Well Oiled German Fun Machine

Allo!
Well, it's 7:37 am San Francisco time, I've been up for 2 hours already, my room's a mess, and I have a hefty back pack that still needs unpacking. Everyone else who's supposed to be at the Vulcan made it back safely with quite the travel fatigue and now that all is said and done we can start preparing to do it all again for Burning Man.

So I understand that my last blog was a bit frantic. There was quite a bit going on and I had a limited time at the computer. EJC wrapped itself
up so very nicely. Apparently last year in Athens, the whole of the festival was far less organized than this year. The planners, being the efficient Germans that they are, decided to step up the level of organization, or at leas as much as they could for a festival comprised of 5000 juggling hippies. In anticipation for the smooth agenda, one of our European friends made the metaphor of the festival being a "well-oiled German fun machine" And so it was that the WOGFM came to be.


A little info about how the festival was set up. We had commandeered the convention center of Karlsruhe (God how many times am I going to have to spell that demon word?) named the Europhalle. Inside the hall, a stadium sized gym housed anywhere from 10- 4000 jugglers at any given time day or night for the entire festival. The info desk, workshop board, general posting board and internet cafe were all located here as well. This may have been one of the largest rooms I can recall seeing and it was constantly full of people throwing things everywhere. Outside, the convention stretched to a local park reserve where several tents housed shows, whorkshops, bars, etc. A large hill separated a rocky fire space and blacklight tent. Past the tents were vending tents, caterers, and for some reason a full medieval re- creation village. The camping areas were on the other side of the indoor water park, which opened it's chloronated doors twice during the week to the mass of unwashed, juggling hippies. Really it was all a plot to get us to shower, but I was not taken in by their squeaky clean lies and made it through the entire festival with out so much as a drop of soap touching my greasy, greasy head.

Whether the weather could have been better, I couldn't say. The whole week was a partial mix of scorching sun with a %100 chance of rain. Thankfully I weathered the storms in my cozy %95 leak proof tent. Jordan's human-furnace of a body dried most of the leaks pretty quickly, but also made those sunny sunny mornings unbearable to sleep through.

:::::HIGHLIGHTS:::::

PARADE THROUGH TOWN:
One fine day the good citizens of Kalrsrueh woke up, had themselves a schnitzel and looked outside to see thousands of jugglers flooding the street. Towering balloon hats ducking countless clubs thrown by brightly colored circus freaks on stilts, unicycles, and each other invaded the streets as we made our way down to the opening ceremonies at the castle of Kalrsruhe. I must have put club hats on 5 million and half kids. The opening show had a dynamite diabolo team that reduced me to the rank of diabolo eunuch.

RETRACTION:
So in my last post, I might have made some exaggerated statements that while true at the time, probably gave everyone a skewed view of the truth. I'd like to take a moment to make the following corrections.
1. It turns out we were not the best fire spinners there. Seconds after I posted that, I ran into Dai and shortly after Yuta. Even after the Japanese duo showed up, there were some dozens or so fire spinners that gave all of us a run for our euros. They just didn't show themselves till later in the week.
2. I stated that everyone here was better than Jordan, including me. That was a bit unfair. There were many jugglers, small children mostly, who Jordan out ranked. Not too say that there weren't small children better than Jordan, and even me. Actually for most of the festival, if you met anyone between the ages of 5 and 10 you could safely assume that they could make you feel like some severely handicapped excuse for a person with their god-like juggling. My pants were literally pulled down, figuratively speaking, by a 10 year old punk who was effortlessly operating five diabolos at once. I'm developing a theory that juggling is a language that children pick up 90 times quicker during their mental development, just like that 3 year old who learned Japanese from Yu-gi-oh.

SHOWS, SHOWS, OPEN STAGES, RENEGADES, PERFORMANCES, AND SHOWS!
Not a night went by when there was some ground-breaking performance happening. I tend to take or leave shows. I adore them once I'm there but getting there and cramming myself into a crowded tent takes away my enthusiasm. Nonetheless, I must have seen at least half of the shows (It was difficult to see much more as many of them were double-booked). I saw my share of phenomenal acts and acts that ranged all the way down to "meh". Latino night was a good example where I saw one of the best club passing routines in my life followed by a girl in a white dressed, who played music that made the audience moan in agony (literally literally this time), rolled around on the floor slowly, occasionally tossing things to her feet and then exited by walking slowly into the audience and letting the act fade into nothing. It sucked hard but was the guttsiest act I've ever seen.

Our group particiapted in several of these. The Vulcan crew performed several of their numbers in the fire open stage on Thursday and in the Closing fire show. Jane, did her fire strip act, which featured her burning off her shirt for the open stage. I personally wriggled my way into the closing fire show and a renegade show, both of which I'll discuss below.

The closing Gala show was beyond phenomenal. There were plain fantastic jugglers, diaboloists, clowns, etc. The best act in my opinion was the acro act where a portly looking base goes through a very clear narrative with the attractive but pissy flyer. The stunts they were doing had me yelling out in shock. We also had the privledge of seeing a juggling duo who begin all their acts by having one of the jugglers demand the shoes of the other, which initiates the great juggling battle. Even the MC, who had the annoying act of introducing the act with hand and shadow puppets only impressed everyone by playing a mixed track comprised of music with dogs barking on certain beats. Every beat a dog bark, the shadow of the hands of this man would morph into another BREED OF DOG to bark. The show was stunning.

