Amazing Decorations
Check out this video of some amazing Christmas decorations. (Make sure you have sound). Again, I wish my life were more like this. Meanwhile, we have a nice little snowstorm in Chicago tonight..supposed to be getting seven inches of snow.. It was very pretty as I left work, although just windy enough to really get into your face too.
Erica and I saw Murderball last night. I really really enjoyed it. A movie that manages to be inspirational without being sappy.. For anyone unfamiliar with it..it’s about quadriplegic rugby. These guys in custom armored wheelchairs tearing around a basketball court, crashing into each other and knocking each other over, talking trash and all that other contact sport stuff…it’s amazing. These folks are tough, not delicate, and it was really interesting noting my own reactions as I saw that in the movie.
Science, Autographs, and numbers
Last night ruled. Right out of the gate I knew it was gonna be good, since I have today off of work. I was planning on going to a talk and book signing by Chris Mooney, part of his tour supporting his brand new book, The Republican War on Science. First I went to Wow Bao, this fantastic steamed bun place that my roommate Katy recommended.. It was in the Water Tower Place, directly across the street from the Barnes and Noble where Chris Mooney was going to talk. In line at Wow Bao, I noticed someone familiar behind me: Maribeth! She’s a juggler who has worked backstage at the Blue Man Group for several years, and now she’s also helping to run CircEsteem, a Chicago youth circus I taught at a couple of years ago. She also collects and preserves dead things. We ordered some bao stuff together and while we were eating Katy caught up to us.. Wow Bao has some fantastic bao..I’ve been looking for a place like that for years..
I could not convince Maribeth to come to the talk or to juggling afterwards, so after the meal it was just Katy and me heading into Barnes and Noble. I bought a copy of the book, snagged a very front-and-center seat, and enjoyed a nice event. Chris Mooney was a pretty good speaker, although, and this is the same impression I got when watching him on The Daily Show, he seems to be cautious about his points, when I think a little more emphasis would help. He speaks very precisely, but often qualifies what he’s saying, almost correcting his own words…and when he’s talking about a huge crisis in terms of political intrusion into, and even corruption of, science, I think he could do well to really punch home some of his ideas. After some slightly plain questions (there were no strong right winger or religious right folks in the crowd to really get something started) he started signing books. On mine, in spite of the little post-it note with my name on it, he misspelled my name, giving it two t’s. I thought it was pretty funny, but he was very apologetic. After a bit we agreed that he could just scratch out one t….
I went straight to juggling at our new location after that.. By the time I got there it was just beginning to rain. Worked on numbers club passing with Michael, and on numbers ball passing with Bruce. Bruce and I had a couple of good runs with eleven balls, and even gave thirteen a try. It will be a while before we get very far with thirteen, I think…but that’s still way up there. Never been excited about ball passing before….
We juggled until midnight, and Michael kindly gave me a ride home. Now I get to enjoy a three day weekend, with the added bonus that Erica is getting back into town on Sunday after a week away in the northeast seeing family and friends..
Practice and Progress
So I’m hoping that starting this fall I can get back to practicing some really intense juggling. I think I haven’t really been practicing the amount that I want to ini the last year or two.. Events like the WJF and attending the IJA have kind of pointed that out to me. I’ve learned some cool stuff, but I could be doing amazing stuff if I manage to practice every day… Perhaps this sounds odd since the vast majority of this blog’s content is juggling…but really, I haven’t been practicing like I used to..I swear..
I’ve almost learned the five ball siteswap, (6x,4)…really cool looking, I think. Yesterday I decided to learn full on behind the back juggling. A bit loftier goal, but I was pleasantly surprised with the progress I made on it.
The secret plan is to start using our new juggling practice space as soon as I’m fully approved for it. This fancy athletic club is almost definitely hiring a couple of us to teach juggling classes, aiming to start this month. Once I’m officially an employee, I get an automatic membership there. It’s directly on my way home from work, so I plan to stop there as many nights as I can manage. Well lit, air conditioned rooms with high ceilings….it’s gonna be great…
Luis, our contact there, has a neato digital camera. He took a couple of videos of Bruce and myself working on passing stuff. I think I’ll try to get some more videos up on here…
Games
The new IJA website at last has the results from the Davenport championships and games… Here are the games results..scroll down to the 8 Club Passing endurance to see Michael’s and my names at second place.
