yo-yo #19: the xmas eye-of-the-tiger skyline

"sunday! sunday! sunday! 4pm at the megalopaloplex!!! THE BATTLE of the CENTURY!!! YO-YO's vs. YO-YOING!!! you'll PAY for the WHOLE SEAT... but you'll only need... THE EDGE!!!"

...

i got a new yo-yo. got it for xmas. it was wrapped cleverly by my fantastic mom in a Jos A. Bank tie box (complete with Jos A. Bank tissue paper inside). she always gets me amazing yo-yo's with essentially zero guidance (more on that later). i'm the first to admit that i needed another yo-yo like the hindenburg needed to be sprayed with nitroglycerin. this one put me in the somewhat surreal position of exceeding the 25 yo-yo capacity of the golf ball holder that holds my metal yo-yo's (that's JUST my METAL yo-yo's, mind you). i know there are way more serious collectors out there, and this is kind of a chance for me to debate that perspective with myself. having just ACQUIRED another yo-yo... what do i think about ACQUIRING yo-yo's? what do i think about people who are much more concerned with their ability to procure, preserve, and display than with their ability to use the toys themselves?

i talk to some people, and they're perspective is essentially "i've got this one beat up pink zero that has been in the washing machine twice and that's all i ever need. anyone who thinks they need more yo-yo's than this is whack!" do i agree with this? of course i could subsist one one yo-yo (see "yo-yo #1). i could survive just fine without yo-yo's if need be, but do i believe that the fewer you possess, the better off you are? with a few notable exceptions, these people often seem a little bit judgmental of "possessing yo-yo's" (if not possessing things in general). talking to them sometimes has the effect of "man... i'm not hardcore unless i only have one yo-yo, and it's a total trash-can BEATER!"

i talk to other people who are PERPETUALLY trying to embroil themselves in some kind of complicated yo-yo trade. they never seem even remotely satisfied (or even aware) of what they have, but they're perspective is "by playing every possible yo-yo, i can better understand what really appeals to me, and what in which new directions i can take my play". others are unabashed about just wanting a ton of yo-yo's 'cause yo-yo's are cool. talking to these people always leaves me feeling sorry for them; as though they're chained to what they've got and what they want, and firm in the belief that more (or more fashionable) equates to "better". i can't help but feel that when they walk away from yoyoing, they will do so unsatisifed, but i hope not.

the rub is that both of these archetypes are largely "possessed" by possession. if you're attached to the idea that you're somethin' special because you just own one yo-yo you know through and through, you're no more free than the person who thinks they're somethin' special cause they have 4 of each one drop colorway.

speaking of colorways, this yo-yo is a skyline by yoyofactory. this is my 2nd skyline, and though i didn't ask for it, it occurs to me that i really, really like these yo-yo's. they're small and light(ish), but feel solid and spin forever. they have a very subtle "H" profile, and are pratty square in their weight distribution. this one is the "majestic white tiger" variation (or something), complete with stripe laser art and eyes on the hubs. it's hot; kind of walking that fine line between that which i want to play, bad, and that which i would like to protect, but the former wins ever time. however, i probably won't play it all the time, realistically. is that a problem?

as i see it, there are two kinds of collectors: those that justify collecting by saying it's for "posterity", and those who just want to have a lot of yo-yo's for themselves. i have no problem with the former, but they're rare in their true form. a lot of people want to say "i'm saving this because i think it's important to document this period in yo-yoing." but most of those people just get off on having a lot of yo-yo's. i have a lot of yo-yo's, and i don't seem to "mind it", so what's my issue with that?

i think getting excited about the things that you have (to the extent that you seek to acquire more) inevitably distracts from what i understand to be a yo-yo's function. if you asked 10 yo-yoer's what yo-yo's are for, you might get 10 different answers, but i bet 7 would be some variation on "fun". while i agree that yo-yo's ARE fun, if you've invested even a little time in learning to yo-yo, you probably understand that there are plenty of factors to the process that suck. string burn, bearing maintenance, vibes from cro-magnon high school peers... not to mention the actual learning of more difficult tricks; it's WORK. it's not playing barefoot wiffleball and sipping lemonade from a beer-helmet. and pretty much everything that involves work implicitly involves some kind of personal development. improving your yo-yoing is inextricably linked to improving the quality of your own character.

and every moment you commit to thinking about getting or having yo-yo's is a moment you're not applying the benefits of actually playing. having lots of yo-yo's is one thing; spending more mental effort manicuring your shiny collection than you do learning and developing is quite another. obviously no one is qualified to judge where you stand in that spectrum but yourself, and sadly, people who are honest with themselves are few and far between. this blog, and that which i'm currently composing would fall under the heading of "thinking about yo-yo's", and i certainly don't see it as detrimental.

in the climate we've constructed (and make no mistake WE constructed it), it's really difficult for a new yo-yoer to avoid the pitfalls of hype and acquisition. "how to play" often seems secondary to "what you've got". there was a thread on yoyonation today by a kid asking for help on his throw... because he could only manage a few seconds worth of sleep time with his "shark vs. zombie beaver" edition bear vs. man. my perspective is that if you're such a neonate to yo-yoing that you have to ask for this kind of advice, then why get a $100 metal yo-yo. familiarize yourself with the utter basics of the art and science before you get in over your head. speaking of the aforementioned "SvZB", several threads have already materialized offering to resell these yo-yo's, making no bones whatsoever about doing so at an inflated price. i find it depressing that people are so excited about this or that yo-yo that they'd seek to "scalp" less than a week after the big release. it's much more depressing, however, that WE enable such behavior by offering consistent demand at virtually any price.

yoyoing, as i see it, is a wonderful thing. but we're people, and people (it would seem) are not happy unless they are hard at work making themselves feel inadequate over NOT possessing "the next big thing". yo-yo's are lovely. this yo-yo is lovely, but only in that it allows me to experience the joy of play. would that we could appreciate the value in that.

yo-yo #18: b-grade g5+

yoyofactory is unbelievable. unbelievable.

the first yoyofactory yo-yo i played was the original grind machine (the 2nd, seasick green run). while i felt the yo-yo was something of a misnomer, being that it was not a spectacular grinder, i was amazed by its consistency. i remember disliking the plastic inserts and caps (the same as a fast 201), but once i ditched them (and the adjustable gap), that yo-yo was effectively a metal freehand.

i'm not sure of the exact moment in time when yoyofactory exploded, inundating the yo-yo scene with hype and metal. the 401k was a great seller, but was readily available for a long time. at some point after the release of the g5 though, yoyofactory became synonymous not only with consistency, but also yo-yo fashion. they didn't just set the standard. they became it, and by 2007, had fully dominated the 1a market.

i first tried a g5+ at the "golden ticket" extravaganza at worlds '07. the exclusive celebration itself was not as huge a deal as many had assumed it would be, but some cool products were unveiled, and this yo-yo became available for the 1st time immediately afterwards. at the time, it came in a dull gray and a brilliant orange. i think the orange sold out in a matter of hours, whereas the gray could be bought on yoyonation for weeks thereafter. augie fash used one of the oranges to throw a memorable (and planned) aerial into the chandelier during an onstage freestyle. boyd seth somehow got it down that night and claimed it for his own. i think he gave it back at some point.

at the east coast classic the following year, yoyofactory began selling its "b-grade" yo-yo's. these were essentially flawed rejects that didn't meet the company's high standards. the first of these were red 888's with blotchy ano and limited engraving. they sold for $60, which incited a substantial frenzy to get them. since their flaws were primarily cosmetic, they were incredibly solid players, and yoyofactory correctly recognized that they could still make the masses salivate at a lower price point.

at iyyo this year in nyc, i bought this b-grade g5+ from samm scott. samm and i have been friends for a few years. though he lives in virginia, he was one of the first guys to come hang out at the park when the north carolina easily amused chapter was just getting together. he's a pretty amazing technical yo-yo player, skilled in all the major styles but 2a. we were rooming together with brandon jackson, adam brewster, and mike salcito (another nc crew guy) at this place called "the pod hotel". it was aptly named, as the floorplans were so unbelievably cramped that we felt literally compressed into each other like seeds desperately awaiting dispersal. there was only slightly more room than their had been in my element during the drive up.

