Juggling One-Upsmanship

[tongodeon]

There's a video forward going around of Chris Bliss juggling to a Beatles song. Apparently it's very popular and a lot of people are impressed.

Penn Jillette wasn't impressed, because if you're a professional performer juggling three balls isn't all that difficult. (And because everyone likes the Beatles, but if you're doing piss-poor juggling

Comments

[tongodeon]

He actually addressed this in on-radio comments. First, he does say that the audience is entertained and that this is good. What bugs him is five people a day forwarding him this link and gushing at how good the guy is. People confusing "entertaining" with "good" are what put a bee in Penn's bonnet.

Second, he says it's like fireworks set to music: there's some sync, but a lot of it is just in your head. (Tom Duff told me about some live computer-generated synced light shows that a friend of his does for concerts. One time the guy forgot some crucial bit of equiment so he just popped in a DVD from some other concert and everyone raved about how well the visuals matched the music when there was no intentional match whatsoever.)

And third, I think that Jason Garfield actually does a *better* job syncing his timing to the music. He makes fewer wild grabs and seems in better control of the throws so that they start and land at the times that they should.

[mmcirvin]

What that reminds me of is the stock iTunes visualizer, based on an old version of the G-Force visualizer for Winamp and such. When it came out, there was a certain amount of hullaballoo about the psychedelic experience of seeing music transformed into vision. But the actual sync to the music in the iTunes visualizer is pretty minor. The input to the simulated video feedback effects is an equalizer-like audioscope display represented as a squiggly line, and sometimes there are some dots or something that pulse with the sound volume, but most of what you see is typically the continuous streaming effect of the feedback, and your head does the rest.

[bsdcat]

Regarding #3 - I'd have to disagree. Garfield's performance did not look as well synced to me. I'll admit that there's a component of that that's all in my head, but I felt like I could see when Bliss missed a beat too - and it seemed to happen less frequently.

[cdk]

it wasn't so much the juggling skill that was entertaining as the choreography.

I'm not so sure it would have looked that different if someone who had a lot of practice with those tricks and some basic familiarity with the song were just improvising their way through it. That was kind of what I thought was going on until I saw the comments attached to Garfield's video.

[merde]

the trouble with comparing entertainment value to quality is that they aren't comparable. entertainment is subjective. quality is objective. and while the Galchenkos are indisputably the best jugglers in the world on an objective level, they aren't nearly as entertaining to watch as either Bliss or Garfield.

(yet. they're young. give them a few years to develop their style, and they'll be doing a 12-club version of the song while dancing an Irish reel.)

[tongodeon]

Penn complained that he saw Garfield performing and the audience couldn't have looked more bored. Bugged him that here's a guy who is almost as good as it is possible for humans to get and that nobody is interested.

I think it's kinda like the guy who makes multi-story houses of playing cards. On one hand it's very, very impressive and requires an almost unhealthy amount of dedication. On the other hand it's still not something that I actually enjoy.

[merde]

it's the technician vs. the virtuoso. the technician gets it exactly right, but the virtuoso knows when to put a little spin on it to keep our attention. maybe the guy who makes houses of cards knows just about when the audience is getting bored, and "accidentally" knocks over two stories, just to keep them watching. it builds tension. it's more exciting.

why does the action hero have to get all beat up before he finally takes down the bad guy? because if he just walked in and shot him in the head, the movie would be over in two minutes.

never let it be said that my quote file failed me:
"Gravity lacks artistry. It's too predictable." -- the Watcher

[tongodeon]

I'll bet, if Garfield put as much time and effort into choreography as the typical yoyo/diabolo guy does, then his five-ball act would have kicked serious ass.

Garfield probably could have done a much better job, but he was hamstrung by needing to do *exactly* what Chris Bliss did (with five balls). He couldn't pick his own moves. That's another way that this is impressive: "I'm not just going to juggle with the same trick, I'm going to juggle your moves".

[tongodeon]

I think they're just serving different masters here. Bliss is performing to entertain an audience, which he succeeds in doing. Garfield is settling a bet with Jillette, which he also succeeds in doing.

[tongodeon]

Choreographing a 3 ball juggling routine to music is not difficult. You can play any song that I've never heard, and I could juggle three balls to it and make up the choreography as I went along and it would look similar to the chris bliss routine except there would be difficult tricks and I wouldn't look like Leslie Neilson. There's so much room to make adjustments to the timing with three balls that you can almost always adjust it to go with the music

[merde]

i don't agree with you on the timing -- i do think Bliss has the choreography down better, although i do like the five-ball version more anyway. however, i'm betting Bliss spent a lot more time developing and practicing that routine than Garfield did with his version. give him another year of practice and i bet it'll be absolutely perfect.

[spiritualmonkey]

I like the version with three balls better. Yes, it takes more skill to juggle five balls than it does to juggle three. I don't care. You can control the timing better with three and the trick is more satisfying. I'm disappointed in Penn Jillette for not recognizing this.

Penn was a juggler long before he was a magician. He & Teller were (i believe) roomies with Michael Moschen for a while. Jason Alexander once described the "zen-like calm" that comes over Penn when he juggling (a strange concept to associate with PJ).

I can totally see him as the type of guy who could get his knickers in a twist about people gushing over what he saw was entertaining, but not really masterful, juggling.

[merde]

that would be Penn, yes. i've corresponded with him; his intellectual arrogance is the stuff of legend.

of course, as soon as he figured out i was female, all he wanted to know was my bra size, so i fobbed him off on louise_roho, who happily debated theology and blowjobs with him for about a year.

you may divine from this that i don't like the guy. brilliant, talented, sure. also a dick.

i do understand where he's coming from, though. certainly i've been known to stare fixedly at Steve Vai's hands and drool, despite the fact that only other guitarists can stand to listen to him. the last song on his first CD is so dissonant my cats run and hide when it comes on, but god damn, it's a neat trick. octatones!it is both inevitable and unfortunate that a specialist learns to appreciate craft beyond the level at which it becomes incomprehensible to the layperson. the trick is knowing where that line is, and not expecting general audiences to understand the infinite subtleties of the craft. the true master craftsman, who can perfect his craft (