For those who are asking, the knives used in TOP SHOT are Jack Dagger Brand Knives, designed by Jack Dagger and Tim Jester.

They’re available right here!

Single Jack Dagger TOP SHOT Bowie is $44.99 + $8 (shipping).

Set of three Jack Dagger TOP SHOT Bowies is $119.99 + $12 (shipping).

PayPal me directly at jack@jackdagger.com, then send me a private email with a shipping address.

The weight of the blade is 14oz and the total length of the blade is 14″ long and is 2″ at the widest point. Dealer programs are available.

Here are some videos from the show:
-Weapons Rundown: Bowie Knife (2:20)
-Top Shot Episode 8: The Razor’s Edge (45:00)

Here’s a photo of the knife.

Here are some low res screen pics my friend took from the show.

Here are a few behind the scene pics:

Pro Throwing on Day One? Yes You Can!

Now on DVD!!!

The first and only PROFESSIONALLY made DVD that teaches you everything you need to know to throw like a pro. Learn about competition throwing, and how you can be part of the fastest growing sport in the world. You’ll also get to see part of Jack Dagger’s professional act.

Jack is the world’s foremost authority on knife throwing, Hollywood’s Go-to Guy on the subject, and is the only professional performer who’s also a certified instructor (and inductee) with the International Knife Throwers Hall of Fame. He’s worked with Anthony De Longis (Hollywood stunt legend and Harrison Ford’s whip coach), David Boreanaz, Emily Deschanel, Adam Sandler and Conan O’Brien (successfully teaching Conan to throw in less than five minutes on live TV). Jack Dagger is the only knife thrower ever to be featured on the History Channel showcasing his unprecedented achievements in accuracy throwing. Jack Dagger is the King of Fling!

Here’s just a taste of what you’ll get:

-Grip, Stance, Windup, and Delivery (the simplest, most effective throwing system ever)

-Target Construction and Knife Selection

-The Seven [most] Frequently Encountered Problems (FEPs)

-How to adjust for more accurate and successful throwing

-Competition Throwing

-Several professional stunts including the Jack Knife – Cucumber Slice (as seen on The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien) which only Jack can do!

Just $24.95 + $5 shipping!

I actually a lot more interesting than I’ve made it sound in the description above. 

====================

Howdy, folks.  It’s your friendly neighborhood knife thrower, Jack Dagger: The King of Fling!

In last month’s Whoop-ass Gazette Alamo Mike told us about knife throwing competitions, Robert Dante taught us how to attach a popper to a whip, Buck talked about Stunts and Stage Combat, and Johnny Hotshot accidentally said something profound about versatility.  I say accidentally, ’cause I know he can’t possibly be that smart. 

This month, I’ll be pinch-hitting for ole Alamo Mike for the knife throwers.  I’ll tell ya a little about myself and my shows, and why I think that performing is the most important skill a performer can have.

Performing has been in my blood ever since I was two years old, doing somersaults down the aisle at my Aunt and Uncle’s wedding.  They had the misfortune of getting married on my birthday.  I’ve been dancing like a monkey ever since.

When I was old enough to safely handle a knife, throwing it seemed like the natural and proper thing to do.  Didn’t make my mom too happy, but what else is there to do in a backyard in Baton Rouge?

It took me many moons before I combined my chocolate and my peanut butter and put together a knife throwing show.  In fact, I’ve only just celebrated the completion of my sixth year doing knife throwing performances, and according to Che Che Whitecloud, I’m barely out of my greenhorn phase.

In any case, I was very fortunate to have been performing just about as long as I’d been throwing knives.  All my life.  So when I decided to put the two together, I was able to maintain a good balance between the two skill-sets: performing and knife throwing.

I’d like to quote something Hotshot said in last month’s Gazette, “Diversify… [and] never miss an opportunity to shut yer mouth…”  Now, lemme elaborate on what that means to me: Always maintain a sense of humility, and learn whatever you can from whomever you can.  Ya never know what’s gonna come in handy, but improving your performance skill will ALWAYS come in handy.

One of the most defining aspects about the Wild West Performing Arts is the props.  That’s right, I said props.  ‘Cause unless I start stabbing a hobo on stage (at which point the knife would become evidence), my knife is just a prop.  Your whip… just a prop.  Your rope, your gun, your hickory stick, your rubber chicken… they’re all just props.  Props are used by performers to tell a story.

Gather all the physical skills you can, as it will give you a larger, more varied vocabulary to work with.  But most importantly, while you’re out there mastering your skills make sure that you’re constantly honing the most important skill of all: performance.  One of the pitfalls in the performance world is “if I can just learn how to walk on this broken glass, I’ve got myself a show.”  No, you don’t.  Now get off the stage and go pull up your pants.

Always imagine that there’s a “So What?” guy in the audience and he’s the hardest guy to please.  Cater your show to that guy.

Example:

COWBOY SHMOOLY

[Performs a flat spin with a rope.]

SO-WHAT-GUY

“So what?  You just spun a rope.  And?”

And…?  And that’s the million dollar question.

Storytelling isn’t always the linear, narrative form that we’ve learned from the Sunday Comics.  Sometimes it’s just a sensation, or a feeling.  Decide how you’d like your audience to feel, and figure out how to usher them along into that feeling.

Keep in mind that no one particular feeling or sensation is the right one.  For instance, in my Jack Dagger shows, I want the audience to feel a little naughty, and experience a little bit of guilt-free sexual humor.  However, in my Van Kleaver Bros shows, Shelby and I are much more innocent, and we want the audience to feel downright silly, or goofy, like we’ve all discovered an inside joke together and have spent forty-five minutes giggling about it.

All this is before you even worry about your “stunts”.  By the time we perform our “stunts” it’s just icing on the cake; they’re already having a great time and don’t much care what we do.  That being said, however, when you do suddenly WOW the heck out of them with a world class stunt, well, you’ve got a fan for life.

In the Wild West Performing Arts Society, we want to preserve the “Performing Arts”.  Note the word “Perfoming”.  It’s right in there in the title.  To quote Steve Martin from Planes, Trains and Automobiles, “When you tell a story… have a point.  It makes it so much more interesting for the listener.”

Always keep your performance skill up in front of the rest of your skills and you’ll do alright.

Remember to join SASS (the parent organization of WWPAS), and Ride for the Brand!  The Wild West Arts are an American’s birthright, and I’m happy and proud to be able to help keep ‘em alive!

You pal,

-Jack Dagger

p.s. [Begin Shameless Plug] – Go buy my new instructional DVD Knife Throwing 101: The Jack Dagger Method… or I’ll stab ya. 

Y’all can email me directly at jack@jackdagger.com.

Sadly, they didn’t make it past a couple of weeks.  Apparently, infant mortality is pretty high among hummingbirds.  They can starve to death in as little as five hours.  One day, while I was away performing in Arizona, Amy said bye to them on her way to work, then came home and they had passed on.  One in the nest, and the other on the pavement below.

After a little confusion, Consuela finally left.  It was very sad, but hey, death happens, and I appreciated the joy they brought me while they were here.  It was a gift of immense magnitude, and I’ll never forget it.

We buried the chics in Amy’s parent’s back yard.

Rest in peace, you mercurial beasties, you.

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.

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

As did I.

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

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.

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

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.