Meanderings of a Monkey Juggler

Saw "Napoleon Dynamite" last night.

Hmm.  I haven't seen many fillums that have been cobbled together from merely one idea for one set-piece.  In this case the writers clearly thought "I know!  Let's have a nerd dancing really well.  Now how do we set a fillum around that central scene?"

In fact the only fillum that I can think of that had less of an auspicious beginning was the Troma flick called "Mutant on the Bounty".  I'm convinced they had that title way before they'd thought of a fillum to put it on.

Bits of Napoleon were funny.  The acting was indifferent.  The love interests weren't interesting.  But the dancing was good.

Have fun.

Welcome to the mental world of the Japanese.  If you've read this for a while you'll know I of a GameCube and that there has been some interest in Nintendo's next console codenamed "Revolution".  I think this is a good name that describes what they're trying to do in changing how games are played rather than just shinying up the pictures.

So lots of interest has been garnered and secrets have been kept about exactly what the machine will be able to do.

Hard-core gamers have been turned off by the stated lack of HD graphics.  Some were turned off by the weirdness of the controller (its selling point if you ask me).  And now Nintendo have just wrecked any chance of salvaging their reputation at all.  They've just released the name of their new machine.  But it's the "Revolution".  Sadly no.  They've decided to call it; I can't bring myself to mention this now.  They've decided to call it the Nintendo "Wii" (pron Whee).

I thought it was a joke at first but it appears not.  It was Nintendo of America that announced this.  I wonder if any UK employees have told them that selling a machine that has a name which is a synonym of "urine" is not likely to go down well in the UK.  There are various comments by Nint re why they've chosen this but they really don't wash with me.

Can you imagine.  If I'd said to my mother "Can I play with my Wii now?" she'd have cuffed me round the head and fairly so.

Honestly! 

I'll probably be one of the ones that does actually buy one though.  Can't imagine the crush in the shop for this baby.  And I'll still call it the Revo.  Otherwise I'll have to walk into a shop and ask "Can I have a Wii please?" and they'll fall about laughing.

Have fun.

K's just ordered some "nutrional supplements".  Ie a waste of money when you could eat properly instead.  Anyway the stuff arrived and has come with a catalogue of further rubbish.  AND it came with a similar catalogue of "pet products".  So along with the standard "de-worming" stuff and "healthy fur and bones" tinctures there are some hysterical products in there.

I'll start with "Aggression Formula - Control aggressive pets" - seems fair enough.  But who on earth would need

"EasyTravel Solution - Pet motion sickness remedy"?  Or what about

"Grief and Pining Formula - For pet depression"? Or even

"PetCalm - Soothe anxious pets naturally"? Or my all time fave

"Performance Plus - For pet's mental clarity".

Who dreams up this pile of garbage?

Have fun.

BJC - Day 4

Up early again and off to be around the site to see wassarp.

Some juggling with Bear; nicely managed a few 7 club things between us and had a sound go at 8.  No prizes for neatness though.

More nattering with people and that was about it.  A couple of people asked me for further info re some pains they'd mentioned earlier in the weekend but nothing new was forthcoming.

While I'm on the subject there have been 1 or 2 mentions of aches and pains (on rec.juggling) during the event by the odd person but none of those complaining bothered to come and contact me. Fools!  I'm free if you're skint and yours for a pasty if you're not.  Ask me questions, that's half of why I'm there; and my details were in the book you got given when you arrived!  Honestly.

Anyway we packed up and headed off.  Met up with The PB's and John and Lizzah just past Bristol for a few mo's then we're back here in Leicester in nary a blink of a lamb's tail.

K's broken the computer again (every time I go away!).  I'm ill again (tonsillitis) to the extent that they sent me home on Monday morning.  Back at work tomorrow.

So overall then how did it go?  Swimmingly.  The organisers did an excellent job despite putting the event in as near an inaccessible part of Britain as they could (for the 2nd year in a row).  My biggest gripe was that the event wasn't long enough; so it can't have been bad.  Really looking forward to next year now.  Sadly there'll be no more camping con's for me this year as I'm now completely out of holiday from work.

