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The Bubble Guy
I was born in Paterson, New Jersey, home of Lou Costello, Allen Ginsburg, Hurricane Carter and people like that. My folks were broke and moved a lot. When I was in 4th grade in 1959 the family tried to move to suburban Southern California but we weren't a good fit so we moved back to the Jersey ghetto. It was good to know that there were other ways to live.
I went to college in Memphis 1967 where I majored in anti-war demonstrations with a minor is civil rights. That became too difficult a load to carry after Martin Luther King was shot there in Memphis and I dropped out to put my thumb out and see what real life was like. Over the next 13 years, I lived on the streets for ten of those years.
After Woodstock I came through Memphis again ... this time with rainbows and stars in my eyes and mud still on my pants. I had lost the hard-earned caution that I had previously learned. That led directly to a pot bust ... just 3 joints but in those days in that place it meant that I faced 3 to 5 years ... unless I could come up with a thousand dollars (lawyer, court fee, bail bondsman, fine).
I tried to work regular jobs ... but, no matter how short I cut my hair or tried to conform, everyone saw the hippie in my eyes and I had no idea how people who worked ever turned that into money. I had to get postponement after postponement and a year and a half later I finally paid off everyone and looked for a different kind of life to live.
I hated that I couldn't get it together to pay off that damn court thing. The only thing that I wanted to do was to travel and here was this thing that kept me in Shelby County, Tennessee. It only took money and I couldn't get that together. I decided after that that I had to choose a goal and accomplish it ... it didn't matte much what. I set my mind on random and picked Europe. It was among the tales that I had told ... someday I would vagabond through Europe ... Okay, now I had to do it.
I went back to Jersey, lived with my parents, took a factory job, and ... set a date for quitting. Ten months ... I would work all I could, overtime if they had it ... I wouldn't go out at night (I was in Jersey, where was I goin'?), just save the money for a trip to Europe.
This wasn't a promise to myself to become a responsible human from now on, only an effort to focus one time on one thing beginning to end. Anything that would help me get to Europe, I would do. Anything that wouldn't, I wouldn't.
I wouldn't go out at night and spend money ... I'd stay home. I needed to entertain myself, TV was dead boring (well, okay, Star Trek, but otherwise...). I thought of toys ... when I was a kid, some kids were good with a yo yo ... loop de loop, rock the cradle, round the world ... I wasn't one of those kids. But now I was 21 years old .. I could figure this thing out ... I was smarter, more coordinated .. I got a yo yo and played with it every night ... I got good and I got bored. So I got one of those Fly-back things (wooden paddle, elastic and red ball babbada babbada babbada babbada) ... I did that every night. I got good and then got bored. Then I got some soap bubbles ... I'd make a big one ... then a bigger one then bigger. I was a smoker and I would fill them with smoke. I started seeing them do things ... two bubbles in the air would bounce off of each other ... or join together ... or come together as one! Look closely at suds and you will go crazy ... I know, I did it for years. I became obsessed. I played with bubbles every night for the rest of the ten months. When I went to Europe, I was good at bubbles ... now it is almost 30 years ... and I'm better.
Street performing: never a great act, a bit of wind and I was screwed.
Puppetry: Political, Social, and Spiritual Satire. Not so much nowadays.
Organizing: I organized street performers in Santa Cruz, CA, in 1980. We defeated efforts to pass laws governing performances and the Voluntary Guidelines that we developed then is still the method used by the city to address problems.
New Vaudeville: With the Flying Karamazov Brothers, Avner the Eccentric, Reverend Chumleigh, Artis the Spoonman, and several others, I worked trying to convince street performers that we are the vaudevillians ... without vaudeville. We thought that we could build a new form for that old form. We still do events, we never made it make money.
TV: After years of insisting that people come out from behind their TV sets and come see live performance (I called New Vaudeville "Entertainment for a post-television generation") ... Avner convinced me that I'd better go on TV before someone else copied Bubble Magic and took it to TV first ""He'll be the bubble man and you will be doing HIS act for the rest of your life." Good point. I went on That's Incredible ... nothing happened. Then I went on Johnny Carson's Tonight Show in 1982 ... fortunately, I had just then moved out of my van into an apartment with a telephone ... the phone didn't stop ringing for years. I did the Tonight Show 3 times, other American TV shows, big variety shows on all over Europe, Japan, and some stuff in other places.
Science Museums: While I was hot the comedy clubs called ... the same ones who would never book me before "You're not really comedy." I went instead to a science museum in San Francisco and convinced them to do a Bubble Festival ... focussing on the physics of soap bubbles and on my performance. Big hit ... NBC and CBS had it on the national news that week "The kids and physicists are gathering this week in San Francisco ... "
15, 000 people showed up and science museums all over the country called wanting to put on Bubble Festivals.
Mathematics: I'm okay with the physics but I really don't understand the mathematics ... but the mathematicians love what I do. My photo has been featured in text books and I sometimes perform at math conferences. In 1998 I demonstrated at the International Congress of Mathematics in Berlin. This is the event where they give the Field's Medal (the math equivalent of a Nobel Prize).
Variete: The German version of vaudeville. Alive and well in Germany ... I do a lot of this these days.
