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string-ball 2

2012-01-08T20:33:00.002-05:00

so i've been at it a week.

so far everything is hunky-dory... ducky, as it were. there are definitely a few short tricks that i had down on metal yo-yo's that i simply can't do on wood (mostly protracted combos i made up), and a metric ton more that take major concentration. i don't 'miss' being able to throw without the need to be fully committed to every trick, but i definitely notice it. i can eek out an 17-18 second 'trick' on this yo-yo so far. haven't tried a long sleeper, but i'd bet my max right now is about twice that long.

besides the time/spin constraint, wood reminds you that it's perpetually prepared to snap back on you. pretty much every 'reasonable' trick (i.e. no triple-lindy's or crazy layers in the gap) can be worked through with mega-aggressive response. you just have to know the how to 'see' the string formation in a way that reveals where the slack will play near the axle. by 'slack', i don't mean a big section of string swinging lazily through the air; i mean the circumference about 1mm above the axle that starts the response chain-reaction. getting back in tune with that little zone has been fun, especially since it's been limited to getting to know the dimensions of a single yo-yo.

i started a string-ball this weekend, from the discarded cotton strings i'd left on our guest bed (you're welcome stacy). i've been using type 8 cotton mostly. i have a skein that feels just right, but it only lasts about half as long as my type 10 cone. as a guess, i think i'm getting about 45m of throw-time before the string looks raw and decrepit around the axle. the dead duncan friction sticker i've added for augmented snap definitely accelerates the string's demise. from how i'm starting off, i think this ball will be significantly larger than the one i generated from cones to balls, but we'll see.

i haven't considered being 'unfaithful' yet. my yo-yo room is still fun to be in despite not being able to reach for any of the throws therein. that said, i have almost thrown a few other yo-yo's. when in my daughter's room the other day, i noticed she left a projam on the floor, and i reached down to pick it up. i was moments away from giving it a perfunctory throw down before i caught myself. at school, a student asked to give the 'eh' a toss, and when i gave it to him he handed me his solaris. i'm so used to the ritual of momentarily trading yo-yo's at contests and club meets, that i had started to put on the slipknot before i realized it. the weirdly alien feeling of holding metal for the first time in almost 3 weeks is what jolted me out of the routine.

more later. must throw.

resolution

2011-12-31T13:21:00.003-05:00

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.

2011-12-22T16:05:00.002-05:00

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

2011-12-21T07:17:00.009-05:00

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

2011-12-15T21:00:00.006-05:00

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

2011-12-07T20:06:00.005-05:00

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)

2011-11-18T22:23:00.004-05:00

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

2011-11-10T16:20:00.006-05:00

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

2011-10-08T22:29:00.007-04:00

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

2011-10-08T21:21:00.004-04:00

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

2011-10-08T15:49:00.006-04:00

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

2011-08-05T23:23:00.010-04:00

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

2011-06-18T22:17:00.009-04:00

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

2011-05-05T09:38:00.010-04:00

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

2011-02-18T23:03:00.009-05:00

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

2011-01-09T19:29:00.008-05:00

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.

yo-yo #84: stock f.a.s.t. 201

2010-12-07T22:08:00.001-05:00

last day of school, 2010. we finished up today, and i'm sure impromptu carols and well-wishes are still caroming off the walls and linoleum. i also got to give away 40 yo-yo's today, something i haven't had the pleasure of doing in nearly 3 years. 40 of these 201's.

mind you, it wasn't just a holiday thing; the kids had to earn these (well, ok, kind of). they had to endure 3 weeks of yo-yo physics AND ace a [20 question, all matching] test to take their babies home. they had to learn the difference between transverse and standing waves, and explain the 3 laws of motion with their sleepers, and... yeah. i certainly like to think that they'll retain some of it. i guess i'll let you know in a few years when they get to conceptual physics (and hopefully i am not yelled at). you'll note the faded bison sticker on mine. everyone had an animal avatar to distinguish their throw. bison are cool.

for the last 4 months, yo-yo mania has so fully permeated the halls of the school that i can't make it through carpool duty without being asked for a yo-yo suggestion from a parent, or through a study hall without having to extract a bit of string lint from a bearing shield. yes, it really is that wonderful. it's not like it's been hard or as though i've done anything special. yo-yo's are really, really cool toys. i play with them (all the time) at a school full of kids. you don't smoke dynamite near a powder-keg and expect it to make for an average wednesday.

for 5 years, the 201 has been the first yo-yo i recommend to kids. it looks cool, takes a beating, handles whatever you can, and when you want to pretend that you just NEED an unresponsive yo-yo... it even mods up nice. the velocity is a better beginner yo-yo by far, but i've learned that to a 12 year-old, the numbers 10 and 20 are pretty distant from one another - may they long cling to that naivete.

if you've never had the opportunity, means, or inclination to give a yo-yo to a kid, be they a yo-yo die-hard at a contest, or someone presumably utterly-disinterested by the prospect of manipulating a non-digital toy with their actual-digits... i heartily recommend it. today, and over the last few weeks as our 'yo-yo physics' unit has marched on, i've been able to witness more 'first sleepers', 'first braintwisters', and 'first knucklewhacks' than i could shake a stick at (i've even seen a few spectacular 'first eli hops' and 'first boingies'). when you're in such a position, getting to watch kids fumble through the process of learning to manage string tension and slip-knots... a certain degree of sentimental nostalgia is unavoidable. like it or not, you re-experience your own tentative missteps, and you laugh about how positively awkward you were... just before you realize how awkward you still ARE.

i'm an old man by yo-yo player standards, but i'm not so ancient that i can't remember learning the basics myself. every sleeper on my midnight special felt like a grandiose spectacle, capable of stopping traffic (though it never did). split the atom, i learned on a purple fireball in my college dorm, courtesy of ken's world on a string. i probably did that trick 500 times in 2 days, for (or maybe 'at') every human-person i ran into. i recall being so irritated at bee string that i wanted to return the $2.00 5-pack to toys r us because it kept kinking up... blissfully (or irately) unaware that my own winding technique and total lack of ufo/sidewinder know-how were responsible for the issue. these last weeks, watching some kids try to wrestle their new toy into submission while others found themselves able to handle it with a strange grace... all of these memories are made real again, and it's like looking through a fogged window at a guy i used to know.

i can do things now that would have blown that guy's mind. i've got tricks that are so outside the realm of what i once thought possible that i could make him quit altogether, tossing that fireball into a sewer or shattering that midnight special underfoot. i could make these kids today quit, too, if i comport myself with too much pride, or scoff at their first throws. sure that would sound like a dick move, but i see it on every playground i monitor and, sadly, at every contest i attend.

we've all got a bit of that destructive pride. it's a comfort to imagine that i've made some progress toward that sunset out there; that the horizon i'm chasing is somehow closer for all the knowledge and skill i think i've amassed. but walking around a globe, i'll never reach it; i'll just come back to the beginning. it's easy to feel some pity for said 'guy i used to know'; pity for his ignorance or for how many times his soft knuckles will redden learning lacerations on wood. but watching these kids, i remember that he doesn't need my pity. because it's been a joy. every throw. and considering that, i haven't really come so far at all. on my BEST days, i get to be that guy again.

it occurs to me that in 5 years of teaching yo-yo science, i've probably given away 300 yo-yo's. now i'll grant you that some of em were butterflies, but still... if one of those kids sees a yo-yo when they're 20 and vaguely connects it with some past experience... jeez, even if they don't, it's been well worth the while.

it's christmas-time. give somebody a yo-yo. someone who's never played. and in so doing, embrace your own beginnings, and recognize that (thank god), you're still that same person; beginning all the time.

yo-yo #83: SPYY ronin

2010-10-29T21:24:00.002-04:00

one of the things that i like about being a yo-yoer is that it feels a bit like stepping into a stream. submerging your pinky toe, you're instantly connected to [essentially] all of the water, everywhere. likewise, the moment you tie on the slipknot and throw down, whether you recognize it or not, you renew your connection to every other yo-yo player in the world.

around 12:43p today, i twisted up a brand new type-10 cotton and threw a light session on my favorite new ronin. i'm not sure whether steve meant to send me this one as an anomaly, but it's almost hypnotic to behold, especially in the sunlight. it is the blackest blue yo-yo i've ever seen, if that makes any sense. maybe all of that colorway are like that; i dunno. but (speaking of water) it recalls the inky power of waves like cortés bank, which is doubly appropriate considering the graphics. (it's a good looking yo-yo - hey! you should buy it!)

in any case, throwing in my backyard this afternoon, 'vaguely warmed' by a pale november sun, i wondered what my friends were up to. maybe at 12:43, drew tetz was immortalizing audrey hepburn in a new picture trick. steve brown was probably hefting a kid (or two) on his shoulders. jon rob may have been deciding between hats, shoes, or combinations of both. guy said something about throwing no jives with spencer; i wonder if that went down. safe to say that seth was relentlessly pursuing some beautifully incredible concept (which i am not creative enough to visualize). sonny was probably engaged in mid-morning guinea pig frivolity, and it's a fair bet that john bot and abe were laughing hysterically someplace.

when i'm bummed about this or that, i sometimes think about disney world. i have a map of it next to my desk at school (where ironically, i have hardly been 'bummed' at all). i like the idea that between the berms of the magic kingdom, someone is always having the time of their life. even when the park is empty at 3am, it's like it's breathing in, its subterranean tunnels alive with janitors and technicians busying to prepare fresh magic for the morrow.

yo-yoing is kind of the same for me. it's not a place you can go, but somehow that makes it even more sacred. because yo-yoing is always 'there'. every day, we all go to its well to drink. we stand on its platform to express our most sincere selves, but also to learn and be humbled. we reinvent tiny aspects of the art, collectively and perpetually. every time we throw sleeper, someone is sharing our joy on the opposite side of the world. we're all bearing its standard, carrying it forward an inch at a time in whatever direction may occur to us. unless you turn your back on the art completely (and i've never heard a compelling reason for doing that), you always remain a yo-yo player. and our little tribe consists of some of the most 'improbably amazing' characters i've ever come across. to be associated with them (with you) through our mutual compulsion to throw is truly gratifying.

today i thought about all of the people who enjoyed their first successful 'gravity pull' today, maybe throwing at the same time as myself. i thought of all the kids who enthralled each other at playgrounds, or of the precious few who finally got a grown up to admit that 'you know, that actually IS pretty cool!' i considered all of the tricks that would be invented today, and was thrilled to have lent some tiny contribution. i thought about all of this stuff and i realized (once again) the hard-learned truth that the humble 2-ply string which connects us all is more significant than the space that divides us.

yo-yo #82: higby proyo 1

2010-10-10T19:32:00.001-04:00

gracious, i am so busy. being a teacher is hard, existence-filling work. i love it, but teaching is not the kind of thing you can really step into 'slowly' or 'half-way' (at least if you aim to be decent at it). good teaching (like good yo-yoing) is about living moment after moment with abandon and getting soaked to the bone. i recognize that i haven't blogged much, and now that i'm back working regular, my rhythms probably won't change substantially.

to compound matters, my daughter is in her first play - a christmas carol. so there are now all kinds of rehearsals to accommodate (not to mention her fledgling tae kwon do career - yes, i'm thrilled she's into martial arts and there was NO pressure on my part, i can tell you). there was a parent meeting for the production the other day; sort of a last-minute 'you understand the insanity that you've signed up for' kind of thing. while waiting to get started, a parent asked me about 'the yo-yo virus' that has effectively permeated the halls at my school. wherever i teach, it's a foregone conclusion that the student body will collectively dive into mass yo-yo-hysteria by november (i'm not bragging - kids like yo-yo's and i am a 'dab hand' at them... it's natural). said parent was buying his kid 'a fifth yo-yo' and he wanted to know more about my involvement with such a weird, niche activity.

these conversations are always charged with the kind of curiosity that seems to beg (tacitly or overtly) for some kind of demonstration, so... whatever... i played some yo-yo for the guy (i threw this yo-yo, which i had in my pocket). i'm always interested by the 'art form' that these little mini-presentations represent. i'm pretty sure i could play yo-yo in front of the pope or chuck norris and not feel too bad about the actual tricks... the awkward part is what comes immediately after - and this is TOTALLY different when you're playing for a group of kids.

when you reveal your yo-yo powers to kids, they allow their jaws to drop. they allow themselves to believe that it's something magical. they allow themselves to 'want in' on it. by the time most people grow up, however, they have shed these wonderful abilities. whether impressed or not, most adults ask questions like 'how did you LEARN that?' and 'how many YEARS?' and 'how much FREE TIME?'. adults need (frequently, though not always) to distance themselves from the perspective of awe, which to many represents an inherently 'weak position'. by adulthood we have been rewarded by saving ourselves from momentary shock and by cloaking our wonder. however, those things always leak to the surface somehow.

the older we get, the more hesitant we are to be amazed. this is natural; we've seen a great deal, if not 'it all'. our brains' synaptic pathways have been firing since before our birth, and we have carved rutted channels that we know better than the back of our hands (or so well, we cannot KNOW them at all for they are HOW we know anything)... through the muddy prism of experience, it's a miracle that we can ever feel anything 'new'. wonder is such an amazing and mysterious thing; so rare and unsettling. looking back, how many ordinary moments can you recall from the last week (or year)... and yet you could probably write a list of the last 20 times you experienced real amazement. when we let ourselves dissolve into a moment that's complete and great, we hang on to it.

i like this yo-yo because it allows itself to straddle the line, and its creator personifies the dichotomy as well. if you've spent any time around john higby, you know that he loves yo-yoing deeply. though he's the consummate professional performer, you could TOTALLY see him ask a 12 year-old at a contest to teach him 'that last trick he did'. this yo-yo is beautiful, but it's not hard to approach. in a world of hard, metal yo-yo's built to resemble alien weaponry, this yo-yo still exudes joy, wonder, and innocence. it still feels like a toy.

every day, i get to talk to a kid (or 10) who comes in and tells me about the 'new trick' he made up... and it's elevator, or it's something like confederate flag, or it's braintwister IN REVERSE. and it doesn't matter that all of those things have been done by most every yo-yoer... they FOUND them on their own. they are 'bartholomew diaz' in a massive storm, driven on by curiosity and daring. they had to be shown at first, but if you have the capacity to give yourself over to wonder, no one can tell you that your efforts are misplaced or in vain.

with every new school i've joined, it's felt like a dry forest floor aching for fire. playing yo-yo is the sort of thing that everyone can do. it takes people out of their most elaborate imaginary-realities and gives an incentive to participate in the real one that is our birthright. kids are shocked to learn that 'hey, this IS something that i can be good at, and... somehow virtually NO ONE else here already is!' it makes me think of all the schools the world over that are just waiting for a lightning strike that ignites this dual-path toward fun and self-worth. it makes me proud of yo-yoing's history - i bet dale oliver and bob rule viewed the schoolyards in the towns they visited in the same way that greg noll viewed waimea bay.

we've all been those school-kids. in some respects, we're those school-kids every day. we wait patiently, diligently, to be amazed. we sit like spires of kindling awaiting a flame. we go to contests and seek out inspiration. we seek out videos and look for inspiration. we read half-baked blog posts and look for inspiration. whether we're learning our 1st trick or our 1,000th, all of us share the tendency to stand under the storm and believe for all we're worth that the 'bolt from the blue' is coming.

because it is... and it's not.

my friend tyler, an inspiration if ever there was one (though decidedly not a role model), turned me on to a great quote this week, by the painter chuck close:

“All the best ideas come out of the process; they come out of the work itself. Things occur to you. If you’re sitting around trying to dream up a great art idea, you can sit there a long time before anything happens. But if you just get to work, something will occur to you and something else will occur to you and somthing else that you reject will push you in another direction. Inspiration is absolutely unnecessary and somehow deceptive. You feel like you need this great idea before you can get down to work, and I find that’s almost never the case.”

the work, our work, is its own 'bolt from the blue'. as yo-yo players or as people, WE need to be the inspiration we wish to find in the world, and not by strutting grandly or playing in some special way... but just by 'getting to work'. a poet-friend of mine always said 'you want to be a writer? write.' there's nothing wrong with seeing a video or a freestyle that moves you, but don't con yourself into the belief that you're in an inescapable creative rut without those extrinsic catalysts. play yo-yo, bring something into being. the only thing that separates any of us from history's most creative, innovative yo-yoers, is that while we may wander around searching for inspiration or assume that it's 'coming any minute' from some great beyond... they're in a constant state of BECOMING it. they're deciding to manifest it, moment by moment.

it's sort of a paradox. we all have to be initiated. we all have to be bitten. but once we ARE, it's no longer anyone else's responsibility to be our inspiration. at some point we have to find the way to be our own.

to do so is certainly a skill, one toward which some have a more natural proclivity... but that state is within everyone's reach. i have to wonder whether the reason why more people don't see that; why (whether in our play or our everyday lives) we set up the dichotomy of 'that guy's incredible and i'll die mediocre'... is because like the adults i mentioned, we're a bit scared of amazing ourselves. we're unnerved by the idea of looking into ourselves and finding an unmeasured well of inspiration, because, i guess... 'what then?' (if there are no ceilings on our creative potential, then how much harder must we work to realize it?). or maybe we've so effectively conditioned ourselves to take our inadequacy for granted that the idea that we, ourselves could fuel our own fire seems slightly preposterous.

what if those conditioned responses could be reset? would that we whom life has taught to know better could be like the kids i teach; absolutely enamored, not of themselves, but of play, of what they're uncovering every other hour... of all that is possible and real and undiscovered.

yo-yo #81: 8-bit freehand

2010-08-28T14:04:00.005-04:00

what are the limits of what you can own?

it's an interesting question to consider, given the current climate of the yo-yo world, which suddenly seems to pulsate with a toxic compound of indignation and confusion over 5a. duncan yo-yo's has stepped forward to exercise control over their 'possession', the freehand style of yo-yoing. while the quotes ARE meant to indicate my bewilderment at the idea that a STYLE of yo-yoing can be owned, steve brown's original patent does account both for the materials AND the technique. so if you're doing 5a (at least anywhere anyone can observe you)... i suppose the implication is that you're playing with duncan's toy, and depending upon their generosity in allowing you to do so.

yes, i think that's preposterous, but in legal terms, they do own and control the style of play. fortunately duncan (via my good friend brandon jackson) has stepped forward to say that they are NOT going to litigate against 'individual players', sponsored or otherwise, who just want to play or compete in freehand. the stickiness begins with their claim that they ARE going to be actively enforcing their patent against being used by rival companies. clearly, anyone who attempts to do the math recognizes the complete lack of clarity that this offers.