People:  I met and "experienced" loads of people this weekend.  Some of them stood out for just being nice people, others were talented and a few had both sides to them.  Here's a few that stood out to me-

• Matt Hall - Talented performer and seemed a genuinely lovely bloke.  Didn't introduce myself to him as I'm not a glory chaser (unlike a few people I could mention) but I'd guess that he'd be the sort of guy who's extraordinarily generous (possibly to a fault).
• Aaron Gregg - Similarly an extremely likeable guy.  Funny on stage and (apparently) off in equal measure.
• Luke Burrage - Ego on legs?  Or selfless organiser?  You can decide but he impressed me spectacularly with his organising and handling of BYJOTY - cheers for that.
• Hayley - Organiser of the event and winner of many sleepless nights.  Obviously knackered but still cheery enough to get stuff sorted as it came up.
• Jevan - Mr "20p" - loads of comments have been made by people getting grumpy with him for his dogged persistence in getting that next "20p".  I don't see it like that at all.  He was demonstrating the spirit of sheer determination and youthful hope.  Sadly this doesn't seem to have vanquished the spirit of curmudgeonliness and experienced cynicysm.  A shame and I liked him so there.
• Claudia and her partner - a couple of very nice Italians experiencing their first BJC.  Lovely to meet and to natter with.
• Carla - for being such a sport despite your problems.
• Anwen, Lucy and Ewan - for feeding me well; you lovely people.

As you can probably tell I had a great time and am sad to be here rather than still having fun there.

Cheers to all.

Have fun.

BJC Day 3

How to follow yesterday?

Well with better sleep certainly.  I actually got some at last.  Throat still painful.

Started the day with another 3 hours of physio work.  More interesting folk and strange and common problems.  After yesterday's pasty my rewards today included cake and ice-cream.

After 1 I saw the Circomedia show.  Some was good but suffers from too much over-acting.  The juggling bloke was very very good as were one or two of the aerial performers and the acro person.  D put it best when he commented that it was too early to sit through the full-on circus atmos.  Some of the kiddy heckles were good.  "It takes a lot of practice" and "Are you scared?" stand out as good examples.

Then to bed for a touch more sleep.

I was woken up by D nattering to someone.  I expected it to be a unicyclist he'd met on his ride out that afternoon.  Not quite.  Turns out P, C and L had come down to congratulate John.  So more people to play with.  Yay!

The main show was on later so after some very nice fish 'n' chips we got on an extremely old bus for the long trip to Redruth for the public show.  The bus struggled really quite badly and we got to Redruth just as the bus broke.  Then we found that the show was delayed by various rumoured times ranging from 60 to 90 minutes.  So for food.  Nasty place with poor service.  Clare ordered potato skins with bacon and cheese.  "Ok that's one skins with cheese and bacon."  Oh you should have seen her grumble at this "It says bacon and cheese in the menu!".  Cue autistic behaviour.

The show started pretty much as we arrived despite plenty of folks being still in various pubs and caffs in the town as they'd been told the delay was longer than it really was.

The show:

• Matt Hall - Compere.  Lots of Japanese anecdotes, the most memorable being the "Scissor, paper, stone" variant which added "Look over there".  Ewan came up to compete and won. 
• Freehand Jugglers - Aerotech display.  Nice juggling and I liked the screen thing they had going.
• Jon Udry - Much better act than the last time I saw him.  Liked this one a lot.
• Apex Acro - as seen at Chocfest.  Good to see a skillful act doing well.  I like that this is so different from the other stuff on.
• Moon Balloon - Odd thing involving juggling in a balloon.  Not impressed by the act but impressed by the inventiveness of it.
• Luke and Pola - as NAJC2.  Very droppy though.  A shame 'cos I like this routine.
• Aaron Gregg - funny but very droppy. Beautifully parodied later in Renegade.
• Marco Pauletti - 5 ball stuff with globalls.  Good stuff but I wasn't as impressed as others clearly were.
• German bloke doing devilstick - not fussed with devilstick but the mime stuff at the beginning was excellent.
• Beyond the Bounce - very nice and inventive ball bouncing routine - loved it.
• Niels Dunker - Technical juggly stuff - nice.
• Ryo Yabe - star turn.  Extremely proficient diabolo stuff.  Amazing!

An excellent show with variety, humour and skill.  Just a shame it was 40 miles from the convention and that the theatre (cinema) wasn't big enough to hold all the convention goers in one sitting.

