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Mark's Origin Story
606 Plays2 years ago
Our second episode story is dedicated to Mark McBride's origin story. Find out how a film student in Tallahassee wandered into a comic book store in Los Angeles and ended up becoming a professional yoyo player who would eventually go on to create 3A-style yoyoing, one of the five divisions of play at every yoyo contest in the world.
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Transcript
Introduction to Steve and Mark's Yo-Yo Podcast
00:00:00
Speaker
I'm Steve Brown. And I'm Mark McBride. And this is a podcast about that time we made up two whole new styles of yo-yo play and at the time nobody cared and now a few people care maybe.
Mark's Yo-Yo Beginnings in Middle School
00:00:36
Speaker
All right, so in our last episode, we kind of talked about my whole origin story and how I got started yo-yoing. Mark, let's talk about how you got started. Oh, man. Cue the time ripples. Man, talk about a Wayne's World reference that I don't think anybody under the age of 40 is going to get. No. No, but all those 40-somethings are going to be like, I like those guys. I like those guys.
00:01:05
Speaker
So you got started, I know where your aha moment happened, right? But when did you first pick up a yoyo? So as the legend goes, first time I really played with a yoyo was middle school.
00:01:23
Speaker
And my dad, as classic fashion, comes home from the office with just a promo yo-yo. Now that looking back, you know, it was from whatever merch company and it had like, you know, insurance company logo on the side type thing. And I was like, I enjoyed the hell out of it. But I didn't know anybody like my dad showed me how to throw yo-yo so that comes back.
00:01:44
Speaker
That's all he knew. That's all I knew. Boom. Back. We knew that there were tricks. We know that there are things like walk the dog and around the world and loop to loop. Never seen them. Okay. Right. So I got to a point where like I could, I had a good throw. Now good throw will get you up and down and, and like kind of a loop. I could go, I could throw and get it back in any direction, you know?
00:02:06
Speaker
I remember getting to a point where I was trying to learn more tricks. I enjoyed it. And the yoyo that I had, because it was just a promotional yoyo, had that flat side. It was like a Dunkin' Imperial, but it had a flat side so that the printer could just slap a logo on it. It was probably a Humphries, which that was the company that made all the promo yoyos for a really long time. It was just kind of a bulbous sort of organic shape, but with a
00:02:34
Speaker
huge flat side but not a butterfly shape no it was an imperial the flat side so they could print size so they could print on it but it also was the exact same diameter as a slime balls brand skate wheel sticker so i had i had this yo-yo that had these little skate stickers because i was a little skater kid at the time
00:02:55
Speaker
So the fact that I had a slime balls yo-yo was kinda cool, you know?
Misunderstanding 'Walk the Dog' and Discovering Tricks
00:03:00
Speaker
I got to a point where the trick I started to try and work on was walk the dog. There's one crucial piece of information missing here that we'll get to soon enough, which is to do the walk the dog, the yo-yo has to sleep. I don't know what sleeping is.
00:03:15
Speaker
So I'm literally throwing the yo-yo like close enough to the ground that the unrolling of the yo-yo is it rolling across the ground and then lifting it up and having to come back to my head because I thought that's what walk the dog was.
00:03:29
Speaker
Wow. That's actually noticeably harder. I think it is too. It's so, and it doesn't really work. So needless to say, I do not get much traction with this trick and eventually this yo-yo ends up in the, uh, in the junk drawer with, you know,
00:03:48
Speaker
not being pulled out nearly as much as it should be. And it's forgotten. Then flash forward to high school. Somehow in high school, we would always stop by convenience stores and get snacks and stuff when we were going out.
00:04:01
Speaker
and I would always get like blue blow pops and a copy of the Weekly World News. And so it became just kind of a habit, Weekly World News, blue blow pops. So then I go off to college, Florida State, Tallahassee, Florida. Somehow over the course of my first semester, I am just packing on the weight. Obviously it's the blow pops. It's not the fact that I'm eating like shit at this point, classic freshman 15, classic overeating with the like,
00:04:28
Speaker
Like I'm working at the computer lab. The only place where I can get a meal at the end of the day is like the student union. I get like a big slice of pizza and like a 32 ounce orange soda and some rubbery breadsticks. And that like, I ate that every night and like McDonald's on the weekend and like, no, it's not that it's obviously the blow pops.
00:04:48
Speaker
Obviously the blow pops. Yeah, it makes perfect sense. So, so I'm like, this is like a cigarette for non-smoker. I got to have something else to do with my hands and stop eating these blow pops. So I go to Toys R Us and I buy a yo-yo because I remember, I remember to yo, I remember that I got a Dunkin' Imperial by this point, like, so at this point I'm carrying around a yo-yo.
