>>Will it get me another job? ... If you can’t understand why I don’t waste my energy on doing seven balls overhead for a minute to make a youtube video for people to watch, then you haven’t entered the real world yet.
I had a similar discussion with my office colleagues a few weeks back. When there was a call for a 'Hacknight' at our workplace to drive revenues up, when a SVP panicked he was going to miss his target. And the people where asked to contribute and magically rescue the whole situation out of nowhere. Nearly every one agreed that they would not contribute a minute to that 'Hacknight'
When people just give up, start giving damn about things. Its generally because they've been taken for a ride, before. Once hard working night owl hackers stop doing things because they watch some jack ass four levels above them doing 1/100th the work but taking nearly everything that is right fully theirs.
The Hack night was a big flop, ofcourse the SVP called for a meeting next day and lectured about motivation and lack of passion in the team(Meaning, people not ready sacrifice a great deal and give away their work for free). And how despite all the help from the leadership(Meaning, Arranging for biscuits and tea, and then going to home to get sleep) people were not ready to contribute to the company(Meaning, Help the VP make an additional million in yearly bonus).
Hey, wait, I don't know about you, but I've always thought one of the most rewarding parts of working in tech was being lectured about motivation by someone with 10X my salary, 100X my bonus and 1000X my equity stake :-)
The reason it's so rewarding is because it's next to impossible to give idiots any self-actualization. And if you do, when you do, their world crumbles into pieces.
you forgot being lectured about taking risks (or wasting my life on making better advertising) by assholes who've already made theirs and never have to worry about how they're ever going to afford to buy in the bay area, raise a family, pay for college, etc. It's easy to take a risk on a job when you don't need the money...
ahh, I remember the day my boss told me the exact amount of happiness and motivation I was to come into work with every day (gestures and happy faces were made to show me the exact amount). (and this was after they missed payroll)
Yeah, i used to organize hack days. It was mostly one vacation day i managed to get for the team where a few would come in and hack on games or whatever.
Until a vp decided to join. Then hacks had to be about creating products and ideas had to be documented, and someone had to "win".
Now the occasional hack that benefited the company as a side effect of almost free motivation and team building disappeared. Only the most suck Ups juniors appears. And all ideas pitch how much money the company could make but are not really fun or challenging to implement.
I used to run the world's biggest juggling video repository (JuggleThis.net, now defunct) which itself was definitely responsible for a lot of the irritation Gatto found with the new generation of camera-happy juggling kids.
Certainly he was frustrated by newcomers filming 100 takes and showing just one (something I'm guilty of too!). But without being a juggler yourself it's hard to express just how much better than everyone else he really was. If being able to do a trick with N balls is unit difficulty, adding N+2 balls is a factor of 10-100 harder. Being able to perform it is another 10-100 times again.
Gatto regularly performed things the next best jugglers could barely do at all. He was the Donald Bradman of juggling, and I'm very sad we now have to say "was".
What about Vova Galchenko? (One of the other jugglers mentioned in the article - the one Anthony inadvertently got into a "competition" with).
As far as putting on a show and performing with poise, Gatto easily wins. In at least some specific areas like clubs, Vova seems to rival him though. He is really consistent and has demonstrated he can perform pretty well too. Here's a direct link to Vova's video [0]. This is probably one of my favorite juggling videos to watch.
Incidentally, I believe Vova has moved on as well- he got a degree in Computer Science and is doing software development these days. His sister Olga has also gone on into engineering.
Our Don Bradman - And I ask you is he any good?
Our Don Bradman - As a bastman he can sure lay on the wood.
For when he goes in to bat
He knocks ev'ry record flat,
For there isn't any thing he cannot do,
Our Don Bradman - Ev'ry Aussie "dips his lid" to you.
