How to catch an arrow – Part IX

Ray Anders called to ask if there was something different I could do for the second season of That’s Incredible! I told him I had had an idea rattling around in my head for a couple of years but would have to test it out before I could give him a definitive answer.

(As I began writing this post, I realized it was not likely I would have been able to appear just a year or so after being hit in the eye. So the incident in which I was hit probably occurred after my second appearance, not before it. But I’m not sure at this point.)

The idea had sprung up while watching the slow-motion film footage that Bill Zarchy had shot at Felt Lake, and which PBS had used in their short feature, The Arrow Catcher. Although I didn’t watch the footage often, Bill’s wife, Susan, had given me a still photograph she had shot that same day. It captured the exact shot that had stimulated my imagination. (Both Bill and Susan were Teaching Assistants in Film at Stanford, while I was there. So both were very skilled in both moving and still photography.) In the shot, the pressure of my hand against the arrow’s shaft caused it to bend significantly in the middle. I wondered if I could generate enough downward force to cause the shaft to break.

Here’s a faded copy of the photo.

To break one, I figured I would have to use a downward shuto (or knife-hand) strike. I didn’t know if I could get my hand traveling fast enough or be able to generate enough force in such brief amount of time. There was only one way to find out.

I don’t remember how many practice shots it took to hit my first arrow. But I think it was relatively few. Soon, I was hitting almost every arrow. It was actually easier to hit them than catch them. The problem was they were slamming into the floor but not breaking. I tried to put more power into each shuto but to no avail.

I was told that wooden-shafted arrows have traditionally been made out of cedar. And cedar was a very flexible wood. I could take a cedar arrow in my hands and bend it into a fairly tight U shape without it breaking.

I tried everything and nothing helped. They just wouldn’t break. Even when I bent one with my hands until it broke, it splintered rather than breaking cleanly. In the end, I had to score them in the middle with a knife to get them to break with a hand strike.

I told Ray what I proposed doing for their season two. He was excited. He said he had never heard of anyone breaking one in midair. But he needed to know my break percentage. I told him eighty percent. He offered me expenses plus several thousand dollars and residuals to appear. I agreed. And the show went perfectly, almost boringly so when compared to my first appearance.

Thanks for your continued support.

How to catch an arrow – Part VIII

Life got pretty strange for a while after my appearance of That’s Incredible!. It was the third most popular show on TV that season. So literally millions of people saw my appearance. People would come up to me while shopping or having dinner for an autograph. They honked at me as I walked down the street. It was my 15 minutes of fame.

For me, one of the oddest side-stories to come out of all this was associated with the unfortunate death of a co-worker. I didn’t know the man but we both worked at the world headquarters for semiconductor giant, National Semiconductor Corporation (NSC), the 4^th largest semiconductor maker at the time. He was a design engineer. I was the off-shift plant superintendent, overseeing the company’s massive Santa Clara facility during swing and grave shifts. Headquarters was made up of 55 major buildings, spread over a two and a half square mile area, and over 5,000 employees during my shifts of responsibility.

This all happened over 30 years ago. So the following is the story to the best of my memory.

The company had an “open-door” policy, where anyone within the company could theoretically drop in and discuss whatever they wanted with whoever they wanted. Well, the engineer walked in and took a seat across the desk from Charlie Spork, Corporate President and my boss’s boss. He started telling him about corporate spies who had been approaching him while at bars, trying to steal company secrets. He believed the Soviets and Chinese were sending beautiful women to sexually tempt him but he had managed so far to avoid succumbing to temptation.

My boss was called into Spork’s office, reportedly to take part in the conversation. (My boss oversaw the company’s legal group, security, and negotiation.) But his real reason for being called in was to see if the man was sane and, if not, get him out of the President’s office and to someone who could help him. My boss quickly escorted him away and had him transported to the hospital for a mental evaluation.

The hospital staff quickly ascertained that he was psychotic and needed to be admitted. So, the NSC people turned him over to the hospital staff and left. While the hospital staff were busy and not watching close enough, the engineer left too. He walked across the street to Stan’s Diving Shop. He asked the clerk if he could see one of their spear guns. The clerk pulled it out of the display case and handed it to him. He promptly loaded a spear into it, then aimed it at the clerk. “Is this a Christian store?” he asked. The clerk didn’t know how to answer him. Someone called the police and they quickly arrived. One of the officers entered the store and tried to reason with the man. When the engineer aimed his spear gun at the officer, the officer shot and killed him.

