Keith is one of my best and most trusted friends in the worlde.
I suppose my best as he is my go to drinking buddy.

We have been harassed by both cops n robbers on the streets.
I'm elated that he has spent lots of time in my company
this past year. Many many years ago he used to be a
"Crate Slug", but he's all better now thankfully.

He also performed for Seal Team Six by request at a backyard
party, just after they got Osama Bin Laden.

The cops arrested him in San Diego for having a dummy hand
grenade and his chain saw was impounded in Las Vegas. In
fact he has had all of his gear confiscated and always managed
to scrap together enough scratch to reacquire slightly used
items to restart the show.

Keith has the most balls I have ever seen on the streets.
He has a huge envelope full of tickets and court summons and
is also the most arrested magician/juggler in The USA according
to he. Anyone whom has met him will surely agree. He sat in jail
for two weeks whilst we scraped enough dough to bail him out over
the hand grenade charge.

He is no longer allowed to perform in the entire San Diego County, but
he still does his show, hit and run style. Then its off to Banker's Hill
where it's safe due to many punk rock hole in the walls, for a some pool,
jukebox music, and shots to celebrate a successful evening...

He is no longer allowed at many venues, mostly for his defiance
against folks whom dislike his fire or in your face performance style.
He wears these expulsions like a badge of honour.

Folks either love or hate him, there is no in between and
that includes fellow buskers. He is a man who doesn't
compromise himself nor his show.

This is a documentary of Keith. You can see him getting
out of jail and also his court appearance in the documentary.
I am very proud to have been a warrior by his side in the trenches.
In all honesty, I feel that Keith won't live to be an olde man because
he flies by the seat of his pants, but I sure hope I am wrong on this...Documentary Click Here.

Video below was filmed a few days ago, just before our drinking session.

Devious








Devious!
Can we "dub" him a "short con grifter"?

He sounds a little bit like PENN JILLETTE! When Penn wss breaking in, in Philadelphia, he would finish by jugglig three bayonets. He would say, "The hat is right there...I'm juggling three SHARP bayonets! (etc.)

The hand grenade bit with the spinning plate was ripped off from my friend Dallas Saupe's show... (Had to mention), so in a way, it's funny to see some level of justice served.

@George Gilbert,

He is no longer performing with the grenade, but I cannot speak as
to your claim. I do remember Gazzo taking issue with you using his
material not too long ago as well. Let's play nice.

Well, I watched the video, it was so painful I had to fast forward. There's more talking about doing stuff than actual stuff happening. Not my kind of busker at all. (It's not the guy I don't like, it's the style. I don't like Gazzo's acts either, for the same reasons.)

P!

I would agree with you on that one.
Do remember he's a not one
of us.

I perform almost twenty effects in
a tight 17 minute set. So I hit them
with lots in that run. I once thought
it was too much, but it flows well after
tightening it up over the years.

Once again, I agree...he's a drinkin' buddy
and someone to share a pitch with on occasion.

George is right. Karma.

The streets belong to all regardless to where performers may like to rank them selfs. Devious You encourage build others up, never lose that. Keep on keeping on. Mario

Everybody uses his material, because he wrote everything. Including the bible.


LoL Raff

And Chanz youre the biggest hack of them all. All of that silence in your show originally came from the pauses in between many crude one liners. You street vagrant poor excuse for good wholesome family entertainment you <3

Https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d83VEc27vaA grenade/plate bit starts at 14:40

With all due respect, You must to be kidding for using this video as an example.
What starts from the beginning of this show is long list of generic fernarlys and one linners I have ever witnessed.
I could not watch it to the end.

I know Mario, we give him **** for it..

In fact, I think the plate/grenade is the only bit that is his

Perhaps, if the rest of the show is any thing to go by.
Hope you well and life is treating you as it should,

Sounds like much ado about nothing to me. Hard to complain someone is stealing your line or your bit when a large portion of your act is "stock".

But I honestly didn't watch much of his show (outside my time constraints), so I really shouldn't be commenting.

-JoeJoe

I disagree... Many performers do great with stock material, and there's nothing wrong with using stock. A lot of my show is just old classics revamped for me..

One example, my pal Hilby, the skinny german juggle boy made a name for it, and has a great career, and is an incredible performer. One of the only guys who can make me laugh with classic stock jokes.. But , if you create something that IS without a doubt 100% YOURS, becomes your signature, that NOBODY else is doing, then it's not pat STOCK, and I think it's kind of crappy to take it... Especially verbatim!

At least try to change the bit, you might find another angle to take on it.

It is not about how well a performer does with stock material, it has to do with the fact that he did not create said material himself. All stock material started out as someone's "original" work, that then got stolen or sold.

