Martin's Psychosis

With Nathan and Art as feedees, I went back to attempting to make a feed of Jim's 3­Count without using the handacross that had resulted in Martin's Madness. The result was this pattern, which I found harder to learn; but then I'm used to doing the forced handacross in other patterns and it kept sneaking in here even when I was trying not to do it. I told Art that I was calling the handacross pattern Martin's Madness, so Art, knowing that I considered this pattern less natural, said we should call it Martin's Psychosis.

 

Again we'll have the feeder throw diagonally and the feedees straight (but you could reverse that and do Martin's Neurosis). If the feedees go with the flow, they don't actually have to know what their sequences are, which makes it easier. It's just done with Jim's 3-Count in mind - always pass, in a 3­count, the club that you just got passed.

 

The feeder starts as in the Madness, for the first four throws. Pass a pair of extreme crosses R-R and L-L, do a R-L self, and then do a middle L-L pass. But at that point you're forced to make the next pass (count 2 of the second pair) as another L-L (to the outside of the second feedee).

 

This is a hurry, and it's particularly strange because it's a hurried pass (there's no such hurried pass in Jim's 3-Count). On top of that, the feedees can accidentally make it so hurried that the feeder can't do it!

 

To avoid that the feedees should simply avoid getting ahead of the feeder's rhythm during their two selves. Passes tend to be slower than selves, so it isn't hard for a feedee, if not paying attention, to get ahead. Try to avoid that.

 

Fig. 9 shows the causal diagram of the 18­count cycle, and Fig. 10 shows the feeder's first six throws. It turns out that each person has four hurries. The feedees' hurries all come before selves, whereas two of the feeder's come before selves and two before passes. It's those two before passes that are the tricky parts.

 

Note that the feedees here pass three R's in a row then three L's. But as I said, if you just go with the flow (return the club you were passed), you won't need to count or anything.

 

The cycle is rather long, making it tricky for you as the feeder to remember where you are. I find it helpful to count pairs of passes, with 1,2,3,1,2,3 being a cycle. Then I always know to expect the hurried pass as the second pass of each pair number 2 and it doesn't surprise me.

 

Mob Psychosis

My brain just about burned up the first time I tried this pattern - I overloaded, trying to figure out the passes in real time by just going with the flow. I'll describe the pattern here so that you can perhaps enjoy the same sensation (I recommend it, though only in small doses). I'll also suggest a way to do the pattern while preserving your sanity.

 

Mob Psychosis adds one feedee to Martin's Psychosis, thus filling out the feeder's 3-count cycle - no selves remain. The feeder now passes to the three feedees in turn, from left to right, in typewriter fashion, while each of them does a 3-count, always throwing straight back to the feeder each club they're passed. Fig. 11 shows the causal diagram for the resulting 24­count cycle (eight triplets of passes by the

feeder).

 

The sequence of passes for each feedee is the same, although the three feedees start at different places in the sequence. Each of them passes four rights in a row and then four lefts in a row. The first feedee starts with two rights, the second feedee starts with three lefts, and the third feedee starts with four rights. Each passes four in a row from alternating hands from then on. As in a normal typewriter feed, the first feedee does a fast start, the second feedee starts with one R self then a L pass, and the third feedee starts with two selves (R,L) and then a R pass. Then go with the flow, always making straight passes. As with Martin's Madness and Martin's Psychosis, the feedees should be careful to stay with the feeder's rhythm - don't get ahead, although that's easy to do by mistake.

 

In order to feed this pattern, you should be able to feed the simpler I-Count Typewriter Feed fairly fearlessly (see the Summer 1997 Juggler's Workshop). In that pattern, all throws are straight, there are no hurries (but also no selves by the feeder) and hence you always alternate Rand L throws.

 

In Mob Psychosis, like in the Typewriter Feed, the feeder goes down the row passing to each feedee till the end is reached and then jumps (carriage returns) back to the left. But here the feeder's passes are diagonal throws (R­R or L-L) (though as usual you could instead have the feeder throw straight and the feedees diagonally in Mob Neurosis). The difficulty for the feeder is twofold: figuring out which hand to pass from, and then figuring out which hand (of which person) to pass to. You can theoretically try to do this by going with the flow, but you don't have much time between passes to figure out what's next. Nor is the feeder's sequence of rights and lefts short enough to remember easily - at least at first.

 

But at the recent IJA convention in Pittsburgh, I found a technique that's very useful for making this pattern work. While I was trying to feed Mob Psychosis, I asked a friend and fellow passer, Laura Provance, to read to me my sequence of passes (rights and lefts) from my notes, in groups of three (RLR, LLR, LRR, LRL, LRL, RRL, RLL, RLR). She would read each group to me just before I had to make those three passes. This had two great effects. I could just listen and pass accordingly, without having to figure out in real time what was happening next (my mind no longer sizzled). And since she read them out loud over and over, I (and she) began memorizing the sequence, so eventually the prompting was no longer critical.

 

To work up to the full pattern, you may find it helpful to attack it in steps. Start by doing just the first three throws. That's easy, so now try the first six throws. Here the feeder should memorize (or have someone read out loud) the first two triplets of passes: RLR, LLR. The second triplet involves the feeder's first hurry, so this will be the first challenge. When six throws is comfortable, go on to nine, then twelve. This way you establish the rhythm section by section, so that you can internalize it.