Old Places; Familiar Faces

by Pinky

Well, I am back in New York after 2 months in the Great Smokey Mountains. It has been 6 years since I worked at Dollywood and I must say everyone there is just as friendly as ever! Although I met many amazing people and could tell you many stories about Maniacs I met while there this year, there is
one that stands out in my mind above all others.

About 2 or 3 weeks in Dollywood, I noticed a very tall young man, wearing a purple shirt standing in line for the golf contest that we held 5 times a day. I thought to myself, wow he seems familiar, but couldn't for the life of me remember where I had seen him. I was standing behind the cash register at the end of the contest and look up to find this same young man standing in front of me.

He would be the guy in the background wearing a purple shirt... no, the one on the right.

He introduces himself as Kyle and says he met Ivan and I at Dollywood 6 years ago and with hand over his heart he begins to tell me how much Ivan and I meant to him all those years ago and how his time with us meant so much to him. Of course by now I'm teary eyed and trying my best to place him, I knew he looked familiar... Then along comes his Mom and Dad, and BAM I remember!!!

He was only about 11 or 12 when we met him, I remember his sweet parents always brought Ivan a slushy after he did the Golf contests back then and they were there every day of their vacation because that's what he wanted to do more than anything else while visiting from Florida. I had many delightful conversations  with his parents and him and you know what he spent this vacation doing, at the age of 17? He came back to every Golf contest we held.

I still have a little blue and a purple Alien that he won and gave to me. It is because of stories like this, parents like this and maniacs like this that I SO love not only what I do for a living but what Myachi has done for so many. So, Kyle and Mr. and Mrs. Schaeffer, if you are reading this, I want you to know that you have all now impacted my life as well. I admire the relationship you all have with one another and the kindness that you all showed us during your visit, you were sorely missed after you returned home.

Now to all of you Maniacs out there that we met and spent time with at Dollywood, you guys made my summer. It was hard work and hot like you wouldn't believe but meeting and or reuniting with all of you made it all worthwhile. Thanks again to The Schaeffer family for sending me pics and making my time in Tennessee such a pleasure.

The Dollywood Quiz

by Crazy Ivan

Trying to get the whole Dollywood thing out of my system and I'm afraid I'm not quite there.  So here's the last time I'll mention it on the blog for at least another... I don't know... several days?  I'll try to make it longer but I offer no guarantees.

The Only Reason I Need

by Crazy Ivan

Some times this job can be a tough one.  The hours can be long (and hot), the venues can be grueling (and hot), the days off can be sparse (and still hot) and the weather can be hot (and humid).  Most of the time it's easy to keep yourself fired up about playing with a toy that you love to pay with, but sometimes you can't help but reflect on how hard a job it can be.

This most often happens 58 days into a 59 day assignment with few days off and a lot of 12 and 13 hour days.  Today, as you might have guessed, was one of those kinds of days.  I've been wearing myself out everyday and the finish line is in sight so it was kind of hard to get fired up today.  I did, but as the sun started to set I really started running out of gas.

And then I talked with one person, it changed the way I looked at my whole day, my whole week, my whole summer and my whole 8 year+ career with Myachi.

Now, first I've got to issue an apology and then lay down a bit of back story.  See, the subject of this story (as I found out tonight) actually reads this blog pretty regularly so I'll feel bad if I embarrass him a bit.  So sorry about that...

Now the back story.  I met this dude about 6 years ago when he was at Dollywood with his nephew.  They got heavily into the game, fell in love with it and bought several.  This, of course, happens to me about a hundred times a day so I filed it somewhere in the banks of happy memories Myachi has provided me and carried on.

I ran into him again the other night and even blogged about it.  He was the collector I talked about in this blog.  He came back today so that we could do a few trades... I dropped the ball and only brought a couple of tradables with me today so we didn't get to do as much trading as I hoped (he did give me a sweet deal on the Straight Jacket I wanted, though).

He showed his collection off to a few of the real maniacs that were hanging out; namely Socks, Triumph and Jumpman (nickname subject to change with or without notice).  We chatted a bit about how he'd built his collection over the years.  Turns out he bought a big chunk of it from a Wolf, a maniac that used to be part of a Myachi Club I hosted early in my Myachi career.

