For Erica’s birthday, I took her on a whale watch here in Portland. We had a great time, and saw a lot of unexpected wildlife. While we eventually saw a few whales, the most exciting sightings were not mammalian. As the boat headed out, we saw several sea otters and a couple of pods of porpoises, which served as a nice warm up.

Erica spotted something in the distance that, while it could have been a buoy, was actually moving independently. A pair of bird watchers made an identification, which I was reluctant to believe, until the captain agreed with it and announced that we’d be slowly and quietly making our way over, in the hopes of not startling the animal and getting a good look. As we got closer, I snapped a photo.

By this time, we were catching glimpses of the body underneath the surface: the shadows of gills, a bright spot at the front, the tail that confirmed the captain’s estimate of a 20-foot-plus length… The beast kept on trucking, seemingly oblivious to our presence. People began to joke about being afraid, and talk about that bright spot being a fish in its mouth. I felt it would be asinine to correct them, and, trying to keep my mouth shut, snapped another photo.

Basking Shark! I never in my life thought I would see one, live, in the wild. This is an amazing animal, being one of two shark species known to grow larger than the Great White. It swims along, mouth wide open to catch plankton. It is unaggressive to humans. It allowed the boat to pull right alongside it, and we spent some time watching it swim and feed. Its mouth would open, and the gills would balloon outwards, and it would swim slowly like that for a long time. We eventually pulled away in search of the cetaceans, but for me, this was the highlight of the trip.

I soon spotted another fin in the distance and pointed it out. The captain said we were in for a bizarre treat, and headed towards it. It turned out to be a Mola Mola, or ocean sunfish, and was strange looking indeed. I tried to get a picture, but ruined it by putting my fingers in the way. (My phone camera has no wrist strap, and I was getting nervous about dropping it into the ocean.) Feel free to check out the Wikipedia Page on Mola Molas for photographs and information. We ended up coming across three of these things in the course of our trip.

Finally, we saw a leatherback turtle. It also let us come right up on it, and was an amazing sight. The captain claimed that in seven years of leading these tours, this was the first leatherback turtle he’d seen. It is an endangered species as well, making this a very special sight in the wild.

We eventually came across some whales, first a finback, then a pod of minkes. The finback did not let us get very close, and, while the minkes surrounded the boat, none came alongside or swam underneath.

We had a great time, and it’s likely I’ll go again someday. I do feel some reluctance, though, as the bar has been set extremely high by this amazing experience.

Then came Kuka:

A collaboration between Jay Gilligan and Manu Laude, Kuka’s subtitle is Pop Juggling, calling to mind, for me at least, pop music. Kuka is exuberant and energetic. There is no talking, no attempt at straightforward jokes with the audience or clowning buffoonery, but I smiled through the whole show. These two captured a feeling of spontaneous joy in playing around with each other and with the juggling props. As the review in Juggle magazine, (which I have since lost, and am therefore forced to paraphrase instead of quote,) said, the Kuka show walks a line between choreography so jazzy and fun it looks like improvisation, and improvisation between people so in tune with each other, it looks choreographed. At the time that I saw this show, I had relatively recently stopped juggling with my main juggling partner of five years. After the performance, I found myself actually feeling lonely, and wishing I had someone with whom to enter into that juggling space, where you’re so in step with your partner that juggling patterns just click together, and you’re both breaking ground into exciting new tricks and patterns, and laughing together the whole way. These were feelings I had encountered assorted times, sometimes at conventions with certain jugglers, learning new crazy passing patterns, sometimes with a particular partner when everything came together. I was sad, but I was also thankful that Kuka had taken me there again, at least for a while.

I’d like to add a bonus video that I came across recently, while looking for clips for this series of posts. This is another trailer, this time for a video that Wes Peden put together with Jay Gilligan, focusing entirely on three ball body throws (behind the back, for instance, being a common example.) This showcases some of the technical chops and creativity these guys have.

Tune in next time as we slow it down again….

This is the first in what I hope will be a fun series of posts about jugglers and juggling routines that I think are amazing: a showcase of personal favorites. I plan to stick to routines or jugglers that I have seen live, and left the show thinking, “Wow, that was incredible!” Some may lean towards innovation in technique and juggling. Some may lean towards artistry and expression. All, I think, include elements of both, and all expanded my own idea of what juggling performance could be. And, of course, I would love to see all of them gain greater recognition.

So for the first entry, I present Steven Ragatz!

I have seen this routine live at least twice, and would gladly see it again, many times over. Clean, polished, smooth, and almost contemplative, every aspect from the set and prop design through the music and outfit reflect the businessman character that Steven has created. This is juggling as Theater, bringing the audience to a place where, Mary Poppins-like, moments of magic intrude into the ordinary with nary a hiccup. He becomes playful as normal objects magically transform into movement, but, refined gentleman that he is, he never loses his composure. And when it is all over, he returns everything to its proper place, and leaves to go about his business. This is one of the most cohesive juggling routines I have ever seen.

