May all your days

be circus days. After the show, I wasn't certain whether the ringmaster had said that this year, but K. says he did. The State seems to be charging for use of all its parking lots, so we parked on San Jacinto near 11th Street and walked up to the Erwin Center. The entrance is now on the north side, since the extravagant basketball-practice gym, or whatever folly it is, rises on the south side. The band is still led by a trumpeter, but more and more is preprogrammed and synthesized digitally. The percussionist was enclosed in a sort of acoustical box, probably to better capture his output for undistorted amplification. Larible did the same blindfolded knife routine using a volunteer from the audience that we saw in the most recent Mexican circus. Whoever stole what from whom, Larible came off second best. As always, it was a wonderful show for the money, with much money-saving, but extremely clever, ingenuity in evidence. The crazy horsemen from Kazakhstan and Khyrgystan were back, second-generation version. Astonishingly, in view of the economy, attendance didn't seem to be down, and the sale of souvenirs and toys may even have been up.