WORLD RECORD FIRE SPINNING (sort of)
At the start of the festival, there were flyers announcing an attempt to break the world record for a choreographed fire act. They aimed to do it with 200 people but ended up only recruiting about 100, myself included. But wait! Many of you might be aware of that Burning Man has roughly 1000 fire spinners perform choreography every year for the conclave burn. This was brought to our attention and stalwartly dismissed as inconvienent. Maybe they categorize it differently since we were one group while burning man was several separate groups. Or maybe they just meant the world record for Europe.

The actual choreography was less then technically exciting. My part consisted of 32 counts of butterfly, followed by 32 counts of weave, then 32 counts of weave on the other side, 32 counts pendulum, 48 counts of horizontal split-time, 32 counts of windmill, and 32 counts of buzzsaw. As boring as my part was, the saving grace of the piece was the fact that there was about 10 other groups doing completely separate choreography that looked good and fit into our mundane choreography to give a fairly complex product. We opened the closing fire show with the piece, so it's nice I can say I was part of that show in some way.

THE ANTICS OF GREG
One day I came back to camp to find Greg lying in the campsite singing Incubus to himself. He offered me gulp of Jaegermeister as he retold his tale of merriment. He, and the rest of the group, met a fun Irishman on the bus ride down named Chris who decided to go off into Kalsruhe one day with Greg on an adventure, a drinking adventure. The details of what they drank were unclear, but Greg did recall having to peel our inebriated friend off the floor of the local supermarket. Once outside, Greg proceeded to walk in front city hall and began to vomit in a nearby bush. This got him a talking to by the German Polize that left Greg with a stern warning to stop. Finally Greg and Chris parted ways. Chris walked in one direction looking for a specific record store while Greg walked in the opposite direction, back to the festival, and happened to pass the very store Chris had wandered off looking for. If you're still in Carlsruhe and happened to find Chris, please return him to Belfast care of Jameson's Whiskey.

THE RENEGADE ACT
So back in Amsterdam, when Greg and I were chilling in our pimp house over the canal, Greg though of the amusing idea of me getting naked, tying an apple to my penis, doing a back flip and catching the apple in me mouth. Ha, ha, ha...what kind of idiot would ever attempt that stupid act. Oh that Greg. About a week later I found myself on the Renegade show preparing to drop trou for hundreds of drunken jugglers. While preparing for the act, I realized that an apple wouldn't work. They tend to be hard and pack a bit of momentum, Assuming that I could tie it right, it would smash into my face at worse or, if I did manage to get near my mouth, probably do a number on my teeth. A Light fruit tends to be a bit mushier (apricots, nectarines, kiwis) and we found out that they wouldn't survive the centrifugal force of my back flip. In the end, I settled for a banana. Tying it to my junk was another difficulty, first you need to get the length right and then leave it tied there until the act begins, less than extremely comfortable, but I know some guys who are into it. Sadly I could not catch the dam thing (the banana that is) in my mouth. While tying, I forgot to account for the dangle effect and made the string just marginally too long. The banana would drag on the ground and kill it's lift to my face. I saved the act by announcing I'd better pull something out of my ass. I then did just that with a D-lite. If this description is hard to follow, Jordan got the whole think on tape. IN the end, the judges were so impressed with my huge huge act that they gave me a whole bottle of wine to enjoy. That's good enough for me I say.

CLOSING FIRE SHOW
Finally, Saturday night a fire show was held to officially close the festival. Everyone did a splendid job including the Vulcan crew who did their poi routine. At the end of the show, the fire brigade shows up and threatens to spray down anyone with fire. Several fire artists started spinning in defiance as they were doused with the fire hose, set on low power. Just when it looked like all had been extinguished, out comes Dai in nothing more than a thong speedo and spins double staff for a full 2 minutes while the fire fighters hosed him down. This was actually part of the show, just to be clear.

THE GREAT ESCAPE BACK TO AMERICA
At the end of the festival, we came to the realization that we needed to get back into the UK, the country we had been barred from, to catch our flight to the U.S. and we had no concrete to our flights from the many different airports in Germany. Jordan, Noel, and Jane hopped a cab to Frankfurt Heim (not actually in Frankfurt), Krissy, Greg, and Adrienne took the bus to Kalrsuhe airport while I was left to make my lonely way to Frankfurt Main airport by train and get a flight to London. Despite our previous troubles with this country, we were waved through easily this time by customs and everyone made their way to Krissy's friend's Tony's place to chill until our flight the next day. I on the other hand paid a visit to Tanya's (old friend) new place and caught up with her. I was relieved to see her new place had draining sinks unlike her former pad in London.

The flight back was graciously uneventful. I scored with a seat near the emergency escape aile and had all the leg room I could want for the whole flight! Right now, people are just waking up trying our best to recover from Jet lag. The trip was defenitely a great experience fro me traveling both as a group and on my own. Like always I count it as life's greatest blessing to be able to see more and more places and I feel I accomplished that pretty well. I'm very relieved to be back though. I have lots of things to do here right now. Hopefully, I'll be posting again to report about the Burning Man experience and after that my trip to the east and, Lord willing, Wildfire. Yeesh, that was a long bugger of a post. Thanks for reading, and I hope to see everyone at this week's spin jam if you can make it.

Chill!
Alex

High!...uh, that is, Hi!

