Shanghai preview
Through one of his coworkers, Harper got tickets to an advance screening of Shangai Knights, the upcoming Jackie Chan/Owen Wilson movie. It’s a sequel to Shanghai Noon, Jackie’s ‘Wild West’ movie… I had fairly high hopes for this film…I enjoyed the first, and this one has the bonus of Donnie Yen playing a villain! I’ve seen Donnie Yen act before, and I know he can do reasonably well, but here he was terrible. The saving grace would have been his fight scenes…but he only had one, at the end, and it was too short. What little there was certainly ruled, though. It was nice watching him kick Jackie Chan’s butt for a while.. I also expected the movie to be funnier. Oh, well. All in all, a disappointment. Good thing I didn’t spend money on it.
Some juggling thoughts.. I’ve juggled a little bit with circus jugglers over the last couple of months, and I keep coming across unexpected lingo differences. Mention a feed with three people, and everyone knows what you’re talking about. A feed with four or more people, though, means something very different to the circus jugglers.. I’m not sure if it’s a regional thing, and I learned a strange way of group feeding in Austin where I started, or if it’s a difference between circus jugglers and…uh…normal jugglers. Right.
Madfest 2003
We just returned last night from the Madison juggling festival. It was an all around success. There were six of us from our little group of Chicago juggling friends, the largest group we’ve brought to the festival yet. As always, I got to juggle with some cool badasses and learned a couple of new passing patterns. We all have new passing and solo tricks to work on..
The games went well. The first competition was in two person seven club passing, so Harper and I entered. All of the other teams except for one dropped in the first couple of minutes. Then there were two or three minutes of just us and the other remaining team, passing away, getting incredibly tired. At a total time of four minutes and forty seconds, Harper and I dropped and the other team, (Peter and Laurie Casement, two great Madison jugglers), won. Brian and I then competed in eight club passing, but we lost, I think third place. By this time, my arms were very very tired and I considered not entering any of the other competitions. I ended up doing the three quarter juggling competition. This is where each competing juggler juggles three quarters.. If you drop, your quarters go into the pot, and the last juggler remaining wins it all. Against all my expectations, I actually won! The pot turned out to be $24.50 and some random Euros used by a couple of jugglers from overseas. My laundry worries are over for a while..