The man’s family were very upset and felt he had been badly mishandled by the hospital (who let him walk away) and by the officer who shot him. They filed a lawsuit.

My boss attended the trial and told me the following story. He said that when they put the officer on the stand, the family’s attorney pushed him hard, wanting to prove he had not been justified in shooting the engineer, that non-lethal options had been available. My boss said that the officer’s response was “I’m not like that guy on That’s Incredible! who catches arrows. I felt it was him or me.”

As I said, it was a strange time. Thanks for following my humble ramblings.

How to catch an arrow – Part VII

After my appearance on That’s Incredible!, I received a lot of publicity, including a feature story in Parade magazine and appearing in a Ripley’s Believe It or Not periodical feature. I was also contacted by a bunch of news shows. One of these was co-hosted by John Gibson, who later went on to host a show on Fox News for many years. At the time, he was with a small news-magazine show on the Sacramento affiliate of a major TV network. He wanted to come to the dojo to interview and film me. I agreed.

By then, I was used to the presence of the large lights used during filming. But nothing had changed when it came to their angle and direction. If they shined directly into my eye, I would be blinded. When shooting inside my dojo, the smaller size of the place offered them fewer options, both horizontally and vertically, than crews had had in the past. So lights were setup just a few feet to my archer’s left. That wouldn’t have been a huge problem had I been able to focus only on my archer, as the arrow would travel directly from him to me.

I normally wore a pair of especially designed safety glasses. But for some reason I wasn’t wearing them that night. But everything seemed well-in-hand.

My archer shot the first of the blunt-tipped arrows and I caught it. But when he released the second, something happened that had never happened before. The arrow immediately veered hard to the left, swinging over about two feet, putting it very near one of the lights and right in front of a bunch of people. I saw it veer over and head straight for my face but nothing more.

I don’t understand how I did it to this day but, fortunately, I reflexively angled my head back and swung my hand in front of my face, grabbing a handful of feathers. Unfortunately, however, my arm was shorter than the arrow and it hit me just above the left eye, then slid all the way back between my eye and the top of my eye socket.

It all happened in a split second and no one but me knew what exactly had occurred. All I could see through my left eye was a dim yellow light.

We had full length mirrors along one wall. I walked over and checked my eye in the mirror. There was no longer any iris, the colored part in the middle of my eye. The center was now completely black all the way out to where the white part began.

Gibson and his crew asked what happened. I didn’t want them focusing on the hit. So I kept my eye closed and told them the arrow had hit me in the forehead and deflected off. I answered a few more questions, keeping things upbeat and positive, then saw them off.

I didn’t dwell on the injury. It was one of the things that had always been a possibility. More people lose eyes to blunt trauma than sharp. I had accepted that possibility so I had no right to complain about it afterwards. I was my fault, I told myself. I should have worn my safety glasses.

My son was with me and I had to drive us home. But on the way, I started getting sleepy. I thought it might have done more damage than I thought. (Turned out I was just sleepy.) I called one of my students, who was a doctor. He checked me and said the cornea, the lens, in my eye had filled with blood. He put patches over both eyes. When I woke up the next morning, I lifted the bandage a bit from my left eye and snuck a peek. I could see. I thought I must have lifted the wrong one. I lifted the other and could see too. I removed the bandages and the blood was almost gone from my left cornea. Within a few weeks, it was all gone.

Actually, the impact had improved my vision. I had been a little nearsighted in that eye. And the impact made it less so. But many years later, a cataract developed in it that badly reduced my vision. Although I never mentioned it, I avoided refereeing karate sparring matches for this reason. I eventually had the cataract removed and a permanent lens inserted. The eye surgeon who performed the operation said the cataract had developed into an almost perfect star pattern.

Since the day I was hit, I have had a small tear at the edge of my iris that makes my left pupil always appear larger than my right. My personal physician told me recently to make sure I taped a note that explained that fact onto the back of my driver’s license so, if I’m ever in a traffic accident, they won’t think the difference in pupil sizes indicates brain damage. But, I told him, I must have had some or I would never have started catching arrows in the first place.

