15 Apr 2007
Posted in Juggling, Rants, Reviews at 1:00 am by alby
There have been days at conventions that have left me bored, days that annoyed me, days that I’ll remember for years for all the right reasons too but today was the first that actually angered me. But I’ll get to that later.
The day was a bitch from the start. What with stuff breaking in abundance yesterday I needed to get stuff organised so didn’t even get to Nottingham until after 1pm. But the big news of the day was that K was with me and D.
We tried to buy them a day ticket each but no-one was around to do this for us so we headed into town for the games and parade and some food and shopping.
Passed Pee and Compact out on their Cokers. Some mindless chavs giving them grief from the safety of a car too. Who would of thunk it?
K vanished to shop and me and D headed to the games. Nice and lovely weather and plenty of folk around.
Luke B ran the games and I managed a good few photos which I’ll sort through another day. Oh he also managed to get the name of the show wrong and used the name of this site (well the last word of it) instead, when he advertised it..
Met up with the gang for food and ended up in Frankie and Benny’s for pizza and steak although Barnsey spent his time complaining that he wanted some Thai food instead. No pleasing some people.
At the theatre we sat ourselves down for a grand show in an ace venue. All the staples of pre-show were going on so balloons zooming off and balls being bounced around and lots of boos and cheers and waheys when the balls went the right or wrong ways. A nice atmos.
I was sat behind “a perfectly ordinary family” of 2 parents and 4 youngish children. I also discovered that they’d bought their tickets today and had never so much as heard of a juggling convention. So I had someone there to ask about a lay-person’s view of the proceedings. More of that later.
The show:
- Compere: Steve Rawlings – very funny. Old jokes to be sure but he wears them well. Ordinary dad was a little discomforted about some of the language used but also forgave him as he was good enough. K slightly perturbed by the knife through arm gag.
- Flame Oz – fire twirling staff thingy. Nicely choreographed but more often than not not very synchronised. K’s fave act of the first half.
- Norbi – different ring routine from his “jungle” act. Nice music again, some drops but went well enough. Definitely happier on stage nowadays.
- Australian couple whose name I forget. A mix of acro, basic 2 person club sharing action and a bit of humour. Came across well and the acro was pretty good even if the juggling was a little basic for the jugglers in the crowd. K’s second favourite act of the first half.
- Some poi routine or other. Again their only real job was to stay in synch and they regularly failed. One or two nice 2 person shapes though.
- Wes Peden – “cross between art and sports juggling”. A couple of years ago I saw a video of Wes and saw a teenager who was “quite good”. Well now he’s going to be one of the juggling world’s stars and he was very very good tonight. Not faultless but damn close to it. Hard stuff, nice stuff and nice movement and invention. Lovely.
Now at this point I forget exactly what else was in the first half (and Wes may be second half – I’m not very good at this am I?) so I’ll stop there for now and say that I’m enjoying the show so far. Some acts do not a lot for me but others clearly like it and the atmos is good so I’m in a happy place. I have a natter with “ordinary dad” who’s basically enjoying things too and says that he’s seen nothing remotely like this before and his kids are saying they like it too; although their favourite is the man who keeps coming on and saying rude words and pretending to cut through his arm. Rebels them kids eh? So all’s cool.
Rest of show:
- Tempei – lovely devilstick bit, hard tricks and dropless as far as I remember. Nice tune too. Might actually have been in the first half now I think about it.
- Angie hula. I didn’t like the hula act yesterday but this showed just how to do one well. Hate the music as I’ve heard it too often in juggling videos but couldn’t really fault the act otherwise. Excellent.
- William from Taiwan – a tragic victim of the “use glow props and people will be impressed” school of thought. First section of his act did nothing for me. It was just 2 lights moving around. And we couldn’t see how hard the stuff he was doing was. The rest of his act remedied this though as he showed off some breathtaking diabolo stuff with the lights on. Saved it. Oh and K loved this and Tempei’s spot.
- Jason Garfield – quite funny chatty piece and some hard tricks complete with full explanation as to how hard some of it was. Some disparaging remarks about other types of acts, but nothing too malicious.
- Vova Galchenko – similar type of act to Jason with a bit of talking but not as naturally funny as Jason is so had to rescue it by whipping through a very nice 3 club routine and showing off some unfeasibly hard 5 club stuff and finishing with a run of 7 clubs. Start of me getting angry but more on that later.
- Get the Shoe – final act. Zippy club sharing and passing routine with excellent ideas, invention, music and mime. A proper full-on finale act. Best act in the show and a real crowd pleaser. Good choice by the bookers.
Now those of you who were there will notice at least 1 omission. It’s deliberate although I may have omitted one or two others acts accidentally.