after day 1, samm and i were back at the room, and he had acquired a pair of b-grade g5+'s. i'm not sure if he had bought them for the $55 they were going for at the table, or if ben had just given them to him outright. (ben is ridiculously generous, and once sent me a pair of top-tip g5's he had scratched a bit while stacking them.) anyway, samm just couldn't get into them, and was quickly running down to his last hundred (which in nyc will buy you a sandwich and styrofoam cup for your tap water). he said "give me $40 and it's yours," and i said sure.

the yo-yo is matte black. the ano has some quirks in places where it's not super-dark; almost brown. the only engravings are the yyf b-grade logos on both rims. the finish is beadblasted and much better for grinding than the original grind machine. i'm always amazed that yoyofactory's "rejects" consistently outplay almost every other company's top-of-the line models, and yet they get barked at on forums for everything from customer service to not releasing certain colorways.

anyway, it was a crazy-good player... but like samm, i just never really got into it. i tried to trade it away a few times with no great prospects. i figured it didn't cost me much, and it's a good yo-yo that reminds me of that trip to new york. why not keep it?

then a few weeks ago, i noticed that yoyonation had started selling little rubber "nubs" to protect the yyf axle towers if you want to ditch the hubstacks (wow, i bet non-yoyoers will really enjoy that sentence). i bought a few pairs of the white ones and, just for kicks, took off the g5+'s stacks and put on the nubs.

holy shit.

i love this yo-yo now. i have nothing against hubstacks; they're fun and enable some weird tricks. but hadn't really occured to me that i might prefer a yoyofactory yo-yo without them. something about this particular yo-yo just kind of puts me off with hubstacks, but when they're removed i absolutely adore it. aesthetically, i think it looks great; a tiny white dot surrounded by a big, black mass. if you've got an 888 or g5 that you've never really connected with, i heartily recommend this rather obvious change. for better or worse, it completely changes the way the yo-yo feels, looks, and behaves. it's uncanny that a $2.00 upgrade (or downgrade, i guess) was able to bring a stagnating piece of my collection back to life.

thanks, samm. ;)

yo-yo #'s 16 and 17: "fake" Mg's

at worlds '05, during his 5a freestyle, my pal jack ringca tossed a dull silver yo-yo out into the crowd. when it was examined after being fought for by the masses, it was discovered to be one of the rare and highly-prized silver mg's... and when it was further examined, it was discovered to ACTUALLY be a well-doctored freehand zero with mg caps. when i heard this story, i thought it was absolutely hilarious. the visual image of people clambering over each other to get to what they believed was a $400 yo-yo, only to discover it to be a facsimilie is at once super-funny AND pretty telling with regard to "the human condition".

at the risk of offending dear friends, yo-yoing is chock-full of teenage boy-types (some are actual boys and others just pretend to be). many (though not all) of these yo-yo boy-types have ingested that most western (and most human) of philosophies; that more is better. more yo-yo's, more expensive, more rare (my favorite). if a magnesium yo-yo sold for $38, no one would assume it to be any sort of "holy grail", no matter how it played. they might trample each other to get to it, on account of it being tossed by jack, but not with the same fervor as they would thinking it was actually "worth" something. things that are "worth something" are so popular on the boards, but they're really only attractive if your spirit is "worth less". i'm guilty too. i have a lot of yo-yo's, some of which i've "wanted". i'm working on that.

anyway, a considerable chunk of the commentary on the boards relates to "yo-yo appraisal". a good-playing (or looking) yo-yo begets hype, which begets cash value, which begets the widespread belief that it's a good-playing yo-yo... which begets more hype. in our present climate, a good player can do almost anything with a stock $20 yo-yo. a great player could win worlds and shift paradigms with less, and yet our fixation on market value remains, as if it represents anything more than an illusion.

the evolution of my own take on this has been interesting. when i first heard about the mg, my response was "am i really going to have $398 more fun with that than with a profly?" i thought the mg was frivolous and decadent. lately, however, when anyone brings up the popular view (almost invariably expressed by the embittered and resentful) that "an mg plays just like a zero", i feel compelled to step in and contradict them. my inclination to defend the mg was probably born right around the time i first played one, whereupon i realized something like, "whoa...this isn't bullshit, at all." in truth, it's not that i care a great deal about its monetary value, but the real mg IS a great player, and, whatever your preferences, it feels DIFFERENT from a zero. but don't be fooled: people who claim to own or desire an mg because it's BETTER than a zero are just as full of crap as the people who say it plays just the same. i'll come back to that point in a bit.

i put these two "fake mg's" (just freehand zeros) together out of happenstance, really. i got both the red (recessed kentaro) and the black (recessed silicone) in a casual trade. i always detested the "new mg" caps, so when i received an mg with them firmly fixed onto it, i drilled through them and pulled them off immediately. (as the aforementioned jack ringca showed me, strategic drilling into the side of a cap makes for a nice whistler.) i stuck em on the black zero, and when i got tired of the whistling eventually, i plugged up the hole. more recently, john higby sent me a pair of "o.g. mg" caps along with his lovely dinosaur art feautred earlier. i had the red fhz sitting around, so i figured why not make a matched set of "frauds".

although the real red mg is much darker than a red fhz, the fact that it's a blatant rip-off makes it, i think, all the more charming. i satined the black one though, and it's actually a passable facsimile in texture. the initiated would immediately notice the difference: (a real mg is delightfully cold every time you pick it up).

i realized later that the best part about them is neither their striking looks nor the "statement" i guess i'm trying to make about yo-yo's and value. what i love about these yo-yo's is that they play incredibly well. not "like" my real mg, but certainly just as "well". these aren't "fake yo-yo's". they're really, really good yo-yo's. i can do all the same stuff with them as i can with my mg, and my tricks and my spirit are "worth" the same no matter what i'm playing.

it occurs to me that when a yo-yo is spinning; when it's in play, no one really cares or even easily identifies its make, model, or value. it's only when we gaze at yo-yo's that are sitting still on a shelf, in a case, or on a web page that we start to salivate about value. when they're in play, the value is in their utility: i can use this to make art, engage others, experience life, win, or whatever.

i think often of the following quote, usually associated with chinese buddhist monks. "tattered, threadbare robes are nothing to be ashamed of; neither are they anything to be proud of."

i think it's important to keep in mind that yo-yoing is only ever yo-yoing, no matter what you're throwing. if all you have in the world is a beat up zero, the value of your yo-yoing is not decreased. and if you're sitting on caseloads of mg's, catch 22's, painted peaks, and bvm's, your yo-yoing is not worth any more. you can't forever hide from yourself behind a lot of toys. i have many yo-yo's (my wife would say "too many"), and some of them are downright fancy. however, the having of them, itself, is less than nothing. i'm blogging about them, but at the same time, i'm not very attached to them. sometimes it's harder than others, because i might connect with the people and experiences that the toys signify to me. but the stuff is just stuff; wood and plastic and a little magnesium. sometimes i catch myself glorying in my collection, but there's no glory to be had there. ever. likewise, no one's any better for subsisting with just one beater of a yo-yo. pride derived from having nothing is no better than pride derived from having a great deal. it's only by walking that middle way, without any attachment, that you can ignore the illusory value of an object and recognize the value of your self.

yo-yo #'s 14 and 15: pair of proyos

my 2a sucks. blows. it goes from suck to blow. it is atrocious. ok, it's not THAT bad. it's really my accursed left hand (the "sinister", as it were). my right, i can loop in any which way until the string unwinds. my left is not as good, but it really isn't until they both get together to tango that the hideous travesty unfolds.

i like to fancy myself as being cut from a kind of "o.g. yo-yo cloth", as if, since i like playing wood a lot, i'm channeling barney akers or gus somera or something. understand that i'm not egomaniacal enough to actually "have" this thought (though i guess i just did), but the "idea" of the old demonstrators kind of underpins everything i see in yo-yoing today. i think what appeals to me the most is the inherent minimalism. compared with today, where we (as a society) seem to believe that no field should be left fallow and all possibilities should be explored (if only for the sake of exploration itself), half a century ago, things were simpler.

