yo-yo #70: "throw today. throw forever."

i carved this yo-yo last week. it's just an ordinary no jive that i cut up with a benchmade model 42s. i'm just getting to know it. i like it. a lot. that's all i got for this yo-yo... however, here's something else. some of them, i'm still working on, and will be until i die.


66 rules for yo-yo players.

1. learn to loop. with two hands.

2. when you play yo-yo in public, look up. be aware of your surroundings. say hi to the people who look at you in wonder. say hi to those who look at you with disdain.

3. be generous with your time, and with your toys. if you have the means, at every event you attend, give something away to someone (who does not ask).

4. understand the differences between yo-yoing for yourself in your room, yo-yoing for judges at a contest, and yo-yoing for a small child at the park.

5. try to find and play yo-yo's that come from every decade of the past century. appreciate their differences (and similarities).

6. when performing for an audience, always look better than they do.

7. be proud you're a yo-yo player. have pity for those who think you shouldn't be.

8. never act like yo-yoing is a big inconvenience. no one's making you do it.

9. be prepared to walk the dog on command. always.

10. never blame the judges. maintain the attitude that, if you had REALLY won, it wouldn't have been up to them at all.

11. hit a true laceration on a stock renegade. fly-away dismount.

12. don't talk about how 'so-and-so' is a lousy player (or human being) if you're unwilling to bring it to them personally.

13. don't confront someone about being a lousy player (or human being) unless you're right. and be sure you understand the consequences.

14. when you're getting paid to yo-yo, be on time and do your job with a smile.

15. don't yo-yo with the goal of being admired. don't worry over whether you're 'somebody in the yo-yo community'. be 'somebody in real life' and then be the same person in the yo-yo community.

16. recognize that you don't really know very many tricks at all. this should make you feel inspired rather than pathetic.

17. find a mentor. or twelve. no need to be explicit about it, but they should know who they are and what they mean to you.

18. stay up all night playing yo-yo.

19. compete. ladder, freestyles, best trick, or whatever. register, pay, and support the contest.

20. carry a paperclip in your wallet.

21. don't accept sponsorship from a company you don't absolutely love.

22. carve a palm tree on a yo-yo using a pocketknife.

23. understand how your yo-yo's work. be able to maintain them.

24. never begrudge your dings. not in yo-yo. not in life.

25. respect the venue.

26. meet the masters (national or otherwise). shake their hands and thank them for making yo-yoing something more. make that YOUR goal.

27. take care of your hands, wrists, body, and mind. when those things fail, so will your yo-yoing.

28. don't go out of your way to vilify this or that company. support the ones that you feel benefit the community and yo-yoing in general. that's enough.

29. travel to a contest alone.

30. travel to a contest in an overfull car.

31. respect your elders.

32. don't fiddle obsessively with your bearings. they'll do their job if you let them.

33. it's one thing to be awed, but don't be intimidated by yo-yo players, regardless of their skill.

34. learn to snap-start.

35. find a yo-yo that you can't play well at all. play it exclusively for a month.

36. go to worlds.

37. be able to do enough of each style to wow the uninitiated.

38. do something else. take up an instrument. knit. do card tricks. shoot skeet. something.

39. make yourself useful at contests. help set up. help clean up.

40. don't be careless with other peoples' yo-yo's. don't be overprotective of yours.

41. own an old wood yo-yo.

42. if you bring a bunch of yo-yo's somewhere, it will be understood that you want people to see them and be impressed. don't be surprised when they aren't.

43. pass out on a yo-yoer's floor in delighted exhaustion.

44. learn all you can about every major player from every era of yo-yoing's history. this art is FULL of fascinating characters.

45. be neither proud nor ashamed of your collection.

46. don't seek to be someone else's favorite player. seek to be your own favorite player. and in that regard, NEVER succeed.

47. don't leave home without it.

48. learn to twist your own string.

49. play responsive, but don't act like it's a big deal.

50. practice more. post less.

51. develop yourself such that someday, if you should find yourself in a room surrounded by your heroes, you will be pleasantly surprised to find that you belong.

52. invent a trick. hell, invent so many tricks that finding a way to record them becomes a necessity.

53. don't hide behind the mantle of an 'online persona'. that has zero to do with being a yo-yoer.

54. run a contest or event. make it a benefit to the companies that are willing to sponsor it. make it a benefit to the players who come and spend their day.

55. don't use the word 'sexy' to describe a yo-yo. or 'sexay'. or 'secksay'. or 'pure sex'. or 'smexy'. to do so makes you sound as if you have no real context for the word 'sexy'.

56. make a video. before you publish or hype it, make certain that it's something that you would want to watch all the way through, even if the yo-yoer were some random guy you've never met.

57. yo-yo transcends gender, and yet the vast majority of yo-yoers are male. respect and appreciate the few girls and women brave enough to wade through all the smelly aggro testosterone to do their thing.

58. find a globe. locate 'the other side of the world'. befriend a yo-yo player from there (or as close as you can manage).

59. at one point, you were just starting out. whether it was last week or 50 years ago, remember that time. treat those who are learning the basics with care. answer their questions, help them with string tension, and don't act like they need to get in line to kiss your boot.

60. acquire a yo-yo from shinobu, eric wolff, or john higby.

61. always have a spare string on you.

62. have more than one gear. go fast when it's time to go fast. go slow when it's time to go slow. understand when it's appropriate to play simply and when it's best to be strange and complicated.

63. don't set too much store by contest results. at their MOST valid, they give an idea of who played the best for three minutes, on one given day. respect everyone who can get up there with poise and intent.

64. disregard these rules. make your own rules. and make allowances for those who won't play or live by them.

65. treat every throw as if it's your last. (throw today.)

66. treat every throw as if it's your first. (throw forever.) the two are not actually contradictory.

yo-yo #'s 68 & 69: pearl/blue hummingbird genuines

i was kinda conflicted about which blog to put this in... i guess such is the dilemma for one who maintains two separate 'yo-yo metaphysics' blogs.

i recieved a truly enormous package of old wood yo-yo's the other day. it's almost an anticlimax, because as soon as you open something like that, you think "well, i guess i have enough yo-yo's for forever now." funny the way we fool ourselves into believing stuff like that for a minute or two. the box was mostly full of old hummingbirds, which was the company run by brad countryman BEFORE he ran bc yo-yo's (which of course, was the company he ran BEFORE switching to run tom kuhn yo-yo's). when my friend kevin asked what kind of yo-yo's i'd like, i said "matched sets", since i've been enjoying a lot of [really] simple wood 2-handed lately. he went "batshit-crazy" and put more absolutely gorgeous sets of tricksters, bc's, and old genuines in the box than i know how to shake a stick at, and i'll be working my way through them for a LONG time.

i started with this set, because... well, look at em. they're BEAUTIFUL.

the hummingbird genuine was not a regular production release. it was pretty limited even in its heyday (the 80's), and since the liquidation of the arcade, ny hummingbird factory, is downright tough to find. this pearlescent white with blue stripe version just has a gorgeous, classic appeal. and they play wonderfully, even for someone with mediocre looping ability like myself. playing older yo-yo's makes me want to do older tricks. i don't know a lot of older tricks, really. i wish i did. i tend to do the same ones that i love over and over.

i had a brief "conversation" with one of my "friends". i use the quotes to emphasize that said dialog did NOT actually take place in person, NOR have i ever actually met the other participant. i'd like to though. we were talking about yo-yo tricks; how they're learned and how they're taught. it really got me thinking ("a dangerous pastime - i KNOW"... beauty & the beast fans? no? ok.). basically, someone was asking for an in-depth tutorial for a trick called "chinese cradle", a weird little decades-old picture trick, and the question was... should they get it?

this particular trick came out of the duncan demonstrator crew of the 1950's. dale oliver tells me that it predates him, and that originally, it was called "chinese puzzle". the cradle part was added on later. ironically, i first saw it done by dale on a tiny, scratchy internet video. since the trick is pretty small and complicated, it was completely impossible to discern what he was doing in the vid, or even what the finished product should look like. maybe that contributed to its intrigue and mystique.

years later, i asked steve brown to teach it to me in virginia, and once he had dug the thing out of the attic of his memory, he obliged. he said something about it having been a "special" trick which, in years past, wasn't taught casually to just anyone. i think i was almost more fascinated by this fact than by the trick itself. this was the first time i had ever heard of a trick that had been "exclusive" in any respect besides its own inherent difficulty to perform. evidently, in the years of the traveling demonstrators, certain tricks were identified as "calling cards". as such, they were more preciously guarded, much like a magician guards his secrets. it kind of makes sense in the context of the giant fad-eras of the 50's and 60's. it just wouldn't do for a demonstrator to pull up at toy store "x" and throw a bunch of tricks that everybody already knew. a degree of exclusivity would have been essential.

