Yup.  I think I finally have all the parts I need.  This photo actually has quite a few projects in it, including the machinery for the pumpkin laser vortex… but that’s another story.  And yes, that is a Barbie hair dryer.  This trophy will be for the 2009 Ultimate Battletop Championship: Wisconsin, and it’s gonna be awesome.  You can see it in person if you come to MadFest.

Eric Wolff with his 11″ diameter top. The largest he’s ever made… so far.

For the average person, the phrase “spin-top people” is not one that is heard very often. Of all the very small social groups I belong to, the top-spinners are one of the smallest; I think only “paddleballers” are fewer in number. At the MadFest Juggling Convention this year we had a really good showing of spin-top people… and that means that there were 7 of us. Eric and Noah Wolff, Alan and Robert Gray, Chris Mulhall, Steve Brown and me.

The normal progression of events when top-spinners get together is:

1. Show off new tops. This rarely takes very long since there are virtually no mass-produced tops, so it’s really a question of who had the time to make some themselves.
2. Show off new tricks. This also rarely takes long since there are very few new tricks developed each year.
3. Play Battle Top.
4. Continue playing Battle Top until it degenerates into a different game that is way more fun.

Battle Top is a game where someone puts down a target/arena like a Frisbee or a plate, and then everyone stands in a circle around the arena and tries to throw a top into it one at a time. If you miss the arena you are out, the top that spins longest inside the arena is the winner. The one exception: if you throw your top and the tip lands on the crown of another top that’s already spinning in the arena, you win instantly. When played exactly by the rules Battle Top is fun for a little while, but what usually makes it really fun is that it doesn’t take long for us to start modifying the way we play.

A few years ago one of the guys, either Alan Gray or Eric Wolff, brought an oversized Battle Top top he made that had massive spikes coming out of the sides. No one could beat it, but it was hilarious to see our little tops get instantly banged out of the ring.

At MadFest this time the Battle Top game degraded in three stages. First, Alan, Eric and I got out our mid-size tops. Commercial tops are usually about 3″ tall with a diameter just over 2″. Our mid-size tops are all in the 4-5″ diameter range and made of wood. This version of the game was really fun because the big tops couldn’t all fit in the ring at once, and we decided it would be funnier if we all threw at the same time. With each throw, the three tops would usually meet in the air above the Frisbee with a big CLOP and it was pretty random as to whether any of them would land in the Frisbee at all.

The next level of degeneration happened when more top-spinners showed up. We were playing Battle Top with the standard rules, and I decided that it was a good time to practice the overhand throw. The standard throw nowadays is a forehand horizontal motion like you would use when playing tennis. The throw I decided to work on is more like the motion that you would use to swing a hatchet, and is the throw that is used when the goal is to split the other guy’s top in two.

I had heard about this throw ever since I started spinning tops, but I could never find anyone who could actually do it. Any time I would do a show for an audience that included men from Mexico or South America they would come up afterward to tell me about how they used to split their friends’ tops when they were kids. I could never get anyone to show me the throw because 1) I didn’t want them to break my top, 2) my top was different than what they used as a kid, 3) they couldn’t remember how to do it, or in some cases 4) they didn’t actually know how to do it in the first place. Lucky for me I know Jon Gates. Jon is a natural with tops, and he figured out the overhand throw and showed me how to do it.

Since I had never really had the chance to practice the overhand throw, my aim was terrible, which was good for my friends because the few times I did hit their tops I did some real damage. There was little risk of me splitting anyone’s top since we were all using modern plastic ones, but mine had a metal tip and delivered some mean gouges and battle scars. It was really fun to be able to work on this throw; I never get to practice it because it is so brutal. Even just dropping a spinning top on a wood floor from waist height will leave a noticeable dent, so intentionally throwing one really hard into the floor is out of the question. We were standing on a thick plastic floor-protector that was keeping the basketball court under us safe, so I had nothing to worry about. I dinged up my buddies’ tops and nearly put a hole in the Frisbee, and just as some other people were learning the overhand throw the game degenerated once more.

As if no one would notice, Eric went over to his bag and took out one of his big tops. It wasn’t the largest one he brought with him, but it was at least eight or nine inches in diameter. When he spun it, all the little tops were instantly knocked away. It was a large wood top with an opening about 4 inches across… just big enough to land a little top inside. I don’t know who started it, but the game instantly became to see how many little tops we could land inside the giant top before it stopped spinning.

It was SO fun! Who would’ve known? Sometimes the little top would keep spinning inside the big top which allowed plenty of time to try to get more in there, and sometimes (like when my lefty-spinning top made it inside) the little top would just get pinned to the side of the big top and the off-center weight made it impossible to add more tops. Our goal became to get three little tops in the big top before it stopped spinning, and after about an hour and a half we did it. The big top had a bunch of really vicious gashes in it from the little tops that had metal tips, but it just meant that Eric has a trophy to go along with the story.

MadFest is the annual regional juggler’s convention that is held each January in Madison Wisconsin. I have helped organize it to one degree or another since it started. For the last six years I have been in charge of the Public Show.