Meanwhile.. I had jury duty on Tuesday, starting 9:30 in the morning. Lots of waiting. My panel was finally called at around 2:00 in the afternoon. We went to a courtroom, met a judge, and all kinds of entertaining stuff. I was not selected. By luck, I wasn’t even called to be a real candidate.. Whew. I would like to do that one day, but not with the kind of case they’re gonna have, and not when my work is so very busy…
We are remodelling our offices.. Or at least moving around a bunch and redoing the carpet, paint, and wall stuff in one. Some newly hired bigwig is gonna move in there. It’s been a little stressful, but it’s almost done.
Some neat juggling happenings in the possible near future for me…I’ll post more as they get confirmed.
IJA Video
Alan Plotkin has a trailer up for his 2005 IJA Highlights dvd..Check it out. (On a side note..Alan lives in Austin?? Should I recognize him..is he a Texas Juggling Society regular?? Odd…) Anyhow, the video has lots of neat things..gives a decent flavor of the variety of juggling going on at the fest.. And has clips from some of the assorted shows. Check it out if you have lots of bandwidth to play with.
George had some questions about festivals vs my regular practice and stuff like that… The festivals are my main chance to learn and do difficult group passing patterns. Club passing with guys who are better than I am and can teach me insane patterns…that’s usually the highlight for me. In my home I usually practice ball juggling, seeing as there’s not so much room for clubs. At juggling club here, for the past year or two, I’ve worked almost exclusively on club juggling…solo and passing. Michael and I have been working on our numbers passing and are slowly conquering nine clubs. I’ve been working on three club tricks like reverse backcrosses, (where I throw the club in front of me and then reach around my back to catch it), juggling over my head, and other things like that. So I work on club juggling throughout the year, but yeah, the festivals are my main chance to do complicated patterns with larger groups of jugglers involved.
IJA Part III
Saturday morning saw Luke and myself a bit groggy, but excited to hit the day. We ate in the hotel cafe..a bit of a letdown, for having to pay extra..and left for the fest. On the way, I introduced him to Dimmu Borgir and one of my brand new favorite bands: 3 Inches of Blood. They are awesome. Songs about pirates, storming castles, and warring cyborgs. Awesome
We arrived at the festival rocking out and ready to rock out some juggling! We warmed up passing with each other, mucking about with seven clubs.. They were also holding the games today, so I kept half an eye on that part of the gym, watching for games I wanted to enter. I managed to get involved in some fancy group patterns with the Madison jugglers..Luke, Mike, and Melonhead, and IJA dude Martin Frost. With the exception of Melonhead, all amazing pattern developers..they can think about a passing pattern and figure out the timing for all the different throws going to all the different people.. There was a lot of juggling jargon as we hashed out this relatively new five person moving juggling pattern, using something like 17 clubs. We also did a successful run of ten catches with a pentagram in ultimates. (For Georges: Five people stand in a regular pentagram formation, one person at each point, facing inwards, and pass to the two people most directly across from them. In ultimates every single throw, from both the right and left hands, is a pass to another juggler, so the air space in the pentagram is filled with clubs: there are no “off” beats to relax and recover from mistakes.)
I think it was around this time that I got distracted by the games. I entered the quarters juggling competition and was probably the very first person to drop. How I have fallen from my former glory….sigh… Three club backcrosses and eight club passing helped me feel a lot better, though!
I then ended up going back to juggle with Mike and Luke. We decided to do a three person pattern, I think called a Turbo, where one person is always moving inbetween the other two even as they all pass to each other. Of course, these are the Madison guys, so the regular Turbo was just a warm-up and we quickly added a club, to make it a ten club turbo, and much harder. I had a nearly impossible time keeping track of where I was supposed to make what kind of throw when, but eventually we got a couple of semi-decent runs on it. whew!
I had a good time watching the numbers competitions… Nine and ten ball solo juggling looks so amazing when done well.