The amazing ending to the story is that in his last innings, "The Don" required 4 runs to reach an average of 100, but got out for a duck (zero) on the second ball. Apparently the ovation he got on entering the ground rattled him. The article below gives a description and makes the case that it was a fitting ending for a great, more memorable than if he had got the runs.
there is pretty much no one who has dominated a sport the way bradman dominated cricket, i think. consider - he has the highest lifetime test batting average of all time, at 99.94. which doesn't perhaps sound that impressive, out of context, until you see that the next three people in the record books have averages of 60.97, 60.83 and 60.73. he was more than 50% better than the second-best test batsman around.
Not sure how cricket compares to baseball, but in the 20s and 30s the overall talent level was nowhere near what it's become in modern times.
Saying that, Bradman's batting average is absurdly high, does 99.94 mean that nearly everytime he went to bat he was able to put the ball in play without the opposing team being able to get him out?
If so, the equivalent in baseball would be almost always getting a hit (closest in modern era was, I believe, .424 by Ted Williams), something that would require the hand/eye coordination of superman, basically.
What an average of 99.94 means is every time he went to play he scored an average ~100 runs. Which is just too remarkable. And that too in test cricket.
Test cricket is just what it is, its a test of patience and concentration. You are supposed to play unreasonably long amounts of time(the whole day) in scorching heat. There fore to go in and play that, it just means one thing. Not only where his batting skills top notch in the history of the game, his ability to focus, concentrate has not been matched ever since. Please note bowlers are always on the look out to get your out. And there are literally many way in which you can get out.
In cricket you (and a second batter who is with you) stay at bat until you are dismissed. There are a number of ways to be dismissed, such as being caught on the full or run out, but you don't need to put every ball into play. In order to score runs you generally must play the ball, but trying to score runs increases your risk of being dismissed.
The best batsman are able to both score runs and minimise their risk of being dismissed, and so are able to stay in bat for longer and score higher totals.
Bradman was, on average, able to score almost 100 runs every time he went out to bat, and that is just ridiculous.
well, "putting the ball in play" is not as hard in cricket as in baseball; the 99 refers to runs, not a percentage. but getting more than 100 runs in a game (known as a century) is a reasonably significant feat in cricket; that bradman's average was almost 100 runs is spectacular.
Cricket has a much, much bigger audience globally than Ice Hockey - there's a lot of Europeans, Australians, South Africans and Indians on HN who have likely never seen a hockey game :-)
It's also not so much of a team game - cricket statistics are much more likely to reveal an outlier than hockey, football, rugby or handball. It's possible to separate to a much greater extent a player from the quality of their team - if you put me and three other random guys on a basketball team with Michael Jordan, he would look a lot less impressive than he did with one of the greatest teams ever assembled! The same goes for Messi, Maradona, Gretzky, etc. Their talents need, and encourage to some extent, wonderful performances from their teammates to make passes, runs, tackles, interceptions, etc.
The only effect that a similar substitution would have on Bradman would be that he'd need to concentrate on 4s and 6s and keeping the rest of us 'in' long enough. If you wanted to sub in a North American sportsman as an outlier, it would need to be a baseball player, I guess :-)
Someone that a higher percentage of people would be familiar with. While his feat is impressive, it is I'm guessing widely unknown. Perhaps Jordan, Ali, Gretzky, Babe Ruth would seem more appropriate.
For those not too familiar with cricket, that "average" isn't like a batting average in baseball. While incredibly impressive, it is not equivalent to getting a hit 100% of the time.
As for impressive feats above and beyond, Babe Ruth comes to mind. He hit more home runs in a season than many entire teams did at the time.
that's pretty american-centric. as an indian i'd say ali was truly world-famous, jordan is well known to my generation due to nba catching on in the 80s but i'm betting a large chunk of my parent's generation wouldn't know him, i only knew about babe ruth from reading american fiction, and i'd pretty much never heard of gretzky until last year.
so you have in fact heard of all of them. I think that pretty much proves my point, but I could also throw Pele in there for a non american that is far far more well known than Mr. Bradman.
It's obviously American centric because American media has been dominate at a global level for decades. That's the reason so many people know who eg Tiger Woods and Jordan are: American media made them famous to a degree far exceeding their accomplishments. The same holds true in music, movies, tv shows, and so on.
