It's All Up In The Air

I’m sure by now most people on the planet have seen the Chris Bliss juggling video, and then Jason Garfield’s response video where he does the same routine as Bliss, but with 5 balls rather than 3, showing people that Bliss isn’t really that good of a juggler. Jason, like many people who are really, really good at something, seems to think that people shouldn’t get excited at how good someone is at something when they aren’t really all that good at it. I would have to agree with Jason on the fact the Bliss isn’t technically as good of a juggler, and that people who email the video around should really understand that, but I have to disagree with where he goes after that.

His website has a page outlining all of the stolen tricks that jugglers are performing, and a list of rules where readers can calculate the level of hackitude they can be expected to be treated by other jugglers depending on the tricks they’re doing in their routine. Many of the “stolen routines” are pretty specific, including the lines of patter that go along with tricks, and might have some level of legitimacy, though I’m not sure I’m willing to agree to the ligitimacy on most of it. The “drop object and reduce count by 1” thing is pretty obvious and isn’t necessarily stolen from a particular person. The “this is going to hurt… twice” ping pong ball thing is pretty specific, but is the line any more stolen than the actual ping pong ball mouth juggling it is going along with? It seems to me that if you want to go there, you might have to include “if you throw objects into the air and then catch them repeatedly without dropping, then you’re doing a stolen trick” to the list of rules. I mean, where do you draw the line?

Some of the rules on the other hand, aren’t specific at all. I’ll paste the 5 rules which determine whether or not you are a hack here:

1. Juggling while eating an apple.
2. Passing around a volunteer and knocking something out of their mouth.
3. Juggling Chainsaws
4. Juggling Knives
5. Juggling fire (Torches)

Now I can kind of see his point on the knives, chainsaws and torches (which is that to the uninformed they make it seem like what you’re doing is more difficult than it really is), but one thing he isn’t allowing for is that no one who knows anything about juggling pays to go see other jugglers. These so-called “hacks” are just performing for the crowd in front of them, and are trying to dazzle them in ways that they’re expected to be dazzled. It is very true that juggling 3 flaming clubs is no more difficult than 3 non-flaming clubs, but to someone who doesn’t juggle (read: everyone in the world) 4 or 5 non-flaming clubs is no more impressive than 3. I wish I had a dime for every person who has seen me juggling 3 clubs and wondered why I didn’t have more. “Don’t you want to juggle 4 or 5 clubs?” Of course I do, but I haven’t put in the time to learn how. It is really not the same thing. “Now if you could light them on fire, you’d really have something…”

Now if one of these hacks is doing 5 clubs in addition to the 3 flaming ones, is he still a hack? What if he busts out 7 clubs, then puts them aside and gets all scary and talks about the death-defying 5 flaming clubs? Is he now a hack because of resorting to flashy showmanship in addition to his non-hack juggling skills in his attempts to make the evening memorable for his crowd? I really don’t think he is. I think Jason’s points are valid to an extent, but I think he’s being rather limiting in how he is defining these things.