Mon 5 Feb 2007

Lombard, Madison, and an Awesome Theater Tour

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I had a gig Friday night in Lombard IL, followed by three shows the next morning for Kids In The Rotunda in Madison WI. The shows all went well and were fun to do. One of the great things about doing the Kids In The Rotunda shows is that since I grew up, and went to college in Madison, there are often people I know in the audience. Old friends (usually with their kids now), the parents of old friends, and in the second show this time I saw my Middle School science teacher Mr. Leidel. I was trying to mention the fact that he was there during the show, but I couldn’t deliver lines, and figure out where to mention him, at the same time well enough to do it. I couldn’t find him after the show either, with the rush of people trying to buy yo-yos and wanting trading cards, and I’m not sure he even recognized me anyway. Middle school was a long time ago.

After the shows, I got really lucky and got to have a quick personal tour of the two big theaters in the new Overture Center. John, who had been running sound for me, offered to show me the newly remodeled Capitol Theater (formerly remodeled as the Oscar Meyer Theater, but now returned to its original name), and the brand-new Overture Theater. It was awesome.

I have actually performed in the Capitol Theater twice, and it was fantastic. Unfortunately, one of the shows was on 9/11, so John and I share that bond since we both were working that day. The Capitol Theater is one of the two massive ones in town that were built in the days of Vaudeville. First the Civic Center, and after that was demolished the Overture center, were built around the Capitol Theater. So inside a sparkling, new, modern building you have a gorgeous old Vaudeville theater. I was worried that the remodel (to make it smaller) was going to destroy it, but they did a great job.

The newly renovated Capitol Theater

The brand-new Overture Theater is pretty great too. It has a TRIPLE balcony! It’s an astonishing sight standing on the stage looking up at the house when it’s empty, so I can only imagine how great it would be to play to a full house there. They have a new giant symphonic pipe organ, and a really cool retracting symphony shell that allows all the sound to go out into the house instead of getting lost backstage, or up in the grid above the stage. I don’t think it’ll be happening any time soon, but I sure hope I get to perform to a full house on a stage as grand as this one.

Overture Hall

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Thu 1 Feb 2007

A New Version of Battle Top

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I love hanging out with spin-top people. It’s always a ton of fun, and at MadFest this year we had a ridiculously good time.

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.

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Sun 28 Jan 2007

Rare Deep-Sea Frilled Shark Filmed in Japan

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Japanese fisherman found a living deep-sea Frilled Shark this week. Although science did know about this shark before now, it has rarely been seen alive, and this has got to be the best video footage ever taken of the eel-like “living fossil”. Deep-sea creatures are so cool.

Video:

Or, check out the video here.

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Mon 22 Jan 2007

Star Wars is AWESOME!!!

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I admit it: I have my dorky moments. But seriously… Star Wars is SO awesome. My friend Harper just gave me this link to a great read-between-the-lines reassessment of the Star Wars movies. If you are a web junkie this is probably old news, but it’s new to me, and besides… Star Wars is timeless. ;)

A New Sith, or Revenge of the Hope
Reconsidering Star Wars IV in the light of I-III

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Thu 18 Jan 2007

MadFest and Chris Bliss

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Having just finished another great MadFest juggling convention I have come to a better understanding of why there was such a controversy over the popularity of the Chris Bliss video that swept the internet a while back. (If you haven’t already seen it, check it out here before you read the rest of this article.)

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.

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Mon 8 Jan 2007

Wisconsin State Yo-yo Contest and MadFest

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Tomorrow I leave for Madison WI to start the ramp-up to the MadFest Juggling Festival.  I have to go earlier this year than usual because I will be doing a radio interview on Tuesday morning (at 6:30 am… ug) on Z104.  As usual I’m really looking forward to the fest, and a bunch of my favorite people in the whole world are coming, so it should be a blast.

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.

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Sat 6 Jan 2007

The Real Role of the Modern Man: Stuff Wrangler

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Coming out of the Christmas season I have had a realization about the role of the male in contemporary suburban society. A huge percentage of Americans live in the suburbs, and many smaller cities are really more suburban than urban these days. 100,000 years ago the male may have been in charge of hunting or other primitive man duties, and 100 years ago the man may have been responsible for the family income and the major decisions, but now the primary role of the man, in my view, is Stuff Wrangler.