Jordan was widely regarded as one of the most famous people on earth for 15 or 20 years. His name is even more famous than his picture. I don't think there's much debate to be had about his global fame frankly. As basketball globalized rapidly in the late 80's / early 90's, it was his image intertwined with it, and it perfectly coincided with the rise of global media.
It's got more to do with the audience for the sport. Golf is played all over the world. On the other hand, a famous American Football quarterback could travel incognito in most of the world, because the international audience for American football is tiny by comparison.
> Someone that a higher percentage of people would be familiar with.
Actually, given India's huge population, I think it is more likely than not that more people are familiar with cricket than are familiar with baseball.
I suspect that Babe Ruth might actually be comparable. People that know a little bit about baseball know him. People that know a little bit about cricket know Bradman.
Ali and Jordan on the other hand are pretty much known by everyone. Pele would be another good example.
I don't see any tragedy here and I doubt Gatto/Commarota does either. He did something amazingly well as a kid and young adult, had fun with it and has now decided it's time to move on. The tragedy with top sports-people is often when they retire and have a lot of trouble adjusting to not being the best in the world at something. From the article it sounds like Commarota finally got tired of the constant stress on his body and the difficulty of supporting and spending time with his family while professionally juggling and is now successfully transitioning to a very 'down-to-earth' career. Good luck to him.
He is a man that has pursued excellence, understands quality, likes to work for himself (performer, landscape gardener, etc), seems to have a competitive edge but also seems wise to it, and has demonstrated keenness to carefully coach others or explain how to do things.
That's probably the most insightful view going - I was simply thinking of him as yet another construction guy. But add that to his story / marketing / brand and ... I will pay extra for the proof of a guy willing to be painstaking to achieve excellence.
Given my current troubles with builders, this is a 2x pricing opportunity for him - quite seriously
The company site has zero reference to his past and is registered under his birth name(different from his stage name), so I don't think that's a card he plans on playing.
Do you think he could really have an opportunity to receive 2x pricing? I think there might be a certain opportunity in illustrating the novelty of his past somewhere on the site, but I honestly don't believe most consumers(even for something large like a resurfacing) would take to time to realize the extent to which he excelled at juggling, nor do I think they would translate that to an increased value in his current abilities(at least not a 100% increase). In reality I think that consumer is more often willing to settle for cheap inadequacy than expensive competence, but I might be completely off with that assumption in this industry(or in general).
What do you think? If he could really stand the chance for a significant increase in revenue for something as simple as publicly touting past accomplishments, perhaps he should; he was that good after all.
It brings to mind Dean Ween, who has been concentrating on his fishing tour business since Ween broke up. He doesn't mention his stage name on his fishing site, though he says that he has a lot of fans hiring him and they spend too much time asking about the band when they should be concentrating on fishing. I think he's more interested in having something unrelated to touring than maximizing revenue though.
There are definitely consumers who are willing to pay 2x the market price for a job exceptionally well done. However, they're not going to assume that because someone juggled exceptionally well that they'd do an equally good job at construction. He'll have to build his reputation in the industry independently, and given that he's not using his juggling persona to market his construction company, it seems like he's OK with that.
"However, they're not going to assume that because someone juggled exceptionally well that they'd do an equally good job at construction."
That's because construction work is a very large field and honestly resurfacing cement doesn't translate very well to juggling.
Now find a construction job that requires working under stress, lots of attention on you, attention to detail, focus on quality, able to repeatedly meet goals and deadlines, maybe a popular analogy with juggling...
How about general contractor? A guy like him has the brain to be a legendary GC, no marketing BS required. If he can twist his brain into using his eyes and mouth to keep 20 subs on track out of each others way, working multiple subprojects and tasks in the correct complicated order and on time instead of using his arms to throw things, I'd pay him a multiple of a typical GC because he would net save me time and money. On a big job, he could be extremely financially valuable, which could be very rewarding to him.