Thanks again for your support. It means a lot to me.

That's Incredible! memento

I asked That's Incredible! host John Davidson for an autograph for my wife. He gave me the one posted below. It was written on the cover of the script for our show.

John Davidson

How to catch an arrow – Part VI

In my last post, I mentioned appearing my first time on ABC’s That’s Incredible! with Tiger Woods and the Dangerous Sports Club, who I’ll refer to as DSC for brevity. The following is a Wikipedia article on the group:

“The Dangerous Sports Club was founded by David Kirke, Chris Baker, Ed Hulton and Alan Weston. They first came to wide public attention by inventing modern day bungee jumping, by making the first modern jumps on 1 April 1979, from the Clifton Suspension Bridge, Bristol, England. They followed the Clifton Bridge effort with a jump from the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, California (including the first female bungee jump by Jane Wilmot), and with a televised leap from the Royal Gorge Suspension Bridge in Colorado, sponsored by and televised on the popular American television program That's Incredible! Bungee jumping was treated as a novelty for a few years, then became a craze for young people, and is now an established industry for thrill seekers.”

I think all of the DSC members were students at Oxford at the time I met them. David Kirke was the oldest and designated leader of the group. He was also the only Irishman and the only one, according to him, who didn’t come from an upper class family. Being older, more down-to-earth, and far more sober than the rest, I only remember David and one of the other members, Tim Hunt, who was the brother of then world formula I racing champion, James Hunt. 

The group appeared in top hats and tails, which is also how they generally dressed when bungee jumping. They also got rip, roaring drunk before they jumped. So, among other things, they were all masters of over-indulgence.

After the show, they came over and introduced themselves. They told me that they were impressed with what I had done. I told them what I did was nothing compared to what they had done, tying an elastic cord to themselves and jumping off a bridge, which seemed like madness at the time. They told me what I did took actual skill. All they needed was enough alcohol, a sufficient number of dead brain cells, and a bridge. We all laughed.

They invited my archer and I to join them for a visit to what they described as the top private club in Beverly Hills. We said sure. Everyone, except for David Kirke, were already well into their cup, as they say.

We followed them in our car from the studio. In Beverly Hills, they turned onto Rodeo Drive and began looking for the club. In the middle of one of the blocks, they swung a U-turn and parked at the curb. Knowing it was illegal to “swing a U-ie”, as we used to call it, we parked at the curb, across the street. As we waited for cross-traffic to clear so we could cross, we saw a police car heading towards our friends, who had piled out of their rental car. Several of them lined up along the side of the building and were “taking a leak” as the cop car reached them. We figured they were busted. But the officers just shook their heads and kept going.

We followed Tim Hunt into the club. One of his friends had left a message to let us in, which they did. They showed us to our own table near the center of the large room and immediately began to bring what would become bottle after bottle of Champagne, the DSC drink of choice. I’m not much of a drinker so I kind of nursed one drink all night. But the DSC guys proceeded to get even drunker.

It was soon after the collapse of the Shah of Iran’s rule and many very wealthy Iranians had moved to Hollywood. There were also a large influx of very wealthy Arab royalty. A big news story at the time was about a Saudi prince, I think, who bought a large Beverly Hills estate and painted black pubic hair on all the large Greek statues on the property. His neighbors weren’t amused.

As our hosts got drunker and drunker, a group of young middle eastern gentlemen partying at the next table with a number of beautiful, blond women got rowdier and rowdier. One of the DSC guys finally yelled, “Why don’t you shut your mouths, you bloody wogs!” Someone at the other table responded with something about “filfthy English pigs”. Both sides got to their feet, ready to rumble. Club bouncers descended on our table and told us we had to leave, which we did, but not without several of the Oxford guys getting a few choice parting words.

They climbed into their car and invited us to go with them to an all-night party, somewhere in the Hollywood hills. My archer accepted. I passed. I had had enough excitement for one day. Plus, my right hand was still bleeding and possibly broken, not the state I wanted it during an evening that would surely end in at least one fight.

