resolution

i've never been one for new years resolution. i guess i'm of the 'calvin & hobbes' mindset that the rest of the world should resolve to bend itself more to my own likeness. not really, but everyone is like that on some level (which is why it's a funny comic).

this year though, i have an obvious one, and it's caused me to be a bit more reflective and try to impose some more upon myself. so here we are. starting tomorrow, i resolve to:

• throw one wooden yo-yo for the entire year of 2012 (or until the world ends, whichever comes first). see previous entries for details.
• completely give up drinking soda pop. i've done this before, but always seem to squeak little exceptions by myself until i find myself holding an empty 64oz 'thirst-slayer' from 7-11.
• keep a journal by my bedside wherein i will write down all the foods i ate during the day. i don't really want to diet; i just want to be more aware of what i'm taking in.
• sit an hour of zazen per week. i have become lax in this practice.
• work on my iai kata at least twice a week, lest i forget how to tie on my hakama.

as for the 'one yo-yo' bit, which is clearly most pertinent to this blog, i last threw a bearing yo-yo on christmas eve. i thought about doing some sort of elaborate 'goodbye bearings' 11:59pm thing, but it would be superfluous. i'm sure the time will come this year when i sincerely miss throwing my other yo-yo's, but right now i'm still really excited to be narrowing everything down to the simplicity of the spyy 'eh'. i've been throwing it almost non-stop since i got it, and i'm as enamored of it as i could be any yo-yo.

it's going to be tough with all of the temptation i have in our 'yo-yo room' (see pics embedded throughout). i have no idea how many radical yo-yo's i have on display or in storage. a few hundred i guess. and though i feel like i should make some kind of elaborate gesture in bidding them adieu for the year, it just feels silly. i don't want to lock them up in a closet. i want the temptation (and to overcome it).

so i guess, 11:59 is going to come and go without much changing at all. i'll keep throwing the same yo-yo i have for the last week, perhaps a bit more excited to be 'officially' beginning on a journey, the end of which is unclear. i don't have any goal in mind for how i will play at the end of it, or for whether i'll want to go back to ball bearings (or other woodies) in 2013. this is about coming closer to who i feel i am as a yo-yo player, about determining what i need and where i want to go, and about stepping off of a path that i feel is adequately trodden without my footsteps.

first touch.

the eh arrived this morning around 11:02est. steve included the backup, along with a couple of other spyy treats (which i'll only get to enjoy for a few days before the journey officially begins) and a nifty jig for evenly sanding axles to desired length.

the entire parcel smelled like burned wood (steve lasered these just a day ago). the smell will gradually fade, and i'm sorry for that because it's wonderful. on a throw, the eh is incredibly smooth. it doesn't spin quite as long as my tmbr irving pro (which sports a wider profile & diameter and a walnut axle), but it's smoother and snappier.

as soon as i felt the spin, first trick i tried was spirit bomb, which is the string trick i use to evaluate pretty much any wood yo-yo. video here. it surpassed expectations. the oak is pretty slick and felt just a little loose on flyaway dismounts, so i've sanded a couple of the replaceable axles and am in the process of getting things dialed. pretty confident that i can hit whatever i want on it, though maybe that's the new-yoyo hubris talking.

it's a huge relief to have the thing in my hand and know that i can make it work how i want and make it last.

SPYY 'eh': completion

this guy is leaving his home in canada tomorrow and will arrive the 23rd (merry christmas, me)!

made of solid oak, take-apart design, and replaceable hemlock axles, this is it. this is the yo-yo i'm using for the entire year of 2012. i do have an identical backup if i should destroy one utterly, but both of my glued-axle oak spyys are still kicking after 6 months, so i should make this guy last.

these are not for sale. they are not being produced. making this kind of fixed axle yo-yo is time consuming and not cost-effective. i have a spare and steve has one of his own, but beyond that, there are no plans to revisit this on any kind of scale. my apologies if you were hoping they'd be on yoyoexpert for $19.99 or something.

there's a great chapter in the book 'the princess bride' by william goldman (the book is arguably better than the movie, which is a classic), in which background is given for the character, inigo. though it didn't make the film, it describes his life as the son of a master swordmaker living quietly in the hills above toledo. domingo montoya makes the greatest swords since excalibur, but, in the effort to avoid attention which might detract from his craft (he doesn't call himself an artist), he allows another maker to sell his swords as his own.

somehow it gets out to a rich swordmaster that domingo is the real deal, and count rugen shows up requesting a sword which would match his 'peculiarities'. domingo denies having any great skill and tries to persuade rugen to visit yeste in madrid, until rugen shows his 6-fingered right hand. then it's on. not only does domingo admit to being the 'genius of the hills', he accepts the job for nothing (allowing a single gold-piece as a deposit, at rugens urging), and tells the count to 'come back in a year'.

then, for the next year, inigo watches as his father essentially beats himself into ruin in making the sword. he took the job due to the implicit challenge of making a perfect sword for a 6-fingered hand. for an amateur, any long-handled cleaver would be fine. but for a master to reach his potential, the entire sword would have to be reimagined from the ground up. all of the measurements would have to balance each other seamlessly. in the end, after peaks of elation and valleys of terrible frustration, inigo wakes in the night to find his father staring, becalmed, at his creation. 'finally, inigo,' he says, 'i am an artist.'

i'm not a master. i don't have 6 fingers. i'm also not going to kill steve like rugen did domingo and provoke the eternal revenge of his sons who would eventually do me in (god, i love that movie).

in terms of how this whole affair pertains to steve's craft, though... i feel like there's some balance. i went to him with what i thought was a simple request; to basically punch out a few more wood halves from his drill press. he did like a hundred for his wedding. we cranked out 12 or so in an hour at canada nats. he could have settled.

instead, he hit it with trial and error for a month, working late into the night and giving up his lunch breaks to make, essentially, the best all-wood yo-yo he could. everybody has something they really care about (or everybody should). i think in some aspect of our lives, we all need to adopt that stance of 'no-compromise' to arrive at our potential (as craftsman, as artists, as yo-yoers, or just as people). compromise is not a bad thing, but in terms of our approach to ourselves; our self-improvement and sense of self-worth, it's a tantalizing poison.

i guess this whole project germinated from the idea of no-compromise (of a different sort), and i'm thrilled that the same spirit was present through the birth of this yo-yo.

365

did i mention that i have a problem with year-long commitments?

