A Rant About Fushigi

If you have not heard of the Fushigi Ball, go watch that video, and then come read the rest of this.

Now that you've seen the "brand new, dynamically designed ball," allow me to yell about it for a few minutes.
#1 Fushigi is a noun, I can deal with this. Fushigi= acrylic/steel hybrid ball. Turns out fushigi is also a verb. It is synonymous with "contact juggling." I am gonna say it right now - the first person that comes up to me at market and sees me doin my thing and says "ooh! FUSHIGI!" I am gonna kick their ass with my torrent of corrections to their clearly flawed knowledge of the art.

#2 Fushigi lies. "Using FUSHIGI is an incredible, therapeutic form of relaxation"
Anyone here contact juggle? For those of you who do not, you know I make it look pretty easy. For those of you who do, you understand the HOURS of frustration I spent trying to learn this art. The months I spent learning a simple trick like a chest roll, or a 3 ball palm spin. Or a decent isolation. The years I have been doing this for and still screw up a waterfall if I am not devoting my whole self to it. After several YEARS on training, yes - a simply palm isolation or butterfly can be relaxing. Let me restate that: years. how many average american teens (who are the demographic of this, given the commercial) do you know who are willing to stick with something as stupidly hard and frustrating as contact juggling to get something "therapeutic." I answer myself - none. Not even me. I do it as a performance art, always have. Never have I thought about devoting time to learn something like this to relax myself.

#3 The existence of Fushigi is a serious double edged sword.
Pro: people might start to know what contact juggling actually is, and so there might be more of us around to spread ideas. If fushigi becomes part of mainstream culture, I will have to explain to less people what I am doing with that crazy ball that looks like it floats.

Con: does anyone remember what happened to poi? It was an obscure art with a very purist following - then mainstream culture got ahold of it and bastardized it. I am not overstating that. You see poi at raves with girls wearing almost no clothes, and doing 3 beat weave and butterfly thinking they are hot shit. Now, if you say "yeah, I do poi" this is what comes to mind - it has become a normal thing to do as a workout (every time I say "poi," feel free to substitute "hoop" and it still holds true). Anyone seen the poi videos (or hoopgirl)? After poi became part of mainstream culture, it became less impressive. It became largely about sex (not everyone, mind you - I have many poi heros who are circus purists) and this is just not ok with me. Sensuality has its place, but not flat out sex. I have seen so many videos where a girl is doing poi or hoop and is just doing... well... pelvic thrusts. The crowd cheers. This SUCKS! I have a fear that this will happen to contact juggling if Fushigi succeeds. I am not saying it will become about sex, but mark my words, the American public will find some other way to dirty up a beautiful and elegant art.

I think the cons outweight the pros... FUSHIGI GO AWAY!

I think that is all I have to yell about for now.