So everyone went their way. I don’t remember how the rest of the evening went for them. Mine was thankfully uneventful.

Here is the link to a clip produced by the photographer who filmed the DSC Golden Gate Bridge jump, which got them worldwide publicity. http://current.com/entertainment/wtf/76299982_dangerous-sports-club.htm

Next time I talk about the photograph that gave me an idea for something new to do with arrows and led to me being invited to appear a second time on That’s Incredible!

How to catch an arrow – Part V

In 1979, Ray Anders became stunt coordinator for a new TV show on ABC called That’s Incredible! I don’t know if it had even started broadcasting when he first contacted me. They wanted to come to my dojo and shoot some footage, then have me appear live on the show in front of a studio audience.

The dojo filming went so well I barely remember it. (I think I have a portion of the footage they shot somewhere.) But the shoot at the studio is still very clear in my mind. They had installed a couple of large, portable bleachers for the audience. They were like the portable ones you might find at a little league baseball game, only with comfortable seats and more sections. We generally caught from around 40 to 45 feet. This would put my archer smack in the middle of the bleachers. I was concerned about several things. First, my archer had to stand about half way up the aisle of one of the bleachers. This put him at an elevation above me. He would be shooting down at me. We had never attempted to catch from such an angle before. Second, he was standing in the middle of a broken visual field. He was surrounded by people who were moving and dressed in different color clothes. I didn’t know if I’d be able to distinguish the arrow from the background or if it could get visually lost in route. And third, there were strong spotlights aimed at me. They were at a high angle, above my direction of focus, but could be a wild card that would distract or blind me temporarily. A split second was all that was needed to throw me off.

The show’s on-camera hosts were John Davidson, Cathy Lee Crosby, and former football great Fran Tarkenton. Davidson and Crosby were very friendly. Cathy Lee even asked what I was doing after the show. And Davidson came up and introduced himself, like I wouldn’t know who he was. Tarkenton made no effort beyond the minimum. He walked around the set spitting chewing tobacco into a paper cup. We had almost no interaction off-camera.

John Davidson also said something interesting before the shoot. The movie Ten, with Dudley Moore and Bo Derrick, was a huge hit in the theaters at the time. John knew or had met Derrick and was, himself, considered a “ten” by a lot of women. He was handsome. He was a good singer. He had his own very popular show. And the ladies loved him. As the ladies who loved him included my wife, I went there hating him, thinking him a stuck up pretty boy. But after meeting and finding him very down to earth, I ended up liking him. Someone asked John if he thought Bo Derrick was a “ten”, as the movie suggested. He said “No.” When pressed for his reasons, he said “Because she’s too young. She has no character in her face. True beauty only comes with age and experience.”

When the audience had been seated and everything ready to go, they asked me to stand in front of a piece of Plexiglass near the back of a small stage. A TV camera was set up behind the glass to get an over-the-shoulder view.

My archer readied the first arrow and sent it towards me. I just tracked it to make sure I could see well enough to make a catch. It seemed tolerable. I touched but didn’t really attempt to catch the second arrow. Having a live audience obviously put more pressure to do something quickly, so I slapped the third aside, while still tweaking things on my end.

Feeling everything was under control, I got serious on the fourth shot. He sent it at me and I almost caught it. It just barely slipped through my grasp. But, my hand’s backward swing continued on and somehow managed to pin the arrow’s shaft against the Plexiglass with the back of my hand. The shaft snapped in two and drove one of the jagged ends almost clear through my hand.

I couldn’t believe it. Blood was squirting straight out of the wound. I had never had a wound that bled like that before, or since. Plus, I wasn’t sure if it had broken a bone.

I asked the producer’s staff if they had a butterfly bandage and some ice. The onsite nurse rushed over to help me. As she put the bandage over the cut and stopped the bleeding, I noticed my hand was swelling very quickly, rapidly getting thicker and thicker. I knew if we didn’t get going quickly, my hand would soon become so swollen I wouldn’t be able to get my fingers to close. (I still have a now faint crescent scar on the back of my right hand.)

