KW Record Newspaper Article about the Cates'
16/October/2009 08:11 PM Filed in: General
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Wednesday, October 7, 2009
Comedian juggles show biz and real life
By Colin Hunter, Record staff
KITCHENER – Of all the juggling routines Bob Cates has performed – and there have been plenty – the trickiest one became part of his repertoire just one month ago: fatherhood.
Sure, Cates can juggle bowling pins while riding a two-metre-high unicycle, but cradling his newborn son Hudson requires a special kind of dexterity.
And yes, Cates can keep 21 genuine dinner plates simultaneously spinning atop an immense array of rods, but changing diapers has proven a comparably dicey undertaking.
“The combination of juggling and fatherhood, that’s tricky,” Cates says, holding little Hudson in the crook of one arm juggling two white balls with the other.
For more than a decade, Cates has criss-crossed the globe several times over, performing his comedy juggling routine at corporate events, church events and on the high seas.
When he tallied up all the weeks he has performed on cruise ships, it dawned on him that he has spent roughly three years on the “floating prisons with room service,” as he jokingly calls the vessels.
The cruise ship jobs have actually been good work – and they helped pay for a nice, impressively tidy house in Kitchener – but Cates plans to take a break from cruise shows after his upcoming two-week stint with Royal Caribbean.
With little Hudson now part of the family, Cates and his wife Jane hope to keep their vaudevillian show a little closer to home for a while.
The Nov. 6 show at Guelph Salvation Army, for instance, will be a rare opportunity for the Cates clan to bedazzle an audience and still get home before Hudson gets cranky.
Just last week, Hudson got his first chance to see daddy in action, though his vision is still blurry and unfocused, so he just slept backstage instead.
The audience, on the other hand, marveled as always at Cates’ boundless energy, comic timing and preternatural dexterity.
Thirty-eight-year-old Cates has devoted his adult life to honing an act that mixes juggling, magic and admittedly “squeaky clean” comedy that is suitable for children but completely palatable to adults.
It all began in the town of Forest, a rural burg situated between Sarnia and Grand Bend, when Cates was still in high school. He was watching a video in English class that included a brief snippet of juggling, which prompted him to whisper to his buddy: “Wouldn’t it cool to be able to do that?
His buddy boasted that he could, in fact, do that – then proved it by juggling a trio of blackboard erasers. Impressed, Cates borrowed a book on juggling from the library and scooted to his room in the family farmhouse to practice for hours on end.
By the time he got to McMaster University to study business, Cates was proficient enough to start a juggling club on campus.
Small gigs followed, mostly busking at carnivals and street fairs, and Cates sharpened his comic patter and added to his increasingly difficult repertoire of tricks.
Along the way, he bought an original plate-spinning rig that was previously used by a regular performer on the Ed Sullivan show, and devoted himself to learning the lost art. The results were often less-than-stellar.
“My serious estimate is that in the past 10 years I’ve smashed about 1,000 plates,” he says. He has, however, discovered an upside to the occasional blooper: “People love to see plates smash. Especially kids.”
Nowadays there’s one kid in particular that Cates is desperate to please. Hudson doesn’t really do much yet, aside from “eat, sleep and fill up diapers,” Jane says.
But Cates is optimistic that, one day, Hudson might follow in daddy’s footsteps.“In the ultrasound his hands were moving around like he was juggling,” says Cates. “That was pretty exciting.”
chunter@therecord.com
For Bob Cates’ videos, information and show schedule, visit www.comedyinmotion.com
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
Comedian juggles show biz and real life
By Colin Hunter, Record staff
KITCHENER – Of all the juggling routines Bob Cates has performed – and there have been plenty – the trickiest one became part of his repertoire just one month ago: fatherhood.
Sure, Cates can juggle bowling pins while riding a two-metre-high unicycle, but cradling his newborn son Hudson requires a special kind of dexterity.
And yes, Cates can keep 21 genuine dinner plates simultaneously spinning atop an immense array of rods, but changing diapers has proven a comparably dicey undertaking.
“The combination of juggling and fatherhood, that’s tricky,” Cates says, holding little Hudson in the crook of one arm juggling two white balls with the other.
For more than a decade, Cates has criss-crossed the globe several times over, performing his comedy juggling routine at corporate events, church events and on the high seas.
When he tallied up all the weeks he has performed on cruise ships, it dawned on him that he has spent roughly three years on the “floating prisons with room service,” as he jokingly calls the vessels.
The cruise ship jobs have actually been good work – and they helped pay for a nice, impressively tidy house in Kitchener – but Cates plans to take a break from cruise shows after his upcoming two-week stint with Royal Caribbean.
With little Hudson now part of the family, Cates and his wife Jane hope to keep their vaudevillian show a little closer to home for a while.
The Nov. 6 show at Guelph Salvation Army, for instance, will be a rare opportunity for the Cates clan to bedazzle an audience and still get home before Hudson gets cranky.
Just last week, Hudson got his first chance to see daddy in action, though his vision is still blurry and unfocused, so he just slept backstage instead.
The audience, on the other hand, marveled as always at Cates’ boundless energy, comic timing and preternatural dexterity.
Thirty-eight-year-old Cates has devoted his adult life to honing an act that mixes juggling, magic and admittedly “squeaky clean” comedy that is suitable for children but completely palatable to adults.
It all began in the town of Forest, a rural burg situated between Sarnia and Grand Bend, when Cates was still in high school. He was watching a video in English class that included a brief snippet of juggling, which prompted him to whisper to his buddy: “Wouldn’t it cool to be able to do that?
His buddy boasted that he could, in fact, do that – then proved it by juggling a trio of blackboard erasers. Impressed, Cates borrowed a book on juggling from the library and scooted to his room in the family farmhouse to practice for hours on end.
By the time he got to McMaster University to study business, Cates was proficient enough to start a juggling club on campus.
Small gigs followed, mostly busking at carnivals and street fairs, and Cates sharpened his comic patter and added to his increasingly difficult repertoire of tricks.
Along the way, he bought an original plate-spinning rig that was previously used by a regular performer on the Ed Sullivan show, and devoted himself to learning the lost art. The results were often less-than-stellar.
“My serious estimate is that in the past 10 years I’ve smashed about 1,000 plates,” he says. He has, however, discovered an upside to the occasional blooper: “People love to see plates smash. Especially kids.”
Nowadays there’s one kid in particular that Cates is desperate to please. Hudson doesn’t really do much yet, aside from “eat, sleep and fill up diapers,” Jane says.
But Cates is optimistic that, one day, Hudson might follow in daddy’s footsteps.“In the ultrasound his hands were moving around like he was juggling,” says Cates. “That was pretty exciting.”
chunter@therecord.com
For Bob Cates’ videos, information and show schedule, visit www.comedyinmotion.com