Guten Tag

So I have officially 10 minutes to write down as much as possible as I'm using the computers here at the EJC. Soooooo....

AMSTERDAM: Buttloads of fun. Lotsa coffehouses. People getting sick. Wandering around aimlessly in a canal filled maze. Everyone was getting sick. Sex Museum!! Jism spewing mannequins. Left Friday. No one bought Alex a bus ticket. Lonsome train ride it is.

Ride to Germany: No drug sniffing dogs (I'm insulted!) Haben nua diesen einen koffer? First night in Karlsrhue. Random father walking to EJC gives me putrid lime flavoured beer he expects me to guzzle in public on the street in front of his 13 year old son. Dinner: Falaffel burrito (it was like sex wrapped in candy) Meanwhile police handle some sort of scuffle between a bus patron and the bus employees, I was too occupied with my falaffel burrito treasure to care. Ian had to set up his tent in the rain.

EJC: I'm watching a stadium packed with jugglers as I write these very words. There's a club combat tournament to my right. It's like the combat scene from Planet of the Apes. Everyone's better than Jordan, including me! Everyone's sick, including me! Someone got married. Someone threw something at that Mentalist guy. Parade threw Karlsrhue. I put club hats on like...80 kids! I hate people from Taiwan, especially if they know diabolo. We're some of the best fire spinners here, including me!

OOOOOKkkaaayyy. I'm about out of time. Hope you enjoyed the blog quickie (or bluickie) I'll elaborate on this mess of visions and ideas later, probably when I get safe back home, oooh, that journey's going to be fun.

Al vietez zen ?

Put away the seaweed; This boy's got his vitamin B!

B! B for Belgium, B for Brussels, and B for Bohemian. Margaret wins this round, being the first to reply with the correct answer of Brussels, the Capital of Belgium. After saying goodbye to everyone's favorite immigration officer, Fohawk McRodColon, the rest of the crew, except Ian who was already through customs, took off to Amsterdam only to decide to head to Carvin after all to join up with Greg, Adrienne, and Bri. The disadvantage was that none of them actually got their bags when arriving in Amsterdam. That's what happens when you radically change your flight itinerary five minutes before your airline closes. Luckily Ima left the festival early and bequeathed his tent, and several other supplies for everyone to use. Ian on the other hand was the sole attendant from the Vulcan who made it to the Secret Garden party, while Krissy held down the Fort in Amsterdam in order to meet up with her boy.

Meanwhile, I decided to take a 1 man tour of Europe's lowest self-esteemed city. Getting into Belgium was considerably easier than Britain. The interaction between me and the immigration officer went roughly as follows:

"Passport."
::Alex hands over passport::
"Are you going to Belgium?"
"I guess so, yeah."
::STAMP!::
"Get in and shut up"

Now that's service with a smile. Upon my arrival, I quickly came to the conclusion that I had no baggage (also lost in transit), no booked hotel, no knowledge of the city, and it was 11:45 at night. One thing I did have on my side though was Waffels and beer. After a quick dinner of just that, I found a comfy place in the airport and resolved to at least get lost in Brussels in the daytime.

I had told the baggage ladies (100 hundred times more polite and helpful than the British custom trolls) to send my bags to the Queen Anne hotel, the only hotel I knew by name when she asked me. After a bus ride down town and some direction acquired in French, (that's right, I got some French back) I checked into a comfy though small private room. Showers are wonderful things.

Brussels is an odd city. There's plenty to do and see just the same as any other major metropolis. They have their share of monuments and the typical European ancient city feel. But as soon as you stepped out of the moderately touristy part of the city, it felt like you were in the beginning scene of Vanilla Sky. There was nobody anywhere. It might have been the comparison to cities in India, but I would see huge center squares with maybe and old hag and her tiny Belgium dog walking by, and little else. I could decide if it was kinda refreshing or just plain creepy.

There were plenty of cool sights. The central town square has a magnificient gleaming spire overlooking towns of medieval street with towering Gothic architecture (holy crap I spelled that right?) I made friends with the workers in the local circus store and juggled as much as I could in parks. This probably helped my French more than anything. Kids would start running up to me shouting "Monsieur! Monsieur! Comment tu fait ca?" Translated as "Dude! Dude! How do you do that?" I got by talking to the kids mostly with facial expressions and key words; Clown is the universal language. Although I wasn't able to stop them from pillaging my balloons. They didn't even want the stupid animals they just wanted the balloon uninflated!

Walking down to another park one day I noticed that people, tourists even, were walking in and out of the Royal Palace of Brussels. Evidently the whole thing is open in the summer for sightseeing, for free! Walking in to the throne room I took out some juggling balls cleverly concealed in my pants. I compulsively juggling ignoring the security guards protests, until the Queen of Belgium entered, saw my obivious talents, saying "let him juggle again, let him juggle again!" And now I'm booked for the Belgian Christmas party. That was what would have happened if security hadn't made me check my bags at the door. Bastards. The throne room was very nice though.

The Atomium was the best sight on my tour. The huge 100 billion scale enlargement of an iron atom, or it's closest model, was a leftover from the world's fair in 196?. In my awed state, I decided to make a bit of art and take a video of myself spinning around the futuristic structure. After hearing it lit up at night, I thought that I would make a series of video each later in the day and string them all together witht eh atomium behind me while I spun my oggs. After hours of waiting for the sun to go down and this stupid hunk of metal to light up (the sun doesn't set until 10:30 in the summer over here) I found to my horror that whole 20 odd story structure blinked on and off like some miserable christmas decoration attempt. It was garishly unholy. I took what video I could and then sulked off to drown my sorrows.