The main public show was Saturday night.. I enjoyed it quite a bit, with a couple of exceptions. Steven Ragatz was probably the high point for me, although both bits by the Passing Zone had me rolling with laughter. Very very funny guys.
IJA for Georges
So George has been posting some comments with nice questions, guiding me perhaps toward better blogging for those outside the know of my quirky cliques. I had originally planned to respond in the comments, but instead I think I’d like to take a post to talk about some of the cool things he’s been asking about.
Here is a page describing the diabolo. It’s a prop that is probably unfamiliar to most people oustide the juggling community, (where, incidentally, it seems to most often be called a ‘chinese yo-yo’). It does somewhat resemble a blown-up yo-yo, played on a string that has a stick tied on each end, often with grips for the hands. The diabolo is not, however, connected to the string, which allows for various throw based tricks. The latter link also has nice illustrations of diabolo use: hands holding the sticks, diabolo spinning on the string between them.
As far as the midnight, or Renegade, shows are concerned…
I have a hard time describing them. Some of the pictures might help here. Sometimes they are a forum for routines that do not make it into the public shows of the festival, or sometimes acts from those shows go on the midnight stage to try tricks they missed earlier. Sometimes it’s more like two guys with a string tied between their nipple piercings trying to do diabolo. Nearly always vulgar. (Joke, as told by Mark Faje in the Friday night show: What’s the difference between a clown and a bucket of shit? Answer: A bucket.) On Thursday (I believe) at the championship shows, the emcee did a trick where he got one paddleball going in each hand, and then a third attached to his belt. Fun, as he jumped and pelvic thrusted to get the groin paddleball going.. That night at the midnight show, one man claimed to be inspired by that routine; he had taken a paddleball, and attached it to the handle of a sword, and proceeded to swallow the sword and then attempt to do the paddleball. (So yes, there are yuks from people putting things in their bodies…) Another guy, whose name I should know but currently escapes me, put on a kilt, took off his underwear, and then walked, tightrope-esque, along the backs of the chairs of one row of the audience, pausing to juggle knives for a moment at the end. You never know what you’re going to get with a midnight festival show, but, particularly at the big ones, there will usually be one or two amazing and outrageous stunts.
And for one picture perhaps illustrating some of the spirit of the thing, here is Mark Faje apparently getting dragged off to some horrible fate. (Extra bonus: in the background, on the left, is Rory, an Austin juggler who apparently went to the same elementary school, and, for a few years, the same high school that I did, albeit a number of years later… We met at this festival, more or less.)
IJA II
Friday morning I woke up, took a quick shower, and went down to Michael and Jenny’s room. They were not quite ready to go yet, so I read in the central square of the Holiday Inn, beside the mini-golf and opposite the pools and video games. For some reason, that first morning, they gave me a USA Today that may or may not have been complimentary…
We ate at a diner on the way, and headed to the festival. I hung out for a bit, wandered the shops, and then ended up watching Andy Head work on some stuff. He’s a Chicago juggler, and has come once or twice to our little juggling club here in town, so I went over and ended up hanging out for a while. We talked about aesthetics of the routine he was working on, and then messed around with three clubs. He said he hadn’t done much club juggling in a long time, and of course his stuff was amazing… He gave me pointers on a couple of the tricks he did that I thought I might be able to learn relatively quickly and was all around a really nice guy. One of the folks much more concerned with the artistry of what he’s doing and putting together an entertaining routine than he is with technical juggling.
Luke from Madison showed up and didn’t have a place to stay, and since he’s a cool dude I offered my extra bed. Luke helps make all the crazy group passing patters that come out of Madison, and I always look forward to juggling with him at these festivals. He shows me mad crazy patterns and we try to do them until we (reasonably) succeed, or have injured each other too much to coninue. We didn’t actually get to juggle on Friday, but swore to ourselves we’d get to it on Saturday.
The main show Friday night was Lazer Vaudeville. I enjoyed the show, although there were some slow points for me. The show was designed for general audiences and I think I was hoping for a little bit more for a juggling audience. Regardless, the cowboy, cigar box, and ring rolling portions were excellent.
