During all this (and for at least as many more acts) Animal neatly manages the scheduling and introductions, always getting the names and titles right, with never more than a few seconds between acts, and performing the odd bit of nonsense needed to keep Club Renegade glued together. While there is no such thing as a "smooth" or "graceful" Renegade, this one is turning out awfully good.

 

Now Rhys comes out again, rubbing his raggedly shorn head, and thanks all the

vendors for coming. He then introduces Kevin Wilber, owner of The Professional Beanbag Hatchery, as inventor of the most original prop of the festival: club covers" These are elastic covers to keep your clubs clean while you practice. The only problem with them is that;, they look good enough to leave on all the time. (Serious Juggling and Capitol Juggling now carry them.),

 

While Kevin describes his club covers, three men appear from out of the wings in a familiar hand-to-shoulder line dance wearing nothing more than strategically fitted club covers! They turn and bow to the crowd, turn again and boogie back behind the wings. Kevin turns pink and becomes speechless. Everyone else is laughing and falling about. A good end to a good Club Renegade!

 

The crowd retreats back to the small gym for more open juggling. Mr. String and I talk about the respective obsessions that overcame us at midlife and changed our worlds. We agree it is much more fun than merely getting a sports car or finding religion. Francoise Rochais has all the numbers jugglers enraptured, watching her work on seven clubs. She has a curious style of keeping her elbows in, not bending her knees, and shuffling her feet about to compensate for club drift. It seems to work.

 

After closing the gym at 2 a.m., I drive her to her host's home and find that she has a strong interest in choreography and dance. I also try to explain that the recent Oregon floods got into my basement and ruined a few cartons of books, some of them about dance. My French is pitiful, and her English isn't up to it, and I think I leave her wondering why I collect wet dance books.

 

On Saturday morning the gym is crammed and the music is loud. At several points Martin Frost and I negotiate sound levels. I quickly turn down the noise, but I suspect Martin gets a harder time from others, who like their music louder. Henrich returns a crumpled handful of slightly used club covers to Kevin, who accepts them very gingerly and puts them directly into a plastic bag.  I suggest he get them autographed.

 

Outside it is damp and overcast and sprinkly. Animal sets up a an old parachute canopy in the trees, puts a big tarp over the muddy spots, and hangs a slackrope between two trees. This all seems futile, but Animal just smiles and lets his laughter roll over the hills. Quite soon the last of the misty rain disperses, and the morning sun pierces the fog and makes the parachute into a great stained-glass dome.

 

At least 100 jugglers come and dance in the sunlight and among the glowing shadows of Animal's canopy.

 

At noon Steve Mills and I sneak next door to the Eastmoreland Golf Club to smash balls at the driving range. He hits the back fence on the fly several times, but it takes me a couple bounces. He is determined to clear the fence, but the tired range balls frustrate him. (Next year we'll hold the first annual PJF Ball-Basher Open, on Friday, April 11th.  Either nine or eighteen holes at Eastmoreland, one of the top hundred public courses in the U.S.  Call me on April 1 to reserve a tee time!)

 

It's now 6 p.m. and we're at Cleveland High School Auditorium. Stuart Celarier, the

Extravaganza director, discovers that contrary to repeated prior inquiry, the school provides only the equipment, and not sound technician. So he asks if l will run it.   We get tapes and cues from everyone, and Ochen sorts everything and keeps me sane for the next four hours.

 

At 6:30 that audience, 800-strong, charges down the aisles and scrambles for the best seats. The lights go down and a spotlight hits Ngaio Bealum. His own words describe the man quite well: The Chocolate Mountain of Joy.  He has the mildest set of drug, sex, and racial jokes ever assembled. A tour de force of "kinder and gentler" in stand-up comedy. He can also crank it up to any level you'd like, but this is a "family" audience, as one stuffy matron inanely reminds him.