That's another thing, Beer is worth the trip to Belgium. Belgium apparently produces a wider variety of beer than anywhere else in the world. The blonde beers were some of the tastiest. They usually gave you a slice of lemon. Quite refreshing. Not only is Brussels known for Beer but also apparently for Comics, Belgium being the origin of Tin tin, Lucky Luke and the Smerfs.A country devoted to Beer and graphic novels is quite the match for me. Each store I went to usually had some type of museum attached to it. At long last I found what I was looking for. Stores stocked with Asterix Comics in French! My bag is considerable heavier now.

Satisfying as Brussels was, I'm now safely in Amsterdam with all of my fellow Vulcanites. The house we're staying in is glorious!! Each of us 10 have our own bed, although we have to take turns with the jacuzzi hot tube. (No joke!) The house is four stories, and right on the Princegratch canal. Greg took Bri, Jane, and I on a tour of the Red light district and warned me staunchly (as he's wont to do) not to take pictures of the prostitutes in the windows, they'll f*ck you up! Yesterday everyone saw the Van Gogh museum and then Jane took Ian and I on a pub crawl. Essentially 12 free drinks for 20 eruos. Makes me happy. Last night I came home before I was too drunk to find our way back and discovered Greg and Noel passed out on what should have been my bed. I decided to stick close to the bathroom in case any of my precious alcohol should escape. Ian came in two hours later to find me passed out on the bathroom floor. Tile can be really good for one's back actually.

That about wraps it up for now. The next few days I'm partying here doing that Amsterdam thing. Surely they'll be more stories to come...and many that I'll never post on this. Friday we'll be over in Germany for EJC. Chances are good that I probably won't be able to make another post until I'm back home. Even though I was told not to return to the UK for three weeks we'll have to in order to catch our outbound flight to the US. Although if they deny us entry I guess we'll just be transported back to the U.S. anyway. Thanks everyone for the comments. Hope to hear from each of you soon!

I'm going to buy Jordan a prostitute!!!

Alex

SURPRISE!! You' re not allowed entry!!

Salut!
So the start of the great European adventure have been...eventful. The flight over, I'm sorry, let me start again...The DIRECT flight over, from SF...to London, was pretty easy to handle. Jordan, Krissy, Jane, Noel, and myself took up the entire middle row of the jet. I was even able to catch a bit of rest as we flew over Greenland.

Then we landed, and that's where the fun begins. For some reason we thought it was a good idea to approach customs together. Between Krissy and Jane,s hair, my wardrobe, and Jordan just itchin' for an excuse to put on that clown nose, Noel, ended up looking the most respectable. That includes our immogrations officer, who in some strange lifestyle choice, sported a graying Fo-hawk. He wasn't too pleased with our lack of address (we were going to the SECRET garden party after all) and he asked us to wait quietly while he took all of our passports, plane tickets, and other close sentimental items to made "inquries" regarding the festival we were performing at.

A half hour later he returned to find all five of us juggling in front of determindly staunch immigration henchmen. The Fohawked dude, who will hereby be referred to as Fohawk McRodColon, reported to us some "bas news" as he surpressed a sadistic smile. Evidently the UK required us to have work permits to work in the UK. Good thing we're not working. But wait, said officer Fohawk McRodColon, performers actually do count as work. But my mom says its not work unless you get paid. Well the British government doesn't care. I guess he was afraid of us dodging numerous tarriffs and worker fees thus depriving England of it's fair share of nothing.

We were given two options, 1. go down to International and get on a plane to anywhere but here, or 2. get on a plane for America, as it falls under the category of "not here". Words were exchanged and the end result was the strong advice not to return to the immigration office unless we really wanted to head back to the US. We bade good bye to officer Fohawk McRodColon and headed to International, quite frustrated. This is what happens when you allow Saxons to run a country!

In International we began the intricate dance of contacting everyone we could (Ian was still in the airport, out of reach none the wiser to our troubles) while we booked flights to anywhere but there. In the end, we ended up gushing out troubles to the far ,ore understanding employees of BMI and United who suggested we talk to Immigration directly. Noel had just gotten off the phone, we had bought tickets, changed the destinations of our bags when who should arrive but our good friend Fohawk McRodColon! He greeted us with a friendly "I understand one of you has had a talk with my boss" Noel quickly stepped up while I hastily explained all was taken care of, we're going anyway, please don't deport us. Anyway, thankfully nothing worse came of that, although I'm still barred fro, going to the UK for 3 weeks.

While the rest of the group opted for going to Amsterdam early, I decided to make the most of the situation and took off for a few days to a mystery country in Europe. I wanted to make this fun, so here's the deal; whoever can guess what city I'm in will win the souvenier. I know I told some of you, so if you know the answer already, please don,t cheat. This city
Is a capital city
Is a destination I' ve never been to before
And was the birth place of Tin Tin

Answers to come next week. All in all, I'm doing great inspite of all obstacles, enjoying myself in mystery city X and looking forward to reporting to evveryone again in Amsterdam next week. Talk to everyone soon

vvvvvvvvrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr CIAO!

A Different Spin Rides Again!