... not in breaking them, mind you... in MAKING them.

in addition to the whole "one wood yo-yo for a year" thing, i'm also joining the crew of 365yoyotricks.com. besides me, some of my best friends in the world will be sharing a trick every week. Nate Sutter, Drew Tetz, David Ung, and Sebastian Brock have all signed on (Steve Brown will be contributing 2 tricks/week). besides the companies those guys represent, yoyoexpert.com will also be sponsoring. frickin' wicked.

part of me is a bit nervous about getting 52 [good] tricks on video using just a simple wood yo-yo, but the other (bigger) part of me knows that the floodgates will open, and is thrilled to all hell about being part of a crew this radical. i look up to all those guys like crazy, and trying to keep pace with their creativity will be the most wonderful kind of "daunting" imaginable.

getting back to the yo-yo, it's coming along nicely. ironing out things like the shape of the corners, the axle material, the wood density, etc. it kind of feels like i'm a 60's north shore surfer whose shaper is hard at work finalizing the details of their big-wave gun... getting the pintail just so, setting the rocker so it won't pearl on big walls... until i remember i'm a yo-yo player.

actually, even after i remember i'm a yo-yo player, it's still a lot like that.

newborn

first time i see the yo-yo i'll play for the next year. steve's sending me live updates as he cuts it. yesterday he sent me an email which was so obscurely technical that i only vaguely understood what he was talking about. this i understand.

i love everything about this little iphone shot, from the smoothness of the raw wood to the "eye"-like pattern of the grain to the dirt and chips on his hands. i look at this and i'm thinking of a hundred-thousand throws and catches.

more to come as it takes shape.

steeling myself (so to speak)

haven't played a bearing yo-yo in over a week. been awhile since i could say that (not that... it's anything significant to say).

still really excited and gung-ho about this idea. obviously, throughout the next year, i'll go through peaks and valleys, some more substantial than others. right now it's easy, because to get ready, i'm kind of cycling through my favorite wood yo-yo's (to which i ALSO won't have access in the new year). mainly been throwing my favorite clean machines, tmbrs, yyf legends, and my old #1 no jive. once i'm down to one, the real fun begins.

as for said one, steve and i have been e-mailing back and forth on specifics. true to his own tendencies, he's being more ambitious about building a better wooden yo-yo than i would have even hoped for, but i'm all the more stoked by the ideas coming out. this is not an attempt to sell yo-yo's, and currently, no plans exist to make this yo-yo available.

part of what i'm looking forward to (or at least what's immediately apparent) is the way i'll have to address the idea of playing 'for' other people. a lot of folks know i always have a yo-yo and will ask with no prompting whatsoever to see a trick (or for a whole show). kids are especially uninhibited about this, but grown-ups do it too. the 'pro' in me wants me to ask them to evaluate my stock portfolio or check my blood pressure or do whatever they 'do' on the spot for free... but that guy's kind of a dick. i mostly just smile and put on a rad little show.

doing a rad little show is both easier and harder with a fancy metal/bearing yo-yo. it's easier because you do longer tricks with more hits and weird formations. those things impress the uninitiated, even when you mess up. i'll miss shattering the illusions of people who have never seen progressive yo-yoing by doing a mindless, minute-long combo on my ronin without trying at all. it's fun to drop jaws sans effort. but it's also harder with bearings because i find that the more you rely on your equipment (or tricks enabled by your equipment) to run the show, the less you 'connect'. it's easier to shock people by yo-yoing in a way that, to them, looks nothing like any yo-yoing they've seen... but it's also fun (and in some ways, more rewarding) to enthrall them with play that looks exactly like yo-yoing to them... but somehow 'unquantifiably awesomer'.

it's a different kind of challenge, which is precisely what's fueling this whole endeavor.

2012

for the calendar year of 2012, i've decided to challenge myself to simplify and refocus my approach to yo-yoing.

for awhile now, i feel like all of my best yo-yo tricks have gotten shorter and shorter, and that my longer 1a combos have stagnated or else deteriorated into self-indulgent pointlessness. not that there's anything WRONG with that, but i feel like i need to do something to refresh my perspective and go back to what i love. considering the team spyy has built (and CONTINUES to build), my ability to rep the brand with relevant, progressive 1a tricks is spiraling down to a pinpoint. my value to the team has really only ever been in playing 'against the grain' (so to speak). i don't mean that to sound self-deprecating - i like thin yo-yo's that whack your knuckles.

and so, spyy has agreed to make me a[nother] new yo-yo (similar, but not identical to the one pictured above). i doubt this one will see any kind of widespread production, as that's not its aim.

starting 1/1/12, my goal is to play one all-wood yo-yo for a year.

a year is a long time, and wood is fragile. in the event that i burn through the axle completely or somehow irreparably damage the yo-yo, i'll have a couple of identical backups... but that's it. no bearings for a year, no metal for a year, no unresponsive for a year. to me, it's the equivalent of joining a yo-yo monastery, which when i think about it, is something i should have done awhile ago. in some ways, it's meant to be a kind of 'yo-yo death', but rest assured, while i'm walking away from the aspects of yo-yoing that don't appeal to me at all, i'm walking TOWARD the parts that do... which is unbelievably exciting.

since other yo-yo's will kind of cease to hold a lot of appeal for me during this process (seeing as i won't be playing them), i'll be using this space to document my progress (or regress, as the case may be). i'd like to note that i really appreciate spyy's acceptance of this. when i brought this to steve, he could have given me a hard time for having made me the flying v, having made me the ronin, and having sent me a truckload of awesome spyy's... just to have me give up on all but one wood yo-yo. instead he embraced it, said 'it's where your passion lies', and offered to make it for me.

i don't expect anybody to care about this. i know a few people read this blog, which always surprises me. i don't mean to act like it's a big deal. it really is just where i need to go with my yo-yoing. i really believe that by imposing limits upon your approach to an art, you can come to understand your own unlimited nature.

here's to finding out.

yo-yo #94: gold ronin

on my vimeo page today, a guy asked me a pretty tough question. he wanted to know how i'm sponsored if i don't really compete.

it's a great question when i think on it (which i don't often), because virtually every sponsored player out there is either expected to compete by the masses/company or else is naturally driven to do so. there are really just a handful of anomalies like me who either stink at competing or else have no desire to do so, yet remain sponsored by legitimate companies.

i do try to count my lucky stars. i absolutely recognize that i get a lot of perks and free yo-yo's and stuff for doing essentially what i would do anyway. that was kind of driven home yesterday when i caught myself looking for a 'perfect' bearing to replace a screechy one in my purple ronin. i was doing flick-tests when it occurred to me that i probably have about 50 extra bearings sitting around in various jars. some thin, some thick, some gold, some grooved. my mind flew back to several years back to when i had exactly one really consistent bearing and i would trade it out from one yoyojam to another. you don't mean to take it for granted, but somehow you don't fail to either.

i'm not altogether sure how it happened, or how it maintained itself. i'm fairly certain that i never did anything to deserve an amazing yo-yo covered in gold. (but hey, i'll take it!) spyy isn't really a 'competition team'... sometimes i wonder if we're not more like a 'band'. we all play different roles, and i'm sure we've all had very different conversations with steve about what we bring to the equation. i'm an anomaly in a team of anomalies, and there's no way i could adequately thank steve for seeing the value in a team like that.

