Down Under - Upside down

There is a YouTube post by a seemingly intelligent man who identifies himself as an educated lawyer. He is pleading the case that the Earth is actually a flat disk and not the round ball we have been told it is.  To prove his point he has a model airplane and two models of the Earth.  One Earth is a flat disk, sort of a round map on a table. The other is the traditional elementary school globe we all grew up with.  

With these visual aids he uses the example of an airplane trip from Los Angeles to Sydney Australia to prove the Earth is flat.  This is the part that originally caught my attention since it was my exact itinerary last week. 

Holding the plane over Los Angeles on the flat map he says, “Here is a trip to Austrailia.” He moves the plane across the map as if it was flying to Sydney.  When it arrives he says, “You will notice that the plane is still up right, it hasn’t changed its perspective. That is normal, that is the way planes fly.”

He then moves the model plane to the globe and holds it above Los Angeles, and says, “Now watch what happens when you assume the Earth is a ball” 

The man follows the curvature of the Earth with the plane until it reaches bottom of the globe and the continent of Austrailia. “Look at the plane.” He says with the excitement of turning lead into gold. “The plane is upside down.  It is no longer right side up.  Planes can’t fly like this... we don’t land upside down in Austrailia, therefore the Earth is flat.”  .....  You just can’t argue with logic like that.

I am here to tell you that the Earth is not flat.  Down-under is not upside down, but there are things that are reversed down here.  Of course they drive on the “other” of the road causing me to take my life in my hands everytime I cross the street.  The water does swirl down the drain in the opposite direction, and The Burger King chain is called Hungry Jack. (Some rule about using the word King for a burger joint).  

But nothing has affected me more than my sudden personal reversal. 

When I started doing my act I was most always the youngest person in a  show.  I usually performed with people older than myself, sometimes it was only a few years difference but the younger you are the greater the gap between age seems to be. 

I was cast in the Shazam Show when I was a junior in college. I replaced Sammy King for a week or two during my spring break from University of North Texas.  The show was John Daniels Magic show at the Carillon hotel in Miami Beach, Florida.  One of the dancers was my age but we were the babies of that cast. I grew up a little during the run, but the green had not turned yet.

Other than John’s Magic Illusions there was my act and a vaudeville act called Elza and Waldo.  They were seasoned pros, who did a silent adagio dance act that was hysterically funny. I am guessing they were in their late 50’s or early 60’s which seemed very old to me at the time. Of course this was almost 50 years ago and back then anything over 20 years of age was ancient to me.   Elza and Waldo were amazing to study.  Every stage moment had been polished to perfection and I watched them from the wings every night.   I remember thinking that this kind of skill and polish only comes with the perfection of time.  They just had done it for so long it was as natural as their heart beat.  Perhaps I was peering into the future. 

I am now rehearsing a show that is not that much different from the Shazam Show 50 years ago. It has dancers and singers, a great band, magic and novelty acts.  At the time of the Shazam show, Miami was as foreign to a Texas ventriloquist as Austrailia is to a California Ventriloquist today.  But here is the upside down reversal: I am older now than Elza and Waldo were when they did  the Shazam show. I am the oldest member of this cast and it is a role I am not familiar with.   In my mind I am still a college kid looking for a good audience to play with but that is not the reality.  I have been performing more than twice as long as this cast (and crew) has been alive.  To them I am Waldo and Bob is Elza. (Bob would probably reverse the metaphor).  Thanks to Elza and Waldo, I think I know what I am supposed to do.  Elza and Waldo just did their act, they didn’t try to tell us how to do ours, nor did they try to tout their massive years of experience.  They were nice people who just did the best act they could every night they got the chance.  While I was watching them from the stage right wings every night, I knew I was learning something.... I now know what that something was.  

There may be someone watching me from stage right at sometime during this run.  If there is, I will probably never know about it as I don’t plan to look. It is my job to silently pay it forward and, like Elza and Waldo, use every minute of my stage experience to do the best show I can. I have been learning this part in the Unbelievables all my life.  Perhaps a reversal is no more than a conscious rebirth.  More later,

As you were,

Jay