Source Code is Miles Better than Tenet

 

SOURCE CODE (2011)

Directed by Duncan Jones

Summit Entertainment, 93 minutes, PG-13

★★★★

 

 

 

On February 15, I slammed Tenet as both junk science and a rotten movie. Lots of movies engage in junk—or if we wish to be polite, speculative—science and it’s possible to make a decent flick using it. I recently came across Source Code, a 2011 science fiction//action/thriller offering that does so very well.

 

If, like me, this film simply slipped off your radar screen, here’s a brief synopsis. Captain Colter Stevens (Jake Gyllenhaal) has been given a mission whose mechanics he can’t understand. He is inside of something that he presumes to be an experimental machine and is told by Captain Colleen Goodwin (Vera Farmiga) he is being sent into to an unfolding event in which there is a bomber aboard a commuter train bound for Chicago. In order to avoid a major catastrophe, he will have 8 minutes to identify and neutralize an on-board bomber. He barely has time to sputter before he is spun and jolted out of his capsule and finds himself sitting across from an attractive young woman, Christina Warren (Michelle Montaghan) who knows him as Sean Fentress. He’s confused and who wouldn’t be? Who is this woman and how does one find a bomber amidst a car filled with commuters?  How do you do process gazing into a bathroom mirror at a face that isn’t yours? In 8 minutes, not much. The train blows up in a fiery ball that kills everyone aboard.

 

Suddenly, Stevens is again in the capsule. Goodwin tells Stevens his mission has failed and she is sending him back again. Before he can sputter, “Wait!” he’s thrust back and the same scenario unfolds. This occurs several times and in each trip back he picks up clues and is drawn closer to Christina. But it doesn’t take long before the befuddled Stevens knows that something very weird is happening and demands answers. He is given just information from Goodwin’s superior, Dr. Rutledge (Jeffrey Wright), and is sent back to avert a crisis, though he does learn it’s not necessarily the one he thinks. Stevens also has reasons to think he is actually dead and is only “alive” inside a computer program.

 

This beat-the-clock thriller works because it uses some actual science to mask its pseudo-science. We know that in some individuals, brain waves can be detected as long as 10 minutes after clinical death has occurred. What this actually means is anyone’s guess, but brief postmortem delta waves do exist. The junk science part of the equation is that no one has actually built any sort of time machine and even if they had, the principle of uniformatarianism would make it impossible to alter an event that has already occurred. But here is where Source Code succeeds and Tenet failed. The latter film’s unending volleys of jargonistic nonsense call attention to its contrivances, whereas Source Code uses science­­-–delta waves—to divert attention from not actually explaining how anyone can be sent back in time numerous times. To put it glibly, our deus ex machina protagonist makes us not “see” the machine.

 

Source Code sometimes slides from thriller to sentimental fluff, but this too is a matter that is easily overlooked because, well, Gyllenhaal and Monaghan make a wicked cute couple. Wright’s Rutledge probably could have benefitted from being more nuanced and less Dr. Frankenstein. He stands in marked contrast to Farmiga as Goodwin. In many ways, hers is the most difficult role in the film, as she is called upon to decide between her orders and her moral center.

 

Source Code is sci-fi and if that’s not your genre, it won’t be the film to make you reconsider. If you do like sci-fi, though, I’d say that this 93-minute $32 million film beats the plutonium out of Christopher Nolan’s bloated 150-minute $200 million Tenet.

 

Rob Weir

Luster Doesn't Shine

 

LUSTER (2020)

By Raven Leilani

Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 229 pages

★ ★

 

 

Luster is Raven Leilani’s debut novel. Let me say from the outset that one day Leilani is going to be a major writer. She has an enormous vocabulary and crafts beautiful sentences. Luster, though, is not the work that will cement her place in the world of literature. It violates one of literature’s unspoken rules in that it has no sympathetic characters.

 

Leilani’s protagonist, Edie­—a name that is hardly ever mentioned—is young, gifted, and Black. She’s also annoying, unreflective, reckless, and prone to blaming everybody and everything for her circumstances. She’s the sort who acts as if the world is going to end if she’s not had sex in a week, which presumably justifies why she’s slept with most of the staff at the New York children’s book publishing firm at which she’s toiling at a low-level job she’s about to lose. That’s what she does instead of building actual relationships or actually trying to improve the skills necessary for the job rather than fancying herself an artist, a calling for which she has demonstrated minimal talent.

