Fanzine

[C-Fan]

Despite the massive partying that went down on Saturday night, I felt pretty good on Sunday morning. The fact that TSG3 was finally over, and that it went so well, doubtless added some spring to my step. I got a burger for take out and took it to Yoyogi.

When I get to the fountain, I`m completely surprised to see... Kenzo?! Apparently his date got delayed or something, so he decided to come out and shred. Booyah! The day started off on a good note for sure.

Sunday was nice because I got to play with more players, and there was no pressure on. I played in a few circles with QP, and it was good to see him playing so well. I saw him hit blazing butterfly to pdx torque, which was one of the best combos I saw all weekend. I also saw him hit blazing far osis for the first time. He`s working on blazing pdx torque. Real clean blazing set. Yusuke also played real well, his usual long runs of spins and ducks.

Andrew shows up a little later, and I shred a good bit with him. I think he was having an off-day and didn`t look happy with his shred, but I kept thinking: "even though today is an `off` day for him, he`s still playing better than I saw him playing at Worlds in Montreal." Sometimes I think that about myself... how even my worst sessions these days are usually better than my best sessions 2 years ago... and how even a bad session is better than being injured and not being able to play at all.

Despite his `off` day, Andrew still hit some good stuff I thought. He had one run with blurry drifter, stepping whirl, and tombstone all BSOS, with one blurry whirl in there. He also hit ripped warrior B2B and Tosh got it on film. He also started a run with rubbermanx2 which is impressive because it was with a floppy light bag, which is the opposite of what he likes. I think the highlight of the session for him may have been borrowing Tencho`s ClimaCools and using them for a bit. He had been talking all weekend about how he wanted to buy Climas, but could never find them. I don`t remember much about how I played on Sunday... I remember playing pretty relaxed. One run stuck out in my head though. I started it with triage, then had flurry using the other barrage leg, then fog, paradox torque, bed, and blurry whirl in the same run. Kenzo told me my triage may have been thin, which means there`s a very good chance it was, but still, it was a fun run.

Normally when we play on the pier, we get a mixed bag of music. Sometimes we bring our own, sometimes there are tap dancers next to us, sometimes tango people, etc. Once there was a group of 20 (I counted them) ukelele enthusiasts who played songs from the Blues Brothers... that was the best. Unfortunately for Andrew, Sunday was a bad day for music for us. We shared the pier with a group of amateur Capoeira enthusiasts, who spent an hour monotonously chanting "hey ah na na" in a hypnotic, annoying tone. None of them played the berimbau very well. Every time they completed a chant of "hey ah nah nah" I`d say to myself in a Ralph Wiggum voice: "go banana!" Still, it was aggravating. It got on Andrew`s nerves too, so we decided to go buy some water and take a quick tour of the rest of Yoyogi.

For every talentless, annoying group of people in Yoyogi, there`s normally at least 2 interesting groups of people. I really like to think that the footbaggers are one of the interesting groups (though we really can`t compete with the ukelele krew). On our way to buying drinks, Andrew and I stopped and watched one of the interesting groups: a gospel choir of 20 or so High School girls, singing in their school uniforms. I`d never seen them before, and it was pretty entertaining. The first song we heard them do was "One Fine Day." There was a lead schoolgirl singer, and the other 20 or so girls would sway in the background singing backup and the chorus. "One Fine Day" was really funny because while the chorus had good pronunciation, the lead singer kept singing "when Je-dus wa-alks!" I was like: Turning to Andrew, I exclaimed: "save me Jebus!"

Yusuke passed by while we were taking in the spectacle, and joined us for a moment. Leaning near my ear, he discretely comments (in Japanese): "wow, not a single one of them is cute." By this time, I had grown comfortable making snide comments to Andrew in English, confident nobody would understand me. But for some reason, Yusuke`s observation was so on point, I responded instinctively in Japanese, in the same loud voice I`d used to make snarky (but safe) comments to Andrew: "totally, not a single one of them is!"





I got a couple dirty looks from from the choir, and then I decided it`d be best to make like Jedus, so me and Andrew slinked off.

After the session Andrew, Keita, X+Y and myself went to get dinner. We finally decided to get ramen, which worked out real well in the end. Personally I had been craving ramen for a while, but more important than that, it was Andrew`s first time eating real ramen. Like a lot of other North Americans, he had only had instant ramen, or cup ramen, which is completely different than the real deal. I ordered him the ramen with everything in it, and he really dug it, which I was stoked about. The plan was to find someplace with Japanese style desserts, but we settled on a place with parfaits cause it was raining, and Andrew treated us all to dessert. This last paragraph doesn`t seem to have much footblog relevancy... but I just thought that somewhere on the internet it was my duty to extol the savoury goodness of true ramen, and to let non-Japanese people know that they should try out the real-deal sometime, cause its not even comparable to that instant shit.

Next entry: 2 man shred with Andrew, a career-changing wrong turn down a Tokyo back alley, and... dare I say it? More cowbell.

[C-Fan]

Footbag isn`t officially on the Monday agenda, but who are we kidding, right?

