All you have to do is go to Whiny's blog to know that the circus was too cool for words. (Ignore the part about Pyro the Clown. He's 16.)

Like I said, I've never been to a real circus like Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey. All I can say is "wow". I mean, I've seen it on TV before (boooring), but there's nothing like actually being there and seeing the concrete floor below the trapeze artists, hearing the call of the ringmaster, tasting the stale popcorn and smelling the elephant shit (or, as Pepperkat put it, the "pachyturds").

It's amazing how everything flows from one thing to the next. They move your attention away from the setup for the next act so successfully that, even though I was trying to watch for it, I'd look up and go, "Hey! Where'd that come from?"

The Acts:

• Bello the Clown. He is terrific. He was on for almost the entire show, and like Whiny says, "He can actually DO stuff." He got into everyone's act, but not just as a funny nuisance. He did the high wire. He did the acrobat tumbles. He did the bungie dives from the ceiling of the TD Waterhouse Center. Very talented.
• The Globe of Death. Six motorcycles in a steel cage, whirring around at high speed. I have no idea how they didn't wind up the Blender of Death.™
• Bailey's Comet. OK, it was a big build-up, but you knew the human cannonball was coming. There's a freakin' huge dayglo cannon in the middle of the floor, fer cryin' out loud. But I did not expect the guy to fly across the arena on fire! Way cool.

The rest of it was awesome, too. The Chinese acrobats, the incredible trapeze and high wire acts, the wild animals, the clowns, the scantily clad women... For some reason, though, when the Mrs came home and tried the tiger tamer's tricks on our cats ("Up! Vanilla Bean! Up!"), they just looked at her like she'd lost all her marbles. We'll have to work on their attitude.