But later that night, right before I left, I also had a chance to speak with his wife.  He's had a series of surgeries on one of his knee and is looking at another in the near future.  He's been largely immobile for much of the time over the past couple of years and I can only imagine how frustrating that must be.  From what his wife told me, Myachi is one of the few things that keeps him excited and having fun.  He can still play, of course, but he also keeps up with us online, collects and trades and enjoys being a part of our small community.

That obviously makes me feel really good about what I do for a living.  But after I left and headed back to the Cabin of Skills, I had a thought that almost overwhelmed me.  It was a complete coincidence that I ran into this guy.  If we hadn't done Dollywood this year or if he'd decided not to come this year, or even come a week or two later, we might never have crossed paths.  I might never have known how meaningful our impact on him really was.

And like I said before, I teach more than a hundred people a day.  I've been doing so for more than eight years.  If the school assemblies and camps where I've taught as many as a thousand people in a day balance out my days off and my significant time at the office I've easily taught over a quarter of a million people in the time I've been with Myachi.

Whose to say how many people I've impacted with this game or how impacted they've been?  Perhaps there are dozens of other heart warming stories about Myachi that I'll never be in the right place to know of.  Perhaps there are other people that were helped through a hard time in their lives by our game.  Perhaps there are other people that have become lifelong fans of the game whose faces I've long forgotten.

I've listed a number of reasons why I love my job on this blog before, but in truth, this is the only reason I really need.

A Collector Moment

by Crazy Ivan

I've met a ton of people this summer that are partial veterans of the game.  Many of the adults I run into now were once kids that I taught the game to.  Many of them have since fallen out of practice, but after a quick refresher course, most of the time they're jamming like they never put the Myachi down.

I've also met quite a few people that have old, rare Myachis hanging around somewhere.  Keep in mind that Dollywood was our largest venue back when we were selling series 1.0 so there are plenty of Calvins, Diggitys, Purple Hazes, Leopard Limes, etc. floating around in drawers and closets of the Dollywood-going public.

But tonight I saw something I hadn't seen yet.  A dude comes in and he's carrying a bag.  He says "You'll probably wanna see this," and motions me to the table in the back of our booth.  I nod and play along and wander back with him.  He opens up this bag and proceeds to pull out dozens of awesome sacks.  All of them are series sacks with the single exception of a Simply Sports Blue.  He's got the whole 4.3 series and a bunch of 4.4s, 4.2s, 4.0s... but he's also got some absolute gems.  He's got a slightly broken in Calvin, a Diggity in similar state, an uber-yummy Black Butter and a Slater.

Anyway, we chatted and it was like talking to an old friend.  Turns out he watches all our You-Tube videos, and I don't just mean all the ones on the Myachi Channel.  He also subscribes to my channel, Monk's channel, Mav's channel, Bones' channel, etc.  When I told him this was our last weekend there his first words were, "I bet you're looking forward to seeing your cats."

For those who aren't aware, he knew I had cats because of this video:



Anyway, thought it was pretty cool to run into such an avid fan of the game that I didn't already know.  He says he's going to be back on Saturday and I'll be sure to bring a few tradables.  I'm hoping to hook up with his Gray Beard and one of his Straight Jackets.

A Lucky Break at Dollywood?

by Crazy Ivan

So before I even get started, I should explain that "Myachi plans" aren't like regular plans.  We plan things out meticulously and well in advance and then we change the plan 37 times before it comes to fruition.  Once it does come to pass, we often change the plan as we're enacting it so very often we are really planning for the sake of improvising with a great deal of forethought.

When I say there's a plan, there should be a little asterisk next to it and underneath the statement there should be a line of fine print like a used-car ad that includes the words "Plans subject to change without notice.  We offer no guarantees on stated plans.  Void where prohibited."  (and as an aside, aren't all things pretty much "void where prohibited"?)

To make a long story short, the information I'm about to divulge is not exactly set in stone.  It may make way to a new plan tomorrow or even yet tonight.  But as the plan stands, it's pretty cool.

See, when we first came down to Dollywood, Kid Myach drove down with us in a van that carried all our displays, signage and the first bit of product we sold.  So in order to go back to NYC, we'll need the van.  Kid Myach would normally drive down, but he's on a whirlwind tour of tradeshows at the moment and won't be able to make it down.

After juggling a few things, we have a plan, and it includes a lucky arrival here at Dollywood.  And I mean that in the double entendre sense that we're lucky that a dude named Lucky is arriving at Dollywood.