What does ordinary dad think? Basically he loved most of it as did his kids. They didn’t get lots of jokes (many were “in-jokes”) but they recognised the skill of most of it but the form of the show as “act-break-act” was unusual to them. Seems odd as this is the normal run of things for us convention-goers.
What did K think? Same as ordinary dad in the main. She’s seen one similar show before. Her favourite acts were not the same as mine (she liked Tempei and William as well as the 2 others noted above; I thought Get the Shoe and Wes Peden were best) so that means the act bookers are doing well to get so many bases covered and keeping all of us happy at some points. It’s clearly a hard job.
So why was I angry?
I’ll take you back to last night and the renegade stage. There are always going to be people that you don’t like or acts you don’t like or types of routines you don’t like. You either like them or you don’t; hey ho, get on with life. What you don’t do is bitch and snipe and then act like you’re being funny. In my book that’s basic bullying and it’s only a small step up from being a complete shit. Behind me was a bloke taking lumps out of the odd performer on stage and trying to get the sycophantic wankers surrounding him to laugh at his appalling attempts to make himself sound more influential/manly (or whatever the hell else inadequancy he was trying to compensate for). I remember when renegade was about laughing along when shit went bad on stage or pantomime booing etc… Yes you don’t like certain acts so either you shut up and bear them until something better comes up or you leave. Yesterday renegade turned sour for me and I didn’t enjoy it because of this idiot and the feeling that he wasn’t the only one like it. I hadn’t mentioned it in my previous post because I hoped it was just a bad one-off. Can people really not see that nastiness just isn’t funny?
Tonight sort of confirmed some fears. First up was Vova. Now I don’t know the back story but he did a piece of club juggling to the piece of music that I mentioned yesterday that Luke used in the WJF. It seems to be a self-penned piece by Luke. I didn’t find it that great. So what? Well it seems that it needs to be mocked in public so why not eh? Because it makes you come across as a shit, that’s why. And it’s hardly as if Vova needs to compensate for any inadequacies so why did he feel the need? No idea.
But top of the shit pile was an old favourite of mine Thomas Dietz. I’ve praised him before but tonight was a major disappointment. If I was an organiser I would have been livid and I’ll go as far as to say that if he got an appearance fee then I’d bloody well ask for it back.
Thomas did a poi routine. Not a straight serious routine but a piss-take; tu-tu and all. I don’t like poi routines in the main but I wouldn’t waste anyone’s time and money by trying to piss all over it like that; certainly not in a public show where people have paid to see something with skill and/or entertainment value – this had neither. So his taking the piss out of poi routines basically wasted our time and money. Ordinary dad didn’t get the “joke”, saw no entertainment in it beyond a man in a dress. K agreed with him. I explained the “joke” she feels the same as me. Why bother?
Then at least this stupendously talented ball juggler could have come out and redeemed himself a little couldn’t he? No other ball routines in the show so surely he’ll do some? No. Really? No. That was it. A pathetic piece of attemped humour by the best bloody juggler in Europe. Thanks very much. Wanker.
I’ve been harsh about shows, routines and occasionally about people in the past but I don’t believe I’ve ever held them up for ridicule before. If I’m being hypocritical then I apologise. I didn’t like some of this tonight and last night and I hope it’s not the way the juggling scene is going. If it is then I’m off in the other direction. If it’s fashionable to bitch and cruelly take the piss then I’m not at that party and good riddance to the lot of you who don’t agree.
Have fun.
Permalink
14 Apr 2007
Posted in Juggling, Reviews at 10:55 am by alby
Well it’s now later than I want on Saturday morning and I’m still at home instead of enjoying myself at BJC.
The car is still shaking despite being “mended”, phoned a garage and it might be an engine mount gone or a broken drive shaft. Ran myself a bath to find that the boiler has broken. The shower leaks into the kitchen. And to top it off K’s phone is dead after she washed it! What an ace morning.
So most of that is being sorted over the next week but I’m unsure whether to drive today and tomorrow.
But enough of woes. Let’s get back to the highs and lows of BJC Friday!
The first thing I did was attend the WJF:UK finals. What to think? Hmm. Still very lifeless but there more going on and all the stars were out to play. First up were Bibi and Bichu whom I’ve not seen for years. They did a passing demo as there were no other teams entered. Very nice stuff with up to 13 clubs.
Balls: Nobody really seemed to run very smoothly as I remember. They all did alright though. Notable was Luke B, not for his juggling which was sound but for his music which seemed to be a self-composed and sung piece. I thought one of their “rules” was no vocals on backing tracks. Maybe not.