i'm an individual player, but i also have access to the spyy website. i have to think that if i tried to post a 5a video on there advertising the new stryker... duncan would not be cool with that, regardless of whether it was done with the 'intent' to advocate spyy for 5a. (this is just an assumption, but they certainly weren't 'cool' with yoyofactory's 5a may videos, which did more to promote and encourage 5a play than any company has in a solid while.) could an 'individual player' like andre boulay put 5a instructional videos on yoyoexpert.com? i mean it's an online store that sells duncans, but certainly everyone associates andre with yoyojam (plus they sell every other manufacturer as well). and then you have the issue with guys like miguel correa and tyler severance, both of whom are employees of yoyofactory and on anyone's short list for greatest 5a player of all time. would their continued contest performance or new trick videos constitute an advertisement for yoyofactory? and if prohibited from doing so, is there really a greater disservice that duncan could do to the style?

i have a headache.

i understand duncan's perspective. they HAVE this awesome thing, and nearly every other company has, in some way (purposely or accidentally, directly or implicitly) USED it to sell their yo-yo's. it's good business for duncan to say 'OI! only WE get to use our stuff to sell yo-yo's!' if they don't do that, they effectively sacrifice their ownership of the patent. at the same time, however, to begin to enforce their possession of the style immediately vilifies them in the eyes of many. i think most yo-yo players want to see all of the best players throw 5a without fear. i think we'd like to see all companies be able to celebrate it - to benefit from it AND give to it. but such an idealized view does not feel very realistic right now.

scenarios like this are amusing to watch unfold, if only because they polarize the community so sharply. we dilligently heed drama's clarion call and file into our respective positions:
• 'throw duncan!': "it's not duncan's fault, guys! they own 5a and have the right to protect it!" (this view, while initially valid and interesting, is quickly delegitimized by the guys who use it as one more soapbox in their attempt to denounce "those copycats" yoyofactory the loudest).
• 'duncan = suck!': "whether they want to or not, this is going to kill 5a! DON'T TREAD ON ME, DUNCAN!!!" (again, lots of good points to be heard, but they're muffled by the furious knee-jerk yells of misinformed bandwagon-jumpers.)
• 'who even cares?'

i like duncan, or at least the idea of duncan. i like their plastic yo-yo's, a lot of em. i adore its history, and standing on stage with bob rule, dale oliver, and chris neff at worlds was an absolute honor. i certainly love my friends, brandon and drew and takeshi and hank and jack and nate and dimi and jeff... and look up to guys like senba and kohta to the extent that i could barely introduce myself at worlds through stammers and blushes... but those guys aren't duncan, or at least not all of it. for me, the 'warts & all' has to include the cease & desist letters sent out by a faceless legal dept to anyone who maintained a site using the words 'imperial' and 'butterfly'... or to chris allen, who tried to use an iconic 'yoyoman' image on his then-fledgling yoyoskills. it has to include the tumult and uproar with which my friend steve left the company, and his description of his treatment by the brass. it has to include perplexing, alienating stuff like this, with the result that i like the company... but find it hard not to hate the COMPANY.

personally, i'm not really a 5a player. i mean i enjoy it, but i'm not out there coming out with new stuff (at least not new stuff that isn't stupid). the north carolinian in me certainly objects to being reminded that a style of yoyoing i enjoy is OWNED by a bunch of suits. i highly doubt that any of the flambeau legal a-team will parachute into my yo-yo club or break up my corner-store shows to serve me with papers. that's not really the point. even though duncan's intentions could be seen as in the interest of self-preservation... it still leaves ordinary yo-yoers hurt and confused to be effectively told that '5a doesn't belong to you.' and the pain and confusion may be compounded if, as the smoke clears, our most dominant and creative 5a demi-gods are no longer able to express themselves 'freely'.

that reminds me of a quote i recently reread. it's from the yoyoguy forum way back in 99, when steve brown had only just revealed his new discovery. it was being suggested that he patent 5a, and his response was as follows.

For me to patent a style of yo-yo play would be silly. First off, that would assume that I had the money for the patent in the first place. Second, that would assume I was making enough money off the patent to be able to defend it. And third, I am not really big on all that lawsuit crap. It's what killed Duncan in the 60's, I see no reason to be part of THAT tradition. It's FreeHand, and it's free. If you want it, take it. Just let it be known that I found it, that's all I ask. (Please note that I take no credit for CREATING it....it already existed, I just found it. Yo-Yo tricks cannot be created or destroyed....much like matter.)

how ironic that, given these sentiments, all of this has come to pass. it WAS patented, and the patent was sold to duncan for royalties (duncan, which surely DOES have the money to be able to defend it)... and now until the big d steps forward to offer some concrete standards for what will and will not be tolerated, the perception that said patent is being held over the heads of companies (and by proxy, yo-yo players) is likely to hold. ... 'FreeHand' indeed... funny old world.

anyways, i don't want to give the impression that i'm too butthurt about it, or that i don't think duncan has a point in trying to protect their property. i think, i (like most every yo-yoer) just want to see how things will shake out. it's a very cloudy business trying to maintain control of a style that has always prided itself on free expression. it's also tough to overcome inertia, and part of me will be surprised if 5a truly sustains any damage over this. of all the play styles, freehand feels the most irrepressible and resilient. the style is like a constantly-evolving organism. the materials may be owned, the 'technique' or 'idea' may be owned, but how do you own something that is as alive as all the players who have breathed fire into it this past decade? it belongs to duncan... but it cannot belong to duncan more than it belongs to yo-yoers.

for my part, i just threw some of my [embarrassingly poor] freehand a minute ago, and think i may do so again momentarily. i must admit that did not use this 8-bit freehand (or any duncan), which is a solid, wonderful player that has never let me down. i did so to remind myself that no matter how the winds of the yo-yo world may howl (and they don't howl so loud when you think about it), and no matter what page 37, paragraph 3, item xiv may say... my yo-yoing always, always belongs to me... yes it does.

... yes it does.

edit: this release was just put out by duncan, and seeing as they did exactly as so many in the community have clamored for (in responding clearly and directly), i wanted to revisit this and share my reaction. click if you like.

yo-yo #80: OLD filligree mandala

2010-07-29T13:50:00.001-04:00

the other day, my good friend (and yo-yo superstar) jensen kimmett, showed me a video of a pair of bearded brothers from new york who run a chocolate business. now, i love chocolate, and it must be understood that they probably could have talked about anything... or even just hooted and grunted... and i still would have enjoyed the piece. however, jensen introduced the vid by suggesting that these guys are 'the CLYW of chocolate makers', so naturally i paid special attention to their approach to chocolate so as to discern his meaning. and i'm glad i did.

to save you from the need to watch the video (which i think you should, because it's neat)... the mast brothers don't just make as much chocolate as they can and get it into every big-box store possible. rather they take pride in making a little delicious and unique chocolate agonizingly slowly with care, they select the best cacao beans and painstakingly wrap the bars they make in thick, artfully decorated butcher paper. they're even planning a sailing trip across the atlantic to scout out new sources of the precious beans. the way they view chocolate is refreshing. they see it as a CRAFT; as a worthy expenditure of their time and energy... as a lifelong challenge.

it got me thinking about the make-up of our yo-yo world. i'm proud to be a yo-yoer for many reasons. however, i think that one of the most clear of these is the dedication to 'the craft'. we live in an age where 'craft' has become an anomaly. just a few generations ago, whatever devices upon which you relied upon, you needed to thoroughly understand so as to keep them working. the lakota on the prairie HAD to understand the crafts associated with turning a living, breathing bison into tools, shelter, and food... or else he had none. the 18th century blacksmith worked long hours over a sweltering furnace, handling rough tools from which most modern hands would shrink... not just to express his artistic spirit, but to provide for himself, his family, and his village. understanding one's craft was, until very recently, essential for any productive member of a society.

i think that, in this world of decadent convenience wherein we find ourselves, yo-yo players and makers feast upon our respective crafts, self-indulgent though they may be. you do not truly need to master a craft today to get along. in fact, devoid of incentive or clear reward, most people don't. you can spend your day in a cubicle selling policies you barely understand, pick up kfc on the drive home, fill your car up with gas that 'magically' pours from the pump, and fall asleep watching television in air-conditioned comfort... and society will tell you that you're 'doing well for yourself'. (consider, i don't intend to berate people who choose to live their lives in such a way - just to intimate that you don't need to 'do' or 'make' much today to be 'a success'.)

in part BECAUSE of this truth, we are entering into an age where one's craft holds a new and invigorating value. in a society where it's not 'necessary', taking something seriously and putting the full measure of one's energy to it reveals a quality of thoughtfulness and patience that can seem alarmingly outmoded. perhaps BECAUSE we have dissociated ourselves from 'where our things com from', well-made, hand-crafted objects are now enjoying a renaissance. selvedge denim, fitted wool caps, artisan beers, 'crafted' chocolate... it feels somehow edgy and rebellious to dedicate one's self to a craft. and in this age of brilliant machinery, it's exciting to handle a thing made with real, human care.

this example of the beloved no jive 3-in-1 is the 'filligree' mandala. though i don't have exact dates, it was made at some point in the 80's, features the standard 'take-apart' construction that was introduced by the model, and is probably the most stunningly engraved yo-yo i've ever seen (the more modern version of the same engraving hardly even looks like the same model). i prefer a yo-yo like this one because you can really see what went into it. this particular model is made of beautiful, aged hard rock maple. although beaten to a pulp by unforgiving years, it still spins beautifully, and the care, depth, and precision of the engraving makes it a true heirloom (to me). the hex nut has been overtightened a bit (something i know how to fix), and it could use some tuning. but then, so could we all. it certainly isn't a perfect throw. any genesis-armed teenager at a contest would probably scoff at this old woody's vibe following 'the fingernail test'. like any take apart wood yo-yo, you have to blend with it, find the sweet spot, accept its flaws (as you do your own). and like any fixed axle, it's not going to allow you the luxury of time in executing your tricks. you've got now - best to use it.

in a world that values function over form, it's an anomaly. but like the mast brothers' chocolate, this kind of yo-yo isn't necessarily meant to be 'a consistent' product. in fact, in some respects, it's meant to be the opposite, since the medium is inherently inconsistent. this, however, brings into relief its authenticity. this toy was turned back when tom ran the old san francisco workshop. he did it not for wealth or glory but for the simple love of the craft, and of yo-yoing. that truth alone makes a yo-yo like this a legitimate joy to play. when you care about a thing enough to inject your own meaning into your craft, you give something great and intangible to it; you soak it with an energy that does not dissipate with dings or chips or rotten days. i won't call it 'soul', which players love to attribute to their favorite throws... but it can make YOUR soul to want to burst from its shell while playing it.

though tom no longer makes new yo-yo's, we're truly blessed to be part of a micro-community that still brims with this attitude. a look at virtually all of the smaller manufacturers right now reveals a set of truly dedicated craftsmen, each ready and willing to put something of themselves into the beautiful toys they make for us. while not all hand-turned, the degree of attention put into planning, machining, and testing these yo-yo's will ensure that they're remembered as the heirlooms of tomorrow. support them and say thanks.

yo-yo #79: hspin good & evil 2: poison

2010-07-13T10:55:00.002-04:00

here's a yo-yo - a good & evil 2: poison. i've always liked this yo-yo.

ok, now that we've got THAT out of the way... i'm always intrigued by others' motivations for playing yo-yo. i'm big on the idea of awareness, and performing a sort of ongoing, live mental-autopsy on myself has become an ingrained habit. i've got a lot of 'extrinsic' reasons to yo-yo:

• i get a lot of attention (way more than i feel i deserve, actually).
• it's kind of offbeat and interesting; people like asking about it in line for coffee or what-have-you.
• kids love it.
• i can do it 'better' than other people.
• i can acquire lots of shiny things.

by and large... all of those reasons stink for me. momentarily comforting though they may be, i see gaping holes in all of them. if, on the path of yo, you use some combination of those as your 'compass', i think you'll get lost and get really, really tired of it. now, you may not see it that way, and i actually do appreciate that. i recognize that i don't speak for anyone else and i don't mean to preach... but i mean... you know me; i am anyway. (and i'll probably use too many semi-colons in the process.)

as awful and incomplete as i find those 'most apparent' reasons to play, i actually do see a number of reasons that ARE valid, and i aim to concentrate on those for a minute. being a yo-yoer IS awesome and worthwhile, and when i try to break it down (which is itself, a difficult and possibly counter-productive task), i come up with the following reasons to supplant those previously mentioned.

• the players: yo-yoers represent a really interesting cross-section of world culture. and while you get people from all kinds of backgrounds and with all sorts of differences, their passion for this ultra-specific mode of expression is a common thread (so to speak). over time, i've developed friendships with a lot of the perceived 'elite' yo-yo players (no, that is not meant to signify 'elitist'), and by and large, it's just fascinating how fully their talents permeate their personalities. most awesome yo-yoers aren't just awesome yo-yoers; they're multi-faceted people - artists, musicians, incredible dads, athletes, aesthetes, philosophers, designers... yo-yoing is something they happen to share, but expression just seems to leak (or blast) out of their every creative outlet. when yo-yoing is just one aspect of a person's makeup, it's so much easier to prevent burnout. i think the 'creative drive' is what i tend to find so compelling about 'yo-yo people' (more so than the yo-yoing). understand, i don't view yo-yoers as a reason to yo-yo in terms of some facebookian attitude of 'friend collecting'; rather the people can help you to view YOURSELF as the multi-faceted individual you are, and as a creative force. when you decide to place yourself not OVER other yo-yoers, but rather AMONG them, they possess the capacity to make you better, as a player and as a person.

• the tricks: i can absolutely lose my self in the tricks. note the "_" between my and self. when i'm throwing yo-yo, and really putting my energy into it, all of the interlocking preferences that i build my self into on any given day just tumble to the ground like misplayed jenga blocks. i don't care how my hair looks. i don't worry about being able to afford the new kicks i think i want. i don't t fuss about that co-worker who grates on me like a medieval hairshirt. i. just. throw. everyone needs something like that. it's available in virtually every pursuit - i just find it in yo-yo tricks. you need to find solace from your self ('a vacation from your problems', to quote 'what about bob'). it's no wonder at all that people who play yo-yo 'compulsively' and worry about 'the quality' of their play get really tired of it. they're allowing their selves (needs, wants, and haves) to keep bashing away at them as they play. maybe those folks should try knitting (i mean that seriously, with absolutely no offense intended).

• it's hard: it's supposed to be. while i wouldn't advocate for yo-yoing as a manifestation of roosevelt's ideal of 'the strenuous life' (hi, artofmanilness.com)... it's good to do things that you find difficult. yo-yoing revolves around the concept of overcoming difficulty. i CAN understand this hold. i WILL hit this trick. i AM going to learn two-handed loops. embracing yo-yoing means embracing that which you cannot yet do, which causes you to recognize your own weakness and inferiority. that realization only punishes those who would otherwise believe that they are great and strong. for a mature person, the recognition of our travails and ineptitude becomes fuel for growth. you don't just do it to collect and acquire tricks and paint them like little bombs onto the fuselage of your life. you do it to discover what you're made out of.

• it happens everywhere: sometimes i refer to my yo-yo as 'a temple in my pocket'. by that i mean you have access to the best part of yourself... always. a professional baseball player only gets to really, truly manifest his art and science on game day (and he needs a ball and bat, 9 friends and a big open field to do it). a great surfer needs a decent wave and a board (the former being frustratingly few and far between). you need virtually nothing to access your self while yo-yoing. a finger. a string. a yo-yo... maybe a pocket would be a nice. people gripe a lot about how much yo-yo x or y cost, but in comparison with essentially ANY OTHER HOBBY, yo-yoing remains delightfully accessible (particularly in the modern era where a cheap yo-yo can still do essentially everything). you don't even have to give anything else up; in fact you shouldn't! one of the best aspects of yo-yoing is its capacity for 'cross-pollination'. i imagine that the fact that the most incredible exponents of the art are also great at other endeavors is no coincidence. being a great painter HELPS you to be a more complete yo-yoer. understanding the rhythm of music HELPS you to understand the rhythm of a trick. it's not required that go off and live in monklike isolation working on yo-yoing all day long. not only will you burn out; you will suffer a worse artistic death - your yo-yoing will stagnate like some hidden, uninhabitable sulfuric pool.

