The Funnies - Food for Thought

by Jerry Martin

If you're a festival junkie like me, you certainly anticipate and appreciate the moments when the real risk-seekers among us (the Frank Oliviers, the Jay Gilligans, the Mark Fajes, and other such singular per- formers) take the stage and give us an expe rience that leaves us permanently altered by the time they take their bows. That way, when we return to our workaday world and can regale the lunchroom crowd with "I saw this guy who..." we steal a bit of the spot- light for ourselves, I sking in the reflected glow of the maniacs and geniuses of Juggledom. 

They're one of Us, so We must be one of Them, or something like that, as if there were really only One Cosmic Juggler with a jillion multiple personalities, conveniently distributed among all these different bodies. 

The Try Anything crowd are the explorers - they are the adventurers - they are the traveling nutcases whose inner voices sweet-talk them into publicly doing the unnatural and bizarre acts that the rest of us marvel at and feed on. 

Way down at the other end of the Things I Could Do If I Wanted To spectrum reside the tired old tricks that everyone and their Uncle Carl knows. Oh, sure fun to learn the first time (and isn't that the rush we all seek?), but stuff we'd never dream of inflicting on other jugglers - like, say, juggling two balls and an apple, and then eating the apple while juggling. 

Ah, the apple trick: the fruitful tie-in that prompted the Washington State Apple Council to hire a young San Francisco juggler to promote their produce all across the country Without that gig, Michael Davis might not have perfected his brilliant bowling-ball-apple-egg juggle, nor been anywhere near New York when the opportunity to jump on board "Sugar Babies" came along. 

Yes, the apple trick. Before chainsaws were invented, was there really anything else for the average dim-bulb heckler to "request?" It's the closest thing to a diploma you're ever likely to find in juggling, too. Hey, you're just not a juggler unless you can devour that Delicious, jaw that Jonathon, perforate that Pippin, hack that Haralson, munch that Macintosh, or flense that Fuji. 

(True confession time: your humble Humor Editor has never learned the apple trick. Quell, if you can, your shock and dis- may.... My problem is straightforward: every time I sneak two lacrosse balls and a Granny Smith into my hands for a quick kinetic snack, a voice deep in my head reminds me that, if I ever really wanted to bash my own front teeth in, isn't this pretty much exactly the way I'd go about it? It was a similar voice, with a similar message, that prevented me from mounting a unicycle for so many years.) 

Variations abound: Michael Goudeau's three-apple free-for-all; Dale Jones's head of lettuce; Tony Duncan's cheese wedge; Larry Vee's cucumber, and (shudder) Tuey's tomato. The Flying Karamazov Brothers eat apples while passing tomahawks, and even Penn and Teller have been seen in public eating the apple while juggling (Penn juggled, and Teller ate; talk about trust...). 

I remember once seeing an experimental dance/theater piece in which a dancer juggled two balls and an onion, and ate the onion - the entire onion, chewing and swallowing every last unrelenting lachrymose bit of it, real-time, with no special .:,.effects and no place to hide. "Vidalia" onions (Oh! So mild! And, oh! So sweet!) were completely out of season, which meant having to choke down a random a run-of-the-mill onion (Oh! So strong! And, oh! So harsh!) the size of a tennis ball at every performance. The show ran more or less nightly for four weeks. I have no idea what it did to his personal life. 

Food for Thought (wow, deja vu!) 

Meet Bear Stone. Note how his spatial juggling alphabet mesmerizes all who see it. Ask Bear to show you the Jugglers' Handshake (remember, the one who breaks... takes!). Read his Jugglers Hand Book, which teaches an elegant language for writing down juggling patterns - a kind of hieroglyphic shorthand. Enjoy the artful humor of a thoughtful and clever mind. Stone, the Groundhogs' Day maven. Stone, who taught me how to liquefy a crystal ball. Stone, who was once hired by the St. Paul Winter Carnival not merely to juggle, but to come up with something that had never been done before, and then do it. 

Wait a minute - "Never been done before?" What kind of bombastic busker build-up is that? 

(I should perhaps point out that the performance in question was staged indoors.. Local jugglers were once asked to participate in the Carnival's capstone Torchlight Parade - so, of course, everybody brought torches (duh), although at least partly because we all hoped the fire might provide some warmth (this is winter in Minnesota we're talking about, people). Well, silly us: at 20 below, the Coleman fuel simply would not ignite. Period. We actually had to warm up the torch fuel before it would burn! But I digress...) 

Imagine you're there in the audience, snug and warm. Standing before you is the ursine Mr. Stone, poised to deliver on his pledge to present something you have never seen before. Dramatically, he produces two balls and an apple, and starts juggling. You and the folks around you break into good- natured laughter at this little jest, when, suddenly and without warning, still juggling, he proceeds to eat... the balls! Yow!! 

Edible props: what a concept! I can see it now: Boston baked beanbags; mouthsticks made of peppermint candy; pasta diabolos; thick licorice slack-ropes; long straight pretzels with pressed turkey fire-eating wicks, dipped in warm brandy; Ry-krisp shaker cups; scarves woven from cotton candy; non-Euclidean pizza crusts to spin on skinny breadsticks; solid marzipan cigar boxes; cheese-log rola bolas (well... maybe not). And, just think of all the fun you'd have experimenting to see which foods bounce best, too! ("Okay: chocolate pudding? Nope...")