33-5,p17

TARMAC THE MAGNIFICENT

English IJAer Stuart Fell has done at least two things out of the ordinary recently: attempted to defend the White House against super-strength invaders from another planet, and invented a new, easy-ta-Iearn devil stick.

His first contribution to Western Culture came as Stuart, a professional stunt man, was helping out with the movie Superman. Besides advising on some of the flying scenes, he was hurled through the air on at least eight occasions by the Krypton Creeps, and was thrown through a White House wall.

His second - more lasting - contribution came as he was trying to figure out how to incorporate the devil stick (that long, thin Chinese hour-glass shaped prop manipulated with two hand sticks) into his juggling appearances as a jester at medieval banquets held in stately old homes largely for the benefit of busloads of U.S. tourists (a very big business in Britain).

Stuart has been cautious about the props he uses ever since a waiter bumped his arm and a wooden club he was juggling gave a woman a headache even before the cheap ale she was being served got to her.

His stick is about 30 inches long and made from a half-inch dowel. Over this dowel he put end-to-end about three (enough to make 30 inches) of the worst quality paint rollers you can buy, which in Britain are made of foam rubber. (Better quality rollers are covered with wooly stuff.) If you can't find such rollers you could just glue one-inch thick foam rubber around your dowel from end to end.

Stuart gets his tapered-at-the-middle shape not by cutting the foam, but by sewing the stick up in hour-glass-shaped cloth which gels tighter and tighter towards the middle of the stick. The result is about two inches wide at either end and one inch in the middle.

This style stick is soft, safe and very, very easy to manipulate. Use normal handsticks. Anyone who is an intermediate (whatever that is) on wooden tape-wrapped devil sticks will suddenly be an expert on this. The combination of foam and length give it the control.

Stuart balances it in the center on one hand stick. flips it into an end balance on the stick. to the other end, etc. He also does moves over the back of his neck which would be painful to learn with the standard model. Kicks with the foot and thigh are also easy.

He has shown it to some devil stick purists who pointed out that it didn't make noise and thus lost its effect. But the Fell Stick - big. bumptious and brightly patterned - whirling about the owner's body, is, in fact, most effective. It may even get a pan in Superman Ill. Watch for it!