AGT 6/21 Recap

The two-hour premiere episode of America's Got Talent was a mixed blessing for the world juggling. First, Kenny Shelton represented the juggling world by clumsily juggling 3 tennis rackets. Oh joy. He then moved on to 3 basketballs and then 3 (gasp) baseball bats. All in the cascade. His hack juggling was boring and unoriginal, but the judges were mostly unimpressed with his drops. When he was buzzed by all three judges (David Hasselhoff, Brandy, and Piers Morgan), Kenny asked them if he could at least do his finale. The judges agreed, and Kenny grabbed 3 knives and juggled on a rola bola for a whole minute. Of course, everyone was amazed and he made it through to the next round.

A few acts later, a second juggler was called to the stage: Ivan Pecel! The bad news is that his act was heavily edited, so the viewers missed out. It only showed Ivan for a few seconds doing a couple 3 ball tricks, a 5 ball cascade, a halfshower, and a blind catch finish. The good news? As most of us jugglers expected, the audience loved it. Unfortunately, the judges are in control of who makes it to the second round. David, for some inexplicable reason, absolutely disliked him. Piers seemed indifferent, but he was willing to go along with David's negative vote. The audience disagreed and continued to cheer for Ivan. Brandy was on the audience's side saying, "he's a talented juggler." Ivan then confronted David and Piers, who disliked him but could not come up with a valid reason why: "You know nothing about juggling. I am one of the best jugglers around, I've won several competitions." With Ivan's bold assertion and some convincing by Brandy, Piers changed his vote.

There was a third juggler, but due to poor weather in my area I was forced to watch some meteorologist tinker around with his Doppler 5000 radar system and miss the juggler's name and act. I do know that he made it to the next round. (Update: it was Vladik Miagkostoupov.)

Juggling's not out of the picture yet... that's a good thing... I hope.