After watching the Fox show 30 Seconds to Fame last night, my interest was rekindled in an art called “Contact Juggling.”

What is it? Well, unless you’ve seen it, it’s hard to describe. Better to explain why I’m interested and let you figure it out for yourself.

I first got sucked in by it while watching Labyrinth, one of my favorite movies (with an awesome soundtrack, too). You know the part where David Bowie’s character has the crystal ball and is rolling it around on his arms in one fluid motion? That’s contact juggling.

And, just for the record, that wasn’t David Bowie doing it. It was actually a guy named Michael Moschen, who seems to be the foremost authority on it.

Anyway, I am just thoroughly impressed every time I see it done, and I’ve admittedly screwed around trying to imitate it, but not having much luck and usually hurting myself in the process.

Well, last night’s 30 Seconds to Fame (which has to be one of the dumber shows out there overall) had a guy named Owen doing this contact juggling thing, so I once again got the bug up my ass and decided I needed to see if the art was a little more accessible than it was before.

Lucky for me, it is.

Now there are web sites on the thing. ContactJuggling.org and ContactJuggling.com are the two I’ve found to be most helpful. They’ve got resources and step by step guides

• even videos - that show you the beginning steps. It looks to me like the best place to start is with a lacrosse ball. Guess I’m going to the sporting goods store sometime soon.

There’s a book out, too, but it looks like it’s sort of hard to get ahold of. I can’t recommend it one way or the other ‘cause I’ve never seen it. I’ll probably end up getting it, though.

In other news…

My Winter Hawks jersey came back, professionally lettered and looking crisp. Love it. Can’t wait for an occasion to wear it.

My Ottawa Senators jersey is also at my house, waiting to be unleashed from the box it was shipped in. I’d wear it tomorrow to my sister’s wedding, but I think she’d be pissed.

Oh, and I added a link to buy Mucha art from AllPosters.com. In the event you’re looking for some cool stuff to hang up (or stuff to buy me), there you go.

Finally, I took out the “Karma voting” feature of the blog because, frankly, no one was using it and it just cluttered stuff up. If it sounds like it’ll be a good idea at a later time, I can always re-enable it. Comments will still be allowed (and encouraged), so no change there.