Meanderings of a Monkey Juggler

I wrote me a little review on rec.juggling so here's an expansion of it:

It wasn't an early start and we got there after noon.  There weren't that many folk there tho'.  It never really got busy which has its positives as well as the obvious negatives.  The gym was quiet so there was lots of room to play.  But then nobody to play with.  I did some passing with Rosie and we went to a "Beginners 7 club passing workshop".  There were 2 other people there.  I was probably the best 7 clubber there and Rosie the least practiced so we didn't really do very well but the other 2 obviously had been working together for a while and were ok but no Galchenkos.

There was one other workshop I fancied but ended up meeting 2 of Rosie's friends and going out to watch the football and eat Chinese.

Back for the show and what a show!  Sometimes for the wrong reasons.

• Compere: I can't remember his name but he was excellent.  Witty and talkative and didn't hammer the "come on clap properly" bollocks that many do.
• Breakdancers - the best bdance act I've seen.  They cut down the posturing nonsense and stuck with the tricks.
• Maxlastic - contortionist.  Nice act and good music.  Didn't like looking at it though.  Probably professional worry.
• Eccles - the P word.  I switched off from looking at the poi but watched him move instead.  He's really very graceful.  He should not bother with the poi but work on his dancing.
• Zack and/or Josh Turner. Some juggling at last.  Lots of ball stuff up to 7 ball half shower.
• Salwa - belly dancers.  Some people didn't like it.  Even those who did thought it went on a bit. I found it very entertaining and was pleased to have seen it.  Some of the girls were part of some of the demographics that you wouldn't expect to be into this stuff.  I particularly am thinking of the huge Goth girl.  Plenty of booty to shake.

End of first half.

• Josh and/or Zack Turner.  Diabolo stuff.  As you'd expect he's very good.  I reckon he was using this to get some practice in before Crawley.
• TimFoolery.  We've seen Tim and he was as good as you remember.  Notable for Sam coming out with the "Come on Tim!" line as nicked from The Now Show/Wimbledon.
• Chris and Rich.  Magicians with some danger.  What to say about this one?  Everything went wrong apart from neither of them managed to drink BBQ lighter fluid.  Think a very low rent Derren Brown bit with the volunteer getting his job wrong and announcing the word on stage when he should have kept it to himself.  And then they set fire to the backdrop.  Chaos but strangely dull at times.  It dragged on and on to the extent that the compere came on and gave his: "We are all united.  We all managed to get through that.  It's like coming back from Vietnam - I was there man!" spiel.  That was an excellent summation done on the spur of the moment.  Well done.
• Olly and Ryan.  One of these guys was the man who climbed through the shopping basket at BJC (and was picked up by his hair).  Lots of energetic acro stuff topped off with a shoulder stand on a rola bola followed by a mildly uncontrolled dismount!  And if we merged them together then the merged being would have a normal haircut.

I liked it a lot with an occasional yawn.  But all the acts had their high points.

Home to Rosie's for sleep with Phil and Camille (I can't use "P and C" I must find another.  Perhaps "C and P"?).

Up late and back to sit around and talk a bit some more.  Ended up in pub for dinner with Sam and others.  That was a giggle.

And now I'm at work and not going to EJC.  Sigh.

Have fun.

Just heard this news here.

Boo bad news.

Have fun.

Tis true.  I wuz robbed.  Here's Dave Gorman's signature as presented to me last night.

My idea had the biggest laugh last night (I reckon anyway, and R does too).  I had to stop reading 'cos the crowd laughed so damn hard but no that's not good enough for the honoured guest on the show.  He even compared my idea to "something Shakespeare would have thought of" but somehow that's not genius is it?  Sigh.  Anyway here's a photie of me and R with the (superbly cool) special guest.  You win a prize if you know who it is (D is most likely to know this).

Anyway the day was a belter.  I got down to London and met R in a pub before heading to the theatre.  Met everyone else on the show which included a girl who flew in from the States just for the show (oh and a 2 week holiday).  One guy was on the original pilot (and won it) and he also won tonight's show.  There were some excellent ideas although they can't put all 6 of them into a show.  I assume they'd put the ones that were decided to be genius in (there were 3) and maybe one more.  This means my bit may not get put in.  But as I said I did have one of the biggest laughs of the evening (honest) and they pre-recorded a fantastic lottery-style bit that I'd hope they don't waste.

After the recording we all headed off to the bar and we had a nice chat with everyone there and Dave came up for a drink or two too.  As you'd expect he's a lovely bloke off screen as well and extremely quick with his wit but then he's a professional comedian so you'd expect it really.  I had to leave early (to miss my train - don't ask) but not before getting this:

Have fun.

Once on the show "Genius" someone came up with the rather sweet idea of stopping war by only making guns that fired puppies.  The downside to this was he started wittering about making the puppies then explode when the enemy were all doing their "aaahhhh" noises.  Well I've just seen another story about this sort of thing.

It seems the Japanese are taking to giving teddy bears at weddings.  So one mad Jap inventor has come up with a gun that fires teddy bears.  But wait, there's more.  Not only does the gun fire teddy bears.  It fires teddy bears with parachutes.  So you can shoot over the heads of the wedding party and have your gift of a bear gently float down on the breeze into the bride's hands (or in Clur's case, down her cleavage).  Can you imagine?  I'd like to see Pee nearly choke on that instead of confetti.  Or Clur squirting teddy bear straight into his face.

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.