Salutations,
Week two of summer of chaos found me in Canada this week. As we did last year, A Different Spin was invited to Elias's hometown of Orangeville to perform for their founder's fair. Wendsday morning found Jordan and I making our groggy way to San Francisco airport after a night of partying, no sleep, and a traditional game of Settlers that, by all rights, I should have owned. Flying with fire and spinning equipment is always a gamble. Technically we're not supposed to carry any substance that has been graced by combustible fluids, let alone soaked in them. Generally we just tape a whole bunch of plastic bags around everything and hope for the best. The flight was fairly uneventful, I've been getting into the habit of entertaining kids in the airport. I have nothing better to do, and neither do they. It usually works out pretty well except for one five-year old I sat in front of on our flight to Philly. At the airport, he seemed compelled to keep pressing his crotch into my knee. My kingdom for a garden hose!

During our lay-over in Philly, we met up with the one and only Mooch who had been transferred to our flight in a strange, entropy defying act of convenience. Elias picked us up in Buffalo (the domestic flight was just plain cheaper). Not surprisingly, the majority of our bags were searched, although the bag full of vaguely combustible fire torches was left untouched. I have an image of airline employees, working out of the public eye, seeing a bag full of juggling equipment on the x-ray machines, exclaiming "Oooh! Toys!" and searching my bag just to examine our rare circus props. Then the manager would come in to see a whole room of airline workers engaged in complex juggling patterns while a stack of suspect bags piled up on the conveyor belt. At least that's what I hoped happened. It couldn't have any more surreal than when they looked through Mooch's box of broken glass that he checked. I keep saying we need to mark "extremely fragile" on the box one of these days, and then when we pick the box up and open it, Mooch should shout "Oh my God! MY GRANDMOTHER'S URN!!!" We might be able to get some compensation out of that.

We stayed at Elias's Mother's good friend Agnes's house not far from main street Orangeville. She graciously converted her upstairs yoga studio into a small inn by piling up yoga mats and blankets to make beds for all of us. One of the most agreeable accomadations I've had yet. Thursday we spent going over our rustier routines and making new ones. We slapped together a decent day show and discussed our options for our daytime finale. Afterwards we walked off the grass area of the park we were working in, to a nearby skater terrain park. We needed the concrete to practice our finale. The two dozen or so skateboarders and trick bikers suddenly stopped what they were doing as a scrawnier guy with a brightly colored tri-hawk layed out a large cloth on the concret and poured a sizeable pile of broken glass all over it. More of them gathered around as that odd-looking man stepped atop the glass bare-footed while another man jumped on top of a trim, well built, handsome youth (that's me). The first man (Elias), then steps onto the glass-walker as the handsome man starts passing knives and lit torches around the two with a tall, tree of a man with a devilish goatee. That was the picture of our finale, that we attempted for the first time in front of a crowd of skater punks. If you doubt the truthfulness of my depiction, the picture below proves otherwise.

Friday we helped open the ceremony, performed one day show and closed the night with a fire jam at the bottom of the street fair. Many people recognized us from last year. I swear one of the best things about traveling in public with Mooch is the looks kids constantly give him. The parents usually grab their little pointing hands away and tell them not too stare, as if he were some sort of misfortunate cripple, forever at a disadvantage in society and life. Mooch tends to wait till they're out of sight before he starts laughing.

Saturday was the busiest day of the trip and is summarized as follows:

9:00-10:00 Pancake breakfast, start the day off right!
10-11 Juggle around in the gathering heat. Start ongoing argument on the validity of our conflicting schedule.
11-11:30 Schedule 1 says perform, Schedule 2 says chill, what's the best plan of ac--- Oh cool! Lemurs!
11:45- 12:15 Day performance: "It's just a little rain! You owe us money you cheapskates!!"
12:15-2:00 Oh, Mr. Sub's veggie sandwich, you're my only vegan friend.
2:00-2:15 We're scheduled for this place, but the strong man' still using it. Mooch go tell him to move (This dude was seriously a head taller than Jordan and twice as thich, physically that is)
2:15-2:30 Hitch down the jugglin' props ma'. Storm's a comin'!
3-3:30 Torrential down pours are no match for A Different Spin! Sweet Christ we're soaked.
4:00-5:00 Hijack Agnes dryer as Jordan, Elias and I stand anxiously in our boxers waiting for our clothes to be done
5:45- 6:00 Alex! Jump over those kids now!
6:00-7:00 Final day show, Diabolo back-flip catch; success!!
7:00-9:00 Thai dinner: With the declining price of kippers these days you'll see it's imperative to keep the sauce to rice ratio in balance.
9:00-9:30 Final count-down to show: Are those clouds getting closer?
9:30-10:00 Best fire show Orangeville has ever seen? Priceless.
10:00- 11:00 Photo-ops and thanks: Sign my shoe!! Mooch is given a baby to hold and awkwardly tries not to pop it with his pointy hair.
11:00-1:00 pack-up and drive back to Zoe's place in Toronto. You thought streets in SF were confusing?
1:00-2:00 Nacho-dinner washed down with a pitcher of beer. End the day right!