• there is no finish line: you will never know everything. you will never be able to do every trick. you will die ignorant. embrace this. CELEBRATE IT, because it represents your most basic essence; the pulp of your humanity. not only is there always something new to try (some trick, some style, some variation)... it's always as evident and close-by as the next minor mistake. my wife says that 'boring people get bored', and it applies well to yo-yoing. if you can't see where to take your yo-yoing next, then you need to step back. our lives amount to picking a direction and walking in it. we have to choose, and our choice dictates the conditions of the next set of choices. make a choice and get walking.

we're people, and every person is out to 'get something'. if you've spent years forging yourself into a dominant yo-yo player (or a dominant forum entity), some part of you expects to 'get something' for your efforts (yes it does, liar, don't deny it). but whatever you think it will get you... pales in comparison with what you get if you find a way THROUGH that acquisitive spirit. to re-phrase: in letting go of trying to 'get something', you actually get something more valuable. your yo-yoing is suddenly 'on your side', and you don't need to fight with it. you don't need to slog your way through tricks so you can finally pass 'expert' and work on 'master'. you don't need to grope at people and convince them to subscribe to your youtube or mention you in the 5-daily 'favorite player' threads that constantly illuminate the boards. you don't need to worry about what you've got (respect, toys, attention, skills) - cause you've got all you need.

the [near-impossibly idealized] trade-off is... you have to recognize that in truth, you are a very small thing; at most a particle of yo-yoing (and of the world). you have to let go of the attention and praise (or lack thereof). you have to perceive that while your yo-yoing can reflect all that you perceive, it's not the only mode of expression available to you, and that obsessive overuse can lead to artistic ruin. you have to relinquish your grasp on all of the accoutrements and trappings that we HANG on yo-yoing, and become secure in the faith that just playing as you do and progressing as you can... is substantial and meaningful. (yeah, good luck with all that - to me as well.)

in the words of the immortal bard (by which i mean anthony kiedis), 'give it away, give it away, give it away, give it away now... i can't tell if i'm a kingpin or a pauper.'

yo-yo # 78: team losi cherry bomb

2010-07-01T22:16:00.001-04:00

i intended to write about something that i've since forgotten about. that's the kind of thing that happens when you strike yourself about the head with blunt objects.

not a yo-yo this time, actually. i AM getting used to my new loop 900's, but so far i haven't slammed myself with those. i've punched myself in the nog with pretty much every manner of yo-yo. probably the worst 'kablam' i've taken came at the hands of a galactic goose while filming some lame trick to show to drew and seth. that noise still haunts my dreams. i actually don't hit myself with loopers too much, and when i do - well, it's not like they've got a lot of mass. alas, no, tonight's round of self-inflicted trauma was performed with a sword... fortunately (for me) it was a wooden one.

when everybody goes to sleep around here (especially in the summer), i like to go outside to my 'dojo' under the oaks and work out a bit. back when stacy was in residency, she worked regular 30-hour shifts, so every other day, i didn't see her, and when i did she was too exhausted to do much more than ingest a few bites of rice krispies before passing out. in those days, with a three year-old daughter, i rarely made it out to my dojo, so the backyard became one. though our quality of life is exponentially improved now, training out back is a tradition that is too ingrained to neglect.

when i was little, i was afraid of the dark. i remember being terrified, not of grotesque monsters or nightmares... but of the dark itself, and its capacity to produce any sort of terror. i now understand that i was also afraid of the quiet, and of the fact that when enclosed within the night's silent blanket, you are utterly alone... with yourself. over the years, i have conscientiously flooded those fears by learning to sleep outdoors, by sitting outside in total, unforgiving blackness, and to some extent, by these rounds of 'night training'. if you're going to root out the splinter of your selfishness, you're going to have to spend a lot of energy exploring your fears. i'm working on it.

there is something almost narcotic about training alone at night, especially with a weapon like a sword, which is such an anachronism with regard to modern life. alone with myself (not unlike a child in bed) i find myself confronted with ideas with which i'm not always comfortable. like yo-yoing, it's become a way for me to communicate with myself, and once you've had some measure of that, the pull to continue is irresistible. i'm sure it's the same with runners, or people who paint those little metal soldiers, or what-have-you.

so tonight, i was performing a few basic sword katas from aikido, and probably pretty badly. my mind was jumping all over the place. i think i was vaguely imagining some romantic visage of some of the old aikido masters whom i hold in highest regard, performing these same kata on their own, refining their respective spirits (just like me, right?). and finally, in a moment of precient, merciful serendipity, i imagined that i shared a secret with those great masters: that out here, cutting through the night with a sword, there is clearly more to life than the mundane...

it was at that precise moment that my left hand slipped from the hilt of my bokken, the released pressure causing the back of the blade to swing around and nail me right above the left eye. it didn't hurt. i wasn't cut or anything... but the blow to my pride felt momentarily significant. there i was, acting like i had something in common with these 'great masters', when i obviously can't even handle the damn sword properly. what a doofus!

but in the next moment, it occurred to me that the blunder had nothing to do with my left hand, but with my state of mind. what sets the 'masters' apart, in every discipline, is focus. we say 'kime' in aikido (though i have no idea what that actually translates to); the concentration of the mind on the task at hand. sometimes it's wielding a sword. sometimes it's slicing zucchini. sometimes it's playing with a silly little spinning toy. my problem was that my mind was on other people, doing other things, outside of my control or influence... and i got whacked on the head for it. i'm thankful, because if i hadn't, i might have kept training with that mindset, which would have been a waste of a beautiful summer night...

i was swinging this oak sword around, with the implied idea that the night was somehow something MORE than what it was; MORE than life itself. but there is nothing more than life itself... or at least, nothing that i get to understand here and now. 'the fire cannot see the ashes,' as they say. the fleeting idea that there should be something 'beyond' the mundane betrays what an absolute beginner i am at life. in truth, the only thing that sets any 'master' apart as 'great' is his or her utter devotion TO the mundane. when you're holding a sword, don't ponder the mysteries of the universe... JUST HOLD THE FRICKIN' SWORD!

it's the exact same thing with yo-yo. how many thousands of times have i been 'idly' playing, my mind bouncing between faraway thoughts like a hyperactive cricket, only to pull into a glorious snag, yanking the yo-yo back prematurely into my knuckles? it happens especially often with a yo-yo like this: the team losi cherry bomb.

the brainchild of yo-yo renaissance guy, steve brown, the cherry bomb was the 2nd ball bearing yo-yo i ever played (after the raider). my girlfriend's little brother (now my brother-in-law) bought one at toys r us and showed it off. i immediately hated it, but only out of envy. it was way cooler looking than the raider. by that point though, i hadn't caught on to the whole 'butterfly shape' thing, as it would interfere with my mediocre loops. the losi line were among the first to feature an adjustable gap (albeit, it was only adjustable due to a pair of o-rings in the guts (a la the fast 201). still, it worked pretty well, and the cherry bomb allowed a level of string play for which i was not-yet ready.

the thing about c-bombs is that they break in pretty quick (way more so than the renegades which supplanted them as the dominant tool for y2k string-trickery). until they do, however, they will punish your knuckles like ruler-swinging nuns on a pack of truant, angus-young-clad schoolboys. for the first few days (or forever if you keep the gap small), EVERY TRICK requires your immediate attention, and the yo-yo is totally prepared to chastize you should you not comply. after awhile, the c-bomb feels kinda like a pet doberman. sure it could snap at you, but you've kind of learned that for the pair of you to get along... you just need to present and attentive. most yo-yo's out there today are nothing like that. for the most part, there is no break-in period. there is no punishment. we've grown to like our yo-yo's soft and cuddly and forgiving. i'm not saying it's a bad thing - but the lessons of the cherry bomb are lost on many.

is that a bad thing? are those lessons still relevant? i think they are. learning to play yo-yo with focus and care changes the way you approach all yo-yo's. when i'm throwing my shiny new, massive-gapped pro, it's easy to hit obscure, experimental, multi-layered tricks... but it's also easy to 'look away'; to go through the motions and play with a perfunctory, half-absent attitude. i know i'll hit the trick. there are no consequences, or even much in the way of communication between the thrower and 'the thrown'. throwing the same tricks on a cherry bomb is different. even if i'm absolutely present, the wind might blow funny and everything might snag into delicious oblivion. the trick is fragile; in perpetual jeopardy... not unlike life (though we trick ourselves into believing otherwise).

if you're going to play, play utterly. completely. totally. as though the string is the only thing separating heaven and earth. withhold absolutely no measure of yourself and your joy... and maybe in equal part, your pain. don't fuss about what it means or symbolizes. it means you playing with a yo-yo, and that's all. the nearly impossible task; the challenge for a lifetime... is recognizing that that right there is PLENTY. that the mundane IS the mystery of the universe.

people talk about how yo-yoing is meditative, and i guess it can be. but i think you have to be careful with the words you choose. personally, i never want yo-yoing to be transcendental. i never want yo-yoing to represent an 'escape'. for me, it's just about playing with 'the truth of the moment', which is at once a very light-hearted and yet absolutely serious thing. the universe is transient. i know i only have so many breaths and i may be one poorly-considered left-turn away from the last of them... if i'm going to use one of those moments yo-yoing? best believe i want to put everything i have behind it, and that includes not only my high-powered equipment and muscle memory (hi k-strass)... but also, most critically, my focus.

in today's world, you can buy the app, and then... you have it. you can refer to it whenever you need to make that perfect carbonara or check the map of reykjavik (i spelled that right first try!). but there is no app for real understanding. there is no app for kime. people are so used to the rhythm of 'buying and having', they want to say 'i understood once, so i understand now,' but it doesn't work like that. you have to keep trying to understand; keep bringing the world into focus; keep feeling the simple magnitude of the simple, the trivial, the everyday. it's not just in the great and romantic moments where we design our character... it happens as we brush our teeth or take out the garbage. the power and meaning of yo-yoing are not only available in the moment when we finally hit that elusive trick or win worlds... but also in all of the misses and tangles and string-burnt snap-starts that tie our tiny glories together. you have to keep inventing your understanding in every throw. the beauty is... you'll never run out.

yo-yo #77: raw bc blank

2010-05-07T09:00:00.001-04:00

it occurs to me that i'm of the last generation of yo-yoer's who learned to throw during a time when transaxles and ball bearings were not widely available. although, somewhat ironically, my first yo-yo was a yomega brain, i traded it away for what was essentially a glorified imperial. fixed axle yo-yoing was just 'yo-yoing' in the 1980's, and for most of the 90's. and while i wasn't a 'serious' player by any stretch (and thank god for that as a child), i think you never really get away from how you defined yo-yoing when you were first exposed to it. my old teacher, the composer thomas oboe lee, once told me that as you 'grow up', you begin to take the greatest delight in the music you heard as a child - that's 'what music is' to you, and you come back to it.

this yo-yo was given to me by matt carter. when i first became aware of the online community, matt was already an established 'yo-yo artisan' with his own aesthetic-mod forum at dave's skill toys. at the time i was much more concerned with function than with form, and i largely ignored his corner, though i'd been regularly impressed by his work.

i got to meet matt at ma states this year, and even played one of his 'crow'd fusions', which i found gratifyingly similar to the flying v in play. although it was not clear to me before this year, matt is hardcore about his wood yo-yo's. i figured he'd dig no jives, seeing as he designed the graphics for at least 3 of the 'modern mandalas', but throwing wood really is his bag. we're kindred spirits in the 'school of lo-fi'.

he handed me this yo-yo at the contest and asked me to throw it around. it's a late 90's blank from the workshop of brad countryman, purveyor of the hummingbird and bc lines, and later tom kuhn yo-yo's. while the bc-era no jives are generally seen as being slightly inferior to those of the san francisco days, he's always had the fixed gap, glued-construction woody completely dialed. this example being no exception, it slid along on the string like molten butter on glass, and i was surprised when matt told me that he, himself had put it together from the parts.

though i protested for a second (or maybe just pretended to), he bade me keep it; to finish it up on my own - paint it or carve it. i've actually left it alone, owing to my sense that i really couldn't add to its simple perfection in any constructive way. he actually gave me another, in parts, to assemble and finish on my own. for whatever reason, it's still in pieces in a cloth bag... perhaps because this one plays so well.

yesterday, i was talking to my friend drew. as usual, we were discussing one thing, and gradually, like some heliocentric plant, our discussion naturally bent toward yo-yoing. drew's planning on buying a longboard, and we were discussing different models. i've frequently highlighted the distinctions between ball bearing and wood axle yo-yo's, and how they compare with other tools of 'dynamic art'. electric vs. acoustic guitars, new school vs. retro surfboards... standard 'trick' skateboards vs. longboards. in each case, the exponents of the former tend to focus on 'results' (fast, progressive shredding, 'destroying the wave', tré flips to smith grinds) while the latter tend to emphasize an attitude of 'cruising'. certainly there are people who attack an acoustic guitar with blindingly fast arpeggios, and i'm not gonna lie - i could hit some pretty complicated tricks on this yo-yo... but i'm not INCLINED to. and i like that i'm not.

as i told drew (and as egomaniacal as it feels typing this), i'd like to develop myself in to the 'gerry lopez' of yo-yoing; and not (please understand) in terms of recognition. it's true that as a surfer, lopez was unmatched, known as 'mr. pipeline' throughout the 70's. he cultivated a tremendous style that became immediately recognizable on any wave. what i find far more impressive, however, is the fact that he has aged with absolute grace. by his own admission, he can't go out and surf pipe at 62 the way he did when he was younger, or the way the young lions attack it now. but he continues to surf, with dignity and elegance, and he seems to treat every wave like it's a gift - which of course, it is. though he was once one of the most celebrated surfers of his era, he's absolutely the kind of guy you can imagine standing waist deep in the shorebreak, pushing some kid into his first wave... without even telling him his name. unlike gerry, my name really IS irrelevant, but i still want to 'be that guy'.

this is the kind of yo-yo i'd like to throw as i grow old (should i be so lucky). i once heard a compelling comparison between psychoanalysis and art. both are designed to explore the inner intricacies and compulsions of the human mind. what divides the two, however, is what's done with the discoveries. when psychoanalysis arrives at a discovery, it holds on to it, applying the truth to one's life and actions and attitudes. when art makes a discovery, it lets the discovery go. when an artist tries to rehash the same idea again and again without moving forward, the result tends to feel unnatural; forced, obscene, stagnant. art's got to be allowed to move on. i don't see myself as old, but i'm acutely aware of the direction in which my yo-yoing is headed. where a couple years ago coming up with a complicated combo would feel fulfilling to me, now i'm more interested in being aware of how a yo-yo feels at it spins, or in the 'thwack' of the wood as it connects with my palm. it's not a lot... just everything.

i don't really believe in the idea of 'transcendence' (at least in terms of moving 'beyond' this moment or place)... but i like the idea of growing past the compulsion to 'do tricks'; at least the fancy ones. i love watching the insanity my friends come up with on a yo-yo, but the older i get, the more the ideal of 'complexity' seems to shrink off into the horizon. when i'm old, i'd like to be the 'archetypical old guy', shooting the moon in the park, approached by some kid who aims to show me up with his new-fangled toy and new-fangled skill... i'd like to be secure enough to let him. a heavily idealized image, to be sure, but it reflects my desire to 'move on toward simplicity'.

i'd like to find the way to apply gerry lopez's 'soul arch' to yo-yoing, and to let that be enough.
because it really is.

yo-yo #76: 'tomoe'

2010-04-17T21:40:00.001-04:00

the toy spins
licked by the fire of innocent skin
its whisper-whir breathes
with the hum of free dragonflies
its coils caress
the memory of all summers
intimacies of wood and twine-
young things twirl while
old things remember
drunk in the perfume-haze
of unlocking july
our boy assumes the stars
will turn for him, for ever

but years protrude
like brambles, bloodsharp
as by demons coaxed
from calloused earth
hard work to buy the ground
and hard tools to work it
so joy-like pus
oozes now from drycracked hands
cherished toys are hawked or locked
into dust-colored boxes
there was no then, it seems
and tomorrow is today plus
one more little death
space-dreams and useless loves
must go to seed

with the insignificance and fury
of sodacan explosions
boys die boys-
and fool-men pray on gravel-knees
toward wealthy gods
and candy whores
the wheels of want
turn too, but with an angry noise
all walls and teeth
the song of iron
makes real the sin and stutter of alive
the last electric ghost of childhood
is drowned beneath boot-rhythms
there is no twine which will not rot
there are no toys in hell

all fallendown his warm
blood now imbibed by foreign grass
no boys are left
to whom he might bequeath a box
the artifacts of a september breeze
a ticket stub, now leathersoft
a ribbon soaked with brown-hair smell
a photograph of smilelines and trees
a spinning top (which seemed to breathe
one afternoon
before the water stank with hate)
the world ago
all lost and scattered
waspwings crushed by winter

every thing waits
the air inhales-

-then nervous bird hands
black with pain, white with hunger
past an inch of worms and dreams
explore the soil of tragic lands
find now the so-neglected
toy all mangle-stained
with dirt and days etched deep
with writhing scars-
and tiny joys
all still caressed (they do not fade)
the tapestries of innocence
the shadows of a hopeful heart

mend now the broken world, our girl
please spin (again) the stars

yo-yo #'s 74 & 75: sleep machines

2010-03-18T08:06:00.001-04:00

in 1992, when the sleep machine was first launched by tom kuhn's small san fransisco yo-yo workshop, i was still a kid. i was a huge fan of the sf giants (and specifically of will clark, having collected over 300 of his baseball cards). it was a time when you could get away with wearing wind-pants (or worse, Zubas©) to school, when you had to wait until saturday morning for 'good' cartoons, and when toys still felt like toys.

the 2nd production ball bearing yo-yo, the sleep machine (and its imperial-shaped counterpart, the roller woody) was an anomaly from its conception. it's fascinating to consider the yo-yo landscape of that era. the silver bullet and sb-2 were the only aluminum models. with the exception of the yomega brain (and fireball?), there were no plastic transaxles to be had. it was an era when every good yo-yo player out there still relied on a wooden, fixed axle models, not to be stoic, but because they were the best tools available. even the sb-2 was perceived by the elite as a bizarre novelty and mediocre player (on account of its inconsistent looping ability and slippy response).

tom kuhn created the sleep machine and roller woody in order to bring performance 'guts' into a more acceptable wooden 'package'. while it features the same axle and [brilliant] gap adjustment tool as the sb-2, its maple body is extremely delicate and prone to cracking when overtightened. the bearing is tiny by comparison with today's models (which would have seemed ridiculously gargantuan 18 years ago), but amazingly, a stock sleep machine can handle pretty much anything you want to throw at it. they featured linen 'turbo discs', which were the first friction stickers, as the bearing necessitated some means to compensate with the lack of response (the yo-yo actually comes complete with instructions for double looping the string... pad printed on its inner walls!)

yesterday, i read a question posed to the boards that i've considered many times: 'are ball bearings cheating?'

this question has been debated so hotly over the years of internet-yoyo-blathering that i find it remarkable whenever i read it, as if we should have reached some consensus and moved on. some of the first posts on the oldest yo-yo forum, yoyoing.com/news, are dedicated to the argument that the only 'real' yo-yoing is fixed axle yo-yoing.

i no longer believe that (i did once), and i doubt the original participants do either. i learned trapeze on an old fixed axle (again, not because i was hardcore, but because it was all i had), and i remember at the time feeling as though the idea of going 'beyond' the technicality of that trick would have amounted to a pipe-dream with extra grandeur. the first time i threw a raider (see below), i easily doubled my longest sleeper ever. a few throws later i tried my hardest trick, braintwister, and i think i did about 8 revolutions (having never done more than 1), laughing with my head thrown back as though riding a convertible on the autobahn.

after those initial tricks, i felt a little dirty. i felt like i was playing contra, having already punched in the konami code. i knew i didn't 'deserve' a minute-long sleeper or the ability to pause 10 seconds just to 'admire' trapeze. these new-found powers had been paid for by technological ideas not-my-own... but the question of 'just how far can i take this?' is a seductive temptress... and it should be.

besides, who am i cheating? 90% of the time, when i'm yo-yoing, it's just me and the yo-yo. am i cheating the yo-yo? i don't think it cares, or at least, it's never spoken up. am i cheating myself? even if i grind harder than ever to push the range of what i can do with a bearing? can a person who works at yo-yoing for 8 hours a day be cheating, regardless of the materials they use? there's no one else to cheat. i've never really been a competitive player, and even if i were, from as far back as 1995 on, transaxle players were prevented from playing in the same division as fixed axle players. in the aforementioned conversation, kyle weems said 'cheating implies that you have an unfair advantage'... so if there's no implied advantage?

the question is not really whether or not ball bearings are 'cheating', but rather whether or not they are 'destructive'. certainly they have catalyzed a dramatic mutation in the way we approach our play. if you took your yo-yo back in time 40 years, it would probably be only vaguely understood as yo-yoing at all. if those changes are understood to be 'bad', then ball bearings have pulled us in a negative direction (or rather, we have allowed them to).