so i guess the "germ of an idea" is that i should be able to live simply, too. and not just "get by", but "thrive" simply. those guys didn't have bearings, didn't have a wide variety of available materials, and didn't have the myriad and complex play-styles that have developed into modern yo-yoing canon. back then, you played a wood yo-yo. if you were good you played two. if you were great, you might make up some tricks of your own. i wasn't yo-yoing back then, and i'll welcome contradiction by anyone who was (or steve brown), but as i see it, the wild, obsessive need to be innovative that seems to consume so many yo-yoers today is a relatively recent development. fueled by the technology, the perspective often seems that if you aren't breaking new ground in yo-yoing, then you're doing something wrong. 50 years ago, making up new tricks was all fine and good, but it was being able to execute and perform the fundamentals that set you apart.

so what did the old demonstrators do? they got really, really, really good at the fundamentals, and at performing.

with so many yo-yo's, so many established tricks, and so many technological developments, it's easy to hide from the basics now. there IS no real canon anymore. lots of the most popular, most innovative players never bothered to learn some really basic tricks, because let's face it: learning basics isn't that fun, and you aren't extrinsically rewarded for it. in aikido, we call it kihon. the basic elements that you need to understand to manifest the art. but if you can "kick ass" without learning the kihon, i mean... why bother, right?

at any given contest, sport ladder is the territory of as few as 3 or 4 intrepid beginners. and the 2a ladder is almost totally ignored. the ladder is largely shunned by advanced players because the prevalent mentality is that good yo-yoers are innovative first and consistent second. i hope i don't sound embittered; that's just the way i see it. freestyling provides a stage (literally) for showcasing the new-and-improved, whereas ladder is where yo-yo tricks go to die.

although i love the ladder, i fall into this as much as anyone. once again, my 2a (2a, which 50 years ago was how you proved yourself to be a "real" yo-yoer) blowsucks. and so, by the outmoded standard to which i hold myself, my status as a "real" yo-yoer is decidedly shaky.

yeah. and you know what else i suck at?

cutting carrots.

seriously. the other day, i was chopping up some carrots for a salad. my 10 month old son was doing his waddle-around-the living room thing. his new favorite game is pushing a sturdy, cube-shaped cardboard box around the entire house. occasionally, he'll pick it up and carry it a few steps, and he looks just like one of the world's strongest man competitors... except he's a baby. well, he sprinted into one of his trademark learning-to-walk faceplants and started wailing. i looked up to check the damage and... zzzzzt!

i almost cut my right index finger off at the knuckle. (it's damn funny that i spend so much time a.) flipping razor sharp bali-song knives around and b.) training with razor-sharper samurai swords and i never cut myself. but, hand me a kitchen knife to cut some veggies, and i'm as good as dead.)

it started bleeding... a lot. evidently there are quite a few capillaries that have to provide oxygenated blood to your fingertips, cause it was an effin' gusher. i felt bad for having to basically ignore my son's fall, but he comes from hardy skateboarding stock; he's gotta get used to it. i immediately ruled out the possibility of going to get stitches, basically because i think i'd rather bleed out through my finger than take a 10 month old to the e.r., especially with me reduced to one working hand (which would be used to apply pressure to the shredded one). if i needed to get stitched, i figured stacy could sew me up after she got home from her practice. we've got some thread somewhere.

after i stopped the bleeding (an hour later), it occurred to me that i really wanted to play some yo-yo. the feeling that followed could only be described as a "oh... damn" moment. with my finger carefully bandaged, and thus three times its normal size, there was no conceivable way for me to play. plus the idea of 1a string-burn over the raw cut pretty much made me want to vomit. it kind of still does, actually. but i wanted to play, so i was left with the mixed blessing of working on my left-handed loops.

i no-jived it up for the rest of that day and the next. in the evening, my wife and daughter went out for a lovely evening at the ballet (which must be pronounced as my daughter says it, accenting the 2nd syllable: "the BAL-let"). the baby and i opted for some late-sunday mall xmas shopping. i picked up "a little something" for my wife (go ahead and read it stacy, i'm not telling), a couple books for my mom, and some polar bear figurines for the little girl at the k-b... where i also spied... a duncan proyo aisle display. and, since k-b is closing its doors nationwide, and EVERYTHING MUST GO, they were on sale for a whopping $0.65 each. it was the single greatest yo-yo discount i have ever seen. for a buck-thirty, i walked out with a pair of emerald green (favorite color) and clear loopers; with the new caps, no less (did oke rosgana do these? they're FRESH!).

i got home, adjusted the string, and tried them together. my finger was still mummified, but except for super-hard catches, seemed painless and secure. partly bolstered by the fact that my injury had resulted in a more confident left hand, my 2-handed had greatly improved. i was also shocked to remember how much i used to like proyos. they are really, really good yo-yo's, and they immediately rekindled the flame of my desire to solidify the basics; to get consistent at the canon, even if i have to define it for myself. innovation's fine, and i'll keep making up tricks... but there's a lot to be said for appreciating simplicity.

it's a few days later now. i'm down to 2 band-aids while playing, and i haven't been able to put the proyos down. everything nice and familiar about a wood axle and all the consistency of a plastic body. although the memory of many epic cookie-dough-brick-eating sessions with my friend in college prevents me from saying it's the best $1.30 i ever spent... it certainly was a solid deal!

yo-yo #'s 12 and 13: throw down luchadors

totally familiar, and yet so very alien.
maybe i should have written that in reverse-order. i don't know.

i have always loved this yo-yo, and yet it's always been kind of... edgy (and yes, i meant the hell out of that pun). the luchador was the first yo-yo that i had any kind of input on regarding design. around 2006, i was a frequent visitor to the extremespin message board (which back then boasted a pretty good yo-yo store to go with the forum). that forum has always been pretty small and familial; not unlike visiting extended family on thanksgiving. you still get the drama you see everywhere else, and you sometimes get tired of the same old people saying the same old stuff... however, a consistent level of respect is maintained, at least between the regular contributors. the fact that the forum continues to exist a year after the store folded is telling... though i'm not sure of what, exactly.

anyway, one day in the early fall, i got a pm from jubei (whom i would later learn went by the name of nate weddle in "real life"). in the previous year, nate had put together a little start-up yo-yo company to sell an idea for press-in/snap-fit freehand zero weight rings. i remember having been excited about their release, but apprehensive about anyone actually buying them. as it happens, they were pretty well liked, and other companies released similar upgrades thereafter. well, now nate wanted to make a yo-yo.

there have always been metal yo-yo's. i remember seeing a die-cast bandalore from the 1904 st. louis world's fair. however, in 2006, the market had not been inundated by the inexorable swell of metals that we have today. by this time, yoyofactory had 1 (one) metal yo-yo on the market in the 401k. (by comparison, they have at least 5 different models in multiple colorways, available on the yoyonation right now, and at least one more dropping next week). this was before clyw, before one-drop, and when the idea of an absolute beginner buying an unresponsive all-metal yo-yo was an anomaly. so when nate pm'd me about wanting to send me a metal yo-yo to try out (for nothin'!), i was shocked, gratified, and also maybe a little concerned for his ability to pull it off.

although i knew nothing of his mode of operation, he must have had this thing "spec'd out" for awhile, because he had protos made and one in my hands by christmas. when i first opened it, i remember being downright alarmed. the yo-yo was more angular than any i had seen. it looked like a cylindrical "batarang". it was badass, but would anyone buy it in a million years? the proto had a slight wobble, but that was due to a shoddily cut axle. i traded it for one of my dif's and it plaed brilliantly (like a bare bones that means to disembowel you). nate had cleverly branded his company "throw down yo-yo's" (a reference to his martial arts and submission fighting experience), and the luchador just oozed meanness. having had years of tae kwon do, aikido, and traditional japanese sword arts training, i felt like i fit well into his "angle". i liked the silly idea of "tough yo-yo's for tough people", and this first offering fit brilliantly.

