What solid orange balls? Not everything ball shaped is good to contact juggle. Someone mentioned a ping pong ball upthread, which is ridiculous. Weight and texture has a lot to do with it.
I mentioned them, and you probably know better than I how practical they are. I just thought of them because IIRC they are essentially seamless. I also thought about billiard balls, but I have know idea whether you can buy them individually – or how pricey they might be.
Obviously this guy has spent a lot of time practicing. The motion is very smooth. And it’s alo extraordinarily boring. Nothing looks out of the ordinary in the motion of the ball. It’s rolling around his hands and arms. Does he do it well? Yes. Is the motion very smooth and coordinated with his body? Yes. Is it something that the average person couldn’t do if they wasted a certain amount of time practicing in front of a miirror? No.
When I started reading this thread I wondered how they got anyone to buy this thing. Now I see there are probably enough people to buy it, who must also be amazed to see someone riding a bicycle. Real juggling (you know where you let go of the ball) is difficult, and requires talent and unusual ability, and is still boring. One Christmas tradition at our house is me juggling glass ornaments. The ones that are as thin as light bulbs. Even though I don’t do anything special, it requires more skill that anything done in that video. I’m pretty sure any real juggler, dancer, or acrobat could add that to their repertoire in a very short time.
Does this sound like I’m disrespecting an art form based on just one performance. Sure. But based on that, what possible motivation would I have to ever look at another. And if that’s the best out there…well nevermind. I’m sure you can guess what I’m thinking.
Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball!
That’s pretty much what you are doing. Just because you find something boring doesn’t mean it isn’t difficult to perform.
It is a hell of a lot harder than it looks. Mastering a few simple moves is easy, but after that the difficulty level rises very fast. What you may not realize is those balls are solid and have a lot of mass. Once they get going you have to stay in constant motion to prevent them from flying away. Beyond that, you must learn how to keep that motion where you want it on your body because you can only recover the ball from certain points. There are plenty of people who perform with three or even four balls at once as well. While the tricks are more limited than aerial juggling to some degree, the difficulty is the same. Many aerial jugglers consider multiball contact juggling more difficult by the way, since you have no lag time out of contact with the objects being manipulated. There literally is no timing, just a continuing, sinuous sequence.
LOL. Well I would think so, given that he’s the guy who *created *it.
I didn’t relate boring and difficulty. Just because it’s difficult doesn’t make it interesting to watch.
I assume multiball would be more interesting and more difficult, but that wasn’t in the video. The video of the guy moving two metal balls over the palm of his hand looked difficult. But not interesting for more than a few seconds.
If you put up a link for an interesting performance, I’ll give it one more look. But the one in that post I quoted was a miserable advertisement for what is supposed to be an art form. Watch molasses ooze out of a bottle is more engrossing than that was.
Hey!
I notice you are a “Mod”. Can you set me up with a “Shaking my Fist at You” smiley?
He’s only a Moperator. Don’t feel bad; I’ve been fooled in the past.
Twice.
No, but as a Mop, I can give you a no pirates smilie:
[SIZE=“5”]# [/SIZE]
The only balls I remember from that movie were the ones bulging through Bowie’s pants.
You may recall that Bogart did the first big screen demonstration of contact juggling in The Caine Mutiny.
Michael Moschen may have invented the genre to a large extent, but he does more “art” juggling from what I’ve seen. Even his toss (or bounce) juggling is very clean and polished but not always so great as a performance. Try this guy. His single ball stuff starts at about a minute thirty.
That’s Okotanpe in that video, if you want to find more of his stuff.
Ooh I do like him.. 
By the way, something some contact jugglers have mentioned if you do buy a Fusigi ball is that the metal core is off centre in quite a lot of them, which does ruin the illusion. If you’re buying it as a present, it’s something to check. (I don’t live in the US, and they’re not sold over here so I haven’t checked this myself.)
Also, if you do get a clear acrylic for a kid, make sure they don’t leave it in the sun, unless you like having things set on fire…
Mmmmmmmm…yes, I remember those, as well! 
But if you want to see the contact juggling that was in the film, here’s a clip of one of the scenes. Those aren’t Bowie’s hands, they’re the hands of Michael Moschen, the granddaddy of contact juggling in the “boring” video linked upthread.
And here’s a video of Henson and company showing how they did it. Delightfully low-tech. If it were made today, it probably would be CGI.
That’s a little more entertaining, consistent with many street performers. I can understand that there is more difficulty to the motion than it appears, but if it doesn’t seem difficult, it removes an element of it’s entertainment value. As I mentioned previously, it’s entertaining when I juggle glass christmas tree ornaments. Not because I’m a great juggler, but because of the anticipation that I will drop one. If I juggle styrafoam ornaments, nobody cares. I think if the ball was non-reflective and had some markings so that the spin were more apparent, it would look even less difficult.
The entertainment value of that young man had much more to do with his interaction with the crowd than the motion of the ball. It’s a nice little bit to add to an act, but he could probably entertain as well with hankerchief. Magic can be like this to. It’s wonderful to watch the technical artists perform with impeccable sleight of hand techniques, but some very simple tricks requiring minimal physical skill can be very entertaining because of the picture painted by the magician with his words and movements.
I’d like to see more of the multi-ball acts that would clearly demonstrate some greater physical juggling skill. That combined with a good general performance might be much more interesting.
Every year my husband’s family has a Christmas exchange where each person brings a gift of around $20 or so. We draw names out of a hat or do a Yankee swap and eveyone walks away with something. Every year there are one or two lame gifts that end up sitting there, last and forlorn, before someone resolutely chooses the BBQ sauce set, the car care kit, or the refrigerator coil cleaning brush (yes, really). This year someone brought a Fushigi and some other infomercial type item, and it was the last thing to go. Worse than useless, the type of thing you sell at next summer’s garage sale.
I know that there are some that might find it to be fun and interesting, but not a good gift unless someone specifically says they want it.
Check out contactjuggling.org; they sort tricks by number of balls, and you can see if any of those catch your fancy.
Your desire to see acts that would “demonstrate greater physical juggling skill” is a bit confusing to me given your earlier comment about that guy being able to entertain with a hanky. He did entertain the crowd with one ball, and if entertainment’s the goal, then he accomplished it. If his goal was to show his prowess with contact juggling, he did that as well, at least to those in the know. You seem to be saying that unless you do more than one ball, you’re not skilled.
You have some familiarity with toss juggling, so you should know that there are tricks to impress a crowd, and tricks to impress other jugglers. For example, the cascade and reverse cascade look exactly the same (except, in reverse), but it requires a slightly and more difficult different skill set to pull off the reverse. So here we have two tricks that appear the same, but one is a bit more difficult. I’d be more impressed to see a reverse cascade than someone juggling eggs in a regular cascade.
With contact juggling, there are mutliball tricks that are easier than some single ball ones. If I’m reading what you wrote correctly, the ones with more balls would be more pleasing to you, even if they were less technical? So because you’re a toss juggler, a single ball looks easy, whereas to both a regular crowd and other contact jugglers it’s entertaining. I feel like you’re somewhere in the middle on this.