Rambling About Balls

It is odd to me that people like round balls a great deal more than cubes. I am talking of course of juggling balls.

Practicing with the CMU Juggling Club has just be great on so many levels. One of the benefits is experimenting with new equipment. In the past we would just have the members of our group to kick around a new juggling apparatus. In the last year if we have been experimenting with something we h

ave been able to pass it around what ever it is with a dozen or more jugglers.

One of the newest thing we have experimented with is the round juggling ball. now you may say to yourself, Self, aren’t all balls round. Well I suppose in once sense you would be correct. We tend to call anything that is the size of a ball a ball. So we have cubes that are balls. I am sure there are some pictures of juggling cubes.

Anyway. It is much easier to sew a cube. I have gotten rather good at it. I can sex a juggling cube in under two minutes. Stuff in under a minute and sew up the stuffing hole by hand in two minutes. We have gotten so good at making juggling cubes that we give sets away to strangers who show up at juggling practices.

The ball pattern we are experimenting is a lot like the cover on a baseball. In face I disassemble a base ball to get the pattern. We upped the size just a little bit. Anyway it weighs the same as our large juggling cubes.

Anyway we have made two sets of round bean bag type juggling balls. One set is being circulated among the younger members of the brigade. The other set I have been using as much as possible. Also it has been passed around at two of the CMU Juggling meetings.

Everyone likes the size except for a couple of the youngest members of the Brigade. They of course being ten have small hands. I think I can scale them down to meet their needs. The only other complaint is the stuffing. We use wooden fuel pellets to fill our bean bags. They are angular and let out dust for the first couple of weeks of juggling with them.

The grains I have found in the strip district have been processed so that they can easily be boiled. This means that is they get wet they expand. They also cost seven bucks a pound. That is the problem with the wooden pellets. If they get wet they expand.

I do know that many juggling balls are stuffed with millet. I don’t know what kind of millet is best. Even so on the up side you can get white millet for feeding birds at Agway stores. They closest Agway store is a bit of a hike It looks like it is around forty bucks for a fifty pound bag. This is a lot more than the three buck we spend for fifty pounds of wood pellets. Also I imagine the volume of millet is a bit less. Which at this point we are stuffing the balls by volume and not weight.

Well that is where we stand. in another week or two we might have a round millet filled juggling ball. Well we will test that bad boy when we get it. If the stuffing is really our last problem this may be the last step to the best possible juggling ball we can make.

So that is more than you probably every wanted to hear someone ramble on about balls. Be safe out there and keep your stick on the ice.

Early Morning Randomness

Still kicking around the idea of writing a book. I have a couple hundred pages of something that I like. Well I like the idea of the story. I am not sure i am in love with how it is working out. I will throw another fourty pages into it and read through it. Maybe this is the one. Maybe it is practice for when i finally get around to writting the Great American Novel.

On other front i am still messing around with knitting. I find myself more fascinated with pattern and individual stitches these days. For what ever reason i don't really have any inclination to make something useful. In a lot of ways it is like the books I have been kicking around for years.

On the clown Brigade Front we are trying to integrate Standing kettle and Birthday Parties into the group. We have also started providing some religious services to a local nursing home. It is nice to see the Brigade getting back to it's roots.

Well just checking in. Be safe out there

Cleaning the Carpet.

At this lovely hour I am cleaning the carpet in the brigade office. It is always disturbing the shampoo a light colored carpet. Sure you get a nice clean carpet when you are done.When you are cleaning you get to know just how much junk is in your carpet. In a tan carpet the color charge is greater than I would like.

I did not pick my carpet color. I probably would have picked something darker. I am not sure why i am rambling on about this. Over the last couple weeks I have been tryng to spruce up the office. In July we started taking a bunch of shows for money. It has been nice for some of the young people to earn some pocket money. Heck it has been nice for the Brigade to have another source of income.

With the lack of another clown troupe in Pittsburgh we appear to be the only way new clowns will be trained. The sad thing is that there are two national clown organizations in United States that are not interested in having a growing clown community in this area.

I have always though it was important for us to continue the craft of clowning. I just don't know. This does not feel like something our Brigade should be doing. Sadly I do not think there is going to be anyone else to do it.

