rants, reports, raves, and embarrassments from eric trules

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clowning

The Not So Dumb Wrestler, A Tribute to Broadway Producer, Kenneth Greenblatt

We grew up in the same neighborhood. Post-war, baby boom suburban Westbury, Long Island, just about an hour as the crow flies from New York City. Manhattan. The Great White Way. Both our fathers worked in the “schmata business”. That’s the Yiddish word for the textile business. Kenny’s father worked in sales and printing. My Dad was the middle-man, a textile broker, arranging sales between manufacturers and the guys who printed on raw fabrics. Both our Dads took the Long Island Railroad into Manhattan five days a week. Who knows, maybe they took the same train at 7:15 a.m. every…

Turkey Day in the Time of Corona

        Frozen turkey’s in the oven since last night. Special Trules recipe. Last employed almost forty years ago, on 23rd Street and Park Avenue South in New York City, in my clown loft, when my parents were still alive, in the early 1980s. Slow roast. Get the bird to stew overnight in its own juices. Guarantees a moist, delicious feast. Or least it used to, as I said. Let’s see. Forty years is a lonnnnnng time. The times, they have-a changed. Indeed. Bob Dylan, the sage himself, is almost 80. I’m 73. I’ve lived in sunny California…

Cirque du Soleil’s “Volta” in LA, Too Big for its Britches?

The “fabulous” 2017 Cirque du Soleil spectacle called “Volta” – opened January 18, 2020 at Dodger Stadium, right here in my hood, Echo Park. Been there, done that… except as one of Cirque’s MANY touring shows, this is its first stop in insatiable-for-Cirque, LA. We neighbors were given free tix to the night-before dress rehearsal by the Dodgers PR department. Truly amazing for the formerly neighbor-averse, now neighbor nee-r-do-well, Dodgers! Many thanks to Patrica Sanders! I remember seeing the very first Cirque du Soleil show here in LA at the 1987 Los Angeles Festival on 1st Street and San Pedro….

Karma, Coincidence, and Clowns, or… a Perfect Circle of People

Sometimes… on a certain night…. or on a certain day…. or in a certain moment, people come together in your life… in an inexplicable, maybe karmic, and if you believe in it, even in a magical way. There’s no logic for it. It’s just something like “life is stranger than fiction”.

gino cumeezi, outlaw clown & provocateur

as many of you may, or may not know, i used to be a clown. “gino cumeezi”. that was my name. great grandson of the infamous and toothless “gums” cumeezi. a cross between charlie chaplin, jack kerouac, and grand central station. i like to think of gino as a subversive public fool. a comic outlaw. a provocateur to the max. truly one of new yawk’s “finest”. in fact, gino ran for mayor of new york city in 1977. against the recently deceased (february, 2013), one and only mayor of new yawk, ed koch. “put a real clown in gracie mansion.” that was gino’s campaign slogan. he finished 5th out of 4 candidates.

the klown, the motorbike, 9 lives times 2, and good karma

about 90 seconds after my first hill climb and descent, i confront my 1st fellow motor biker, a brown-skinned local dude puttering uphill with a fellow passenger on back. i’m heading down, he’s coming up, and i pull over to the right. so does he. that is, he swerves to his left, my right. what the hell? we’re heading right at each other. we simultaneously swerve to avoid one another. in the mili-seconds before impact, my life doesn’t flash before me. i think something like, “what the fuck, man… you idiot, you’re gonna run right into me. don’t you know the rules of the road? it’s your country, you boneheaded yokel, what the…?

crash! bang. head-on. i go down. he goes down.

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