i hear a lot of kids clamor about the idea of sponsorship like it's thor's hammer; seemingly unliftable, but 'man if i had it i'd be unstoppable'. the truth is obvious: if you're not unstoppable without it, having it doesn't mean a thing. there's no way a 15 year-old takes that kind of thing to heart, but it's true. a lot of guys seem to fade into oblivion right after aligning with this or that company. if you're expected to compete, the pressure can be extreme, and if you're not, your contribution always feels ambiguous at best. it's a bit like the advice i dread having to give my daughter in a few years - if you're not enough without some guy who wants to dangle you on his arm like a patek philippe, then you won't be enough with him either.

if you're prepared for all that (meaning you're ignoring it), and you still want to be sponsored, you have to do something to stand out. maybe you make neat videos with old dixieland jazz soundtracks. maybe you have 9 fingers on your left hand. maybe you dress in the loudest conflicting plaid imaginable. i've seen guys sponsored for lesser traits than any of those, but if you don't actively share your playing (or who you are) with the greater community, no 'pro scout' is going to show up at your high school looking for you... and if they should, do not - DO NOT - get into their van!

if, beyond that, you want sincere advice, here you are:

• look like you enjoy yo-yoing. better yet... ACTUALLY enjoy yo-yoing (it is enjoyable). would you hire someone to manipulate your toy and make it look like it steals your girlfriend and leaves shrapnel in your palms?
• don't talk about wanting sponsorships. if that's all you really want out of yo-yoing, you're pre-destined to fail as mentioned above, but the more you blather on about it, the more unlikely it is to even happen. it makes you look cheap.
• do something that no one else can do (or that no one else could give a crap about doing). this could be 'winning' or it could be something else, but chances are, whatever it is, you're going to have to work really, really hard to get close to it.
• be a nice person. i love how this one gets overlooked. i'm no math teacher (i am a math teacher), but by my count there are around 10 yo-yo companies out there that can offer a legitimate sponsorship, and since yo-yoing is still such a niche thing, virtually all of the players and owners are buddy-buddy. if you conduct yourself poorly on the regular, you'll be blacklisted like the hollywood ten.

above all, you have to serve your own interests. this spinny-toy thing that we do is an art, and though it be swathed in company logos and the occasional giant-check, you can't really make it something other than that. do not risk your own artistic freedom or fulfillment by misrepresenting yourself to get sponsored. it's just not worth it.



... unless they offer you a yo-yo like this, in which case yes, you should sell out right now.

yo-yo #'s 92 & 93: spyy garagecraft woodies

when i look at my life honestly, all of the most memorable and significant periods - the times when i truly grew and changed as an individual - were when i had it comparatively rough. understand, i never 'actually' had anything rough. i've never been abe lincoln carving out an austere, frontier existence while self-edumacatin' in a cabin. my home has never been torn apart by war or famine or disease (knock on wood).

regardless of one's background though, we all 'have it rough' sometimes. within the context of one's life, you can only compare against your own experiences, and it seems only natural that the times in which we are most hard-pressed are often the ones from which we take the most valuable lessons. there's obviously a tipping-point: if one's challenges are so great or so many that you can't progress at all, it's a different matter. in general though, we need a bit of newton's 3rd law in our lives, lest we spin our wheels (so to speak) in stagnant, boring complacency.

this summer, i took a welcome retreat from nc's 3-digit early july, touching down in calgary, ab to judge the canadian national contest. though the experience was filled to bursting with memorable anecdotes, i might have taken the most joy from the hour or so spent carving and sanding these yo-yo's out of strips of oak in steve's garage. when steve (the proprietor of spyy) married his wife, suzanne, he was already into yo-yo's. as such, crafty dude that he is, it seemed fitting that he should put together some nice DIY yo-yo's as gifts for the guests. i had the pleasure of throwing one of these ink-stamped beauties, too. i'm not sure what kind of wood it was (pine maybe?), but it weighed in around 40g. it was like playing a yo-yo made from gaseous helium.

steve, gary longoria, and i just kind of fell into a pattern with his press and power tools, and at the end of an hour or so, had somehow etched a quintet of slick-looking wood butterflies from his oaken stock. (i love that, depending upon how gary operated the press, they each have distinct scorch-marks along their profiles.)

we were able to cajole the yo-yo's into playing well enough. the narrower of these two has a fairly deep gouge which gives it a bit of a rattle. we later shot lasers at them, etching subtle logos and messages into the wood, and inducing a wonderful scent which i'm sure still pervades steve's basement. the wider butterfly (etched 'supersonic' on one side) ended up perfectly smooth - rare in a wide[ish] gapped butterfly woody. i spent at least 20 minutes hand-sanding it, and the unfinished oak feels softer than teflon.

it wasn't until much later that it occurred to me that it's actually TOO soft.

since these are glued together, we basically had to set the gap using a popsicle stick tool and then pray we got it right. the gap isn't too wide, but the profile of the yo-yo and the smoothness of the inner wall are such that virtually no string will hold a decent bind (much less a tug), and unless the tension is positive to the point of kinking, i can pull the string right through the gap from a full wind - not what i look for in a wooden yo-yo. it's still fun, but i get pissy if i can't set a wooden yo-yo up to do decent moons, and this guy is just too slick & loose.

a few weeks ago, i tried an experimental surgery that had never occurred to me. dead duncan stickers can work wonders in a no jive if the gap's too large, so i surgically cut a line down the radius of one and used tweezers to set it [ever so carefully] around the yo-yo's gap. alas, i was not born to be a surgeon, and the slightest movement of my hand established a 1mm gap in the sticker, causing, in turn, an irregular whir.

beyond that tolerable side-effect? perfection. tight binds, crisp loops, late fly-aways into smooth string-stalls. it's incredible what a little friction can do.

the metaphor holds true for our lives as well. when we're just coasting along, everything going our way, life rarely feels as meaningful as when we're pushing against it to a degree. we need that push-back; it gives us context for our lives - a frame of reference. everybody's different, but i think we all share this universal need; not for hardship so much as something to lean on - something to feel sliding against us as we spin. having that metaphorical traction is what enables us to move.

in yo-yoing, we call it 'response', but i rarely consider how apt the term is. my kids at school want massive gaps so they can get away with any kind of sloppy throw or flailing laceration. they're honest at that age, too. they'll tell you they don't want response because it makes whips hurt. but in our lives, if we're out of control, we SHOULD get that response. we SHOULD get a knuckle-whack, or a speeding ticket, or a dear john letter. when we screw up, our lives should snap back and make us untangle and wind back up before trying again. that cause and effect helps clean us up and give us a handle on where we went wrong.

