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Short video of me demonstrating some multiball to two of the kids early on.
The video is not listed and will only be up a short time!

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"There's no point in being grown up if you can't be childish sometimes."

Hello to Jason Isaacs

Last week i had my first expierence with a real audience. My school class went over to an old persons home to entertain them for a while. I brought my acrylics and stsrted juggling. They were all amazed and couldn't believe what they were seeing. One thing that amazed me was I got some fushigi comments. Some of them mentioned that they saw it on TV! I was amazed how even they knew about fushigi. The one move thst just freaked them out was the enigma and the thumbhold. I also played that game where you pretend there is a string connected to the ball and pull it back and forth.
wasn't busking, but first time with a real audience. All in all, went really well.

I was busking once and a man came up to me with a baby carriage, and just started watching for a bit, he seemed pretty restless. I wasn't really paying attention to the baby, but as he gave me some change, he said "I have no idea what that is, but it finally put him to sleep". I thought that was pretty cool at the time, I guess it might come in handy.

This is probably pretty normal, but as I have a tendency to perform under trees, uncountable people assume invisible strings and such while I do the enigma, and a couple who actually refuse to believe there isn't.

HUNDRED DOLLAR BILL IN THE HAT TODAY.

baller.

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il faut pas avoir peur de ta liberte.

So just last week, I joined the annual talent show of my college for the first time, and I decided to go with Metallica's "Enter Sandman". The sun was at twilight, yet I had to keep my sunglasses on due to a nasty stye; I thought it would have been better if I could make proper eye contact with the audience.

The hours before the show, my heart was racing mad, as in it was the fastest my heart has beat in my life! I needed to take deep breaths every now and then just to keep myself calm. This was gonna be my first actual performance, totally different from demonstrations for friends and family members. It didn't help that I've learned a bulk of my tricks just two months ago (although I've practiced and perfected my right-hand butterfly for about six months, but that fact didn't really help much).

Soon, the emcee called for my name - it was my turn.

I've rehearsed my performance a bit, but I didn't do any stage or dress rehearsals whatsoever. Before my anxiety got the better of me, I took one last deep breath and, acrylic in hand, marched into the center front part of the stage, which, by the way, had a layout like that of a runway. I looked up at the ceiling lights that would have hindered my sight was it not for my sunglasses. I looked down at the audience, forced a smile, and got into the starting position. Then, the music played.

At first, my butterflies were a bit rusty, occasionally leaving contact from my skin. I almost dropped the ball at one point, but got lucky when I caught the ball into a cradle with my left hand. I let out a deep but subtle breath and proceeded as planned. Surprisingly, as the song reached the middle, I felt like all worries were gone. I was no longer anxious; as a matter of fact, I was having the time of my life! The acrylic ball just flowed along and around my arms,. When the song reached its end, I bowed, and as I was lifting my head up, I heard an unusual sound: the whole building was applauding! I looked up and found at least half of the audience giving a standing ovation. I spelled "thank you's" with my lips for the audience was cheering too loud for my voice to be heard, after which I returned to my seat among the audience. My friends kept on praising my performance by giving me high-fives from all directions.

My heart stopped racing for the rest of the night - that is, until the announcement of the winners. I thought I'd be lucky to place third, since I was competing with the past winners of this talent show, a comedy duo and a singer with an amazing vocal range. My eyes opened wide when these two acts came second and third place, respectively. When the emcee was in the process of announcing the first-placer, the college roared in excitement. And behold! They called out my name. The cheers grew to their strongest. Amidst this flood of applause, I tried to make sense of what just happened. Good thing the emcee interrupted me from my dazed state and asked me to come back on stage.

So now, I have a shiny golden trophy displayed in my room, but more than that, I have finally found my inner extrovert.

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¡ƃuılƃƃnɾ ʇɔɐʇuoϽ ǝʌol I

WOW!!! That an amazing experience, it sounds surreal! That ought to be enough to keep you CJing for a while. It sounds like you found your flow in the performance.

Congratulations!

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You control the inertia, it doesn't control you.

Wonderful story!

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Never underestimate the complexity of buttered toast

Very awesome and inspiring story.
I hope to be good enough and confident enough in my juggling to do something like that soon.