nate and i both took some pictures to get a sense for what people thought. though it was mainly positive, we got some vibes from steve buffel, the owner of spyy yo-yo's, who felt that throw down was trying to rip off his design for the hub-spikes on his popuar "radian mk-2" model. nate and i discussed it, and the spikes were changed. nate incorporated of one of my ideas, and from that moment i really appreciated his willingness to listen to his product testers. after a little back and forth on the boards, steve and i reconciled, and became friends at worlds 07. he is a super-cool guy, and his yo-yo's speak for themselves. steve brown was also pretty vocal about hating the design. he felt it "wobbled like it had the dt's", was too sharp to snap start well, and was just generally uncomfortable. to each their own. it IS kind of uncomfortable to catch on a snaggy bind, and don't get me wrong, it COULD kill you... but i kind of like a yo-yo that i have to pay attention to; that i won't always take for granted. i ended up trading the original prototype back to nate, and then i sold the second proto to a collector. although i bought one of the raw ones when they came out, i still really regret that.

after another proto run, the luchador launched in early 2007. nate chose a blue/gray combo for the production run that i never really dug all that much. but it suited the design and incited still more "batman" remarks. the engravings looked great, as did the packaging. the only issue with it from a design perspective was the axle. the luchador launched right up against the 888's, the peak, and the milk, as well as other yo-yo's that had a refined bearing seat, thin axles, and silicone response. by contrast, with its dif-e-yo styled axle set-up, the luchador was a little behind the curve. however, it played as well as any of those yo-yo's, and people liked it a lot.

in addition to the freebie nate sent me, i eventually bought one of the second run. i alwas hear people mixing up (or wildly inventing) which run was which. it's pretty easy. the first run had small lettering, darker ano, and no mask on the blue side. the second run had slightly lighter ano, bigger lettering, and a mask on both sides. that's it. the second run looks a little cleaner to me, and i almost never play it on account of the fact that my original still rocks the party.

my 1st run luchador is definitely in my top 5 yo-yo's. although there's always been something about the luchador that didn't quite speak to me, it's a solid yo-yo. i've probably spent more time with this thing in my pocket than any other bearing yo-yo (btw, if you have a luchador in your pocket, DO NOT fall down. it's worse than big keys). i've taken it everywhere. i'm not sure if it's the aluminum or the ano, but i've been able to "spark" my first run several times while walking the dog on pavement. since that's one of the most-requested tricks from kids everwhere, my luchador is pretty heavily scarred, and i like it that way. the sharp angles kind of make it look like it SHOULD be scarred. it took me a long time to find the perfect setup. for me it's the same as my eetzilla setup: a kk bearing, one thin dif, and one black kentaro (broken in), always with yyn highights (yell-o).

since we started prototyping the ronin (more on that someday soon), which is essentially a "modernized" luchador with some new angles tossed in, even my main one generally hangs out on the shelf. but, it still finds its way into my pocket or onto my finger sometimes, and when it does i'm flooded with a wonderful year's worth of wonderful memories.

yo-yo #11: the best looking freehand zero ever

i know i just posted the higby dinosaur zero two posts ago. and i will admit that this yo-yo and that may well be forever deadlocked in a struggle for fhz aesthetic supremacy. still though, i like lavender (i'm masculine that way; my son's room is lavender). so i'ma give this one the edge.

i got this yo-yo from steve matchett (aka mr. match) in 2006. i haven't seen him around on the boards lately, but in a relatively short time, he put out a number of ridiculously amazing dye-jobs, both on polycarb plastic and delrin/celcon. this is my favorite marble-dye ever. i'm not sure what i gave him for this... (i think maybe a white worlds 05 mosquito?) but it was a good deal for me.

the yo-yo itself is just an ordinary white fhz. at some point i sent it to chris hicks to be silicone recessed. it plays like any silicone recessed fhz; wonderfully.

the dye on it is so intricate and fascinating that it feels like a story told in a language i don't understand. i seriously feel that if i had some sort of syllibary, i could "read" and "interpret" this yo-yo. if i was any kind of photographer, i could capture it, but i'm not and i can't. parts of it are kind of a textured "amythest" and others are veined marble. i have no idea how he masked it. i see something new in it every time i pick it up, and it changes hue completely depending on the light. i think the original white caps [on ANY fhz, actually] work perfectly to set off the color and just give it the most classic look ever. whoever designed the fhz caps seriously deserves a double-finger-snap-wink.

this is one of those yo-yo's that i'm nervous about taking outside, and yet i can't resist playing it. at one point, right after receiving it, i took it to linville gorge in the beautiful nc mountains, and i dropped it in the surging pool below the falls (by accident). i recovered it, and consider that a sort of baptism. actually, i'm just glad i didn't ding it.

yo-yo #10: clean machine

plain. simple. unadorned. what do you need to yo-yo? what do you need to be a yo-yoer?

i'm not sure of the exact day that it became the future, but it surely did. you're reading this online. in all likelihood, the majority of your personal communications today have been online. as such, it's so easy to slouch into the belief that yo-yoing is something that happens on a network, in a forum, on a keyboard. and through the inescapable lenses of commerce, it's even easier to lounge into the thought that, like everything else we want, yo-yoing is something that we can acquire; and that if we fail or cease in our quest to acquire (the newest, shiniest, smoothest), then our yo-yoing is diminished.

fortuately, yo-yoing is not something that you acquire. it's something that you are, or may become. there is no connection between what you have and what you are.

this is not a fancy yo-yo. it does not have a spec bearing (or... any bearing, for that matter). it isn't made of 6061. there are no hubstacks, no silicone recess, no sonic-welded rim weights. there is nothing here to hide behind. when you throw it down (and sometimes when you just look at it), your every flaw is exposed.

the hard thing isn't working to become so amazing that you have no more flaws. rather, it's realizing that we are made of flaws. we CONSIST of our flaws; of our illusions. when you snap back on trapeze or run out of spin, though you may scream at yourself inwardly, this yo-yo will not berate you. it will guard the door, but it's never cruel. any weakling can forge themselves into an ideal. but, ideals are always on the move, and said weaklings will move with them; never satisfied. our society tells us that "never satisfied" is the most productive way to live, but yo-yoing doesn't have to be about "producing" something. it can be about appreciating what's already there; what's always been there, from our first weak throw. that's the hard part, and when you can really do that, the "flaws" you once thought were there aren't flaws at all.

so why practice yo-yoing? why practice anything? because practice does not make perfect. practice IS perfect. the paradox is that we have to move through practice to recognize that perfection has been there all the time. and after we realize that? more practice. (it's a good thing yo-yoing is fun.)

your yo-yoing inevitably expresses what you're seeking. are you seeking a huge collection? are you seeking titles and accolades? are you seeking a reputation for witty banter or incredible skill? would you still care about incredible skill if you couldn't get online for a year? what matters to you?

if i could manifest the truth while sitting still; if it felt right, then that's what i'd do. sometimes it does. other times, i pick up this yo-yo, and i play it, and the fanciful microcosm that i've constructed and maintained for myself falls away. i pick up this yo-yo and that which i need comes into glaring relief. it occurs to me that every activity, every trick i hide behind is only a shadow of the truth. the only point of yo-yoing is to experience life; to do so intensely and sincerely, and to share yourself with everything.

i don't want you to join a cult or drink any kool-aid (though, now i'm thirsty... great). but quit groping. quit attaching to the idea that yo-yoing is something that happens outside and away from yourself, whatever you play. if you've been reading, you know that i have modern yo-yo's with every possible accoutrement. if i picked up an 888 and understood, then that would be enough. sometimes, though, it's easier to understand everything when you strip everything away.

this is the clean machine. it's the first and the last; the simplest and the most impossibly difficult yo-yo to use and understand.

yo-yo #'s 8 and 9: john higby + dinosaurs

john higby dinosaur yo-yo's



i don't have a lot of stories associated with these two yo-yo's, but they speak for themselves.
and they basically say: "john higby is a titan."
in addition to being a ridiculously talented performer, he's a seriously kind and giving gentleman, and has been very good to me.


i sent him a big ben around 2005, and asked him to give me a triceratops skateboarding. he killed it. i don't love big ben's like he does, but i had ordered a clear one for my yo-yo class to use for learning string tricks. when i came to realize that they would need easier, more consistent response, i swapped it for a 201 from my own collection, and sent the big ben off to get arted up. although it's just an ordinary (albeit beautiful) big ben, it suicides better than any yo-yo i have ever owned. i clocked my longest one (while standing still - running suicides are another matter!) at 1.25 seconds.

