Final Weekend O' Death
The juggling gig at Six Flags is over. We hope they will be interested in hiring us again during the summer and for next Fright Fest.. Our last weekend went really well..we tried new tricks and they usually worked.. The weather, though sometimes a bit cold, was mostly nice and we attracted huge crowds. Our friend Cole did us the favor of videotaping and taking pictures on Saturday.
This next weekend is the Quad Cities juggling festival. Last year Brian and I won the eight club passing competition and Harper and I won seven club passing…this year the plan is to go for nine..
More on Saturday..
After one of our shows Saturday I heard my name called.. It was this familiar looking guy…I went through my college and old high school friends in my head, but couldn’t place him. Then he said “I’m your cousin.” Oops. Maris. Right. It has been maybe a year and a half since last I saw him, so not recognizing him was pretty embarrassing. He had heard I was juggling at Six Flags from his father.. We had a good time hanging out, he met the guys I juggle with and I met a couple of his friends. In a strange coincidence, he’s been taking wing tsun, a martial art I just started with this past summer. He is far, far, more accomplished in it than I.. He’s also working on a commercial for the very wing tsun instructor that I am supposed to contact here in Chicago. Strange strange…
The park filmed one of our shows on Saturday.. We have asked for copies.. In addition, we are mentioned in newspaper ads they’ve put out for Fright Fest. We are first in the list of acts they mention.. No pictures, unfortunately.
Most eventful weekend..
This third weekend juggling was filled with excitement.. In what turned out to be a fateful decision, I brought along a clown nose I own. I wore it in the car on the way to Six Flags. (Harper and I had done this on our way to Colorado last Thanksgiving..great fun). This girl on a school bus waved at me and I waved back, and we ended up behind the bus. The back of the bus was full of teenage girls and they were all waving and stuff..one of them put on a train conductor-style hat and some sunglasses..etc.. She held up her finger, and I at first thought it was a “wait a minute” gesture, but then she held up a bunch more fingers. Brian, driving the car, said “They’re giving us a phone number.” In a few moments they produced paper with a phone number on it and held it up to the window…Brian, Ragnar and I were a little weirded out.. The girl held up a cell phone, and there was lots of motioning that I didn’t really understand until another paper saying “Who doesn’t have a cell phone?” was held up, and all the girls produced cell phones. Ragnar mentioned that he had a cell phone, but we decided that this was best kept to ourselves..the girls were ostensibly a high school volleyball team, and therefore Off Limits to Brian and me, and Ragnar (the one of us in high school) did not wish to talk to them. Around this time a car pulled in between us and the bus. A few minutes later, it changed lanes away. As this happened a second and third time, we realized they had made signs telling the other cars to get out of the way. Then they’d show us signs like “I missed you” and stuff. Again came a phone number sign, this time with a name.. A bit later a sign asking “Why you no like?” appeared.. Then the bus changed lanes and we decided to head on… Why didn’t this stuff happend to me when I was in high school?
We thought it would add to my outfit if I started the show wearing the clown nose. (My outfit consists of black pants, tight black shirt, red suspenders, a leather thing around my arm and a spike collar). Then, warming up about ten minutes before our first show, we had the brilliant idea of incorporating the clown nose into our balancing routine. What if I were balancing something on my face, and then Brian put the clown nose on me? We tried it with a knife, which proved too difficult, so we tried it with something easier: a pitchfork. As Brian started putting the nose on me, somehow the pitchfork fell and I didn’t quite manage to catch it before it hit me. Gave me a nice cut on my right eyebrow. I headed off to the bathroom, and then to first aid, where they told me I might need stitches. I convinced the first aid folk to hurry, and after they’d bandaged me a bit I ran back to the stage to start our show a few minutes late. After the show I returned to first aid to fill out some forms, and had great fun with some of them: “Please describe the incident…” The show went well, as did the rest of the evening.
Our stage is decorated with cheese cloth and rope stapled along the back wall. For the past 30 or 40 shows we’ve kept a candle burning on a counter at the back of the stage for easy quick torch lighting. Minutes before our first show on Saturday, after we’d already gathered an audience of a couple of dozen people, some of the cheese cloth seems to have blown into the candle with the wind.. So our stage caught fire. The cheese cloth went up very quickly, and the rope was fairly swift. The black cloth backing of our stage was well fireproofed, and didn’t cath at all. A couple of bursts from the fire extinguisher we keep handy put the fire out, and our audience cheered…they had not seemed the least bit scared during the fire. So we went ahead and did our show. We later told park workers about the incident, and apparently the whole stage was supposed to be fire proofed..we don’t know if it just doesn’t work that well on cheese cloth or what.. But they asked us not to do fire until this was taken care of.. Of course, this didn’t happen until after the show where a torch hit me in the face..no damage, just got ash on my nose.
What a weekend..
Rain and juggling..
The second weekend juggling at Great America went very well. Our show runs much more smoothly, we know where we’re supposed to be and when.. Weird people keep saying weird things, though. One kid asked me if I was supposed to be Elvis. Wearing a black trench coat, skull shirt, and my hair in a two foot long french braid, I did not expect that question. A rocker girl later said my trench coat would be cool if it didn’t have the flannel lining. I just don’t understand…
This past Saturday featured heavy rains all day, all accross Chicago. A mall near the homes of the other two jugglers had its skylight ceiling over the food court collapse. Despite the weather, the Jugglers of Death performed throughout the day. It was great…only the hardcore people visit Six Flags in the rain. We would start a show with two people watching from a covered food area far away, and finish the show with a screaming crowd of 20 packed around the stage. The feeling of pressure from doing a “big” show was gone, and instead we hung out and joked with the audience while doing our show.. A great time, but I still hope the weather is nicer next weekend.
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Great America…..of DEATH!!
Our first weekend of juggling at the Six Flags Great America theme park for Fright Fest went very well. My friend Brian arranged the show, and got ahold of our third member, Ragnar, a dude from Brian’s old high school. We perform as the Jugglers of Death on the Market Stage, but I haven’t seen the rest of the park and have no idea really where we are. Our shows are full of danger. We never juggle clubs or normal balls. To get the audience excited, we have them yell “Death!” at us whenever we say death.. So there’s a lot of stuff like “And now Matiss is balancing on his face a pitchfork….of DEATH!” and the audience yells back “Death!”…etc. Breakdown of the danger: I do a solo knife routine, Brian does a solo torch routine, Ragnar does a solo devil stick routine..Brian and Ragnar together do a diabolo routine. Brian and I pass torches, and finish by both catching a torch between our legs simultaneously. We then blindfold Ragnar, put a carrot in his mouth, and start passing knives. We have him step into the pattern blindfolded, and then I cut the carrot. Then the three of us do a nine torch feed, Brian exits the feed and stands between Ragnar and me as we pass torches. Brian then does a headstand, and spreads his legs. He gets up, grabs some knives, and gets back into the feed so we’re passing a mix of knives and torches. Then we finish. Huge crowds form, especially for the carrot part, after which half the audience leaves, thinking we’re done. Then a huge crowd forms again for the torch feed/headstand part.. It’s been really fun, with only minor injuries. It’s not too cold, and we often keep the curtains down on the sides of the stage to cut down on wind chill/interference.
