Mark Hayward Is My Hero

Now that my busiest time of year for performing is over I have to catch up on everything that I have let slide, or partially slide, for the last three months. Ug. There’s a lot of it. I dubbed today “Efficiency Day”. Nothin’ but workin’ fast today. I set a timer for meal times, and just worked, worked, worked. It went well, but I think tomorrow will have to be day 2 of Efficiency day… I still have a lot to do.

I will be performing at a big one-day art fair this Saturday. The Penrod Art Fair at the Indianapolis Museum of Art. Tens of thousands of people go, so it has big potential. We’ll see how it goes. After my experience with the non-existent street-performing scene in Indianapolis I’m trying to not get my hopes up, but in the best-case scenario this could be huge.

Check out one of my latest obsessions:

My solar car fan

My wife Lenore had some surgery last week (she’s ok) so I have been hanging out with her at home just letting her recuperate. Today I am with her at work being her teaching assistant since she is not able to lift anything heavier than 8 pounds for a month. She gets tired very quickly since she is not all the way healed yet, so we might go home and take a nap between her classes. I know… very cute.

This week is the Indianapolis Fringe Festival and I was asked to do some street performing as a part of it. The only problem is that there is no one out. I mean really no one. I drove down Mass Ave yesterday at about the time I was considering starting and I counted a total of 19 people in the five blocks of the street, and most of them were getting into their cars. I think that the problem is that unlike other major downtown streets in other cities, Mass Ave is not closed to cars.  So people just drive up to what they want, do their thing, and then drive away.  Since the only pay I will be getting is passing the hat, I am starting to think that I might not even be able to do a single show. I’ll keep checking it out though, so we will see.

First of all, I love the ocean creatures. I’m not sure why, but sea life has always fascinated me, and deep-sea creatures have always been my favorites. The environment they live in is so extreme, and they tend to be FREAKY lookin’!

One of the few Oarfish ever seen surfaced at Santa Catalina Island, California on August 16th.

photo: VIMAS

This is not a picture of the actual fish, but I wanted you to see what these things look like. No one really knows the limit, but these fish can get enormous.

Also, three fisherman found some arms and a tentacle of a giant squid floating near Santa Cruz Island. We don’t get giant squid developments all that often, so this is pretty cool.

That’s right folks, the new cards are here! This whole year is rather super hero themed for me, I’m not sure why.

If you’d like your own Mark Hayward trading card check out this page.

Yo-yos are awesome.  I’m hanging out in Cleveland Heights Ohio after finishing the yo-yo contest today.  It was fun.  I helped judge the Sport Ladder portion of the contest and ran the music for all the freestyle competitors.  This is the contest run by Steve Brown, National Yo-yo Master.  The big plans for tonight are hanging-out, yo-yoing and eating pizza.  Should be a great night.  Tomorrow we barbeque.

I travel and use maps all the time and my favorite map site is Google Maps, but it no longer allows you to print out the maps.  Perhaps it no longer works with Macs, I don’t know, but I did figure a way around Google Maps’ shortcomings.

If you hit the print button you either get a less useful small version of your map with the printed directions on the side, or you get no map at all.  What I have started doing is just taking a screenshot of the section of the browser window that I want, and printing it out as an image.  You can do that like this:

Press + Shift + 4 – You then get a crosshair cursor. With the crosshair cursor select a rectangular area of the screen that you want to take a picture of.

The image will automatically be saved onto your Mac desktop, you open it and print it.  Easy!  Not as easy as if the site still worked, but that’s how it goes.

Thanks to Nini’s World for the directions for the screenshot.

I just finished watching the final episode of NBC’s America’s Got Talent. If you don’t want to know who won you should stop reading right now.

First of all, I should say that I am really glad that this show is on the air. Even with all of my complaining, America’s Got Talent showcases variety arts and is good for all of us in the live entertainment industry. But there are a lot of serious problems. Click here to see my original rant on this subject.

Of course this show has been the subject of a lot of conversations in the juggling, yo-yoing, and performance communities, and one thing we were all in agreement on before tonight’s episode aired was that there was no way that a non-musical group could EVER win. Obviously the producers knew that too because they waited to give the judges picks on some of the semi-finalist shows until they had seen who the audience picked. With lay-people as judges you can never have a level playing field between music and variety acts. No one understands what is involved in putting together a good variety routine, and that’s fine, but the problem is that almost everyone knows how hard it is to be a good singer, and music has an emotional connection that nothing else can match. I realize that American Idol is not open to some of the acts that were on America’s Got Talent, but the fact that a variety act could NEVER win makes it look as thought the show producers think all variety artists are just really good filler. As long as music is a part of the competition no variety artist should ever enter if they actually want to win. They may get some great promo, but they will never win. (more…)

I went and saw the movie last night with my buddy Marcus Monroe.  It was really good, although it did get my blood to boil.  As humans we are SO not all working toward the same goals.  Read more about the movie here.

For the first time in my life I am actually enjoying being in a parade. Every day at 3:00 there is a parade at the WI State Fair, and they like for all of us entertainers to be a part of it. I don’t really have a good parade act. Basically I just walk along yo-yoing. It’s ok, but it’s not great. But this year, with the help of my friend Rob Summerbell I’ve got a great parade bit.

Rob is the world’s only Wacky Wheeler. Along with his wheel he usually also brings along his monster cruiser bicycle… and at State Fair he lets me ride it. It’s awesome. It’s a cool classy lookin’ cruiser bike, but it’s extra big, and it has 36 inch wheels!

It’s a little hard to ride at the slow speeds of the parade, but it makes a big splash. I ride with one hand and yo-yo with the other hand while doing circles and figure eights around the other people in the parade. Sometimes we have some pretty close calls where we almost run into each other, but usually we miss. It’s a lot more work than just walking and yo-yoing, but it’s a lot more fun too.