 

Ngaio opens things up and introduces Iman, whose comic ring juggling is nicely choreographed to nonexistent music. Her cassette is dead, but I don't know that, an as it is the first act of the evening and I am running sound, I assume it is the equipment.  It is much too early in the show for me to lose my presence of mind, but I come real close. Iman recovers nicely, and we trade mimed gestures of incompetence (on my part) and gracious forgiveness (on her part). She, a real pro, then proceeds to charm and captivate the  hearts of the audience anyway. She employs the same strong and precise movement as last night, and now does up to six rings.

 

Rob Brown and Frank Olivier bring a touch of the surreal to the show. They each have acrylic fright wigs, unicycles and loud music. They also have entirely different acts, done at different points in the show. Frank does a flaming rendition of Purple Haze. Rob also portrays a manic musician: Rob's character is a new one to me and very un-Rob, it even moves differently than he does.  Frank, on the other hand, seems exactly the same onstage as he is offstage, except now he's on a giraffe uni and is waving a guitar about and somehow never quite gets tangled in its cord.

 

Shoehorn is a tap dancing saxophone player who is very good at both skills and presents a rousing performance.  (This is billed as a "Juggling and Vaudeville Extravaganza.") Then there is Brian Patz being the epitome of 70's disco-hip, with a flashy club routine. It's like a Travolta flashback with props.

 

And then Moshe comes on with his remarkable cartoon-like character, Mr. Yoohoo. Like the more famous Bill Irwin, he is a mime and clown. And like Bill Irwin, he does much to redeem the bad impression most jugglers have of mimes and clowns.

 

Now we have a troupe of girls doing rhythmic gymnastics, two of whom, we're told, are world-class contenders. They are followed by several more young girls in matching Bali­Hai costumes, swinging poi-balls in unison. These kids are a good number of cuts above a sympathy act and deserve all the applause they get, which is considerable. (Keep in mind that while half of the audience are jugglers, while half the ticket-purchasers are not jugglers. Hence the "family" acts.)

 

Then there is the other kind of family act - the Mills Family.  They kill, as usual. Even though they do the extra-short version, the act requires coordinating two wireless mikes, two cassettes with cues, and some offstage visual imagery. (If Steve could just work in a golf routine I think he'd be the happiest vaudevillian in the world!)

 

At some point Cliff Spenger does a quick, blindfolded tightrope act assisted by a nearly ideal kid volunteer. Cliff realizes this and shows her off nicely. Jeff Daymont does his entire act in Japanese. He's just come off a tour there and finds their language easier in some respects than English, so...  It's remarkable that all the comic byplay between Jeff, Sergie (his Russian doll) and the audience works just fine despite the language barrier.

 

Kenny Schultz, multiple winner of national footbag tournaments, does impossible things with that prop. Mark Peachock pleases the audience with a juggling routine of three, five and seven balls. The now-bald Rhys Thomas does freestanding ladder and some funny patter, and Ben Schoenberg again charms everyone to pieces. Henrick does his glow-light stick figure and then supervises the landing of a 747.

 

Atsuko Koga is a wonder. She does traditional ball and parasol work with the fluid grace of a dancer. The ball is eventually replaced by a wooden block, and then a coin. Then the parasol graduates to a three-decker model, and the ball floats up and down the levels. Her cues to the audience are slightly off at first. I suspect she is used to the Las Vegas crowd (where she works), who have to be told what to watch and when to applaud. She finishes with some very pretty, though not terribly difficult, flower-stick work.

 

The last act is Francoise Rochais doing the nurnber that won her the IJA Individuals Championship last year.  I'm amused by her costume and a character of a French shepherdess - an image from a Fousseauian mythic past that never was - entertaining her sheep with precision baton juggling.  Her batons have ribbon tied in bows to one end, vaugely like Miss Bo Peep's staff as portrayed in old-fashoned children's books.

 

Ngaio Bealum graciously closes the show with heartwarming and fond farewell to the audience he's emceed for more than three hours.