 

Put another way, Edie is a Generation Z mess. She lives in a crummy apartment infested with rats and roaches, has a mountain of student debt, and is lousy at conversation. Hers is not a life filled with Black rage, rather one of delayed social development and bad decision-making. The latter includes forays into soft porn and kinky sex. The novel is sometimes identified as a bildungsroman–one dealing with one’s formative years–but we don’t really get much of a sense of anything being formed. What would compel the 23-year-old Edie to have an affair with Eric, an often-distant white dude twice her age who has a wife and a daughter?

 

Because she has no boundaries, she crashes a party at Eric’s house in suburban New Jersey and insinuates herself into their household. As it transpires, Eric, an archivist, and Rebecca, a medical examiner, have an adopted black daughter named Akila. Rebecca cares less about Eric’s affair than expected and the two of them are willing to try Edie as a live-in nanny and teach Akila about being Black. The flaw in this is, as you might expect, triads are not so easy to sustain. Plus, Akila is savvier about life than Edie. She’s been fostered several times and has grown into her upper middle-class existence and the privileges that go with it. 

 

Some have remarked about the humor embedded in Luster. I’m not convinced about that. Leilani’s book touches upon too many serious topics for us to chuckle our way through. These include race, but it would too simple to identify it as the novel’s core. It’s also about the gaps between suburban and urban life, desire versus just sex, having money and doing without, art and artifice, and responsibility juxtaposed with immaturity. The key phrase, though, is that Leilani “touches upon” these subjects, which is all she can do in such a short book. At a key moment in the book Edie protests, “This isn’t my fault.” When Rebecca retorts, “The slogan of your generation,” I couldn’t but think, “Exactly!”

 

Luster is an ironic title. There simply isn’t much sheen or glow to Edie and an attempt near the end to give her luster is contrived and unconvincing. Were it not for those gorgeous sentences and Leilani’s obvious promise, this would be the sort of book one would read, shrug, and toss aside. Okay, I also liked Akila a lot and think a bildungsroman about her would have been a lot more interesting. In my view, Leilani’s next step is to pay more attention to characterizations and narrative arc.

 

Rob Weir

 

 

Altan Local Ground March 2021 Album of the Month

 

ALTAN

Local Ground

Compass Records

 

 

Here’s an early St. Patrick’s Day present. If you are a Celtic music fan, chances are you need no introduction to Altan, a veritable Irish supergroup that has been around since 1987. Nor do I need to sing the glories of Altan cofounder Mairéad Ní Mhaonaigh (roughly ma-RAYd nee WEEnie for the Irish-impaired), she of the delicate bird-like voice that enraptures listeners.

 

Altan’s newest release is an old one, a statement in need of illumination. Altan has 21 recordings to its credit, of which Local Ground was its 10^th—if you could lay hands on it. It was recorded in 2005, but was available only in Japan except for a brief reprint on Virgin Music’s Narada label. That’s how I originally came across it back in the days in which SingOut Magazine had a global reach. Nashville-based Compass Records has gained redistribution rights so that more North Americans can have access to this wonderful release.

 

Again, for those less familiar with the band, Altan’s signature sound is its combination of Donegal-influenced instrumentals and Ní Mhaonaigh vocals. Donegal music is distinctive in that it generally features two lead fiddles, those of Ní Mhaonaigh and Ciaran Tourish. These give the ensemble a strong melodic base, and fretted instruments (Dáithí Sproule and Mark Kelly on guitars) act as rhythm and percussive supplements. Back then, Dermont Byrne’s accordion acted as a third melody instrument, though he has since left the band. Most Altan instrumental sets are of the step-lively variety and Ní Mhaonaigh’s vocals are slower and more fragile grab-a-breather interludes that are often sung in Irish. “Éirigh’s cuir ort do chuid éadaigh” is an example of this. It’s a song about a man trying to convince a lass to elope with him. You can take my word for that and hear for yourself what’s going on in English-language offerings such as the well-known immigration ballad “Adieu, My Lovely Nancy;” “As I Roved Out,” a variant of   “Blackwaterside;” and “TheWind and Rain,” an Irish take on a Scottish song. There are several other songs in Irish as well, including the lullaby “Dūn do Shuil” (“Close Your Eyes”). Somehow, Ní Mhaonaigh and lullabies seem made for one another.