Ask Zeeppo

Clown News 8/23/2013

J Rock Cat 1

Slow Progress

Video is not a medium that I have done much in over the years. Lots of people have fancy camera and microphones and the like.  So doing vidcasts and editing stuff has been a bit of chore to pick up on.

The thing is that if the Brigade is going to be able to look for donations on line we are going to have to prove that people should give us money with something that we put on line. So we need to be able to make television or something like it.

These newscasts have been the something like a phase that we are going through in order to make something up. They have been six kinds of terrible and sometime seven kinds of terrible. In our most recent attempt we have even done some editing. The editing was all me and all bad.

Well I working my way through Luther on the Internet. I am on the fourth episode of the most recent series and Ruth Wilson's name popped up on the screen. If you do not watch this show you are missing out. Any way this should be a good episode.

Be safe out there and keep your stick on the ice.

Clown News 7/20/2013

God times throwing fire

I had fun at Duck Hollow yesterday. It was the Brigade's first juggling at Duck Hollow of the season. This is me juggling torches in my kilt. The picture is blurry because I was moving so fast. It has nothing to do with trying to use a camera phone at night.

Anyway it was a neat evening. We did not have a bunch of people but the people we had were a nice mix so it was a nice evening.

I would like to think the Fire Arts community in Pittsburgh is starting to turn the corner. Yesterday I did not have to explain to anyone that they should not be drunk or standing next to the fuel pit. Also not once did I have to tell a drunk smoker that they were standing next to something flammable.

The sad thing is was almost entirely a new group of people. The folks that showed up at Duck Hollow last year who defended drunken spinning where not there. So there is no proof that they learned anything from the police periodically breaking up the spinning groups last year. It would have been nice to save the Pittsburgh Fire Arts Group. With the way things a going they will simply become another irrelevant internet group.

Well safe safe out there everyone

Clown News 5/19/2013

Rambling About Clown Stuff

2:33 AM

It is early in the morning and I am once again without sleep. Actually I feel like I could sleep but it does not happen.

I have been working on several thing of various degrees of importance. I am working on a way to increase the rate of fire on the Brigade confettie cannon the Clownzooka. I am back to working on the LAst Brigadier. I also have three grant proposals for the Clown Briagde in the works. They are not due for some time but I need to stay ahead of such things.

Everyone who writes a book thinks they are going to write the great American Novel. I suppose that is mostly Americans that think that. Anyway, I think The Last Brigadier may be my best shot at that title. The more I work on it the more I like the characters. Also I know exactly where this book is going to go. Heck I even have a plot outline written out.

The book was started three years ago. In it is a character who is a Baptist Preacher in a church up the Hill from where the Brigadier was once stationed. His fictional atributes are very similar to my current minister's actual existance. I wonder if I knew about him in the back of my mind when I created this character.

Well be safe out there. And keep your stick on the ice.

Ted Nuggent Once Knew the Way

This is not the man I want in control of gun control. Maybe if I had an electric guitar I would want him around. At the end of the Video Ted does prove that we do not need guns. Please watch.



You see Ted is able to fend off the flying bullets from an army of cops with his tasty guitar riff. So kids put down you guns and pick up a guitar.

Bad Crickets

I do not know a great deal about fire arms. Nor am I an expert on raising children.

Even so this is what the NRA is defending. The kid in the picture cannot be more than ten even if they are really short. I have met many ten year olds. Being a clown you get to meet lots of kids. I am not sure I would have wanted any of them to be armed.

I remember when people were outraged by Joe Camel. Joe was a cartoon Camel that smoked Camel Cigarettes. He was always in a cool popular place with good looking women in awe as he played the piano or golfed or what ever upright cartoon camels do. In Joe's defense none of the kids who took up smoking because he was smoking killed their siblings with second hand smoke. Well not with the same efficiency that you can do it with a cricket rifle.

At least with cigarettes it took years to kill people. If you follow Jimminy's boot wearing cousin you can take about todlers left and right. It was interesting listening to a discussion on the "news" channel about this. The Gun Defender was claiming it was a good idea for kids to learn things young. He claimed there was a great heritage in our nation of learning things while being young.

You know I teach young people how to juggle. You have seen the videos on this blog if you are long time reader. Have you ever seen a kids with a set of swords in their hands or torches. No because it is too dangerous.