we live in an era of minimal response. we want it to be easy, but we aren't always wired for easy to seem meaningful. we can design yo-yo's to make tricks more blissful and forgiving, but applying a perfect takeshi recess mod to your life can be a bit trickier. in a world where, more and more, people seek to distance themselves from negative consequences, the idea of inserting some augmented response - of holding oneself to a higher or tougher standard - can feel almost heretical. but it's not always a matter of being hard-headed or artificially going against the grain.

sometimes you just need that extra friction to feel right.

yo-yo #91: luke hildebrand 1-piece looper

luke hildebrand is a good friend from eastern virginia. he goes by 'the wood dwarf' on the boards, and i've been fortunate to have known him for years. like a lot of our community (or at least the most interesting cross-section thereof), yo-yoing isn't the alpha and omega of his life; it's just one more interesting thing that he does. a talented visual artist and sculptor, his art always seems to exude a kind of 'rough-hewn' texture with bold 'woodblock-print' contrast. so i found it kind of amusing when i unwrapped this yo-yo, which he sent me this summer.

it is tiny - among the smallest yo-yo's i own. luke carved it from a single piece of cocobolo, the density of which is ample to provide it comparative heft, but it still feels delicate and fine.

i've just got the one, so despite the fact that it's obviously designed in the style of an archaic looper, after a few minutes of 0a, i tend to gravitate to some of my standard fixed axle string tricks. i've spent a lot of time trying modern 1a on old-timey yo-yo's. sometimes it feels like an appropriate challenge, and other times it just feels obscene. maybe it's the fact that this yo-yo is about as thick as my middle finger, or that the gap is about 2 string-widths, max, but trying to force technical string tricks on this guy feels decidedly silly. it IS fun to work on basics with it - trapeze, eli hops, boingy. the gap is so hilariously unforgiving that flying away out of a clean combo feels decidedly satisfying; as though you've somehow 'attained something'.

it occurs to me that, on some level, this is always our approach, in virtually every pursuit. sometimes we feel it after hacking our way through a particularly dense 1a jungle or after having finally mastered a concept that's eluded us for years. invariably though, after we 'level up', the experience feels less significant to us than we expected. we break through a creative ceiling only to discover that the skill-set that kept us up at night is really nothing so special at all. it just becomes a part of 'where we are'. before we can do it, it's something intimidating and awesome - afterward, it's been pulled into the gravity of our personal sphere, like a possession we couldn't previously afford.

in some cases, our response is innocuous enough. just a pleasant exhalation or a fist-pump in an empty room. to work hard and then delight in the result of our efforts is the natural rhythm of how we progress through most every endeavor. however, to begin to EXPECT reward or recognition outside ourselves - to crave it to the point of belittling others or perpetually self-aggrandizing - is to mutate the natural into a sort of compulsive illness.

i find it disconcertingly funny when members of our community put on airs as though what they're doing is so phenomenally hard or so incredibly inventive. i have nothing against personal challenges. i don't even take issue with the ephemeral glory that follows overcoming them. there's a lot of insecure self-obsession in our little community though, which i think is counter-productive and best rooted out. (it's worth noting that if you have to ask whether you have an ego/insecurity problem, you probably do... and if you're sure you don't, you almost certainly do.)

i don't think you should ever develop a big head about your yo-yoing. is there anything more ridiculous than some child (adult or otherwise) blathering on about how they're going to dominate in 2012 or set the yo-yo world on its ear with their new video? that's about like setting the 'cake-baking world' on it's ear (actually that would be substantially more lucrative). pretty much all the yo-yoer's i know treat their art as a deeply personal pursuit. you might have outward goals (especially if you're competitive), but you don't work hard to attain something without so much as within. so, who can you dominate, really? what do you think you deserve? whose attention do you crave?

make-believe swagger is not strength, and momentary self-deprecation is not true humility (especially when its actual objective is to elicit the predictable reaction of 'no no, you ARE amazing!' from one's 'yo-yo fans' - please).

i think we need to escape this cycle within ourselves. it's hard, because how do you push yourself if you're NOT actively trying to attain something of value ('mastery' of a trick, ca$h-money, slaps on the back from collectible internet-friends)? is the yo-yoing itself EVER powerful enough to be its own reward, or is there always something ulterior attached to it? i reiterate a question i asked much earlier: would you continue to yo-yo if you couldn't get online?

i wish we could play yo-yo without the implied carrot of the golden loving cup or recognition-as-vindication. i feel as though these two [generalized] archetypes of playing for extrinsic 'attainment' attach to essentially all of the darkest and dumbest behaviors in our community. you're playing with a yo-yo. you're not curing disease, comforting sudanese refugees, or even wiping down someone's lunch table. if anyone, ever, happens to see your playing, take something positive from it, and relate it to you, that one instance should surpass your expectations for recognition (and you should let it fly off of you the moment it touches your ears).

there are a thousand brilliant, wonderful reasons to throw down, and virtually all of them happen within you.

thanks again, luke.

yo-yo #'s 89 & 90: stow-aways

i am not at the world yo-yo contest.

as i type the words, my hands twitch a little, my lip curls in an involuntary grimace, and i exhale with a melancholy i can not withhold. i watched the feed tonight and last; got to see my friend hank become world champion in 3a... got to see samm scott, with whom i've traded tricks for years, get 3rd in 5a... got to see a beautiful performance from sebby! seeing my friends on stage, and getting glimpses of them in the crowd and at the judges table brought me down a bit, i'll admit. i chafe to be away... but i also wouldn't trade the last two weeks to be there.

yesterday afternoon, my minivan rolled into our driveway on a wing and a prayer (ok, more like a slightly-leaky front-right tire and a 0% oil-life alert lamp, but whatever). the fam and i just finished a 5,000-mile trek from our north carolina home to the [semi-]wilds of wyoming, where we camped amidst bears and bison in the badlands, yellowstone & grand teton national parks. we hiked through 103-degree days and slept through 34-degree nights. we saw unbelievable works of man-made art and substantially more unbelievable works of nature-made art. we expected the trip to be cathartic, wonderful, and harrowing... and it did not disappoint.

i'm not sure what compelled my wife, stacy, and me to do it. most of our friends literally responded with laughter when we mentioned our upcoming adventure (about which we were naively excited). when i was a kid, that was what our vacations were. we would pick a direction - usually 'west' - we would start driving, and after a few weeks of whimsical exploring, we'd go home. if my parents ever had 'a plan', they kept it well-hidden. my dad and i would race to put the tent up at rocky, windy KOA's and record our best times. we'd see a sign for a prairie dog home or a giant ball of twine and pull over. at the end of the trip, my brother and i would have arm-long lists of crazy things we'd seen, but it always felt organic and extemporaneous. one of the things i love most about my wife is that she's up for this kind of thing; for spontaneity, and bugs, and dirt; for nurturing fires and driving through the night without a clear sense for when or whether wyoming will ever end.