The weather gods are on my side, as the sun is rocking out in the sky as I make my way to meet up with Andrew. I picked Hachiko in Shibuya as our meeting place, which was good, because it`s a nice place to wait, and Andrew got lost. I didn`t panic too bad, and eventually he found his way to the meeting point. I punished him with a big hug of relief. Shortly we dumped his bags at my friend`s place, then spent most of the day trolling Tokyo for gifts, and taking in some sights.

Sightseeing and shopping was fun, and there was even some footbag-relevant shopping accomplished! I bought a pair of real slick soccer shorts for footbag, which I`m pretty excited about. They are clima-cool technology, which means they will probably be very cool to play in. They are black with red trim, and have the insignia for FC Munchen on them. Speaking of clima-cool, we dropped by a couple shoe stores in the hope of getting Andrew Clima-cools (he said he had a dream the previous night about Tencho giving him his Climas... ) but no dice. While we were wandering Shibuya, I started to get a little lost. I took us down a random alleyway thinking that it had a store which gives out free samples of wine, but I was mistaken. Instead, there was a store with Clima-cools on sale! Not just that, but they were the original model, which was exactly what Andrew was looking for! They had them in his size and at a good price, so he snapped them up. I felt so happy for him that he managed to find them. Exiting the alley, I noticed that the wine place was one street over, but we didn`t stop there.

Around 3 pm, we decide to hit Yoyogi and take a break from walking... by playing footbag. We get there and meet up with Tosh, who came to give Andrew some farewell gifts on behalf of the Tokyo crew. I`ll let Andrew describe them in his blog, but they were all really nice and really thoughtful, and I translated Tosh`s explanations into English. I managed to resist temptation, and gave a legit translation... the gifts were so thoughtful, it really hammered home the crappiness of my `welcome to Japan` gift that I gave Andrew on Thursday night. But I was good, and explained the gifts` meanings accurately. Andrew is moved. I feel so lucky that I get to play and hang out with the Japanese crew all the time.

That Monday is not a national holiday, so there`s hardly anybody in the park. That means that Andrew and I shredding is the only show in town, and we draw a lot of attention. I play better with a crowd, so this helps me warm up really fast. Andrew plays in his Clima Cools for the first time, and he plays really well. I was impressed that the toes were as good as they were, especially because he was playing with them right out the box, with no mods at all. He says he`ll probably add a rail to the insteps, because they way they are now, he wouldn`t be able to hit things like ripsteins.

"Don`t knock em til you try em" I advise. Sure enough, I see him hit 2 very Felix-y ripsteins right there. Sweet.

Andrew also warms up pretty fast. We take advantage of the fact its a two man, and trade some tips on moves. I give him some advice on making his torques less downtime, and he gives me tips on stepping ducking. His advice on stepping ducking is really good, and I get excited about it because I know I can apply his general advice to all of my alpine sets. The thing he said which was so key was this: get a big straight set, THEN duck it. Rather than try ducking it while you are dexing, just focus on a high set with your back straight, and then go for the duck. Using this advice, I hit my first flipside Ripped Warrior! Andrew calls out: "bsos! bsos!" so I do a couple more tricks, then *bam!* Bsosed it. Tosh filmed the whole session, so I rewatched it on his camera, and my flip stepping ducking was undeniably clean. The angle on my `strong` side was impossible to see, but Andrew said it looked clean to him. I`m always real paranoid about `the`, but I think both Ripped Warriors were clean. Using Andrew`s advice, I also hit ripped warrior-fog-darkwalk-stepping... far butterfly. Cool combos are on the horizon for sure. At one point I ask Andrew to look closely at my `strong` stepping ducking, and hit ripped warrior to blurry torque. His face doesn`t change expression as he says: "looks clean to me."
"Thanks" I reply. "Um... could I get some props for that combo? That wasn`t that easy."

For the first half hour or so, Andrew kept talking like he`d switch back to lavers at some point in the session, but the way he was playing, it was obvious that he wouldn`t switch back. He hit tombstone b2b and a bunch of other good stuff. The combo that impressed me most though was blender-fog. That`s just a solid combo. He tried to juice it up with food to fog, but no luck. Food-fog is such an Ahren 2000 combo. I should have requested food to tombstone...

I finish my session with a long run with some nice links, and kick off my shoes after that. Andrew is still going, and I keep encouraging him to try beasts. We agree that it would be exceptionally memorable if he hit his first Beast in Japan. Watching him try for beasts, I call out suggestions of beasts which I think would be particularly easy for him. At one point I say something like: "You seem to step out of whirligig pretty easily... how about whirligig-whirligig-food? But that last link might be hard, going into food off whirligig."
Totally non-ironically, Andrew shoots back: "No, that shouldn`t be a problem. Food is one of my staples."

Me:

I get up and give him a high five for saying with a straight face: "food is one of my staples." That totally seemed like something I would say... talking footbag but saying something unintentionally ridiculous, eg "I`m a big sealing fan."