When will Americans realize five year olds with guns are dangerous? Perhaps the NRA wants all the kindergarder kids to have baby rifles to prevent the next school shooting.

Juggling & Name that VIdscast

Work continues on the Vidpodwhats it. We have not named it yet. We have come up with a couple of bits that will be part of the show. One of the bits will be the news. WE have been working on that one a lot. We are trying to figure out who is the best mix of people to use and how to approach it. We have also been getting in some practice on just doing the thing. once decision that we have come up is that we would like to have the title animated. There is a young person named Rosetta McBride who does this neat thing where she draws a cartoon and sets it to music. I would like to have her do the titles. This is a video of her drawing a cartoon This is her learning how to juggle. Some day we will convince her to join the circus. We be safe out there and keep you stick on the ice.

Clown News

This is the news from 4/30/2013, sort of.

Give the Yahoos Nuclear Weapons

I do not understand why the recent gun legislation failed. I have to wonder how bad it will have to get before the second amendment is no longer needed. How many innocent people will have to die before we do not think unstable people need guns. I am a clown and no constitutional scholar. Even so it is my understanding that the amendments are changed from time to time as our nation changes. We once thought the Demon rum was so bad that we had to prevent it's use at all costs. Then we later decided that was not the case. So why is the second amendment so important that it cannot change. Do we need a well ordered militia to stand against tyranny? What nation on this planet can defeat our military? And if no nation can defeat us why would we think our citizenry could stand against our military. If everyone that wanted a machine gun could have one would they be able to take down the US Military? No matter how many people are in your militia they cannot stand against a squadron of F 22s or a carrier group. So we as Americans must trust that our Army and Navy are not going to oppress us. There are two alternatives. We can reduce our military to the point a group of yahoos with machine gun can stand against them. Or we can give the yahoos their own nuclear weapons and Naval carrier groups. Those are the only two solutions that will give the citizens parity with the military. Well call me stupid but I personally think the US Military has my back. Be safe out there and keep you stick off the ice.

The Clown News for 4/12/2013

Recycled Humor 1

After the Clown News

Sergeant Wilson defends the honor of 1 Direction.

The Skates are Finished

Well the Chicago 76 skates are finished. I have been looking for parts for the for a couple years now. And with the exception of the laces and the ball bearings everything is original Chicago parts.

The wheel are the hard clay wheel for roller rinks. I cannot wait to go to the rinks and use them at the end of the month. Heck I might sneak out next week and use them on a rink.

Well be safe out there everyone and see you at the rink.

Clown News

Brigade News

Need a name for a Clown Show

Scott Brand Lies to You

First off I would like to thank all of the people that are spamming the old Blog. So I stopped by to post a complaint about some company and there is a bunch of spam. Somehow that seems just about right

Anyway the good peole at Scott Brands is advertising that if your stop by their website and do a survey. You are then supposed to get a free month of Hulu. Well in reality you get a chance to give them all your credit card information. If you do not give them your personal information you do not get the free month.

I was so annoyed that I called Hulu. They claimed it was a standard industry practice. Well the only site I know of like them is Netflix. Well I tried them out and actually got a free month without having to jump through hoops. I called the people at Scott and they claim that they let you know before hand. Well it is toward the bottom of a several page document that is shrunk down to 4 pt font. So yes they do tell you that they are lying to you about the free month. They just do it in the sneakiest way possible.

Well if you come across this offer don't believe it. Scott just want to survey you with out giving you anything in return.

So go Brawny

Be safe out there and keep your stick on the ice.

Cat in a Bag

Why does my cat sit on or in my computer bag. I just do not get it. Here sits Maya on my bag at the end of practice in our office. You can tell there was a practice by the large number of beat up balloons laying around.

It makes you wonder. Maybe she wants to go out with me when I leave. Even if she did I am sure that she would rather not travel in my bag.

If you have any ideas let me know.

Ideas of March March

 As always the Ideas of March March was a great thing. The clowns and I joined some other denziens of the city on our yearly misson to make people aware that they should beware of the Ides of March March. Here was are walking down the street warning everyone that we were there. It is hard to tell who is in clown face from behind. You also may not be able to tell I am on stilts.