You may never have heard of him before, but this dude is heavily into the game.  Monk and Animal met him years ago back when they were at the FAO Shwarz in Las Vegas.  He had awesome skills and worked as kind of an unofficial Myachi Master back then.  We've stayed in touch through the years and he recently decided to join the team and move to New York.  And now he will (probably) be coming to Tennessee.

I feel a bit bad even writing this, since as far as I know, Lucky doesn't even know this yet.  He might actually find out that we need him to come to Tennessee by reading this entry and that would be hilarious.  But maybe not the best way to break the news.

Anyway, that means that if you're in the Knoxville area, you have yet another reason to come back to Dollywood and see us one more time during Dollywood Nights (August 8th-14th 10 am to 10 pm).  You'll get to meet the newest member of the Myachi team, a soldier who is already well on his way to earning the title "Myachi Master".

An Engagement Extended

by Crazy Ivan

There have been rumors for a while now but we finally got confirmation that our stay at Dollywood has been extended by a week.  We'll be hanging out for their "Dollywood Nights" celebration, which is a week long thing where they keep the park open until 10 am.  All I can say is "... Glowsticks!"

We're all really excited about it.  Pinky, Kore, Bones, Bamboo, Rush and I have been having a lot of fun these past few weeks and we were all kind of hoping for a little more time here.  The people at Dollywood are awesome and I'm going to miss a lot of them when I leave.  Plus it's a chance to make another week's worth of maniacs.

But like all things, there's a downside too.  I have to wait another week to see my cats, for one.  And they probably forgot what I smell like by now.  More importantly, anyone in NY who is looking forward to seeing Bones, Bamboo or Rush again is going to have to wait.  Anyone who hangs out at HQ and has been missing Pinky or myself will have to wait another week.

Ultimately, that's no big deal.  What is a big deal is that anyone who was looking forward to me being done with Dollywood so I could go back to my normal (frenetic) blogging pace is going to have to wait another week.  With the crazy hours we're working I've been updating this thing a few times a week instead of a few times a day.  My contests have been in limbo, I'm barely on the forum, the Trick of the Day videos are getting uploaded after 11, I haven't even reviewed the 5.1x series yet, I haven't been on for the Wednesday Night Brawl in ages and there hasn't been a Wednesday Quiz in months.

I'm looking forward to this extra week, but I feel like I owe our loyal readers an apology at the same time.  Our new final date is August 14th, but we're hoping to hang out in Tennessee for a few days after so we might not be back in NYC until the 18th or 19th.  Expect me to go crazy making up for lost time on this blog.

A Visit From the Man

by Crazy Ivan

You never know what to expect at Dollywood.  And I can tell you for certain that the last thing I was expecting yesterday evening was for Myachi Man to pop up in the midst of our closing crush.  I can't say I was caught entirely off guard because I knew he had to swing out at some point in the month, but it was a pleasant surprise none the less.

The reason I'm taking the time to share it on the blog is that I know we've got a few readers in the area.  And if you happen to be making the decision this morning as to whether or not to go to Dollywood, my strong suggestion would be that you should definitely go.  Not sure how long he'll be hanging out, but Myachi Man is going to be opening up with us this morning.

It's amazing the kind of energy that dude brings to what we do and its something that words cannot possibly do justice to.  The only way to understand is to simply see him in action.  He'll be there through early afternoon and he'll be rocking things out in a way that makes the rest of us jealous.

So swing by, ride some coasters and say "hi" to Myachi Man.  And if you're reading this too late or are too far away from Dollywood to use this information, you'll have to satisfy yourself by going to You-Tube and watching a bunch of the old school Myachi videos.  I particularly recommend this one.

Talk About Mad Dedication

by Crazy Ivan

When you're away from home for a long period, you start to miss the small nuances of wherever you live.  Whenever I see a pretzel vendor or a movie that that shows the New York skyline or somebody cuts me off in traffic, I start feeling homesick.

That's why it's really good to see a familiar face now and again.  That happened today a little while after we opened up.

Omega (also known as one of the several "Boss Tweeds" on the forum) became a contender for the "longest distance traveled to play Myachi" title when he showed up at Dollywood all the way from Long Island.