ball bearings have allowed yo-yoers to go from zero to sixty in an instant (both literally and figuratively). i read another post the other day, asking for how long people had played. inevitably, the responses (most of which betrayed obvious youth) were along the lines of 'eight months - i'm on master.' don't get me wrong - i appreciate the importance of BELIEVING yourself to be approaching mastery, and the tendency to do so while growing up. investing in such a belief, however, which ball bearing yo-yo's allow for... could be seen as a means of cheating oneself, and the inevitable let-down once one sheds the delusion can be devastating.

i think everyone has known some incorrigable, hey-kid-get-off-the-lawn curmudgeon who wants to regale you with stories of walking eight miles to school in the snow (uphill, both ways). they've read 'the greatest generation' 6 times (12, counting the audiobook), and they remember wistfully when america felt self-sufficient and a force for good, rather than a gradually-devolving series of strip malls and strip joints. those are the kinds of guys whom you'd expect to tell you that playing your ball bearing yo-yo makes you less of a man; that its complacent, benevolent technology allows you to 'get away' with shenanigans for which you 'deserve' to be whacked about the knuckles.

i buy part of that. i do. in some respects, i've become the 'get-off-the-lawn' guy... but only ever to myself (i hope), and i think that's the way it should be. i think you should be your harshest critic... and also your most fervent supporter. i wouldn't pay any mind to some snot-nosed kid betting me i can't hit 'trick x' on my no jive... but do i pay mind when I say it? you bet. likewise, i don't go around criticizing people for the way they play, because i expect them to do that for themselves.

i don't believe that yo-yoing is dying some overbloated, decadent death, drowning in the warm milky bliss that bearings offer. i don't think we've been seduced by the 'dark side' that some of us assumed the technology would come to represent. i'm not sure how anyone could watch john ando or guy wright and claim that we're headed in the wrong direction. yo-yoing is ever on the move, and it really always has been. it hit us 'old folks' hard when bearings became ubiquitous, because it was a technological lightning bolt that revealed all of our assumptions (and many of our treasured skills) to be outmoded in its instantaneous flash. the field of play was warped, and suddenly creativity was rewarded ahead of effort and persistence. collectively, we're still working out how to cope with that upheaval.

you can look at essentially every technological development in our history. the printing press, the automobile... the sham-wow. if you want to experience the joy of a quill tracing across paper, then a movable-type printing press is not cheating... it's ineffective; superfluous. if you want to hike the appalachian trail, you will not feel 'slow' for not being in a car. if you crave the tone of a martin acoustic, a stratocaster just will not do. the only dissonance enters when you don't fully understand what you intend or mean.

i play wood axle yo-yo's an awful lot, and sometimes people ask me why i'm on spyy. i should think it's obvious. dynamic as it is, every attempt to grasp yo-yoing and pin it down is doomed to fail. because it is linked to our creative human spirit, there will always be a new direction in which to go; a new technology to employ and explore. sometimes, i want to experience cotton and wood sliding against each other (a sensation the like of which i have found no where else). sometimes, i want the yo-yo and string to 'get out of the way', allowing me to explore obscure and complex ideas. each perspective informs the other. neither is wrong. neither is destructive. neither is cheating.

i've said it before - yoyoing is an art. and try though you might, you really can't cheat at art, for which the subversion of our most cleverly-devised rules is an inherent proclivity. you might succeed in conning yourself occasionally, but that is pathetic rather than shameful or devious. by all means though, break those rules which you perceive. TRY to cheat... you might just inspire the next great mutation.

yo-yo #73: THP raider

2010-02-25T13:46:00.001-05:00

... boom.

good lord, it's all i hear about lately. we're gonna wake up in a few weeks and yo-yo's are going to be everywhere, and we'll all be superstars, and sunshine and rainbows will cover the earth. and then what?

seriously, the community is all atwitter with news of an imminent 'yo-yo swell'. yyf and duncan are reporting serious sales increases. we've got the giganthomous hyper©®™ promotion going on in japan. you can suddenly buy yo-yo's (of a sort...) at walgreens for $4. guys like paul yath and paul han (pretty much the two best pauls i can imagine - oh hi, escolar!) are popping up in nice new marketing campaigns. and then there's this razor thing...

i don't want to get in a big tizzy over it. i already did that and got it out of my system. i like yo-yoing. i've done it for a fair while. most of the folks whom i'd call my best friends are yo-yoers. i want good things to happen to yo-yoing. but what does that mean.

the majority of people i hear talking about it seem to be under the impression that a boom is exactly what every yo-yoer has been waiting for. but let's examine that.

a boom is characterized by a sudden surge in popularity. people will want to yo-yo. retailers and manufacturers (some of whom are in the game now, and some of whom will jump on board as it happens) will respond to perceived demand by generating a much greater supply of yo-yo's and accessories, and putting those products within reach of the non-yoyoing public. people will buy said yo-yo's, which will generate awesome profits for the companies involved (if you have the startup to make and sell a million plastic yo-yo's, and the network to get them into retail stores, the profits can be immense). for awhile - maybe a few months, maybe a few years - there will be a metric ton of new yo-yo players, most of whom will obviously be total novices.

the issue with a boom is that (by its very nature) it must be followed by a bust. given a quick surge, there will come a time when yo-yo's are so ubiquitous that they are no longer in demand. if markets have not been prepared in a sustainable way (i.e. if kids lack the means to get good at yo-yoing and the desire to stick with it), then people will stop buying yo-yo's relatively quickly. if there are events, promotions, and learning tools in place to keep yo-yoing interesting, the boom may be prolonged. regardless, manufacturers and retailers will need to be extremely flexible and wary amidst the chaos, so as to position themselves properly for the inevitable bust. around y2k, when the last boom evaporated, seemingly overnight, HUGE amounts of product were left over. retailers found themselves selling it off cheaply, sometimes at a loss, and having misread the demand, a number of manufacturers were left choking on stockpiles of yo-yo's.

i bought this yo-yo in 1998. actually i bought a pair, a blue and a black. at some point much later, i foolishly tried the raider crush mod on one of them and destroyed it. at the time i bought it (for $30), you couldn't find them. they were sold out everywhere and i happened to be in zany brainy when the shipment arrived. THP of course, refers to Team High Performance, the teal-clad engine of yo-yo domination that burst onto the scene with their fancy transaxles. although boom-icon jennifer baybrook and such luminaries as paul han, ryan lai, and pat cuartero were members, i really didn't know much about them aside from their loud shirts and the card-full of difficult tricks you had to master to make the team. this yo-yo spun forever - for. ev. er. and once it broke in, it made tricks like split the atom or hydrogen bomb (which used to separate the men from the boys) positively easy.

by the end of the boom, a bazillion yo-yo's had been sold, but the number of people who kept with it afterwards was comparatively tiny. companies are businesses, and a number of them had to push the eject button, escaping from the market altogether with fistfulls of cash (or, if they were too slow, buried in debt). the community was shuffled up a bit, and yo-yoing went back to being a kind of 'niche' thing.

it's worth asking who stands to benefit from a boom? the companies who are well-positioned for one; namely those with the capacity to make large amounts of entry-level yo-yo's available to consumers. as of now, companies like duncan and yoyofactory have demonstrated this ability. both of those companies can put $10 throws in retail stores, sell them by the truck load, and make a killing. also, having invested a great deal in the yo-yo community during the intervening years, those are the companies with the most to gain in KEEPING yo-yoing popular. i think that, lacking some specifically bad experience with either, anyone who would call themselves a yo-yoer should want those two companies to do well. they sponsor contests. they push the standard of quality forward. they interact with the community, and frequently respond to its demands.

companies like peter fish or razor, who clearly have the ability to sell a lot of yo-yo's, but who have yet to demonstrate accountability to the community, are likely to make a bunch of money and then run away. nothing personal; just business. maybe they'll prove me wrong. it'll be on yo-yoers to watch these new companies and determine whether they're invested in yo-yoing, or whether they just mean to use it to bathe in duckets. it should be pretty obvious. so far, neither company has really 'given' anything to yo-yoing - no high-quality product, no sponsored events, no interaction with the community or the online stores. if they want to be perceived as caring about yo-yoing, those things will change. if not, they'll stay the same.

the boutique metal companies don't really have the means to interact with boom-consumers directly. no beginner will go online to buy a super-expensive first yo-yo when they can buy a speedle at TRU for $8, and few retail stores will sign up for the risk associated with carrying expensive throws. i remember when the last boom puked its last, and my local Hobby Lobby was desperately marking down SB-2's and cold fusions from $120+ to <$30. companies like clyw, spyy, and one drop can market their butts off, but on some level they'll have to hope that beginners latch on, see the pros throwing expensive metals, and decide follow suit. though that may happen to some extent, i doubt those companies will be raking in the kind of coin that those with entry-level plastics will see. if we could slow the boom down, and players who get into it have an opportunity to mature... the smaller high-end companies could stand to gain greatly, and the community would benefit from the new blood. i think it's also reasonable to ask oneself why a boom is desirable. some kids want yo-yoing to be popular so that they, themselves will be. i feel like that's kind of sad, although no more so than the kids who DON'T want yo-yoing to be popular so that they'll be perceived as unique and interesting. if you like yo-yoing (or love it), it makes sense to want to see it expand. but remember that there's a difference between expansion and unchecked, cancerous growth. after the latter, you might not recognize the landscape of yo-yoing at all. in my opinion, what we want to see is not this protracted cycle of boom/bust, but more managed and sustained development. i want to see yo-yoing grow in popularity, gain mainstream appeal, and see the companies that give a crap about it rewarded for their years of effort. i don't think that's what a boom really does, however. consider the landscape of the last boom. in 1996, yo-yoing was pretty dead. there weren't a lot of people doing it, and being good at it seemed impossibly hard. in 1999, it was inescapably everywhere, everyone and your mom was yo-yoing, and new technology made it seem like being good at it was possible. then by 2002, it was pretty dead; many of the new players had quit, and the standard of play had been reset, making it once again seem difficult and obscure. how much better would it be for a yyf, yyj, or duncan to experience 15 years of incrementally growing popularity, rather than 3 years of killing it (and potentially 1 being left with a warehouse of yo-yo's they can't sell)? if instead of the boom model, we could see yo-yo companies (and the community) enjoy that sort of gradual growth, i think it would be preferable. most of the yo-yoers i know would like yo-yoing to be a big deal again. they'd like it to be seen and appreciated as the hybrid sport/performance art that it is. they'd like every kid to have a yo-yo in his/her pocket. booms are pretty successful in GETTING those yo-yo's there, but to KEEP them in kids' pockets (or better yet - on their fingers) takes a different, more patient approach. i hope we find that our companies are up for that. i think that some of them will be, and some will miss out (thanks, cptn. obvious!). the scene isn't what it was 13 years ago. the culture isn't the same. some people feel that a boom of the same scope isn't even possible, because kids won't latch on in the same way. 'good yo-yoing' has become extremely technical, and while the technology allows a kid to throw a minute-long sleeper on a few minutes of practice... it still takes months to get 'ok'. are kids today up for that? i guess we'll find out.

if it does come to pass, i hope that we as yo-yoers are able to keep our wits about us. i hope that we're able to use our voice and experience to advocate for those companies which have worked to enrich our experience for years even without a boom. i hope that we're able to express to those just starting up that this is a pretty bitchin' deal we've got going here (if you'll pardon the vernacular); that it's well worth the effort.

i pick this yo-yo up and feel a little conflicted. on the one hand i remember how exciting it was when yo-yo's were suddenly everywhere - how it felt like a movement, the sole object of which was FUN. on the other, i remember how lame it felt for that movement to suddenly asphyxiate in the night. i want to see my friends rewarded for their skill and for their work. i want guys like steve brown and john higby to be able to tack a zero on to their average audience size (and their performance fee). i want guys like ben and hans to be able to retire to the polynesian island of their choosing. i want to see yo-yoing take its place on the pulse of pop consciousness once again... i just don't want to watch it explode into emptiness the way it did before.

yo-yo #72: 66

2010-01-29T09:50:00.001-05:00

i really didn't intend for this to happen.

a couple months ago, i jotted down some yo-yo rules, which turned into some more, and which a few people read. now i've got a yo-yo and a comic with my likeness on it, illustrating the lot of em in a quirky cartoon-folk-art style. crazy.

collaborating with john higby has been a whirlwind dream. i feel as i imagine a young streetball player would if he were approached by magic johnson and asked to play one-on-one. awed, maybe a little confused... but 'OF COURSE!' in this case, magic plays yo-yo, and though known for his showmanship and art all over the world, he liked my idea and wanted to run with it in his way.

about 5 weeks and many e-mails later, i received a huge parcel with several examples of the finished product, along with some of the original artwork created by john. to call this stuff priceless to me would be an obvious understatement. it's cartoon-yo-yo-ME! mind you, it doesn't make me feel more important - more as a tugboat would if tied to the back of a luxury cruise-liner. 'we're going to the caribbean? ... mmmok!'

i like proflys. i like them a great deal. compared with pretty much every 'popular' yo-yo out there, they aren't easy to work with at all. before the axle breaks in, they can be downright snagalicious. and even after they do, the teeny gap is a harsh mistress, punishing hubristic hands which would try to control her. what john does to clear yo-yo's is positively insane. i have one clear '66', but i'm really only keeping it that way to provide a controlled counterpoint, standing out in relief next to the paint explosion pervading its peers. my favorite (the one in the foreground of the first pic) looks like it's teeming with multi-colored bacteria. during spin (or still), it seems to pulsate with a fecundity that no splash-ano on the planet could match. another example calls to mind swirling galaxies from the old charles & ray eames video 'powers of ten'. it makes me feel tiny (and huge).

playing them is a joy, and a lesson in humility. a mature person will not see the two as mutually exclusive.

i'm used to playing wood axles now. i prefer it, not because 'it's so zen' or because 'it makes me feel fancy'. i just prefer it; i prefer the tricks i do and the way that i approach them. i play my flying v's a ton, but i'm always looking for ways to make them feel more like wood, which i realize seems a little counter-intuitive to most people. a thin bearing caked with thick lube does the job, as does breaking open said thin bearing and using the inner race as a fixed axle (props to steve buffel for that idea).

this past week, matt carter reappeared on yoyonation. under the alias 'scarecrow', matt was a fixture on the old skill toys board, and recognized for his aesthetic talents (it was he who designed the graphics for both the quatle and celtic no jives - remember those?). talking to him reminded me of another yo-yoer from the past, one who (unfortunately), i have yet to meet: mr. bill alton.

mr. alton wrote a great newsletter in the early 90's called 'the noble disk', and even a book called 'the care and operation of the noble disk'. the book is particularly great, and takes a novice reader through the nuances of yo-yo play from 'beginner to advanced'. what's awesome about it is the fact that it was published in 1996, so all of the standards are going on 14 years old. alton boasts about his 12 second no jive sleeper (14 with a proyo), and describes a time when the differences between looping and string tricks were not yet so delineated. yo-yoing was a simpler (and perhaps more difficult) thing back then, and though i certainly don't 'rue the boom' or wish to turn back the clock, i do think that our present yo-yo culture could stand to relearn some of the lessons of the past.

it seems as though every time i check a yo-yo board, i'm confronted with some variation of the question 'i just did _________, is that good?'

exponentially-expanded technology has enabled yo-yoing to become so vast and complicated that it's no longer easily divided. completing x, y, or z alone won't make you a master, or expert or whatever. yo-yoing makes you a yo-yoer, and that's plenty. one of the defining hallmarks of adolescents is the 'desire to arrive' at something (yeah i used to be one too), so i can't expect them to fully 'get' that concept... but i do hope our next generation will find the patience to appreciate their own rate of development for what it is. imagine playing yo-yo for years, with a 12-second sleeper being the clearest result of efforts. imagine the time before youtube and regular contests, whence you might go YEARS between seeing yo-yoers of your own skill. it's only been one generation, but somehow the kind of patience and persistence it takes to accommodate those obstacles would seem ludicrous to much of our community now.

however, the point remains today. in a world where everyone knows kamikaze, the ability to do hydrogen bomb is not 'valuable' on its own. what's valuable is the WORK you apply to your craft. in the end, the work is the result; the journey is the end. the old guard understood this because they had to. otherwise, why on earth would they have persisted? i don't think you have to play a no jive or profly to understand (maybe i do, but that's my problem). i think all you have to do is recognize that there's NO end. you will never 'arrive'. unfortunately, that truth is really difficult for some people to swallow.

you want to be good at yo-yoing? really commit to it, and you will be. you want to be GREAT? commit to it for a lifetime... and you might be.

yo-yo #71: duncan o-boy

2010-01-21T08:33:00.002-05:00

yeah, i know. it's been a long time. i don't owe any kind of explanation. i've always intended to update it when and if i have something to say.

i received this yo-yo for xmas. it was in my stocking along with a few other nifty trinkets (an old 'whirl king', several packs of ancient cheerio string, one of those silver gorham yo-yo's, and an autographed trading card of my very good friend, mr. john higby - with whom i am presently collaborting). in our family, my mom does a lot of the big-box shopping, and wraps them in thick, fine paper with a crisp brilliance that i will never be able to emulate. but the stockings are my dad's exclusive province. he loves it, and though my brother and i are all grown up now, our stockings are still replete, year after year, with small but shockingly relevant gifts. the o-boy stood out, however, as a yo-yo that i've always coveted.

one of the earliest models released by duncan following its buyout of the flores company, the first o-boys were essentially identical to the elliptically-profiled flores models of the day (we're talking about the 30's - old). those first models featured extra thick dowels for axles, and i can't imagine that they spun for very long at all. the model now in my collection materialized considerably later (don't have a date). the profile is a little wider and the axle is (thankfully) considerably thinner, so it actually spins pretty well. i can hit kwyjibo on a 50+ year-old yo-yo, which is kinda cool. shortly thereafter, it falls apart because the axle is not glued.

my dad scored all of this stuff on ebay. he's become a total ebay-junky, scouring the site for auctions of old original ansel adams yosemite photographs, 1st edition copies of john muir books and ancient medical tomes. he and my mom are collector-types. they keep everything, and each corner of their home sports some manner of miscellanea. while the untrained eye may waltz in and not understand the crumbling detritus, i see it as the substance of my youth.