College Yo-Yo Culture and Social Learning
00:05:11
Speaker
you know, college fashion, you know, you're seeing all the same friends and hanging out at the same, you know, like shows and stuff like that. And people would be like, wow, yo-yo, do you know any tricks? I was like, no, can you teach me some? And they all went, no, you know. And I was like, hey, can you do any tricks? No, can you teach me any? No. And I remember, I'm pretty sure it was my friend, Trad, who might've been his twin brother, David. And I had yo-yo and they go, you know any tricks? And I go, no. And they goes, well, do you know how to make it sleep?
00:05:39
Speaker
And I went, what? It teaches me how, it's like, yeah, so actually you got to make your yo-yo sleep. And I was like, like, and again, this, cue the, you know,
00:05:48
Speaker
Cue the transition of the background falls out and the galaxy comes thus down and the 2001 line starts shooting across my face that all knowledge of the universe has thus opened up to me. So I learned how to sleep a yoyo. So now that opens up, walk the dog and rock the baby and around the world.
00:06:12
Speaker
I'm having fun, and at this point, there's a couple guys that I'd made friends with, mainly Brian and another guy named Todd, which again, this is show friends. They're buddies that you would see at shows and at all the college-y places, and Brian had a little wood, he had a wood yoyo and a leather pouch.
00:06:35
Speaker
because it was that hard. So that was an old Tom Coon. Yeah, he had a Tom Coon because he worked at this place called Loft Keeper Suits and he's like, yeah, he should come by. So did Todd. They worked at a place that actually sold yoyos and stuff. He was probably the one who taught me most of those tricks.
Spontaneous Road Trip Adventure in California
00:06:55
Speaker
So I don't remember either of these people.
00:06:57
Speaker
They graduated and left Tallahassee before you came on to lofty. So that summer I had off. Now the Florida state's film program, you were working on films every summer except for your, after your freshman year. So a friend of mine, Kevin Klein, who actually now has a great restaurant in San Francisco called the front porch. If you're ever there, you should check it out. It's amazing. Kevin's an old buddy from high school, like real tight. And he had this idea that he always wanted to take a bread truck.
00:07:26
Speaker
and drive a bread truck around the country, you know, and get in misadventures and have the grand road trip. And so I said, I'm in. So he starts looking this up. Turns out that the insurance on driving a bread truck around the country is prohibitive.
00:07:43
Speaker
So all of a sudden, our grand road trip shrinks down to a plane ticket from Florida to San Francisco. And then 40 days later, a plane ticket out of Los Angeles. So we're going to fly to LA.
00:08:02
Speaker
Bum around California and then leave Southern California. Fly to San Francisco, bum around, leave out of LA, got it. Wonderful adventure of a time. I was going to go all, I went all the way down to San Diego. So we went through like LA, we went from San Francisco to LA together. My mom's cousin lived in
00:08:23
Speaker
She let us borrow some bikes and we had this genius idea and if you know LA geography, you'll laugh as far as how terrible an idea this really is. We're looking at the map and we're like, oh, we can ride a bike from Reseda to Malibu. You look at a map and that's like four or five miles, right?
Challenging Bike Trip from Reseda to Malibu
00:08:41
Speaker
It's not that far, I think.
00:08:44
Speaker
but we're two Florida boys. Florida is just a sandbar that happened to be slightly taller than the Gulf of Mexico. We have no concept of this thing called mountains. You know, we go through the mountains, which again, like we are on Walmart special bikes borrowed from my mom's cousin. She told me like years later, she's like, yeah, we had to throw those bikes away because they were destroyed by the time you got back.
00:09:08
Speaker
Holy shit. Usually guys with the canyons, this like for motorcycles and like these high performance bikes and we're on these like, you know, you know, shwins. But somehow Kevin decides that this just works for him. He gets another bike and rides it up to San Francisco. Like, like afterwards, he rides back up to San Francisco. I'm like, I got to check out San Diego. I am pulled to San Diego. So I go down to San Diego, live, love, learn, great time, come back to LA.
00:09:36
Speaker
And so I've got a few days before my plane leaves and I'm burning time. Kevin's gone. I'm by myself in LA. And I remember like my mom's cousin or like one of her friends, we were talking, we were talking about like, Oh, what should we do in LA?
00:09:53
Speaker
And they're like, and they said, you know what I think of when I think of LA, especially us, you know, youngsters kind of thing is Melrose. This is 1990, the summer of 94. So this is back when Melrose was still like just a few years out from like it's Jane's addiction style heyday. You know, it was still like punk rock shops like Red Balls and Retail Slut and all these shops are still there.
00:10:19
Speaker
I didn't know any of these. I just had a map. And Melrose is actually a pretty big road that goes east-west. So I got nothing to do. I'm burning time. I take the city bus from Santa Monica where I was in a youth hostel. And I'm like, I'm going to go try and find this infamous Melrose.
