Saturday 11 March 2006 — This is over 18 years old. Be careful.
I’ve been listening to Penn Jillette Radio as a podcast, and enjoying it a great deal. He’s funny and articulate, and I appreciate his political opinions, even when I don’t quite agree with them. He’s had interesting guests (who knew that Gilbert Gottfried did expert impersonations?). And he talks about show biz, including clowns, magic, and juggling occasionally.
But I was surprised by his reaction to Chris Bliss, the juggler who juggled to the finale of Abbey Road. Penn didn’t like the routine, asserting that the juggling skills were mediocre. I have two problems with this: First, Chris Bliss could have looked smoother during his routine (he grimaced a lot), and there are certainly more difficult routines, but he’s hardly a mediocre juggler. Second, Penn and Teller to me have done a good job showing that presentation is almost more important than the technical challenge of the act. They’ve made a specialty of doing classic magic tricks in unusual ways. So Penn seemed a bit hypocritical for criticizing Bliss’s technical abilities.
Penn claimed on the radio that Jason Garfield could do the same routine, but with 5 balls. Jason Garfield has incredible juggling skills, so I didn’t doubt that he could do it, and he’s also an angry competitive guy, so I didn’t doubt that he would do it.
And sure enough, Garfield has done it. He’s written a sputtering screed about Bliss’s routine, called Bliss Diss, and included a video of his 5-ball routine to the same audio track. It’s a remarkable routine, with many incredibly difficult tricks, including 5 balls in one hand, double back crosses, 5 over the head, pirouttes, and so on. Garfield is one of only a handful of jugglers technically accomplished enough to perform it, maybe the only one.
But, in the end (no pun intended), Bliss’s is the better art. I’d like Bliss’s routine to be more polished, but Garfield’s is too complicated for audiences to relate to. Garfield berates Bliss for getting applause for a simple 3-ball cascade, but the genius of Bliss’s routine is the way a simple trick can be fit into the routine at just the right spot to be appreciated, just as the Beatles put a simple piano chord into the song in a way that made it a masterpiece.
Jason Garfield clearly understands juggling, I’m not sure he understands art.
Comments
But, more importantly, Bliss thought of it first. It's kind of like saying I kind silk-screen a Marilyn photo better than Andy Warhol. Maybe I could, but that's not really the point. Bliss had a cool idea and perfect execution of it; he deserved all of that applause.
I can play that Beattles piano part using sixteenth notes everywhere they use quarters, but I don't see myself selling millions of records.
On the other hand, I guess I can understand the frustration of an artist who is measurably better at their craft than a comparable "hack." Unfortunately, in art, it isn't about being the best in a technical sense. That's part of what makes it art...which is a seperate thing from popularity with the masses at times as well.
I think what people who respond positively are really experiencing is the sheer joy with which he is moving - he could be air drumming or doing a bad spontaneous dance for all anyone cared.
On the negative side, he is repeating just a few moderately difficult tricks while wildly exaggerating his body movements. The nay sayers probably hate air drumming and bad but spontaneous dancing...
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