Rings: really don’t care about ring juggling that much sorry.
Clubs: Toby Walker stormed it and should have won by a good distance. I didn’t stay for announcements of winners though as I’m still not fussed by bests and seconds etc…
Dietz and Vova didn’t seem to click at all. Dietz in particular didn’t seem to be even trying. He’s in the public show today so I hope he does better. Oh and he looks weird without his facial fuzz.
Back to the gym for more chatting than juggling. Accosted by a couple of people to sort shoulders and backs.
After food it was to the “British-ish Cabaret” for a melange of awful and grand stuff. The first half in particular was pretty bad despite some fine turns by Rob Firey (although even he was a tad droppy on his hat bit), Jago doing some interesting contact stuff and Donald Grant being Donald Grant. There’s a lot there to like so what was so bad? Wonderwoman doing ok hulahoop? How about a belly dance with flags? Would have worked if flags were interesting and she was any good at bellydancing and the music was at a decent pace. This was immediately followed by a poi act. Now I’m only saying what happened – there was an audible groan from a sizable portion of the audience when this was announced directly after the bellydance job. Wasn’t that hot a poi act either – just to top it off. So first half rescued by those mentioned earlier.
Second half was generally better despite a pointless 4 person acro bit with about 3 tricks in it and more dancing. Luke Wilson was rightly the star of the second half although he was run close by a nice 3-ball and coat routine by Luke B. But bizarrest were the headliners. You’d expect Luke Wilson to headline yes? I did but no. Splott Community Circus came on last to do a bit of ballet on unicycles. I’ll take you back a few months or more first. Someone in Nottingham asked us for ideas of who we’d like to see at the BJC. Cue names being suggested and one comment made was “no kids on unicycles spinning round each other”. It’s a bit harsh ‘cos they were good (and funny) but basically they were kids on unicycles spinning round each other. So an odd end to a patchy show.
Stayed for the renegade but needn’t have bothered really. Left before the second poet came up on stage. Before that we’d had some fun with Haggis and Charlie, nice acro bit and the World Juggling Ordinary Every Day Objects Federation with Tempei, Aaron Gregg, Luke B and Wes Peden hosted by none-other than Louis Theroux (aka Nathan Burrage).
So home to discover this morning that everything has broken. Serves me right no doubt.
Sigh.
Permalink
12 Apr 2007
Posted in Juggling, Reviews at 11:46 pm by alby
It’s just after midnight after the second day at BJC. A later finish tonight as there was just more happening and more people to meet and chat with.
Started early enough and managed to get a few more shoulder photos (I am obsessed, really).
Then me and Clurb had another storming passing session managing really nice runs of 7 (in 2, 3 and 4 counts) and 8. At one point we had a couple of people come and ask us for advice/info re passing and that’s never happened to us before. Woot.
We had a couple of workshops pencilled in as well. First was Tarim’s both hands passing workshop. First of all we had to get through the door and some annoying woman was guarding the door with her life. I think she was trying to be humourous with the bloke in front of me by pretending not to know him and hence not letting him in. Not a problem for a second or 2 but this just went on and there were plenty of people stuck behind us waiting for this charade to end and to get in to do stuff. It did but not before voices were raised.
Once finally inside the workshop was hugely over busy and there really wasn’t enough space so we asked Tarim what he was covering and we could already do it anyway so we zoomed off for more practice instead.
Actually I headed over to the WJF site first as I’ve got me a ticket for it but hadn’t seen any of it to that point.
I wandered in to find about 30 people there and Vova was up on stage. It was advertised as “Advanced Competitor Exhibitions” but seemed to be Vova standing there and trying to juggle some patterns suggested by the assembled audience. In practice this was Wes suggesting stuff and Vova struggling to do it. He’s a hugely talented performer but the atmosphere was dead, the crowd not very enthusiastic and all we saw was Vova struggling to do stuff at the limit of his ability hence lots of droppage. Not a great first impression. I didn’t stay around for long. Tomorrow is the advanced competitions so that should be a much better showcase. I heard later that the diabolo and devilstick show they put on was excellent – not a surprise with William and Tempei in the house. Sadly I missed this one.
Back in the gym after bandaging Clurb’s hand up to stop her getting her usual convention sore hand. Worked a treat it did.
Ooh ooh and we saw Lizo from Newsround too! Check here.
At about 6.30 we wandered over to the show site for BYJOTY. This was the best show at Bodmin last year so if I went to any of them this year I wanted to make it for this. I wasn’t disappointed.
There were 13 performers this year and I can’t remember them all but by crikey the standard has improved.