At some point during the session (its possible Im confused about the day... but it doesn`t matter) we take a break to go get water. On the way, we pass a guy wearing a cycling outfit, who is a one-man percussion band. He has bells around his ankles, a bass expansion unit, beads on his wrists, and is surrounded by an assortment of cybals, windchimes, a cowbell, and something resembling a marimba. His sense of rhythm isn`t bad, but he`s definitely more gimmick than talent, as he lashes out with every limb, eyes trying not to look at the money-hat in front of him. I exchange glances with Andrew and make an "eh" face ( ) as if to say "this guy isn`t that great." Andrew shows his sense of timing is better than the drummer`s by immediately hitting me back: "needs more cowbell."

I start to nod in agreement, when the full impact of his comment registers on my radar, and I`m in total shock. The comment would be funny, but I`m so shocked that he used it so well, scratch that- I`m amazed that he even had the OPPORTUNITY to use that phrase, much less in a context where it was funny AND made sense. Sharp, maybe even better than "please kick me again tomorrow", if only because this was intentionally funny.

The clock is ticking on the session, so we end on some strong combos, then Andrew uses the shower at my friend`s place, and we meet up with Kenzo and Morio before their Shinkansen leaves. We have a real fast beer and dinner, and I say goodbye to Andrew. I would have liked to have spent more time hanging out with him, but it would have been criminal for him to come all the way to Japan and not see Kyoto properly. I see everybody off, then go get some beers with a non-footbag friend, before going to dinner with Kim.

Monday night I get dinner with Kim, and we toast ourselves on a job well done. The tournament ran on time, was fun, and everybody had a good time... but it still was a relief to see it over. We have a good celebration dinner, then go home and judge Shred30. Judging Shred30 with two people makes it go so much faster, since you can check each other, and you have less chance of screwing up. We calculate Andrew and my scores first, since its apparent we had the two highest scoring Shreds. Watching my shred again, it seems better than it was when I did it. That`s a relief. Andrew`s shred is really easy to calculate, since its mostly a series of repeating drills. 3rd and 4th place is also pretty clearly going to come down to Takumi and Henmo, and 5th and sixth are also in the same category. It takes us a while, but finally Kim and I calculate the top 6 scores, and go to bed feeling happy that we can already announce the top 3 finishers, as well as the top 3 Japanese finishers. I`ll post complete results and hopefully video later.

It`s 3 in the morning, and we just spent the last couple hours judging and talking footbag. So what do we do? Kim starts posting results on the Japanese forums, and I start logging the footage we shot on Friday. Footbag... addiction, or disease?

[C-Fan]

I took Tuesday and most of Wednesday off from footbag, which was probably a good idea. I played lots of frisbee and went to the zoo for the first time in like 10 years. I should really figure out how to post fotos in here. Wednesday afternoon I decided I`d drop by Yoyogi, to try out the new shorts and just have a casual shred.

I run into Yusuke on my way... he`s leaving right as I`m getting there. Bad timing. Still, Sue Kitchi, Hearts, X+Y, Keita and BBK are there, so I still get in a decent session. Everybody`s real surprised to see me, especially showing up in the middle of a session.

The new shorts work real well, which is a relief. It`s around 4 pm, so its not that hot anymore, real ideal footbag conditions. Sue Kitchi looks like he`s having his best session of the weekend, with lots of spins on both sides. If he bent his knees more on his clippers, he`d be even better. X+Y is shuffling a lot, but I don`t remember much out of the ordinary... gave him a few props throughout. BBK probably has the best session of us all, hitting a bunch of triple dexes like fog and smog, and also showing a strong flailing set. He has a couple good looks at atom bomb, and tells me he`s hit it before. That`s hardcore. Hearts looks like he`s having a bad session until the last 45 minutes or so, when we play in a 2 man circle together. He hits zooming mobius 6 or 7 times, but keeps missing the seal on the infinity. Finally, I see him hit osis-mobius-infinity-pdx mirage-handcatch, and I take his hand off with a high five. Zooming mobius! And he can hit flip mobius too... I would pay to see the money combo.

I play real casually, which is fun. This is the first session in a while where I feel I can just goof off, since the tournament is over and there are no special guests around. I do lots of pogo-style blurs all day, on both sides. Weak side is iffy, but they feel fun and are styly, so whatever. I hit pogo style blurry whirl, which is clean, and iffy on the flip. The pogo thing reminds me of something Floyd said when I was in New Zealand, about how every move just looks better without a plant. Liam proved that to me with muted tomahawk, so I decide to mess around with ducking muted tricks. I hit muted ducking paradox mirage bsos, which I can guarantee you is at least twice as hard as you think it is. I also hit muted tomahawk, and give a shout out to Liam afterwards.

I also mess around with trials a bit. Up until then, my hardest trials trick was paradox torque off a bench, but I decided to try and hit WHAT?! off a bench. Definitely felt more dangerous, but I did manage to pull it off, and on video, which was a big rush. Less dramatic, but even more satisfying, was hitting reverse swirl bsos for the first time. I managed that feat a couple times, and the most exciting thing is that I feel that maybe I can use it in hard combos in the future. I really liked lots of `03 Vasek combos because he`d throw in reverse swirls after hard torque tricks. I`d love to be able to do stuff like that.