In the lower right corner is Amelia the President of the Tri-Rivers Clown Alley. So perhapse this counts as our first joint operation with the Tri-Rivers.


Most of the pictures I took were like this one of a passing car. They were waving at us that we are number one. Usually one uses their pointer finger for that . Still, I will not judge.

The bottom picture is Mandy and the 18th Annual March cake.

Well as you can see I am a lousy photographer. I hope Walt got better pictures.

Be safe out there and keep your stick on the ice.

Salvage 1

This is a great little show that I recently discovered. I mean it is Andy Griffith with a rocket ship. The only sad part is that they made so few of them. I am smelling a remake with Denis Farina in the title role.

An Old Friend

I am spending a day with an old friend to work on a new one. With in the Clown Brigade is something called the White Book. It is tha majority of the proficiencies that you are able to work on as a Junior Clown. It is basically the guidelines on how to become a standard clown.

The book was meant to go with something that we never really bothered working on. These are the proficiencies that Standard Clowns are allowed to work on. We have been calling it the Red Book even though it does not actually exist.

Well as of today there is actually a Red Book. It includes advanced version of the White Book Proficiencies and some that are new. As of now there are 17 Proficiencies in it. There are a dozen that are being finished and need to be voted on by the Brigade Council.

On some level this is progress.

Be safe out there and keep your stick on the ice.

A Group of Clowns

What is a group of clowns called?

One of the folks in my troupe looked this up. According to what they found it is a Buggy.

What the heck. I have never heard that. It is like a Lion being told that his Pride is called a chair.

I looked this up on the internet. I came across Yahoo answers third or fourth on the list of search results. It indeed said that a group of clown was called a Buggy. Upon further inspection this answer was voted on by yahoo users.

So basically a group of people who may or may not know the answer get to vote on what they think the answer is.

Well that sounds like a great system. No wonder wikipedia is not considered a valid research tool. Oh that reminds me. I have to go on wikipedia and add the time I landed on the moon while a crew member of Appolo 15.

Oh by the way. A group of clowns is called a Troupe or sometimes and Alley.

Be safe out there and keep your stick on the ice.

A Sign That You are a Nerd

There are several sign that you are a nerd. One of those signs is that you have more than a passing familiarity with the Tardis.

Chalk Theiving Cats

Why are my cats stealing chalk???


There are three chalk boards in the Clown Cave. There is chalk in a couple of places around the room. We are big into chalk. We have white chalk and colored chalk. There are pictures and lists put on various chalk boards.

The odd thing is that chalk end up in small piles in the corners of the upstairs rooms. That means that the kitties are gathering it up and piling it up. I have never known a cat to do this sort of thing before. It is very odd.

MST3K Godzilla

MST3K - S02E13 - GODZILLA VS. the SEA MONSTER - Click here for another funny movie.

Yay Godzilla

JC Brooks Stilting & Juggling

Well it is what it says it is.

Be safe out there and keep your stick on the ice.

Blog Clog - Google still Stinks

The  battle against the Cyber Shills continues. Today there were thirty messages from folk that want free advertising on my blog. Frankly I do not have enough readers for anyone to want to advertise here. I do allow comments because once in a blue moon someone without an account will leave a message here. Also I have reconnected with a couple of friends who I had lost touch through the comment section on this thing. So I really do not want to stop receiving anonymous comments.

This, once again, is somewhere that the people of google could improve things. They could check anonymous comments and see if they have been reported as spam.I mean this is not brain surgery folks. They just do not feel like doing it. It would appear they want people flooding their users with spam.

Someday I suppose that they will annoy me enough that I finally move my blog to wordpress.

Posting on a Bus About Church

Once again I am tooling around the Steel City on a bus. The bus is packed and it has to be explained to people that they should use seats in the back and not stand in the front blocking everyone. There is the occasional person screaming for the back door even though the driver can get in trouble if they are caught using it.

I am on the 61C and there should be a larger bus on this run. Of course the Port Authority is opposed to doing anything that might make their customers happy or comfortable. So a shot bus it is. I suppose we are lucky they have not started using dodge darts.