nowadays, there are more tricks; more directions from which to amaze an audience. the technology has rendered much of the past's yo-yoing 'antiquated', but the sheer volume of a modern demonstrator's repertoire should be more than enough to flabbergast any audience. 50 years ago, the number of individual 'tricks' out there was comparatively limited. there are infinite ways to loop, infinite ways to stylistically alter 'rock the baby'... but any yo-yo performer of the modern era or the golden age would agree that you HAVE to have the ability to show em something truly crazy - something they've never seen.

anyway, the question i was left with was "SHOULD there be a quality online tutorial for a trick like 'chinese cradle'?" and the answer i've gravitated to is "no."

i don't think that tricks should be withheld by anyone on the basis of who is "worthy", but i DO think there should be some tricks that AREN'T accessible via the internet. we live in an era of instant gratification. if you want something, and you've got internet and paypal - BLAM! "bad credit? no credit? NO PROBLEM! CONGRATS! YOU'RE PRE-APPROVED!!!" as a society, we've started to feel entitled to things like food and shelter. and while, i agree, it's good to have these things available to people... we need to recognize that NONE of them are things that "just happen" to us. i think that we should work for things, or at least viscerally recognize the work that goes into them, regardless of whether it's our own. if you want to eat a cheeseburger, i think you should be willing to slaughter a cow yourself. period. i don't think it's necessary to kill one every time you order a #12 from McD's (ew), but knowing what it means to kill something, prepare it, and eat it - how messy it is, how wasteful, all the emotions involved - it helps you to truly value what you take from the world. it helps you to be thankful. if you want to live in a house, i think you should be willing to help build one - to learn about the different skills and efforts that have to come together to enable your "dream kitchen". it goes without saying that we can't DO all this stuff. the functions of our society are so refined and technical that no lay-person will be capable of coming to understand all of the arts. still, it's the attitude - the work ethic - that matters. lunch, indoor plumbing, quality health care... whether you should be entitled to these things or not, they don't just happen to you. they're born of effort - always. what are you working for? and where does your work go?

if you want to learn a yo-yo trick, i think you should learn it. and if it isn't on youtube or kwos or sector_y or yoyoexpert... you should get out of your house and seek it out. maybe that means harassing someone at your local club or maybe it means traveling around the world. maybe it will involve some waiting, during which you get to experience "not knowing" it. in the end, when you do learn it... it'll be worth EXACTLY what it took to obtain it. lately, i think some things should be harder to obtain.

i allude to the martial arts all the time. in budo, we have something called kuden, which are, in effect, glorified secrets - secrets of training or secret applications of technique that have developed within different schools over millennia. the defining characteristic of these secrets is that they're only ever taught to people who are worth a damn - who have proven their loyalty to the school and the system. just like demonstrators withholding this or that trick from potential competitors, if you teach the wrong sword technique to the wrong person... it could be employed against you. it's not all paranoia either. having a technique that belongs to someone only if they make a legitimate contribution might inspire that person to contribute... whereas making said trick available on the internet primarily inspires acquisition (which leads to the compulsive need for MORE acquisition). it might seem like a trivial distinction, but you'll remember from my last post - ain't nothing trivial to me. there's something valuable in learning a trick from a human being, with no intermediary 1's and 0's.

should every trick be common knowledge (or at least commonly and easily accessible)? should one's ability be the only factor that mitigates the dissemination of information. i don't believe in withholding things arbitrarily. i don't think it's valuable to say "nah. i'm not teaching you THIS trick cause you're not in The Cool Guy Club." that's not it. at the same time, "chinese cradle" is an old trick, and it belongs to way more than just me. steve taught it to me, and he learned it from dale. if either of those guys would prefer that i carefully consider those the manner by which i share such a trick... i'd be inclined to respect that (and honestly, even if they don't give a crap... maybe i should). dale told me that he, for one, doesn't really believe in "trick exclusivity"; that if someone asks him, his response is "i learned this trick from a champion, and it's my responsibility to teach someone else." i agree, but at the same time, i'd rather teach someone who DOES ask, as opposed to someone who just happens upon it whilst searching for "darth vader". fortunately, it's a self-governing principle, seeing as the number of people who really want to learn "chinese cradle" (or really any old trick i can imagine) would probably number around a dozen or so, at most. i'm certainly not going to be met with throngs of kids asking for help with it, nor would i look sideways at someone who asked, in effort to size them up or gauge their commitment to our "sacred art". pretending at exclusivity in such a teeny niche community is pretty stupid. seeking knowledge out is enough all the accreditation you should require ... but if you want it, be willing to really seek it. there's not enough seeking in yo-yoing; not enough patience. maybe that's true of modern humanity in general.

the trick itself is perfectly irrelevant. this is not about "chinese cradle" at all, so much as it's about learning to feel less entitled. in our world, which every day, seems to become more digital, there's some real value in learning a trick from a master; in seeking one out, in looking into his eyes, and in valuing the lifetime of work that's gone into the trick he teaches you. i've learned a lot from online tutorials, and i'm certainly not trying to diminish the efforts of guys like gabe, whose sector_y (as i've previously stated) represent one of the main reasons i'm any kind of yo-yoer at all. that said, i care about yo-yoing. though i've been exploring it for what feels like a long time now, i kind of want it to withhold some secrets. rather than just picking what i want from a silver cyber-platter, i want to have to work to uncover some of its gems. rather than be told the secrets that i've yet to understand, i want (in time) to deserve to know.

yo-yo #'s 66 & 67: save deth freehands

there's no such thing as a 'save deth freehand', strictly speaking. for awhile, the proprietors of that most 'now' of yo-yo lifestyle companies (big pond, there), seth peterson and dave poyzer, were selling little vinyl decals with their logo. although the circular decals could be used for any number of purposes, they were made to fit perfectly upon the caps of the ever-popular duncan freehand. ironically, the decals were printed and cut by none other than brandon jackson, then-graphic-design-guru and NOW, the head of marketing for duncan toys.

i first saw the decals at ecc in 2008, where dave gave me a pair of the purple ones. that contest also marked the first time i saw an enyo freehand, which had just been released as a collaboration between duncan and yoyonation. i'd heard people begging for a freehand made from the super-hard and super-sparkly enyo plastic for years, and was psyched to finally score one at the contest. when i got home, i dot-3'd the caps (brake fluid is the best way to remove the printed logos from fh caps, if you were wondering) and applied the decals. one of them went on perfectly, the next i stuck on just a bit off-center. the issue with 'a bit off-center' with spinning objects is that they end up looking 'really off-center'. perfectionist (psycho) that i am, i ripped the errantly-placed decal off angrily, replacing it with a tiny green triangle project sticker, which also looked egregiously dumb.

i liked it ok at the time though, and i sent the zero off to my pal chris hicks, who was modding everything not nailed-down. chris had done some very consistent (if simple) work for me in the past, but he had grown into his lathe pretty well and i was just asking for a silicone job. when i got the zero back, i was in utter shock. it was (and remains) the single best-playing freehand zero i've ever used. chris ended up doing a silicone-schmoove job, cutting the schmoove rings super-shallow compared to the inner silicone-ring. though simple, it was just a flawless job; pristine. and when, a few months later, seth sent me a set of green decals with a shirt i'd ordered (and i actually stuck em both on RIGHT)... i was in freehand zero heaven.

it's a funny thing about freehands; some seem to play better than any yo-yo out there... and some are total lemons. i'm not sure if it has to do with the tolerance of the plastic or the axle or the spacer set-up or what. a few months ago, i received a white 'duncan boy' zero in a trade (no idea for what). it looks totally ordinary (or it did), and yet, as some zeros just seem wont to do... it outplays almost anything. it's just a fricking MACHINE, and it doesn't even seem to care what bearing i toss in. like it's aforementioned brother, it was the beneficiary of the least complicated mod imaginable. and yet it was just perfectly executed, enabling this little hunk of plastic to manifest its highest level of play. you know, it might piss me off that there's such inconsistency from one duncan yo-yo to another... if i didn't have a few that are just completely perfect.

it was so good that i wanted it to match the aesthetic of my other super-zero... so when i snagged yet another pair of decals from seth at indy this year (pink ones - the last he had), i knew right where they needed to go. i always kinda found those duncan boy caps (and the duncan boy mascot in general, now that i think on it) to be pretty friggin' lame - a poor successor to either the original circle-headed duncan or the weird little cartoon bell-hop, both of which have a simplistic, classic feel. anyway, i stuck the decals on some sparkle blue caps with the kind of accuracy that experience alone can yield, held my breath when i clicked them in (cause wonky caps can upset an otherwise-perfect freehand)... and yet again, i had a zero that qualified as 'functional art'.