Standouts included:
- Jon Peat reigning BYJOTY with clearly the best choreography and music but really droppy towards the end of his routine. I reckon he’d have won again but for the drops. Some bizarre patterns too.
- Sarah from Glasgow. Notable for being the first ever female contestant in 3 years of BYJOTY. Nice ball juggling and sinewy dancing. There’s a girl who knows that she’s in front of a mainly male audience! Kudos though, she did juggle well and won a gig at the Crawley convention for her efforts. Good job.
- Diabolist called John. Masses of stage presence and stunning technical skill. A great routine with hard stuff, nice pacing and a very worthy winner of both a silver award and a gig at the Durham convention.[ah erm it seems my memory is going with old age, John didn't get the Durham prize, the guy next in this list did, well they were both very good]
- Another diabolist (can’t remember the name sorry) with an even higher technical repertoire but didn’t make quite as cohesive a routine as John. Stunning skill though.
- Norbi. His last go at BYJOTY as he’ll be too old next year. Didn’t win but got himself a silver award too.
- Tom Derrick – tennis be-kitted and nice routine choreographed well with tennis balls and a racquet. Complete with change of ends break. A nice touch.
- Adrian Pole (aka AdyPops). The youngest ever entrant at 12 years old (although he really does look much younger). He came on literally bouncing with energy and blazed through quite a hard routine with only a couple of drops. From about half way through his act it was obvious he was going to win the main award, assuming he didn’t balls it up. He didn’t balls it up. So BYJOTY stays at the Leicester club for another year. Yay for us and well done to Adrian. Definitely a juggler to watch. And he’s got about 7 more goes at defending his crown.
If the standard keeps going up like it has then there will be some superb jugglers coming through and getting some performing experience through this show. Major kudos for Luke B for sorting this and running with it. An excellent show.
But there is a but. Apart from the “Best Trick” bit. It was too long. It was lengthened after some heckling but I reckon the original timing would have been preferable. Either that or give each performer 60 seconds to do however many tricks they can get in the time. And definitely cut down the judging time for this as that really dragged.
But it didn’t spoil the show and seeing Adrian’s mum’s face was worth the price of admission alone. A very good evening.
After a little more passing in the gym (poorer than before but we were both quite knackered) I sat and watched a few of the gym goers.
This was an eye opener. Next to me was Wes Peden and Toby Walker trading hardest tricks. Thomas Dietz was practising his 5 club backcrosses just down the way. A girl I didn’t recognise was doing majorly hard 5 club stuff and then there were 2 german men doing amazing passing patterns. I think these last are Jochan and Florian and in the show on Saturday. I wouldn’t doubt it considering the stuff they were showing off with in the gym.
From when I started going to conventions the skill level of participants has just rocketed. I remember a report in The Catch (very long-defunct juggling mag) being impressed with seeing that more and more people were doing 5 balls. That seems to be the starting level now. I am impressed!
So home now hence writing this. Photos have been taken but you’ll have to wait for them as I can’t do them now through tiredness rather than technical insufficiency. Sleep well and I’ll write again tomorrow some time. [edit: photos are up but random and not really edited yet - see link to the right for my albums]
Have fun.
Permalink
Posted in Juggling at 7:45 am by alby
I know it’s still on-going but I’m at home first thing after coming home for a warm bed and a bath.
Well the BJC already seems to have more customers than the previous. Possibly a result of more convenient geography.
Me, Clurb and Barnesy got there earlyish and were about the 3rd car in the carpark. Nice to see that I was booked in under a pseudonym rather than my name. Caused a little bit of awkwardness at the reg desk. I knew I’d paid!
Had a bit of a juggle in the main hall. There’d been some worries about whether the main gym was going to be big enough. Well so far there’s been no problems. Wondered in to see some vaguely famous faces as well as plenty of juggling space oh and about 7 traders.
Me and Clurb managed a good few runs of 8 clubs and some esoteric 7 club patterns before zooming off to volunteer. Occasional bods have complained about the volunteer system this time round but it seems to make sense to me. Why not have some benefits to those who do a little work to help out? I understand that it disadvantages those who can’t make it to the whole event but you can’t please everyone. And rather this than the thing breaking for want of a few hands to the deck.
Clurb got the world’s easiest “meet and greet” job; pointing cars to the right place. I got the keep “cars moving” near the campsite job. Problem is that people failed to understand the very simple instructions. The plan was to get people to dump their stuff and move their cars to the carpark before jomping across the camp site with all their stuff. Cue most folk doing the opposite and jomping and setting up before shifting their cars. Sigh. Some excuses were staggeringly bad. “My stuff is really valuable” they’d whinge. Well a: I’m here to keep an eye on said stuff. b: your boyfriend can take the bloody car while you wait here with your stuff. and c: it’s as safe on the verge now as it will be in your tent later, and d:why the hell did you come in seperate cars anyway? People!