i'm the third edward haponik (out of four). my father has always gone out of his way to embrace pretty much whatever i do (aside from my proclivity for sneaking out to 'roll' houses growing up). with the exception of playing baseball though, i'm not sure any of my obsessions has ever really resonated with him: skateboarding, jazz, martial arts, yo-yo (though he gave me my first - an original run yomega brain). one might expect a parent to react to their offspring's varied and apparently disconnected pursuits with a kind of benign neglect, but not my dad. he's always been secure enough to appreciate the things that he never pursued himself and to look diligently for their connective tissue. i guess i played chess, to which he could relate. i even beat him - once. (i suppose there is also the matter of our mutual appreciation for the early film work of steven seagal.)

dad's a successful doctor, and in some respects, i feel as though i may have let him down. elementary school teacher, stay-at-home-dad, yo-yo player... not the kind of stuff that typically garners one great accolades. and yet i know he's proud of me. i truly wouldn't feel 'worth it' had i not spent my entire childhood (and now adulthood) being SHOWN that i am by both he and my mom.

my most persistent memory of my childhood is probably playing catch with my dad. i have no sense for how many hours we spent in our various backyards (or at campsites, or at the grand canyon, or at the 'field of dreams' in dyersville, ia) tossing a baseball back and forth. it seems as though our relationship was built up gradually, one throw at a time. i first recognized the end of my childhood following one such catch around age 15. i was a strong (though wild) pitcher, and i turned the fingers of his left hand into swollen sausages and covered his palm with a pulpy bruise. i've always had a problem with accuracy (i once hit three consecutive batsmen, and then gave up a grandslam - no joke), but when i threw the ball across three lawns he never complained, beyond mocking his own inability to leap the 8 feet needed to catch them or else pick them out of the dirt. he never laughed or discouraged me. he did, however, make me run after them, which i did not fully appreciate at the time.

there are a number of things that i just could never imagine him doing. virtually all of them are dishonorable. he compulsively deflects praise to those around him, especially to my mother, which is appropriate considering the yeoman's effort she brought to our family. my dad isn't some kind of saint, as i'm surely making it sound... he just tries really hard to be a good man, and he's done it for so long i don't think he even recognizes it as 'trying' anymore. it's taken me a lifetime to fully understand it, but if he weren't my dad; if he were some random guy that i met at a dinner party and learned a bit about... he would still absolutely be my hero.

it's too easy to see my parents as an inseparable unit, ignoring their individual outlooks and efforts. they're as head-over-heels in love today as i imagine they were 35 years ago, a fact i found nauseating as a teenager, but which i find endearing now. while i've always seen my dad as a calm, consistent force, my mom is just pure, unyielding energy. the second of six sisters, the rhode island home where she grew up still shudders with laughter whenever the family is together (probably even when it's empty, at this point). she will kick your ass in whatever board game, whether you're 6 or 60 (though her ferocity has dimmed slightly through playing against her granddaughter), and although my dad loves the outdoors, i've always seen it as my mom's affinity for growing things that has sent the pair of them hiking through essentially all of our national parks. it was not until i became a [comparatively inept] homemaker and cook that i came to appreciate the full spectrum of what she did for us. she plays with my kids for hours. not 'watches them play'; plays with them, and usually harder than they do. my daughter loves when she comes over, not just because she's willing to play pretend... but because no one else has ever dared her to be so imaginative.

it was my dad who serendiptously picked out the o-boy, and this post was meant to be about him... but to try and yammer on about him and NOT my mom would be tantamount to pulling a portuguese man-o-war from the ocean so as to point out its features - it would immediately disintegrate. my mom loves my dad like the sea loves living things, and vice versa. each is now composed of the other.

i know an awful lot of people who have had really difficult, awkward relationships with their parents. in some respects it makes me feel guilty for having so many warm memories of my own. i didn't do anything to deserve an amazing family - no one does, just as sure as no one deserves a dull or abusive one. the worst of it is the knowledge that there is absolutely no way to repay them. ever. my dad didn't 'sweep in' and save the day valiantly one time. he saved EVERY day. my mom maintained a kind of glue that not only kept our family together; it electrified it. they're not dead, and i don't mean to preemptively eulogize them. but my whole life, now both steady and exciting in its own right, has been built around the scaffolding they provided. the closest approximation to karmic recompense that i can imagine is to be that kind of father - that kind of person - for my own son and daughter.

alex is up from his nap... guess i should get off the damn computer. ;)

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

2009-11-20T15:16:00.001-05:00

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

2009-10-30T09:43:00.001-04:00

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

2009-10-20T10:07:00.002-04:00

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

2009-10-10T11:17:00.000-04:00

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

2009-10-02T15:13:00.000-04:00

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

2009-09-20T11:14:00.002-04:00

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

2009-09-14T13:26:00.000-04:00

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

2009-09-10T07:49:00.000-04:00

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

2009-09-09T15:16:00.000-04:00

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

2009-09-09T08:38:00.000-04:00

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

2009-09-02T12:55:00.000-04:00

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.

yo-yo #56: the cream (kind of)

2009-08-24T15:33:00.000-04:00

people keep asking me if worlds was fun. i have a hard time answering them without being sarcastic, but it's like... it's the world yo-yo contest! can you imagine something MORE fun? ok... you probably could, but it would probably be really dirty and unmentionable... because that's just your way, and everyone knows it.

anyway, among the reasons for its excellence were all the crazy yo-yo's people gave me. i already mentioned seth's decade-old sb-2. in the final minutes of finals on saturday, paul yath spotted me and said "hey hey!" and handed me this yo-yo. (months ago, we had vaguely discussed the idea of my testing the cream, but since it's totally finished, and getting glowing reviews all over the place, i'd have assumed that my input was no longer relevant anyway.) he actually apologized for giving me one that was half black, as that was all he had left, but i LOVE yin-yang colorways. i actually bought a 2nd run black milk to match with my 1st run white, and was dismayed when i learned that the runs were slightly different.

the yo-yo is pretty flawless; a different feeling from the original milk, but just as wonderful. the new blue o-rings manage the ginormous gap perfectly. i have no idea when it will be out, but you should buy one when you have the means.

tangential to the cream and its virtues, i thought i'd post some pictures from worlds. it was a memorable trip for certain.

within 10 minutes of arriving, i was immersed in a surreal gathering of some of my closest yo-yo friends. it seemed like they were the only people there. i've hung out with sebby any number of times, but had never actually met abe. brandon jackson originally described him as "intense", and that would be the first word i would use, as well, meant in the best sense possible.

we immediately went to johnny rocket's, which is a worlds tradition, if only due to its proximity. this was my only trip there this time, and i didn't get to eat my cheese fries because i had to leave to pick up steve buffel at the airport. before leaving though, i got to watch one of my yo-yo heroes, john bot, considering his chocolate dr. pepper... which was actually not as repellant as it sounds.

drew tetz has become a force of nature, and i love his yo-yoing. i almost never saw him playing this, his "trademark" green capless zero. i gave him a long overdue clean machine, and he just rocked the hell out of it for the next 3 days. he also designed the best contest format i've ever experienced for the fixed axle breakout, and went on to win it. world fixed axle champion, and well deserved it was!

the "small one" is actually chandler, but everyone is always shocked by his resemblence to jeff coons of duncan crew. both are extremely cool, and great yo-yo players, which evidently, is genetic.

i have the chronology of this one all messed up i think. one night, i went out to dinner with abe and john-bot, and it turned into abe, john-bot, drew, shawn fumo, joey fleshman, seth peterson, and french nat'l champion hadrien bennaceur (we all crammed into my honda element). we tried to go to bahama breeze, but the wait was :30, so we went next door to cattleman's. cattleman's is a pretty nice steakhouse (we realized this AFTER sitting down) and is really expensive, which is at odds with the usual worlds experience. after our refined dinner, we felt the need to unwind. so we went to walgreens and purchased some "food items" that are "distinctly american", so that we could provide hadrien with a fuller understanding of our culture. we bought "circus peanuts" candies, root beer, pork rinds, and the tour de force (pun), easy cheese. hadrien's initial response to the easy cheese is captured above. later, a number of people partook of the "screaming eagle", which is a pork rind/easy cheese/circus peanut sandwich. i politely abstained.

john bot insisted that "all brazilians hate root beer", but bazani disproved the stereotype by just looking "meh" about it. he then popped an enormous shove-it over the bottle, as if to further diminish the root beer's ability to hold any sway over him.

the next morning, i went swimming with my good friend, the yo-yo entrepreneur/world-dominator, f. pat cuartero. pat can now do 100 push-ups in a row (82 if he observes proper form). caribou lodge was impressed with his physique, and both chris and boyd were unabashed in their desire to "look at the work". boyd effectively demonstrated that his beard has the power to exponentially amplify the creepiness of any expression.

thursday night was, of course, wheel of penalty. by virtue of his canadianness, my friend and sponsor, steve was required to drop his pants and "feel the breeze". i'm not certain that he wears canadian themed boxers every day.

jon rob.

guy.

this worlds was my first contest where i was "part of a team", which is a strange experience. i feel a little hypocritical being ON a team, but not concerned with "winning", but i've come to understand that not all teams are about that. i can really get behind what steve does. he's picked three totally different players so far, which indicates that he doesn't just value yo-yoing along one direction. in the case of jon rob and myself, he took a big risk in making yo-yo's for us that were either "not easy" or "not what the market generally prefers". spyy is an easy entity to represent and support.

i'm also really lucky in that i actually LIKE my teammates. it is kind of strange being the "weak link" by virtually any quantifiable standard (though fortunately, yo-yoing can always be argued to be devoid of quantifiable standards - see my last post). jon rob and guy are way more awesome yo-yoers than i am, admittedly, but just like it's best to NOT have the most expensive house on your block, i'd rather be the poorest player in an amzing group than the best player in a poor group... if that makes sense. i love watching these guys play yo-yo, or just talk.

joe mitchell won a well-deserved lifetime achievement award. despite his youthful appearance, joe has been around the epicenter of yo-yoing since the last boom. such a great guy, and not just because he gave me a beer. but mostly. i love dave schulte's expression in this pic. dazzling as ever.

speaking of beer:

this is the only other picture i feel compelled to post of myself. it was taken by red, one of my favorite photographers and yo-yo players, and i can only PRAY that he does ANOTHER 500 days. in the interest of full disclosure, i did NOT actually shatter this bottle. abe did it whilst trying to open it on a velvet rope-post. i did however, drink it.

at one point, i left my camera in my bag, and seth sequestered it for his own personal use. he and dave (save deth) had the brilliant idea to buy a futon/frame from wal-mart, set up their booth around it (complete with a tv/dvd/super-nintendo and clothing rack), and then return said futon following the contest. a lot of players owe them thanks for the opportunity to watch the event unfold in comfort and high style.

i took this photo of joey fleshman during one of the rare moments when he was playing an unresponsive yo-yo. when i first arrived, he was playing a flying v (yay!), and i was embarassed by the quizzical expression he gave me when he noticed that mine was set up unresponsive. prior to worlds, i had been dividing my time evenly between the slim and fat bearings. since the contest, and mostly due to joey's influence, i think i've spent at most 20 minutes with the latter. he also asked me to carve his clean machine for him, which was a strange honor. i hope i did it ok.

a few of us went to "the largest checkers in the world" (you can sit down in it), and while there, sid put on a show. one simply cannot watch sid yo-yo and not WANT to yo-yo oneself, so it kind of devolved into yo-yo chaos. sid's tricks are, by and large, harder, weirder, and yet cleaner than pretty much anything else i've seen. i ate a "big bluford" burger, which was pretty delicious... however, i felt like a place like checkers should really have crushed ice. i'll think stick with cook-out.

anyhow... i realize that the cream (which is, again, incredible - thanks paul!) was only the jumping-off point for this post. there are probably a thousand other moments from worlds that i could go on and on about, but these are the ones that occurred to me here and now. only about 354 days until the next one!

... oh and i don't know what the cream has to do with the game of go.

yo-yo #'s 54 & 55: higby painted sunsets

2009-08-17T21:30:00.000-04:00

so people are trickling back from worlds. the boards are becoming repopulated. people are talking about all that they saw and experienced.

part of that is (as always) all about how "terribly flawed" the judging was. and devoid of a total powerhouse reinventing the 1a scene, it's worse this year.

the most controversial results probably hit the floor after the 2nd round of 1a. it was chock full of talent, but the names that were culled from it were definitely not what people expected, even after seeing the corresponding 1 minute freestyles. yuuki spencer, sid, augie fash, tyler severance, sebastian brock. all beloved favorites, and all eliminated.

what confuses me is... why are people so surprised? why so upset?

i know we want to make yo-yoing a sport. and god, we try so hard to pretend it is; to mold it into the shape of one. but i'm sorry it's just not right now. it's not because no one can accurately predict the winners before being TOLD what they are by a panel of judges. even if you knew what to look for, and clicked through every freestyle in slow-mo 10 times, the final results would be inherently unpredictable. said judges try their best to be fair and objective, but what system could they possibly use in real-time to determine that "blindingly-fast-freestyle a" is more valuable than "totally-innovative-freestyle b"? ... cause that's what they're up against.

i hear a lot of people talking about "string hits", and it's important for them to understand that no contests are really judged in that way. but their ignorance betrays the dirty secret that essentially NO ONE (up to and including competitors and a good many judges) really understands HOW the winners are chosen, and WHY they win. on the yoyofactory world's countdown, ben posted that the team had been training with a clear focus; to throw down innovative, difficult tricks, quickly and cleanly. it won the contest for them 2 years running. however, ben claimed that the contest was not judged in a way that benefitted his players' training model. how, in what's supposed to be a "sport", can that possibly happen?

no one watches a baseball game and is confused about who won. no one goes to track meet, but can't predict the victor after observing the 100m dash. you might train in this way or that way, but you know WHAT you're training for. you know how your performance will be measured and what you have to do to win the game. we yo-yoers have crafted this elaborate stage, upon which we display truly amazing creative feats... but we forgot that there's no real way to "judge" something called a "freestyle". oops?

the closest legitimate approximation of the model that yo-yoing appears to strive for would be figure skating, or maybe gymnastics. in both of those examples, the participants are able to design their own routines (or at least their coaches are). HOWEVER (big however), in said examples, the participants are ALSO required to demonstrate the same essential elements, and are judged on how well they complete them. the judges are able to easily compare how well skaters a and b complete their respective "triple sow-cows" (or whatever). and there are strict rules that determine the precise deductions for missteps. how boring would it be if all of the "freestyles" were not "free" at all, but composed of tricks and movements the judges knew to look for? to watch as all the competitors in a yo-yo contest strive for that "perfect rancid milk" (that everyone knows is coming) in the middle of their freestyles? but that's the only way yo-yoing can be quantified, and thereby made a sport: by being predictable, uniform, standardized. remember compulsories? everyone thought they SUCKED... but they were probably more fair and more clear than what we have now. and no, i'm not saying we should go back... i'm just saying we shouldn't invest too much in who wins and who doesn't.

i can't imagine anything more redundant than complaining about the results of the world yo-yo contest. OF COURSE the judging system sucks. NO system could do anything BUT suck. the very notion of a "system" PRECLUDES its ability to effectively judge and compare something called a "FREE-STYLE". that which is inherently expressive will never be measured with any validity. it's absurd. it's like watching two may-flies live out their lives over a day, and then numerically grading each on which had the best "quality of life". an enjoyable way to spend an afternoon perhaps (if you're an entomologist, anyway)... but at the end of said afternoon, don't try to pretend that you did something more substantial than watching some bugs fly around.

and mind, this doesn't discredit the judges who spend hour-after-hour toiling through the freestyles. yo-yo contests are FUN. they're full of hilarious hijinks and trick-trading and incredibe videos and cool new toys and NONE of it would happen if the judges didn't run it for us. if you haven't organized or judged a contest, i'd have to argue that though you may have a right to express it, your perspective on "who you think should have won" is woefully incomplete. this tirade isn't meant to diminish the efforts of the competitors up there on the stage either. we're human, and so we're pretty lazy. unless there's something "in it for us", a lot of us don't want to get out of bed, much less learn really frustrating, difficult yo-yo tricks. the idea of being "world champion" is pretty attractive. it sounds like something worth practicing for. and those of us NOT driven to be champions should thank those that strive for it... their play inspires us to improve our own.

