The Birthday Request

I got invited/requested by one of my Hot Shots, Scarlet, to work her birthday party at the gym last year (for a party that is this weekend).  She's been excited about it for well over a week.

Yesterday, I was all over them, being knit-picky, smash-mouthed, relentlessly badgering the Hot Shots on their form and focus; the quality of their effort, constantly demanding better. Finally, the exasperated future birthday queen looks at me and says in a fatigued way, "Please don't be like this at the birthday party."

Sircey's Ya Ya Birthday

This was done back in early April, after I had already left LASG a week earlier.

Just Malaika's Imagination

This video is from Malaika's birthday party last September 2nd. It was a lot of fun to work, given the number of kids I knew (former SMGC students) who attended but don't get to see anymore.

Lilly, I think, was shocked to see Teri and I, and disoriented by our presence at LASG (I can't remember, but she said some "funny" and "curious" things about the gym switch, and why we left). I seem to recall her expressing some irk and ire, as though holding me accountable to SMGC's closing.




When we were at SMGC, at the end of her class, Malaika used to always ask me to make her a paper airplane. It was kind of a ritual, like when I used to come in and share my breakfast with Anna.

Madison's comment about the haunted maze in the video's closing credits can be better referenced and contextualized by clicking here. I should revisit that updated video, and prefix it with this clip of Madison, talking about it.

It took me 8 months to get around to doing this video. It just kind of happened accidentally while sitting in front of my computer, Friday morning, perusing my music library files as well as going through video files, looking for pictures to send to those who appear in them. Less than 24 hours later and....whalah! Video made, wrapped, printed!

I miss these kids and am grateful for being able to preserve some of the memories!

Malaika's currently been fencing, and loving it!

Catastrophic Success?

Julia came in to help participate in Sircey's birthday party, today. Before the party, she did a standing back flip by herself after a couple of spots from Yefim; then did a layout on bars! To my knowledge, she's done neither before, by herself.

Pretty good for a non-workout day.


*UPDATE* Julia's comment in this post made me decide to post a clip the device she brought up. Coach John is a master manipulator of this and uses it regularly. Between Yefim and I operating on different pages from the book, we come close to "decapitating" Sircey against the top bar (Yefim thought I was ready to bring her down, when what I was trying was John's method of swinging the rider under the high bar).

The Spectacular Spider-Gymnast

Happy Birthday, Ana!

It just occurred to me that today is Ana Frandell's birthday. If I had remembered it earlier today, I would have worked on finishing up a video of her I started over a year ago.

For some reason, I've had Sept 7th lodged in my head ever since Ana quizzed me on it a few years ago. She basically stopped showing up to gym (no official quit day that I can recall) before SMGC closed down. 2 weeks ago, she started coming to a tumbling class for cheer on Wednesday nights (the one night the higher level team girls from SMGC don't come on). She definitely tumbles like a trained competitive gymnast and not a "chuck it" cheerleader.


I remember putting the following up on the closet wall at SMGC, over by the stereo as a joke:



It was created using an online newspaper generator.

Some parent apparently read it on the wall, and thought it was real.

I recommend checking out this video, in honor of Ana.

Happy Birthday Ana!

Happy Birthday Robyn!

Thank you for all your hard work as camp director, this summer! And thanks for getting the kids to show support for our soldiers serving overseas.

I look forward to working with you again for our advanced class.

This video is right up your alley:

John Hill and the Secrets of the LASG Birthday Zipline

The feature attraction to LASG birthday parties has got to be the zipline. Coach John Hill does a great job with it, as well as with manipulating the overhead spotting belt for the birthday kid. I couldn't resist doing some filming when he and Heather set up the barrier of octagons for the kids to crash through on the zipline.

I was originally going to post just the raw footage, but just couldn't help myself with not adding in the Indiana Jones music.

Happy Belated Birthday, Coach Teri!

Monday was Teri's birthday, and I know she wanted to try and stop by the gym on Monday to see Anna and Malaika, and how they've progressed. Well, she wasn't able to make it. I had meant to film Anna and Malaika give her a birthday greeting, but forgot.

Fortunately I saw them again this week, as Malaika's baby sister, Nikita, has her class Friday morning, as well as their mom, Stacey.

Happy Birthday to a great teacher, excellent professional photographer, and wonderful human being!

Her website and blog.

New Soul Birthday

Kaliray is one of our SMGC kids who migrated over to LASG. Last Sunday was her birthday party, and I was happy to have been asked to work it. Robyn and Heather are also former SMGC coaches who worked the party, along with coach Desiree.