Or if he's not set up financially / people skills wise to be a GC then his legendary coordination and planning skills would make him an awesome heavy equipment operator. I've seen what a truly good crane op can do, and he could be one of the best. One of those guys who works the machine at full speed yet perfectly smooth and 1/4 inch accurate.
Not seeing how troweling cement makes best use of his unusual skills. Then again, if he likes what he's doing, he wins.
When I look at Moschen (and my personal favorite, Greg Kennedy), I'm reminded of the history of visual art (painting in particular). There was a time when being a great painter meant being able to capture a scene or a moment with verisimilitude or with emotion, and a painter could make a healthy living (possibly not opulent or luxurious, but not necessarily starve-in-the-gutter poor) by capturing portraits for clients who could afford that kind of opulence. It took a particular refined set of skills to translate the world of sensory data coming in through the eye to paint on canvas.
The invention of photography basically gutted that kind of painting. People wonder why painting went to modernism and post-modernism; part of the story is that the entire skillset of "faithfully rendering the real" had been rendered economically obsolete by cameras, so an artist who didn't want to starve had to render something else. Similarly, it matters little how much discipline, effort, and grit it takes to perfect an on-stage juggling routine if the audience doesn't bother to come to the stage.
Moschen and Kennedy's style brings people something they know they've never seen before, even though they don't know juggling. It's postmodern juggling. ;)
I saw him perform a few years ago. It was off-putting: he spent a bunch of time during the show complaining about other people "stealing" his tricks, specifically contact juggling itself.
As an amateur juggler, Anthony Gatto is exactly who I expected this to be about. The article perfectly nails the tension of juggling: it's theoretically a performance art, but one in which there is almost no audience who can appreciate it.
I think it's akin to free jazz, or car shows, or other weird passions where eventually the experts can only be understood by other experts.
I did find it weird that they made no mention of Vova's sister Olga. Did she leave juggling?
I wonder if it's like when I take a look at software and all anyone else can see is the output, but I can appreciate the underlying mechanisms and even be awe struck. And my colleagues are wondering if we're looking at the same thing.
Ah - I do love a good contact juggling routine. I got to see this guy at the buskers festival in Christchurch NZ. They gave permission to reproduce one of their promo videos:
Speaking as a juggler: I've seen Gatto in performance (in Kooza in 2008); he's every bit as good as the article says. I've also seen (and met) many other top jugglers.
And yet, to be honest, while I appreciate the talent and skill required to do the kinds of numbers and moves Gatto does, and even though I understand the difficulty of pulling off, e.g., 7 clubs or 7-ball 5-up 360s or 6-club backcrosses — I find this type of juggling fairly boring to watch. No matter how much showmanship you put into it, every performing juggler eventually realizes that technical skill means very little and audiences get bored after about 3 minutes. Most good jugglers with long shows do comedy and variety routines. Gatto clearly didn't want to go down that road. I respect that.
My favorite juggler to watch is Falco Scheffler: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CmnaICnMiw — no high numbers here, just 3 and 4 balls. And way more fun to watch than endless runs of 5 club backcrosses.
A performing juggler once told me (an amateur),
after he showed me a technically challenging bit:
There are bits you do for an audience, and there are
bits you do for other jugglers. It sounds like Gatto
liked the doing the technical bits more than he liked working for
an audience.
Now, years later, I find that programming has a similar
pattern: there is code that one writes for an audience (and that
thus is more maintainable) and there is code that one writes
that may show great technical skill - but that is more ...
challenging to enjoy.
Interesting - I would say it's the inverse. The complex, challenging, and spectacular code that gets blasted out is for the audience (user/customer) - but the most beautiful, simple, and maintainable code can only be written by those with the greatest skill, and are mostly appreciated by other developers of likewise experience.
In a way, it's a bit like juggling - that non-flash, simple routine, which concisely and clearly expresses intent, with little room for error, may not look impressive - but other developers will recognize the raw skill that was required to create it.
