The Greatest Meh on Earth

Come one, come all, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls to see the Greatest Show On Earth (TM)!
Meh.
Last night, we took the kids to the circus. Not just any circus, but the Ringling Bros. and Barnum and Bailey Circus....The Original Greatest Show On Earth (TM). Home to the most prestigious clown college in the U.S. The CIRCUS.
Meh.
Granted, the boys were tired from swimming all day. But I accidentally bought front row seats and we were "circus celebrities" and got to sit IN the main ring for the most of the first act. I could see the clown's crazy eyebrows. CIRCUS CELEBRITIES.
Meh.
During the tiger bit, S fell asleep. E had a faraway glazed look in his eyes, and it wasn't enthrallment. The motorcycle in the steel globe bit barely registered on their cool radar.
Meh.
M, who is bitterly opposed to clowns, reported only that he found it exactly how he imagined a circus to be. He wasn't bored, exactly, just mostly unimpressed (except for the motorcycle thing). The tigers WERE beautiful, but he just saw some at the zoo a couple of weeks ago.
Meh.
Me? I love the circus. I love the idea of performers from all over the world, living together in caravans, traveling the country and sharing their talents with one and all. I like the idea of the woman and her 8 cute white ponies having this special bond with her animals, and spending her days nurturing, rehearsing and loving them. I love the risk, however mitigated by lawyers, that still remains: the man alone with 12 tigers and a skewer of raw meat, 8 motorcyclists in a teeny cage at 40 miles an hour, a woman spinning by her hair.
But.
I concede this: the circus is a throwback. It is what remains of a simpler time, a simpler audience, a simpler world. It represents a time when the world's performers were assembled andwe went to see them, rather than now when we sit on our couches and the world is brought to us. We are jaded, and worldly, and easily unimpressed. We have seen BiggerLouderFaster already. We have been Supersized.
So, indeed, in the several occasions I've seen Cirque du Soleil, I have seen superior aerialists, gymnasts and freaky flexible people. I have been to the world's finest zoos and seen tigers and elephants (and there are many even luckier people who have seen the animals roaming free in Africa while on safari.) I've actually even seen an elephant paint a picture before.
Apparently, I am not the only one who feels this way: the bottom tier of half of the Mobile Civic Arena was not even filled. Concessions were a fortune. The experience felt Disney-fied, and overly rehearsed. Maybe even a bit tired. Some of the clowns put in a lackluster performance.
But then I think, surely, these people dreamed of being in the circus. They clearly trained for it for most of their lives. I know that there are institutes in China where young children with an aptitude for gymnastics train for hours a day. Certainly, those clowns who studied at the clown college and competed against other would-be clowns had this singular goal in mind: they must have WANTED to arrive in the circus. They must still experience the thrill of riding around the ring on an elephant or performing feats of strength and balance upon a horse, or while hanging from the ceiling. If not, then what? Is the circus a relic? It is a nostalgic remnant of times past? Are we just Wall-E-esque consumers lined up to buy overpriced sno cones and watch the circus like a tv show, idly wishing we would change the channel, if only there were a remote control?