I get excited when i hit toe merkon, but something tells me I hit that a long ass time ago and just forgot about it. That`s what happens when you`ve been playing 7.5 years. Decided to practice flip alpine stepping using Andrew`s advice, and manage to hit Ripped Warrior BSOS for my second time! I seal it with a combo that includes fog, flurry, food processor, bedwetter, and possibly blurry whirl in the opp direction of the food. I end my session on that note.

edit: strangely, I forgot to mention that I hit flipside stepping grifter for the first time, as well as clipper set grifter on both sides, both for the first time.

[C-Fan]

After TSG ended, I had the 2 sessions on Monday and Wednesday described above. Then I went to Okinawa for 4 days, which was awesomeness incarnate. I left my footbag shoes and shorts at a friend`s place in Tokyo, so when I returned back home to my part of Japan, I found myself with none of my good gear. This actually turned out to be a good thing, as it helped force me to work on my dex-less game, which has greatly improved.

My first session back home was on May 9th. I lost some time initially, as I had to re-lace an old pair of lavers and put insoles in it. I also didn`t have any good shred shorts, so I had to make due with a real baggy pair of shorts, which made stepping and most dexing pretty hard. I had gotten used to my metatarsal insoles, so now playing in regular lavers without those insoles felt real strange.

I love the sessions immediately after a tournament is over. No pressure at all to skool Shred30 or even do long runs, so you can just go out there and mess around. I hit my first reverse whirling tricks ever, and they felt real weird. I really have no desire to learn them. I hit pdx reverse whirl, and then later on on the same side I sealed blurry reverse whirl. No real motivation to try and hit them on the flip. I didn`t have much confidence in this pair of lavers to absorb lots of shock, because they had no good insoles, and the sole area of the toes was real worn down. So I mostly laid off symposium, except when I hit pdx flail bsos.

I mostly played around with strange zulu and ducking tricks. It`s hard for me to say what tricks are new, cause I know I must have hit some of them years ago, and just never hit them again. Anyway, I was stoked to hit zulu osis bsos, as well as zulu butterfly bsos. I also had a run with ducking "pdx" pickup bsos, and later in that run I hit toe gyro clipper for the first time. My best run of the day had diving clipper to zulu clipper bsos, as well as ripwalk, pdx whirl, and ducking clipper all bsos. Barfly to reverse swirl was also new.

My next session was on 5/11, and I only hit 2 ripwalks all session. Those were my only stepping tricks. That has to be some kind of personal record for me. I spent the whole session focussing on playing dexless, and had a ridiculous amount of fun. I must have hit more dexless clippers in this session than I had in the preceding 6 months combined. Hit zulu clipper b2b, starting from each side. Zulu clip-duck clip-duck clip-zulu clip. I had a breakthrough this session, where dexless clipper play just all of a sudden seemed like something I could realistically add to my game. Not just the occasional combo when I concentrate, but rather throwing in 4 or 5 dexless in the middle of runs, breathing normally. Session climaxed with: gyro clip-diving clip-gyro clip- diving clip-ducking clip-spinning clip- ducking clip-spinning clip. 8 unique dexless, and I could have probably added onto it right there. My problem with going for long unique dexless strings, is I find all the moves confusingly similar, so I`m usually not sure if I have already hit a trick or not!

My first session back in Morioka was on Saturday the 14th. It felt like late winter outside, which is ridiculous for mid-May. I had to play in a long sleeved shirt over a t-shirt, and still wished I had a hat. I meet 2 new shredders who have just joined the club, and they seem nice: Azusa (shredita) and Shunsuke (um, shredito?). Despite the cold, there are lots of people walking around, and that helps me play well. Gochin plays better than usual, and seems to be focussing on longer, pretty bothsided strings of half guiltless half tiltless. I think that`s a real good choice on his behalf, as that will benefit his game more in the long run. Ayako has improved. She hit toe mirage bsos, and has started working on her flip clipper. I gave her lots of advice on that, and really encouraged her to skool it. In Japan, Yuko is still the only shredita who seems genuinely comfortable with both clippers, and I think Ayako can go in that direction. her best combo was toe mirage-butterfly-mirage. Shunsuke has only been playing a month, but already can link ATWs and do legovers. I taught him the "jumpy" style of legover, and he picked it up real fast. I can see him getting very very good in a hurry. Azusa is working on both toe stalls, and made visible progress on her flipside toe in just one day. I also taught her ATW, which she hit twice in one day. Good potential. Shinchan has a good session. I challenge him to hit pixie mirage b2b, and learn he hasn`t hit it either side yet. After hearing my challenge though, he hits smear to pixie mirage. Booyah! He also gets his foot on the flipside. He was trying alpha smasher as well, and after some advice, he hit a real nice one. That`s very easily the coolest trick I`ve seen hit in Iwate. Nice stuff man! I played pretty solid throughout, but nothing too memorable. Mostly just taught. I did have one run with 6 or 7 contacts of ducking clipper-drifter repeat, and in the same combo had 6 contacts of ducking clipper-drifter repeat on the other side. Not sure if I had hit that combo on either side before that day, but it felt cool knowing I could hit it repeatedly on both sides in the same combo.