I was at a birthday party today for the son of a friend of mine and I had brought my juggling things with me. The kids really seemed to enjoy my 3 ball toss juggling and I think they had a good time when I tried to teach them a bit. I was also pretty happy when I pulled out my acrylic and got positive feedback from the kids and the adults. I even convinced the kids that it was controlled by a string. I did eventually tell them that the string wasn't really there because I felt like I was lying to them. It's why I could never be a magician.
Anyway, it was really nice to hear the sound of amazement from the people watching as I did isolations. I don't see them from the perspective of an audience and I don't perform in front of other people much so it's very nice to get positive feedback.

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"People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually, from a nonlinear, non-subjective viewpoint, it's more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey... stuff."
-The Doctor

So watching Richard's busking video Sunday before the show & seeing the slow motion string trick got me inspired to do it myself a bit that night, with amusing results. A friend of someone else in the cast was in the audience and came up afterward to ask how I did it, at which point I did the move & told him it was controlled by strings. Totally buying it, he said, "Aaaw, now it's not as cool!!!"

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Help! The law of gravity has been repealed!
What doesn't kill you makes you harder to insure.

Lol! I'm really amazed by how many people will believe that it's controlled by string!
On the other hand, the fact that they believe it means that you're doing very well controlling your isolations because it looks still enough to support the string theory. It means that your hard work and practice is paying off.
Honestly, we could probably make a graph showing time of practice and the age of the audience you fool with the string trick. With my level of practice it looks like I rank in the "fooling children" category.

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"People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually, from a nonlinear, non-subjective viewpoint, it's more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey... stuff."
-The Doctor

Made an odd audience observation last week.

I decided one day to try out a coloured acrylic for the improv during seating before the show...I've been using my scratched up/chipped clear 76mm, and really don't like having it that close to the audience; it's just too old and damaged. So I brought in a lemon lime instead. Went back to using the old one after that night...The audience, I suppose, automatically thinks 'crystal ball' easier with the clear, and seem to take to it naturally and get right into improving with me and my "assistant" with whom I wander around (Our characters are both so eccentric that we've found it works better to work the crowd as a team). With the coloured ball, however, some of the tables had this look on their face like, "What is that? How am I supposed to react?" at first and it took a little longer to get them really involved.

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Help! The law of gravity has been repealed!
What doesn't kill you makes you harder to insure.

I think that might be because the colored ones aren't nearly as clear as completely clear ones. Clear acrylics look a lot more impressive since... we'll they're clear. Colored balls look more like regular balls, like balls for playing for little children, which might make them not that special for "older" and more "serious" audiences, while a clear acrylic always feels a bit mystical. Maybe using a colored ball might be like using a little basketball and as people might not be interested in interacting with a basketball (because it's just too normal or they are "too old" for it), they might not be interested in interacting with a ball that seems like a regular ball on first sight.

The same applies to contact juggling with acrylics and stage balls. I think acrylics look a lot more impressive for audiences than stage balls, even when you do the same tricks. The acrylic just adds another level of excitment.

At least that's what I think might be the reason. It's a bit sad, but what can you do? A ball is just a ball... and if you want to tell people that it's more than just playing with your ordinary run-of-the-mill ball it helps to have something that doesn't look at all like one... :/

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いつでもストール！

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Never underestimate the complexity of buttered toast

I think so too, with acrylics and stageballs....I just wasn't expecting it with different sorts of acrylics. I've used the coloured ones at festivals before and it hasn't made any difference. Then again, the people there were more used to seeing object manipulation, whereas the ones who come to this show generally haven't seen any before.

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Help! The law of gravity has been repealed!
What doesn't kill you makes you harder to insure.

I had my first practise in the park 2 days ago. There were 2 men walking by with a dog. One of them said " you make it look so easy". I replied " it's really tricky." .......I don't know how to accept compliments.

The weird thing is that I've only been practising for less than a month. I can do an ice cream squeeze up ( if that's what it's called), an index finger roll and a wobbly enigma. Also still attempting the butterfly, but these seem like enough for someone to watch me in the park.

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I wish I didn't get so distract...........oooooohh, something shiny.