... i purchased these sunsets from yo-yo superstar/painter, john higby a few years ago. he bought a whole mess of clear ones from yoyojam, and painted them in his distinct style using all kinds of different themes. i always loved his "space" freehand zeros, but never had one. i had to go with that. a little while later, nate weddle from throw down sent me a pair of silicone o-rings for them, and they work PERFECTLY. it's almost a pity they're so beautiful, because they're easily the best [bearing] loopers i own, and i play them all the time.

anyway, last year, higby won the "artistic performance" division at worlds. ("artistic performance". i mean if you get up in arms about who should win THAT, then i can't imagine a reason to stand around arguing with you.) higby's routine was exquisite. he built a subway staircase prop, and pretended to descend it, reascending with any number of new yo-yo styles and gags cleverly culled from his stage shows. he brought friends on stage, the event was colorful and electric, and involved 3-d glasses. it was brilliant, and pretty much everyone thought he had won (which of course, he did). i emphasize "pretty much" because i'll bet one or two of the other competitors may have disagreed. some of their friends and family may have, too. and that line between art and science is razor-thin. if one dude in the back thinks taka or hiro really deserved it... isn't that enough to question the system? how about 3 guys? 30? 300? subjective is subjective, and just like truth, it WILL out.

case in point, this year higby goes up on stage, does a dazzling three-part "past, present, and future of yo-yoing" extravaganza (actually bringing his infant son on stage in a space suit at one point, and making use of incredibly innovative props throughout). a lot of people i talked to thought he had it in the bag again, yet he wasn't even in the top three. of course, higby wasn't as pissed about it as some folks i talked to: "I really did not enter AP to win but to get my idea on stage and to get some friends up there too! I think AP is getting better and I hope more people enter with the endless creativity of the amazing toy called YO-YO." pure class.

i love how in ap, the results only list the top 3 "competitors" ("artists"?), and then after that it's alphabetical order. i mean... if we're saying there was a "winner", there must have been a "loser", right? so who "lost" the art contest? it's ridiculous to ask, right? more ridiculous than declaring someone the "winner" though?

i think the only freestyle i watched this year which seduced me into the belief that it was the incontrovertible winner was kentaro's 3a. i've never seen anything so difficult done with such grace, within yo-yoing or without. i don't know anyone who could have picked someone over him. but my argument is still inherently subjective, and the fact remains that if someone came on-stage and matched his skill (hard to believe, but not impossible)... who in the world would be qualified to call one the champion and the other "s.o.l."? kentaro should be congratulated (to the end of his effing days) on having smashed every ceiling ignorant schmucks like me had placed on 3a. he should be congratulated on designing and working out a routine that people will look back on and call "totally ahead of its time"; which will define the standard for the division in years to come. i have to believe that THOSE sentiments are more meaningful, both to the observers and to mr. kimura, himself than "congrats on being world champion". i'm sure he doesn't remember, but i just told him "thank you", and would like to do so again.

so what do we do? everybody's asking each other. do we yell to each other about how the judges must have "had it in" for this guy or that guy? do we switch things all wacky, and go to a vague "performance"-based system or peer-judging/crowd-response (which at the worlds level, become nothing more than a popularity contest). do we designate really specific criteria that everyone knows and navigates? do we demand total transparancy and live-televised click-graphs, in which case, which judges will want to step up and risk being yelled at?

i've never heard a truly satisfactory solution though; one that makes the winner clear and does so fairly. i don't believe there are solutions, because i believe the "problem" is only a problem if you choose to view it as such; if you focus more on the results of the contest than the content, itself. the real "problem" is that people need to win things to consider themselves and their passions valuable. unamerican as it may make me seem, i repectfully disagree with that premise.

i do think people should try to find ways to run a better contest. i've had the privilege of sitting in on judges' meetings, and i love the great ideas that organizers are trying out, and i look forward to helping to implement changes where i can. i ran nc states for two years (and i hope to again). it's hard, but rewarding, and the attendees are genuinely appreciative. but they're appreciative because the contest gives us an excuse for getting together. the results, themselves will never be meaningful, and if you believe they are, i think you're delusional (no offense)... the experiences on the other hand... those will always be meaningful. worlds certainly was this year, and many thanks to all of you that made it so.

yo-yo #53: sb-2

2009-08-17T10:23:00.000-04:00

i would like seth peterson to become a brazillionaire someday (meaning i would like him to own the nation of brazil, and all of its contents/resources). he's a motivated, young entrepreneurial-type. with a little luck, and a few more shirts sold at savedeth.com (which you should support), he could totally do it.

besides being one of the planet's most creative yo-yo players, seth's also just about the most generous person i know. actually, now that i think on it, those traits seem to correspond quite a lot. i'm not sure if a life spent playing yo-yo somehow imbues one with altruistic tendencies, or if i just tend to gravitate toward friendships with the really generous players because i happen to like them. it occurs to me that i came home from worlds this week with a bunch of new yo-yo's, none of which i actually purchased.

seth has been telling me about this one for awhile. i played a tom kuhn silver bullet 2 ONCE, in about 1998. the mall-cart where i used to hang out and salivate had one that was just for prospective buyers to play. i vividly remember thinking that it was superior to proyo's cold fusion in every respect but aesthetics. i wasn't one of the kids who always asked to play it, mostly because i knew i couldn't afford it back then. i bought a custom mag for about $40, and that, in itself, felt totally outlandish. the $100+ tag on the sb-2 made it seem like it belonged in neiman marcus, and although it can be found for cheaper now, i've always associated it with extravagance.

i collect tom kuhn yo-yo's, and when seth said he had one of these for me, i was pretty excited. i've always kind of put the sb-2 on a pedestal, and although i've wanted them, i've never really gone after them. the one he gave me on wednesday though, is a yo-yo i'm truly going to treasure. the sb-2 was the first production ball bearing yo-yo, and this one plays incredibly well; as smooth as plenty of today's most technologically advanced creations. the gap tool on it is truly brilliant, and it can be made to loop splendidly or dead unresponsive with just a few rotations of the spacers. it's pretty natural to go from the flying v to the sb-2, which for some odd reason, makes me feel kind of proud (though the sb-2 was never discussed as a source of inspiration for it).

the best part about it, though, is the patina (which, incidentally, is among my favorite words). i love yo-yo's that LOOK like they've been used; that LOOK like they've been loved. while a shiny new sb-2 would be "cool", this one is "beloved"... and like something out of "the velveteen rabbit" that love has made it "real". it's taken some beatings, but the aluminum, itself, is mostly intact. while areas on the hubs still sport a dull polish, the yo-yo has oxidized on the surfaces that the hand is most prone to touching, creating a kind of natural "enso". the rims, which are the most frequently handled, have darkened considerably, and now look like aluminum does when it is pulled from the ground.

though the yo-yo has lost its polish, it has gained proof-of-play. it bears the evidence of seth's considerable committment to yo-yoing, and that's much more valuable to me than a high lustre or ornate splash-ano. seth gave me a yo-yo, but he also gave me something of himself. like i said, seth's very giving, so i don't know if that was a big deal to him. but it certainly was to me.

so yeah, i'd like him to be a brazillionaire, but then... i also know that if all of brazil WAS his someday, he'd probably just smile and hand it back to red.

yo-yo #52: spyy skyy chaser

2009-08-05T11:04:00.000-04:00

i've just been a mess all week. i don't know how my wife even puts up with me. been all gloomy and moody and surly. slothful and listless. a real pleasure. i like to think that my "base" disposition is pretty even, and this attitude is pretty unnatural for me. so i kind of try to delve into these darker emotions when they arise.

worlds is obviously next week, and i'm elated to be going, but whenever elation is abundant, i find that it's frequently accompanied by elation's miserable doppelganger. worlds is hectic, and it just simmers with nervous energy. it's also a contest, and i'm not altogether clear on how i feel about that notion itself. also, i'm going alone; leaving my kids with their grandparents and my wife to fend for herself. not the worst i could do to them, but there's still a modicum of guilt.

i'm doing 1a, and the battle with myself over whether and how i should be motivated for that is something for which i was not prepared. i've competed some, and i did ok at nc states, but i feel like since this is worlds, it "matters", or at least... it's "supposed to". it should be preemptively stated that i'm not looking to win; (at the risk of sounding defeatist) i truly don't even want to. i haven't put in the time, practice, or consideration to even be in the running, and the title holds no glory for me whatsoever, especially given its inherently subjective nature. i revere the winners for their skill, and the amount of work they have to put in, but being champion has never been for me.

so why even get on stage? hundreds of people will compete this year and virtually none of them comes in with a legitimate chance (or even sincere intent) of walking out with the "big yo-yo guy" trophy. some of them will get on stage just to say they did it (to others, or just to themselves). some of them hold making it to finals (or even just round 2) as their deepest ambition, and after that "whatever". for me, i feel like it's kind of a pilgrimage. it's the biggest stage in yo-yoing, and whatever my grievances or misconceptions about how the winners are chosen, i feel like i should put myself up there at least once, even if only for a minute. if i have any hope for it, i hope i throw yo-yo like myself. i hope i don't get carried away with the moment and let my yo-yoing go all to hell. i hope that i don't walk off the stage with any regret (though in my experience, that's more a choice one makes than anything else). i'm an "old man" (by yo-yoer standards). i've seen things and done things that i hold much more meaningful than this (honestly, throwing wood in my backyard is no less important to me). i guess i hope i can keep my perspective that balanced.

i won't be using either of these yo-yo's for my 1a 1-minute. i'll be using the flying v, which actually constitutes another reason for getting on stage in the first place. steve buffel is considerate, almost to a fault, and would never pull the "sponsor card", issuing an edict that i compete (he even suggested i use a no jive). but i'm really proud of the yo-yo we made, and i feel like it deserves a moment on stage, too. and if said yo-yo gets pissed at me for wielding it poorly, well... tough shit, flying v!

the final and most ridiculous reason why i'm doing 1a does involve these yo-yo's. i wanna do ladder. seriously, i really like ladder. i won the "old guy" ladder at worlds in 07 (not to toot my own horn, but i win a lot of "old guy" ladders). i've talked about this before, but i think ladder is rad for two reasons. 1.) it is totally quantifiable. you've got to hit THIS trick THIS way, and if you don't you're done. no one can possibly dispute the winner afterwards (like anyone would even CARE to: "i had cuartero in first for ladder, what about you?" "psh. cuartero?! that guy has some ugly-ass pop-'n-fresh! adam brewster's gerbil took it for me."). and 2.) i like "canon". i like "kata". i like the idea that some yo-yo tricks should be preserved, and that virtually everyone should know them , so as to share some common points of understanding. i don't feel that EVERY trick on the ladder is super important, but most of them, and i think the idea is well-conceived. if you can't do kamikaze or black hops, i think you should learn those tricks. i think they're valuable. i think developing the ability to hit those tricks on command is valuable, in part for the tricks' own sakes, but also because of the fundamentals that learning them teaches you.

i'll grant you i'm not someone who "practices ladder", because well... i can't imagine anything more boring than practicing a whole list of tricks i already know i can hit. but the question of whether i WILL hit these tricks i've learned is actually pretty exciting for me.

ladder is largely viewed as "the kiddy pool" of yo-yo contests, and for pretty good reason. at most state-level contests, if you freestyle, you're precluded from ladder. otherwise, the top players would beat up on the newer players in every division and snag all the prizes. takeshi told me he HATES when experienced players do ladder, because it just depresses the newer guys and turns them off of yo-yoing. i agree with that, but i also just... really like ladder, and i don't want to apologize for being good at it. that's why i really dig contests like worlds, which have ladder, but break it into divisions. you've got the ladder for people who JUST want to do ladder, and then ladder for people who want to freestyle in one of the "championship" divisions. same tricks, but two separate pools. my only gripe is that not enough of the freestylers actually DO the ladder, and i think that's generally either because it's too easy, or because they're too cool for it. if i were mickey, and i already won ladder with no misses, then i can totally understand. lots of great freestyle players don't even know all the ladder tricks though, and i kind of think that's too bad. yo-yoing's an art, but it also has structure and pedagogy. i don't think anyone's too cool to learn 25 yo-yo tricks. hell, maybe it should be 40 tricks, or maybe have the 1a and 2a lists consolidated. anyway, having won it in my age group once, it wouldn't sit right to try and do it again, so by entering 1a, i get a whole new field and don't have to feel like a schmuck (i mean a bigger one than i already am).

i like packing early, and i'm trying to decide on the yo-yo's i'm bringing to orlando. it's amusing to me that there was a time whence i would have just said "all of em", and then spent the next few days lugging around a huge case. nothing could be less appealing, and though, as my friend jonrob says "can't hate on a case full of yo-yo's", neither do i feel like showing one off or standing guard over one next week. i got an AMAZING shipment of yo-yo's from steve this week, with a little of all of the yo-yo's spyy's put out lately. i was immediately blown away by these little beauties (i'm the type of guy to refer to yo-yo's as "little beauties"). the skyy chaser is being produced in both big c-bearing/silicone and medium-big d-bearing/pad form. it's small, about the dimensions of a skyline, but it feels disproportionately substantial. i'm not going to try it, but i feel like i could probably kill a rhino with one of these, at least a baby one. the red-orange (or orange-red - screw you, crayola) NON-blasted ano finish is flawless, and is most at home out in the sunlight. the laser art, lifted straight from the hood of a firebird, hints at the yo-yo's hidden muscle. everything about it screams performance, and so i'm pretty set on using one of them for ladder. i want to use a yo-yo that i won't have to worry about. (while "no jive ladder" is seriously fun, i've been there/done that).

winning would be fine, but like deciding to freestyle at worlds in general, it's more of an internal struggle (or "turmoil" - hi, dazzling dave!), and if you're tying any particle of self-worth to "how you do" relative to others, i'd argue your energy is misplaced. much like how i feel freestyling should be, i don't really care if i win, or anyone beats me. it's just about doing as well as i can, and so i'd really like to go perfect (at least the 1a list; on 2a my punches have always been awful and i'll be lucky to get past them at all). so, yeah. i'm not sure if i'm the first person who's kind of just doing 1a so that he can do ladder and not feel like a turd, but... well there it is. see you at worlds (who am i kidding, i'll probably crank out #53 before i leave).

writing this is a pleasant reminder that, no matter what drama and baggage you take with you, be it desire for "champion of the world glory, "what am i doing this for" confusion, or "i hope my wife eats ok while i'm gone" anxiety, worlds is first and foremost a celebration of, as boyd seth said recently "the string that ties us together". and it's gonna be an effin' party.

yo-yo #51: anti-yo eetzilla

2009-08-02T08:08:00.000-04:00

51 is not actually prime (3x17). don't front, i know you were thinking it was.

i finally arrive at an anti-yo, which has made several of my favorite yo-yo's. when i started getting into "forum-culture", the anti-yo fluchs was just hitting. i'm always amazed when yo-yo's that have a serious design issue really resonate with the community anyhow. despite a prone-to-wobble axle/bearing design, the fluchs was the kindling that later enabled a twin-inferno in the form of the eetsit and bapezilla.

the eetsit came out on valentine's day of 06 and, hotly anticipated as it was, sold out abruptly. almost as soon as it hit peoples hands, however, the reports of a flaw started rolling in. although the eetsit was roundly held to play brilliantly and look delicious (it WAS named after a tasty snack, after all), its bearing seat was just a little too high for its inner wall. as such, much of the disappointed populace was experiencing a newly-named phenomenon that would resound like a death knell to virtually any other company: "slippage". almost overnight, all the boards were alive with theories as to what the culprit was, and whether a solution was possible. it's funny to look back and remember how confused everyone was about it. oke rosgana had a complicated theory that the eetsits shipped with a batch of konkave bearings that had a microscopically tapered edge, which caused the issue. myriad others blamed the stock baz pads, and plans to make thicker ones were made. however, when some illuminated individual (as far as i can recall/research it was mOoN in georgia) sanded down his eetsit's bearing seat, everyone seemed to breathe a collective sigh of relief. true, it was "yo-yo surgery", and true, such things shouldn't be necessary after plunking down $85... but to make a beautiful beast of a yo-yo manifest its full potential? so worth it.

the eetsit was such a curious release. almost everyone who bought it seemed to LOVE it (despite that whole "unplayable due to slippage" thing). i really do think that any other yo-yo company would have been dead in the water. but kiya and sonny always represented their product so well, and for a few years, it really seemed as though they were the only force out there conning us into the belief that yo-yoing could actually be "something cool people do". i didn't actually play one for about a year, when at an nc "easily amused" meet, i tried samm scott's and fell in love. fortunately for me, samm goes on these kicks where he only plays one kind of yo-yo, and he gets a ton of em. when i first met him, he was all up on hyperwarp heavy wings, but he also went through a dark magic period, a freehand period, and an anti-yo period. at this time though, samm was deep in a 401k period, and he was more than willing to trade joey fleshman's old, all-brown eetsit for my beat, gray 401 (good call, samm!). joey had fixed the bearing seat, so i was all in. i had acquired the first half of this eetzilla.

the second half had been forged in the fires of mount doom (or machined in some shop) later in 06. the bapezilla was the inevitable "fixed" version of the genreally-adored eetsit. kiya/sonny basically just gave it a new, outlandish colorway, a flat bearing, and a new name. it played like a million bucks, and when it was covered in gold as its third incarnation, "the gouda", it could have sold for about as much. the gap was a little on the thin side for some people, but by and large, it was recognized that anti-yo had released something truly wonderful, and the bapes sold like wildfire. i bought one from the nation, and the day i received it, drove :30 to my pal dave wilmot's (he was good, but i don't think he yo-yo's anymore), and we traded halves. i got all blue; he took all green. about a week later, he let me know that he had dinged it on his floor, and unable to deal with the ding... had satin-finished the whole effing outside. i was shocked and appalled. the bapezilla had one of, if not the most beautiful finishes ever, and i was momentarily dismayed at having exchanged with him if he was going to use it so sinfully. later that week, i banked my own blue bape off of my ray bans (which were in my shirt pocket, not on my head). the 2 mm white mark the collision left upon the yo-yo felt like a blemish on my soul, but after that first one, the floodgates were opened, and i recognized that a scarred yo-yo that had experienced the world is no less beautiful than a pristine one. since then, i've had no compunction with dinging the hell out of my yo-yo's. i don't do it needlessly or artificially, mind you, like some skatepark grom rubbing his shiny new board on a rail to make it look skated. but, every gouge tells its own story, and all of them collectively construct a kind of autobiography (after all, what are WE, apart from our own loss and pain - the flat plane of our love and joy are brought to life by our own "dings"). the satin one that david had later became a total "yo-yo skank", and made its way into and out of dozens of collections. eventually, it came back to me, until i traded it to dave poyzer... for a black phi and a gold 201 (i shit you not - this momentary lapse in judgment can only have been karma for having taken advantage of samm)! in true dave fashion, he polished that sucker to perfection and later sold it for a mint.

speaking of cost, a few months after the bapezilla landed, someone sold one on ebay for $230. at least i think they did - there was some disagreement as to whether the transaction was actually finalized. the details were irrelevant though, as in the eyes of the "yo-yo market", the bapezilla was suddenly a commodity on the level of the oxy 4. $200+ prices became commonplace (even though the bape had retailed at $80), and with this new inflated clout to its price came a new (and largely undue) backlash. by the end of 06, several new high-tech yo-yo's were emerging (among them the saturn radian mk-ii, the first wave of clyw peaks and yyf g5), which totally reset the "smoothness standard". this freshly-weened generation of yo-yo's didn't necessarily render the bape obsolete, but it did get people talking (and complaining) about its design. since the bape's axle system doesn't actually "seat" the bearing, and uses a super-thick axle, on which the bearing rests, it's more prone to vibration than newer setups. as seems to happen with so many companies, anti-yo developed a tribe of haters that seemed no less zealous than their fanboys.

i've played anti-yo's though (like this one) that play as smooth as glass. i do think people should have high standards, and should look out for ways by which yo-yo design can move forward... but it's not necessarily good to be obsessive. as in all things, it's important to strike a balance. "water which is too pure has no fish." yeah, you want a smooth yo-yo, so that your spin times won't be negatively affected, but most of the yo-yo's we've seen these past 5 years though, anti-yo included, are capable of way more than YOU are (no offense). our technology has far outpaced our collective ability to utilize it, so deriding a product simply because it doesn't have a feature we perceive to be the best isn't always productive.

i brought my eetsit to worlds 07, and i hung out with sonny, who is without question one of the kindest, most interesting people i know. he was rocking an eetzilla the whole time; green and brown (i call the blue and white ones "bapesits", and almost never see blue/brown "sitzillas" or green/white "eetbapes" - ok i'm retarded). i determined to get one, partly because i thought the "earthy" look was rad, but more because i thought sonny was. lucky for me, one of my other pals, tyler koske, had a bapezilla, and he was cool with trading halves. i don't know how his ended up, but mine was immediately transformed. it just played flawlessly, and it has ever since. perhaps it's this perfection that's rendered me especially sympathetic to the hate anti-yo seems to sustain.