sitting in a car for thousands of miles can be boring, but there's also something to it that i found invaluable. i've seen so much of my country because of those trips. i sleep well outside and can make a meal out of anything because of those trips (my mom once resorted to ranch dressing sandwiches). i can look out a window engaged for hours while passing the most desolate stretches of kansas or texas because of those trips. cheesy though it may sound, you grow together as a family on this kind of trip too, even if only by virtue of never-ending proximity. passing on those experiences to my own kids has always been the plan.

because of stacy's schedule and my own impending school year, these past two weeks were our only shot for an epic, griswoldian road-trip. although we entertained various schemes of my abandoning ship to fly down from nashville, it gradually became clear that worlds would have to be sacrificed this year. while in the parks, i had no qualms whatsoever. it's hard to have 'qualms' while you're submerged in the waters of a glacial lake or being chased by a buffalo while holding a 3 year-old. it was really only on the drive back that i started to realize: 'damn - i'm gonna miss worlds.' and so began several days of progressively intensifying ho-hummery.

on the trip, i didn't want to be bogged down with a ton of yo-yo stuff. a few years ago, i was totally that guy who would have FOUND room for a 72-star case full of throws, even if it meant i didn't get a sleeping bag. now i realize that quantity is overrated, so while packing, i set aside precisely 1 (one) yo-yo - a red/black 2nd-run thin-gapped flying v which i've banged off of essentially every material known to man. i brought 6-7 cotton strings, some thick lube, and a spare wide bearing in case i wanted to pretend i'm any good at 'regular' 1a. you don't 'need' as much as you think you do.

packing a car for a trip like this is an art form, and i worked diligently to appease the spirits of my pepere (who's ability to pack an rv was legend) and my dad (who is still very-much alive). when i was little, my parents would ditch the middle seat of our minivan, throw down a blanket, and my brother and i would basically roll around the middle of the vehicle playing with action figures, reading, or drawing for the duration. apparently, the authorities take seatbelts somewhat more seriously now, and to my kids' chagrin, we had to have them in actual seats (most of the time). though it took me an hour or two, i eventually had the odyssey packed tightly and efficiently, with full access to food and toys and total rear-view visibility. no crevice went unused.

... except, apparently, the one i used to stow these yo-yo's a few weeks ago.

one time, i asked my buddy jack 'how do you 'display' your yo-yo's?', to which he responded, 'at this point, it's really more of a 'containment' issue.' i can relate to that. i have a 'yo-yo room', but inevitably several escape or are relocated by the kids, and i find them in unexpected places, like unbidden gifts. a few weeks ago, i was driving to the midnight showing of the new harry potter movie, and given the fact that i'd be waiting in line for a solid hour, i brought a pair of 3-in-1's out to the car with the idea that i'd work on/show off my mediocre 2-handed while waiting to get into the theater. i stuffed them in one of my new van's 75-odd 'compartments for stuff', and promptly forgot about them. i remember wanting to go retrieve them, but not enough to sacrifice a good seat. the movie was entertaining (AND late), so i just didn't think of them again until i looked for the pressure gauge in iowa.

it was nice to have these guys on the trip. i didn't intend to do any looping (aside from the retro-regens and lunar-landing variations that i always do with the v), and no matter how modern 1a develops, people - particularly the very old and very young - will always see 2-handed loops as the pinnacle of yo-yo magic. i worked with these just as much as i played my flying v over the past 2 weeks, learning no new tricks, but continuing to develop skills i've been working for years. i love how LONG it takes to be good at 2a, especially with wood & cotton. with the on-again, off-again effort i've turned in, wyyc-worthy abilities would take as long to create as the teton mountain range. but i also love that once you arrive at pretty-ok, decently-shaped, consistent loops... the simplest nuances become utterly satisfying.

somewhat surprisingly, i played a lot of yo-yo on this trip. on trails, at gas stations... even knee-deep in a stream. i like playing outside under the sky. if you've never done 'shoot the moon' under the actual moon, you should try it (but don't clock yourself). playing a wood yo-yo while out in the woods is also a feeling worth experiencing. i miss being at worlds with my friends, but it also occurs to me that the real center of 'the yo-yo universe' is not the world yo-yo contest in orlando, but wherever we happen to find ourselves playing. it's reasonable to see my friends on the feed and miss them, but this was such an unforgettable trip, and i got to explore (and yo-yo) in so many surreally beautiful places that it's a little silly to be glum about it, even for a second. it's hard to be away, but sometimes you have to make yo-yoing 'in the world' just as meaningful as yo-yoing 'at worlds'.

congrats to everyone, and safe travels home.

yo-yo #88: caitie's flying v

today i was yo-yoing with my daughter. it's father's day, but that's irrelevant.

it's a funny thing to say, in part because i never really thought she'd want to play yo-yo at all. oh, sure i gave her one when she asked me. in fact, i've given her a few over the years. but having a yo-yo somewhere in your room (under the bed or in dresser-drawers) and actually playing with it are two very different things. a few weeks back, i gave her another new yo-yo; this one. it's one of my green, first-run, star-grade flying v's. i don't remember what precipitated her asking to try it, but for whatever reason, the synapses in her brain were prepared to gel with some new-found small-motor awareness, and she was off and running; able to play 'for real'.

she's got maybe 20 tricks down now, the most difficult of which is probably trapeze. she's still getting split the atom and double or nothing dialed, and frankly, i don't care if she ever does. i LOVE that she's an eight-year-old playing with a toy, and that she delights in picture tricks, around the world, and creeper. she's at a point where i've seen countless school-age kids (mostly boys, i guess) 'make up' a dozen tricks in the course of an afternoon, playing with an unbridled glee that will almost certainly atrophy into sad oblivion later on in life [/depressing].

there's something reflective in watching your progeny do something that you, yourself love. you evaluate it with a fresh understanding, and the desire to shake off your own calcified routines and molt from a caked-on adherence to to non-existent rules seems unavoidable. caitie isn't very 'good' at yo-yoing by the prevailing standards, i suppose. i wonder though, what does an old major leaguer think when attending his son's little league game. does he suppose, as johnny connects weakly with the ball and sprints the 45 feet to first, every fiber of his being crackling with vitality and excitement... that he's not very good at baseball yet?

i watch her giggle and invent tricks like 'ballerina', in which she lifts the yo-yo overhead and slowly pirouettes en pointe... and i wish to hell that i could be 'good' at yo-yoing someday.

the ways to be 'good' at yo-yoing are so vast and numerous that really, none of them have any significant meaning. it goes without saying that if you're going to play for any length of time at all and NOT pull out all of your hair, at some point you're going to have to reconcile this and submit to defining 'good' for yourself. i'm a parent and a school teacher, and it occurs to me that the vast majority of yo-yoing that i see gets done by kids. and since a person assigns value based on what he/she experiences... i guess i define 'good' in increments of joy.