every time i pick these yo-yo's up, i'm reminded of a virtue that has seemed to apply every meaningful endeavor i've encountered: do a small thing well.

i'll relate one of my favorite stories surrounding the swordman, musashi miyamoto, a hero of mine (inasmuch as legends CAN be heroes). musashi was bathing and relaxing in the fief of the renowned swordsman, yagyu munetoshi, who had secluded himself in the mountains and taken to delighting in the simple pleasures of gardening and the tea ceremony. like musashi, a group of burly samurai from kyoto had come to the fief to test their skills in fighting the old master. politely declining to meet with these challengers, munetoshi sent a single white peony from his garden, along with a message intimating that he no longer had any interest in teaching or in fighting. the samurai scoffed at the peony and left in a huff. out of kindness, munetoshi's courier then delivered the peony to musashi's room, who, upon seeing it drew out his short sword and cut the stem in two. picking up the fallen piece while the terrified courier collected herself, musashi compared the two cuts at either end of the stem. from the angle and smoothness of the original cut, he deduced that the peony could only have been sliced by a sword, and that his own stroke was decidedly inferior. upon learning that the peony was cut by lord munetoshi, himself, musashi arrived at the conclusion that he was not yet ready to challenge such a master.

of his performing career, steve martin said "being great is easy. every performer can count on nights when the stars align and everything goes to plan. nights like that are statistical, but being good - every night - is difficult." similarly, when i was growing up, i confided to the poet maya angelou, a family friend, that i wanted to grow up to be a great man. her response was that "the world is too full of great men as it is. be a good man, which is rare." while throughout my youth, i was awed by every sort of flamboyant virtuosity... in my adult life, i have come to respect consistency, simplicity, and and sincerity above all else. it might seem like hyperbole, but a carefully-siliconed freehand reflects these principles as well as anything. nothing you do - not the way you cut a peony, the way you perform on stage, or the way you silicone a freehand - is ever trivial.

i play these guys more than any other zeros, probably; even more than my mg's. partly on account of their anomalously wonderful play; partly due to the fact that i think save deth remains one of the coolest entities in yo-yoing. sure, they're sparkly, but their real value lies beneath the caps. like expert flower-arrangers, their respective modders found the way to bring out the best in these yo-yo's, either by diligent practice or serendipity. playing them reminds me to try to 'do a simple thing well' in the context of my own life...

every simple thing.

yo-yo # 65: tulipwood eric wolff masterpiece

awhile back, for no good reason at all, i put together an incomplete list of tricks i'd learned. it was fairly substantial, and mostly composed of ridiculously simple stuff culled from now-outmoded (if not defunct) sites.

for years, the only site i learned from was 'ken's world on a string'. hallmarked by simple text and illustrations, kwos is one of the few instructional tools left over from its era, and i still find myself going back to it to check this or that, or to remember old, beloved tricks that i once treasured.

years after i stopped visiting kwos, i stumbled upon the mark hayward/harper reed collaboration, 'howtoyoyo.com'. this may have been the first organized video catalog that i encountered, full of treasures filmed at contests in the early 2000's. i still remember some great, 8-second 5a trick-tutorials by steve filmed in a dark parking lot and performed with laser-cut precision. trying to learn them, i'd have to watch the clip over and over dozens of times. the real cache, though, for me, was the list of picture tricks. performed by dale oliver, bill deboisblanc, dale myrberg, cappy, john bot, and others... it's a trove. and i don't throw that word around (although... who does?). the videos are ridiculously hard to see, but bits can be deciphered.

going through the list i had composed, i ran into a trick from said collection that i had TOTALLY forgotten. buried in the list is a phenomenal trick by bill deblah entiteled 'flower'. upon seeing it in type, i flashed immediately back to a day in 2005, when i sat in my empty classroom until dusk trying to get it wired. i never really did, and abandoned it in frustration. however, when i looked the trick up yesterday, i understood it immediately. i picked up this yo-yo, a gorgeous eric wolff-turned tulipwood butterfly, which i scored last year at nc states, and had it first try. funny how the mind changes. with yo-yoing, it's not like you develop crazy abs or cauliflower ears, or any outward sign that you're 'developing'. but the more you yo-yo, the easier it is to make connections. you really feel how you've grown when you re-approach a concept that seemed difficult or impossible years ago.

anyway, i think it's a cool trick; it feels 'cutesy' and old-fashioned. it got me thinking about the way we create and retain tricks. obviously, they aren't something that you can hold. they aren't objects that can be manipulated whenever, or stored away. and yet, we tend to treat them as possessions; as if we 'pay' for them through the process of learning them, and after we can do them, they become 'acquisitions'. i wasn't thinking about it in such explicit terms when i composed that list years ago, but that's the attitude from which it surely sprang. these here are the tricks that 'belong to me'.

the sticky point is that when you acquire something, it becomes your responsibility; such is the nature of acquisition. if you buy an old pick-up trick, it's yours - you CAN do what you want with it. but if you let it sit stagnant in your front lawn while weeds and shrubs grow through it until it becomes a rusty, dilapidated eyesore, then your negligence has expanded to affect the landscape and community. everything you own, everything you have is, implicitly a BURDEN upon you. some burdens are heavier than others, and the more you've got, the more you're responsible for. we can try to get around it with slippery ideologies and/or ignorance, but it's pretty straight-forward. you've committed to bringing certain things into the fold of your life; into the realm of your 'control'. whether that's a car, a bonsai tree, or a work of art like this yo-yo - or even something intangible, like knowledge or a certain trick, then doing so makes you responsible. whether you mean to or not, the things you HAVE are things to which you tie a piece of yourself. as such, none of the things we acquire should be perceived as trivial.

if, whether tacitly or explicitly you decide, 'i know this yo-yo trick - it's mine,' then caring for it becomes a kind of duty (like changing your cat's litter box, only less gross). how do you care for a yo-yo trick? the same way you care for any artistic element: by doing it right. if you've learned kamikaze, then you should do it correctly, using the elements paul uncovered. if you mean to do something different with it, then you're changing the trick. that's ok, but don't do so casually, just because you have trouble with 'magic drop' or something. when you teach it, teach it right. you're passing it on. you're proliferating a piece of yo-yoing's living tapestry. don't muck it up.

awhile back, jon rob made a good analogy, comparing yo-yo tricks to undiscovered land. the tricks are all there, waiting to be found. you may uncover them, present them, or learn them... but they don't really belong to you, alone. no one can really steal 'your' tricks, and the tricks you learn aren't really 'yours' either (that said, there's nothing cool or interesting about doing a derivative freestyle that people will have seen before). you may have exposed the thing, but once it's out in the open, it kind of belongs to everyone, and everyone who learns it must share the duty.

it's the same with any art. it's not really a question of whether or not i CAN copy picasso's bull sketches... it's more a question of 'what would be the point?' artistically, the moment those pictures have made the journey from picasso's hand to the page, they no longer belong to him. 'intellectual property' lawsuits notwithstanding, the moment an idea or emotion is expressed, it's no longer really within our jurisdiction or control. picasso discovered some incredible ways of drawing a bull. now everyone can do it. but... why would they? spencer berry discovered the movements that compose 'breath'. now everyone can do it (i mean, kind of). but... why would they?

cause it's nice to make pretty pictures? cause 'breath' is a fun yo-yo trick?

why DO we do any tricks that have already been discovered? obviously, in the beginning we have no choice. we perceive yo-yoing to simply be a collection of tricks that we have to learn. by now, i really shouldn't be so perplexed when i happen upon the question 'do you guys make up your own tricks?'... i mean... after a few years, what else is there to do? realistically though, what we'd call 'new' aren't even our own tricks; when viewed close up, the 1a tricks we do are composed of the same underpasses, pops, and landings that have been popular for the past decade. a 'new trick' may be composed of less than 1% innovative material. and when viewed from afar, the tricks we do melt into the landscape of the freestyle or session. a doctor cannot understand the human body without understanding cells. a yo-yoer cannot understand the nature of yo-yoing without a sense for 'tricks'... and yet, just as with the body... it's the WHOLE that really matters.

and that whole must always belong to everyone. no one (not yuuki or shinji or the eternal spirit of pedro flores) is big enough to throw the whole thing.

each of our string hits represents a brushstroke in the painting of our trick, each trick a brush stroke in the painting of our combo, each combo a brushstroke in the painting of our session, and each session a brushstroke in the painting of our life. however we wish to divide it, however we try to stake it off and claim it, yo-yoing is really just one trick, and that's what we have to take care of. though we may reveal this or that fraction thereof... no particle will ever be the exclusive province of any one of us. all of it belongs to all of us, and as such, taking care of it becomes our collective responsibility. nobody gets into yo-yoing for the responsibility. some people see it as a 'bad word', and would certainly rather not associate things like that with yo-yoing. but that's what caring about something boils down to... and if you want to take anything from yo-yoing (or give anything to it)... there's really no escaping the burden.

