Moving rooms -A touch of Rain- JC in the Hospital

Firewhip

Mama sent dresses for the girls that she made herself.

Victor showing his chained wrists to the audience.

Some bug.

Lasso.

Amelia during her mind reading routine.

An audience member emailed this to me.

Olivia piloting the Quassy Boat. The Captain is a very nice man.

Amelia's turn

Victor too.

The Captain and his new best friend Amelia.

Our stage from the lake.

This shack on the lake recently sold for $500K...you see the whole lot.

This boat house here costs more than what most people would pay for 2 homes.

Got word a couple of days ago that my good friend JC was hospitalized for a ruptured appendix. He had surgery and while recovering he had heart problems so he has been moved to the cardiac unit while still receiving antibiotics for the septic problems related to the appendix problem. His wife tells me he is improving and has asked for his magic supplies so he can entertain the staff and other patients.

Turns out our room was by the loading dock. That meant that at 7am a Pepsi truck backed up into the unloading area beeping all the way. Then the driver opened 7 or 8 roller doors to get to the libations. Then he loaded them and then he shut the doors....I know this because I heard it all. The lack of sleep kept me tired and slightly moody all day. So we moved rooms and with any hope tonight we will sleep well.

The shows went very well. But it looked like the 2nd show was going to rain out. SPrinkles moved into a light shower 15 minutes pre-show. By showtime, however, it moved on and we pulled off an excellent show. The rain made us pull everything off so we had to do the show out of order and ad lib a few others. Amazingly it went really well.

Time for bed....godd night.

On CT News (including video)

Olivia's Buttercup has gotten out of control.

(By the way Buttercup is shedding the next few days)
Practice

Buttercup and ChiChi the production assistant at the tv studio.

Filiming the openning.

Nailed.

The local news guy.

Amelia reading their mind.

The drive back to Quassy...three sleepers in a row.

Jim is really tired.

The day started off busy. Early up and early to the park to meet Ron (our boss and all around nice guy...punny too). Then it was off to New Haven to Channel 8 newsroom where we were taken to the studio...a very big studio. We were given about 8 minutes overall to promote our show at Quassy park. It was a ton of fun and they gave us a lot of lee-way as to what we could do. The video here doesn't show our intro but I did do the human blockhead and introduce the whole family. Everyone was really nice. The kids told me that when I took the nail out it had a giant bugger on it that was visible on the TV so maybe it was cut from the final airing (it was taped).

i should mention that we drove past or through Yale. What a pretty old group of buildings. We plan on visiting the campus and the birthplace of the hamburger a block or so away "Louie's Lunch" once we are finished at Quassy.

On the way back we hit the Uhaul for boxes for our spearbox illusion then it was a quick flight back to the park with 40 minutes to get the show setup and going. It was decided the kids would do the show without me so that I could get other supplies (fuels and cinder blocks). Little did I know that James had only 3 hours sleep due to time he wasted on the computer the night before. As a result he did a poor job as show host and had a hard time holding the audience. I got back in time to save the last 5 minutes and recovered some of the audiences. He's been banned from the computer and ordered 10 hours sleep for at least a couple of nights until he is fully back to himself.

CT roads are narrow and the drivers are insane. I miss the openness of western roads. It's hard to adjust to.... There must be sign laws out here too because almost every sign for a business is very low key....almost invisible so it is so easy to miss a building or find a business. The people are generally very nice....I have not a word against the locals...in fact we have been treated very well by everyone. And the audiences have been very nice during and after the shows.

It is expensive out here. Take anything in Cali and multiply the price by 2 or 3 and you have the prices before taxes. Tax is only 6% (Cali is 8.25) so that isn't too bad. But our basic needs are so much more expensive than other venues. But that's show biz (at least for the traveling shows). Kentucky still wins for most livable (price, people, roads, etc).

Our hotel is a resort. It is very nice but we haven't a fridge or microwave so we have to buy ice for the cooler and bring in our microwave. I signed a "no smoking" contract with the front desk or suffer a fine of nearly $300 so we won't be using the Foreman grill here. There isn't a laundry so i spent a good two hours trying to figure out how we are going to work that out. The hotel has a laundry service that reflects the prices of the state. SOOOOOOOO.....we had to find another way. Fortunately my cousin, Patricia, lives about 20 miles away so tomorrow she and Cynthia will drive out by her house to a Laundromat and clean our delicates. That means she out of the show for the day.