I think the benefit of less balls is that one can actually follow the patterns whilst with more balls/clubs/objects it's all a bit of a blur and one is respecting the skill but not really getting much out of the visual appearance. Like listening to music written/performed for the listener versus written/performed as a technical demonstration of the skill of the musician.
As a hobbyist juggler, his performance is really fun to watch on two levels. At its simplest, it's just a beautiful, flowing routine. It's really cool seeing one pattern become the next and the abrupt transitions between some are almost giggle-inducingly delightful.
At the same time, I can watch it with a juggler's eye and go, Rubenstein's Revenge, Windmill, Take-outs, Columns, The Machine, ....
It's exciting seeing a performance that is magical in total but that contains a bunch of pieces I can recognize and do myself.
As a fellow juggler (well, former, I don't really juggle much these days) I agree.
I find Gatto amazing in the same way other world record breakers are amazing, but apart from going "wow" it didn't feel inspiring to me as a juggler.
OTOH, there are world-class jugglers who go in different directions and do feel inspiring. I remember when I was starting out, this group with Jay Gilligan, Ville Walo and some other Finnish guy I forgot the name of had a VHS you could order over the 'net which was just unlike anything we'd seen. They were good technically, e.g. no problem with 5 clubs, but they also kept inventing new tricks and new ways of using objects instead of just going for more objects. I can't find any clips from that video[1], but there's some newer stuff from Jay and Ville on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8w-WsyPeLEghttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQJ4Q0SdJDo
[1] which started out with them pouring a bunch of meat and such into a jar and slurping it down, probably a joke at the large percentage of vegetarians at juggling conventions
Also a fellow juggler, but I have always felt the opposite, actually. (And have frequently felt like I'm in a minority.)
I could watch technicians practicing 8 balls, 10 rings, crazy site swaps, endless 5 club back crosses, etc. in a gym for hours. I have certainly enjoyed and appreciated the Jay Gilligan and Michael Moschen's of the world, but the overwhelming majority of "artsy" juggling just doesn't work, at least for me. For every Gilligan/Moschen/etc routine that I've seen that I've thought was well done, I feel like I've seen 4-5 that just fall totally flat for me.
At the other end of the spectrum, the "entertainer" jugglers that are aiming for a non-juggling audience I find almost impossible to watch. They are technically uninteresting, and I just can't get into the endless stream of lame jokes and winking at the crowd. Just awful. I would actually much prefer to watch Gatto practice than do one of his Vegas performances. The performances are impressive technically, but I find absolutely nothing about the presentation entertaining.
I think the reason that I feel this way is that I've always enjoyed the process of juggling (figuring how to do something, figuring out techniques for how to break down a trick into pieces, mastering each piece, etc) more than the end result (a polished, performable trick).
Back when I was juggling a lot, once I felt like I mastered a trick, it didn't really hold much interest for me anymore. When actually juggling, I would much rather spend my time trying to eke out a few more catches of 7 than toss 5 around more or less indefinitely.
But like I said, I've often felt like my preferences here are not all that common.
Apropos, from the Vova article: "These kids are changing the face of juggling, evolving a culture whose values — speed, numbers, athleticism, technique — are distinct from the traditional juggling values of balance, expression and showmanship."
I would say the Walo/Gilligan stuff is a third kind, where creativity the main value.
Even though the answer to the article's question is pretty easy (there are really very few athletic or show business fields of endeavor that you can actually make a good living doing), as I was reading it and watching the videos I was really glad that it was posted to HN. I think it's fascinating to learn about someone who's the best at something incredibly difficult.
This reminds me a bit of the Satoshi Nakamoto Newsweek article - A journalist who wants to dig up a juicy story but gets nothing because the guy just wants some privacy. And then he writes an article about being empty handed, accompanied by any research that might have been done along the way.
The guy was a juggler, who probably didn't make tons of money and who was injured & discouraged, or even just going through some regular life struggles (we all have them). He's doing something different for now and harassing him won't change a thing. I feel like he just wanted to be left alone.