 

As noted, Altan mixes things up via up-tempo sets such as “Tommy Peoples,” four tunes bookended by reels, and “Is the Big Red Man Within?” a jig and reel combo. Sproule penned “The Roseville” when he lived in Minnesota, and it has a suitably barn dance vibe. The “Bό Mhín na Toitean” combo of a march, a Highland, and jig is a bit like “The Roseville,” though more distinctly Irish in structure. There’s also Altan’s take on a classic slip jig and jig originally performed by the legendary John Doherty. (Slip jigs are generally in 9/8 timing and straight jigs in 12/8.) For the re-release, Compass has added a bonus track, the breakneck “Andy Dixon’s” set that’s a dynamic addition to an already superb album.

 

If, like me, you’ve collected the entire Altan oeuvre, Local Ground is a must-have recording. But, I also envy those who are just now discovering Altan; Local Ground will delight and make you want to hear more. Me too, though there’s no comparable rush to the one that first makes your jaw drop to your ankles.

 

Rob Weir

 

Note: Most of these links are slightly different from those on from Local Ground. 

 

Nomadland is Deeply Moving

 

NOMADLAND (2020)

Directed by Chloé Zhao

Searchlight Pictures, 108 minutes, R (brief nudity, mild language)

★★★★★

 

 

 

Nomadland manages to be two seemingly incompatible things: a love letter to America and a middle digit amidst its amber waves. It may not win much come Oscar time—it is decidedly not usual Hollywood fare—but it has already carried off a fistful of prizes in every critics’ circle and film festival that have thus far weighed in.

 

Nomadland is cinéma vérité with a twist; much of the film is a pure documentary that is unmediated by director Chloé Zhao. We meet a lot of colorful and interesting people, most of them from the walks of life in which they actually stride. Or, perhaps, drive would be a better word. It is about real-life nomads, those individuals who, as Fern (Frances McDormand) puts it, are not homeless but houseless. They live in vans and follow both jobs and bliss. In essence, they are migrant workers.

 

McDormand doesn’t just play a nomad, she inhabits the role to the extent that she can’t even sleep in an actual bed. She is on the road because her husband has died and, though she’s tough as nails, she’s grieving. There’s also the fact that her town has gone out of business-—literally. She and her late husband Bo lived in Empire, Nevada. When the housing industry cratered in 2008, the demand for drywall dropped and U.S. Gypsum closed the entire company town. Imagine a scenario in which the place you lived, worked, loved, and socialized for decades becomes a ghost town overnight.

 

Even nomads need community and here is where the film becomes a masterful slice of cinéma vérité. We are taken to the Arizona desert where we encounter Bob Wills, who operates an actual network for nomads. Wills is equal parts motivational speaker, swap meet coordinator, support service facilitator, anti-corporation evangelist, and bear-like shoulder to lean on. Fern also befriends the grandmotherly Linda May and late-in-life Swankie, a lover of rocks and all things natural. They are both mavericks addicted to freedom of the swim-against-conformity variety. The burly 75-year-old Swankie speaks of being resigned to dying because of the wonders she has seen.

 

Life on the road sounds romantic, but the flip side is something Wills rails against: the nomads are poor. They work hard, mostly in jobs most of us never see. We observe Fern on the frenetically paced floor of an Amazon warehouse, shoveling mountains of beets in Nebraska, cleaning filthy bathrooms in South Dakota, and performing other menial tasks. McDormand is 63 now and we see etched on her weathered face both grit and weariness. Another friend, David (David Strathairn), is also aging—he’s 72 in life—and pathos abounds when we see him in a soda jerker paper hat flipping burgers. Linda May speaks of having worked since she was 12, but finding she was eligible for a mere $550/month in Social Security benefits. In other words,  these nomads are not the Wally Byam Club.

 

In The Things They Carried, author Tim O’Brien’s namesake tale is about what soldiers chose to heft in their field packs. Muse upon your possessions. If you lived in an Amazon-sized van, what would you actually need and what else would you try to find room to take? For sure you’d need warm sleeping gear, a cook stove, pans, clothing for all seasons, water jugs, and a large plastic bucket into which to do your business. You’d probably pack other things that you’d find you didn’t need and swap them at one of Bob’s desert gatherings. (They are akin to Burning Man for the non-moneyed set.)