Before you call that insane, I should explain that he didn't come all the way just for Myachi.  He was already visiting his grandpa in North Carolina and was only a few hours from us at that point.  And, of course, there's more to do at Dollywood than just play Myachi.  But I will say with confidence that had we not been there, he wouldn't have asked his grandpa to come so far just to ride the ThunderHead (which would totally be worth the drive by the way).

Anyway, he picked up a bunch of the 5.1s, played in a few contests, met Bamboo and Kore for the first time, jammed out, learned some new tricks and reminded me how much I miss all the NY maniacs.  It was great to see him and we can't thank grandpa enough for bringing him out.  Grandpas tend to be pretty awesome about stuff like that.

Incidentally, I'd love to get the actual number on the furthest distance travelled to play Myachi and/or see a Myachi Master.  I know there are a few pretty impressive numbers, so if you think you might hold that record, let us know in the comments section, the forum or Facebook.

A Role Reversal

by Crazy Ivan

First let me apologize for the long hiatus between blog entries.  I suppose I underestimated the toll that this Pigeon Forge assignment would take on my energy and thought I'd be able to do a better job keeping this blog up to date.  As it stands, I've gone from blogging two or three times a day to blogging five or six times a week, and I feel that I owe our loyal readers a little more than that.

I'm the late guy in today and I have about 8 minutes before I have to hop in the car and head in, but I did want to take a few seconds to share a really fun moment in my day yesterday.

In places like Dollywood, our sales strategy is pretty simple; get the Myachi in the customers hand.  We spend much of our day standing at the fringes of the passing crowd and yelling "You're in!  Back of the hand!" before chucking a Myachi at some unsuspecting tourist.  Sometimes they catch it and toss it back, sometimes they miss it altogether and take another try and quite often they catch it, look at it and say "what is this thing?"

Myachi Man has aptly described this method as "Myachi Bombs Away" and it's amazingly effective in the right crowd.  A bunch of people all out to have fun all day at the amusement park is exactly the right type of crowd for this and it's worked wonders in the past and continues to work well today.

But yesterday I had a cool experience that I've oddly never had before.  As I'm standing near the booth and tossing people in, an eight year old kid that I'd played with earlier in the day runs up.  He'd already bought a Red Shredder and it was on his hand and in the ready position.

"You're in!  Back of the hand!" he calls out as he approaches.  I pocket my Hound's Tooth quickly, he tosses me in and I toss his Myachi back.  And then he runs off.

I turned to Rush and said, "Bro, I just got tossed in..."

After reading back over that, I suppose it's far more remarkable from the shoes of a Myachi Master, but it was the first time in my 8 years with Myachi that I ever had a kid toss me in a Myachi.  It's always the other way around.

Now that I look at it from the other perspective, I can see why our method is so effective.  Somebody tossed me a Myachi yesterday that I wasn't expecting and it was the highpoint of my day.

So that's all I have time to write now.  I've got to grab Bones and get to work.  I promise to write a longer and more relevant blog tonight.  It'll have pictures, video and it will introduce you to a Myachi Game that I've never before written about on this blog.  Incidentally, it's one of my favorite Myachi games and might be the most martial-arts relevant game that we play.

The Other End of the Age Spectrum

by Crazy Ivan

The other day I wrote a blog titled "Why Golf?" where I recounted an awesome story of a grandmother who whooped both her grand kids (and everyone else) in a golf contest at Dollywood.  It was so much fun to be a part of that I doubted any other golf tournament this year would compare to it.

And I continued to think that all the way up to about 11:08 this morning.

We do our first golf contest at 11 in the morning and usually it's the smallest contest we do all day.  We've had some days where only 6 or 7 people show up and a few slower days where we actually cancel the first contest because there aren't enough contestants.  We have a minimum of 5 people before we'll actually hold a contest so most mornings we find ourselves in a desperate scramble to find a few willing participants.

That was not the case this morning.  Kore, Rush and I opened up and right away we could tell it was going to be a fun day.  By 11 o' clock we had some 30 kids lined up and waiting.  Several of them were people who'd been in the contests yesterday or the day before so we had a few real ringers, including two previous champions.  It was so big that I felt sorry for the newer kids because I figured they wouldn't stand a chance against so many experienced Myachi golfers.

