of a Chinese mortuary. In 1986 he was in two really fun movies, The Golden Child and Big Trouble in Little China.

Last year around this time I wrote this about the NCAA tournament and said that the Gods of College Basketball hated my living guts. While this may still be true, their wrath seems to have abated somewhat, at least for now. I decided to do a straight chalk bracket this time around, which means picking the higher seed to win every single time. I hate picking upsets, so this actually felt pretty good. I know upsets are going to happen, but it's impossible to predict with any amount of certainty which ones will occur. If somebody says, "Yeah, I saw that one a mile away," you can bet your bottom dollar they're not mentioning the ones they didn't see or the one they "saw" that turned out to be a mirage.

I've heard some griping that there is a lack of upsets or Cinderellas in this year's tournament. There are no double-digit seeds in the Sweet 16 for the first time since about 1995. Supposedly it makes the tournament more boring and lacking in story lines. I think this ignores the possibility--possibility, mind you, not certainty--that higher seeds lasting longer means better teams matching up against each other in later rounds, and that could mean better basketball games.

Having said that, I'd say that there are only three games on the schedule for the next round that seem intriguing at first glance. First would be Pitt/UCLA, the Ben Howland Bowl. Howland used to coach at Pitt, now he coaches at UCLA. The Bruins made the NCAA title game last year.

Florida/Butler was a very exciting first round game a few years ago, when Mike Miller had to drop a last-second floater in order to avoid a big upset. Florida went on to play in the title game that year, losing to Michigan State. Different players this time around, but if Butler shoots as well as they did against Maryland, they could give Florida real problems. Florida has been getting off to really slow starts the first two rounds.

I actually think that UNC/USC is an interesting game, mostly because nobody east of California knows anything about USC. Everybody and his brother knows about the Tar Heels. USC pretty much dominated Texas and has been a solid team all year long. UNC has talent to burn, a great coach, and a bit more tournament experience than USC. But with a week to prepare and a pretty good coach of their own, USC sure has a shot.

I saw 300 a couple of weeks ago and liked it. There's no point in reviewing it. It's violent. It's dramatic. It's kind of funny. Just don't go see it if you're Persian. Or if you're a stickler for historical accuracy.

I flipped on the Dallas/Cleveland game just now, and they said that Wilt Chamberlain holds the record for fewest games to 8,000 points in a career. 197 games, 40.6 points a game. It made me think of a couple of other Wilt stats I've heard recently. When Kobe Bryant scored 65 a few days ago, they mentioned that Wilt did it 32 times. A couple of weeks ago Dwight Howard put together a great stretch of three games where he hit something like 80 percent of his shots from the field. ESPN showed a list of players other than Wilt Chamberlain who had done the same thing. You know you were dominant when somebody is trying to explain how incredibly rare some feat is, and they have to leave out all the times that you did it.

One more thing: The Atlanta Falcons traded Matt Schaub to the Texans today. When Bobby Petrino was hired, they said that he would have the authority to bench Michael Vick if he wanted. There had been grumblings among some that Schaub was the better QB (better passer, anyway) and should be the starter. If you really wanted to put pressure on Vick to play better, why would you trade the only guy on the roster you might have confidence in to step up? You could argue that this move is telling Vick that he's definitely the guy and has nothing to worry about. I think it looks like Petrino is being paid five million a year to shut up and do what Vick tells him to.