The bus trip back was storming.  My friends had all sodded off so I spent the trip with 2 lovely Italians I'd met in workshops and with the bloke that was always asking for "20p" if he showed you a trick.  Well anyway the bus was another double decker and there were balloon fights between the decks.  Someone would blow up a balloon and then "set it off" after climbing up or down the stairs.  After a while of this someone came up with the wheeze of putting a trip-wire across the stairs.  So a balloon was tied across the bottom and then more and more were added.  What was left resembled a mad spider's web.  Eventually those upstairs noticed this thing blocking their egress.  It all went quiet for a bit and then someone came down the stairs with a perfect balloon model spider to add the cherry on top.  All this was helped by the driver not really complaining despite being hit by a stray flying balloon.

Spent the next part of the evening watching the renegade show.  Some was appalling, some was good. Stands out were Matt Hall sings Tenacious D, The Reduced Public Show Co., Mini dribbling chilli vodka into Matt Hall's mouth from his own, shouting loudly at the person who complained that we were too loud.

After this I stayed up very late finally chatting with some old pals.  And so to bed.

Have fun.

Day 2 - BJC

Knackered to start with as no sleep.  GRR! 

My first job was to run a clinic session for 3 hours.  The room I got was the store-cupboard off the main hall.  Not too bad but very cold.  At first it looked like all I would be wasting my time so I sat and played Scrabble for a bit.  Then the floodgates opened.  I wasn't quiet until gone 1 o'clock so that's when I packed up to give myself a break. 

After grabbing food me and D wandered into town to watch some performers and the games.  I missed Tempei but caught Dan the Hat who was doing a spot-on street act.  I particularly liked the tea-spoon trick.  Games were cool, notably for Peachi's choices of backing music.  One stood out was a series of different drum rolls (if I remember correctly this was during the club balance).  Philip was doing damn well in just about every event and managed a couple of second places.

I had another workshop to run so left early to get ready. 

This workshop was much better than day 1's.  The turn-out was bigger and more varied.  I hope I made some sort of sense but I assume I did because I went overtime somewhat.  In York I did 90 minutes instead of 60.  This time the session took 2.5 hours!  And most people lasted to the 2 hour mark.  This is when my throat started to hurt.  Ewan came to ask me some advice as well and he rewarded me with a pasty! Cool!  Bizarrely, despite being in Cornwall, he didn't give me a cornish pasty rather a "mediterranean veg" pasty.  No worries though, it hit the spots of assuaging my hunger and of sheer surprise.  Made me smile a lot.

Met up with more folk later and me and D headed out to watch the BYJOTY competition.  For the first time at a convention on of my mates was going on stage (actually the second time, since we saw Phil at York).  Lizzah's brother John entered, after ages saying he wasn't going to the convention anyway.

I had very high hopes for a good show when the first act came on and actually had a personality and character to play rather than just coming on and doing some tricks.  Shame he was so droppy. Other good acts included:

• Zack - excellent diabolo routine and won the Crawley Convention award (ie he gets to perform at the next Crawley Con).  Well deserved.
• Norbi - he did his ring thang again.  I've said before that I like this routine. It fits the music perfectly and isn't just about pure technical skill.  He was a tad droppy though.  (The curse of droppyness seemed to infect the regulars as Luke struggled during the con as well).  He won the prize to perform in next year's BJC show.
• Arron - Of "Vote Arron" fame.  Nice attitude and played up well to that character.  Some excellent skills and a deserving winner of the judges prize for best act.
• "Lucy" - Aka Lukas in drag.  Nice ball holster!  Surprising and confident performance.  Nice to see a teenage bloke being comfortable with performing to the extent of allowing dragging up.

The winner was our John.  This is mad!  Our John!  He came on to an odd introduction from Luke.  I paraphrase here but it went something along the lines of "Here's John Peat from Leicester.  He'll show you something a little different.  The only other thing I've written is 'prehensile toes'. So here's John!"

John used some very odd music that reminded me of the Crazy Frog and as he juggled he was pulling the most extraordinary facial gurns.  I can't wait to see the video of this routine.  The crowd loved the whole ensemble; the character, the energy, the strangeness of his moves, his kick-ups and his weird feet.  He stormed it.  Peachi has stated that John got about 1/2 the votes cast.  Now that's impressive.  Well deserved.  He now has lots of glory-hunting new friends and the added pressure of fame when he's out and about.

I was very impressed with the post-award interview.