Melrose Exploration and Comic Shop Discovery
00:10:38
Speaker
So Melrose intersected Santa Monica. I got off the bus and started walking. Now the first mile or two,
00:10:45
Speaker
It's maybe furniture shops, you know? And I'm like, this isn't very interesting or punk rock. Fuck it. I'm just going to sit here and take the bus back up to Hollywood where I know there's like fun, cool stuff happening in Hollywood. So I'm at the corner of Fairfax and Melrose.
00:11:04
Speaker
Sitting on a bench. Sitting on a bus bench, waiting for the line that goes up Fairfax and over into Hollywood. The bus pulls up, I pull on my wall and all I've got is a five, right? Bus fare at this point is like a buck 25, right? And they don't give you change, obviously. So I'm like, well, I'm not going to give you five bucks for a ride because I got nothing to do. And I'd wave the bus on. Wave the bus on, I'm going to go get change.
00:11:30
Speaker
you know, the gas station from this. And it's also an excuse. Like I can see a shop that's advertising boots. Now, again, this is back in the old punk rock days kind of thing. So, hey, like, I like me some Doc Martens, you know, I break my five at the gas station and then walk over to the the boot shop. And then a few doors down from the boot shop, there's a record store in the past. The record store, there's a comic book store. Turns out this is actually where Melrose starts. Right.
00:12:00
Speaker
So I start fumbling in. That trip I successfully found the one Susie and the Banshee shirt that I had been searching for all up and down California. But the real important, like interesting thing was not the Susie and the Banshee shirt at the punk rock shop, it was the comic book shop. I roll into the comic book shop, Golden Apple Comics. Turns out Golden Apple Comics is the comic book shop, definitely on the West Coast. It was Golden Apple Comics and then there was like
00:12:30
Speaker
Midtown comics in Manhattan like there's like those are the two comic book shops in the country, right? Great coverage up cool So I roll in there and play with my yo-yo and the guy behind the counter. He's like Hey, you got a yo-yo there
00:12:47
Speaker
I check it out, I was like, yeah, cool, you know? And I get my yo-yo, I was like, wow, this string's, this is old, you know, this string's old. And he goes here, and he reaches down to a box somewhere behind the counter, pulls out a new yo-yo string, takes my string off, puts on a new yo-yo string. I'm like, holy shit, you can change the string of a yo-yo?
00:13:09
Speaker
At this point, I thought that you played with the yo-yo until the string died and then you went and bought a new one for Toys R Us. You can, you can change the string on a yo-yo. Oh my, my eyes are open. And he's like, oh yeah, this is like, let me show you this kind of thing. Boom, gives me a new show. I'm like, this is amazing. Mind blown. Bill Leibowitz. Oh my gosh. Like he, he's going to come back. He comes back in so many stories of yo-yoing. Man, that guy ends up at like, you know, again,
00:13:38
Speaker
but at the time, he's just a dude that owned the biggest, best comic book store in L.A. And I go, thanks, man, cool. He tells me that there's these things, these really good yoyos, and they have things like called transaxles, like there's pro-yoyos. And if you want a really good yoyo, you get a wood yoyo. But he also had a real pro-yoyo called a yomego with a brain.
00:14:04
Speaker
If you know your history at this point, the Omega with the Brain was the auto return clutch. They were still super special to YoYo's. You had bought them at like kite shops. You could buy them at like kite shops, but the biggest retailer of those things was, um, science and learning stores. Yes. Yes. Remember when those used to be a thing like that, you know, like you could go into these stores and it was all like science and learning toys.
00:14:26
Speaker
Yeah, or like you go on a field trip to like the museum and the like the really great museum gift shops. So that's exactly where they were. They weren't mass market toys at that point. They were these, you know, like heavy acrylic, like good yoyos. And again, and he threw that thing and it just sailed. Like just, oh my gosh, that sleeper lasted at least 10, 15, 20 seconds. Oh, 10, 15 seconds. Damn. Man.
00:14:56
Speaker
Ah, dude. And he says, yeah, man. And it's like, yeah, this is a really good one. But again, the good yoyos are wood yoyos. Okay. So.
00:15:05
Speaker
Thank you for the yo-yo string, thank you for opening my eyes. I will never be the same.
Working at Greg's Yo-Yo Shop
00:15:11
Speaker
I came in a blind man and thus I now see. I head out, hop back, like days later I'm on a plane back to Florida, X number of however long later I'm back in Tallahassee, and went and got a Yomega power spin. But not from Greg in lofty pursuits.
