cirque de mel (BIGGER THAN MY GREAT GREAT GRANDMOTHER)

... except I can't work out how to open this post with the word "The." Well it's been a while. I'm rusty (Hello). I ran my bath upstairs. The downstairs bath no longer has any hot. I got in and found there was a wasp hovering around. I got out and tried to hover in a manner that might influence his own hovering towards the door. I didn't flap I just waved my arms, switched the light-saving bulb on and off... He knocked about the bulb and the lintel, inscrutably. Both of us looked stupid. Neither of us were equipped for this. Neither were a credit to our separate species. "Basta! We are the paragon of dumb animals" I thought after the bath and set about building a circus from youtube:

 

  A lot of silent acts had to be cut I'm afraid, but they can be easily found. "The Miller and The Sweep" who just whack each other with sacks until they're both grey... "Princess Rajah" who can belly-dance with a chair between her teeth... The legendary Annie Oakley from 1894 displaying a marksmanship that has to be taken a little bit on trust given the state of film stock from 1894... The stripper on the flying trapeze and "the Gordon Sisters" endlessly boxing for Thomas A. Edison...

Edison's own electrocution of Topsy the elephant however (to illustrate the dangers of Tesla's Alternating Current) I left out after much deliberation. It did smack of epoch, but this wasn't going to be that kind of circus.
And I would have loved to have had the extraordinary "Julian's Troupe Acrobats" on the bill, but they refused to be embedded.

 

 Darrell Bluett stays. He has to. I can't stop watching him. I don't know why. I even thought of reproducing his act myself verbatim, then found someone else on youtube had already done that. I am glad.
 

 And in the world: I compered. My first time properly: the Wambam Club at the Battersea Barge. Our burlesque act Lady Chocolat never arrived but I'd written two songs that day to cover. One was called "Scrap Brain Zone". It was accompanied by the music of Sonic the Hedgehog from my phone and was supposed to sound a bit like Julian Fox ("I'm a blue hedgehog. And I'm running around a factory that's very, very dangerous. Collecting Gold Rings..." etc.) The other was "O Suck It In", an attempt to phonetically reproduce Asha Bhosle's "O Saathi Re" (from the 1978 film "Muqaddar Ka Sikandar") into a language that let me join in... an old idea, but a great opener. Coincidentally there happened to be a large and mainly Asian birthday party in that night to see the burlesque act, so witnessing me singalong to a Bollywood legend probably sweetened the pill of her absence considerably. Definitely. It wasn't racist. They could tell I just wanted to sing along:

Oh suck it i-i-i-i-in.
They let me market your demons.
They let me market your demons.

Oh lower your belly on me.
Suck in and put your belly on me.
Oh lower your belly on me.
Suck in and put your belly on me.
Remind me of Butch my cleaner.
Then let me knock at your knee-knaw.

Oh suck it i-i-i-i-in.
They let me market your demons.
They let me market your demons.

Johnny Hayseed,
I need you knee-deep.
On yon façade we'll eat brassy monkeys.
Up with the southern butchers!...
Who aren't bad people.
Bjorn says when he's king
He'll pardon them mostly.
And build the office on me-ee-ee.
Build the office on me.
Make love and stooge on me.
Only joking for real.
And let me knock at your knee-knaw.

Oh suck it i-i-i-i-in.
They let me market your demons.
They let me market your demons.

Hurry, hurry, Carnaby.
Just take it easy.
Sandstone may easily be the pushier moon, heh?
It's the third year BC.
Who saw the burly detective?
My old nun said to me it's too easy to hate.
Bjorn ain't too thin now-w-w.
Bjorn ain't too thin now.
Who said the rude thing now?
Someone joking for real.
They let me market your demons.


P.S. That's Asha Bhosle singing on my homepage now. (I may switch back to the Eno though at some point because his music is actually supposed to be used as wallpaper. Just makes it more ethical.) Anyway we'll catch up properly tomorrow maybe.