Normally, I host the tournament and while I'm rocking that out, all the other masters are fishing; tossing in people as they walk by and trying to get them to join in.  We accept new contestants all the way through the first round.  The final entrants before we moved on to the second round were two little kids (a 5 year old girl and her 3 year old brother) that Kore roped in.

For the littler guys, we always let them stand a little bit closer, but even then, they never really compete with the older and more coordinated kids.  True to form, the little girl took two shots, missed the goal on both tries and got knocked out.  Her brother fared a little better and made it to round two.  A lucky shot got him into the second round and an opening bull's eye got him all the way to the final round.

You've probably guessed by now that this little dude actually managed to win the whole thing.  A spotty performance on a few of our returning champions left things wide open for him at the end, but it wouldn't have mattered.  He got a bull's eye and two yellows (7 total points) and smoked the competition by a full two points.

He was so young that he barely even knew what had happened when he won, but when the whole crowd erupted to cheer for him, he beamed as genuine a smile as I've ever seen.  His mom was more excited than him (even though she knew that she would then have to buy another Myachi for his sister) but he was pretty fired up and felt like a winner.

I just felt like I had to share that.  In the (less than) two weeks that we've been running these contests, our winners have ranged in age from 3 to 72.  That alone should be the only sell line we ever need for Myachi.

Reinforcements Arrive

by Crazy Ivan

There was a time when I was invincible.  I was impervious to injury, tireless in my efforts and resilient to any malady.  I shrugged off illness, I laughed off pain and I tackled every passion with an almost singular focus.  There was a time when I was, in a word, indefatigable.

That time was called "young", and it is a seemingly distant memory.  Don't get me wrong, I was young pretty recently.  I'm even now just learning that I'm no longer young.  As Gallagher once said, "we spend half of our lives learning to do stuff and the other half realizing we can do that stuff anymore."

My recent trip to Dollywood has been rapidly showing me just how many things are falling into that latter category.  I did this exact same assignment with a much smaller and less experienced team when I was, myself, far less experienced.  I worked open to close and didn't take a single day off in 57 days.  I took a half day once when Myachi Man was here and I hiked up a two mile, 1800 foot trail in the Smokie Mountains.

And that was when I was young.

Now I'm a mere 10 days into this stint and the 13 hour days are starting to take a toll on me.  I'm actually going to be taking a day off tomorrow, a scant 130 hours of labor from the start.  My body is sore, my brain hurts and anybody who follows the trick of the day videos knows that my voice has all but given out on me.  I still managed to massage my old guy pride with the fact that I outlasted the younger guys when it came to needing a day off, but I didn't come close to my goal of making it all the way through the summer like I used to.

Since I'd overestimated my youthful invincibility, this realization also comes with the side effect that we don't have enough help to cover Dollywood.  If my oldness is going to have me doing crazy things like "days off" (whatever that means), we realized that we were going to need more help at the Wood.

The first thing we did was stuck Rush on a plane.  I'm not sure exactly why Myachi Man chose Rush, but perhaps he got a deal on passenger per pound and simply chose the lightest guy.  But that wasn't quite going to do the trick.  We needed a genuine Myachi Master to replace a Myachi Master, and while I have faith that Rush will one day earn his way into the fourth generation of Myachi Masters, he's not there yet.  He still has much to learn and being at Dollywood will certainly speed up the rate of his progress, but it wasn't enough.

This put us in an awkward position because Animal, Monk, Maverick and Noodles are needed in New York.  Not only do we have the two biggest toy stores in the country to worry about, but we also have a few summer camps we're doing this year, a bunch of special events and the typical Myachi amount of birthday parties, Mitzvahs, graduation parties, etc.  We couldn't afford to deplete our resources there.  And it's not like there are any Myachi Masters just lying around.

Or perhaps there was...

In addition to Rush, we also welcomed Kore back to the ranks today.  He'd been in Florida for the last few months and had been all but cut off from the Myachi world, but when he saw the Myachi symbol in the sky and heard the Myachi communicator crackle to life, he answered the call.  He knew that a Myachi Master was needed, so he came to the rescue as one would expect from any legitimate superhero.

So the team at the Wood grew, I get to rest my voice for a day (as well as this ridiculously old ankle of mine), we have Kore's sense of humor at the Cabin of Skills and we have Rush's youthful enthusiasm to young up the crowd and fire up the rest of the team.  What was looking like a great summer keeps getting all kinds of better.