recently, i sent him some caps and asked for more dinosaurs. though i had originally intended to put these on an mg, i decided against it because i know how fickle i am. once you put caps on an mg, the ONLY way to pry them off is by drilling a hole into em (btw, if you drill the hole PRIOR to snapping the caps in, the yo-yo whistles like a shrieking satelite!) so, i decided to just put ordinary mg caps on my mg, and toss these on a zero i had just procured. said zero is one of the takeshi painted/siliconed ones. it's sort of cream with some yellowish fade. higby's caps are super striking on it, and i like that the yo-yo is kind of an unintentional collaboration between two good friends and great people. i think it looks the boss. i haven't had it long enough to develop a cool story for it, but i assure you, i'll get right on that.


thanks forever, john. you're an artist, and a cool guy, and you deserve all of the awesome things that are happening to you. ;)

yo-yo #7: bedazzled cfgt

what is it with yo-yo players and ukuleles?

there's me, drew tetz, steve brown, josh root... who else... it seems like everybody plays ukulele.

at one point in 2005, josh root posted a b/s/t thread about procuring interesting stringed instruments in exchange for yo-yo's. josh is 1/2 of the crime-fighting duo, the diss kings (the other half being jack ringca), which is sort of a "team" that exists solely to mock the considerable inanity of the yo-yo world. josh is a good yo-yo player, but his claim to fame is probably his powder coating, which for awhile in 2005 was "all the rage". everyone and their mom was getting their bare aluminum difs and phis coated in technicolor-sparkly-rainbow hues, and josh was making about $40 a pop.

i offered him the two instruments i had available: a hilo baritone ukulele that i had drawn all over, and a bizarre old balalaika-looking instrument called a strumstick which played like a dulcimer, but sounded like a banjo. he offered me his services on my phi, which i had long wanted "ectoplasm green", as well as a cold fusion gt in any color i wanted. i chose red, and he made it so red, it became the basis for my definition of the color. i later ditched the phi, which always kind of played like balls. evidently, the uke played like balls, too, because josh traded it to steve brown, and now i think it sits over his bass rack.

this yo-yo is remarkable in that i've never "pimped out" another to the same degree. xzibit would be proud. what once was a cold fusion gt is now... a glossy red powdercoated, large konkave spr'd, black hubstacked cold fusion gt. it's pretty crazy, but even crazier is the fact that i never really dug it all that much. i traded it at one point for an mg (though i later traded back for it). i probably offered it to 10 different people who never wanted it (though it plays as well as anything).

i didn't actually learn to love it until this summer. i was hired by a local filmaker as a "yo-yo stunt double" for a short film about a toy store owner on a secret quest to develop a yo-yo that never stops spinning. i drove over to wilmington in mid-june to shoot, and was greeted by 100+ degree temperatures. the issue was compounded by the fact that they were shooting in the top story of an old warehouse, which was humid as the day is long. i heard one of the grips say that it got up to 130 inside. since i have some tattoos on my hand/wrist (and to make me look old and weathered like the actor i was doubling) i had to do about an hour of makeup, which was melting against my sweat even as it was applied.

once i looked the part, the director asked if i had a red yo-yo. although i had brought my big case, and probably 60+ yo-yo's, the only red one i had was the pimped cfgt. interestingly enough, the yo-yo they had been using in all of the shots was a red-dyed turbo bumblebee gt without the caps (essentially a plastic version of this yo-yo). that thing was trashed, and had no guts or response, so i was glad to have an alternative. we shot for about 5 hours in increasing heat and humidity, and although the 1st hour left my hands stringburned and bloody (with no trace of the carefully applied makeup remaining), i actually came to appreciate the yo-yo, itself. string notwithstanding, it really held up and played great, and since then i've enjoyed it, though it's just too pretty to seriously beat on.

eventually, i got a copy of that film on dvd. it's cute and a little cheesy, and the old guy who plays the owner looks absolutely nothing like me. you really have to suspend your disbelief when they cut to me yo-yoing in the workshop. they didn't pick my "best yo-yoing" (SURE, they didn't), but they picked stuff that "worked". it's a good little flick, and a real good little yo-yo.

i have no idea whether or where the film is available. i have it on my computer, but i'd feel bad sharing it.
you can see the yo-yo part here: http://www.vimeo.com/1817814
password: spun

yo-yo #6: blue renegade

in 2002, i was teaching 6th grade at a mediocre charter school in downtown durham. stacy and i had moved to carrboro the year before (to accommodate her unc med-school choice), and i was commuting about 35 minutes into the city. the situation was not improved by the fact that i was working for a pittance and teaching every subject.

i had totally abandoned any kind of progressive yo-yoing (in truth i hadn't found it yet, though i thought i had). the only yo-yo out of cold-storage at the time was my custom mag predator (more on that later), and it banged around with spent staples and dirt-change in my teacher-desk. on a time, one of my students brought in an old yomega brain and spent recess trying to find his way through "forward pass" (though he called it "shoot the moon"). in the waning seconds of our time outside, i asked him to let me see it.

i've never actually been all that good at yo-yoing, and at this time, having fully picked the scab of the late 90's fad and discarded it (but for moments when i simply refused to grade things and searched out something else to do), the rust of years was evident. i fumbled to make a slip-knot (travis hadn't bothered or didn't know how), took two tries to "wind the dog", and missed several split-bottom mounts before nailing "split-the-atom" (which i knew as "atom bomb", having never heard the more politically correct "atom smasher"). i wandered through a theme and variations on "chain reaction" before the bell rang, and i handed the toy back to its owner.

the funny thing about yo-yo's is that you can be really bad, and even throw really badly by your own really bad standards... and people will still be absolutely amazed. during my self-indulgent yo-yo diatribe, i had not really noticed that the class had encircled me. only after i returned the yo-yo and asked them to line up did i notice that their starry-eyed slack-jawed stares. the were agog. they were astonished. they had been taught all year by a mutant yo-yo superstar from uranus, and they hadn't had any idea (well, about the yo-yo part). again, i was decidedly "not good", but to the uninitiated, even the banal and routine appear to transcend the limits of reality.

one girl, who had the befuddling name of "awnshawntia" (or as she explained on day 1, "it's pronounced enchanté. it's french.") actually asked me if it was magic. "do more magic tricks," she said. i had seen "ok" yo-yoing, and i was aware of my own mediocrity, but everyone feels bolstered by such praise. i pulled my mag out of my desk and frowned at it, having forgotten that my last bee-string had snapped, sending the metal toy dinging across the floor of the empty classroom on one empty morning. it stared up at me impotently, and i was consumed by the desire to find a new string.

that afternoon, between the bell and my first parent-teacher conference at 4:00, i went to the only toy store in town (a tiny, indy place next door to duke). i asked if they had any yo-yo string, and was met with a quizzical look from the proprietor. "no," she said, "but we have yo-yo's. do they MAKE just the string?" she led me to an aisle in the back, where i learned that, in point of fact, they had "yo-yo". singular. one yo-yo: a blue superyo renegade. in my blissful ignorance of the yo-yo world, i had never heard of it. i had never seen the sector y videos. the name of "escolar" was, as yet, meaningless to me. i was confused as to why this random offering was the only one in the store. the last time i had actively looked for aything yo-yo related was probably y2k, and in any given toy store, one was positively assailed by yo-yo's. it occurred to me that the fad had died, just as skateboarding had in the early-90's (i still remember trying to find a pair of vans, airwalks, or ANY skate shoes in 1997 to no avail). i didn't even blink before buying the renegade (which came with TWO strings - one for the mag, one for the gade - i'd be set for life!)

the yo-yo was royal blue and slightly translucent. at the time, i wasn't a big fan of butterfly shapes, because i had trouble looping them (my weak inside loops represented roughly 1/10 of my trick potential). i flipped it imperial, but hated it, and pagoda was just a crazy novelty, so i stuck with butterfly. it was super-responsive out of the box, which i loved. i could do exceedingly long combos on it (by my standards) and still have the snap to get it back to the hand. i went to one of the few yo-yo sites i knew of (yomania.com, god help me) and was pleased to find tons of glowing reviews. still, i remained fully ignorant of its uncanny potential.

