You might want to have a sling handy. For, y'know, picking your jaw up from the floor.

[slipjig3]

I feel rather petty for saying this, but years along, I still want to dope-slap anyone who comes up to me insisting that that Chris Bliss three-ball-juggling-to-the-Beatles video is the greatest thing since sliced bread. I really should be long, long over this. I'm not.

Well, I finally have a way to deal with it: someone has finally uploaded some clips from Michael Moschen's "In Motion" special for PBS, which he filmed about 15 years ago, around the time of his MacArthur Genius Grant. My statement to the Chris Bliss fans will now be as follows: "Please watch this video, and then tell me if you still think Bliss is hell on wheels."

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(YouTube page link here.

Quod erat demonstrandum.

Comments

[slipjig.livejournal.com]

Oh, don't misunderstand: it's not a question of art. My problem with Chris Bliss isn't his routine so much—it's reasonably competent—but people's reaction to it. There is a common complaint among jugglers that non-jugglers have a poor concept of which tricks are difficult and which are not. It's not anyone's fault, because it's hard to judge unless you have some experience of what's involved, but if you're a performer it can get very, very frustrating. It's the old Eat the Apple Dilemma: you can work for a year on a complex five-club routine and get appreciative but mild applause, but if you eat the apple while juggling, the crowd will go nuts. (Spread the word: the eat-the-apple trick is the easiest trick on the planet.)

I had people send it to me with notes saying that it was "something I could aspire to." I had to fight the urge to say, "Aspire to? I could have done this routine when I was in practice, and I wasn't even very good." His juggling is simply not that difficult; furthermore, his styling is awkward throughout much of it, and the routine is more than a little repetitive. To listen to people call it "the greatest juggling ever" when truly gifted and brilliant performers like Michael Moschen and Anthony Gatto and Vova and Olga Galchenko are being ignored can be maddening.

*cough* Sorry. Rant over. (By the way, I forgot to mention in the post: Moschen is the guy who did the crystal ball work for David Bowie in Labyrinth.)

[maverick-weirdo.livejournal.com]

1. I have been a fan of Michael Moschen Since Just For Laughs: The Montreal International Comedy Festival (Showtime, 1991)



2. There are 2 tricks (in juggling, or anything else)
   
   1. Making the 'Difficult' look 'Easy'
   
   
   2. Making the 'Easy' look 'Difficult'


3. I knew about Labyrinth

[slipjig.livejournal.com]

No worries. (The Labyrinth item, by the way, was something I genuinely forgot to include in the original post, for the benefit of those who weren't previously familiar with Moschen; my response to you happened to be when I facepalmed and remembered. Sorry.)

[slipjig.livejournal.com]

(By the way, I'm impressed: precious few people have even heard of Moschen, in any context.)