Next: I find shreddable shorts! Session with a bunch of new tricks, new set, and a stylish rewind fearless!

[delakong]

I'm so incredibly jealous!!! I love Okinawa. I lived there for 3 years and it was like paradise to me. The beautiful beaches within walking distance of anywhere, the gorgeous water, the postcard like landscapes. Damn, I really miss Oki.

I used to live in Yokosuka, but I didn't really like it there. I was too young to enjoy anything. I wasn't old enough to go off base by myself untill like a couple months before I moved. The only thing I really remember fun was school field trips to the temples, Mt. Fuji, Kyoto, and stuff like that. And I got to go to Tokyo Dome to watch the Tigers. That was REALLY fun. The people there really got into the game and the energy was incredibly infectious. And I went to Tokyo Disney Land about a million times. Beautiful stuff you get to see over there. I liked the cherry blossom festivals. Before we got to move on base we could see Mt. Fuji from our kitchen window (pretty far away though). Cool stuff to experience.

I miss the huge baths too. Now I'm stuck with a tiny bath that I can even fit in and the water gets cold.

Sorry to put such a pointless point in your blog, but anytime someone mentions Okinawa I HAVE to talk about living there. You are a very lucky man.

[C-Fan]

I'm so incredibly jealous!!! I love Okinawa. I lived there for 3 years You are a very lucky man.

Whoa whoa whoa there fella. Hold on a second. You lived in Okinawa for three years and you`re jealous of my 4 day trip? Dude, you LIVED there for THREE YEARS!!! That`s jealousy straight up, right there! I spent my entire time on Ishigaki-jima, which was pretty idyllyic. Not touristy at all, felt like what I imagine old Okinawa was like. I can`t imagine living there... definitely like paradise.

Anyway, I`m finally making some headway through all my fanzine backlog, which feels good. This weekend I hit Tokyo and had some good shred times, but first I want to knock out my last session before the weekend:

May 17th- While playing in baggy-ass shorts helped me learn dexless style, it was a big relief to find a pair of usable shorts in my apartment. Shreddable mesh shorts meant I could do step sets again, as well as shuffle confidently, but I still made a point to skool the dexless style. I ended up doing a good mix of the two, which I think is a good combination for my game. I find that dexless helps me get some energy back, so if I shuffle for a bit, then do dexless, I can do longer runs overall.

I did a load of laudry during this session, so I`d shred 20 minutes, change the water in the machine, then shred some more. I had a slow start because of this, but eventually it blossomed into a nice productive session. Thinking of Gochin, I tried plo b2b and hit it within a couple tries. Within the same combo, I also hit pixie ss mirage b2b, and got smear bsos. That felt real satisfying, because lately my flip pixies had deteriorated a lot. I played around a bit more with pogo-style step sets, and hit fog and bedwetter using this style. For some reason, in-to-out dexes after a pogo set feel natural, but out to in dexes feel really really strange. I thought a bit about how when I was in NZ, Floyd and I came to the conclusion that moves always look better if you can do them without a plant. With that in mind, I hit spinning clipper without a plant on both sides, and barely missed bsos a few times. So much harder than with the plant.

The highlight of the session came when I decided to skool flip quantum. Before this session, flip quantum was one of like 2 basic sets that I couldn`t hit flipside to save my life. I could hit nuclear, atomic, leggy atomic, stepping, flailing, pixie, wonton, and furious sets on both sides (with varying degrees of consistency... but I could hit them), but couldn`t hit flip fairy or flip quantum. It seemed kinda shameful that I could hit flip wonton, but not flip quantum, so I decided to skool it some. To my happy surprise, I hit a legit flip quantum set, footing toe blur! Strangely enough, my flip quantum is extremely hippy, as opposed to my strong quantum, which is real leggy. I found the secret to flip quantum was mostly focussing on dropping the set foot to the ground as fast as possible, keeping the knee of the dex leg as straight as possible, and lifting the knee of the dex leg at the same time you drop your set leg. Focussing on this new method, I managed to seal flip toe blur, and promptly bsosed it. I also hit flip slapping butterfly (toe sidewalk) for the first time, and bsosed that as well. I think if I skool it, I can make flip quantum a pretty reliable set, though I`ll likely only hit basic 4s out of it. Who knows.

That should have been the final highlight of my session, but I thought I`d try one last thing before heading in and putting my clothes in the dryer. Since I was wearing good shorts for the first time since TSG, I thought I should try flip stepping-ducking just to make sure I didn`t forget how to do it. In honor of Andrew Grant, I managed to hit ripped warrior b2b for the first time ever! I remember the first time I met Stan Sagalovskiy, back in like 2001, he thought I hit ripped warrior b2b. Later, he told me that that was one of the reasons he decided to get serious about freestyle, since that combo inspired him. He was a little disappointed when like a year or 2 later he learned that I had never hit flip ripped warrior, so he didn`t actually see that combo hit So when I finally did hit it back to back last week, I also gave a shout out to Stan. I sealed Ripped Warrior b2b with a run that included ducking clipper-duck clip-spin clipper bsos. Satisfied with the suprisingly good session, I called it a day, and decided to rest up for the weekend in Tokyo:

Next: I get my good Lavers back! I shred in good weather! I find A+W Root Beer in Tokyo!