Then it was workshop time. I managed to do my posture/control one again which went reasonably well although I feel it was rather esoteric for some of the participants. I’ve got some excellent photos of dodgy shoulders now too (ta Lynne).
Then I hassled the organiser I’d been talking to re running clinic sessions. Despite being told I could I was then told that there was no space. So I suggested a workshop room when there was no workshop ongoing. “Well we want to allow someone else some time” he said. But we organised and agreed I this. It’s hardly my fault that there’s no space. And I feel guilty for causing hassle and awkwardness. While I’m whinging though I would say “ta” to the orgs they’re doing well so far so kudos to them all.
There are loads of people here including plenty of the more talented and/or pushy folk: Luke and Pola, Wes Peden, Vova, Ben Jennings, Marco Paoletti, Erin Stephens, Pete Bone, Ben Beever, Tempei, Aaron Gregg and others I’m sure. The standing “joke” of the event so far is “He’s not as tall as you’d think is he?” re. Jason Garfield.
Last night there wasn’t much in the way of a show so I came home early, after missing Tiff’s band (despite Paul aka Eek hassling me to go and see them at least twice). The other thing of note was the WJVF awards but I missed those as well. Too many people to talk to I suppose.
Renegades start tonight though so I should have more juggling to report on. Oh and it’s BYJOTY – a great show last year so I want to get in this time again. Should be excellent.
And there’s a couple of workshops to get to today as well.
Have fun!
Permalink
10 Apr 2007
Posted in Juggling at 9:28 am by alby
It’s the BJC starting tomorrow. And I for one am really looking forward to it. Loads of work to be done there, lots of juggling, a few workshops and loads of slobbing around nattering and watching some shows. And maybe a bit of volunteering too. We’ll see.
See some of you there.
Have fun.
Permalink
09 Apr 2007
Posted in Blog at 12:09 am by alby
You may have noticed a little change here. I’m trying to figure out a few WordPress thingies and I started with “widgets”. Now the old style thingy didn’t allow “widgets” so I changed it to one that does hence the obvious difference. But the thing is I’ve tried using widgets to change the sidebar content and also downloaded a “recent comments” jobby.
Now none of that seems to work. No matter what I put in my sidebar and no matter what the order is I seem to be utterly incapable of actually carrying those changes over into the site’s presentation. A bit shit as that’s what all this work and hassle has been for.
I’m off to bed now but does anyone have any ideas?
Have fun.
PS The other reason was to try and use Spam Karma 2. It works beautifully; thanks for the heads up Jen.
Permalink
04 Apr 2007
Posted in Comedy at 6:46 pm by alby
Can you really catch bird flu off a toilet duck?
Permalink
Posted in Blog at 8:41 am by alby
I’ve just been vetting my comments again. Now I’ve banned a few words in comments and 1 or 2 IP addresses so there are far fewer spam messages getting through to me. Certainly many less illegal ones.
But 1 from today has me intrigued.
It purports to advertise a website for “forced crossdressing”. What a marvellous thing the world is that people could be in any way enthusiastic about such a site/topic.
Have fun.
Permalink
03 Apr 2007
Posted in Life at 7:15 am by alby
I giggled a lot last night.
Ta.
Permalink
02 Apr 2007
Posted in News, Rants at 9:20 am by alby
It’s the 25th anniversary of the first war I remember happening. You’d think in 25 years people could do some growing but it seems not.
A newspaper (I believe it’s the Mail but I won’t jump to easy conclusions [edit-turns out it was the Mail]) has put in a big story about how horrendous it is that a UK government spokesperson has expressed regret for those killed in the conflict. Nothing seems too nasty there. So why they upset?
Well it seems this spokesbod wished to express regret for the Argies too. How dare he? A man clearly of the enemy.
For god’s sake it was a war. We had nothing personal against the foot soldiers of the Argentine army. Most were conscripts sent by a military dictator to be shot at by a professional army and navy. Poor kids mainly. What the hell is wrong with expressing a bit of sympathy for those poor sods caught up in a popularity contest back home in Buenos Aires?
I would say that the newspaper involved here is one of those whinging non-stop about the lack of decent christian morals in the home country. Would be nice to see some of those morals in this instance.
Gits.
[edit: I've just looked at the story on their website and it's managed to garner loads of lovely comments from easily led imbeciles. Marvellous how malleable Mail readers can be. Link here]
Permalink
« Previous Page — « Previous entries « Previous Page · Next Page » Next entries » — Next Page »