Mark Hayward Is My Hero

I have a 2004 Toyota Prius. It is the best car ever. I want to sell it.

So you’re thinking, “If the Prius is the best car ever, why do you want to sell it?” Two reasons:

1. New things are VERY enticing, and the new Prius has some nice new little features besides just being new
2. A new Prius won’t have 87,000 miles on it

Here’s what I have done so far:

• Put a for sale sign in the window with my phone number
• Posted an ad on Craig’s List

Results:

• Two phone calls from the ad in the window
• Nothing from Craig’s List
• I still own my Prius

Possible Explanations:

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This last weekend I was in Ithaca NY to be the MC for the Cornell Juggling Club’s public show at their Big Red JuggleFest. It was a great time. First of all, juggling festivals are always great. If you don’t spend your time hanging out and talking with people, like I usually end up doing, you can just juggle ALL DAY. What a great way to spend a day.

I was hanging out with some of my New York City pals: Sean Blue, Marcus Monroe, Paris, and Sean’s non-juggling buddy Herman, who turned out to be a cool guy despite that fact that he’s not a juggler. Ithaca was really hard to navigate for most of the out of town guests, and we got lost every time we went anywhere. It was not awesome.

The show was on Saturday night, and was really high caliber. It took place in a former top quality theater that has been converted into a lecture hall on the Cornell campus. I understand that a university probably needs a lecture hall more than a theater, but as a performer it was really hard to look at what obviously used to be a great theater, and was now just a shadow of its former self. It still had the orchestra pit, but the new wall was only six inches back from the edge of the pit, and there was no longer a backstage. Strangely, there was a brand new greenroom with a bathroom, but that was it.

My sets in the show went over great, and the show went very smoothly. Thomas Dietz, from Germany, was the headliner and we had a whole slew of other great acts. See more (and download the poster!) here: http://rso.cornell.edu/cjc/festival/performers.htm

Last weekend I had a great gig with the Smithsonian Institution that took us to Phoenix Arizona. In their ongoing effort to bring the Smithsonain to the people (instead of the people always having to go to Washington DC) they put on a huge event called Culture Fest, in Phoenix and the surrounding area, with 10 experts from different fields. My role was to be the second half of a one-two punch with historian David Shayt. David and I presented several different versions of the program, but the overall format was that David would do a powerpoint presentation for the first half of our set, and I would close it out with demonstration and teaching. David’s presentation was really good, was what the adults wanted to see, and it was just long enough that kids could still get through it if they got bored. Then I hit ’em with the action-packed parade o’ skills! I have always tried very hard to have a show that is fun for adults AND kids, so the Culture Fest audiences were great for me.

One of the best parts of the weekend was hanging out with my juggling and yo-yoing friends. The last time I was in Phoenix I spent some time with Dave and Athena, and I did get to see them Thursday night before they headed to California for a juggling convention, but most of my time was spent with my yo-yo buddies Hans and Julius.

I think that my time with those guys could be summed up as “cool cars and yo-yos”. Of course there was a lot of yo-yoing, there always is. In addition though, Hans (aka Yo Hans) is also a car nut. He owns several awesome cars, and one night we went to the longest continuously running weekly car show. That’s right… weekly. Every Saturday night hundreds of car, truck, and motorcycle people get together and hang out. It’s awesome. The whole range is there. You have the import tuners, monster trucks, classic 50s & 60s cars, Corvettes, and even the Model A guys. I finally got the chance to pick the brain of a real Model A guy! He answered all of the questions I could think of. It was incredible.

I took a whole bunch of pictures that I will post when I get home on Monday. This weekend I am in Ithaca, New York at the Cornell Jugglefest serving as the MC for their public show.  It should be fun.

If you have always wanted to carve the Best Pumpkin in the World you can get in on the action with this book.

Mark Hayward has just released his first eBook: Pumpkin Carving Tips, Tricks and Patterns.

Even if you don’t want to be the Best in the World and just want to carve a better pumpkin than last year, you should check this out. It’ll be the best $2 you ever spend on Halloween for something that wasn’t covered in chocolate.

A lot of work went in to putting together this first edition of Pumpkin Carving Tips, Tricks and Patterns, and the second edition will be out in time for Halloween next year. The book was written as an enhanced version of Mark’s pumpkin web page.

I met a local magician named Vito a few weeks ago at the Rocky Ripple Fest here in Indianapolis, and yesterday I helped him build a bed of nails.

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We had our annual pumpking carving party Sunday night, and it was a good time as usual.

Many a good pumpkin was carved, and some new tools were even introduced, including a wood-carving chisel set and a eye-gouger/mellon-baller that Richard brought.

This year my pumpkin was not very intricately carved, this time it was all about the fire.

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This weekend I had a couple of gigs in the Chicago area, but I went up a day early to participate in a taping for Chicago Public Access Cable TV.

Harper, Matiss and I showed up with a bag full of juggling machetes and two pumpkins.

We carved this one in advance, and the other was to be carved while we juggled.

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Lenore and I went to the international grocery with our pal David Morrison. It was really fun. David is very much a food guy, so we stopped at the grocery on the way back from one of Dave’s many secret restaurant gems. This time it was a Vietnamese place called Sizzling Wok Hai, and it was delicious.

Even though it happens every time, I am always surprised by how much food there is in the world that I can’t recognize. Of course that’s the real fun of going to an international grocery. My favorite sections are the drink section and the candy section. This time I bought a bottle of Green Plum (soda I think, but I haven’t opened it yet), and a bag of White Rabbit candy.

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There are two alligators in the White River. Seriously. Alligators in Indianapolis. What’s up with that? Some fool must have released their pet gators when they got too big to handle, figuring that having large, dangerous, invasive predators in our city would make life better for everyone. One of the places I normally walk my dog is a wilderness area that is right up against the river, so now I have to wait until they catch the things, or winter comes, before I can go back there. Stupid alligators. Well… stupid people really.

Read the story here. When this story was reported on the TV news last night they interviewed the cop in the photo, and he had seen the gators himself.

I went up to the Fort Wayne juggling festival last weekend. It was fun, and very low key. There were maybe 30 or so people there, so it was much smaller than your average regional jugglefest, but it was a nice little gathering.

There were two things about the fest that were awesome. One was that Tom Miller of the Unicycle factory there, and two, he and other people brought some of his creations.

Tom is the guy you call if you have any bicycle or unicyle related oddball request. He has made all manner of normal and normal-ish unicycles like various heights of giraffe unicycles:

(By the way, it’s called a giraffe when the pedals are higher than the wheel so there is a chain that connects them.) (more…)