The zipline (which you can see in Malaika and Anna's video) broke on Saturday, so we worked without one of the main attraction party gimmicks at LASG. This was only my 2nd part at LASG, so I'm a bit out of my groove on running parties and learning the LASG format and material.

Kaliray is another kid who I've always loved, but who I don't see enough of. She misses a lot of gymnastics classes (at LASG, she's signed up for my Monday intermediate class along with Malaika and Anna- all originally part of Al and Teri's junior advanced Wednesday). Cute as all heck. Some of that should come through in this raw footage:



I hope to someday use the footage in a future video. One-legged inch worms are what we call one of SMGC's standard warm up passes across the floor where you hold one leg high in the air, then move both arms forward, followed by moving the bottom leg forward. I remember teaching a class of physically fit stuntmen/martial artists and it just about killed them. Most of the kids don't have much love for the exercise either, in spite of the cute name given to the drill.



Anna and Malaika were at Anna's violin recital, so weren't at the party.

I wish I had better footage of my handstand push-ups at the beginning of the video; I did two no problem, with Kaliray on my back without touching the mat (not confident and consistent yet to do it away from the wall) the first go round; but was too muscle-tired to do it in 2 takes for the camera. I'm way past my prime, but think I want to work on this; hopefully before the 40-50 lb kids I work with turn into 60 lbers!

Birthday Belle

Carol and I worked Alejandra DuBose's birthday party last December. I've had a difficult time figuring out what music to use in it, and how to edit it. I looked into Spanish music, but couldn't figure out what worked; I learned from Alejandra's school chum, Sierra, that Alejandra's big into Hello Kitty. Apparently "psycho big", although I've never seen any evidence of it; nevertheless, I searched YouTube for "Hello Kitty music". It does exist....and is painful to listen to. So forget that.

Since I left in quite a bit of the natural audio, I decided to go for instrumental versions of songs from Beauty and the Beast.




I didn't film everything we did at Alejandra's party (hard to film when you're also leading the party); but it gives some idea of what you could expect at an SMGC birthday party.

Even though this was a small party, Alejandra requested I build the mighty maze instead of the obscenely awesome obstacle course....so how could I refuse? I didn't film any of it; but I think we divided them into two teams and had a sort of relay race to see which team could finish getting through the labyrinth first.

Birthday Dream Believer

I've known Sophia Levy longer than I think I've known her. She only moved up to my beg/adv class within the past year. Before that, I only vaguely knew her from when she was in Sara's intro class. I was delighted when her and her school classmates graduated on, into my class. They are a fun group, because of their energy. Plus, they like my humor.

"A Part of Bianca's World"

This was a party I was looking forward to working. Bianca is a recent graduate of Carol's intro class, along with her friend Evelyn. I never really remembered their names before they joined my class; although I've been told it, on occasion.

I think they had a bit of jittery nerves the first day they joined beginning/advanced; but I could be wrong. They warmed up pretty quickly (and I wasn't a complete stranger, since I do try to endear myself to other instructors' kids whenever I can).

One of the great things about Bianca's party (besides her nice parents) was the fact that many of her friends have taken class at SMGC before. So it was fun to see familiar faces again (if not a bit sad, that they aren't currently enrolled).

And then of course there's adorable Bianca, whose facial expressions always brings a smile to my heart.

"Birthday Wars"- Special Edition

I had this vision from the camera's perspective of swooping around through the birthday obstacle course like I was going through the trenches of the Death Star in my X-Wing fighter to the John William score. So that was the germination of this video. I tried to capture as best I could with windows movie maker, the look and feel of the original. Hardly Industrial Lights and Magic, but- hey! What more do you expect from a cheapo parody? The Special Edition has extended credits, and the addition of soundclips from Star Wars....I think the closing credits may be longer than the actual video footage.

Birthday Necessities

Katie Katie

I've always liked this kid and it was nice to be able to work her birthday party at the gym. I started filming a few things without fully realizing that I'd end up making this into a movie; otherwise I would have liked to have taken more pix of Katie specifically and of her in the party room, blowing out her cake and such. What also made this neat for me was seeing a couple of other kids that I know at Katie's party. It's obvious from the video.
At the time I made this video, I had no idea I could rip mp3s off of my regular cds using the windows media player. So I had no party music I liked (I wanted something from Disney, like Trashin' the Camp from Tarzan...); I ended up using this sugary sweet song from a 70's Japanese anime series called "Candy Candy". Running out of song-to-footage...I also incorporated a French version of the song (the show apparently was popular in Europe as well as around the world). I happen to remember this series because when I was a kid during one summer in Japan, I bought an LP with the Gatchaman theme song on it; but the record was a mix of different anime series, not all of them for boys. Well...the song grew on me.