there's not much in this world that's more difficult than appreciating the perspective of 'the other', by which i mean true empathy and not just a vague ability to tolerate different views. when you consider that most yo-yo players are youngish males, simmering in the kill-or-be-killed environment that is high school, is it that surprising that the dominant standard of 'goodness' is competitive glory? when you consider the explorative, iconoclastic, define-yourself-now subculture (actually, there's nothing 'sub' about it) which pervades the internet, and so the world... is it surprising that the next most popular standard should be innovative and groundbreaking?

there are as many ways to be 'good' at yo-yoing as there are yo-yo players. in all aspects of life, i think it's important to dig into the views which you, yourself don't understand. what are the circumstances and motivations which drive them? how do others define 'good' and why?

last week, my friend drew asked a terrific question: 'what do you have to do to be called a 'great yo-yoer?' ... now, i see a big difference between the qualifiers 'good' and 'great', but i'll get to that later. when i thought about it, i came up with some fairly high standards. my response wasn't intended to read like my 66 rules (which are really a sort of personal take on goodness)... but it kind of ended up sounding like the cliff notes:

a. make it look great. by which i mean unquantifiables like 'impossibly fun' or 'unbelievably stylish' or even 'holy-shit edgy'.
b. push the art forward. boldly go.
c. care about it so deeply that your love for it leaks inescapably into your playing.
d. be able to yo-yo for a crowd (any crowd) and truly hold them.
e. win. a lot. beat the game.
f. teach in a way that people hold on to it. yoyo evangelical.
g. see 'inside' and make associations with other arts, or better, make people watching you do the same.
h. know the history. tricktionary.
i. don't let being perceived as a 'great yo-yoer' be your motivation for yo-yoing.

i know that's a pretty tall order. honestly, i don't believe that there ARE many great yo-yoers out there today. maybe a handful in a generation can really, truly live up to that kind of standard. they're the folks i see in my head when i think of the word 'champion', though hoisting a trophy is only the meanest of that list's challenges. so many of us spend our childhoods dreaming of someday-greatness, in everything we learn to do. unconsciously, we begin to assign value to ourselves based on a comparative rubric delineating 'what we've achieved'. is it enough? am i great?

the truth is that you don't need to be.

true story: my dad is good friends with the poet, dr. maya angelou. she's a wonderful, fascinating person, and deserves more attention and fame she receives (which is considerable). i don't know her well at all anymore, but when i was in high school, i got to speak with her regularly (and, of course, did not appreciate what a blessing it was at the time). on one occasion, when i was a few days away from my high school graduation, she and another professor were over at our house for dinner. i was sitting on the stoop under the mantle, and 'auntie maya' was grilling me on the sort of person i thought i'd be some day. i said something like, 'i don't know what i want to do exactly. i'd like to teach and just... be a great person.' i've never forgotten her response: 'no, dear. the world is full of people wishing and vying desperately to be great. be a GOOD person.'

the point was basically lost on me at the time, but it stuck with me regardless; the distinction between goodness and greatness. to me, it's the difference between intrinsic and extrinsic reward. being 'good' doesn't get you the fabulous cash prize or legendary glory that being 'great' will. being 'good' (either as a person or in the context of some skill) is more humble, more subtle, and ultimately, more important. don't get me wrong: i have no problem with greatness. i think that all of those skills i outlined in response to drew are essential, and i'm putting my nose to the grind to achieve them every day... but the only one that i think really, truly matters is the last (go ahead and read it again).

the point of yo-yoing, for me, is to keep practicing every day, even though i understand i'll probably never be truly 'great'. just to throw down, to invent fun little tricks and giggle about them with my girl or with the kids at school... to receive my flying v's chastising knuckle-smacks with a smile when my mind wanders, or the blessing of a fly-away dismount when i find the way through the trick... to find the courage to play with joy and let the rest fall away... to me, that's what being a 'good' yo-yo player is all about.

and 'good' is good enough.

yo-yo #87: bpzl

anti-yo lives! after a brief hiatus (at least in relative terms), sonny and kiya are returning to the making of yo-yo's (and, evidently, to making them exciting). few companies are able to make yo-yoing seem dynamic in the way that anti-yo did with just 5 releases. their initial offering, the fluchs, had axle issues, which foreshadowed the community's acute awareness of any quality control hiccups which were to occur afterward. yet, in spite of wobble or slippage or plumbers' tape, anti-yo always maintained that strangely undefinable edge which helped build their legend. the folks who loved them always seemed to do so with every fiber of their being, and they had the same daring je-ne-sais-quois that made it cool to skate companies like consolidated in the 90's.

and, if the bapezilla reboot (bpzl) which sonny sent me a few weeks back is any indication, potential design and/or machining flaws are ancient history. this thing is undeniably pristine in its aesthetic and its spin, and i'm glad that our community is so amped about a company aiming to resurrect/improve upon their former glory.

the bpzl is an all-around great yo-yo. to me, it feels more like an old oxy than a bapezilla, having lost the sharpish corners of the original. it's rocking a nice step in the hub like an oxy, too, though it features the one drop axle/side-effect system. the whole package works great. mine is all black, and the blast is significantly softer than the old 'slippe-matte' finish. it feels a little heavy in the hand, but moves through dense layers quickly and fluidly. sonny reminds me that with the side-effect system, you can dramatically change the hub weight, and so the feel of the yo-yo overall. (i only have the default anti-yo hub-looking caps, which is what i'll be sticking with since i love the look.)

in other news, i've been playing a lot of shakuhachi music lately. a shakuhachi is basically just a 1.8 shaku hunk of root bamboo with some holes drilled into it. and while it's featured into some of the most ritualized court music of old japan, it's probably most often associated with the komuso. these itinerant monks would wander the countryside, wearing basket-hats to shroud their identities while playing contemplative flute music. since many of them were former samurai (made ronin by way of release from their lord), they were acutely aware of the need to defend themselves from opportunistic scoundrels, and it's said that the use of heavier root-end madake bamboo developed from its efficacy as a bludgeon.

one of the things i love about shakuhachi is that unlike so many instruments, its austere sound somehow feels as though it's 'meant' to be on its own. it's moving air and bamboo, both of which are prone to inconsistencies, which you can hear even in listening to the masters (the difference being found in the way they 'own' and respond to those inconsistencies - just like in yo-yoing). it's probably the most difficult instrument i've ever learned to make a sound from, because you have to perfectly divide the air over and under the mouthpiece, and the direction of air is different for every note. that said (also like yo-yoing), the aspects that make it difficult are precisely what make it rewarding and addictive.

lately, it's felt as if, as far as my throwing is concerned, the toys are winding down somewhat (to paraphrase les claypool). we all pass through crests and troughs of passion, and i'm certainly accustomed to throwing with less 'piss and vinegar' from time to time. fixating on making art when no need is apparent seems perverse, and the mentality that screams 'i've got to like this! i can't let the world pass me by!' seems misguided.