00:15:35
Speaker
For some reason, I found myself at some other learning, one of those learning stores, you know, that sold these things and I got this and I was like, again, a tense, like, I could do five around the world with this Omega Power Spin. Five of them. Mind blown. So, then I go back to, you know, like, by that point, I'm doing more tricks, like, you know, I think that Brian,
00:16:04
Speaker
might have left by this point. No, he had left by this point because we overlapped slightly. So yeah, so I'm learning more tricks from Brian and Todd. And then at the end of my sophomore year in college, they fired all of us undergrads. Like I had a computer job. Like I ran the computer. I was at like
00:16:22
Speaker
ran the computer labs at night. They just said, uh, all you undergrads no longer have jobs were giving your jobs to the graduate students. I had to go get a job. So same thing. Like, you know, you just start pounding the pavement, like just look like just collecting, collecting applications. And I was at the mall.
00:16:42
Speaker
And Brian was working the cart. I said, hey, how you doing? And he's like, dude, you should go out to the shop and talk to Greg. Get a job. I went out there, met with Greg. He's like, yeah, we are looking for somebody. What can you do, kid? Like, same kind of thing.
00:17:03
Speaker
And I pull out my Dunkin' Midnight Special because I realized that the Midnight Specials of all the Imperials were the heavier plastic. So that was the good one. Now, at this point, I will say after meeting Bill, I went back to Toys R Us, got a wood yoyo from Toys R Us, which a wood yoyo from Toys R Us is something that should be in a pinata, you know?
00:17:30
Speaker
And so I was like, this is terrible. I don't know what he's talking about. Never touched it again. So I kept on with my, excuse me, my midnight special. I did have my Yomega, but it was like so super special and sacred that I never pulled it out. And so I'm doing tricks with Greg. And at that point,
00:17:51
Speaker
At that point, Greg was the best yo-yoer of us. You know, Greg was best yo-yoer of us. So he was teaching, showing me tricks. I was like, wow, cool. And yeah, started work for us. Same thing. It was just like, he needed someone to, he needed somebody that could work the crap shifts at the mall cart because it had to be open when nobody was really there.
00:18:17
Speaker
And I was like, sure, dude, like worked around my class schedule. I was in started working back at the, um, at the shop. Eventually like they, he closed down, he stopped doing the card at some point. Yeah. They raised price. I remember him complaining about it. Like they had raised rent like dramatically and it just wasn't worth it anymore. Yeah. Yeah. So, and now in similar to you, like, like I'm working these dead shifts. So I,
00:18:45
Speaker
practiced and learned all the props, learned how to juggle, learn how to Diablo, learn, you know, practice, like contact juggling, like practice my yo-yoing as much as the, as much as there were tricks to learn at that point.
00:18:59
Speaker
You know, because also while there were, I think that there were, there were some books out, but really the only books we knew of were the, where it was the Duncan yo-yo trick, the little green one. Yeah. There was the little green Duncan yo-yo trick book. And then there was the couple of videos, the Arnie Dixon one, which, I mean, there was only like 10 or 12 tricks on that. There was the Dennis McBride videos, but they were,
00:19:23
Speaker
I mean, it was a lot of like two-handed stuff, which we just weren't doing or weren't interested in. And I mean, that was it. There was no websites. There was no, there was no variety of places to land. There was no nothing.
Creating New Yo-Yo Tricks: A Discussion
00:19:36
Speaker
About this point in time in history is when, you know, you started working there and got really engaged in it. We started doing the, you know, the Oliver Toys stuff. Like this was, this was something I enjoyed
00:19:50
Speaker
But you were the one who was like trying to get good. And I had a head start on you. So basically, I was just doing tricks to stay better than Steve. Right. And you were doing stuff almost specifically just to taunt me. Yeah.
00:20:08
Speaker
Cause you were just like, Oh, well I can do that. And you would just like trot something out and you weren't doing it a lot, but like every once in a while, like basically, as soon as I would get excited about something, you'd be like, yeah, whatever. Anyway, how about this? And you were, and I'm just like, Oh shit, I didn't even know that existed. I was so mad, you know, because I, I didn't know what I didn't know.
00:20:30
Speaker
Well, there was nothing too new. No, we were making that shit up out of nowhere. Like those were tricks that I was playing with because the trick stopped it, split the atom. And here we are, here we were playing with transaxle yoyos where you could really
00:20:47
Speaker
fling those things and go trick to trick to trick to trick to trick, which is what I thought by legend, Tommy Smothers and everyone was doing was just, you know, these long strings of incredible Gio-Yo tricks that when somebody would look at him, they would say, how was that not in a big knot? You know? Yeah. Well, yeah. And that was the thing is that from like, when we met Dale, when we were talking to Dale,
00:21:10
Speaker
And he was describing the stuff that people did. It sounded so much better than when we actually found footage of it. Yeah. Like, you know, the way that he described it, it was like, this sounds amazing. And then we'd see, you know, we'd find like a, you know, a third generation dupe of a VHS that somebody recorded off the TV or something. And we'd see it. And we were like, that's like the same shit that we're doing, except he looped out.