i probably threw that yo-yo for 2 straight months. i made up tricks that i have since forgotten. i forgave its butterfly shape when i learned it enabled me to hit trapeze pretty much automatically. and then, inexplicably, i put it down; put it away. i didn't touch it again for 2 years. i blame this on three circumstances. 1.) i was still not the type to research my interests carefully on the internet. 2.) i was, at the time, totally obsessed with learning to surf. one obsession at a time, please. and 3.) i knew of zero yo-yo players within a 100-mile radius. as the boom had dried up, so the yo-yo population appeared to have evaporated. yo-yoing no longer felt like a "movement", so much as a "relic". it was amazing, but you can only be amazing in a vacuum for so long before people (and you, yourself) tire of your "same old crap".

if i had happened upon the boards; the culture that WAS out there, i would have found freehand. i would have found offstring. i would have realized how wonderfully FAR from the core of understanding i actually was, and i would have desired to keep searching. but, when you're alone in the world, it's difficult to question your own understanding. with yo-yoing, it never occurred to me that there was even something to understand. i never realized how far it extended.

so, when i hold this renegade, i think of the years i spent in yo-yo solitude; unaware of what could be done with it. had i ever seen what paul escolar, gabriel lozano, or spencer berry had done with it, i would have seen yo-yoing in the way awnshawntia had: as magic.

it reminds me that while i regret my ignorance, i recognize that it was (and remains, thank god) a substantial part of me.

i still play with this all the time. i feel as though do not truly know a trick unless i can do it on this yo-yo. the starbursts gave their last gasp years ago, and after trying a duncan sticker in it in 2004 (way too responsive on such a thin bearing), it was the first yo-yo i tried recessing on a dremel. it was the gnarliest, nastiest recess-job ever. it looked as though i had spun the yo-yo at 33 rpm and stabbed it repeatedly with a pit bull's tooth. in 2006, i had chris hicks clean it up for me with a thick dif pad, and it now resides comfortably in the realm between responsive and unresponsive.

the paul escolar sector-y vids remain my most transformative moment in yo-yoing; as if coming out of a tunnel and into a sunrise, and wondering where the color orange had been during all those dark years. the fact that that dude could use the same yo-yo as the one i gave up on to invent what he did still blows me away. in the last 4 years, i'm pretty sure that every time i've picked up this yo-yo, i've done one of his tricks first, as a sort of libation.

this is one of the few yo-yo's that, should i make it to 90, i know i will hold with the same reverence.

yo-yo #5: the purple rebellion-quashing fireball

goddamn, some people.

ah... the boom. i remember it fondly. especially since i was not personally invested in yo-yoing at all, and just one among millions of spineless hookworms to latch on to the fad with both mouthparts as it rocketed through the late 90's. i bought this yo-yo in the summer before my junior year at boston college. i was a ymca day camp counselor, and EVERY kid at camp had a yo-yo (fireballs were standard-issue. if you had a stinger, you were cool. if you had a team losi, you were sort of edgy. if you had a raider, you were a legend, and automatically beloved. if you had a duncan, someone might try to give you an old pair of shoes, cause they assumed you were poor as hell).

there were hundreds of plastic yo-yo's being lost at camp, and i could have ganked any of them through nefarious counselor-means, but i thought it might look bad to get called on that. plus most campers were bright enough to scratch their initials on the inside wall like a cowboy might with his saddle. the heavy-handed went through 5-packs of yomega string like lightning, as their sloppy, jagged carving would burn through type 8 cotton in a trice.


so, i bought one at zany brainy. i paid $14.95. it was easily the most i had ever considered paying for a yo-yo. (although i had been gifted with a brain (laugh all you want) in 1987 by my dad following a trip to fall river, mass., i had traded that yo-yo almost immediately for a duncan midnight special with shiny silver stars.) i chose purple, not because it was most fetching (green was), but because no camp kids had purple. like little north carolinian bloods and crips, they stuck to red and blue, and the unproveable rumor that reds spun longer, but blues looped better was widely bandied about the park.

some of the kids (and all of the counselors) found it ridiculous and juvenile for me to participate in the trend, but i didn't care. yo-yoing was fun, portable, and it really didn't matter how good you were. it was like an instant-tribe. if you were yo-yoing around town, you WOULD see another yo-yoer. they might be anywhere between the ages of 6 and 30, but it didn't matter. those days were replete with knowing glances and nods; as though we were all caretakers of a secret that just happened to be everywhere.

anyway, summer ended, i went back to boston, and still yo-yoed all the time. i probably knew 20 tricks, none of which had been learned online. i also had a purple brain to match my fireball, but i thought clutches were lame, so it was "disabled". the fireball was in my black silent-bob trenchcoat pocket virtually the whole year. at the end of it, i was VERY good... at all 20 of the aforementioned tricks.

my best, most indelible memory of it is during a history study group session. everyone had to take history to fulfill their core. it had nothing to do with my dual majors of elementary ed. and music composition, so i didn't care about it in the least. i went to lectures sometimes, and mainly drew cartoons or read comics (it was during this semester that i fell in love with stan sakai's usagi yojimbo). during "study group" (and i use the term loosely), i would either work on austere, semi-tonal compositions that i silently dreamt would someday be masterpieces... or i'd yo-yo (i was THAT obnoxious).

anyway, on this day we were discussing the warsaw jewish rebellion against the germans of 1943, but really, the only word that pertains to this story is "rebellion". it could have been any rebellion, because the most annoying, wanted-to-make-sweet-whoopee-with-his-own-voice idiot in the section (maybe in any section - ever) LOVED to say the word "rebellion". only, he pronounced it "webellion". his name was fred, although i'm just assuming there because when he referred to himself (and he did so often), it was as "fwed". he had previously picked a fight with my friend hilary "the guy" taylor, but he had conveniently transformed into "cuddly-drunk" before it had actually come to blows.

anyway, we came to some question and fwed started pontificating about how it would have been in the germans' interests to have "squashed" the rebellion quickly and quietly so as to prevent other uprisings. i found his diction (here having the meaning of "word-choice") hilarious, as well as his diction (here having the meaning of pronunciation). i was pretty sure every other person in that group had heard the phrase "to quash rebellion", and there were a few raised eyebrows when he said "squash" again. i was irritated (probably just because i didn't like fwed), so i said something like "well, i'm sure they intended to QUASH it quietly. i'm sure they would have preferred history students not be reading about it 50 years later." his rebuttal was immediate: "but they DIDN'T squash it, ed. the webellion wasn't squashed at all, because the jews achieved their obective and died fweely!"

at this point i took out my fireball and started doing some inside loops.

fwed continued. "and that's the thing about webellions, people. they have to be squashed. if they aren't squashed, the wegime's pwoblems will multipwy."

i looped faster.

"i think we should bwing this up with the big cwass. it wepwesents an important point. the germans' failure to squash-"

my string snapped. the yo-yo sailed across the room, landing with a thud on a desk before rocketing back toward me due to the backspin. i ignored it.

"QUASH!" i yelled. "the word is QUASH, fwed! "squash" is a vegetable, or something done to mushrooms in mario. "quash" is what happens to rebellions. you're killing me over here."