don't get me wrong - i still play all the time, and i want to keep improving as a yo-yo player... but none of the ways in which i want to improve are easily judged, externally. i want my yo-yoing to be more meaningful. i want to settle more deeply into each successive throw. i want my yo-yoing to be appropriate for its moment and situation. i want to understand how to keep kids enthralled in increments of 5 seconds, 1 month, a year, or forever. i delight in the discovery of strange holds which, like mysterious secret tunnels, may be known only to a few other intrepid explorers on the planet.

there's no clear way to judge these kinds of improvements, and no trophy even if you could prove success.

in terms of goal-attainment, i've done or received a lot of what i feel is reasonable to 'want' as a yo-yo player. some of that has been the result of my own effort, and some are things which just 'happened to me'. maybe my aspirations were small, but absent of a 'burning desire' to achieve x or y, my yo-yoing feels self-contained and relevant to my own needs. that's a good feeling, and one that i think every player, from the most casual to world champions, should get to know once in a while.

i feel more and more like one of those [heavily idealized] anonymous monks. i watch my friends and get inspired to throw, but not necessarily to break new ground in the way that they do. i just want to walk around and play. i'm excited about going to contests (a week from now i'll be on a plane to bac!), but the idea of competing in one seems more and more absurd. the tricks i'm enjoying seem to be continually compressed into simpler, more concise versions of themselves (i think i squeeze more glee from one slow, protracted eli hop or a well-executed flyaway dismount than i once would have found in a dozen blitzkrieg tricks). and the strange part about all of this is that it's not a lament. in some ways it feels like a kind of death, but i'm enjoying it.

i imagine we all go through times (whether we examine it or not) wherein it seems that every aspect of our lives is built around our passions. as i mentioned a few posts ago (and so probably almost a year), i'm a yo-yoer, from when i wake up to when i go to bed. however, i'm also a dad. and a husband. and a teacher. and an aikidoka, musician, surfer/skateramateurpoetchessenthusiastdisneyworldnutloverofsmallwoodlandcreatures... etc. everything bleeds together, and i'm realizing that what my life gives to my yo-yoing and what my yo-yoing gives to my life are really equal partners.

you can understand a person's motivations through the most [seemingly] trivial actions. how they sleep,walk; how they carry themselves... how they play. people yo-yo for all kinds of reasons. some people play to understand themselves. some people play to connect with others. some people play to be accepted (or exulted). some throw to belong to something and some throw to stand out; to associate or separate. some throw to realize their deepest desires, and some throw to forget them. regardless of your approach, i think on some level, your yo-yoing should serve your life and the world, and not the other way around.

i guess if this exercise in rambling incoherence has to have a point, it's that you need not panic about how 'into it' you are. try to be more conscious of all that your play does for you, and maybe less conscious of whether you're progressing along lines that were dictated to you somewhere along the road. the yo-yo is a forgiving little talisman, and if the spin of your enthusiasm is deteriorating into a wobble, you'll always be free (like anti-yo) to regenerate.

yo-yo #86: hspin pyro #118

it's interesting. my mom has bought me some of my coolest yo-yo's. i guess that's not that interesting, when you also consider that she's bought me some of my coolest skateboards, action figures, clothes, and meals over the years as well. moms rock.

i got 3 yo-yo's for xmas in 2005. back into playing yo-yo hardcore (and also, evidently, 'for good'), everyone i knew was oscillating somewhere between degrees of mild annoyance and outright rage at the amount of time i was playing yo-yo. but when the holidays rolled around, suddenly, everyone had the perfect gift idea. that's one of the nice things about being a yo-yo player - if all else fails, it's a great 'default present'.

my mom didn't treat it like a default present, however. she was out to find the newest, baddest return-top on the block, and found it at the now-defunct extreme spin webstore in the form of the hspin pyro. when i unwrapped it from its tube and threw it down (with a beautiful, hollow 'zzzzzzzzng' noise that no other yo-yo can approximate), the first thing my dad said was 'so can it do 'walk the dog'?' i knew he was kidding, but part of me cringed - like, 'you understand what this is FOR, right dad?' ironically, he understood better than i.

the pyro was, upon its release, arguably the most solid, consistent, and BEAUTIFUL production yo-yo ever made, and it set the stage for how to hype releases for the next few years. to be honest, the oxys probably played better, and the fluchs was perhaps a tad more stylish... but the pyro had everything in one [exceedingly wide] package, and the fact that its ads featured willowy models staring wistfully into the 'soul of yo' didn't hurt its reception with the drooling late-teen boys-club that is yo-yoing.

i'd had metal yo-yo's before this one. however, this is probably the first one i ever owned which i was frightened to throw. it was such a pretty thing that i felt intimidated spinning it so close to the ground. though i gradually shed that inhibition (ask any of my main yo-yo's), #118 remains alarmingly devoid of marks. a couple tiny pinpricks, and that's all i've generated. it'll probably stay that way, too, since i have so many that i now prefer. it's funny that i have several yo-yo's in nice condition like this, amidst brothers who look like they get thrown in a war zone. and it makes me consider that dichotomy which besets and vexes all yo-yoers at some point - i'll call it 'the allegory of the dog'.

to walk or not to walk, that is the question - whether 'tis nobler to suffer the dings and scuffs of outrageous concrete... or take arms against a sea of pain-in-the-ass kids who keep asking you to walk the dog, even though I WAS JUST DOING YUUKI-FREAKING SLACK RIGHT IN FRONT OF THEM!!!

... yeah.

japanese swordsmanship repeatedly references two types of swords: the life-taking sword and the life-giving sword. they're not weapons, but metaphors for levels of a warrior's understanding. obviously, swords are sharp and pointy, and they're made for hacking people up. people who try to convince you that a sword is not built/designed for that express purpose are either deluding themselves... or else need a better sword. swords are built for taking life, and so are warriors (at least at first).

we devise unbeatable techniques, hone razor-sharp reflexes, and practice until we can barely stand (sound familiar?)... all to the end of refining our skill such that no other can overcome it. but the more you practice, and the more of life you see, the more you come to terms with the truth that you can't 'take' it all. the more you prepare for the 'other's' inevitable attack, the more you realize that no other drove you down this path; you drove yourself. you realize that the sword's truest function is not really in the efficacy of its cut, but in its ability to protect and preserve life. and in realizing this, the swordsman arrives at a level of meaning and understanding never approached by technique, alone.

i think it's true of yo-yo players, too. i see some kids practicing with this sort of fury; as though they're angry with the yo-yo for challenging them. i see yo-yoers on stage, in contest halls, or in schoolyards whipping the toy around like a medieval weapon, with an intensity that could melt stone, begging anyone and everyone to observe and be awed. and i think this is good, and that it's important to experience this feeling and understand. but i also think it's important to shed it.