00:21:36
Speaker
my reaction was like, I must not be seeing that stuff. Right. Yeah. We were always like, Oh, this must not be the one. There must be this other thing. Yeah. And you were the one who was like, I'm going to watch all the videos and learn all the stuff. And you were touting how you could do all these kinds of things. And I was like missing all the found fundamentals and foundational stuff. And just be like, Oh, here's another like crazy intricate thing. And you'd be like, son of a
00:22:04
Speaker
Well, and I remember, so, and this was the thing that spun me off, right? Is that, you know, we had that green Duncan trick book and I was trying to learn tricks off of that. Cause that was all you had. Um, and, and there was more tricks in that book than there were on the Arnie Dixon video. So I was trying to learn tricks off of that and I was trying to learn split the atom. And that was when I came up with what I would later name chain reaction. Yeah.
00:22:27
Speaker
And so I, so Dale came and he was like, well, can you do split the atom? And I'm like, yeah, I can. And I showed him and it was completely wrong. It was a completely different trick. And he looked at me and he goes, well, what's that? And I'm like, that's split the atom. He's like, that's not split the atom. That's something new. And as soon as he said that, that was literally the first moment that it occurred to me that I could just make up new tricks. It hadn't occurred to me before. And I don't know why it hadn't.
00:22:56
Speaker
But for some reason, it was like I'm just trying to I was trying to dig out like all these old tricks from like, you know, these like lost archives of yo-yo history. And it never occurred to me to be like, oh, fuck it. I'll just make up new ones. And then as soon as that happened, I realized like I made up a new trick. Wait, I can just make I can make up new tricks. I can make up new tricks. And then that became all I wanted to do. Yeah. And that was something which I remember. Well, two things. One.
00:23:27
Speaker
And this'll probably be, man, this is another tease to what should be a future episode. When I finally started doing the Anamakan and breaking a lot of these tricks down, getting to a point where I was like, okay, I'm gonna break out, mathematically break out all the tricks that I could find, including going through the Dunkin' Trick book, right? Because again, at this point, we're just like strip mining any resources. Getting to split the atom and realizing it's mathematically impossible to do the trick as it's written in that damn book.
00:23:58
Speaker
Right. And I remember you complaining about that. Yeah. Remember, you were you were livid about that. You were so pissed. You were like, OK, here, look. And then you're like, you know, trying to like you're trying to like sketch it out. You're trying to show me like and I'm like holding the because this is how we used to figure out yo-yo tricks is that somebody else would hold the yo-yo. Yes. And you would move the string around it to try and explain it to them.
00:24:20
Speaker
And we were like, we must be missing something here because you can't do it the way that they're drawn it. Right. Because, yeah, so like I'm holding the yo-yo and you're like, OK, so the book says this, right? And I'm like, yeah. And then you like move. OK, now, what does the book say to do? And I'm like talking to the steps and you're like, you do it. And we're like, but it doesn't work because if you do it, then it and we're sitting and going through it and we're like, oh, my God. And at the time.
00:24:43
Speaker
You know, like we were just like, we just proved the Bible wrong. You know, like it was like this huge, like that book was the sum total of yo-yo knowledge that we had been able to find. And so finding like mistakes or errors in that was just, you know, it was mind blowing to us. And then that, but that was also like, that was that turning point where we realized like, or
00:25:06
Speaker
What if we just made up new shit? Yeah, and the other thing that another thing that I didn't understand at the time and I only understood much later looking backwards is if you looked at that time in history Before the internet where this kind of explosion of creativity was happening It would be happening and it was happening in a handful little pockets and all those pockets
00:25:27
Speaker
usually had all those pockets had like two guys or like a few guys who were essentially bouncing stuff off of each other slightly competing with each other. You know, and
00:25:40
Speaker
Like you and I were doing that in Tallahassee where it was like, like, as you were, you know, saying, like you were constantly learning all the fundamentals and I was just trying to stay ahead of you. I mean, it was that it was that, you know, I'm going to I'm going to say this knowing full well that saying this out loud is going to sound like the most douchiest asshole thing imaginable.
00:25:59
Speaker
But it was that same, that was, it was that Lennon McCartney mechanic, right? Where it's like, you've got to have two people that are roughly at equal levels, but in slightly different directions that are constantly trying to one up each other. Like, and you know, you've watched this play out in like millions of different ways with millions of different pairs of people.