Bones' First Myachi Trip

by Bones

There are probably not enough words in the English dictionary to express the excitement I felt when Crazy Ivan told me Bamboo and I were going to Tennessee to play in one of Myachis first homes, Dollywood. He told me "Its going to be terrible, long days, sun overhead all day on black top, no fun at all" I said I was in with no hesitation. I passed the phone to Bamboo and he had the same response.

The wait until we started our journey flew by and before we knew it, it was 6AM and we were on our way. I rode with Kid Myach which was epic in its own right but that's a different story. I was a maniac before I became a Myachi Master so I had read all there was on the Internet about Myachi. The big three in Myachi, Myachi man, Kid Myach, and Crazy Ivan were all my inspiration once I discovered Myachi. Not just because they have the coolest job in the world but because they worked hard for what they believe in. I remember meeting Crazy Ivan and actually being star struck. Kind of silly, I know, but you have to be silly when your going to play with a toy for 10 hours. Everyone thinks the motto for Myachi is " It's all about looking good and having fun." In reality it's "Good things come to those who work hard."

So now I am miles away from home far up in the Smokey Mountains, away from everything I've ever known, ready to work hard. I am not sure why because I can't imagine anything better than this but Myachi always finds a way to surprise me.

I Promise Not to Post About DollyWood Tomorrow

by Crazy Ivan

Alright, so I'm willing to admit that over the last few weeks I've spent way too much time on this blog waxing nostalgic about the good ol' days at Dollywood.  It's gotten to the point where I'm sure most of you are sick of hearing about how happy I am to be headed back there.  I told myself last night that I should find something other than that park to blog about tonight.

But then I got there and we rocked it out just like the good ol' days and I was flooded with nostalgia like I hadn't been since I knew we were coming.  It was exactly how I remember it.  A long, grueling, hot day littered with the coolest, salt of the earth people that you can ever hope to meet.  I saw a few old friends (I did live in the area for two years before joining Myachi) and I saw a couple of maniacs.

Keep in mind that it's been six years since I've been here, so the kids I met when they were 12 back then are going into college in the fall.  The kids I met when they were sixteen are taking their kids to the park.  As you can imagine, it was pretty surreal.

I spent all day being reminded why I fell in love with this job all those years ago.  Don't get me wrong... it was really, really hard work today.  My body is aching from head to toe and the sunburn doesn't help matters.  But there are so many people to play with and they're all so ready to play.  We meet so many awesome maniacs (shout out to Allison and her whole mission trip, Tom and his cousins from Indiana, David and Brian and the Barnett family from Florida) and we get to see them over and over through the day, so what starts as a quick sale in the morning turns into a kid coming back 9 times through the day and hanging out for an hour and a half the last time.

Bones and Bamboo had a great time.  They were walking out of there saying "I can't believe we just worked 13 hours and I'm not tired".  They were full of energy all day despite playing some 30 games of Fu a piece out in the sun on the black top.  I swear, there were times when Bones was sweating so bad I wondered if he would wind up nothing but a puddle by day's end.  They were busy for about 90% of the day, but we did find time to get them a few free minutes to ride one of the world's best wooden roller coasters.  They also got to see Dolly Parton herself at the tail end of the Kid's Fest Kick Off Parade.

Pinky also had a blast, though she was so busy cashing out customers that she barely got to play at all.  Kid Myach was in classic Kid Myach form so nobody got by him all day.  There were times when he was teaching so many people that Bones, Bamboo, Pinky and I were struggling to find somebody that Kid wasn't already playing with.

The people that run the park and the people that work at it are some of the nicest and most considerate people in the world and I forgot how friendly people are down south (easy to new when you live in New York City).  All in all, despite how sore I am, I'm really looking forward to the rest of the summer and I regret that it has to end in less than two months.  Not sure how many 13 hour days it's going to take to knock that out of me...

Alright.  So I'll totally blog about something other than how glad I am to be at Dollywood tomorrow.  I'll teach a new trick or talk about something collecting-related or explain some weird nuance of MYACH.  I promise.

Dollywood, Day One

by Crazy Ivan

So here it is, quarter after seven in the morning and time to get this show on the road.  I don't have time to write much.  Bamboo and Bones are still getting ready and in a few minutes, we'll be heading out to the kick off of Kid's Fest.