[C-Fan]

Last weekend I said: "man, f*ck this BS winter weather, I`m going to Tokyo!"

And so I did.

As hoped, Tokyo was good weather, good lavers, good friends, good shred and good times. My feet had begun to hurt recently, probably due to having to play in my old lavers out of necessity. The old lavers are totally worn down in the toes, and don`t have my good metatarsal insoles, so they offer no protection.

Saturday I felt real good going into Yoyogi. I played "whack-a-mole" the night before, which was a surprisingly excellent way to blow off tension. The weather is perfect: sunny, hot, but not too hot, and a subtle, occasional breeze just strong enough to cool you off, but not mess with the footbag in flight. I slap on some sunblock, toss my nice lavers (with the good insoles) in my bag and trek to the park. To my surprise, there`s hardly anybody there, footbaggers and otherwise Such a beautiful day, you`d expect it to be swarming. Oh well, just more touches for me, and more space to play.

Kim and Yama are there when I arrive, and I trade "heys." Kim bought a rocking new portable stereo for less than 30 bucks, and its much louder than the old stereo. Combined with the fact that we are the only people on the pier, made for the rarest of situations: a Yoyogi shred where we could HEAR our own music! Huzzah!

It takes me a little bit to readjust to my good lavers. Specifically, the insoles make my toes feel kinda elevated in the shoes, but I eventually get used to the way they feel. In any case it feels good knowing these shoes can absorb impact so much better than my other pair. I warm up with 100+ consec kicks, 50+ alternating toe stalls, and 20+legovers. I think warming up makes a difference, and helps me play better. As is sometimes the case, I began this shred feeling like a different player. Sometimes I`ll have a session where I feel kinda Risden-y, sometimes I feel kinda like Pete, etc. Saturday, I felt like Eli Piltz, which is a rare feeling. Specifically, I felt like circa 2000 Eli Piltz.

Riding this vibe, I proceed to hit symp toe whirl bsos a lot. Or things like symp mirage to symp toe whirl bsos. It`s lots of fun, and people are surprised to see me playing that way. The most Eli-esque combo I hit is blurry drifter to paradox torque. I can actually see the Shredquarters in my head, with that white sculpture in the background... right off Chad`s "blades of steel" tape. In the same combo I surprise myself by hitting tomahawk without a plant. It`s just the second time I`ve ever hit that, and I did it midstring! My last real Eli-style combo of the day is when I started a run with flurry to symp toe whirl, which was fun.

Shortly, I start going back to my normal style... which these days is a mix of shuffle and dexless. Usually like 4 or 5 dexless, then some shuffle, then more dexless, etc. Unlike my last weekend in Morioka, my new dexless style gets a reaction in Tokyo. People are pretty surprised to see me do long strings of it, and I feel happy my practice paid off. There`s a real good vibe in the park. We listen to some new 2manyDJs, and it makes me think of when I saw them in concert in New Zealand with Adrian and Damian and co. Those guys are great. I show off my newly acquired flip quantum, and hit flip tripwalk for the first time, and promptly bsos it. Hit that a bunch all day. I tried flip plasma, but my flip tripwalk is still kinda midtimey, so plasma is out of the question. I toy around a bit more with pogo tricks, and hit pogo pdx torque for the first time, real cleanly. I feel like Tuan `95! Back then, that was considered a 7 add move. Definitely harder than blurry torque, but doesn`t feel seven-y.

Kim plays well in what would end up being his last session in Lavers. Stepping clipper to barrage. Reverse swirl to torque. Gyro mirages without a plant. Yama was there and played solidly. He just has a real solid style, I really think he is one of the best players in Tokyo. Hearts had a good session too, with longer strings than usual. Gave him lots of props. I wish he would spin more though in his regular combos, since his spins are so good. X+Y played decently, but I thought he had a better session on Sunday.

I bow out around 5, and head home to shower. Playing in the new lavers was fun, but adjusting to the shoe`s shape gave me blisters on both feet, which required bandages. I was good about ignoring the pain on Saturday, but it became a factor on Sunday.

Sunday is also nice out, a little cooler than Saturday, which is actually welcome. For some reason, all the people in Tokyo who decided not to go outside on Saturday, decided to come to Yoyogi on Sunday. The pier was packed... the footbaggers were sandwiched between a Spanish tango group (with a dominating sound system) and a hip hop crew that was practicing. Later, a capoeira troop would squeeze the pier even further, and add to the chaotic sonic dissonance with their berimbaus.