00:26:20
Speaker
But you've got to have those two people that are really, really close in ability with different strong points who both work well together and are also slightly antagonistic towards each other. And that was us 100%. And that's how we kept pushing each other. And even after you left, we would still touch base. And we were always still trying to one up each other.
00:26:47
Speaker
Yeah, but there was definitely a point though where you eclipsed me and it was never, you know, like the, and I remember, I remember the point where, I remember the point where I eclipsed Greg. When I became better than Greg, like, whoa, Greg obviously never tried, you know? And so like I was feeling good. And then like I said, kept trying to get ahead of you, but you were really trying hard. And so eventually you eclipsed me.
00:27:10
Speaker
Well, the point like the point where I eclipsed you happened much sooner than the point where I realized I had eclipsed you. Oh, you think so, motherfucker? I mean, well, it did because that's the thing is that I didn't have again, like we were doing all of this without context.
Wooden Yo-Yos vs Modern Technology: A Reflection
00:27:26
Speaker
So like so there was definitely a point where I got better than you, but I didn't think I was. And so I was still trying really, really hard because I always assumed that you had more stuff that you hadn't shown me.
00:27:39
Speaker
You also, but the other thing is that that was also the chapter where you were still trying to prove your guru, Dale Oliver, was right that all things could be done on wood that could be done on a transaxle. I was. I was really hell bent for a long time and as bearings started to take over and as we started going to these juggling festivals and started to see these yo-yo contests,
00:28:01
Speaker
And especially in the very early days of THP, Team High Performance, which was a demonstration team out of a kite store in Honolulu that Yomega contracted to become their promotional team. These kids, much younger than us, started showing up at contests using all the ball bearing stuff and they were good.
00:28:23
Speaker
Um, and, and I was like, I was being very stubborn about it and I was being really stupid about it, but like, I was hell bent on proving that like.
00:28:33
Speaker
There was nothing that you could do on a bearing that I couldn't also do on wood. And for a little while, for like a very short little window of time because the tricks had not caught up to the technology, I could. So there was like a short little window where like that seemed plausible because at the time it was because the tricks were nothing. And then as soon as
00:28:57
Speaker
uh as soon as the players started to really push into the abilities of the technology like wood axles became so obsolete so fast i mean i i remember it was literally like a matter of a week when i was like yeah yeah yeah wood axle wood axle and then you know on that friday i was like
00:29:17
Speaker
I need to switch. No, it wasn't. It wasn't a week because it wasn't because you held that line for a long time. And I remember the point where you surrendered. It was it was in 99. Yeah, it was. It was it was Tallahassee. It was in 99. And it was while I was working for Team Losi, because when I first started working for Team Losi, I was putting wooden spintastics axles in their yo-yos to go and demo with.
00:29:47
Speaker
I was literally taking out the bearings and putting in wooden axles and going out and demoing that way. So I was, you know, I was selling yoyos with ball bearing axles and demoing them with wood axles in them and people couldn't tell, which I mean, you know, in my, in my credit, like that's pretty good. But there was definitely there, there came that point where I was like, this doesn't work anymore. I can't, I can't keep up. And I, and it was because I couldn't keep up with my own ideas.
00:30:15
Speaker
Like that was, it wasn't even trying to keep up with other people. It was, I have this idea and this idea and this idea and this idea for a trick. And I just couldn't pull it off with wooden axles. And then at some point I graduated from college. Actually, I didn't even graduate at that point. Like I had, I did an internship. Was this when you were interning at the Simpsons?
00:30:36
Speaker
No, I worked for the Simpson. I was interning at Bruckheimer. I went to LA. I, you know, graduated like was last semester, did an internship, which, you know, I knew I was going to move to LA anyway, so I just moved to LA. For my internship, I had to fly out here to get the internship ahead of time. I was the first class that did it, so I had to do it on my own dime. So this would have been
00:30:57
Speaker
96. So we'll say two years. So two years after I come back, I had first come to check out LA. I'm like with my friends, I go, we got to go to this comic book store. What comic book store? I don't know. I don't know.
00:31:12
Speaker
All I know is that I was like, it's on Melrose. And I was like, trying to get the bus from Melrose back up to Hollywood. And I was here and I was like, oh, that's Golden Apple. Yeah, that's the comic book store. We'll go. And we went there. I was told later that Bill wasn't there a lot, but you know, he was there. And in retrospect, he was always there. I rolled in there and I was like, Bill, you don't know me. You don't remember me.
00:31:41
Speaker
But check it out, I work at this new, I work at a yoyo place. I like make yoyos and juggling equipment and all this kind of stuff like that now. He's like, ah, good job kid.