The midnight show was fantastic. Mark Faje emceed this time, and of course the Renegade stage is perfect for him. He was obscene, hilarious, and his usal dangerous self. Every time I see any of his big tricks the jokes still kill me and my mind is still blown. A Japanese team went on to do yo-yo and club tricks. Any time they missed, they took a drink from Mark Faje’s bottle of Maker’s Mark. Mark got into this idea, and soon was dancing across the stage to bring them their punishment whisky every few seconds. (Later, after the show, I saw one of them literally being carried away from the festival building.) At the end of the show, after his big Bowling Ball of Death bit, and leaving the scorpion in his pants, (he claimed he forgot about it), Mark explained the gimmick behind chainsaw juggling and proceeded to juggle a running circular saw and two clubs. He then brought Mark Hayward up and, making him stand in front of a large board and hold balloons, he threw knives at Hayward. While riding a unicycle. Without harming Mark Hayward OR the scorpion. Great stuff. Luke and I headed to the hotel satisfied and ready for the big day: Saturday.
IJA Fest I
I’m going to try breaking this up into installments, so that I can rattle on comfortably about the juggling festival in gory boring detail…
The IJA trip was a blast… I think the festival this year was better overall than last year. I will post a link to the competitions results once they are up…I should only appear on there once, for when Michael and I came in second in the eight club passing endurance.. I also came in fifth this year in three club backcrosses endurance, a happy little improvement over seventh last year. The shows were, overall, quite good. Thursday night had the individuals and teams performance championships, Friday was the big Lazer Vaudeville show, and Saturday was the Cascade of Stars. I also caught most of the Renegade shows on both Thursday and Friday nights.
Rode there with Michael and his wife Jenny.. We had planned to leave in the morning, 9 or 10, but didn’t actually get away until the early afternoon. We still arrived with plenty of time to check in at our hotel, (I had booked a separate room, two beds in case some cool person from the fest needed crash space), register at the festival, and look around the gym space before the championship show. This year they were taking photos of everyone and printing out ID tags with special coded information in the border decorations: how many days you paid for, what shows you paid to see, etc. The tags were to act as tickets to all of the shows. So of course, the card printing thing was down when we registered, and I was given no name tag with the assurance that my name would be placed on a list to get into the evening’s show, and instructions to come looking for my tag tomorrow. Began wandering the gym, looking for friends, checking out the vendors… Chatted with some folks for a while before spotting Mark and getting hurried along to Indian food before the show. On the way we realized there was nowhere near enough time for Indian food and went to a local diner instead.
Got to the theater just at 7:00 as the show was supposed to start. Ticket trouble: they could not find my name on the list, until I spotted it, hand-written in on the side of the page.. But we were still in time, found our seats, and the show started. There were, overall, more drops than I would have expected in the championship show.. A juggler from Chicago ended up with a medal in the individuals category..and I’d never heard of him before. One more reminder that we don’t have a good, open juggling club here in the city proper of Chicago. He was also, I think, the only American to medal. Ryo Yabe took the gold in the individuals, something I think he deserved last year as well. His diabolo routine once again blew my mind…although I’ve heard that there are some diaboloists in France who put Ryo to shame..I have yet to see anything of theirs though.
The Renegade show that night rocked! The Renegade shows are after-hours, anything-goes, not-suitable-for-children-or-clowns type shows. I missed the beginning, but Mark Hayward was emceeing and basically all of the Japanese guests to the festival had decided to perform. Matt Hall got roped in as translator, being pretty much the only person at the festival with passable skills in both English and Japanese. Once the Japanese acts finished, and someone had decided to try and play Duck Duck Goose onstage for the next act, Michael Jenny and I headed on to the hotel.
A nice start to the fest, and tomorrow maybe I’d even juggle!
IJA
In about half an hour I should be leaving for the Quad Cities to attend the IJA juggling festival. This will be my second time going, after last year. I came in third in the quarters juggling competition, so I’m aiming to top that performance this time.. I will return on Sunday, and hope to be able to blog about it shortly thereafter. The shows should be amazing, I’m planning on attending some of the workshops, and it’ll be awesome seeing the extended juggling crew. Mark is putting on the big variety show on Saturday. He asked if I would like to be a stagehand for it, but I want to actually see it too much to help him out, and had to refuse… He always puts together rocking shows.