 

Chloé Zhao’s light directorial touch hits the target better than an arsenal of big production movies. Usually there is no musical soundtrack beyond occasional mood-setting transitions. When needed, Ludovico Einaudi provides gorgeous and deeply moving filler. Joshua James Richards’ cinematography is equally evocative. He allows the camera to dwell upon the vastness of the West, the sweep of an empty road, the otherworldly jaggedness of the Badlands, the glowing beauty of a desert sunset, the sheer majesty of tall, snow-covered peaks, and the absurdity of human-built “attractions.”

 

And let us again praise the fearless Frances McDormand. She has already won two Academy Awards and it would be a major injustice if she doesn’t win a third this year. She is indeed fearless. There are very few actresses with the moxie to appear as unglamorous as she, to float naked in a mountain creek, to sport unkempt hair, and wear nothing more elegant than a cheap loose shift and sandals. Were it up to me, this movie would sweep the Oscars. Nomadland is a stunning film that will both exhilarate and make you hug your Kleenex box. Call it down but not yet out in America.

 

Rob Weir  

 

Postscript: Some critics have compared the nomads to Dust Bowl refugees. I disagree. The latter had no choice whereas most of the first I find more analogous to the Roma. 

 

Blacktop Wasteland a Propulsive Novel

 

BLACKTOP WASTELAND (2020)

By S. A. Crosby

Flatiron Books, 304 pages.

★★★★★

 

Blacktop Wasteland is a propulsive novel on several levels. First, it is about race and social class, two subjects that spark. Second, its protagonist, Beauregard Montage, is addicted to fast cars. And third, because Crosby treats Beau as neither a victim nor a hero. 

 

Beau has three kids, 18-year-old Ariel from a youthful dalliance, and two sons, Darren and Javon with his long-term partner Kia. He has not always been a good man and on that we can blame poor parenting and racism Southern-style, the latter of which sent his 14-year-old self to five years in juvenile detention for a crime he did not commit. Nonetheless, Beau bears responsibility for subsequent forays into thievery and violence. He’s really trying to stay out of trouble because he loves Kia and his kids, but his make-it-in-America plan has a built-in limitation. Beau is really only good at one thing: cars. His Plymouth Duster, the only thing left behind when his petty criminal father fled, supplements the family income via illegal drag racing money. No one drives or fixes cars as well as Beau, who also owns a garage.

 

How, though, does a black man compete and pay his garage rent when some good ole’ boys open a fancier garage nearby with amenities and prices Beau can’t match? Or when his son needs braces and his mother is in a nursing home and about to be kicked out because Medicare has cut off payments because of an asset snafu? What can he do about Ariel, who doesn’t live with him, but is probably hooking and dealing drugs–not that her alcoholic mother cares one way or the other? Beau and Kia live in a trailer, so it’s not like there are piles of cash floating about, nor are there that many opportunities for a black man in a backwater Virginia town. The skinny is that if “Bug,” as his black friends call him, doesn’t come up with a windfall pretty quickly, his crumbling foundations will give way. As it is, one of his sons is drawn into the household financial crisis and not in a good way.

 

Despite Kia’s pleading, Beau is sorely tempted to take part in a heist–an insider job in a jewelry store–being orchestrated by white hood Ronnie Sessions. Beau doesn’t trust Ronnie, his dim-witted brother, or his partner Quan, but it can be done with Beau at the wheel of the getaway car. Rule number one in pulling a job: Don’t place your fate in the hands of people you don’t like and think are inept. Rule number two: If something is sold as dead simple, it’s usually only one of those. Blacktop Wasteland morphs from one man’s struggle to make ends meet to a crime thriller, and a very good one. To say that unexpected wrinkles occur scarcely does justice to the novel’s various folds and creases. This novel has quite a few bad guys, not to mention a few good guys who get in the way. As it has been for most of his life, Beau must ultimately depend upon himself to survive.

 

Crosby deftly juggles a lot of things in Blacktop Wasteland. He gives us a slice of black life set in 2012, but feels like it could have taken place 60 years earlier. It’s also about fatherhood, black support networks (shaky and legit), haunting memories, and self-awareness. Beau may wish to go straight, but deep inside suspects he may be cursed with a “propensity for violent conflict resolution,” just as his counselor in juvenile detention once proclaimed. He has good intentions, but he has killed before and has an “if necessary” view of murder, not guiding moral principles on the subject. Add the question of whether biology is destiny to Crosby’s bag of tricks, not to mention the old philosophical mindbender of whether the end justifies the means.