"sewiouswy? that's a word? i always heard 'squashed'."

i was so irritated. i remember walking home while doing variations of rock the baby and a trick i called "unhook the stars", which was a terrible movie but remains a great trick name. i pulled out weathered oxford dictionary and looked up the word "squash".

i found something approximating this:

1. To beat, squeeze, or press into a pulp or a flattened mass; crush. See Synonyms at crush.

2. To put down or suppress; quash: squash a revolt.

i am a dumbass. i never apologized. goddamn that fwed anyway.

yo-yo #'s 3 and 4: eric wolff wooden yo-yo's

pull up a chair, ladies, and let me spin you a yarn about a dick move i pulled...

nc states 2008. i was running it, and we needed sponsors. since forever, i had ogled at eric wolff's wooden yo-yo's and it occurred to me to contact him and see if he had anything he could contribute. to my bewilderment, he responded promptly and said he'd do two for me: one for me to keep, and another for the contest! i was pretty taken aback at this. i mean, really... if i had the ability to make these yo-yo's myself, i'd probably make 20. i'd put 10 in a steel box and bury it in my yard, put one in some sort of rotating display case in my house (with lasers), and play the crap out of the other 9. and that would be all.

and here he was giving me (i mean the contest) TWO.

they came a few weeks later: one cocobolo freehand zero with a large kk setup and one smaller, lighter, speeder-shaped small merc-bearing yo-yo made from indian rosewood. they killed. killed killed killed. and it was rough knowing that the zero (the more beautiful of the pair) wasn't mine. eric had stipulated that it go to the contest, but didn't care where.

the weeks leading up to the event advanced, and suddenly, we were alive with sponsors. yyn, yyf, yyj, yyg, and clyw had all come through and gone big. we got 3 nice metals from yyf (plus all the plastics), a PAIR of peaks from chris at clyw, and the usuals from the nation, the guy, and the jam. all this for top 5 finishers in 2 divisions and what turned out to be about 25 competitors. there had been a snafu with duncan, but they had still donated all of our give-to-newcomers yo-yos. we were in such good shape, deciding what would go where became a seious ordeal. the peaks were reselling for a ton and played like butter, so they went to the top spots in 1a and open. there were still like 6 $80 yo-yo's to distribute. so i did the unthinkable. i kept the metal in the freestyles, put the eric wolff up as the top prize for ladder... and then i entered. i kind of justified it by saying it would encourage people to sign up for ladder, but of course like 4 did... and they were mostly my pals. i wasn't going to freestyle, cause i wanted to help judge. it was just... shady.

the thing about sport ladder is that its all about being consistent with just a few tricks. i've always done well with it, because i like all those tricks (except effing boingy - and don't even start. i've heard from everyone. jesus could come down from heaven and give me boing instructions and jiggle my wrist up and down and give me clever analogies and my boings would still blow. i could meet satan at the crossroads and trade my soul for perfect boings and blues guitar skill, and i'd go home and play great guitar, but when i tried boings be all "goddamn it, satan, these are just as bad as before!" i can do it well enough to get through it on ladder, but i won't be learning "protrusion" anytime soon, and i've accepted that. ringca likens them to a $2.00 hooker; "not pretty, but they get the job done").

so i won... and i felt like a big hairless [boingless] turd. i felt as though, being the contest organizer, i shouldn't have competed at all. i felt like, by winning, i had betrayed eric; as though no one should be able to own two of his yo-yo's. i felt like i cheated my pals... and yet... i wasn't prepared to give it up, because to whom could i fairly give it. i felt like i'd be a good enough caretaker, but it's never really felt "mine". i've maybe played it a dozen times. it has the original string on it. i've never unscrewed it. it kind of stares at me like the big glazed eye in the tell tale heart. no phantom beats yet, and no one under the floorboards... leastways no one relevant to this issue.

hopefully someday, i'll come to terms with having it, and give it its due attention. lord knows, i'm not ready to pass it on, or brandon jackson would have had it long ago. the other one, i've played lots. it's a little light, but well-balanced and gorgeous. yo-yo art.

oh well. not a crime against humanity, per se. i didn't make sweet love to anyone's decrepit mom, but this was not my shiniest moment, either. i expect that when my days are spent and they put me on a shelf, if it turns out to be the worst i did, i'd be surprised... and pretty pleased.

it's almost certainly the most beautiful yo-yo in my collection, and in an unfortunate coincidence, it remains the only yo-yo that i sincerely feel bad for owning...

... so why am i smiling?

yo-yo #2: sayco tournament yo-yo

sayco tournament yo-yo

in july of this year, i dragged the wife and kids up north to visit family in new england. ok, so they went willingly, but the 32 hours in the car felt distinctly like "dragging". i've gone up there almost every year since i was an infant, and the scene at my aunt lorraine's house in manville, ri is always raucous, hilarious, and warm.

their house (purchased some years ago from my maternal grandparents) is old, and the side street to it is more cracked and weathered than walter matthau's face. my mom used to tell stories of how she fell down on it and jammed a loose piece of black asphalt into her knee, which lodged there eternally. she carries a piece of old river road with her everywhere, still. i guess so do i, but i don't have the pebble.

aunt lorraine is married to uncle tom, an art teacher. their son, jack and i are of similar age, and whatever distance lies between us, i will always count him among my most trusted friends. uncle tom is another matter. when i was in middle school, jack and i used to go 2-on-2 in any sport against any pairing of uncles. neither of us will forget the drubbing we received at the hands of my father, "big ed", and our monolithic uncle john bryer when we challenged them to the dumbest, manliest game ever, 2-on-2 football. i think we lost 49-0. we met with much greater success against my dad and his dad in 2-a-side baseball (no less idiotic, really). as we ran up the score against them, uncle tom's anger became palpable. i did not help matters when i started talking serious trash or 'calling my shots', and by the end, he and i were embroiled in a full on scream-off. we both later apologized (kind of), but i still think about that day every time i go up there. it's funny, the little things we hang on to.

anyway, fast forward to july 2008. everyone in the family knows i yo-yo, probably because i'm effing obnoxious about doing it all over the place. uncle tom, being no exception, approached me and asked if i was interested in meeting an old-time yo-yoer. as someone who's kind of into where yo-yoing comes from (see: yo-yo #1), i wondered who he meant. he shocked me by saying "his name's larry sayco". i had read a little about him via some web research at some point, and had heard more from people who had never met him, but knew of his legend.

larry sayco was an old duncan demonstrator in the 50's, and later broke away to form his own company. he used to sell his yo-yo's far and wide, but stopped suddenly when people began to take advantage of his generously low prices to mark them up in sales and auctions. now he only sells his wares at shows and functions, and has zero contact with what we'll term "the yo-yo community". (it was through an annual show at my uncle's school that they had become acquainted.)

although i had seen footage of him doing 2-handed loops while standing on top of a moving car, and had heard of his prolific skill as a performer, i was in no way prepared for our meeting. when we pulled up at his workshop (a non-descript, 400-square-foot brick oven in what appeared to be a non-descript, 800-square-foot town), rain was falling in torrents. my uncle and i (along with my two young cousins; the sons of the aforementioned "monolithic" john bryer) knocked and entered, and i was amazed to find that mr. sayco stood about 5'2. he honestly seemed bigger in the pictures on my computer than in real life. he was extremely cordial, and asked "so who's the champ?" evidently, my uncle had prevarocated regarding my skill, and i came up empty when i tried to imagine him bragging about me to anyone.


his workshop was totally cluttered by knick-knacks and papers (but few yo-yo's). his walls were plastered with news-clippings of his old performances. every photograph featured a grinning man with shining eyes, a pork pie hat, and knickers doing some extra-cheesy picture tricks, most of which i had never heard of ("tonto's mask"?). the few yo-yo's that could be seen were of old-school plastic ilk. ultra-thin and devoid of any label, they looked like duncan "professionals" with opaque sidecaps. the majority of the space itself was taken up by several large, ancient industrial machines, and as we "toured the facility', mr. sayco described the function of each.

all of the machines had been gingerly tinkered with. he was most proud of the string-twisting machine that he had constructed from spare parts. he claimed to have designed one for duncan before leaving the company, but was embittered over not being able to take it with him. we saw the immense machine where the molds for the different sayco yo-yo pieces (of which there are two) were pressed together. mr. sayco patted that machine like a trusty steed, saying "and this one cost me a mint... a MINT!" he also had a special press that fit the finished pieces together efficiently and tightly. he built a yo-yo for us from scratch, and quickly wound it a type 9 string.

then he started playing with it.