• "So this was your first time on the stage." - "No I came on seventh".
• "But you've never performed on a stage before." - "Once during the Tech-run".

It confused Luke somewhat but gave us all a great laugh.  Poor John couldn't stop shaking that evening.  Oh and he won the best trick comp as well with a multiplex to 6 ball mills.

I'd also have to say that I was damn impressed by Luke during this show.  For a bloke I've said (and I'm sure others have too) has an unrestrained ego he looked so genuinely happy to see this show and these jugglers shine that I can't believe it was anything other than a real joy that these guys were getting on stage and just doing their thing.  Cheers to Luke for this show.  I missed the first BYJOTY but I'm so glad you kept at it as this was a stunner.  Thanks.

Things in the tent quietened down after BYJOTY but I wandered in at the start of that night's Renegade show and it was being hosted by Aaron Gregg. He was as funny here as he was in the Open stage the day before.  It started very slowly as the usual reluctance to perform was there.  Some notable (not able?) performances included

• Mario the Magician - "3 cups, 3 balls; 3 balls, 3 cups!"
• Man being lifted by his hair.
• Tempei and Luke - diabolo vertax passing.
• Tempei - Cowboy rope tricks!  Oh and he was made to "perform monkey boy!" by people insisting he did his trademark vertax genocide.  Oh and remember that triple genocide he did at York?  Old hat old boy - the bar is now at a quin!

A storming day marred only by tiredness all day and a sore throat.

Have fun.

The BJC has come and gone again.

This was my first BJC since '99 so I was looking forward to it.

Day 1

A long drive with D was actually not as long as expected and tent-upping was painless.  Immediately on entering the reception of the Dragon Centre for the first time I was accosted by a stranger wanting assistance with his aches and pains. Bear in mind I hadn't even picked up my convention pass at this point.  Rod appeared and mentioned that they'd already had some requests for me so that bade well for those clinic sessions I had planned.

After setting up camp I wandered a bit and just met a few folk and nattered.  I had a workshop to run as well and this was reasonably well attended but I think I'll not bother with that particular workshop again.  It's just too talky and not enough for people to do.

The first show of the weekend was the Open Stage hosted by TimFoolery.  It was a very entertaining set of acts held together well by the compere.

The acts:

• Tim from Hull – A lovely old style fire eating and breathing act.
• Matt Hall – Our first meeting of Matt and he managed some storming diabolo stuff whilst entertaining us very well.
• Aaron Gregg – Once in every BJC there comes a time when the “catchphrases” that endure the con are made.  Aaron’s routine was that time and place.  Potential and actual catchphrases included “It’s ok it’s the jam one”, “It’s behind you”, “Ask Tom” and the title of this entry.  Very funny and set the entertainment bar high.  The only man I’ve ever seen sellotape jam to a juggling club.
• Bendy Dan – I’ve not seen him for years but he showed up and did his thang.  Nice to see that he’s maintained the tradition of a different hair colouring scheme every convention.
• Marco Pauletti – Argentinian bloke doing a weird contact routine with balls and torches.  Nice idea but it didn’t do anything for me.
• Luke B – He really struggled with this one.  And you don’t have to take my word on it.  There were 2 heckles that stood out. The first one was “Luke Burrage – British Juggling Legend” and another was from a small kid and was said in a matter-of-fact way at normal volume; “He can’t even do 3”.

After a long day’s travel and all this entertainment it was time to sleep.  Sadly the weather was awful and the rain kept me awake for the first 2 hours.  Then some middle-class rebel teens were having a natter about life and sex in the tent 3 down from mine and it was all really cringe-worthy stuff.  You know the sort of thing when teen boys with too much confidence try things on with teen girls who are too impressed with forced bravado.  Anyway that was bad enough but then after 2 hours of this crap was the pay-off.  This bloke’s girlfriend had been waiting for him in the tent 2 down from mine and had heard everything that I had.  Cue big fight and acrimonous break-up.  Sadly for me it took them 2 more hours to work through it all and kept more than a few people awake.  I don’t care if her life was over, I didn’t get any sleep!

Ah there that’s better.  Day 2 to follow!

Have fun.

I've just sat and watched a new Beeb panel game.  The most notable thing about it was that it was presented by Danny Wallace of "Join Me" and "Are You Dave Gorman?" fame (he was also the producer of the radio 4 "Ross Noble Goes Global" shows.  (Incidentally I would strongly recommend all of the above, and you can hear ALL of the Ross Noble shows on the site).