So ... an agent recently asked me to write a bio. I thought that writing for this website might be good practice ... I might have to leave out the pot bust for that other one though.
[This message has been edited by Tom Noddy (edited 01-22-2001).]
I went to college in Memphis 1967 where I majored in anti-war demonstrations with a minor is civil rights. That became too difficult a load to carry after Martin Luther King was shot there in Memphis and I dropped out to put my thumb out and see what real life was like. Over the next 13 years, I lived on the streets for ten of those years.
After Woodstock I came through Memphis again ... this time with rainbows and stars in my eyes and mud still on my pants. I had lost the hard-earned caution that I had previously learned. That led directly to a pot bust ... just 3 joints but in those days in that place it meant that I faced 3 to 5 years ... unless I could come up with a thousand dollars (lawyer, court fee, bail bondsman, fine).
I tried to work regular jobs ... but, no matter how short I cut my hair or tried to conform, everyone saw the hippie in my eyes and I had no idea how people who worked ever turned that into money. I had to get postponement after postponement and a year and a half later I finally paid off everyone and looked for a different kind of life to live.
I hated that I couldn't get it together to pay off that damn court thing. The only thing that I wanted to do was to travel and here was this thing that kept me in Shelby County, Tennessee. It only took money and I couldn't get that together. I decided after that that I had to choose a goal and accomplish it ... it didn't matte much what. I set my mind on random and picked Europe. It was among the tales that I had told ... someday I would vagabond through Europe ... Okay, now I had to do it.
I went back to Jersey, lived with my parents, took a factory job, and ... set a date for quitting. Ten months ... I would work all I could, overtime if they had it ... I wouldn't go out at night (I was in Jersey, where was I goin'?), just save the money for a trip to Europe.
This wasn't a promise to myself to become a responsible human from now on, only an effort to focus one time on one thing beginning to end. Anything that would help me get to Europe, I would do. Anything that wouldn't, I wouldn't.
I wouldn't go out at night and spend money ... I'd stay home. I needed to entertain myself, TV was dead boring (well, okay, Star Trek, but otherwise...). I thought of toys ... when I was a kid, some kids were good with a yo yo ... loop de loop, rock the cradle, round the world ... I wasn't one of those kids. But now I was 21 years old .. I could figure this thing out ... I was smarter, more coordinated .. I got a yo yo and played with it every night ... I got good and I got bored. So I got one of those Fly-back things (wooden paddle, elastic and red ball babbada babbada babbada babbada) ... I did that every night. I got good and then got bored. Then I got some soap bubbles ... I'd make a big one ... then a bigger one then bigger. I was a smoker and I would fill them with smoke. I started seeing them do things ... two bubbles in the air would bounce off of each other ... or join together ... or come together as one! Look closely at suds and you will go crazy ... I know, I did it for years. I became obsessed. I played with bubbles every night for the rest of the ten months. When I went to Europe, I was good at bubbles ... now it is almost 30 years ... and I'm better.
Street performing: never a great act, a bit of wind and I was screwed.
Puppetry: Political, Social, and Spiritual Satire. Not so much nowadays.
Organizing: I organized street performers in Santa Cruz, CA, in 1980. We defeated efforts to pass laws governing performances and the Voluntary Guidelines that we developed then is still the method used by the city to address problems.
New Vaudeville: With the Flying Karamazov Brothers, Avner the Eccentric, Reverend Chumleigh, Artis the Spoonman, and several others, I worked trying to convince street performers that we are the vaudevillians ... without vaudeville. We thought that we could build a new form for that old form. We still do events, we never made it make money.
TV: After years of insisting that people come out from behind their TV sets and come see live performance (I called New Vaudeville "Entertainment for a post-television generation") ... Avner convinced me that I'd better go on TV before someone else copied Bubble Magic and took it to TV first ""He'll be the bubble man and you will be doing HIS act for the rest of your life." Good point. I went on That's Incredible ... nothing happened. Then I went on Johnny Carson's Tonight Show in 1982 ... fortunately, I had just then moved out of my van into an apartment with a telephone ... the phone didn't stop ringing for years. I did the Tonight Show 3 times, other American TV shows, big variety shows on all over Europe, Japan, and some stuff in other places.
Science Museums: While I was hot the comedy clubs called ... the same ones who would never book me before "You're not really comedy." I went instead to a science museum in San Francisco and convinced them to do a Bubble Festival ... focussing on the physics of soap bubbles and on my performance. Big hit ... NBC and CBS had it on the national news that week "The kids and physicists are gathering this week in San Francisco ... "
15, 000 people showed up and science museums all over the country called wanting to put on Bubble Festivals.
Mathematics: I'm okay with the physics but I really don't understand the mathematics ... but the mathematicians love what I do. My photo has been featured in text books and I sometimes perform at math conferences. In 1998 I demonstrated at the International Congress of Mathematics in Berlin. This is the event where they give the Field's Medal (the math equivalent of a Nobel Prize).
Variete: The German version of vaudeville. Alive and well in Germany ... I do a lot of this these days.
So ... an agent recently asked me to write a bio. I thought that writing for this website might be good practice ... I might have to leave out the pot bust for that other one though.
[This message has been edited by Tom Noddy (edited 01-22-2001).]
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