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“Peeeace!”

This morning I was surfing some international yo-yo blogs when I stumbled upon this video I made with Alexander Maness from Current TV.

Alex came to Chico last year and followed me around as I told him about our humble hobbie. I hadn’t heard anything since the trip, so I just figured the whole documentary got trashed. Needless to say, I’m delighted to see that it did get finished and I think it looks great.

Speaking of blogs, my new friend Cate Corbitt recently posted a picture (shown below) from yesterday’s photo-shoot on her blog, SFFaces.com. The shoot was an potpourri mix of music publicity shots (for my band Drown Radio), product shots (for my new craft line), and a few yo-yo shots for Cate’s blog. SFFaces.com documents a portion of the Bay Area’s eclectic individuals.

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Yo-yo meetup in SF Sunday the 10th

Sorry for the late posting, but there is a big yo-yo meet up here in the Bay Area tomorrow. So if you aren’t doing anything else, why not come by and yo-yo with us. Here is the info from Kiya:

Looks like the weather is going to be great on Sunday..

The next Team COY meeting will be a multiple team meeting at Golden Gate
park THIS Sunday February 10th.
The meet will take place in the bandshell area next to the De Young Museum.
Here’s a map of the park for those that haven’t been to Golden Gate park
before:
http://www.inetours.com/Pages/SFLndmrkVws/GGP_Map.html
It’s the area labeled as “Music Concourse” next to the De Young.

There’s also a little contest being run by the guys from the 2YO SF club
which
starts at 10am.
I’ll be there at noon.
This will only take place if it’s NOT raining.
So if it’s pouring rain out, consider this event cancelled.
See ya on the 10th!

Golden Gate Park
Bandshell Area.
Look for flying yoyos.
February 10th, Sunday.
Noon.

Bring drinks, yoyos, beers, foods, and hula hoops.

If you show up and can’t find us call me: (650) 245-2859

-kiya

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Plug-in to y’r muse

The folks at Broken Yo-yos sent me one of their newest products, the Plug-in III.

The Plug-in III is smooth as hell on the string, and probably the shiniest yo-yo I’ve ever seen. But what I really like about it is how inspired I feel every time I pick it up. I’ve been trying out a bunch of new whip moves with mine, but it also motivated me to create a little tribute to MC Escher’s self portrait in a metallic sphere.

I call it Hand With Reflecting Halves.

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Master of Self Promotions

Video thumbnail. Click to play
Click To Play

I’ve finally gotten around to uploading the entire yo-yo segment from Master Of Champions. It was a huge file and took some work, but I’ve uploaded it to blip.tv and a few other online video places.


I’ve also taken the liberty of uploading the entire Master Of Champions show and just the edited Doc Pop interview. You can download them here.

Quicktime
Full Master of Champions 784 megs (the best quality I have)
Yo-yo Segment 24 megs
Doc Pop Interview 13 megs

iPhone ready
Full Master of Champions 308 megs
Yo-yo Segment 86 megs

Divx
Full Master of Champions 353 megs
Yo-yo Segment 99 megs

If anyone feels like creating a torrent of the Full quicktime file, let me know and I’ll host the link here.

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Aloha

Today I’m featured on Veronica Belmont’s cool Mahalo Daily video-cast, so I wanted to say hi to any new readers that may be surfing this site.

I was going to link to a couple videos or whatever, but it looks like Mahalo.com already has a good list of my yo-yo related article on their “Doc Popular” entry. For those who would like links to my craft site, personal blog, or even Twitter info, you can find all that stuff on www.DocPop.org.

I’ve found it interesting that even though I refer to myself as Doctor Popular or Doc Pop, I often get referred to as Doctor Pop or Doc Popular in the media. It first started happening on that ABC show I was on last year and it really drove me nuts. Hearing Oksana Baiul repeatedly butcher your name would give you nightmares.

Oh, and speaking of Master Of Champions, I’m currently encoding the entire episode we were on and some of the individual segments for the web. Check back in the next few days to see those.

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Back from Nats

This year’s National Yo-Yo Contest was one of my favorites. Congratulations to Jake Bullock and JonRob on being the first joint recipients of the Trick Innovator of the year award. On another note, I thought this year was easily the best year for Freehand at Nats. Historically, freehand was one of the most anticipated divisions and often turned out to be one of the most disappointing.

I mentioned previously that I would be live blogging the event from my iPhone and updating it to my flickr as well as twittering the event. The twitter thing was pretty iffy, but you can see all my Nationals flickr set here.

I also recommend JD_WMWMW’s photo set, where the above photo was culled from, and Sarah and Michelle‘s sets too.

Nationals 2007

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For those about to flock…

to Nationals, sign up for a Twitter account, and let’s keep each other notified on the happenings in Chico via text messaging on your cell phone, IM, or PDA.

Twitter is a web based web site that makes it easy to communicate with your friends. The basic idea is you have 140 characters to be able to tell everybody what your doing or thinking at any time. Ordinarily it’s not the strongest branch of the new web2.o, but it is perfect for events like this, especially since it works so well with cell phones and most of us get free weekends (right?).

The first step is to go to Twitter.com and register your account, then go to http://twitter.com/devices to add your device (cell phone, IM, PDA, whatever). Once your device is registered text “track NYYC” to 40404 and you will be automatically notified whenever someone posts a Twitter containing NYYC (which stands for National yo-yo Contest… “NYYC” does not have to appear in all caps btw). This process is also described on http://twitter.com/blog/2007/09/tracking-twitter.html

Again; login to twitter, set up your mobile device, then send “track nyyc” to Twitter’s text number (40404). Afterwards, feel free to find friends to follow or send a test NYYC message.

This is a big event, at times we are all at the park, other times we are scattered around, but if we use Twitter to communicate what’s going on, we can make sure we don’t miss a thing.

For example, “NYYC triple A throwdown going down now in the parking lot at H.I.” or “OMG, @DocPop is the new NYYC champion in every single division!!!1!”.

To send a message or reply to a specific Twitterer, just type the “@” in front of their name. Mine would be @DocPop or you can also check out my Twitter page http://twitter.com/DocPop

If you are Twittering any National Yo-Yo stuff, be sure to type NYYC in the message somewhere, otherwise it won’t go out to everyone’s Twitter Tracker.

BTW, in combination with my flickr updating, this might be a good way to keep track of what’s happening in Chico this weekend.

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Big Bad Popular Doctor

I’m on the verge of the next busy season for a yo-yo pro, but I’ve already been getting some bigger gigs lately. Today I opened for Big Bad Voodoo Daddy at a huge corporate gig in Santa Clara. I snapped a quick pic of BBVD right before I took off.

My goal is to make this the best holiday season I’ve ever had. It’s already been the most productive, most creatively successful year I’ve ever had, so I have high hopes for the next 3 months.