do it right. have pride. represent.

yo-yo #64: laminated rd-1

my family and i were at target last week (or tar-jay, because we're high-fashion french-types). we were meandering through the toy section, idly discussing the bike that everyone knew we were planning to buy caitie for her 7th birthday. we had straight-up SOLD her bike at our yard sale the week before to an adorable 4 year-old, and cait had watched it go with a degree of nostalgic sadness. she could barely fit on the thing though; it was time for an upgrade.

i asked cait what she wanted besides the bicycle, and was surprised by her response: "a yo-yo... a nice one like yours". my daughter has never really paid any attention to my yo-yoing. sometimes she jokes that it's an embarrassment at the bus stop or imitates her mom in rolling her eyes when i play in the department store. lately though, she's asked to play quite a lot. she has several yo-yo's, most of them cheap party favors that she prizes not for their play, but for their depiction of favorite cartoon characters. i gave her a mosquito awhile back when she asked to learn the basics, and chris allen kindly sent her a yellow proyo awhile back, cause he's nice.

now, however, she was intimating that she wanted a "nice one". part of me fell into the mode of thinking that i experienced as a teacher whenever a kid asked me about buying an expensive yo-yo. "you don't need one. play what you've got, learn to love it and ask me again in a few years." the father in me though, was busy thinking "she's interested in what i'm interested in? seriously? where's my credit card??"

somewhere in between, it occurred to me that i really do have a lot of yo-yo's... probably an unhealthy amount. and lately, i only really play my no jives, my flying v's, and a few others with any regularity. it wouldn't make a whole lot of sense to buy a 7 year-old a brand new fancy yo-yo. i don't want her to feel tied to it; she's 7! at that age, one's hobbies should be as fluid as water. you feel like yo-yoing today? play your yo-yo. tomorrow you want to bury your yo-yo in the sandbox? knock yourself out. i'm not one of those parents that expects my kids to take their pastimes very seriously, but neither am i one to deny a birthday wish.

i decided to channel mr. miyagi, and asked her to choose. my wife suggested that i give her 3 options that i wouldn't mind losing, but i had other ideas. i don't like to be too attached to things, and when i get attached, i sometimes need to find a way to let go of the object(s) in question. i don't want to be the kind of person who would hesitate for an INSTANT if my kid asks me for something i can easily give them on their birthday. when my wife suggested i put limitations on what my daughter can have, my immediate reaction was "oh yeah, good idea". however, THAT VERY REACTION indicated a problem. that was really only my reaction because i'd be AFRAID that she'd pick one of my most prized toys. and THAT... is inherently lame; no getting around it.

to my daughter, all of the yo-yo's on the wall of the 'yo-yo room' are toys. as such, she has a much more accurate and unclouded understanding of them than i do. i equate them with 'value'; either monetary value or sentimental value. this is a problem, because my attachment to them obstructs my ability to see them for what they fundamentally are: playthings.

i gave my daughter an unlimited choice. from the 100's of yo-yo's in the room, which cost anywhere between $1 and around $450 (and several of which i would truly call 'priceless'), i said "pick any one you want". i did this for ME; not for her. i did this because the moment i said it, i was giving EVERY yo-yo in there to her. i was offering EVERY one up, and in so doing, i was severing the connections i had with each of them.

what if she picked the mg??? PICK the mg! TAKE IT. i'll set it up so it's tug-responsive and i'll smile when you do 'creeper' on the driveway. what if she picked an eric wolff??? PICK an eric wolff! i've enjoyed them all. and while i view them as high art, they play AWESOME... and i firmly believe that no yo-yo - NO yo-yo can 'do better' for itself than by being played and adored by a child. if it could talk, the yo-yo that shinya used to win worlds this year might say it's pretty happy... but i'd wager its joy would be NOTHING next to the one that any 4th grader uses to make his first loop-the-loop. and what if she picked "no jive #1"??? how could i give away my favorite yo-yo of all time? PICK #1!!! i'm always saying that playing that yo-yo taught me humility. i say it taught me that i don't need anything fancy to amaze myself, and that 'it's not the yo-yo that matters'... if i'm not prepared to give it to my kid, then i'm full of shit. and playing it hasn't taught me anything at all.

i think you need to be hard on yourself sometimes. i often make little challenges to myself and hold myself to them really strictly. some of them are relatively silly and easy like this, and others are harder. i don't want to be the kind of man who says one thing and does another. i'm truly more afraid of finding myself to be a hypocrite than anything else. some days i wonder if there's anything else to really be afraid of. guns and monsters and root canals... you can find the strength to face any kind of terror in this life. but looking at yourself honestly and recognizing your own hypocrisy? that's a whole different kind of scary.

caitie walked around the room a little bit, and then picked this yo-yo. a 2003 tom kuhn rd-1. made of purple, green, and blue laminated wood. it plays just fine. nice and smooth, not too heavy, and it responds well. this will be a good yo-yo for her to learn with, at whatever speed she wants. she's not really ready for a big gap, and i'm glad that she didn't choose one... but i'm glad for HER, and not for myself. i'm happy she picked the rd-1, because it was the one she liked, but i'm also happy because i passed the test i gave myself. it occurs to me that i'm relieved that i WASN'T relieved; that i could have handed any of those damn yo-yo's over to her with a smile. for a minute there, i was worried that it would be tough to do so, but i know better now.

happy birthday caitlyn. how time flies.

yo-yo #63: F***ing Awesome No Jive

since my last post, i've been on a real bass kick. it's nice when you get old (or at least when i do), having so many 'micro-obsessions' between which to bounce. as it occurred to me recently, i haven't NOT played yo-yo over a 24 hour period in something like 4 years. it's not that i'm obsessed; i just don't really think about it. yo-yoing's fun and interesting to me, so i do it. i do it while waiting on line, or sitting on the toilet, or pushing the stroller around the neighborhood. when and if i run into a period whereupon i'm no longer stoked... i just won't yo-yo. there's NO point to pushing yourself in that vein. what could be more counterproductive than WILLING yourself to 'have fun'? it's one thing for yo-yoing to be about 'striving' to improve, but i think you have to have a fluid enough spirit to allow yourself a break when you're moved to do so. in fact, no need to even think of it as 'a break'. yo-yo's are small and convenient, and you can come back to them whenever. don't worry, you'll still be a yo-yoer, and there's always a new and amazing direction in which to fall hopelessly.

i've also been playing this yo-yo a lot this week. it's one of a clutch that seth peterson gave me at worlds. i actually gave it to HIM at ecc last year after an epic fixed axle session outside tyler's house with spencer berry ('yo-yo heaven'?). seth said he needed to pick up a no jive, and i had this one on me - a white painted butterfly one with the 'ii devil-girl' graphic on one side. when he returned it to me unbidden this august, i had forgotten he had it. as i turned it over in my hands, i still didn't realize it was the same yo-yo, since he had flipped it imperial and affixed a 'f***ing awesome' decal to both sides. immediately my thoughts raced back to my youth in new orleans. my cousin jack had come to visit (we were probably around 7 years old), and he had brought me a shiny blue sticker with the word 'awesome' emblazoned in silver robo/techno-lettering. it was pretty cheesy, and even at age 7, i was 'too cool' to be very impressed. it occurs to me, looking back, that i could have done a better job of receiving that gift, which my cousin clearly felt was aptly described by its text. looking back, that sticker (along with my cousin's reverence for it) WAS awesome. this yo-yo is just like that, except 'f***ing', too.

i'm not big on obscenities, really. i try to use them 'when appropriate'(?). like i don't kick up a big fuss if i drop an f-bomb, but neither do i think it's generally the best way to express myself. sometimes though (like when i stub the shit out of my toe or the canes blow a 5-on-3 power play), it totally is. it doesn't bother me, so long as they're said with intent. if you're angry or ignorant, and 'f***' is all you can manage, then yeah, i think that's a little pathetic. if you own it, and you mean it, however, i see no real evil in it. some people get really tied up about naughty words, but every human, myself included, possesses the capacity for far darker transgressions, which if stifled and ignored are all the more likely to leak to the surface of our lives.