unfortunately, it felt as though anti-yo went from "en vogue" to "so last year" really quickly, and when they released another yo-yo with the same axle setup in "the business", they got as much grief as they did praise. i find it pretty depressing that kiya and sonny really weren't left with any great motivation to participate in the community thereafter. these guys were really driving "yo-yo style" forward, if nothing else, and when the tide turned on anti-yo, it turned pretty harshly. it's been said before, but when one posts something on a messageboard, one's perspective rarely recognizes the people involved as "people". it's always more convenient (in light of the grandiose points we wish to make concerning yo-yo inferiority) to operate under a shield of anonymity, and with the perspective that we're dealing with some "corporate" entity than it is to recognize that we're taking a dump on two dudes, and their efforts to make yo-yo's that they love, without raking in a ton for it.

anti-yo's latest yo-yo is (of course) called the ywet, which stands (of course) for "yo-yoers will eat themselves", a reference to the band "pop will eat itself". i've played two of them; they exist and are phenomenal. i have no idea if they will ever be dropped or were even meant to be. for a good long while, the forum-masses were pretty obsessed with their imminent release. i think the idea of a super-hyped yo-yo that is NEVER released is a nice way to highlight our rampant, materialistic nature (which most always values the acquisition more highly than the people behind it), and would certainly be aptly named.

sometimes i wonder why anyone posts on the fundamentally dehumanizing messageboards anyway. the bigger ones seem to serve as little more than gossip columns; perez hilton for yo-yo nerds (i only know what that is because of my wife - no really!). maybe they've always been that way, and i just wasn't paying attention. regardless, it remains the most convenient mode of communication available to us, and the participants would do well to find ways to appeal to each other's better nature, and to embrace those who continue to make yo-yoing feel like "something cool people do".

yo-yo #50(!): clean machine with "aberrant grain"

2009-07-28T12:33:00.000-04:00

50!!!! WOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (ok, who cares.)

this yo-yo will make me a bit of a hypocrite. i'm always going on about how "yo-yo's are meant to be played!" or "what indeed, dear friends, is the ultimate value of a yo-yo kept in its box?" or something similarly flowery, idealistic, and patronizing.

i um... i'm keeping this yo-yo in the box.

i took it out to take a picture. i've even thrown it once, last summer. i actually had forgotten it existed before it returned to me in the mail yesterday.

in the spring of 08, the yo-yo world was atwitter (though this was before "twitter" was so big) about "the green triangle project". this was to be an epic feature film collaboration between west coast yo-yo legends spencer berry and paul escolar. so huge were the expectations surrounding it that the "atlas" of yo-yo forums, yoyonation, set up its own special board for the project. within said board, a secret mini-forum emerged, invisible but to a pretty random group of invitees. private forums are such interesting entities, in general. they're obviously exclusive, and this breeds a certain degree of egomania among some of the participants, and it rubs some of the excluded the wrong way that people are "talking yo-yo" in secret. but they're not inherently "bad" at all, and in my experience they represent the most casual and sincere internet forums, and very rarely pertain to yo-yo's at all (which is part of their appeal). anyway, before said venue fizzled due to its redundancy, a really cool plan was hatched there.

i had talked to brad countryman, and to my own shock, was able to acquire the LAST stock of clean machine no-jives on the planet (or so i was told). i received some 23 of them for what basically amounted to a pittance, given their rarity. meanwhile, drew "fro" tetz and brandon "bohacklés" jackson began working on cool laserable "gtp" side-art for the yo-yo's, which interested peeps could buy for $12. although they came up with KILLER logos, i could find no way to have them engraved on the cheap, so they sat for awhile (to the chagrin of those that bought em).

then, last august, i drove up to nyc for the "iyyo" with some pals (mike "sausalito" salcito, samm "i'm driving with you AGAIN?" scott, brandon "bojackpsychoschematixgrayscale" jackson, and adam "i expose my belly to i-95 traffic just like kierkegaard did" brewster. while up there, i visited the millenium hotel room of stu brown and his "werrd" team (very posh, though with a grim view of ground zero). whilst there, stu showed off his newest and most fantastic laser-engraved and pad-printed yo-yo's. they looked ridiculously good and i told him so. later in the week, we discussed lasering further, and stu offered to do the clean machines up for free!

after i got home, i shipped the box off to australia. a few people weren't interested in the graphics and just wanted the yo-yo's, so they got theirs right away. due to a series of unforeseen circumstances, however, stu wasn't able to do the yo-yo's... and again they sat... for nearly a year (to the continued chagrin of those that bought em).

stu sent them back to me this week. they're still unengraved (clean, as it were), but since the green triangle project has been dormant and the aforementioned private board silent for going on a year, it hardly seems to matter. i'm actually pretty happy with the way it worked out, since clean machines are beautiful, special, and rare in themselves. so at worlds this year, i'll be able to distribute the last 16 of the LAST clean machines on the planet to their rightful owners. awesome.

THIS particular yo-yo is one of three in the group with a WEIRD aberration. i've seen a lot of no jives. i HAVE a lot of no jives (3oish?). but i've never seen another one like these. traditionally, tom kuhn's wooden yo-yo's are cut with the wood's grain passing through the diameter of the yo-yo. on these 3 (and the one depicted here, which i claimed for my own as soon as i saw it last may, cause i'm a jerk), the grain goes around the circumference, so instead of lines going through the diameter, you have a really clean, eliptical pattern around the hex-nut area. (see the pic, with a comparison to my other "normal" clean machine on top.) this would seem like no big deal to the casual observer, but aside from its uniqueness, it's really cool for 2 reasons: a.) it's considerably harder [or so i'm told] to cleanly cut wood that way. and b.) since the grain goes around the outside evenly, the density of the wood is more evenly distributed around the yo-yo. the grain is ALWAYS "lined up", which makes a huge component of "tuning" these no jives totally irrelevant and unnecessary. as such, mine is ultra-smooth, which, it must be said... most clean machines are. it occurs to me that i do have an eric wolff yo-yo that's cut in this way, but i've never seen it in a "production" wood yo-yo.

as i said before, i'm keeping it in its original clear box for now. i'm not entirely positive as to why. i mean, clearly no jive yo-yo's are super-special to me, and i already have more than i can throw regularly. and i do think that having one with a characteristic i've never really seen is pretty nifty. however, i think i'm also doing so with the knowledge that i won't be able to keep it safe from the world forever. one day, this yo-yo will be tarnished, broken, dismantled, and sitting unloved in a trash heap someplace... just like essentially every yo-yo (and on some level, every person). i DO feel that the primary value in a yo-yo is what can be DONE with it, and for this yo-yo to sit aside is, to me, a violation of one aspect of its nature. it's a bit like withholding a part of my SELF from the world, which on the one hand feels dishonest, but is also unavoidable, even to the most sincere. maybe one day, i'll break it out, and it will reveal a state of play that's only ever been obscure to me. maybe i'll pass it on to my daughter or son, or to one of their kids (knock on wood - PUN!). regardless, i'm not quite ready to play it. and for all my hypocirsy, it makes me feel good that this tiny anomaly, this strange little particle of the world sits like a gift, ready and waiting to be opened.

someday, maybe.`

yo-yo #49: red imperial

2009-07-24T13:08:00.001-04:00

it only took me 49 yo-yo's to get to the imperial. so what? not like it took me 50 or anything!

beloved yo-yo icon steve brown just posted a link to his facebook today: wired magazine's 100 things your kids may never know about. reading through the list was pretty remarkable. i rarely pause to consider just how much has changed since i was a kid. from the way i access and learn information to the way i express myself to the food that i get and how i prepare it... so many facets of my childhood would seem totally primitive and foreign to my 6-year-old daughter. obviously, every generation can say as much. (i used to love being regaled with my great-grandfather's stories about life in massachusettes at the turn of the century. he provided for his family as the proprietor of a vegetable cart, and would push it along the winding streets for miles, greeting his customers by name. eventually he saved up enough to open a market, and was able to put his kids though college. can the american dream still be lived in such a way?)

anyway, this list made me think:
remember when yo-yo's came back up?
remember when you couldn't take them apart?
remember when a 10-second spinner felt like a serious achievement?
remember when you bought them on a whim at a toy shop or drugstore for $2?
remember when, if you played sloppy or carelessly, they'd whack you in the knuckles?
remember when no one gave a crap that you were really good with a yo-yo? ... oh wait.

what's the saying? "the more things change, the more they stay the same."

i bought this imperial at a local k-mart just a few years back. there was a thread on yoyonation that essentially dared people to make a video of themselves playing with imperials, and i thought that idea was just the coolest. i've never watched a ton of yo-yo videos (even now i mostly watch friends or offerings i'm pretty sure i'll like), but i get so tired of vids that don't do anything to really set themselves apart in some way. this was at least an opportunity to make a video (a craft i had only just begun to learn) that was different at its premise.

making this video catalyzed my desire to play more fixed axle, which led me to no jives, which set me in the direction i'm on now. still, every time i look at this video, i'm embarassed by it. i feel it's one of just a few i've done that are truly terrible, and that i should go back and do over. the tricks aren't the issue so much as how i perform them. nothing looks smooth or clearly-intentioned at all. it LOOKS like someone who's not at home playing an imperial - which i guess i wasn't. oh well, i guess it's important to document ones' amateur rattle (though probably NOT one's pseudo-mullet or hideous goatee).

i talked to steve about imperials a few years back. having been mr. duncan-guy, i kind of expected him to say "they're awesome. classic." he basically told me they're total crap - butterflies, too. the gummy, low-quality plastic, a design that can survive only a few light bumps, and mediocre-at-best looping ability really seemed to infuriate him, especially compared with russells (which are probably the only yo-yo that are more numerous than imperials worldwide). he said he'd asked duncan/flambeau repeatedly to revisit and improve them, but if it "ain't broke" (here having the meaning of "still sells") the company saw no real need to fix it. it occurs to me that i've pretty much never talked to an old-timey yo-yoer (at least one who was worth a damn) that really prefered the imperial. larry sayco also told me he despised it, and vastly preferred both the "super" and "professional" models.

regardless, i like this particular yo-yo. if the atomic-zombpocalypse hit tomorrow, and i survived in a sewer eating rats for 6 months before emerging... and if the only yo-yo left to be found was this red imperial, i'd be ok. i'd be just fine. i love the translucent red against the gold stamp. it doesn't play well by the standard i hold (which is not high in itself), but at least it's held together. i started on midnight specials growing up, so every time i throw this it feels a bit like coming home. i tried to hit spirit bomb on it earlier today, but no dice whatsoever. my no jive practice has not refined my technique to that extent, evidently.

it also makes me think of "good yo-yoing". like i said before, every generation looks back at the previous ones with a bit of wonder and maybe superiority. "how did you even SURVIVE without ipods?" my old students would ask me. and admittedly, if i could time travel and talk to my 12 year-old self as i suffered through long hours of making "mix tapes", saying "in 20 years, every song you have ever owned (and some movies) will fit in a 3x2 inch casing and will be able to be accessed instantly"... well... i probably wouldn't have finished said mixtape.

we yo-yoers do it too. we mostly operate under the assumption that the stuff we're doing now is somehow grander than all of the stuff that came before. to the kids in the community now, pre-webforum yo-yoing is like the dark ages, when in fact... blissfully ignorant or not, our tricks cannot be effectively detached from those of the people who spent long years refining and teaching the basics. they're the reason yo-yoing is burned into collective american consciousness; why yo-yo's are identifiable at all. and though they are in large part obscure to us now (just as we will be to later generations), we're foolish and forgetful when we neglect to honor yo-yoing's history. our yo-yo's aren't that great and our tricks aren't that incredible. i mean... they ARE... but not to the extent that they grant us license to deride the past. "good yo-yoing" is just yo-yoing that is relevant and meaningful in its moment.

this yo-yo (by which i mean imperials in general) has survived, like alligators, sharks and cockroaches. although the plastic sucks and you can't do "soiled panties" on it (whatever that is), the imperial has never broken in the long term. for all its flaws, i like that i can go buy one at a store and feel connected to [a part of] what yo-yoing was 50 years ago. would i mind if yoyofactory (or someone else) were to reset the standard someday, and another yo-yo occupies the imperial's hallowed space? not a bit. i DO think there should be a better "standard" out there that the uninitiated first associate with our art.

but before you scoff at the imperial, consider: how many yo-yo's will still be relevant 5 years from now (let alone 50)? and how many thousands have seen their first (or only) glimpse of yo-yoing through the imperial's plastic prism?

where the yo-yo's and yo-yoers of today seem to immediately alienate passers-by ("oh, i could never do that in a million years"), the imperial invited us all to try to "make it come back up to our hand" that first time... where now we try to burn through categories like "advanced", "expert", and "master", shedding them as if they carry a disease, the imperial told us it was ok to just enjoy "gravity pull" or "forward pass" in the beginning... that HAVING a "beginning" is, in fact, worthwhile... and where the yo-yo's of today are engineering feats in themselves, masking our ineptitude with their remarkable technology, the imperial taught us that when we fight through frustration and learn to use it, the skill we develop is truly, undeniably, and forever our own.

yo-yo #48: orange/blue siliconed zero

2009-07-06T18:30:00.000-04:00

"So many want the juice that skating gives, the popularity and coolness, but are not ready for the pain that comes eternally. People who think skating owes them are wrong; they get wheelbite in the rain. People who owe skating will live for ever. You want to know how to be a skater? Taste the concrete!"

- Jake Phelps
i've been playing yo-yo since july 1985. that was [to the best that i can recollect/research] when my dad brought my a guilt-gift from one of his many doctor-trips in the form of an early yomega brain. he was at a conference in boston, and was staying at his home in fall river. at the apparent recommendation of his mother, he bought the yo-yo from a local toy store. the patent on the brain is, i think, from 1984, so mine must have been one of the earliest production models.

anyway, that means i've been yo-yoing (albeit touch n' go here and there) for 24 years.
and if you can believe it, i've been skateboarding for 25!

i'm old. really old. like easter island-deity old. at least i feel that way sometimes. in may of 1984, my family moved from 2101 kentucky ave. in "charm city" (baltimore, md - alternatively "the city that reads", as bus stop benches advertise) to that den of heat and sin and biting reptiles - new orleans, louisiana. my parents had bought their first house (which had to be 3 times as big as the one we'd left), a low, sprawling ranch nestled in a labyrinth of white-concrete suburban streets, alleys, and intertwining drainage canals. this would be the playground which, over the next 6 years, would provide me with endless delinquent adventure, and which would perpetually dare me to discover and redefine the true nature of "fun".

when we made the move, the old owners had left behind exactly three items: a set of "jarts", a useless basketball backboard, and a bright yellow, metal-wheeled banana-board. i had never seen a skateboard up close, although i knew vaguely what they were. i remember trying to stand on it with my dad looking on, unsure of whether he should intervene. upon the glass-smooth surface of the garage, the wheels slipped immediately. the board shot out from beneath me, and had settled under the workbench before my ass had fully connected with the floor. i remember it hurt; enough to put me off wanting to skate for a couple months.

in the intervening time, however, i met jason heinze and matthew patterson. matt i met at the local pool. i was playing with my brand new "gizmo" toy (the cute one from "gremlins", remember?), and we ended up tossing the thing across the length of the pool. by the end of an hour, we had built a lasting friendship and had penciled in a summers worth of playdates. (it is amazing and surreal to watch now, as my own daughter strikes instant swimming-pool-friendships in the same way.) later that week, i met jason while exploring the streets of the neighborhood on my bike. he laughed at my training wheels, in a moment providing me with the imptus to finally shed them, which i did a week later. almost immediately, i learned that jason and matt had a pre-existing friendship, and i was surprised to find that, rather than being ostracized by the pair with their history, we formed a sort of trio. usually three's a crowd, but with us, three was riches and power. three was always having someone to play with, always having someone get your back when psycho-timmy threw glass at you, and when you had to punch psycho-timmy, three was never (ok, rarely) getting the ever-loving shit kicked out of you when his big brother came home.

and when we all concurrently discovered skateboarding, three became a full-on pre-pubescant skate-gang.

jason had an old nash board with which he introduced matt and me to the virtues of skate. and whatever we learned, he probably always remained the best of us. within a few weeks of seeing his board and learning to push, matt and i had our own rides; matching variflex dragon boards (by coincidence, i kid you not). my first summer in new orleans was a blur of skinned and re-skinned knees, huge carves, and the made-up tricks that every eight-year-old swears are pure gold. somehow, the next 6 years (and to some extent the next 24) were composed of incrementally amplified versions of the same.

skate-sessions with matt and jason remain my most readily-fetched and most indelible childhood memories. i can still feel the asphalt under my ojii "team rider" wheels (which i still have and occasionally ride). matt became skilled at riding ramps (i won't say "vert" because all our ramps were mini's or launches). he was the only one of us that could launch into a 180 or land a solid backside air off our pal robbie's quarter pipe. jason always had lance mountain boards, but really only rode street. he could grind before it was called "grinding", and though our roads had no curbs, he ollied up the "gentle inclines" with easy grace. i kind of blended the pair of them. i was happy riding street; happy with transition. i had the best boneless in the neighborhood, and i'd snap them uselessly over hydrants to compensate for my mediocre ollies. though my skill was nothing much, and no sponsorships were seeking me out as they were some other kids in our neighborhood... i remember being happy to be included, to be swept up in something, to be a skater.

to be a skater in the 80's was an incredible thing. i remember, really remember thinking how cool it was to be a part of what felt like an artistic movement, no less epic than the harlem renaissance... or "the" Renaissance itself, for that matter. hanging out at the nearby shop, i'd watch powell and g&s decks flying off the shelves, bombarded by ubiquitous images of the bones brigade and day-glo thrasher stickers. every day at school was spent half-assing it, doodling imaginary signature-decks and impossible ramp-plans while waiting for 3pm (c'mon, at least i WENT). our little triumvirate took full possession of the evening, from when the bus breaks squealed at our stop to when our parents would literally peal us from the street for bed. although my house was on the way to our usual ramp corner, i made a habit of bringing my board to school so as to waste no time in collecting it (or maybe just so i could bring my board to school). the neighborhood, the whole world it seemed, was ALIVE with skate-passion, even if it was really just me.

and then, like most everything... one day it was all gone.

i blinked and my friends quit; they moved on to remote control cars and collecting hunting knives and stuff. the streets were all quiet, and no one was willing to break out the ramps. in 1989, skating in new orleans just died. not with a bang, but a whimper.

i was too busy to ruminate much on it. we were preparing to move to north carolina (it might as well have been nepal). the move was as much for me as it was for my dad's professional opportunities. the city had begun to simmer me into potentially criminal form (aside from skateboarding), and my parents wisely noted the precipice upon which i was perched. the move to winston-salem was for me, a move into nothingness, but it was undeniably safe. there were no skaters in my new neighborhood. if there had ever been a "movement" here, it had died of alzheimers. one kid at my new school had a skateboard (a nice hosoi hammerhead), but when i went to his house, it turned out to just be the deck, which he had salvaged from somewhere. noting my disappointment, he gave it to me, and yeah, i still skate that too.