I'm mad fired up about it, though it doesn't look like the weather is going to be too accomodating.  Half of me is fired up and excited and the other half of me is reminding itself that we're in for a really long summer.  13 hour days of STWAKOJ for the next two months will no doubt take their toll.  It's been half a decade since I've done an assignment like this and I made the mistake of getting five years older in the last five years.

We went in last night to set everything up and I found myself way more nostalgic about the place than I expected.  It was almost like a family reunion.  They gave us a spectacular spot right near the entrance so we'll see everybody who wanders in.  Should be a crushing year.

The unfortunate side effect of working for 13 hours is, of course, that there won't be many updates on the blog today.  I'll get back to the cabin at about 9:30 tonight and I'll provide a rundown of the day's highlights.  I'll also be getting the Trick of the Day up mad late, though if I have a chance, I'll film it in the park.  If it was possible, I'd film it from aboard the Thunderhead Roller Coaster.

Anyway, gotta grab a bite while I still can.  I'll have time to elaborate a bit more tonight.  If you just haven't gotten enough of my random rambling, feel free to come visit me at Dollywood and I promise to ramble until you get bored with it.

The Cabin of Skills

by Crazy Ivan

Alright, so we're all rested up and relaxing for the day.  We set up our tent at Dollywood tonight so today's all about getting our cabin stocked up and getting comfy.  We won't have a lot of time to enjoy the ammenities this summer and we'll be worn out like crazy so today we're getting the most out of it.

I don't have much time to blog at the moment, though.  Spent way too much time hiking the wilds around our cabin this morning and still have a Trick of the Day to film so rather than trying to describe how awesome our place is, I figured it would be easier just to show you:



Oh, and sorry I'm getting this to you so late.  I filmed it early and had no end of trouble uploading it to YouTube... That's also why it's taking so long to get the Trick of the Day video up.  Starting to hate the connection we have out here.

What a Long Day...

by Crazy Ivan

On most nights, the House of Skills quiets down pretty early.  Animal is usually in bed by eleven and by then Kid's already asleep as often as not.  Mav's usually holed up for the night by midnight.  Monk stays up all night, but he's usually in his room, maticulously studying fantasy baseball stats or whatever he does.

This is good for Pinky and I since we usually stay up late and live in the basement.  It's an old house so every time somebody crosses the dining room or the living room, the creeking floor echoes through our room.  In fact, you might have heard how creeky that floor is on some of the Trick of the Day videos I've done there.

Anyway, normally the floor quiets down by 11 or so.  But for the odd midnight snack from Mav or Monk, my room is usually comfortably quiet.  But not last night.  Animal's girlfriend was out of town for the weekend and got home late, so she came to see Animal at about 11.  Mav had a buddy over.  Bones and Bamboo were crashing there so that they could leave early with us, but instead of getting some sleep, they stayed up until 2 in the morning playing Magick with Monk.

Needless to say, my room was far from quiet.  I was tossing and turning and wishing for industrial strength earplugs until after 2.  Of course, 1 or 2 in the morning is when I usually get to sleep, but I usually try to get up earlier when I have to wake up at 4 in the morning.

So I get up this morning on less than two hours of sleep.  And then I drove for 13 and a half hours.  And now I'm at the cabin and I'm about to edit the Trick of the Day video...

Basically, this is all a really long explanation of why I can't write a very long blog post today.  I can barely keep my eyes open at this point and I still need to shove some food into my head before I pass out.  So I promise something with a little more detail tomorrow (including a quick video tour of our new cabin), but for tonight this is all I can manage...

Going Back

by Crazy Ivan

Alright, so if you're sick of hearing about how excited I am that I'm going back to Dollywood, you can go ahead and skip this post and I'll see you next time.  Don't worry, I totally understand.

Kid and I are getting a lot of the last minute stuff set up.  We're dusting off our displays, making sure we have enough pegs, rounding up all the product we'll need and finalizing our travel plans.  Pinky is verifying our reservations and Bones and Bamboo are packing up.  We're only days away from the trip and as we draw ever closer my mind hovers on it for longer and longer periods.

And for some reason, today it's seized on a memory from my teenage years.

I used to sing a lot.  I still do, but these days it's mostly confined to the shower or singing along to the radio in the car.  But back in my youth I sang for several different bands.  I played a little bit of keyboard and a little bit of guitar (and by that I mean I could follow along with a song without screwing it up), but I wasn't very good.