Zoe was kind enough to shack us up for our last night in Toronto so we didn't have to get up at 5 AM to get out of the country. After a quick snack we high-tailed it for the border. For some reason, we though it'd be a good idea to wear our clown noses for border patrol. This seemed to inspire a few more questions from border patrol. "Why are they all wearing clown noses?" he asked suspiciously. Mooch's flight back from Philly to white plains was canceled sadly due to a widespread thunderstorm that was wrecking havoc with air traffic. We made it back to SF only an hour late thankfully. On our first flight from Buffalo to Philly, the flight attendants had to give us the safety speech. Jordan and I, having heard this speech far too often donned clown noses and started miming along with the stewardesses. If you've never made a flight attendant laugh out loud, I highly recommend it. During our lay-over in Chicago, Jordan and I experiment juggling on those moving sidewalks they have and entertaining the mile long line of poor souls whose flights had gotten canceled. I only use my circus powers for good. Finally we arrived back at the Vulcan at a hearty 3 in the morning.

The gig in Canada went over really well. It was very gratifying to see A Different Spin performing with little to no deterioration of our skills. We were invited back next year and during New Year's. Mooch will be working this fall to create A Different Spin east coast division so a new years gig in Canada would be a wonderful place to bring everyone together. Right now I'm spending this week preparing for the trip to Europe of which I embark in one week's time. Play (the festival we were going to in Wales) was canceled, so instead we're going to try and hit up a festival in Cambridge. I'll be making one more post before heading across the pond, but hopefully I'll see everyone on the west coast who reads this drivel before I go. To everyone else, I'll find you....find you when you least expect it.

Bye for now
Alex

Freaks of Mt. Shasta

Howdy,
I just got back from Mt. Shasta and am now using my two day breather to relax and get things prepared for Toronto. Hope everyone had a happy fourth. The adventure up to Mt. Shasta, starring yours truly and his trusty side-kick Bri, started out pretty decently. Smooth sailing for all of 30 minutes. As we were crossing the Bridge to Sacramento, Bri turned to me whilst driving and pointed to an S.U.V a little ahead and to our left.
"Does that Canoe on top look crooked to you?" She asked. Five minutes later we were swerving away as fast as possible, trying to avoid a rougue canoe that was barely still hanging onto the side of the spooked S.U.V. The good news is, if the canoe took us out and pushed us over the bridge, at least we would have a boat.

We arrived in the small, new age town of Mt. Shasta mid afternoon that day. We checked in to our Campsite not too far from town and started to unpack. We stopped the unpacking pretty quickly when we realized that we had forgotten our tent back in Oakland. I've always wanted to sleep under the stars anyway. We met Paula that afternoon. She ran us through the game-plan. We were getting paid to entertain the walkers of a five mile race around town. Pretty low-key. There was also a parade the next day we were invited to be a part of. Before sleeping that night on our wonderful tarp, we saw the movie Hancock. I liked everything except for the last five minute denuemount of the film. Seriously, it's worth seeing if you walk out right after the climax.

The event on the fourth went very well. I was dressed in a gold suit jacket, green pants, and a rainbow uncle sam top hat. I also ran around with a gold zanni mask while Bri had a matching red mask and green hair. I only made 1 little girl cry. Everyone else seemed very appreciative. The parade also went very well. I stilted the entire mile of it or so. After all the good times, we got some free, god-awful beer and hit the beach of Lake Sisskiyou. The best part of the trip for me was swimming in that gorgeous water. A perfect chilly but refreshing temperature, deep, clean, but dark enough to hide the fact I had no bathing suit keeping me from communing with nature in the buff. Family-event be damned!

The fire works on the lake were also highly enjoyable. I made the mistake of taking my glow toys out before the show, including my magic d-lites. I was consequently attacked, physically, by several small children who demanded the secret of my magic. At one point I had myself in the fetal position. For the gods' sakes, I refuse to be coerced into giving away my trade secrets on the very hour I'm supposed to be celebrating my state-sponsored Liberty and Independence!

The next day was the street fair where we got to run our street show as often as we could for some bonus cash. The shows went pretty well, especially as we fine-tuned things each performance. We got a decent sized crowd each time, all the acts went pretty well, nothing catastrophic thankfully, but we just didn't get paid very much at all. The crowd who watched us would throw some money our way, but the whole operation simply didn't pay. I guess I need to work my hat line more. Bri decided she rather head back Saturday night than waste another half day for uncertain results.

So embittered were we by our lack of profit, Bri pulled over at a Casino on our way back down the I-5. Within five minutes she had doubled her street profits at a random slot machine. I on the other hand played on hand of Black Jack for $10. The first hand I held with 20, then watched as the dealer took 21. Bri, can we go now? Bri's luck was not one ot hold though. two minutes after driving away from the casino, Bri's tire ripped off, and we had to make a hasty change. We made it back to Oakland at about midnight, exhausted.

So ends week one of my greatly anticipated summer of chaos. I can't say I'm completely happy or completely dissappointed with the Mt. Shasta adventure. The whole thing was just generally greatly different than my expectations but in just as many good ways as bad. I guess Life on the whole is pretty similiar to that. (ooh, that lake water might have thrown a zen switch in my head). Write more next week after A Different Spin returns from Toronto. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go make Spanakopita.

Peace
Alex

Back on the Blog

Hello everyone whose bothered to keep up with this,

Allow me to begin the return of my blog which has been on hiatus since India for the simple reason that there wasn't a gigantic amount of my life that was worth writing about (at least nothing that I'd post on the internet). Here's a brief summary of how things have been since my return from the far east.