the yo-yo plays fine, like any imperial no jive. some people have recently said that they think it's neat that i 'have the guts' to play yo-yo's like this. are you kidding? yo-yo's like this are the best thing in the world, and i'm so glad they're still out there. if you don't have a wooden, fixed axle, imperial shape that PLAYS in your arsenal, get one now, while they're just endangered and not extinct. if it's what you want, then it doesn't take any courage at all to play yo-yo's like this (they don't even hurt too bad when they whack you). i'm not trying to be an iconoclast; i genuinely prefer it to the ultra-wide, unresponsive, metal-of-the-month. it's hard, but if you allow yourself the courtesy of defining your own standards, it's really JUST fun. people seem more comfortable in thinking that yo-yoing is like some middle-school math program, and that when you get 'off the gifted track' you're screwed. but everybody's really on their own track, blazing their own trail. you might think you're learning all of johnnie's tricks, but you can't step into the same river twice. every trick you do is yours, so make damn sure it's the trick you WANT to do, and not the one you 'think you ought'.

being a one-trick pony sucks. musashi said 'touch upon all of the arts: to learn the sword, study the shamisen'. i think it's really important to have multiple expressive outlets, because doing so prevents your becoming 'burnt out' with any one of them. one of the things i was delighted to notice this week is that playing a lot of bass made me WANT to yo-yo. and yo-yoing frequently makes me WANT to doodle silly pictures or practice sword kata. and so on. inside, all of our arts are connected, and they all serve and refresh each other. many of the unhappiest people i've met are the ones that are hyper-focused on one objective. if all of your energy is directed toward one activity or goal, two things happen 1.) you restrict yourself. you can't say everything you want to say via any one medium, i don't care what kind of virtuoso you are. finding another way to express yourself, even one that you really suck at (especially one you really suck at) helps you to approach yourself from a new perspective. 2.) if all of your eggs are in one basket, then when you drop it, you'll feel you have failed, UTTERLY. the person who commits himself thoroughly to yoyoing WILL at some point come to detest it. and when he does, he'll feel that all his time was wasted and all of his expression rendered moot.

a friend of mine asked me if, when i play bass or yo-yo, the expression 'flows through me' in the same way. i don't know... i guess i don't look at it like that. i don't really see myself as a conduit for some vague, expanse of artistic energy. i don't really see the art as something that's inside me needing to 'escape' like air from a baloon. i think that art is just what happens when you give yourself to a moment. sometimes it has a really strict form, like a song you're trying to play or a trick you're trying to hit. other times it's more spontaneous and flexible; an exercise in allowing your brain to leap between ideas and bridge gaps that may never even have occurred to you previously. art's what you're doing, if you're doing it fully and presently. in either case, i think the main thing isn't to think 'ok... i need to put some of MYSELF into this here ART.' if anything, i think it's about getting your 'self' the hell out of the way. maybe it is the same process, but it feels somehow obscene to pick it apart.

composition is another story, and i definitely try to create yo-yo tricks in the same way that i try to write songs. a yo-yo trick, in my mind, has to have a beginning, middle, and end. it also has to have a POINT. maybe the point is 'rambling and incoherent', but the form offered by a central idea is the defining essence of any trick, and any song. even john cage's most whimsically random-sounding compositions are based on underlying structure, even if the structure is 'twelve radios blaring' or 'birds outside' or '4 minutes of silence'. i like to make short yo-yo tricks that focus on one simple idea (playing a lot of wood yo-yo's like this has probably kept me from much longer endeavors). i used to love the idea of 'sonata form' in yo-yoing, but continued recapitulation can really make a trick overlong and boring. i'd LOVE to see someone do a 'sonata form' video or ap freestyle though... hmm... my main issues with correlating my trick making to music are the restrictions of my own abilities. when i used to compose a lot, i liked to apply my ideas in layers that resolved weirdly, and the idea of harmony in yo-yo is really, really tough. if all i wanted was a pretty melody, that would be simple... but who wants to listen to mozart all day?

music and yo-yoing share an obvious aesthetic similarity in that as soon as an idea escapes your fingertips, it's gone. you play a note or hit a string, and it's in the past (and trying to linger on it interrupts everything). it's as ephemeral as the sound exploding in the air of the room or the hold resolving to trapeze. and try as you might, you can't get any of the notes, or any of the tricks back. you're making noise or doing your trick in THIS moment, and that's all... and the immediacy of that concept is to me, the quintessence of both media. when you're yo-yoing, even if you're hiding in a room full of toys, babes and bling, which con you into the luxuriant belief that you've GOT stuff to which you might assign a part of your self... The Trick is the ONLY thing you have in the world. so whether i'm playing my bass or my yo-yo or with my star wars guys (ok maybe not with my star wars guys... except i guess kinda... but no)... or writing this blog... i just want to do so fully. what moment, aside from this one now, will ever be real to you? this one's all we've got.

and mostly this one is enough...

in fact, it's f***ing awesome.

yo-yo #'s 61 & 62: diamond specials

how do you feel about your yo-yoing?

are you good at it? what does that mean? does being 'good' enable or entitle you to look down on yo-yoers who 'aren't good'? when you see someone who's just started yo-yoing or someone who's been plodding through the basics for years, do you make secret comparisons? do you, somewhere in the base of your brain, feel a little superior? when you finish top 5 at a contest, do you feel a little bad for the guy that got 23rd? and should the guys who finished top 4 look at you that way? to be a good yo-yo player, do other yo-yo players even have to think you're any good? who's the boss of your yo-yoing? who tells you where it should go? are you being honest?

awhile ago, mark mcbride made this post. mark's one of the guys i've always looked up to as a yo-yoer, and one of the few people for whom my respect has actually INCREASED as i've come to learn more about him. although it isn't a new, hot, trendy topic, i think about the ideas behind this post a lot. in some ways, i feel like it really captures the way i see yo-yoing, though it's projected from bride's lens, which is naturally different from my own.

these are diamond specials: good, simple, beautiful yo-yo's, the both of them. i bought the walnut one from collector/photographer shawn garcia, who knows a lot about wood yo-yo's and has been an inspiration. the blonde one was gifted to me outright by my friend izzy, who found it at an antique shop. a pristine relic from the tom kuhn san-fransico era. i play both of these yo-yo's often. because of the rhinestones, it would border on the sinful to flip them butterfly. out in the sunlight, they positively glow during spins, and when i play them i remember hearing tom kuhn describe the first yo-yo he won, a duncan jeweled which, as it reflected the sunset was "the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen".

... i really want to be a 'good yo-yoer'. i have since i bought my purple fireball from zany brainy 10+ years ago. but like vizzini trying to describe 'the man in black' as 'inconceivable', i don't necessarily think it means what you think it means. recently, i've blathered on a lot about the subjective. i've talked about how contests aren't really the best tools for identifying 'what's good'. i don't think i'm a terrible yo-yo player (though my contest results would certainly suggest it). as a judge, i know that most of the tricks i like best would score poorly even if i hit them cleanly (which i rarely do). some people really can walk the line. they can throw the tricks they love on stage, do ok (or better than ok), and be pretty content. i see other yo-yoers who kind of 'closet' their favorite tricks. instead, they practice tricks that feel less natural and less interesting so as to get good results, by which they go on to define a part of themselves. are they happy that way? dunno. maybe.

i think that some players will always associate success with complexity. a trick is 'good' if it's hard; if it makes the observer think 'never in a million years'. a yo-yoer is 'good' if he can do a whole mess of hard tricks. that's but not how i see it at all.

i'm a bass player, and i used to work really hard to be as progressive as possible. i listened to the most technically incredible bassists and scoffed rudely at the ones who didn't know theory or couldn't blister through apoplectic slap solos. i used to pity the ones who believed it their job to 'support' their guitarist(s). i'd heard people say "the song's the thing" a million times (and i'm not sure when it finally registered) but i don't look at it now as i once did. although in some ways, it was useful for me to learn all the technique and theory, i now recognize that the compulsion to do so reflected MY OWN weakness, and not that of 'lesser musicians'. technique was, and remains, a crutch (which is not a bad thing, if you need it). i had to move through technique and complexity to understand, and to get to my own music, but not everyone does. some musicians are born with the understanding that they can play the music inside of them, and that's enough. it can be sloppy and easy and composed of junk that no one but they and their moms would want to listen to. all that matters is that it's authentic to them. some yo-yo players understand that too. once you dissolve the wall between yourself and what you aim to create... no one can ever again call you 'good' or 'bad' at what you do with any authority.

i'm in the process of uploading a yo-yo video. i'm calling it "new adventures in 'lo-fi'", a play on an r.e.m. album. watching it, i'm sure there are plenty of tricks that people would say aren't 'lo-fi' at all, and that's natural. it's not a term that they (or i) get to define for anyone else. actually, i asked a lot of my friends at tn states to show me a 'lo-fi' trick, and almost everyone interpreted the idea differently. doc brought up the distinction between 'moves' and 'tricks', which are often mistaken for each other. some players asked if there was a time or string-hit limit, but to me, it's way more organic than that. it's more like there's an 'intent-limit'. it's about showing me one idea, one thing you love, as opposed to barfing out your last 3 meals and asking me to pick through it and see what's in there. think simple.