it seems to me that mostly, people try to do things powerfully because they feel 'compelled' to do so, and that's not really power at all. it's true of every walk of life. we all meet people every day who seek to exert themselves upon the world or define themselves against it. but the guys (and girls) who play with real power are simply in command of their art. they don't need to impress anybody, don't need to play like someone else, and don't need to hide under a mantle of epicness. playing yo-yo isn't epic; knowing yourself is.

walk the dog is hard for some people; maybe the hardest trick out there. and it's not because of any technical difficulty (obviously), but because it asks the player to 'lower' themselves - to step off of a pedestal which we spend so much of our waking life polishing. 'i've worked on this for so long, and i can do all this STUFF, and this yo-yo costs $100! and you in your ignorance want me to do the one simple, stupid yo-yo trick you know???' dings sand out nicely, i promise. if you're afraid to ding your $100 yo-yo, to whom does it belong? if your skill is such that it chains you to your pedestal, than its more a burden than a gift.

most of the best yo-yoers out there are pretty happy people; the sort of folks who would not only walk the dog if a kid asked, but literally think nothing of it. and it's not because those people have 50 more shiny yo-yo's in a box at home (some of em might have just the one in their pocket). rather it's because they've come to terms with the truth of what they do. they've spent years - in some cases, a lifetime - battling their way through the knotted jungle of ephemeral geometry which we call home, not to impress some other, but to impress (or discover) themselves. the yo-yo teaches you who you are; it carves you out of rigid granite, throw by throw. the sword GIVES YOU life.

it's said that when you start on the journey, the mountains are mountains and the sea is the sea. then, after achieving some knowledge, the mountains are no longer mountains and the sea is no longer the sea. once you arrive at the truth, the mountains are again mountains and the sea is once again, the sea.

when you start out as a yo-yoer, you're just a kid playing yo-yo. then somewhere along the way, you become a superstar. sometime later (hopefully) you are, once again, just a kid playing yo-yo... which is a wonderful thing to be.

yo-yo #85: Fiend Spitfire

everyone who's ever been stoked to spin a yo-yo, even for a short time, recognizes the toy's potential to transcend the mere act of throwing it. like almost any radical and worthwhile pursuit, yo-yoing maintains the capacity for a lifestyle. to me, mark mcbride has long symbolized this understanding.

his early advocacy for the nascent 3a style, 40-watt halo vids & t's, his book the yonomicon, and his role as consigliere-for-life of the duncan crew (particularly during their early-2000's renaissance) ensure his place in the yo-yo pantheon. to me though, his coolest enterprise was fiend, the yo-yo magazine which, though ephemeral and never attaining the mass appeal it might have, went a long way toward giving yo-yo players a rallying point for their [sub]cultural identity.

although, as is print's tendency and (perhaps) it's eventual downfall, you can't easily find an old copy of fiend. incredibly, the internet has hung onto parts of its old web presence, which if you haven't perused, you should. in describing fiend, bride tapped a literary vein far better than i ever could. yo-yoing's a tough thing to describe, but he nailed it here:

What is a FIEND?

A Fiend is into playing in a deep and serious way. He (or SHE) recognizes that yo-yo (or juggling, or top spinning or whatever prop you choose) is about more than just contests or lists of tricks. Those are merely tools to help you achieve the real "State of Yo." You really get it when you're throwing and you become one with the forces of nature and physics that make it all possible-your movements are a dance with infinity. You are surfing the wave of reality. The trick doesn't need a name, you don't need an audience, you've moved beyond all that. You just know that THIS IS REAL. An old Hindu text asks, "what is the difference between the dancer and the dance?" A Fiend answers "nothing."

i was blissfully unaware of fiend when it was current. as someone who experienced the boom obliquely, and from the 'outside', i knew jack about the online yo-yo world. the only thing i knew about mark mcbride was velvet rolls, the quintessential 3a trick for which ken's-world-on-a-string put up a bewildering tutorial (which was so out of my league that i remember assuming 'well, you'll never learn that; just get it out of your head'). i think i held a copy of fiend once at the mall cart where i hung out circa y2k, but being only 'peripherally' invested in yo-yoing at the time, i was more interested in the peripherals, and i gravitated to the pretty pictures in 'yo-yo world'.

at the time, the idea of being so 'serious' about playing yo-yo as to define any aspect of one's self by it seemed absurd. it's a toy, after all. but then, i'd always thought of myself as a 'skater'... i'd rock vision street wear at school, slap bones brigade stickers all over my notebooks and lockers, pre-emptively duct tape my sneakers to avoid ollie-holes (this was before skate shoes), listen 'religiously' to faith no more and suicidal tendencies, and nod in agreement with thrasher's philosophical observations. for years, skating had somehow held enough sway to effectively carve the stylistic path on which i diligently tread. was yo-yoing so different?

at the time i wasn't ready to consider it, but now, from the moment npr wakes me up to when i crash at night, i'm a yo-yoer. it doesn't just mean that i know this trick or that. i choose my pants based on which yo-yo's fit well in the pocket. i wear my callouses with the same pride that wrestlers take in their cauliflower ears. most of my best friends are 'fiends', and though i may only see some of them a few times a year, the dedication we share for this simple toy is all the common ground we need. for the love of pete, i've written 80-something blog entries on life as a yo-yoer! evidently, somewhere along the road i decided that 'the noble disk' (another great 'zine) is, in fact, a worthy centerpiece to one's sense-of-self... oh, and these days my notebook is covered in yo-yo stickers.

lately, it feels as though things are really spinning (oh, the pun), and i'm not talking about the whole 'boom' thing. i'm not interested in # of yo-yo's sold, but in how yo-yoers perceive themselves, and how the world sees them. bride was years ahead of his time with 3a, and likewise i feel as though the right confluence of variables for a sense of the 'yo-yo 'collective' is [finally] coming together.

you have chris allen, who, while perhaps absent of bride's edge, has worked his ass off to create (in yoyoskills.com) the means for yo-yoers and manufacturers to hear each other. you have paul han and bombsquad borrowing from the norcal skate scene to reinvent the 'yo-yo aesthetic'. you have the studio sessions guys pushing tricks into new and glorious territory (i think of them lately as our equivalent to the aforementioned bones brigade). you have save deth, at long last picking up fiend's torch and releasing a combination dvd + magazine which emphasizes not just tricks or toys, but music and lifestyle. and you have steve brown, once a contributor to fiend and now 9 days into his effort to document and present a yo-yo trick for every day of 2011. modern yo-yoing brims with the kinds of charismatic iconoclasts which, ironically, tend to inspire a sense of cohesion.

it's always a good time to play yo-yo, because yo-yoing is fun and interesting... but this is truly a good time to BE a yo-yoer, because it's starting to feel like something exciting again. my humble thanks to mark mcbride, and to anyone who's ever made that their mission.