Performances are in this season. I've had quite a few since coming back to California such as juggling at a Gothic fashion show, roving around a end of school festival in mountain view, teaching children how to juggle during their field day, dancing at the Mission Art Project, and spinning fire at a Martini party. The last bit was one of the stranger performances I've gotten involved with. The gig was with fire pixie and was at a house that made Scrooge McDuck's mansion look like an airplane bathroom. Seriously, there were fountains inside the house along with 30 very drunk middle aged women I had to "entertain". The Mission Art Project (map) was a bit more satisfying artistically. Mumu and I choreographed a 5 minute dance/clown piece with her chair, my D-lites and poi, and sparklers. That was the last act to Mumu's 30 minute show "11 feathers abajo agua" which went over very well when all was said and done.

The first weekend in May found me at fire drums up in the Santa Cruz mountains. Many of you were probably there anyway, so I don't have to expand on how awesome it was. I was spinning fire everynight although I was never quite able to make it to dawn. The mountain temperatures made crawling into my sleeping bag fairly inviting. Speaking of frigid mountain festivals, Mutantfest was also a blast. The highlights would be too numerous to list here, but for me, nothing beats waking up that first day, and seeing a 195 lb man, obviously under the influence of chemical agents, nude as it gets, running around screaming at the top of his lungs absolute nonsense. I'd feel bad for him if it wasn't so goddamn funny. When he collapses face first in the mud, we were initially concerned and were considering helping him until we saw his naked ass start to dry hump the grass. Surreal or obscene? You decide.

Speaking of painful images, birthday parties have been another staple portion of my life. June has seen me entertaining at more birthday parties than almost the last three months combined. The good news is, I'm making bank. The bad news? I'm going out of my mind. When you're hired to be a Cowboy for three hours on a Saturday morning with limitied bathroom breaks, you'd start to feel burnt out too.

Anyway the real reason I've revived this blog, is not to regale you with tales of naked maniacs or tedious birthday parties, but rather to inform everyone that for the next 2 months, I'll mostly be on the road with my summer adventure of 2008. It starts this Independence day where Bri and I will be in Mt. Shasta helping out with their 4th of July festival and street performing along the way. After that, A Different Spin rides again in Toronto for Orangeville's annual founder's day. A week after I get back from that, I'm off to London, Wales for the Play Festival, Amesterdam, Karlsruhe for EJC, and then I finish everything off at Burning Man 2008. So, seeing how everyone seemed to enjoy reading weekly updates from India, I'll try to be making weekly updates on this summer.

Mt. Shasta looms ever closer to me right now and Bri and I have spent the last few days working quite hard on a street show to take there. The show right now is mostly me talking and pulling volunteers out of the audience to humiliate. It's been a tad stressful, but I'm confident the preparation will be worth it. The show ends with me on a pile or broken glass and Bri juggling knives on top of me. If that's not worth a fiver I don't know what is. Well, hopefully next week I'll be writing good things about that adventure. Until then I hear a bed calling my name. Hope everyone enjoys their summer in their own way. See each of you soon.

I cut my hair!
Alex

Home again

Just a quick announcement that I made it back to the Bay safe and sound. Speaking of Sounds I can't hear out of my right ear, it closed up during the flight down. Beyond that I'm here at the Vulcan fighting off sleep until midnight. Talk to y'all soon

Alex

In closing, I win India

Tashi Delai everyone!

This shall be my last blog post from India as I'll be departing Delhi at 3:15 Am Delhi time which will be anywhere from 2:45-5:45pm your time depending where in the country you happen to be.

Mussori ended most wonderfully. The perfromance at the orphanage blew their little parentless socks off. Sophia was back on stilts for teh second time since here injury. During her performance someone in the crowd started cahnting So-phia, So-phia. It was pretty cute. They treated us to more chai after the performance and then we hit up some Tibetanese food. The day performance at the Tibetan shcool was also very well received. Sadly they requested that we not do our show at the sister Tibetian school down the road. They said the show was great but with times as they are they don't feel a circus appropriate. I'm cool with that although my own philosophy states that times of tradegy are all the more reason to make people laugh.

My last day in Mussori was spent in a really awesome graveyard that they have not far from my hotel. The graves are super old and mostly in ruins, very hauntingly beautiful, like a zombie contact juggling. We met up with the enviromental NGO Swecha late thursday night. They lead high shcool students to different schools to teach enorimental activism. We followed them in the bus deeper into the Himalayans for our final performance.

A funny thing happened to us on the way to the Ganga that morning. We took a pit stop on the side of a cliff that overlooked the a ganga tributary about 200 yards down or so. After relieveing oursleves we started throwing rocks from the cliff seeing who could make hit the water. I started looking around and some of the girls had found very interested wild foliage growing not to far from the bus. Suddenly I heard Matt's voice yelling "Get in the Bus! All men going now!!" Apparently below the cliff but out of site was a small village that we were inadvertedly throwing rocks at. A small donkey train was very slowly but surely making it's way up the cliff to kick our asses. We sped on, leaving the villagers shaking their fists behind us.