i've talked to my friends drew and mitch about comparing 'low-fi' yo-yoing with riding skateboards. drew revealed a fascinating truth to me; that a lot of my skater/yo-yo friends create tricks that base themselves around a similar rhythm. a skateboard trick is often composed of an 'entry' (usually an ollie), some central feature (maybe a grind, manual, or a gap), and then the 're-entry', or roll-away. it occurs to me that most of the tricks i like to see and create are similarly composed; simple tricks with an objective. tricks that have a beginning, middle, and end... based on one fundamental idea. i'm almost never inspired by 30-second combos with a hundred string hits. sure it's difficult, but to me, it's [usually] empty. it's "please for the love of god, look at ME!!!" instead of "hey, check THIS out."

understand, i'm not trying to say that i'm all about stagnation. i don't see 'low-fi' as sitting around, chewing the cud, doing the same tricks you've always done. if that's what it is to you, that's your prerogative, but i did that for years, and there's nothing there for me. i don't think there's anything 'right' about a punk-rocker saying 'whatever. i can play these 9 songs and that's all i need.' the classical virtuoso who feels superior due to the complexity and difficulty of his repertoire is equally deluded.

i think you've got to push... i think life IS pushing... but if you're letting someone BESIDES yourself decide which way you go, no matter how hard you do push, you're still imprisoned.

in yo-yoing, 'simple' has almost become a derogation, but simple tricks are all i really want to do. i guess playing a lot of wood yo-yo has led me to really appreciate the simple, and as anyone who's played the blues will tell you... simple rarely means 'easy'. i don't think you have to play wood (or even responsive) to know where i'm coming from, but maybe it's easier. i'm definitely beginning to feel that 'lo-fi' yo-yoing is about 'progressive simplicity'; about finding new ways to be simple (which can actually be a lot harder than 'finding new ways to be complicated'). it's about creating tricks that make the uninitiated say 'i could totally.' it's about having the courage to look at your yo-yoing and accept it, and to decide without pretense or comparison, where it SHOULD go next.

most of us will never be 'the best yo-yoer in the world' by any standard. it's easy to admit that to ourselves. what's difficult (and maybe a little scary) is to learn how to say sincerely... that you don't want to be.

yo-yo # 60: the red v

since i'm just getting to know this yo-yo, i'm not going to waste a ton of words with amusing anecdotes or pithy philosophical musings. in time, i'm confident that i'll have to redress this post (maybe several times), as i'll have this yo-yo in my pocket for awhile. as such, though there are two of them, i'm only going to discuss one of them. ;)

actually, there are 2.5 red sparkle powdercoated flying v's on the planet. steve buffel, the proprietor of saturn precision yo-yo's, is as you should know, a gentleman and a scholar. at the inception of the flying v, as steve was asking about my preferences, we briefly discussed the possibility of a powder coated finish. since the heyday of the diss kings, i've always loved the look and feeling of powder coat, and the lure of it on a yo-yo i was helping to design was irresistible. however, it was not to be.

steve, who has forgotten more about making smooth yo-yo's than i (or most yo-yoers) will ever know, and who has experience with multiple methods of coating yo-yo's, brought up two major reservations with using the finish in a production run: inconsistency and demand. compared with an anodized finish, powder coating is incredibly inconsistent. anodizing a yo-yo actually produces a physical bond between the finish and the aluminum. it can be chipped off, but it's incredibly durable (having tried to beat up a number of them, i've found spyy's ano to be especially tough). powder coating a yo-yo, by contrast, bakes a flowable "crust" onto the surface of the yo-yo. it's beautiful, and also durable, but compared with ano, less precise. tiny variations in the surface are possible, and since yo-yo's are spinning instruments, these variations become amplified, and can quickly reduce a precision toy to a shuddering mess. they CAN be essentially perfect (as are the coatings on both of my diss kings masterpieces, as well as my white addict)... but they won't all be.

the other issue with using powder coat is the simple fact that the market doesn't seem to dig it en masse. it looks cool, and people want to try it, but functionally, it doesn't have a lot of advantage over ano. yo-yoers, it must be said, like to make positive and negative distinctions between yo-yo's; sometimes arbitrarily and sometimes legitimately. a powder coated finish would look beautiful, but it's glossy, tacky texture makes it awful for extended grinds (unless satin finished, which is possible but disturbs the coating's signature aesthetic). we were already discussing a yo-yo that was thin, that featured a small gap (although we also enabled a large one), and that had shiny rims. it needed to have some features that people would actually WANT. silicone response, a large diameter bearing, and a bead-blasted/anodized finish seemed important if we were going to try to share the v with the world. it's been pretty well-received, but i think if they had all been powder coated, people would have either complained or just stayed away, neither of which were desirable.

still, it's what i wanted, and what i originally said was important to me. although he had no need to do so, and nothing to be gained by it, steve set about preparing his last three raw flying v's for me along the lines i had originally requested. he had the pieces powdercoated in a brilliant, deep red sparkle. the color is deeper than the mg i described below, and its sparkle is more subtle. he then remachined the bearing seat to prevent variation and make the spin as true as possible. the yo-yo's were laser engraved with tressley cahill's original graphic, and steve added my own signature to the rim. we didn't consider putting my name on the production v's, and i'm glad of it. that's partly because no one would buy a yo-yo because it had my name on it, but moreover, the v was meant to be a yo-yo that's shared with other yo-yoers. when they play it, i don't want them to think of me at all. i want them to play the way they play, and use the yo-yo as if it's their own "signature model", which... if you're playing it... it is. sure it's what i like, but when you play it, it's what you like and how you play that counts. you're the one making art with it. i like that the red v's have my name on them, not because i'm an egomaniac, but because it's clear that these are distinctly mine, and just what i wanted. unfortunately, one of the 6 halves met its fate in laser engraving, and was rendered unusable. steve sent me the yo-yo's straight away (including the extra "ok" half - hence the "2.5"), but not before he pimped them out further, adding the presentation box and accoutrements of the special edition pure's, including "certificates of authenticity" for both yo-yo's (2/2 - lol). he could have sent them to me in a ziplock bag, but i've come to realize that over-the-top generosity is just the way steve seems to roll.

somewhat predictably, the yo-yo's play better than any powder coated yo-yo i've ever touched. devoid of vibration, and gleaming like a pair of fire trucks, they redefine a phrase i use often for yo-yo's i dig on: "a joy to play". the coating adds a bit of heft (maybe a gram or two), and though it is glossy, i don't do a lot of long grinds anyway. in fact, i like that when i set one spinning on my arm, it rockets across the length of it before launching from my shoulder. also, since the coating is thicker than ano, the recessed response is shallower. a single k-pad (my preferred sticker) sits just about flush, and enables tighter binds. i vastly prefer this for when i play unresponsive. i haven't decided whether i prefer this version or the production for stalls, regens, and other small gap "tug stuff". i need a low-friction surface for the john gates trick, "measuring tape", which is certainly among my top 5 favorite tricks. i'll need time to see how i use these yo-yo's.

people have already warned me against playing them "too hard", but they must not know me at all. what kind of hypocrite would i be if i were to stand on my blog-soapbox all day preaching that yo-yoer's should "allow their playthings to experience the world" while i stroke mine on their little leather pillows and "let no dust alight"? nah. these yo-yo's are for playing. all yo-yo's are for playing. i won't bang them up prematurely, but they're going to get dinged and scratched and scuffed, rest assured. and as they do, they'll be even more beautiful than they were on the day i got them in the mail. and if that doesn't make sense to you, then we don't look at yo-yoing (or life, maybe) in the same way. we don't have to.

it's not that i believe that "nothing is sacred"; more that "everything is". and it's not that i believe that "nothing should be preserved", but rather that "beyond this moment, nothing ever can be". not only is there no use to our human tendency to grope at shiny cars or heirlooms or faces or yo-yo's, desperate to keep them ever the same... to my mind, that tendency (and the fear that drives it) betrays the most egregious of our delusions.

wait... you don't count those as "pithy philosophical musings", right?

thank you, steve.