This year, as usual, we had a fantastic show. We had great jugglers like Luke Wilson (Brittish, living in Germany) and the Dew Drop Jugglers (Minneapolis/St. Paul MN) and we had great variety acts like The Rope Warrior (Chicago) and the Flybar Pogo Stick Demo Team (Chicago/Ohio), and sold out our 1300 seat theater once again. It’s always a challenge convincing people to go to the show, but once they go they are usually astonished at how great it was. For the most part, once people have seen the show they make it a family tradition to go every year. Initially it was frustrating to me that people didn’t seem to believe me that the show was going to be good enough to be worth seeing. I eventually got over the fact that not everyone thinks juggling is as cool as I do, although that never seemed like the whole story. This year I think I have seen the light, and my frustration has changed to a slightly different form: I think that American society no longer believes that live entertainment is worth the trouble.

I don’t know exactly where this lack of faith comes from, and of course there are exceptions like Broadway and rock concerts, but for the most part Americans won’t make the effort to see live shows. In our modern society people tend to be more isolated from their neighbors than ever before. There is more fear than ever about the dangers of the wide world outside (sometimes justifiably), and that is combined with less reason to leave the home to find high quality entertainment. People just don’t go out as much as they used to. With the amazing advances in technology we can have more top-quality entertainment at our fingertips than we will ever have time for. But, in my opinion, nothing can ever beat being in the audience of a great live show. Ever. This is where Chris Bliss comes in. Stick with me though, I’ll get back to him in a minute.

I have long wondered why the great old vaudeville theaters are so grand, and modern theaters are usually so boring. For a while I thought it was just the style at the time, or that we don’t value ornate buildings anymore, but that’s not it. I have been reading a history of Vaudeville called “No Applause, Just Throw Money” by Trav S.D. and it has shed some light on this question. It all comes down to money. When the great Vaudeville theaters were built, Vaudeville WAS the entertainment industry. The whole thing… or nearly so anyway. The content of the shows was always changing and the customer never completely knew what they were going to see. As a result, one of the only ways the theater had to bring people to their shows, and not those of their competitor across the street, was to build a fantastic theater that people wanted to come to. Part of the reason that it was worth the expense was that live performance was the only game in town. Radio was in its infancy and television did not yet exist, so if you wanted entertainment you went out to the theater. It was a big market.

Ok, back to Chris Bliss. One of the reasons his video was such a big hit is that it struck at just the right cultural moment. Many jugglers complained that his performance was not particularly good because the juggling wasn’t difficult, but there is no question that it was a great performance if you listen to the reaction of the crowd. Although I think that with fairly little effort Chris Bliss could make that routine a lot better, it is definitely a great performance, and if the point is to make a living, a great performance is the most important thing of all.

The Chris Bliss video is not a live performance, but it is a recording of a live performance, and the reaction of the crowd is infectious even through a computer monitor. So what the video turns out to be is a live performance that happens to be in just the right format to get in front of millions of people who don’t go out to see live performance, and they loved it.

That is exactly why the Chris Bliss phenomenon was so frustrating. I do not know Chris Bliss. I have nothing against him or his performance. If we were friends I would give him some constructive criticism, and he might or might not take it. I have seen many, many truly great performances in my time as a working professional entertainer, and as an avid attendee of juggler’s conventions; what frustrates me is that my knowledge of great live performances shouldn’t be anything special. It should be something that all Americans have in common. We have an astonishing number of truly great live entertainers in this country, and most people don’t know it. If we had a successful network of cabarets and other smaller more accessible live entertainment venues like they have in Germany, the Chris Bliss phenomenon would not have happened because Americans would already know that great live entertainment exists. There are many great performers from around the world who live and work in Germany because there are so many performing opportunities, and Germans appreciate live performance.

By the popularity of the TV show America’s Got Talent it seems as though there is some demand in this country for variety arts, but that show will not be the one to deliver it to us. After reading some of their legal documents, and talking to former contestants, it is clear that the show was created to find musicians and sign recording contracts.

I know how convenient it is to not have to leave your home to get a movie, or how easy it is to just flip on the TV and find something great to watch, but I think that American society as a whole is really missing out on a great resource that is within easy reach. What we need now is a venue for it, and to get up off our collective butts and see some great shows.

resources:

Chris Bliss Diss video by Jason Garfield. This one got a LOT of heat, and made it to the national news. It is from the viewpoint of a highly technical juggler.

Amazing Juggling Video. Perhaps the best juggling video I have ever seen. Keep in mind that videos and performances are not the same thing.

Also, we will once again have the Wisconsin State Yo-yo Contest at MadFest this year.  Unfortunately, this was the year of starting everything later than I should have, so there aren’t many details up about the contest yet, but that should change soon.

After shooting the video of Fat Boy Slim’s song “That Old Pair of Jeans” with Chris Bliss, a call went out for jugglers to submit their own videos juggling to the same song. While there is no live audience in Mark and Vova’s video, it is SO much more interesting than Chriss Bliss’ performance with the same track, and it shows so much more of the potential of great juggling. This is not a totally direct comparison since it is an edited production vs. a (basically) live performance, but I think you will see my point. Make the comparison for yourself.

Check out Mark and Vova’s video.

The Chris Bliss version on Fat Boy Slim’s website. Click on Video.

My thoughts on the phenomenon of Chirs Bliss juggling to a Beatles song (w/link to the video)