I am off to Bible Study at Second Baptist. It is an odd format that I have not seen done anywhere else. You are given a Bible verse and asked to come up with your thoughts on it. Some have object lessions or mini sermons. Others tell how that verse made them fell. And the happy few tell elephant stories that are related to the Bible Verse.

On the face of it one would think this would be some kind of train wreck. To the contrary it works out most weeks. The people who come clearly spend time thinking about thier replies, and you get to learn a lot about the people you go to church with.

After a person has read their verse and said their piece the floor is open to comment from everyone else around the table. This ranges from well thought out Biblical commentaries to jokes about people being old.

In many of the churches that I have been a member this would lead to great division in the congregation and much gossip. At Second Baptist it leads to a greater understanding of the word and a great deal of good natured fun.

Over the last couple of years I have thought a great deal about what church should be. I have tried to list what are the best traditions, command structure, physical layout and a hundred other details. I would have never considered such a Bible Study as being part of the mix. So over the last year I have thought a great deal about this particular Bible Study. I would like to think that such a Bible Study could be a blessing to any church. Sadly it strikes me that many Christians are too thin skinned or not introspective enough. So in the end I have a lot of reasons why it would not work elsewhere. I have very few reason why it works here. Maybe the people are special. Maybe the Holy Spirit is particularly strong in this congregation.  It could be the leadership of the group.

What ever it is this church has been set apart for something special. When it realised what that thing it will be something to see.

Be safe out there and keep your stick on the ice

The next director of Star Wars

I would just like to put an end to all of the speculation around the next director of the star Wars Series.


It will not be me.

I just wanted everyone to know that I will not be directing the next Star Wars Movie.

When did Netflix become awesome??

I am not a bus booster for god and services on this blog. Frankly if people want my endorsement they should pay me. I have much more substance than a Kardashian just no one cares what I think. Perhapse, no one listens to them either.

I am watching House of Cards on the Netflix. This is seven kinds of awesome. I am up to the fourth episode. Also it is a bunch of episodes at once. Now this is the way to watch a new series. Always Kevin Spacy plays a great Southern Gentleman.

The cast is great and almost everything is very believable about the show. I mean a Republican Mayor of Pittsburgh, well everyone gets to make a mistake. The other unbelievable thing is that there is a congressman as smart as Underwood. Spacy plays him so well that you want so much to believe there is a Congressman that smart and that underhanded.

You have to love when an American Business is on the ropes and then swings for the fence to save themselves. I hope this works out for them. On a personal note the image on the netflix page is very disturbing. I am sure that is what they are going for. Sitting int he Lincoln Memorial Chair with bloody hands is grim. The American Flag in distress is down right wrong. If a right wing nut job flew their flag upside down to protest the President I would roll my eyes. In the context of this show it might be a fitting symbol. At least it is stylised flag and not a real one.

Be safe out there and keep your stick on the ice.

New Blog

The last couple of days I have been working on a new blog. This one is for the Tri-Rivers Clown Alley. It still has a ways to go. Even so I am not completely annoyed by it's existence, so that is a plus.

This is the address thing: http://tririversclowns.blogspot.com/

Please go an visit this son of a gun so that it will show up on a search engine. 

The sinister minds at Hulu continue to confound me. I understand that they are trying to make a buck. Even so forcing your users to pick commercials before a show starts is a wee bit over the top. Perhaps there should be a choice where you can select that a new feature is stupid.

Well I am going to heading out. One of the kitten is trying to eat my computer.

Have fun out there and be safe with you stick on the ice.

Funk Clown Practice

A great time was had a practice this evening. We had Apprentice Miller back. He recently has surgery to straighten his legs and has been recovering. We had on the Craig Charles Funk and Soul show which always makes juggling better. By the way you can find a link to this great little show over on the left side of the screen.

Apprentice Miller's brother came with us today. He has not be very interested int he clowning the last couple years. We got him up on a started set of stilts and he had a good old time. So things are looking up on the front as well.

I am working on The Last Brigadier again. I like the plot and the idea of the book. I even like the characters.The plot has a very restricted arc compared to the wandering around I have been doing with the Time travelers that I usually write about. In some ways this is better. I do not think I will ever have that jumble of plots to my satisfaction. So this might actually be a book that I can finish. I think I might even have the first chapter done by the end of next month. So we will see.

Be safe out there and he is a random music thing that I like.