00:31:56
Speaker
Congratulations, random stranger. Exactly. And so I got the, so I was like, that's, so this is the place I, I didn't know the name of the place I got the name of the, so I now knew that it was golden apple comics. I got their business card. I come back to LA, I come back to Florida and I like sent him our catalog and some like multicolor string. Cause we had multicolor string, multicolored string. So I sent him some stuff and I was like,
00:32:23
Speaker
Cool, thanks for all the inspiration. I had graduated, moved out there, and living on Venice Beach. I was like writing screenplays, wanted to make movies. Yeah, so by that point, again, this would have been 97, so Yoyo was starting to pick up. I was looking for something to write, and again,
00:32:44
Speaker
Greg knew that the yo-yo boom was coming because he was buddies with Dale Oliver. Like Arnie Dixon had left Duncan to go start SuperYo. Like everybody was gearing up for this big mass
Writing a Yo-Yo Book Amidst an Anticipated Boom
00:32:58
Speaker
market. Before it was called SuperYo, it was called like Dixon Toys or Arnie's Toys or something.
00:33:05
Speaker
Um, but he had, yeah, he had started off, he had left Duncan and what he did is he just started sourcing like random cheap yo-yos from China and just slapping his name on the side of them. And that's what he was selling. And then once he made enough money, he had a better yo-yo that he had designed. Um,
00:33:23
Speaker
And that was how he paid for the tooling for the first yoyos of what became SuperYo. Everybody was kind of like ramping up. Greg said, hey, you used to always shoot your mouth off that you could write a better yo-yo book. So do it. Start at Brain Twister and go from there. As we were saying, that's where the yo-yo book stopped. And we were like, but here's all this other great stuff we're doing.
00:33:49
Speaker
this thing called chain reaction and like so many tricks that I never had named like muscle memory tricks. I had done one little piece of concept art when I was in Tallahassee to, you know, I think it was in Tallahassee just to show off like I could do a better yoyo book.
00:34:07
Speaker
and then threw it away, or like just left it, didn't think about it. So Greg was like, I lined up a publisher, do it. So I'm sitting there like working on this yo-yo book. By that point, I had actually gotten a job at The Simpsons, the TV show, The Simpsons.
00:34:24
Speaker
just as a PA. My job was 85% just getting lunch and coffee for the writers. And it was exactly what you would want for a minimum wage Hollywood job. As you were saying, the team high performance worked for Yomega as the mass market like Bandai was coming and everyone knew it.
00:34:45
Speaker
Right. And so they band I hired team high performance who at the time were again were the only ones who like had kids that could yo yo. Right. That was the because at the time it was all it was like older guys who were like holdouts from back in the day. Yeah. And then there was the older young guys, which was us. So like we were all like in our 20s, but there weren't any like there weren't any kids like under the age of, you know, 16 or so who were really good yo yo players except this team.
00:35:15
Speaker
Well, and more importantly, there was nobody like as you're saying, like there was these old guys who were the holdouts.
00:35:21
Speaker
for again, like Dale Oliver's perfect example. The last man in 1970, the youngest guy in 1970 was 50, 60 years old at this point. So the team in Honolulu, because Alan Nagao who owned that shop actually bothered to keep a team. And he was working with Yomega back when they were just a museum store company. And so they were, so that was
00:35:51
Speaker
So Yomega had them. Well, when Bandai kicked us up, they're the only ones out there. So Bandai scooped them up through gobs of cash at Allen and he turned it into the teal shirt brigade that it became. Well, that left Yomega proper with no demonstrators. So they asked Greg, Hey, do you know anybody that would be a demonstrator? Now at this point,
00:36:17
Speaker
You know, you had tattoos in a mohawk and your mega was scared of that. So I remember calling Alan Nagao and asking for a job with THP. And this was the funniest convert. This is the this is the funniest conversation. And I've brought this up to Alan since then. And he and I both had a really good chuckle over it. So this is before I created five. And this is when I had already made a name for myself as a one player.
00:36:44
Speaker
And I called him up and was like, Hey, I understand that you're hiring demonstrators. Um, I'd like to be on your team. And he's like, Oh, okay. Uh, can you do a two-handed shoot the moon? And now at the time, almost nobody could do two-handed shoot the moon. It was like, that was like the top level impossible two-handed trick. And I was like, no, I'm primarily a one-handed player. And he was like, Oh, so you need to practice more.
00:37:10
Speaker
And I was like, no, I really don't. I think that there's a lot of room still in 1A, and I don't need to do 2A to be a great yoyo demonstrator. And he goes, oh, well, all of our demonstrators are two-handed players. So thanks anyway, click. And he just straight hung up on me.
00:37:29
Speaker
And, uh, yeah, I mean, which was hilarious in retrospect, you know, because that was like not long after that was when there was that massive like one a Renaissance and that's what took over everything. And I was, I was ahead of the curve on that because I was making all the shit up myself. Well, that was the, yeah, the THP at that point had their whole, um, plan.