Swecha had arranged a camp site to be made for us in a small valley SURROUNDED by MOUNTAINS! WE swam in the ice cold glacier water and then prepared for our final show. The show was held in the courtyard fo a 5,000 year old temple. We had to wait until after teh 7;00 puja where everyone rings bells and chants for half an hour over the lingum aka Shiva's penis. This happens every night mind you all over India. Before Puja while we were setting up, I took it upon myself to distract the locals from our equip and to give everyone more room. I only meant to do a litle juggling to turn peoples head and before I knew it there were hundreds ov people verly effectively trapping me in a ring of bodies. For nearly a half hour I would do a trick and then pull someone up, ask their name and balance a "Club hat" (Hat made out of three juggling clubs) on their heads and get them to squat down or put their hands up, anything to throw their balance. Finally Chris came by and rescued me, but not before I made my customary jump over several volunteers.

The show went wonderfully. We were very tight on security after the show as experience has taught us, and everything went smoothly. The next day we packed our stuff and took the longest goddam bus ride of my life to our Bus Driver Ram Kumar's village. On our way down we stopped for lunch, while some less cultrured people flew to Pizza hut, Savannah, Keeli, Sophia, and I lunged in a luxuriant Hookah bar sipping our mango shakes laughing at the others who doubted our intuition. We got to Ram Kumar's village at about 1 am. And still his family cooked us dinner and gave us whiskey. It was Ram Kumar after all.

HOLI HELL! The next day was Holi, the day when all of India smothers each other with colors. We woke up and were immediately invited to party with some of the other hotel guests. We were warned that some people get a bit to aggresive on holi but these guys were really nice. We had a dance party in their room and put layer after layer of bright pigment on our face. Things were cool until we tried to go outside. JP, Savannah, Mumu and I were outside for all of five minutes. A drummer was drumming and the ladies began dancing with our gracious hosts. Suddenly a swarm of hundreds of brightly colored Indian men had creeped out of the streets and were slowly moving in staring at us wide eyed. Suddenly on our our hosts grabbed Savannah by the wrists and pulled her back in the hotel. Mum got dragged in too and we wre told that ll the men outside were '"holi guns" gangs of men that would get dangerously rowdy with any attractive speciman that walked their way.

Thankfully Ram Kumar picked us up in the bus and drove us to his house. There we attracted no less of a crowd of villagers and kids and villagers and kids. I told just one my name and the next thing I know everywhere I go I hear a-LEX! a-LEX! The next day we bade them all farewell and the showered us with flowers and forehead paint. We were treated like rockstars and we didn't even do anything!

Finally here I am at Delhi ready to come home. I would have loved to have seen so much more of India, but I take comfort in that I don't feel like I wasted anytime here. I'll be flying back to San Francisco on flight no. 985 Air China at 12:40 pm. Which brings me to my next point. Can someone pick me and Bannigan up? I'd take the bart but it would be nice to help Bannigan (aka Jim) out with a ride back to Oakland as no Bart trains run close to his house. If you're interested please send me your name, address, phone number, driving experience, current resume, and waiver of liability to Spiceyquark@gmail.com in the next 10 minutes. Excited to see everyone really soon. I'm going to be so Jet lagged!

Namaste and Damiabad!
Alex

Still on the Mississippi

Guten tag
My last entry was cut short by incredibly obnoxious technical problems so this is just a quick addenum. Musoori is a very incredible mountainous village. Thankfully it hasn't been as cold as it looked like it waould have been. Only at night. The daytime has been quite temperate.

We're staying at the Hotel deep, which for the price has been spectacular. The view outside our window is of a sweeping mountain landscape. I keep expecting a sweeping circle of stars to surround the mountain, flash the words "Paramont Pictures" and to have a movie start. I'm staying ing the "party room" with Matt, Carly, Bannigan (Jim), Savannah, and Mumu. We're so stoked to have a dinning table in the room that we broke down and got the more expensive room service.

As for networking, Matt and I took a bicycle rickshaw past Musoori to check out a Tibetian Refugee school. I woke up and order myself a Chai. Then we got to the village a bit early so we relaxed with another Chai and a donut hole. We met our contact who said he would go grab the super intendent for us and while we were waiting offered us more Chai. We finally met the Super Intendent and was ushered into his house where we talked things over a cup of, guess what?, CHAI! At this point Matt and I were so hopped up on Chai we had little trouble expressing our enthusiasm for the show. I let it drop that my Gram would enjoy all the tea which got the S.I. talking about his trip to Swansea. Who knew?

We were immediately booked for a Day show Monday and then another the next day in Rajpur (45 minutes away). The one school would have 2000 tibetan students. With the recent riots and protests in Tibet due to the Olympic games, we were happy to be helping some of the Tibetians get through some rough times.

On the way back, Matt and I went through a gorgeous mountain pass, the type that so see in cartoons where the main character has himself pressed up against the mountian side while peering down an impossibly high cliff. Last night we performed fire for the Musoori Boys and Girls school and were then treated to dinner. the performance went really well. We were on a Basketball court that looked out over the valley. We also had most of Musoori looking down at us from the overhead streets. The dinner by the way was excellent. Whenever we have home cooked food we usually get two things. Wonderfully spicy flavours and sick people the next day. A few people have been a bit ill up here in the thin Mountian air but we seem to be adjusting. Thankfully I've yet to feel any affects.

Today we'll be performing fire again at an orphange. Tommorow at one Tibetan school. Tuesday the other, and then Wendsday we meet up with Swecha for the conclusion of the tour. I still don't feel like I've experience enough of India but if I can catch the Holi festival before I come back I'll be reasonably satisfied. Hope everyone back home is getting psyched for the Vulcan Spinagouge!

All vitezein!
Alex