SPYY – Technology for Players

luckily, andre, who was running the contest, happens to be one of the most benevolent and generous people on the planet. having just driven 2 hours east to pick up johnnie delvalle, he was totally cool with going another 90 minutes out of his way to come get me. i ended up getting to his house around noonish. johnnie and i (who had met briefly, but never really hung out) watched stargate (i initially mistook it for dune, betraying my age). i met andre’s wife devon and his brother jamie (who also mistook stargate for dune – space-deserts, c’mon), and eventually we all went to chili’s. the best aspect of chili’s was easily listening to jd order. while the rest of us contented ourselves with elaborately-named items of the regular menu (crispy honey-chipotle chicken crispers? can i get an acronym?), johnie ordered TWO plain chicken breasts off the children’s menu and veggies. when it came, i must say it was clearly more healthy than any of the sauce-laden, salt-dusted, deep-fried crap the rest of us ordered. after lunch we threw, watched family guy, and johnnie drew on andre’s cat with a sharpie.

a little while later, higby arrived at the boulay household and whisked elliot jackson and myself off to his home. john’s house is insane-crazy-awesome. it’s kind of a 2-story log cabin on 4 wooded acres (bisected by a stream… with fricking RIVER OTTERS). every square foot of the inside pulsates either with art, or with memorabilia from the late 50′s/early 60′s (frequently the two are one and the same). yo-yo’s are strewn about every corner and surface, and there are those set aside for the higby’s son theodore rocket to play with (and chew). john showed us his yo-yo museum (in fact i slept there), which is a legitimate trove. pieces from every era of yo-yoing’s history are illuminated, including a pristine flores from the 30′s and several duncan tin masterpieces.

i gotta say, i definitely ATE as well on this trip as i have on any yo-yo excursion. generally, it’s scavenging for bits of whatever i can find or the game of ‘dietary roulette’ that is white castle. but john and rebecca are all about the awesome food. the first night we had chinese that only uses veggies from its own on-site garden. for dessert, john torched up some creme brulée, with a perfectly crispy upper layer. next day, he made poached eggs and a pasta with his own homemade marinara.

i think one of the things i really appreciate about john is the delight he takes in precision. making a perfectly consistent creme brulée or poached egg takes awareness, patience, and flexibility… much in the same way that maintaining an audience’s interest does. having watched john’s stage show several times, the thing that always strikes me is that his cues, lines, and tricks are always right on point. nothing’s overly complex or difficult, but like his creme brulée, it’s always perfectly presented. consistency is a dying art.

the contest, itself was wonderful, but kind of a blur. i judged every division (which must have included 100 competitors all told). andre was ridiculously nice to me, and i genuinely enjoy judging (otherwise i don’t even watch a lot of freestyles, honestly), but i’d be lying if i pretended that my eyes weren’t ready to bleed by the end. fortunately, a lot of the freestyles were genuinely worth watching. andrew bergen (in pretty much every division), along with elliot jackson and nate suttar’s 1a were particularly noteworthy.

particularly surreal for me, was the ‘meet the pros’ table andre engineered. i sat with bergy, jd, and eric koloski and signed a ton of my yoyoexpert/spyy trading cards. as much as i’d like to take myself seriously as a ‘pro’ yo-yo player, the table predictably devolved into a contest to see who could vandalize their own card the most creatively. (i’m pretty sure viking-monocle-sideburn ed won that particular battle). sadly, the papier-maché piñata-masterpiece that john devised for the contest, señor jodel, plummeted from the sky without warning about 30 minutes into the contest. although part of me wished it had waited until the freestyles had begun… that would have led to serious (albeit hilarious) injury.