My muscles felt fine this session, but the blisters on my feet provided random, sharp bursts of pain at unexpected intervals. They weren`t even linked to specific tricks... sometimes symposium set them off, sometimes dexless did. It was real frustrating, because it felt so out of my control. I stretched, I slept well, I took care of my body. But when the skin on my right ring-toe decides to rebel, what can I do? I bandage my physical problems, and bandage my mental game by staying focussed. It`s a big challenge though, because of all the dissonant noise generated by 3 warring stereos and the berimbaus, and also because the air stinks of semen (in spring, some tree in Japan gives off this awful smell, and that day it was especially pungent). I do very well keeping my mental game in check, but the pain is pretty bad. I strongly consider just going to the arcade for the rest of the day, but I decide to tough it out, and take it as conditioning. Yusuke and Hearts act real silly, and that really helps me keep cool. They make me laugh real hard when they start singing along to select parts of the Champion`s League song.

I have a few real long strings, but I definitely played better on Saturday. I hit flurry-blackula-pdx torque, which felt like a Ken-combo from 2 years ago. Hit stepping whirl to tomahawk both sides. I enjoyed watching everybody else play well though. I saw Yusuke hit torquex2 for the first time. He`s also been skooling his flip steps, which are very clean. Consequently I saw him hit ripwalk to blur, and a bunch of flip ripwalks. Keita threw down his usual toe craziness, but I was most impressed to see him use lots more clippers. Ducking symple legover, clipper set dlo, legbeater, tripwalks. Very very excited about this development. Keita has always been one of the most talented shredders in Tokyo, but very one-dimensional, since his game was all-toe. Now that he is throwing clippers in the mix, he looks to be on the path of becoming a complete shredder. His tripwalks were especially impressive... he`d get the first dex up by his knee usually.

Morii showed up later, and I thought he played real well. Fog and blurry whirl in the same guiltless combo with lots of other shuffle. Whirl-drifter repeat and almost blender tacked onto that. Food processor. X+Y hit flipside smog and flipside smoke. Impressive. Kim plays the entire session in new blue clima cools. They look real cool. Everybody comments that Kim seems to play more like a robot in them. Saw him foot stepping clipper-reverse swirl-torque. His best combo was likely-clipper-flapper-clipper-reverse swirl. Vasek-y. Later on we talk about his new `robot` style. I mention how Tim Duncan is called "t-robot" because he is so fundamental; no flash. But "K-Robot" isn`t that catchy. Then I think about Kim`s old nickname, Kim Ghidora, and I blurt out: "Mecha Ghidora!" There`s a moment, then we all burst out laughing. I think it`s a good nickname, I hope it sticks.

In the end I felt good I toughed it out on Sunday. It feels good when you can beat your frustration and come out with a decent session as the result. We all go get dinner and drinks afterwards, and I hear some big news about the next Japanese tourney, which I`m elated to hear. But its still confidential, so more on that later...

[C-Fan]

Wednesday at work I had to give a speech/presentation by myself in front of the English department and reps from all the other English departments in my city, so when work ended, I felt like a load had been lifted off my shoulders. I checked modified before leaving work, and had a short PM back and forth with Jon Schneider. For some reason, he was up at 4am in the States... I PMed him back telling him the weather in Japan was beautiful, I had just watched "Mowing the GRASS", and I was gonna go out and shred. I also told him I`d hit some stuff in his honor.

Dashed home and figured I had a good 45 minutes til the sun set. In situations like that its real tempting to skip the warm-up, but I was diligent and did it. 100+ inside kicks, 100+ alternating toe stalls, bunch of clippers. I tried to start the session off with dexless play, but the position of the setting sun made spinning tricky. I did hit ducking clipper to spinning osis bsos for the first time though, and that felt nice. It`s always reassuring to hit something decent early in a session, kinda takes off any pressure you might put on yourself to hit good stuff.

I spent some time skooling some of my weaker components. I should do that more often... skool my weak stuff by myself in Iwate, then show it off when its mastered when I go to Tokyo. I pretty much did that with my dexless style. Anyway, I practiced flip pixies, and ironed out some of the careless mistakes I was doing with them. By really focussing on keeping the set near my body, and keeping my dex leg straight throughout, I had much better sets. Hit something like 7 contacts of Whirl War I on my first try, so I figured my whirls were good enough that I didn`t need to skool them.

Maybe in honor of Jon, I started playing around some with my swirls. My flipside reverse swirl has improved a lot. I still get it maybe once every 6 tries or so, but at least it feels better. It used to feel like the most alien move ever. One time that I hit it, I had enough control that I was able to link it to far symple swirl. First time hitting that combo, which I thought was very stylish. Then I decided to try far symple swirl on my weak side, and after a couple tries, I managed to hit that for the first time! Putting 1 and 1 together, i took the next logical step, and hit reverse swirl (strong side) to far symple swirl. So I hit reverse swirl to far swirl for the first time on both sides! After a few minutes of skooling, I also managed to hit far symple swirl x2. Satisfied, I moved on to other components. That one`s for you Jon!

