Corteo in Columbus

Ticket sales for Corteo are not great this year in Columbus. The weekends are selling well, but weekday houses have a lot of empty seats. This is sad for a couple of reasons: 1) less hours available for the local hires (i.e. me); and 2) increased chances that a future Cirque du Soleil show may not even come to Columbus while on tour.

I don’t know how ticket sales in Columbus for Delirium were, but I know that they were good for Varekai. I see a couple of problems which might be contributing to this drop in sales: 1) Tickets are not cheap. At $75 pop for good seats (double for the VIP package), ticket prices are at least on par with touring Broadway shows. 2) The economy. With gas prices rising every day (Ohio just had another $0.25/gallon jump this week), some people might have to choose between going to a show or filling up their SUV for the week. 3) Location. Varekai was located right in the downtown Arena district, with lots of daily visibility to everyone working downtown. This year’s location at the fairgrounds was probably cheaper to rent, but with a much less convenient location.

Here’s hoping sales pick up soon (think of it as supporting the local economy folks…my checkbook will thank you).

Lights out

Nothing makes you appreciate something more than having it suddenly taken away. Last night the electricity went out at 6:30 pm. I was watching TV, just about ready to get up and put dinner in the oven when I heard a loud bang/pop sound from outside (probably a blown transformer), and all went dark.

Later, after eating a much simpler meal than had been planned, we went for a walk to see who all was sharing our misery. Not many as it turned out. Only a small strip of houses, one house wide, by about two blocks long, was out of power. It’s all the more irksome when you look at the houses next to you on three sides and they all are blissfully unaware that a power void is so close to them. And of course, since it was a relatively small outage, the power company didn’t feel a lot of pressure to rush. They didn’t even show up with a truck until 9 pm, and the power was back on 45 minutes later.

The biggest loss of the night was missing the season finale of Heroes, which we’ve been watching every Monday. Hopefully they will re-play it soon.

Ooh, I just looked up the Heroes site in order to link to it and discovered that you can watch any/all of the episodes online. Sweet…

College students with too much time on their hands

This video is hysterical (if you ever played video games on the NES):

Super Mario Bros. – Live!

Hot Rods?

I don’t understand the logic behind putting shiny, rotating hubcaps on a vehicle that is not already a stylish ride. Maybe they were on sale or something, because I saw two cars today with fancy hubcaps which were totally out of synch with the rest of the car. One of them was actually a soccer-mom-style mini-van!

Thoughts of running off to join the circus

I’ve got a new gig. I’m working as an usher for Corteo, the most recent Cirque du Soleil production to stop by Columbus, OH on its touring circuit. Yesterday we had a 4-hour training session, which was mostly boring (I volunteer as an usher all the time, so a lot of the training seemed redundant). The people were great, though, and completely enthusiastic, and I think I’m going to really enjoy the experience.

One highlight of the day was sitting under the big top to learn the finer points of seating people, and in the background we got to watch several of the performers rehearsing. Then, we got to actually interact with one of the performers as there were some actual training points we needed to learn about her particular act. The performer appears to be a middle-aged woman, but she stands only about 2 1/2 feet tall (perfectly proportioned). In her act, appropriately titled “Helium” she is completely suspended in the air by six (large) helium balloons. The main character of Corteo (a clown who is imagining his own funeral celebration), sends this little character sailing out over the crowd inviting them to put their hands up to help her out. Being just slightly under neutral buoyancy, she can fly around as long as she wants to if she can jump off people’s outstretched hands when she floats too low. As ushers we needed to know what to expect as well as problem areas where we may need to step in and provide our own hands to keep her from floating down to the floor prematurely.

As ushers (also called Cirquadors), we will, of course, get to see the show multiple, multiple times. The majority of the usher positions are actually inside the tent, but there are a few positions outside the tent as well, and we will all rotate through all the positions.

We met a small group of usher-folk, called followers, who actually ‘follow’ the show around the country as it tours. I don’t imagine the pay is outstanding, and room/board is not provided, but if I was single it would be somewhat tempting to do for awhile as an excuse to travel the country. After all, what kid hasn’t dreamed of running off with a circus?

Bodies on Display

Last weekend, Kurt and I visited the Body Worlds 2 exhibit at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago.

I had heard positive comments from several people who had seen one of the several Body Worlds exhibits that are touring the world, but it is a bit hard to really know what to expect. Cadavers of real human beings, placed on display: it’s almost a taboo concept. And you could even debate the ethical questions of whether anybody should be able to make money from such displays (all specimens in this exhibit are obtained through a voluntary donation process, but it is the exhibitor who stands to make a lot of money from their display).

The first surprise were the vast crowds of people lined up to enter the exhibit. Tickets are sold with a specific entry time, and so I assumed that would lessen the crowded lines phenomenon. Not so. It was slightly more controlled in that you were in a line for your specific time slot, but there were still hundreds of people waiting to enter at the same time. They sell a lot of tickets for each time slot, so even once you enter, your pace is dictated by the speed of everyone around you.

Part of this exhibit’s trademark is preserved bodies which are in various poses (sitting, kicking a ball, etc.), but the exhibit also includes many other variations including individual organs (under glass), and preserved ’slices’ of an entire body.

In one of my college science labs they brought in a human cadaver to allow us to observe actual anatomy examples, but the specimen quite resembled only one thing: a corpse. The flesh had been preserved (stinkily so), but it was off-colored and very ‘dead’ looking. This is NOT what you get at Body Worlds. These specimens are preserved with a fairly new process dubbed plastination that preserves the bodies with natural-appearing coloration and without any disturbing smells.

I’m sure some of the draw of the exhibit is of a voyeuristic nature, but I think its greatest strength is for education. What better way to learn anatomy than from actual examples, preserved in such a professional manner. In fact, I did see several college-aged students with textbooks and notebooks in hand, apparently there for just that reason.

Even so, there is a certain morbidity in visiting a Body Worlds exhibit. I had to wonder, for example, on a couple of the specimens, how recognizable they would be to a family member or someone who knew the person when they were alive. There are also a number of preserved babies and even a mother, pregnant with child, that reminds you of lives cut tragically short.

This isn’t an exhibit for everybody (one woman fainted during our visit), and Kurt found that he even got a few negative reactions from people where he works (“You went to see what!?”). My experience was very positive, however, and for my money, worth the visit.

Premiere vs. Us Weekly

Just adding my two bits to the blogosphere regarding my disappointment that the remainder of my subscription to Premiere magazine is being replaced with a subscription to Us Weekly magazine due to Premiere’s decision to stop printing the U.S. version of the magazine and switch to an online-only format. I subscribed to Premiere for movie news and information. Us Weekly is a celebrity tabloid, only a tiny notch above a paparazzi rag (i.e. at least they mostly only print photos where the celeb looks to be okay with their picture being taken).

Nice try, but I’ll take my refund instead, thank you very much. Fortunately somebody posted a direct number on the Premiere message boards (800-283-3956) for refunds and they are processing my request without any fuss. Considering that I cashed in some frequent flyer points that were about to expire for my subscription, I’m quite happy with the $4 refund coming my way. Certainly better than inadvertantly supporting Us Weekly.