We hurried back into position. I focused on making sure to grab the first arrow as that might be all I could do before my hand wouldn’t work. My archer drew a bead on my heart and sent the shot on its way. I grabbed it but felt it slipping through my grasp. I fought to hang on and ended up with handful of feathers, the tip hanging downwards towards the floor. Although it was kind of a catch, I didn’t want to end on that. So I told my archer to shoot more. I cleanly caught the next three, before my hand got so thick it wouldn’t close anymore.

Also on the same episode was a 7-year-old golfer, who none of us paid any attention to, as there were so many similar acts at the time – a 4-year old tennis player, etc. When they reran our episode for the show’s 25^th anniversary, they showed the little golfer again. It was Tiger Woods.

Next time, I’ll get into the story of our exploits that night with another guest, the Oxford Dangerous Sports Club, and getting invited to and then kicked out of one of the top clubs in Beverly Hills. (The Oxford boys got invited and kicked out. But they had invited us. So when they left, we left.) Thanks for reading.

I haven't forgotten you!

Sorry for the delay in getting out my next post. I'm close to finishing the first draft of a martial arts based novel I've been working on for a while and need to keep focused on that for a few more days. Once I'm through with the draft, I can begin polishing the plot and details, which will, hopefully, not take too long.

Take care, Jim

How to catch an arrow – Part IV

Several months after we had filmed in Golden Gate Park for The John Newcombe Show, I got another call from Ray Anders. He wanted me to appear on a show he was handling called The Guinness Game. The show’s premise was the host would introduce someone and announce the Guinness world record they intended to break. Then, the panel, selected from the audience, would vote on whether or not the guest could achieve their goal.

I agreed to appear and flew to LA for the filming. The show’s producers just made up some record for me to set. I think it was 14 catches out of 20 attempts.

It was the first time I had been asked to catch indoors. I had caught before indoors but never for a TV show. I was worried about a couple of things. One, an indoors shoot meant they would need a lot of high intensity lights. These could potentially blind me temporarily if they were not positioned correctly. As I tracked the arrow’s flight, my head would turn approximately 90 degrees. So no lights could be within that range, unless angled downwards from a high position. Second, I was worried I might get nervous. I had never had to catch on command, so to speak. To increase my catch rate, I had changed the way in which I caught and it was still untested under pressure.

My original approach had been to simply snatch arrows out of midair, as you would a flying bug. The problem, as I mentioned earlier, was getting my hand to close fast enough. If I was off even slightly, they would slip through before I could grab them. In my new approach, I pressed my hand against the shaft as I closed my hand. The pressure of the edge of my hand created friction, which slowed an arrow down enough for me to more easily grab it. This slight adjustment significantly increased my catch rate.

When I showed up for the shoot, I found that the producers had thrown us a curve. The show’s insurance carrier had refused to allow me to catch from an open position. They wanted me to stand behind a piece of Plexiglas and reach out from a place of safety. But the Plexiglas distorted the image. Arrows weren’t where they appeared to be. I told them I couldn’t catch from there. One of the staff secretly told me to start from behind the Plexiglas but step out if I needed to just before an arrow was released. Obviously, this added step made things more complicated.

Everything was finally set and my archer drew back the first arrow. I readied myself. He let it fly. It flew past me at about shin height, out of reach. He drew back the next arrow. I fixed on the arrow’s tip. It was jerking around. I hadn’t even considered my archer would get nervous. But he was. He released the second arrow. It passed high and to my left, far out of reach.

The next 18 arrows were all over the board. I think I managed to catch the 14^th on my 20^th attempt. I almost had to dive for it. But I completed what that had asked of me.

My archer wasn’t selected because he was a great competitive shooter or someone with a great deal of training and a long time and avid archery buff. He was simply one of my green belt students who said he could shoot. He always did the best he could but each shoot was a learning experience for both of us. There were times when I covered for him, as at the Guinness Game shoot. And there were other times when he covered for me. When lighting was bad or I was sick or my eyes weren’t at their best, he would take some of the steam out of his shots.

He and I had a lot of fun and exciting times and travels. Next time, I’ll get into my two appearances on one of the top network TV shows at the time and some of the interesting people we met, including party with some crazy and rich Englishmen, who popularized Bungee jumping, and a 7-year-old who would later become one of the greatest athletes in his sport, perhaps for all time.