So a panel game?  On BBC1? At prime time?  Yes that's right and pretty much what I thought.  Corporate whore or what?

Actually I found the show amiable enough if not actually funny. Probably better than "A Question of Sport".  (I hope they use that as an advertising quote)

It's called "School's Out" and is based around the idea of being in school. 3 celebs get asked questions on school subjects.  The most memorable thing about it was that all the questions were ridiculously easy.  I even got all the english lit and history questions.  The best bit by far was watching the "French oral" exam.  This is where a real French person asks questions to the guests and marks them on their responses in French.  One was awful, one was OK and Mel Giedroc was excellent although she did answer "I am Mel Giedroc" to the question "How are you?"

I was watching this and thinking; "Could they actually do this in say Germany or France?"  Imagine a German TV star being asked questions in English.  I'd imagine they could speak quite well on all manner of topics and probably in at least 2 foreign languages.  But you should have heard the pantomime "oooohhh"s from the crowd when Mel started talking about her kids in a foreign lingo.  Anyone would think it was difficult and weird to learn another language.  Actually the difficult bit is true enough but it's only us (in western europe) who are crap at it and so never bother.

In short.  Well done, good effort but likely to improve with further application.

Have fun.

Now then just how would you advertise a poliical party?

First off you have to say what that party actually stands for, yes?  How about saying a bit about that party's record in local and national government?  What about the leader?  Is he a good guy (as there are no girly leaders)?

Well that's what I'd have thought.  But then I'm neither an advertising copywriter nor a politician.  I suppose that the marriage of politician and advert exec would be a product made in the depths of the hell of cynicism and I'd be right.

I've just had the misfortune to see the latest "Party Election Broadcast" by the Labour lot. Well here's a turn-up - they're scum.  Who'd have thought it?

Let us return to the idea of advertising yourself.  What do you think this ad told us about the Labour party?  Well the answer was "Nothing".  A bit fat zilch and a void where content should have been.

Instead of a series of benefits to voting red all we got was a CGI chameleon riding a bike.  Yes that was it.  What?!

The conceit was that the chameleon was David Cameroon, changing his ciolours to fit whomever he was speaking to.  Oh that's unusual!  A politician tailoring his message to his audience.  Never?

How on Earth do any politicians ever get off on showing that other politicians are either frugal with the truths they impart or have changed an opinion at one time or another.

TB was once a member of CND, he was a socialist, he was utterly opposed to joining the EU, he was utterly opposed to students having to pay for their education.  And I'm sure there is a catalogue of similar changes of opinion and spin in all parties.

The parties in the UK are currently engaged in trying to figure out why people aren't interested in politics.  Well der!

Just tell us about the bloody issues and what you are going to do about them please!  I really didn't want to see a sub-Pixar piece of cack that tells me a: nothing new about any politician and b: nothing about why I should vote for anyone at all.

Have fun.

[edit: Just seen the blues advert and it hit all the buttons I decried the red one for missing.  All positive stuff about "if you want to go green, vote blue!"  I don't remember seeing any part of it be negative against anyone else.  If this was a race between only 2 groups and I make my mind up on such trivialities as marketing then I'd have to vote blue.]

Pee's older so 'twas his do last night.

We went to The Curry Pot - chosen as it has a good website (apparently).  Any road up we ended up there last evening, P, C, L, D, R and me.  L was late so we just made it on time for the booking.  The place wasn't full anyway so we'd of been ok.

The food was very good and I'm extremely pleased that they offered us some starters and kept pushing us because those starters were grand.

Pee had a "Rara", a couple of us had "Korai" - when D says this he just sounds Brummie "I'd like a lamb korai please".  Made me titter anyhoo.  Add naan and rice and a good time was had for about 2 hours.

Cue a bit of a walk into town for a drink in an empty room above a bustling pub.  I'm not sure many people downstairs knew that the pub had an upstairs. After this drink the party split - actually the party didn't but I did.  Home to sleep.  An enjoyable and full evening.  Memorable for L desperately trying to "enhance Pee's special day!" and the food and generally happy company.

The last point is the photos took on me phone.  Go to the "Photos" page to of a look.

Have fun.