The Magic of Unicycling
The year was 2023, and I was signed up for a single adult talent show. As I saw it, I had two options: Play a little something-something on my flute (been there, done that), or ride my unicycle around. But unless you can do multiple tricks while riding (which I haven’t learned), that’s only interesting for about 10 seconds. So how do you stretch it out?
I came up with 4 “Acts,” the first 3 all based on the premise that I would play dumb and act like I didn’t know what the audience wanted me to do with a unicycle. One person in the audience was my designated “heckler,” asking what in the world I was doing and ultimately trying to get me to just ride it.
Act 1: Start playing a “unilele” solo in sync with a guitar recording. When that fails to impress…
Act 2: Exclaim that the audience must want to see a magic trick with the unicycle! Perform the trick (with custom unicycle cards). Everyone cheers!… Except for my heckler.
Act 3: Fine! Then I’ll paint a picture of the unicycle in 1.5 minutes. This WOULD have been cool, except I’d only rehearsed this once, and feeling flustered, I totally forgot to really show the blank canvas. You could only see it for a split second. Kind of a face palm moment afterwards. But this is the painting I showed the audience:
Act 4: Finally ride the thing. Yay!