PROJECT CONES TO BALLS

this is not a yo-yo.
this is an "announcement".

my new project with steve brown will begin shortly: http://conestoballs.blogspot.com/

we've been discussing it for awhile, and it's going into effect. if you like this blog [god help you], you are sure to like this. ;)

i promise not to let it interfere with this blog.
actually, eff that. no promises, and this was never about you anyway.

yo-yo #'s 58 & 59: freehand Mg's

sweet luxury.

one of my most persistent memories of autumn 2005 is of playing that g-d "duncan boy: around the world" video game. remember? it was a big promotion by duncan. you played their video game (on their site, of course), and every week they announced a batch of prize-winners. said prizes ranged in value from their shrink-wrapped t-shirts to their "hardcore" plastic line to... the illustrious... freehand mg. although it would have been cool to win anything, the mg was the only prize i really wanted, and i'd be lying if i said that, month after month, i didn't feel a twinge of jealous anger as i watched other folks score them (among them my good friend, joey fleshman - JERK!!!)

i played that game... WAY too much. i even got really ridiculously good at it, and by november, my name occupied like 7 of the top 10 hi-scores. (this is depressing to look back upon and admit, because it was not a good game.) edit: i found it. try it out here.

the freehand mg had made its debut at the world yo-yo contest a year before. rumor of it had circulated through the boards for some time, nudged lightly by the postings of its architect, steve brown. released as part of duncan's 75th anniversary extravaganza, the mg was to catapult the standard of "yo-yo luxury" to new heights. though it was supposed by many to be more a marketing ploy than anything else, it ended up a spectacular player, easily better (in my opinion) than anything made by duncan before or since.

the most brilliant move steve made in creating the mg was commissioning the great shinobu konmoto (s. kon) to hand-craft it. sure, it came in a big wooden box, and yeah, it had a bunch of special-edition counterweights, and it had that fancy ceramic bearing, but big deal. shinobu is THE quintessential yo-yo craftsman. anyone who knows anything about the highest standard of yo-yo's knows his name, due to his creation of multiple "world mod contest" award-winning pieces, including "nostalgia", held by many to be the single most aesthetically incredible yo-yo ever made. although the work of eric wolff is admittedly "more my style", s. kon's use of crazy materials (origami paper? a coke can?) and intense dedication to his craft more than qualify him to be referred to as the world's pre-eminent modder. my favorite of his creations (which i have only seen in pictures) has to be the "revolver", which is itself, a raw freehand mg encased in form-fitting leather. try as i might, i cannot imagine a more exquisite yo-yo.

the mg was forged (rather than machined) from 99% magnesium, with around 1% other goo (and stuff) to help stabilize it. raw magnesium is, of course, highly flammable, so there was some discussion as to whether the 1% would offset any risk of blowing up one's house. i can't say i know the science there, but having owned 5 mg's (and having walked the dog hard with one), i haven't destroyed anything besides my preconceptions regarding what "a fine yo-yo" is.

for april fool's day in 2005, dave's skill toys ingeniously photoshopped a "museum of yo-yo history" mg pic into a radioactive neon green, changing the caps to read "freehand Pu", and put it on the storefront for $1,000,000. several idiots on the skill toys board were convinced (in some cases for years) that there was, in fact, a plutonium freehand. some even e-mailed steve about it. i wish i could find that picture.

the first run of mg's came in two colorways: a sparkly red powdercoat (which remains my favorite yo-yo color EVER, and directly inspired the special edition flying v's to follow this post) and a clear anodized silver. initially i assumed the latter was just raw magnesium, but having seen steve's prototype mg's, which have developed a beautiful oxidized patina, it's clear that their coated (lol - get it? ok that was dumb). a few years later (after duncan sold out of the first run - 250 of each color?), they released another series in either blue sparkle or black ano. the 2nd run differed from the first structurally in that on one side, the response area was recessed. by 2006, recessed pads had become all the rage, and the mg's flat response area was becoming outmoded. they also had new caps, which were awful.

the first mg that i ever played was actually one of the black ones. i was at va states 2006, and the aforementioned joey fleshman asked to use my metal yo-yo (an hspin g&e2), which i handed over slightly grudgingly. joey nonchalantly passed me what i assumed was a non-descript freehand, white zero caps and all. after a few throws, i was totally mystified as to how this zero easily outplayed my good & evil. it was absolutely smooth, the response was perfect, and it seemed to grind forever. i told joey as much, and he said "well it ought to be good - it's an mg!" i was so shocked, i almost dropped the thing right there. he used fhz caps so that no one would be inclined to steal it out of his case, which i found both wise and slightly depressing.

i refer to that experience often when i hear someone say the mg plays just like a fhz... yeah... like the best one you've ever played times a thousand. the mg uses the same guts as the other freehands, but the weight distribution is TOTALLY different. the tolerances of magnesium compared to that of plastic enable a level of smoothness that's TOTALLY different. even the material itself feels cold and alien and strangely refreshing (even compared to aluminum yo-yo's). if you honestly can't tell a difference between them... you need some more experience before making sweeping pronouncements. no one who has spent a significant amount of time with a freehand mg AND a plastic freehand has ever tried to convince me that they play the same. granted, the differences might not be valuable to you at all.

there are lots of fine reasons to want a yo-yo, the most obvious of which is certainly the level of play. people want a yo-yo that will enable them to yo-yo as "well" as they can... but even that takes on different subtleties. most kids i know would say they want a yo-yo that "lets" them do the hardest tricks they know, preferably with ease. that outlook has never much appealed to me. i think it's useful to push the limits of your play, but it's also useful to try yo-yo's that make you work. these mg's handle anything i throw at them, but neither is as easy to set up or work with as any number of modern aluminum models. it's just as reasonable to want a yo-yo that makes you feel a certain way, which is definitely the case with me and these yo-yo's (actually... probably MOST of my yo-yo's). the value of a thing isn't always directly tied to its utility... or at least that utility isn't always defined so linearly.

people get really worked up over the mg, i think because of its outlandish retail price. the natural assumption is that, since it's the most expensive thing out there (or one of them), it needs to play "better" than everything else or it amounts to a colossal waste of money. the issue with that is that there is no "better" than than everything else. the best feeling i've ever taken from playing yo-yo has been with a beat-to-hell 20 year-old wood one. i wouldn't sell it for $1000, let alone $400... but that doesn't make it worth a damn to anyone else. i've had just as much FUN playing imperials as this mg, but somehow, that fact doesn't make me regret paying a lot for the latter (nor would i pay more than $3 for an imperial - weird). virtually every performance yo-yo on the market now can outplay the mg by SOME standard, but those standards are all as artificial and subjective as the ones we use to judge between this or that yo-yo player.

the mg costs $400 (at least), but it's "worth" what it's worth to you. mg's almost NEVER resell for retail on the boards or on e-bay. they aren't really a good financial investment; certainly in the short term. but that's not really why you buy it. i like the way mg's play. they have a weird, undefinable character that you don't find anywhere else, and which i vastly prefer to any other duncan (including the screaming eagle line). i also like them for the nostalgia, and for the community's fervor around the time of their release. it reminds me of a time when, imo, duncan and its crew was the most exciting thing in yo-yoing. i likewise associate those memories with that time when yo-yoing was at its coolest (and still pretty new to me). playing the mg rekindles those feelings, and that's "worth" it to me.

the first mg i actually acquired was the red one you see here. i bought it from steve as he began selling off some of the arsenal that had taken over his attic in 2006. i've played it alot, but it's only got one legitimate ding, which it earned in its first hour of play at the playground my daughter and i used to frequent. at some point thereafter, i picked up a "spare" red, which i ended up relinquishing. i just purchased another for cheap, but am not likely to hang on to it. the black one has a great texture, but i don't play it as much (i'm not a big grinder). since i first saw them, i DETESTED the 2nd run's caps, and so i've made sure that all of my mg's get a pair of the o.g.'s, which i find classy and understated. some guys prefer to rock their mg's nude, but for me the bright white caps and their contrast with the yo-yo's body is a big part of the aesthetic appeal.

sometimes, i'll admit, i get caught up in the "value", myself. i look at these two yo-yo's and i think "over $800 (though i can't actually say i paid that)! that's the per capita gnp for some of the world's poorest nations! and i have it allocated to TWO YO-YO'S???" it is pretty striking, and it underscores the ridiculous ways in which i've spent my money... but then - so does the rest of my collection, and if you're reading this, so does yours, (probably, to some extent). it's natural to hold a really expensive yo-yo like this and feel guilty for having it. it represents a lot of roast beef sandwiches. maybe i should sell them all and donate the proceeds to charity, right? the mg's inherent extravagance naturally engenders these feelings.

but it's not necessary to abandon all material possessions in order to be a good, giving person. if we, who can afford expensive toys are honest with ourselves, and are willing to recognize our privilege, using it to do a little good in the world, then that may be enough. playing yo-yo isn't yachting or car collecting (the $800 pricetag of a pair of mg's wouldn't buy me so much as a steering wheel in those hobbies). it's important to apply some perspective, and in fact, keeping a nice yo-yo as a sort of talisman might even encourage one to live a little more generously (wishful thinking maybe?).

i dunno... these mg's are going to sit somewhere. better, i tell myself, that they sit somewhere they're appreciated, played, and enjoyed. better that they bring some joy out of someone, who can then pass it on and share it with the world. better that they make me aware of my blessings, many and varied as they are, that i may be more willing to give of my joy, my time, myself.

one thing is certain to me: i don't feel like withholding any aspect myself when i play them.