 

Blacktop Wasteland is a terrific novel, from its multivalent title to a conclusion evocative of I Was a Fugitive from a Chain Gang.” It will leave you shattered.

 

Rob Weir

The Assistant Needs a New Job

 

 

 

THE ASSISTANT  (2019)

Directed by Kitty Green

Bleecker Street, 87 minutes, R (language)

★★

 

The Assistant splashed down in the post-Harvey Weinstein Zeitgeist Sea. Because of that, it has gotten praise from MeToo and other such movements. I understand the desire to embrace such a film, but The Assistant is both dishwater dull and slow–in a geological sense. 

 

It follows one day in the life of Jane (Julia Garner), a novice junior assistant in a New York City film production company. Her job is unabated drudgery. She arises before the sun to make her way from Astoria to Manhattan. Don’t think of her duties have anything much to do with movies. At best she’s a concierge who books flights, makes sure that her boss’s limo shows up in time, or that the actress du jour is on the schedule. Most of the time she’s a factotum who makes coffee and copies, cleans the break room, and is expected to kowtow to the two male assistants (Jon Orsini and Noah Robbins), who dutifully ignore her–unless she makes a mistake. Mostly, Jane is invisible. Actors and actresses pass through the doors and dump their coats and coffee cups on her while making as little eye contact as humanly possible.

 

Jane gets a jolt when Sienna (Kristine Froseth) shows up from Idaho. She’s a new junior assistant and Jane senses that she’s a replacement-in-waiting. She’s pretty to Jane’s plainness and the boss has ensconced Sienna in a posh Midtown hotel. Jane musters enough courage to take her concerns to Wilcock (Matthew Macfayden), the HR director, but she can’t quite say that she thinks Sienna is there because she is the boss’s latest sexual conquest. Wilcock essentially belittles Jane and offers only the solace that she need not worry because, “You’re not his type.” When she arrives back at her desk a few minutes later, she finds that Wilcock has told everyone about her complaint.

 

Jane’s day ends as it began–in darkness. She’s so wiped she nearly falls asleep at a coffee shop and she doesn’t have the energy to take more than a few nibbles from a muffin. We sense that she’s on borrowed time, but I will confess that I wondered why she was in her job in the first place. Jane has the courage of a timid little mouse. Everything about her seems wrong–her belief that within five years she’d be a producer, her clothing, and for sure her low-key personality. It’s as if she never got the memo that, even were your boss not a monster, New York is a tough town. The boss never actually appears on screen–we hear only his voice on the telephone dropping a few F-bombs–and see his silhouette in a window as he and Sienna are presumably having it off. His physical absence is a nice touch that enhances the existential dread hovering over Jane. Beyond this, however, The Assistant plays like a rejected script for The Office.

 

Garner’s affect is so flat that we want to hug her and tell her it’s okay to back home–presumably the Midwest as she’s a Northwestern grad–to her loving and supportive parents. Or maybe take a job in a library that’s more befitting for quiet people such as she. After all, it’s not as if New York will magically become more accommodating with a better boss and coworkers.

 

Make no mistake, those coworkers are complete jerks. They are the sort who smirk at Jane and inwardly revel when she is called on the carpet for doing tasks that they dumped on her. But here is where The Assistant falls apart. Much more needs to happen for this to fit the profile of now labeled the Weinstein effect. This film is not really about sexual predation. We only know that Jane suspects that Sienna is a victim. Why? Because she’s from Idaho? Because the boss cheats on his wife? All we know for certain is that nearly everyone who comes through the door is quisquous and self-absorbed. This makes the production office a toxic workplace for all underlings. It’s what we get because we knee-capped labor unions that mediated against abuses of power.

 

The Assistant is thus a drab office drama sans any actual drama. The few outside shots have Hopperesque qualities that convey Jane’s anomie more effectively than the claustrophobia of the office. But none of this changes the fact that the creepiness of The Assistant is too mannered to pack a wallop. We need a good film about the Weinstein effect, but this isn’t it.