this dude looks about 90. he's seriously old, and waddles around like some leprous piece of him is about to break off and get lost on the floor amidst the detritus of 40 years of yo-yo making. but, dude can THROW. nothing even remotely new-school. lots of next-gen players would watch him and only vaguely recognize it as yo-yoing. there was no distinguishing between looping and string tricks. everything was interwoven. his loops were pristine, and he knocked a penny off my cousin's ear ("'cause quarters are cheating!"). he drilled bank deposit into his pants pocket 3 straight times, then punch-regenned into my cousin's pocket. it was like what i imagine kareem abdul-jabbar would be like as a centenarian. he could be ancient, withered, and wheelchair-bound on the street, but put him on the hardcourt and he'd not only walk, but redefine grace.

he asked to see my yo-yo (a luchador), and said he "yeah, i invented that". when i looked incredulous (having helped test the first prototypes), he explained that he meant he was part of a group of guys who came up with the idea for the butterfly-shaped yo-yo, not the luchador, specifically. although he dropped a few names, he explained that he was thoroughly independent from "yo-yoing". he just wasn't interested in being connected to other yo-yoers anymore. it was a fun job, but a job. he was attached neither to the glory days, nor to the fact that the yo-yo world had left him behind decades ago. he had left us there, too.

part of me wanted to say "you would blow peoples' minds! let me get you on youtube!" but thinking about it, i realized that he was so far beyond the need to show his skill off to others, the idea wouldn't be worth a thought. he had spent years winning contests, years on the road, years designing and building yo-yo's, years performing for kids bar mitzvahs. he had literally spent a lifetime in yo-yoing, and though he understood that "things had changed", he was also secure enough to understand that nothing important had. it's still playing with yo-yo's after all. the pettiness of my thought (and my yo-yoing) just seemd obscene in that moment.

as we walked out the door, he tossed me the yo-yo he had made. a scorched odor was still emanating from the axle. it was thin; half the width of many popular models today. like an awestruck teenager, i asked if he'd sign it, and he flashed to his workbench, where he used an electric dremel to engrave a quick signature onto the back cap. he tossed it back again and smiled meaningfully. "now, don't forget where it comes from," he said. i took 'it' to signify more than that particular yo-yo.

in the car on the way back, my cousins were aglow. it was clear that they'd been hooked on yo-yoing, and that, true to their own generation, they'd be on the internet researching it within an hour. my uncle and i exchanged no words that i recall, but i will never again associate him first with a rotten squabble over a childhood ballgame.


i still rock that yo-yo from time to time. it loops well. the gap is about the width of the cotton string on it, so string mounts have to be flawless. eli hops are seriously tough, and anything more modern is pointless. when i pick it up, i think of two things. i think of the gnome-like yo-yo hermit who generously gave it to me. and i remember that to be a yo-yoer, you don't have to find yourself caught up in yo-yo drama all the time, or ever. simply picking it up and throwing it with respect (and maybe a nod to all that have come before) is quite enough.

yo-yo #1: no jive

well... i guess i lied about there not being an order... this is undeniably my favorite yo-yo ever.
it's certainly the one most of my friends would first identify with me. in truth though, i didn't pick it because it's my favorite. i picked it because i already had so many pictures of it, and didn't feel like taking too many more. there are other no jives that are special to me, but it would feel a bit strange to start off with one of them. i call this one "#1" not as a reference to it's (or my) awesomeness, but because victor wooten calls the fodera 4-string bass he most often plays "#1".

i could seriously write a book about this yo-yo. i will grant you that it would not be a very good book.

the no jive 3-in-1 yo-yo was invented by "dr. yo", tom kuhn in 1976. i bought this particular yo-yo from dave's skill toys in arizona in 2005. i had recently gotten back into yo-yoing (hard), and was reading a lot of the yo-yo message boards. from time to time, these message boards become embroiled in various 'archetypical' debates (meaning there are only a few debates and we just have them again and again in different ways. it's sort of annoying, really.). one of the hottest at the time was the debate over response. a 'responsive' yo-yo will come back to the hand when tugged. an 'unresponsive' yo-yo will not and will need a string bind to return to the hand. generally speaking, playing with an unresponsive yo-yo is easier because it won't snap back and whack your hand in the middle of a trick, and that irritates a lot of the old guard because they had to learn it 'the hard way' before unresponsive yo-yo's rose to prominence.

anyway, i was reading these rehashed debates over response, and was really intrigued by what a lot of people [especially on the duncan crew (which then contained guys like steve brown, jack ringca, seth peterson, and spencer berry)] were saying. there perspective was generally that "unresponsive is fine, but if you learned the right way, you should be able to hit anything on a responsive yo-yo, too". i agreed with this, but couldn't really manifest it in my play. watching ringca's 'shut up' video featuring hard tricks on thin, responsive avengers and ballistics brought into relief my own inadequacy. also, growing up in the 80's, and witnessing the yo-yo boom of the 90's (during which ball-bearings became de rigeur), i always kind of viewed fixed axle yo-yo's as the real deal and transaxles as handy cheats. i no longer hold the same views, exactly, but when i think of "yo-yoing", i think of yo-yo's that "come back" first.


so in part to hone my skill (and probably in part, to escape from the fact that i wasn't improving quickly with bearings anyway), i bought this yo-yo from dave's for about $18 shipped. i probably spent my first month with it in total frustration because i was approaching it as i would a bearing yo-yo that just had way less spin time. i decided to dedicate my lent (though not a serious practicing catholic, i always liked the ritual of lent) to relinquishing bearings and just playing this one yo-yo. it was the best thing i ever did for my yo-yoing.

i abandoned my earlier view and looked at playing wood as a completely different endeavor. it was absolutely like starting over, and i had to re-examine my throw, and virtually all of the fundamentals i had taken for granted. i didn't get great in 40 days, but i stopped feeling embittered over it, and i recognized that which i still believe today; that yo-yoing is absolutely a spiritual deal.

no jives spin for about 20 seconds (my longest sleeper is 47, but i've never really practiced long sleepers... because they're really, really boring). compared with a bearing yo-yo, which can go on for minutes, that's pretty ephemeral. this appealed to me because it reminded me of life.

here's a haiku i wrote (i suck at haiku):

Life unwinds and spins
Then is pulled back to the hand
Inexorably

contrary to what i used to assume when i was young, we don't actually hang around on earth forever. my life may snag and i may get pulled back as i type this here. there aren't any guarantees and you pay for every misstep. this doesn't render life meaningless. rather, it ensures that nothing is trivial. the fundementals of your life MATTER. it's the same way with fixed axle yo-yo. you can take nothing for granted. the meaning is in the basics. in every breath. in every throw.

the yo-yo, itself, is just an everyday, run-of-the-mill 'tom kuhn no jive 3-in-1 yo-yo'. there is nothing special about it. i have beaten the crap out of it over the years, and it's pitted and blackened around the areas where it gets handled the most (i like that my dirt and sweat are literally part of it now). it vibrates a lot and has this "hum" that just kind of resonates with me. it doesn't bother me at all. this summer, i carved the impression of one of my tattoos into one side, and a very rough-textured "no jive" logo on the other. only a small part of me regrets it.


a lot of people ask me how i set up a no jive. mine has one completely dead duncan sticker inside (i do this to even out response) and a tiny rubber o-ring from an 888 hubstack (this shims out the gap a hair, and reduces some vibration). it's obviously flipped butterfly, and i often adust the axle to line up the wood's grain. cotton string, always. the great thing about wood yo-yo's, though, is that no two are alike. you should be able to blend with any yo-yo and "allow" (not "make) it to do what you want. i set up every no jive differently.


some incredible people have handled this yo-yo, which is another reason it's important to me. last month, when national yo-yo master steve brown stopped over with his family on the way to a wedding (and suggested we throw a bit with an imperceptible downward flick of the wrist), it was the one he picked off the wall, 'cause it was the most beat (read: 'loved'). world champs like yuuki and tyler have rocked it (both are of no less titanic skill with wood than with metal). brandon jackson, adam brewster, joey fleshman, and red collectively invented "the spirit bomb club" on it last summer. virtually all of the yo-yo friends whom i most admire have played it, and so a little bit of all of them dwells within it, also.

honestly, it's just a yo-yo. it's not even a good one. and yet, to me, it represents the best of all yo-yo's. and after 3+ years of exploring its mystery, i'm no less inspired; no less amazed...

yeah... damn... what in god's name am i going to choose tomorrow?