the move to nc did teach me one positive thing though, a revelation that irrevocably altered my whole perception of skateboarding: hills are cool.

new orleans had no hills. well, technically it had ONE hill at a park by the zoo, and hundreds of kids would be on that grassy sucker daily, climbing up, rolling down, and just generally trying to comprehend it. nc was different. my kitchen window looked out on two huge, beautiful hills, tapering nicely with slight inclines before intersecting at a common stop sign. i vividly remember the first time i braved the steeper and shorter of the two. everything was perfect, amazing... until a third of the way down i developed a "wobble". speedwobbles turn a skateboard board into a shuddering, convulsing mess, especially if the trucks are too loose. having never experienced this speed for more than a second while on a ramp, this sensation was foreign to me and i panicked. i ended up rolling down the latter 2/3 and amassed an instant contusion-collection that had my mom mystified as to why we'd moved at all. within another week, trucks tightened, i was pointing my schmidtt stix down the nastiest hill in the neighborhood, and though i rode through the wobbles, i was unable to do so with the brick wall that punctuated the t-intersection at the bottom. more ow.

i mastered speedwobbles and powerslides eventually, and much more importantly, i mastered riding alone. on occasion, i'd be run off the road by seniors in their mustang or mocked by b-ball jocks as i pushed past their pick-up game. it's amazing to me that there was a time when being a skater was a real liability when it came to "being cool". but when i look back on it, pushing alone through those years was one of the richest, most meaningful times in my life. and every time i bomb a hill now, it's the same feeling, the same desperation, the same commitment that sweeps over me. it's somehow surprising to look back now and realize that i constructed a huge chunk of my character while on a skateboard.

so what's it got to do with yo-yo's?

well... whatever. i never said it all had to tie up perfectly. i was holding this yo-yo today, an orange and blue siliconed fhz that i traded (or just stole) from my buddy samm scott, and it made me think about skating. it's an incredible zero, as some zeros just mysteriously seem to be. but as for what it's got to do with skating, i'm coming up empty... maybe it's the colorway. i had a rad driveway session yesterday, and i've got it on the brain. it's all just manipulating energy anyway.

but much has been made of how similar the two media are. for awhile in the late 90's, they were marketed in very similar (very eXtreme!!!) ways. both are all about tricks; the aesthetic of "the dance", and though both skating and yo-yoing pretend to be competitive sports sometimes, the best exponents of each recognize that they are ARTS first. they're different, too. some yo-yoers love to talk about yo-yoing as though it's some kind of iconoclastic sub-culture, but really it's playing with toys. it can be done in the safety of one's room, closeted if necessary, free from ridicule, and sans pain. all that notwithstanding... much of what i've learned from riding a skateboard has applied itself pretty naturally to playing yo-yo. truth is universal, and these could be "yo-yo truths" with only minor editing. let me hear it if you disagree.

• if you intend to hit a trick, commit... or you will probably eat it.
• learn the basics; no one wants to see you do a stationary tré flip if you can't rock a giant ollie at speed.
• your board's going to get trashed if you're using it right. don't sweat it.
• skateboarding does not happen on the internet.
• whether in a park, in the rain, or in 110 degrees, know how your gear is going to respond.
• knowing where skating comes from is just as meaningful as knowing where it's going.
• if you want to bomb massive hills, you're going to spend a lot of time walking back up.
• you're going to fall down, sometimes worse than others. get the hell up.
• getting sponsored will get you some gear and might make you cool among skaters, but if it satisfies your compulsion to skate, you should never have stepped on the board to begin with.
• although it's great to session with friends, skating is primarily a loner deal; you have to be comfortable with yourself.
• if you go fast, you get wobbles. put your weight forward and ride through them.
• sometimes skating won't be cool. people are going to make fun of you. get over it. if you're skating to be cool in the eyes of others, quit. now. please.
• the tricks are rad, but the ride will always matter more in the end.
• being able to do a handplant is pretty worthless. being a skater is pretty worthless. being a person who understands what a skater understands... is invaluable.

yo-yo #47: SPYY Flying V

2009-07-02T21:01:00.000-04:00

i'd like to preface this by stating that i realize i don't deserve a signature yo-yo. maybe only a very few people do. that said, this is gonna be mine.

two years ago, i was an elementary school teacher in durham, nc. for the third time in four years, i had been graced with a student teacher. although it actually added up to more work for me than i initially expected, it came with two undeniably cool perks: the university paid me (usually right before xmas) AND i basically got 2 weeks off of teaching when the trainee took over full time. sometimes i'd wander the grounds playing haunting (annoying) melodies on my shakuhachi (no really, i'd do that). i'd watch surf movies in the lounge, enduring the inevitable witty comments of my overwraught peers. i'd play yo-yo. a lot... i even designed one.

in november of 06, i started drawing out "my dream yo-yo" on graph paper. this was right around the release of the peak, and the yo-yo i drew had a similar bearing seat, big c bearing, silicone response. i borrowed a single schmoove ring from "the end". when it came to the profile, i wanted something wicked. throw down was getting ready to release the luchador, and i was testing it. i wanted something comparably sharp and dangerous, and drew out a yo-yo that was wide, spikey, and brutal; something i'd be wary of catching, let alone throwing in a crowd. heavily rim weighted and pyro wide with a perfect square profile, i wanted it to spin forever and handle a bazillion string mutations.

i sat on that idea for months, and then on a lark, shot it off to nate weddle, who pretty much WAS throw down, asking about whether i could "borrow" his machinist to do a one-off. his response was "i like it. why not just make it your signature throw down yo-yo?" although it embarrasses me to admit it, i got really excited about that; attached to it. i thought it was really. really. cool... and i will not deny dreaming up bizarre colorways and cool little tweaks. whilst i kept dreaming, however, on and off over a year, i fell in love HARD with another yo-yo.

i had liked the tom kuhn no jive 3-in-1 for awhile... but when i approached it again 18 months ago, something was different. whereas before, i saw playing a wood yo-yo as a cool retro novelty (or something), now it just felt like yo-yoing, period. everything else was the novelty; unnecessary window-dressing. as has been documented in a metric ton of my videos, i became obsessed with throwing no jives; especially with hitting tricks on them that i had previously assumed to be impossible (ex. 1, 2, 3, 4). over the course of a year, playing ball-bearing yo-yo's only sparingly... my style evolved toward a completely different ideal. like chemosynthetic plants living deep in the ocean, i no longer required the "light" of bearings or low-response to do what i wanted to do. yo-yoing became more spiritual, more meaningful, and much less dependent upon equipment. i'm not trying to say that i became a "better yo-yoer" than anyone else; just that it "felt better" to me.

i still looked at the ronin and thought of how nice it would be to have my own special yo-yo, but since it no longer suited the direction my style had taken, it was really just empty ego thinking that.

then this winter, steve buffel of saturn precision yo-yo's released a pet project he called the "pistolero". when i saw the finished project, i was completely astounded. steve actually captured the engravings of an 1873 colt peacemaker pistol, and had used them to adorn the outer circumference of the yo-yo's rims. he had also surgically drilled 6 holes into the hub, giving the feel of a revolver's cylinder. unfortunately, a problem with the anodizing left him unhappy with the final result. although the yo-yo looked phenomenal by all accounts, he felt it vibrated too much to be released at full price, and put it up for sale direct from his site for what was basically a $75 pittance.

regardless, i never saw a yo-yo i liked the look of so much, and i contacted steve about maybe working out a trade. i offered him one of my ronin prototypes for one of his pistoleros. to my shock and glee, he not only accepted, but offered me a red one, the existence of which i was unaware. despite shipping from calgary, it showed up at my door like 4 days later, and i was even more blown away. i quickly traded a benchmade butterfly knife for a 2nd one, and it became my main player for a few weeks (along with my no jives, of course), reinvigorating my interest in playing with a bearing.

although i assumed that steve had received the ronin, felt "meh" about it, and had just kept mum to be polite... in actuality it took him about 3 WEEKS to receive it. when he finally did, he e-mailed me straight away, intimating that he liked it a lot, and if nate was truly "awol" for good, that he'd be interested in producing it for me himself. needless to say, i was flabbergasted. this was a yo-yo dream that was basically dead in the water, and suddenly it's being raised like a relic from the lusitania? moreover, jonrob, one of the yo-yoers i most respect, had just become spyy's first sponsored player, and his yo-yo, the "pure" was due out in a few weeks. though i had always associated it with extremely (maybe even obsessively) high quality, it occured to me that spyy was suddenly one of the most multi-faceted and interesting companies out there. i talked to nate about it, expressing my interest, and he said in his predictably low-key way "hell yeah, do it! i love spyy! i'll make the ronin my way eventually to make it up to people who never got their lucha libres replaced." (whether he will shall remain to be seen.)

steve and i talked, and he sent me 3-d CAD-drawings of what the ronin would look like with a few "spyyish" tweaks. it looked good, and i was dizzy at the idea of being included in something so cool... but i was also pretty conflicted. this was just not a yo-yo that matched me very well anymore. coke-can wide, and with a gap you could drive a truck through, it would probably sell great... but what's the point of having "your own yo-yo" if it's not truly, FULLY, what you want to play? despite my reservations, i didn't mention any of this stuff to steve at first.

and as it happens, i didn't need to. during our 3rd or 4th phone conversation, he basically asked whether this was really the yo-yo i wanted, and i had to say "well...". though i still can't believe it, he said "let's start from scratch", and we set about making a yo-yo that really fit with the yo-yoing i do. that was easier than it might sound. i play with no jives. i basically asked steve to make me a metal one.

obviously, it was more complicated than that, especially for him. at first we even bandied about the idea of making a wood yo-yo. but i've already got about 30 wood yo-yo's that do exactly what i want a wood yo-yo to do. i've never had (and never SEEN) a metal yo-yo that plays with the classic feel and subtlety of a wood yo-yo. that's what i wanted. steve had just finished setting up the cad profile of the "addiction", complete with a big c-size bearing and recessed silicone. he wondered whether we could use the same guts on this yo-yo, but expressed concern at the idea of such a wide gap on a slimline. it was a leap of faith, but he made it. the morning after he made the initial proof, he called me before coffee, seriously worried about whether it would work. it "just feels so different" he said. in the end though, thankfully, he evidently recognized that that's what he was going for (and maybe that's what having me on the team implied), and he went ahead.

this yo-yo is mostly all i've played for the last month or so. i've still thrown my no jives some (especially with my weak 2-handed). i love it. LOVE it. it's slim enough to put in a tight jeans pocket and plays like the emmeff dickens; just as smooth as any spyy you've ever played. it's got a hint of classic old school flavor, but handles anything the new school could possibly throw at it. it regenerates smooth and easy and eats string layers for brunch. it's going to ship not ONLY with a big c bearing, but also with a "half-spec" bearing that greatly reduces the gap and instantly makes the v tug-responsive, enabling the trapeze stalls i love to do on 3-in-1's. i wanted a slim metal yo-yo that could be set up to handle spirit bomb and shoot the moon on successive throws, or huge, beautiful fly-away dismounts... and now i've got one.

steve had the idea for the name, "the flying v". i don't exactly remember his reasons, but i liked it. the flying v is, of course, a classic gibson guitar, and fit well with our idea of a kind of "retro" profile. it also occurs to me that when i play yo-yo, i generally only "see" one half of the profile at a time. pretty much every yo-yo i throw therefore makes a kind of "flying v" as it moves over and through string segments (a little cheesy maybe, but i think it works for this yo-yo). it's also way rad that it's my favorite color, by which i don't just mean "green". anyone who's spent time in a forest will recognize that there are a bazillion "greens". this is my favorite green. it's the green you get sometimes in the early-morning shade of pisgah national forest in the blue ridge mountains (ok, really cheesy, BUT IT WORKS FOR THIS YO-YO). tressley cahill did the art for it, and i'm really pleased with how it turned out.

i'm still a little conflicted and werided out, in a "this is all surreal" way. not about spyy, mind you. i can't imagine a company that'd be easier to "rep". good people, amazingly consistent yo-yo's; what's not to like? no, although i strike a lot of people as a pretty "take-it-easy" kind of guy, i'm not at all. i over-analyze things and take apparently trivial matters pretty seriously. i still worry about being able to do something positive for the brand. i'm an old guy who's mostly good at throwing old wood yo-yo's. and here i am holding this next-generation metal masterpiece that's clearly capable of "more" than i could ever throw at it, so it's easy to feel a little guilty. add to that the fact that i'm not going to be champion of the world (i probably only barely deserve my "champion of the state" status), and there are tons of kids who can shock me with moves i don't understand after they've yo-yoed for 1/10 as long as i have. so it's also easy to feel a little apprehensive. and yet it's been made clear to me that i'm not really on the team for those reasons. so i'm just gonna keep doing what i do.

i remember when yoyojam came out with the 'matador' for jennifer baybrook, and everyone was like "um... why does she need a 1a yo-yo when she pretty much just loops (and had a concurrently issued signature looper)?" well, sometimes i worry that people will say "um... he plays old, irrelevant yo-yo's, right? why does he need a high-end metal signature?" again, i don't need one (and i don't actually concern myself with things "people will say").

so maybe it is a little weird for me to be on spyy given my proclivities... but at the same time... yo-yoing's yo-yoing. it's playing with physics, with the air, and a bit of string. sometimes there's wood attached to the end, sometimes there's plastic, or metal. i'm coming to learn that it doesn't matter as much as i thought it did - either way. it's the yo-yoing that's going on INSIDE that matters. and i really approach that the same no matter what i'm throwing.

this yo-yo is everything i could want in a metal. and at the risk of sounding [predictably] esoteric to many, the hardest, coolest, most serendipitous thing steve's done was to inject some real "soul" into it; some character. it doesn't feel like just another super-smooth metal yo-yo. yes, i recognize that it's probably just the hand i had in its creation, but this yo-yo and i connect where so many others just feel distant and alien. i really, really hope other people are able to say the same. i hope they can pick it up and feel inspired to play really honestly. cause that's really all i could ever ask of a yo-yo... or a yo-yoer.

it should be out really, really soon!

yo-yo #46: throw down ronin prototype

2009-07-02T13:32:00.000-04:00

throw down... sigh... i didn't really recognize the extent to which i had 'attached' to it until it foundered.

i'm so disappointed about it. nate weddle has only ever been a really nice guy to me. and i was amped to meet james buffington finally at indy this year (another nice guy). i really wanted throw down to keep it together. i wanted this yo-yo to work out. but my desperate wanting is silly, and just another facet of the bad feelings i now associate with the whole situation.

this yo-yo was going to be "the ronin". ronin in japanese means "unemployed person", although i've heard the more poetic "wandering wave" also. basically, a samurai who was severed from his lord, either by some misdeed or the latter's death, became a ronin. westerners often associate the word with heroic figures like miyamoto musashi, wandering the countryside, dueling and practicing incessantly, honing both skill and character. we tend to like the idea of the loner-john-wane-cowboy riding off into the sunset. generally though, the term was an insult; a derrogation. if you operated outside of a fife or the service of a lord, you were essentially without use in feudal japan, and were probably "better off" committing seppuku. anyway, it's an ironic name for a yo-yo, considering that it represents the end of my loose affiliation with throw down. it's a cool, bulky toy ; comparable in size and weight to a pyro. it's very smooth, but in play, feels decidedly "clunky".

we had released two yo-yo's: the luchador (yo-yo #12/13) and the tiny shuriken. i was really pleased by how both played, by their branding, and by how they were received by the community. i felt that throw down was headed in a really cool direction. in fall 07, nate sent me a prototype of the "lucha libre", an all-delrin version of the luchador. his first attempt was in essence, exactly that. it was a plastic luchador, without a bearing seat and with a huge axle screwed right into the plastic. as a product tester, i felt like this was a recipe for disaster; that the axle would strip the plastic halves, ruining the yo-yo or that the bearing seat would fail under the pressure of the steel bearing being tightened into it. i said as much to nate, and he considered it.

after awhile, he decided to redesign the lucha libre with a weird steel hex-nut axle insert that would fit into the delrin body. it used protective shims and was a very ambitious and complicated design that ended up taking him forever to finalize. i'm not sure if he got impatient or what, but i certainly never got to play with the updated version before he brought it to market. because i'm intentionally hard on yo-yo's i test, i like to think that i'd have caught the flaw, but who really knows? the libre had a paper thin wall around the bearing seat. even the slightest overtightening or banging could (and would) break it, rendering the yo-yo pretty much useless. nate told me he was aware of the flaw just in time for its release from stores. he added a quick disclaimer to it, and hoped that people would be gentle.

whether they were or weren't, peoples' toys broke quickly and in large number. i know of relatively few libres that are still in working condition (and have been played reasonably hard). around this time, nate pretty much stopped responding to my emails (and apparently to those of an increasingly irate yo-yo community, many of whom had been told that he'd replace their broken halves). i'd still harass him on the phone sometimes, and he'd repeatedly say stuff like "yeah i gotta get on that." i really think he wanted to, but that he simply didn't have the means. my good friend takeshi reminded me that nate's got some aspect of the "samurai" mindset himself, and that he wouldn't want to ask for help or even offer up the fact that everything was not alright. and to be honest, though i think he should have said SOMETHING directly to the community, i can appreciate that perspective to a degree. i think that nate was just overwhelmed by the financial meltdown the libre had become. he had been putting the little money he made from one yo-yo into funding the next, and all it took was one design flaw to toss throw down into a whirling vortex. evidently (and most unfortunately), he hit the "eject button", and has been incommunicado with the yo-yo world since last year.

this irritated me for 2 reasons. although i just tested out his yo-yo's, and had nothing to do with the company or business plan (or apparent lack thereof), i was perceived as an official "throw down guy" who could accurately comment on what-the-hell-happened. also, this yo-yo, MY yo-yo, the ronin... obviously stalled indefinitely. over the course of a year, i was told "2 more weeks, 2 more weeks" and pretty much believed it. needless to say, the original run of 10ish protos are the only ones that have ever been made. at one point i had 4 of them (3 of which i bought from nate at cost), but i've only kept this one. i'm not sure if i kept it to remind myself of how excited i was about designing a yo-yo "just for me" (i sure don't love the way it plays now), or if i've kept it to remind myself to "see the forest for the trees", and NOT to get too excited about phenomena over which i have essentially no control.

forgive me, but i'm going to talk more about this yo-yo in just a minute (in a much more gleeful context!)