 

Rob Weir  

 

 

  

Battle for the Big Top: When Circuses Ruled

 

 

BATTLE FOR THE BIG TOP (2021)

By Les Standiford

Hachette Book Group, 272 pages.

 

If you are under the age of 40 and have never lived in New York City, you may have never seen the “Greatest Show on Earth,” as the Ringling Bros. Barnum & Bailey Circus was dubbed. It folded its tents in 2017, and that’s a misnomer. You’d have to be pushing 70 to have seen it under canvas, a practice that ended in 1956.

 

These days, the only mammals in most circuses are homo sapiens the likes of the aerial artists, clowns, contortionists, jugglers, musicians, and power track antics associated with Cirque du Soleil. Once, a circus meant most of those things plus lions, tigers, and bears, oh my—and elephants. It simply wasn’t a circus without elephants and hadn’t been since 1816, when Hechaliah Bailey first displayed one in conjunction with horseback riders.

 

There are many good circus histories, thus Les Standiford fashioned his a bit differently. His approach is encapsulated in the book’s subtitle: “P.T. Barnum, James Bailey, John Ringling, and the Death-Defying Saga of the American Circus.” Those three rivals whose shows eventually merged made the circus into an iconic part of American popular culture. To sharpen that statement, until the early 20^th century, circuses, minstrelsy shows, professional baseball, and vaudeville were among the only forms of popular culture, if we mean spectacles shared in the same way by Americans in all parts of the country.

 

Circuses took initial inspiration from the admiration of skilled horseback riding, a logical outgrowth of pre-mechanical travel. Trick riding remained a circus staple and was joined by other acts that could be performed in a ring such as clowning, juggling, and tumbling. Standiford observes, “three other elements added color and vitality: the menagerie, the sideshow, and the parade.” (loc. 289 or 4588) Thus, the one-ring circus begat three rings, a dizzying sensory display. Money and a love of showmanship attracted Standiford’s principals. “The Greatest Show on Earth” evolved from cutthroat competition and trial and error. By the 1890s, the seven biggest circuses moved from town to town by rail—it took 65 cars to move Bailey’s show-­­–and were models of logistical efficiency. Overnight, tents arose, and a massed parade lured ticket-buyers to witness everything from caged wild animals and “freak shows” to recreations of Roman chariot races and the Great Chicago Fire. As the cost of such elaborate exhibitions soared, it invariably caused contraction and mergers.

 

When the ante upped, so too did the dangers. Death wasn’t always defied. Fire was a constant threat, which is why Standiford engages in the unorthodox organization of devoting his opening chapter to the July 6, 1944 big top fire in Hartford, Connecticut, that killed 167 patrons and scores of animals. Add lawsuits and liability insurance to the cost of doing business. Other challenges faced the circus, including competition from movies and later, activists who drew attention to mistreatment of circus animals, not to mention the moral implications involved in trapping and removing them from native habitats. Standiford recounts many such heartbreaking tales.  

 

Readers may be surprised by the portraits he paints of Bailey, Barnum, and Ringling. Bailey, an orphan adopted by the nephew of Hechaliah Bailey, was akin to a top-hatted version of Horatio Alger’s Ragged Dick. Nor does he buy completely into the view that Barnum was a huckster. As he notes, chicanery was but a small part of a bag of tricks that in many ways was more educational. (Who, after all, had seen lions or bearded ladies in the hinterlands?) John Ringling outlasted both, but he and his brothers struggled as often as they prospered.

 

Standiford presents circus figures who admit that the circus was a product of a different age. It’s wrong to say that all good things must come to an end. Often, American circuses were little better than their blood-soaked ancient Roman progenitors. But Stanford also quotes Barnum biographer Robert Wilson who cautions we live in “an ahistorical age, one that is quick to condemn historical figures using the standards of the present.” (loc. 2055) Whatever its faults, Ringling was correct to note that “the circus appealed to children as well as the child in every person. (loc 3977)

 

There are still several old-style circuses around, but most are desultory affairs that often compare poorly with what might be seen at a county fair. They are a far cry from the days in which performers such as animal trainer Clyde Beatty, clown nonpareil Emmett Kelly, trapeze daredevil Lillian Leitzel, equestrienne Ella Bradna, diminutive Tom Thumb, and the high wire Flying Wallendas were household names. Not to mention elephants such as Babe, Jumbo, Old Bet, Romeo, and Juliette.

 

Rob Weir