In case you doubt me on this one, here is a list of some of the ways that the modern male is often expected to wrangle stuff:

  • carrying diaper bags
  • carrying grocery bags
  • carrying shopping bags
  • handling suitcases
  • doing home repair
  • taking care of car maintenance
  • taking out the trash
  • moving furniture
  • walking the dog
  • cleaning the hairball out of the drain
  • killing/removing bugs
  • getting stuff from high shelves
  • opening jars
  • holding the purse in public
  • loading the car
  • driving the car
  • putting lipstick/cell phone/keys/wallet in pockets when going out

This is, of course, an incomplete list, and is not universal, but this is the stuff that I do, my friends do, and that my Dad has always done. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining, it’s just that I finally saw the pattern. And to be honest it does make me feel like a man to load the car before a long trip.

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Sun 31 Dec 2006

The Longest Legs in the World

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I was in Washington DC this week to hang out with my Dad’s side of the family, and I saw a man with the longest legs in the world. Ok, I don’t know if they really were THE longest, but they were seriously long. Crazy long. My wife is 5’9″ and the dude’s legs were at least up to her shoulders. He was not the tallest man I have ever seen, but he CERTAINLY had the longest legs I have ever seen. The thing was that his body was about the proportions of a regular-size guy, it was just his amazingly long legs that made him so tall. It took a lot of effort to not stare, and the guy next to me didn’t even try, he just gaped.

Here’s what went through my mind, in order, when I saw Mr. Long Legs:

    1. Wow, that’s a really tall guy
    2. Wow, his legs are really long
    3. REALLY long
    4. Huh… his pants are too short….
    5. Yeah, well… what’re ya gonna do?  There’s no way anyone makes pants that long.

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      Thu 21 Dec 2006

      A Night on the Town With Harper

      Posted by mark under Regular Ol' Stories
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      This weekend I went to Chicago even though I didn’t have any gigs. I just went up to hang out with my pals. It was the first time I’ve done that in YEARS, and it was really fun.

      As luck would have it, the Threadless Christmas party was Friday night and my friend Harper invited me to come. Since I am often in Chicago in the middle of the day with some time to kill before or after gigs, I have spent a fair amount of time hanging out at Threadless. Mostly I hang out with Harper, but I know a few of the other folks there a little, so going to the Christmas party wasn’t the awkward I-don’t-know-anybody experience that usually happens when you go to someone else’s work party. The other thing that made it good was that Threadless really knows how to let it all hang out. Where most work places have one or two wild and crazy characters, at Threadless it’s the opposite, almost everyone is wild and crazy. There is never any shortage of wacky stuff going on with those cats.

      Harper and Crystal

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      Wed 13 Dec 2006

      Hot Smoothie Action… and a Recipe Too

      Posted by mark under General
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      Smoothies are SO yummy. It’s not always easy to find a place that will make you a good one. The whole smoothie industry seems like a bit of a racket to me anyway. The total cost on the ingredients is very low, but the smoothie still costs three or four bucks. The solution? Make your own!

      My buddy Adolfo is a smoothie master. He has one almost every day, and he gave me his recipe:

      Throw in a peeled mango or a banana

      About 1/3 cup OJ

      About 1/3 cup Soy milk

      2 or 3 ice cubes

      Throw in blueberries, strawberries, or whatever

      I like to put in some flax meal, maybe a tablespoon or two

      Now, blend the heck out of it. Should be yummy.mmmm.

      A very good recipe. Now here’s my version of it:

      • One peeled banana
      • One peeled, seedless tangerine or orange
      • A handful of frozen blueberries and/or cherries or mango chunks
      • 2 or 3 spoonfuls of vanilla yogurt
      • 1/3 cup of whatever juice I have already made in the fridge
      • sometimes 1/3 cup of milk
      • I think I’m going to add in the flax meal since it’s so good for you, but I just haven’t bought any yet

      I am amazed at how delicious it is. AND you get a whole bunch of servings of fruit (a real problem for most Americans) in a very quick and easy form. Works much better in a blender than a food processor by the way. Sometimes it’s hard for me to resist the urge to put other weird stuff in there. I figure that it’s all going to get blended up anyway, so what’s wrong with throwing a few Skittles, a Snickers bar, or some Doritos in too?

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