00:37:53
Speaker
You know, they, they were the mall demonstrators like, yeah, the whole, the one a Renaissance happened when they left the scene. Yeah.
00:38:01
Speaker
But before that, again, they were big, they were in motion. Yomega Corporate, also like Allen Amaral, like that company, that side of the company, they still wanted some of their own guys because they still had two lines at this point. They had their mass market deal with Bandai, but then they were still selling their stuff.
00:38:23
Speaker
Right. So they call Greg and Greg's like, there's this kid in LA, he's writing a book for us. Maybe you call him. So I get a call and they're like, Hey, can you send us a video? Like show us if you can do some new tricks? I was like, sure. You know, so I videotaped myself again, 1997.
00:38:41
Speaker
Um, make a video, send it over there. Like, here's all things I can do kind of thing. And they're like, wow, you really can do the tricks. And I went, yeah, they said, yeah, you should, we should, we should talk more when, yeah, because it's a, it's this job where you would, you come work for us and, um, you know, do doing demonstrations at like trade shows and school works and all and things like that. And when you're not out in the, uh, field.
00:39:06
Speaker
you'll be back here as part of the member of the team at the office. Whoa, hold on a second here. Let me explain something. I am literally living on Venice Beach. I wake up whenever I want, I drive in and hang out with the writers of The Simpsons and get them coffee.
Career Advice from The Simpsons Writer
00:39:25
Speaker
Then I come home, skimboard up and down the beach or like,
00:39:30
Speaker
go out dancing in Hollywood, and you want me to move to Fall River, Massachusetts? A place that is so far, like, to get to Fall River, Massachusetts, you don't even fly into Boston, you fly into Rhode Island. Oh, that sounds like the worst thing ever.
00:39:48
Speaker
I said, I will gladly be your west coast guy. Cause I know how travel, like I know how rep work works. You know, you can have a wet, you should have a west coast guy. Yeah. I live, I can jog to LA extra my place. It's cool. And they're like, nope, no, thank you. And all right. All right. Well, it's been fun. So about, we'll say four weeks later, plus or minus, they call back and go, okay, you can stay in LA.
00:40:18
Speaker
Oh, amazing. This was a real like, like a Zen story that I still to this day tell. At this point, I had, I'd finished the book. And I got this offer, you know, this job offer. And I went to I went I talked to Ian Max Tomgram. I remember his Ian. He was one of the bit like one of the top writers on The Simpsons at the time. And he was like, he was one of the guys that was, you know, nice to me. They were all very, they were all really cool. But he was, you know, like,
00:40:46
Speaker
I was friendly with him. I said, Ian, I need some advice. He said, what's up? I was like, I got another job offer. Now at this point, this seems really clandestine. In retrospect, every PA jumps. If you're still a PA after a little while, you should have jumped. But I didn't realize this was like that. So I feel like I'd be really good at this.
00:41:09
Speaker
I need some advice. And he goes, what's the job? We're for a yo-yo company. What does that involve? Well, I'd pretty much be like, you know, going out and doing like school shows and demos at like trade shows, things like that.
Mark's Professional Debut with Yomega at the World Yo-Yo Contest
00:41:23
Speaker
You know, just showing off yo-yo tricks and doing the things. And he says, what do you want to be doing? You know?
00:41:28
Speaker
I said, well, you know, I really want to make movies and like I'm really kind of sharing writing movies and comedy, like fun stuff. And he says, I think you should take the job because it'll be really good for your timing. Like you can learn comedy, be like all the guys around here, all these writers.
00:41:43
Speaker
A few of them came from national lampoons and they're just kind of writers. Then there's like Schwartz who just happens to be genius, but the rest of us all had standup days. Like even like Mike Scully, who was like the guy in charge at that point, who you would never expect to be a standup guy.
00:42:01
Speaker
you know, you got to spend some time learning how to deal with people. So it's very valuable for comedy to get some stage time, even if you're not a stage guy. And second, if you wanted to, how can you expect to tell stories if you don't have stories to tell? Like get out there and get some stories. That is such amazing life advice. It is. It was like I exactly I owe Ian so much for that, like one
00:42:27
Speaker
little bit of advice. And he's just like, he was always like, man, if I have to read one more store, one more script about three 20 something sitting around LA trying to sell a script, I'm going to fucking kill someone. So he's like, yeah, man, get out there and get some stories. And so I was like, dude, I will.
00:42:52
Speaker
I will take your advice my friend. So I called you Omega back, took the job. My first official yo-yo gig as a professional was to go out to Prim Nevada, the world yo-yo contest in Prim Nevada in 1998.