And rarely is stock material actually "purchased", which is why I say it's hard to complain that someone is stealing a line when a large portion of the act is "stock" to begin with. Hard to take the high road when you're standing waist deep in mud.

-JoeJoe

I think that point was already made clear JoeJoe, to much of a good thing will make one vomit it all up.

A lot of lines I have tried to trace, and found impossible ..They are just too old. And a lot of them are variations of Rob Orbin jokes.

. Here are just a couple of lines that I do know the original source for.

Giving a kid a plastic bag (Space helmet), the bit came from MR Pitiful, stand up comedian . I remember him doing his bit on the re-made version of "make me laugh". "My parents hated me. On my birthday, dad gave me a plastic bag. He said it was a space helmet.. One time he bought me a swing, and put it in front of a brick wall. My mother gave birth wearing panty hoes, " etc, etc...

"Do you get sesame street where your from? I know you watch it, but do you get it" .. This is from the first episode ever of Alf, not hard to find... Alf looks condused watching sesame street, and the girl says "Do you get sesame street where your from".. Alf replies "no , and I don't get it here either". ..

So , question.. Who owns those lines? I bet I know somebody who would claim them

I'm gonna take an unpopular position here and argue that stock lines, and the use thereof, aren't a bad thing, and definitely have their place.

When you learn to play guitar, do you start by writing your own songs? No.
When an actor auditions for a play, do they write their own monologue? No!
When a child learn to write, do they start out creating novels? NO!

In all of these, the learner starts out by doing something that has been done successfully before. That way, they can focus on technical ability and craftsmanship. In the beginning stages of learning, it's best to do something as close to how someone else does it to learn a successful way to do it. That way the learner is not wasting their time learning to do something that doesn't actually work.

Craftsmanship comes before artistry. Learn a stock show, and fill it with stock lines, and learn to deliver them, and perform them. Learn to misdirect by cracking a joke while loading a cup. Learn to gather a crowd by doing the same thing as the other guys. Learn a few good hat lines to figure out how to GTFM. Then start to inject your individuality. Bit by bit, shows evolve on their own. New lines and situations crop up. The learner exposes themselves to new experiences and teachers, and bit by bit, their show becomes a bit more unique.

Stock lines, stock shows, stock routines... They are all fantastic learning tools.

As far as the originality of stock lines, or lack thereof, we, as people, and as performers, aren't as original as we think. If you've ever worked retail, you've heard countless people say "This doesn't have a tag. Does that mean it's free?"

As a magician, you've undoubtedly heard "Can you make my wife disappear?" or "Can you change this 1 into a 100?"

How many jugglers have independently come up with jokes about having 3 balls? I'm sure the number is in the thousands. There is lots of low-hanging comedic fruit.

I thought I was brilliant when I came up with "I don't actually smoke cigarettes, I only smoke when I do shows... About 20 a day!" without having heard it before. When I saw Nick Nickolas say the same thing, for the briefest second I thought "Hey- that guy stole my line!"

I of course, regained my senses quickly and realized that as far as lines go, it's not much of a stretch to come up with. He's probably been doing it since before I was born. Independent invention is a common thing in comedy. The point is that lots of people find the same things funny, and lots of those people are in very similar situations a lot of the time. It's only natural that we'd come up with similar lines a decent amount of the time.

I don't say this to encourage line stealing by any means, but that we, as performers, can be far more forgiving when it happens. Another person doing a bit you came up with isn't going to ruin you. 100 other people doing your bit isn't going to ruin you. Yeah, you do have a right to your line, but in the grander scheme of things, is it really worth the effort, anxiety, and frustration we pour out when we feel we have been wronged? If you as a performer are so unable to come up with new material, new lines, new jokes, that you have to doggedly defend every last one you've created, well I'd have to say that your artistic growth has stalled, and you can't be more than a small step above the unoriginal artists you dislike.

Additionally, hundreds of bands play the same songs the same way, and nobody objects. There is absolutely a place for cover bands, as well as "Cover magicians" and "cover jugglers".

Someday I want to write a book of stock routines and hat lines and one-liners and all of that. A compendium of bit and pieces, and full shows. Something you could hand to an absolute beginner to get him out on the street and working as fast as possible. Compile that together with a section on show structure, audience management, and other street knowledge, and make it into a "Here's a few stock shows you can do to get started, here are 20 additional street-tested routines you can mix and match to build a show, and here's a starting point to create your own" kind of book. The goal is to get someone out and working as fast as possible, and learning the right way.

I think I have years of learning ahead of me before such an ambitious project though.