And I wasn't a very good singer either, at least not at first.  I can still recall the feeling in my stomach the first time I ever took the microphone on stage.  I'd only been with this band for a week and a half and we'd only had a couple of practices.  The other members of the band had been playing together for a while, but their singer had moved away and I stepped in kind of last second.

I'd never sung in front of an audience before and when the music hit and my cue came, I must admit that it was probably really obvious I'd never sang before an audience before.  I was terrible.  I clammed up, I got nervous, my voice cracked, I forgot the lyrics and I found myself counting the seconds until I could run away and hide.

I made it through the four song set and by the end of it I was doing better, but it was still an awful and thoroughly embarrassing experience.  By the end of it, I think most of the audience just felt sorry for me.  The other members of the band looked horribly disappointed and, no great surprise, they went out the next day and found themselves a new singer.

Now, that might have been the end of my singing career.  My guess is that if anyone who was in the audience that night was asked, they would say that it should have been the end of my singing career.  I wasn't sure why I'd sung so poorly that night.  I'd done way better in practice and normally I could at least carry a tune.  But I'd underestimated the effect the crowd would have on my nerves.

But I'm not much on the whole quitting thing, so a few months later, a friend and I started another band.  We did a softer type of music (the first band was more heavy metal, this one a bit more early 90s alternative) so it was a little more in keeping with my vocal strengths.  But more importantly, I'd learned exactly how bad it felt to screw up on stage and was determined not to do it again.

We played a few small shows while I built up my confidence and after a few months we were playing all over the place.  About a year after my first disastrous performance, we found ourselves booked at a teen club playing alongside the band that I sang for before.  Well... the one I attempted to sing for before.  There were six bands playing that night but we were billed right before them and they were closing the show that night.

And I was determined to give the performance of my life.  It wasn't just about winning a competition, it was about proving to the band that I let down that I'd gotten better.

Well, we didn't win the competition but I did sing a lot better.  It was a big enough improvement that all my old bandmates congratulated me on the show.  The band I was singing for at the time disbanded shortly thereafter and it would be years before I found myself on stage again.  By the time I did, I'd traded the microphone for a set of flaming torches and the act was way different.

So the $64,000 question is, what the heck does any of this have to do with Dollywood or Myachi?

Well, Dollywood was by debut as a Myachi Master in training.  I was brand new to the game and when I started with Myachi if I wanted to impress someone, the best thing I could do was turn my hands over and juggle 3 or 4 of them in my palms.  I guess I was okay back then, but I was no Myachi Master.

Going back this year feels a lot like going to that battle of the bands.  I was substandard last time I was at Dollywood and now I feel like I'm at the top of my game.  I can't wait to go back and show everyone how much better I got.

And I bet you can't wait for me to get there either... so I'll start blogging about something else!

Raring to Go

by Crazy Ivan

To be perfectly honest, I'm doing all I can not to just write about going to Dollywood every day on this blog.  It's all that's on my mind.  I'm so fired up about going back to my roots, seeing some old friends, hiking some familiar trails, hooking back up with veteran jammers and sweating about 3 gallons a day for two months plus.

More than that, I'm looking forward to taking Bones and Bamboo through Myachi boot camp.  I'm looking forward to expanding their experience with Myachi and helping them to take their Myachi Mastery to the next level.  I'm looking forward to watching them learn this venue the same way I learned it.

And I'm looking forward to living in a cabin with a hot tub and a pool table for a couple months.  That's pretty cool, too.

But, on the other hand, there are a lot of things in NYC that I'm not looking forward to doing without for a month.  Most of it is personal stuff... you know, my bed, my cats, my guitar, my collection (which is definitely not coming).  But there are also all the people that I'll be missing for two months.  And all the general awesome New Yorkiness of the summer.  And the slackline... which would be awesome to have in Tennessee.

Anyway, the next few days will be a crazy, chaotic scramble to get everything in order before we ship out.  Pinky has to get all her office work covered for a couple of months and I've gotta figure out how I'm going to do stuff like shipping out contest prizes and getting the trick of the day video up.  And don't worry, I'll still be blogging when I get down there.  I'll probably try to write a couple things every night and set them to drop at different times since I won't be able to write during the day.

Hopefully I'll see some of you guys there...