... and you can't put a price tag on that.

yo-yo #57: blue duncan fh2

it's a beautiful day outside. normally, north carolina in early september is still a hazy mass of heat and water, the latter perpetually oscillating between liquid and gas... all over you. but today is just lovely; sunny... around 70. it feels like wyoming; summer in the afternoon shade of the tetons. all of the windows and doors have been thrown open. in the middle of last night i actually felt momentarily chilly. i love the summer, but i think i love its death throes even more. perfect time to play yo-yo outside.

around this time in 2004, i went shopping at target for cupcakes on account of a teacher-party (i think a baby shower?) at school, about which i had completely forgotten. it was irksome, because i hate buying tasty-treats at big faceless stores like that, but forgetting had been my fault, and i had to bring something. it was my planning period, so i was in a big rush, but on the way to check out, i passed the rack of clearance toys. front and center were about 30 yo-yo's: about 10 hasbro fast 201's (powered by yoyofactory - lol), which sported a reduced price of $7.50, and perhaps twice as many duncan "freehands", marked down from $14.00 to $10.00. i couldn't remember having seen either at target before (which they both plainly were), but i also rarely shopped in the "boy toy" aisles, having only a 3-year-old daughter at the time. i picked up this blue freehand (i knew and trusted duncan, having always played midnight specials - lol), and considered it for only a moment before i tossed it onto the cupcakes and proceeded to checkout. the deciding factor was, of course, the spare string that was in the package. i knew my renegade string was old and gross (i had ironically also bought said renegade for the spare string, which i had put on my custom mag). i remember actually feeling bad for spending $10.00 on a yo-yo when i already had a perfectly good one. how things change, i guess.

when i got to school, i tossed it absent-mindedly and liked it a lot. i put on a little show for my kids, who were predictably awed by my mediocrity and 5-year-old tricks. i still played yo-yo sometimes, but hadn't bothered to learn anything new or interesting since the big boom (and bust) of the late 90's. my yo-yo collection at the time would have included a midnight special, a purple fireball, a purple brain, a pink saber-wing fireball, a thp glow raider, a turbo bumble bee, a custom mag predator, and la piece de resistance: a blue renegade, the starbursts of which had long since worn to vague, dull, nubs. by the end of the day, it occurred to me that yo-yo's had actually IMPROVED in the intervening years. duncan, which had been kind of a punchline when i quit playing, had put out a yo-yo that seemed to outplay my gade out of the box!

bear in mind, i had never played (or heard of) the fh1. i had completely (blissfully) ignored the online yo-yo community, and felt totally self-sufficient. i had bought about 25 bee strings (relics from 1999) from a closing 'hobby lobby' in or around 2003, and since i didn't play much, and really only changed them when they became unplayably kinked and gnarled, they had sustained me through almost 2 years. *want to know something funny? i've STILL never played a freehand 1. never. at this point, obviously, it's not because i've never been exposed to them. i've had dozens in front of me over the past few years. some of my best friends still swear by them, but it's kind of become a game to me. "when will i actually submit and play a freehand 1?" maybe tomorrow; maybe never. i've never finished toni morrison's book, beloved, either. on purpose. same kind of thing.

when i got home later, i dug out the string from the packaging for my appreciative renegade, and in so doing remembered that the fh2 came with a cute little mini-video-cd-thing. i was kind of curious, so i popped it into my laptop's tray and waited for it to load. when it finally did, all my illusions were destroyed.

i had thought i was a pretty good yo-yoer; not like "dominant" or "innovative" or anything... but somehow, i had totally forgotten that those words could even APPLY to yo-yoing. i had been quietly rehashing the tricks i had learned or invented in 1999 for years and years, and it had never occurred to me that during that time, though yo-yoing had not been "everywhere", it had still been quietly evolving somehow, and without MY help?!?!

i don't recall all of the details of the video cd. it featured a brief clip video, and some basic trick tutorials. the clip vid was what really struck me; it had been filmed very much in the style of a skate video, with which i was plenty familiar. it featured crew members (which, at the time would have included steve brown, jack ringca, mark mcbride, spencer berry, takeshi, paul escolar, and seth peterson, to name a few - an effing dream team if ever there was one), and their post-newschool, post-1a-revolution yo-yoing were light years ahead of what i could comprehend. the whole video cd couldn't have been more than 8 minutes, but that was all it took to reset my "yo-yo hubris" to zero. it also precipitated a cursory internet search which yielded howtoyoyo.com and by proxy, dr, popular, whose "glass lab experiment #4" proved to be the straw that broke [my pride's] back.

indirectly, the purchase of this blue freehand sent me into an immediate and beautiful spiraling depression. the yo-yo (in general) was SO MUCH COOLER than it had been when i had effectively set it down. there was so much more to learn. i wanted to see what was out there, and the terrifying vastness of that realization was especially disturbing, because i had not been IN on any of its creation. i like to participate in the construction of "awesome" in the world, and i had missed my chance to help make yo-yoing into this incredible, dynamic tapestry. or had i?

the upside to completely annihilating any sense of pride in one's crappy yo-yoing... is that if you dare to accept the truth of your legitimate mediocrity, then you GET to start learning the new stuff. and you get to start doing it with an "empty cup"; free from the burdens of your own skill, preferences, and expectations. the aforementioned depression only lasted a few minutes; after that i was too busy immersing myself in "shockwave" and "nanda kanda" to be depressed. yo-yo people always strike me as so anxious to shake off their beginnings; as if it's this big race, and you don't get to pause and appreciate the scenery until you're an "expert" or something (though people like that tend to burn out long before that anyway). the poet cesare pavese once said, "the only joy in life is to begin". i feel i've had the pleasure of "beginning" yo-yoing several times now; as a small child, during the boom, for a few weeks when i bought my gade, and yet again, as precipitated by this little blue fh2.

this last time has really stuck. i've played yo-yo every day since making this purchase. i went back to target a bit later, found all of their remaining stock of freehands AND 201's (which i also came to love) discounted to a ridiculous $1.50 and $1.33, respectively. i bought them all, and spent the next 2 years strategically distributing them among to students, family, friends, and random passers-by.

not long after i ran out of them, i became irritated with duncan, and got "stuck" with a bunch more fh2's to give away. steve brown (one of the only yo-yo players i had heard of in y2k), had famously stormed from his positions as head of marketing/design, and duncan crew leader. the firefight between he and the flambeau executive, jason sauey had spilled over onto the internet, which resulted in a curious edict from duncan, when i asked if they would sponsor nc states: "Sure, we'll sponsor. I just have to confirm that you would not be having Steve Brown involved with the contest in any way."

i found that really depressing, because, even though i knew he had a prior engagement, if i COULD have conned steve into coming down to judge or participate in the contest, of COURSE i would have. i felt that was just too much experience to try to blackball him due to a personal grudge. i told duncan that i couldn't accept their sponsorship under those conditions, but they had already sent me half of their package: 15 yellow fh2's, which mike burke told me not to bother sending back. rather than injecting them into the overfull prize pool (other companies had really stepped up for us), we used the fh2's for the beginner corner, and after the contest, i went about playing johnny appleseed again, giving them away to semi-random, well-deserving people. i think i sent the last one off to a former student this past january.

it's not my favorite yo-yo in terms of play. it feels a little too round and "gushy" to me. i play mine stock, unrecessed, with one duncan sticker and the thin spacers. it's not beautiful or rare or impressive... and yet i'll never get rid of it. every yo-yoer has one yo-yo they cam point to as "the one that put them over". after i bought this yo-yo, i discovered the badass duncan crew. i discovered dr. popular, the glass lab, and eventually, sector_y. i discovered dave's skill toys and yoyoing.com. and by spring, i had finally discovered the value of communicating with other yo-yo players on web-boards, through which i eventually met and befriended some of the titans listed above (though part of me, still overcome with awe, will probably never feel that i deserve to be in the same room as them).

the last few years, i've really been all about playing yo-yo, i guess. there's other stuff i do, of course, and i try to sustain my other interests. but i spend a lot of time playing yo-yo. many of my best friends are yo-yoers. it's become something much more than a hobby to me. and undeniably, my life would be very different now had i just remembered to make treats for that baby shower... it's funny to ask myself: if i could go back, with the understanding of how deeply i would fall... of how fully the toy would take hold of me... of how much time and energy i would invest in it... would i buy it all over again? or go check out with just the cupcakes?

this wasn't my first yo-yo, but it was probably the most important to my development into the player (and, since they are inseparable, the person) i am today.