Stick twirling - now theres an art that I unfortunately cannot be caught dead at now.  I was doing it in the 80's before T. Lee made it an almost necessary form on stage. 

I used to sit, long ago while in high school, and just try to get it to spin once between the knuckles (forward/reverse), then twice around both ways.  I got really good with both hands going at once (remember fellas, this is the 80's now)....analogous to those outfits we were stuck wearing in our 70's grade school pictures...nice memories, but what were we thinkin. 

Twirling with both hands became an art and I really had it as part of my schtick and I got many offers from other local bands because of the stage aspect (yeah,playing skill too).  But then I started letting the stick leave my hands, which is where the real fun began. 

I always had a stack of sticks in a bag hanging on my floor tom, and I would (based on who was watching in the crowd) juggle as if I were out of control, as in toss a stick into the air purposely out of reach and then between snare beats reach under and snag a new stick....the expressions were priceless because they always thought I 1>would never catch the stick (hehe - I wasnt supposed to anyway) and then 2> the stick always magically appeared in my left hand again right in time.....it had people laughing at me, then they got pissed when they realized, I was laughing at them....

Then, I started this juggling thing, or flipping them....my band loved it.  Heres how it went.  I used to play the ride cymbal (you have to picture this of course) with my right hand (quarter notes, 4/4....so there was 4 whacks on the bell if you will) on every 3rd quarter, what I would do instead of hitting with my right hand, I would strike the bell with my left hand (yep, reaching across) and while striking the bell with my left hand, I would literally flip the stick of my right hand (tossing into aiir and getting rotation back to my palm and catching again).  Now, can you imagine the concentration to not only play "Train kept a rollin" (Aerosmith tribute band) and get the stick to rotate free air during play and keep great time?  I got really good at that and did some other crazy stuff which all worked....my most infamous was setting up prior to a gig and strategically placing both kicks directly under a ceiling supported light bar....during the show, I did a standard 80's double bass thumping solo and then when finished, stood on both kicks, reached up and grabbed the light bar and then swung up and over my kit landing out front.  I was out of control - bar loved it - got me boned.

Anyway, back to gloves....I did much stickage work so gloves never worked for me.  What I can say though is that during twirling between the index and middle finger I developed one hell of a callous and a deformed looking paw, and actually considered gloves and tried cutting out the parts between the fingers, but that failed. 

I think I just answered the guys question on stick twirling and gloves....whew.

Ras