Jack Dagger

This is a completely non-performance related post, but definitely worth sharing.

My wife and I have a new neighbor right outside our front door. I’ve named her Consuela. She looks like this.

Consuela has a couple of babies in the works. They look like this.

Keep in mind these eggs are ridiculously small. And when they hatch, they look like this. I present to you: Jose and Sophia.

Hope you enjoyed meeting the neighbors.

My brother-in-law, Ryan Beadle, shot and edited this little endorsement/advertisement for the Pampered Chef Safety Can Opener.

Rufus T. Washington, Jr is a handsome man, who grew up in the South.

As did I.

I decided to add “handles” to my new chef knife throwers. So as not to change the dynamics of the knife, I chose to use Perma Blue Liquid Gun Blue to darken the metal, giving them the appearance of handle scales. This way they can still stack flat in my hand or sheath, but give the illusion of being “real knives”. Pretty snazzy lookin’, huh?

Here’s a closeup, showing the product I used, as recommended to me by Tim “Ricochet” Jester.

This angle really shows how the faux handles are different from the knife

I just got my new chef knife throwers from Joe “Brokenfeather” Darrah, and I gotta say, these are the purty-est knives I’ve ever seen. They’re gonna be wicked in our Van Kleaver Bros show.

Here they are on my kitchen table, next to my wife’s birthday flowers.

And here’s a closer pic.

Only one of the knives has proper handle scales (polished black G10), and Joe tricked it out with his signature custom file work. For the rest of the knives I’ll be using gun blue to darken the handles, to give the illusion from the audience perspective that they have proper handle scales as well. But they’ll still be flat and stack well in my free hand. I can’t wait to use ‘em!

p.s. Throwing knives is good for your health.

Well, not really.

But kind of.

John Leonetti, having grown up in Seattle, makes the sojourn back once in a while, and has struck up a friendship with legendary whip maker David Morgan. Mr. Morgan made the whips for the first three Indiana Jones films.

On his last trip to see Mr. Morgan, John (an advanced student of Anthony De Longis, who trained Harrison Ford for Indy4) wound up hosting an organic whip cracking seminar with an eccentric group of martial artists.

The “hatred” mentioned above comes from the fact that the co-founder of the martial arts group was none other than my favorite author Neal Stephenson.

Now lemme tell you a little bit about Neal Stephenson. He’s what would happen if Robert A. Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, Thomas Pynchon, and Tom Stoppard had four-way gay sex, and one of them had a womb. That’s an oversimplification, but to put it bluntly, I believe that Stephenson is the most intelligent, witty author of our day, a guy who legitimately transcends genre. He writes science fiction so interesting to read, for instance, that even my wife loves it. And she don’t read no steenking sci/fi, mane!

The kicker of this whole story is that John had never even heard of Neal Stephenson before meeting him and the group, and teaching them how to crack a whip. Then he just mentioned it casually on the phone to me the other day. “Yeah, I was up in Seattle cracking whips with a bunch of guys. One of ‘em was an author.”

“Oh yeah? Do you remember his name?” I read a lot.

“Neal something.” Which triggers in my brain the only Neal author I know that lives in the Northwest.

“Was it Neal Stephenson?”

“Oh yeah, that was it.”

“Asshole.”

“What?”

That’s pretty much how the conversation went.

And here’s your homework lesson. There are three parts:

1. Order a whip from David Morgan.

2. Then go to your local book store, buy a copy of Snow Crash (Stephenson’s first book; as good a place as any to start), and read it while you wait for your whip to arrive.

3. Take pics of you holding your David Morgan whip and any Neal Stephenson novel, and send those pics to me.

Finally, here’s the email that John Leonetti sent out about his experiences with Neal and the Gang. Included is a link to his photo gallery (John is a gifted photographer) and I strongly urge you to check it out.

Hello friends and whip crackers,

I’ve updated my photo galleries with some material I shot at David Morgan’s shop on December 27th. He was very generous with his time, and allowed me to photograph more whips from his private collection.

The following day Will Morgan, magician/whipmaker Louie Foxx and I gave a whip demonstration to members of The Barton-Wright Applied Hopology and Historical Antagonistics League (BWAHAHA). Co-founded by writer Neal Stephenson, BWAHAHA is a Seattle and San Francisco-based group dedicated to the practice of Bartitsu, a martial art created by Englishman Edward William Barton-Wright in 1898. Will, Louie and I shared our insights on basic whipcracking, and everyone had a great time trying out a variety of whip styles and lengths.

You can check out photos from both days here:

http://web.me.com/johnleonetti/cracktice/home.html

Best,

John Leonetti
www.johnleonetti.com

I went out again this weekend to support my good pal Anna Fur Laxis, but this time it was for a Disney-inspired show. Seriously.

It was called Burlesqueland. Here’s the flier.

The guys from Peepshow Menagerie also came up with these Mauschwitz-lookin posters for each of the girls. Brilliant.

The first night of the two-night shindig happened at Bordello, downtown LA. Gorgeous place. The stage looks like this.

My good friend (and awesome photographer… I’ll post a link to his pics when he has them up) John Leonetti tagged along, and he looks like this most of the time.

He sometimes looks like this. And if the phallic, camera-in-the-crotch metaphor doesn’t sum up John completely, I don’t know what will.

Also in attendance was my dear sweet lovely wife.

While we waited for the show to begin, they piped in old Disney tunes, including the following lovely gem, as lip-synced by my lyric-savant wife Amy. Sorry, Amy, but you’re internet famous now…

The evening was hosted by none other than Ursula from The Little Mermaid, that angry eight-legged bitch, also known as Dizzy Von Damn, whom I’m quite certain I was married to in another life. She’s friggin’ awesome. She’s also the winner of last year’s Viva Las Vegas.

As Ursula, she looked like this. I can’t explain the dead girl on the stage.

Finally, I got a photo of Anna Fur Laxis. However, my camera sucks at indoor photography, so this pic kinda makes her look like an enraged golden spirit come to destroy us all. Not true. She’s quite lovely, and her Golden Fish Hook routine was outstanding.

We took a photo after her routine to prove that she isn’t a raging specter.

Special note, I finally got to meet Ava Garter in person (with whom I’m email-collaborating on a super-secret pilot), but did not get a photo with her. Weak.

I also met Dita Von Teese, who seems like a real sweet gal.

No knives were thrown at Burlesqueland, and that’s a damn shame.

Not the guy from American History. Nuh-uh. Beastie Boys, baby, Beastie Boys.

Take a look at what happens when Cowboy Max and I get a hold of my brother-in-law’s boom box and head to downtown LA.

Special thanks to a certain sweet gal who held the camera steady despite her fits of laughter.

Just watch…

Here’s a teaser ad we recently shot for HollywoodCombatCenter.com. Don’t worry, there’s knife throwing in this ad.

Enjoy!

Cowboy Max takes his first try at throwing knives around a living person… ME!

Take a look.