I don't want you to leave the blog thinking negatively about CT. It is a beautiful state. The homes are unbelievable. Most buildings are awesome. And every one keeps their yards impeccable. The people are friendly and Quassy Park is wonderful.

Amelia and Victor made friends with the boat pilot (there is a boat that docks near our stage that gives tours of the lake.) He and his wife work at the park. The kids got to feed the fish that gather around the boat and had fun chit chatting with him.

We had Chinese food for dinner tonight. The restaruant was actually run by Chinese and the food wasn't that bad. I asked the waitress to not bring us "white-people" food but real Chinese food. It was alright. Lots of vegies.

TIRED! 83, 84, 85 tomorrow TV

Our stage
View from our stage

The girls

Perky Pal

On safari

Have you ever been so tired that every muscle in your body ached...it hurt to blink...it hurt to not blink...after sitting standing is nearly impossible...everything irritated you...and words come out jumbled? Well, multiply that by 10 and that is how all of us felt today. Still we pulled off three shows. Every seat in front of, to the side of, and all the standing area around the stage was full. It was a good day. And it was sunny....warm, in fact. Our stage face the lake.

Quassy is tiny but it has a feeling to it of a real amusement park. An old fashioned feel. It's 102 years old and there is a familiar feeling to it. There was a feeling of dejavu it reminded me of a place I went to as a kid that is no more....Frontier Village in San Jose, CA.

Tomorrow we have to get up early for a TV appearance in New Haven. Then it's three more shows.

In spite of the exhaustion everyone did well.

I am sure there is more to report but I am pooped so ciao!

Last Day in NY....off to CT 82 shows down....midpoint

It wasn't the front page...it was page 3....Miles as the Pink Gorilla giving a high five was used by the local paper to promote the fair.

When the show is over and the folks have left this is what the stage looks like....

The gent below is Dennis the light board guy for the big stage. We got him over two fears this past week. Fear of snakes....he held Buttercup. And his fear of fire-eating....here he is learning.

Elvin the Great also gets over his fear of snakes.....Kind of....

The day started off rainy but by 4pm it was partly sunny and full sunshine by 5pm but the fair closes at 8pm so the numbers stayed low. Still we were told we had everyone who was on the fairgrounds at each of our shows. I love these NY crowds...they know how to be an audience. We got a lot of nice comments from everyone after the shows .

Pack up started after our last show...I took the small kids and Cynthia back to the hotel to eat and get ready to sleep. The big boys packed things up in record time. The fair even pulled our trailer free from the backstage and we were out by 8:15pm. We have an early start to CT tomorrow. The last show made it 82 shows down....42 shows to go until our first full day off. (But this job isn't anything like real work. ....this play baby!)

Sunshine in the Empire State

Polka King Jimmy Sturr
Miles as a monkey fgoing for a stroll.

Olivia...with attitude.

James' Street Show

Girls with their Friend Joelle.

At long last the sun broke through and not a cloud could be found in the sky. But summer it is not. Spring weather is how I would describe it. No humidity, a soft wind, and low 80s. That could only mean one thing...BIG crowds! They came out in force today and it only increased as the day progessed. So much so that there was traffic both ways from the fairgrounds (2 miles out of town) to the Village and a ton of professional traffic control. With it, of course, were the energencies ( like a call from the front gate abot a boy having a seizure), trash everywhere( I still don't understand why people can't walk 10 feet to a garbage can...I kicked several people off the stage after a man spilled his beer on it...don't want a repeat of past events where we come in to a stage filled with discarded pizza, melted ice cream, spilled drinks, trash and a potpouri of other refuse littering the stage....where we have to clean it up and/or stand, lay or sit in during the shows.) and the noise. But that' s the fair isn't it.

Update on the goat. The kids were born breech and died and the mom goat (the owner's favorite) was taken back to their home.

The polka king, Jimmy Sturr, was the main stage star tonight. He had a 4pm show and it was awesome.

Audiences were big today and that means only one thing......Great crowds...great responses. In fact there was a manager from another fair from NY that saw the show and booked us for 2010.