> The usual strategies of sportswriting depend on the writer and reader sharing a set of passions and references [...] but you almost certainly don’t know as much about juggling as you do about football or baseball.
Nope, I knew more about juggling! The author only lost me at the end when it got into analogies with various names in basketball/tennis/golf that I was at most barely familiar with. But other than that, this is a great article. I realized midway through that I've actually seen Gatto's cirque act and didn't realize it was him at the time.
There certainly is some money in juggling. The article mentioned 50k starting salary at cirque du soleil. But maybe working in concrete lets him spend more time with his family for roughly the same amount of money (or more).
In my youth, as a devastatingly mediocre musician, I got the opportunity to spend some time with a band. The sex and drinking looked fun, but the nighttime hours, and never being able to settle down with a nice girl and start a family, blow.
This article is much more about the journey of his life and the journey of a journalist to answer the question. The final answer means very little; there are a myriad of reasons he quit. Perhaps you should read the article. It's very enjoyable.
>>Will it get me another job? ... If you can’t understand why I don’t waste my energy on doing seven balls overhead for a minute to make a youtube video for people to watch, then you haven’t entered the real world yet.
Resuming:
If you are at the top in one hierarchy that doesn't reward you according to your position, what should you do?
a) Stay and struggle (even with some niceties ex:social status).
b) Move to the bottom of another hierarchy where there's plenty to everybody (but where you don't have the skill or the passion to move up).
You can do anything, but not everything - David Allen
I tried during last years (I'm also dealing with this problem) to be somewhere in the middle of this 2 solutions but doesn't work. To be in the top of one hierarchy (and get the niceties) you need focus. Nowadays to that continuum of possibilities I would call indecision.
This is a case of a performer aging and not being able to understand a new medium. Gatto asks if posting videos on youtube will get him another job. He never considers that it can be a job.
Gatto seems to prefer the well-honed live performance to the recorded performance that may have worked on the 100th take. This is a matter of taste. It's also difficult to judge the skill of a performer in a recording (are they that good or did they edit their video to just have their successes).
This makes me think of classical music. Live performances have certainly been on the downward trend for many years. Glenn Gould devoted himself to just recording instead of live performances seeing this as the future of music (see http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/06/06/050606crat_atlar...). I think there's room for both live and recorded. Seeing only perfect performances can create unrealistic expectations in people's minds.
If your specialty is getting things perfect (almost) every time, and you are competing in an arena where the other people only have to keep trying until they get it right once, then you are going to have a bad day.
The comparison with live and recorded performances is spot on. There's probably a reason the major "live" performances of popular musicians are pre-recorded.
There may be a lesson here for those who are spending years perfecting technical skills when your competition are taking three-month bootcamps.
This article's existence, headline included is the straight-forward definition of ridiculous.
"In the future, the truest sign of human existential crises came not from plague, wars, or conspiracy, but ineffable journalism."
It also comes with a self-esteem hedge in the opening just in case you don't read. What might be an interesting story would the the meta-article on the set of these types of stories.
I had a similar discussion with my office colleagues a few weeks back. When there was a call for a 'Hacknight' at our workplace to drive revenues up, when a SVP panicked he was going to miss his target. And the people where asked to contribute and magically rescue the whole situation out of nowhere. Nearly every one agreed that they would not contribute a minute to that 'Hacknight'
When people just give up, start giving damn about things. Its generally because they've been taken for a ride, before. Once hard working night owl hackers stop doing things because they watch some jack ass four levels above them doing 1/100th the work but taking nearly everything that is right fully theirs.
The Hack night was a big flop, ofcourse the SVP called for a meeting next day and lectured about motivation and lack of passion in the team(Meaning, people not ready sacrifice a great deal and give away their work for free). And how despite all the help from the leadership(Meaning, Arranging for biscuits and tea, and then going to home to get sleep) people were not ready to contribute to the company(Meaning, Help the VP make an additional million in yearly bonus).
Ultimately you get what you pay for.