Stay tuned for future posts in this series…balls, clubs, pop juggling, diabolo, we’ll have it all! With gushing, semi-articulate praise from me padding things out!

I got off of work at 11:00PM, listened to McCain’s speech in the car on the way home, and managed to walk to the Empire bar to join Erica and some friends before Obama started his speech. It was incredibly heartening to see the crowd of people in the bar, already celebrating as they waited for the acceptance speech. We listened, applauded, cheered, and, when it was over, went out into the street in hopes of finding other happy people. We wandered through the old port area, stopping by a couple of bars and clubs, calling and texting random people, and I spent a good half hour on the phone with my mother in Austin. It was shortly thereafter that we heard cars honking and momentary sounds of chanting from up in Monument Square. We made our way there to find a couple dozen people, clapping out a simple rhythm, dancing, and yelling. The group grew over the next hours, with people bringing pots and pans to beat, cars stopping to honk and high five the revelers, and many improvised chants and even a couple of speeches. We finally went home at around 2:30 or 3:00 (I had a team meeting at work scheduled for 8:30 the next morning,) still full of energy.

There were many cameras, and at least two people were recording audio. One person, looking suspiciously like a Salt student, came by to ask people, including Erica and myself, about the experience. One video made it to YouTube shows some of the growth of the celebration, and also features Yours Truly a little past the one minute mark:

My only complaint about the night, and unfortunately it is featured in the video, concerns the speechifying. This amounts to a minor quibble, but I do not think that now, or that night, was the time to mutate “Yes we can” into “Yes we did.” I feel that the point of Yes We Can is to encourage people to actively engage in the current situation, in government, and in society. It is a call to empowerment of the individual, and an attempt to end people’s disenfranchisement with government. I was not there to celebrate the end of the race, or even just the liberal victory of its outcome, but rather to hope for, and celebrate the beginning of, a fundamental change in the direction of my country. Tuesday ensured that change will come to the highest levels of our government, and that is wonderful, but I feel that the momentum of local and individual activity connected to this race and campaign can bring important change on a much more intimate scale.

Mainly, though, I’m just glad that I can have confidence that my country will not invade another country unprovoked within the next four years. It is such a relief.

Today it snowed, but it feels like winter is letting go.. It has been warmer for the past week and none of the snow is sticking. I think it cracked the fifty degree mark a couple of days ago!

The job hunt continues…and once that is done, everything should be settled into place for a while. I think there will also be a lot of opportunities to juggle around here too.

This is all, of course, tangential to the truly important thing I discovered tonight, buried in the comments of that thread.

At first glance, I thought this was creationist-made, in support of that Expelled movie. After several more delightful viewings, I have come to the following conclusion. This video required far too much talent, too great of rap skillz, and to much genuine humor to have possibly been made by a religious fundamentalist or creationist. It just has that certain…je ne sais quois. I cannot stop laughing at the Daniel Dennet..and the Sam Harris..and the Darwin…

And I love it.

Estrogen Fest happened a couple of weeks ago. I think our two nights went quite well, although I felt slightly better about my performance on the second night. There was videotaping going on, and my understanding is that we will get a copy once everything is put together.. Stay tuned.

What stood out as I watched, and I think deserves some comment, is one particular testimony from one of the “medical” talking heads on the program.  He had just finished suggesting that people use the Secret to improve their health, delicately attempting to prevent future lawsuits by encouraging people to, of course, rely on traditional medical help for serious illness, but to turn their minds to exploring other paths at the same time.  He then went on to describe how sometimes, doctors have given patients a sugar pill, telling them it was medication.  Lo and behold, these patients healed just as quickly as those on actual medication, if not quicker!  And this, he tells us, is the Secret.

Now, disregarding his likely skewing of any actual data on such studies, this man has just come out and all but stated that the Secret is nothing more than a placebo effect.  A placebo effect!  The Secret is just a sugar pill you can take, and tell yourself that you feel better.  I’m surprised they included that, for I would have thought it a bit of a giveaway that this snake oil they’re hawking might not actually do much.

First up, super speedy cheese with Dragon Force. Check out the dueling solos! Burn!

Next up, Nightwish! Finnish symphonic metal. I was puttering around iTunes and YouTube when I discovered them, and immediately sent this video to all my friends. For some strange reason, no one else was nearly as excited as I was. Still, Hiromi bought me a cd for my birthday. Long intro, but stick around for the operatic vocals, and the keyboard solo!

Finally, we have Arch Enemy! Swedish melodic death metal with a supremely badass German vocalist, Angela Gossow.

On a side note, I suspect that metal has developed such intricately differentiated sub-genres just so that fanboys can fight over which one is best, and over which bands epitomize each one, and which bands don’t belong in their sacred chosen sub-genre.