I spent a good chunk of time trying to figureout nuclear sets. I`d hit them both sides plenty of times before, but it was always real inconsistent. It seems like a cool set that is pretty easy on your body, so thats something I definitely would like to add to my game. I`ve really been cutting back on my symposium sets, for my body`s sake. I think it helped me to really set the bag straight up next to me, and consciously wait for a second before moving. Still had the bag run into my support leg a lot. Didn`t make too much tangible progress, but I think if I keep working on it, it will pay off. I had matador bsos on my foot.

Like I mentioned before, I watched Mowing the GRASS right before leaving work. Inspired by Flash, I hit fog to symp whirl. Then I decided to step it up a notch, and hit it BSOS! Pretty happy with that. Guess that`s kinda Honza-ish. I also tried doing flip janis, but no luck there. I thought my newly acquired flip quantum would help, but I still feel like I don`t understand it.

I always practice in the parking lot in front of my house. At one point, a group of like 5 of my students walked by and were all surprised to see me in my shred gear. They asked me if I was going running, and I told them no, and showed them some freestyle which blew them away. They were genuinely impressed, which was a nice lift. I wonder how I would have felt if, when I was a high schooler, I ran into my young French teacher and saw him, I dunno, juggling cleavers in his parking lot. That must have been kinda surreal for my kids.

As my session winds down, I decide to skool mobius a little bit, but planting and just spinning normally. I can hit mobius occasionally, but usually I think of it as a specific trick. My hope is that by practicing dexless play, and getting my normal spins to the point where I don`t think about them, I will eventually be able to hit tricks like mobius and vortex without thinking of them too hard. Like, just do a normal spin, and then do the torque. To my happy surprise, I hit mobius (with a plant I think) on my weak spin side. I play a few guiltless contacts into the seal, then go for flipside... and hit it!?! I`m so shocked that I handcatch it, but it was definitely controlled enough that I could have played on. Mobius BSOS And the midstring one was without a plant! I literally jump up and down with happiness, cause Mobius BSOS is one of those things I wasn`t sure if I would ever hit. I think my problem was that in the past I skooled things like mobius and vortex before really skooling things like spinning clipper. As a result, I could hit the big tricks occasionally, but it was always pretty hard. Now that I`m hitting a ton of spinning and gyro clippers on both sides, every session (almost every run really), I think the bigger spinning tricks will come more naturally. That`s the hope anyway. But yeah... Mobius BSOS! Whoo!

Next: casual shred at Basketball practice, but with some nice results.

[Nathan]

Next: casual shred at Basketball practice, but with some nice results.

Ahh! Damn your suspenseful posts.


Anyway, I love your blog. The time and effort you put into each post really shows.

[C-Fan]

Next: casual shred at Basketball practice, but with some nice results.

Ahh! Damn your suspenseful posts.
.

Just keep in mind it`s ME we`re talking about. If Jorden posted something suspenseful like: "hit something good yesterday, will post in my next entry" that`d be pretty suspenseful, but with me, you know it`s gonna be something like: "I hit flipside flapper!!!!"

But yeah, thanks for the kind words. I`m always happy that other people have fun with my blog too.

So last week I took my lavers to work, and got in some light footbag during breaks in basketball practice. Not to turn this into Jeremy`s touch-footie blog or anything, but I`ve been skooling my jumpshots a lot, and its really paying off. Since I`m the coach of the team, I try to make a point to get my teammates involved and pass more than shoot, and when I do shoot, I make a point to get layups as a way of setting an example (my kids like to jack up 3s and far jumpers, instead of driving to the basket. I want them to learn to never settle for a jumper when they have a layup chance). But last week a couple kids were out with injuries, so we had to practice 3 on 2 games. Usually the team of 2 lost (as they should), except for once where I was on the team of 2 along with the best student player. We ran the screen and roll real well, and I couldn`t miss a jumpshot, I hit like 4 from free throw distance off of screens. Felt good to show my students that I can shoot when I need to (against a zone for example).

Feeling confident from the good basketball, I translated that into a pretty good shred session, considering how light it was. My flip pixie practice paid off some, as I was able to hit flipside pixie same whirl for the first time! I sealed it with a string where I bsosed it. I also hit pixie same mirage x3 starting on each side. Hmm... my blog really reads like an intermediate blog sometimes. People must think: "Ken gets excited by pixie ss mirage x3? Doesn`t he have anything better to post in his blog?" But I would counter by saying we all get excited by hitting stuff that is hard for us. I hit a lot of stuff I don`t post in my blog, because its not that hard for me. I could probably hit 5 unique fearless within a couple tries, but that might be easier than say, flipside fear.

Aaaanyway. I also hit muted pixie same swirl for the first time, and came agonizingly close to it on my flipside several times. That`s totally a Felix trick. I also hit ducking swirl for the first time, and was pretty close to it on the flipside. I set a new personal gyro clipper record by hitting 4. This was particularly exciting for me, because I wasn`t even trying. In the middle of a dexless string I got 2 in a row, then without thinking did a third, at which point I hit my 4th. Thing is, my 4th was pretty controlled too, so I should have gone for 5, but instead did a ducking clipper into more dexless. Should try to up that record, cause I know I can. Speaking of records, I also decided to count how long I could go dexless. Not unique dexless or anything, but interesting dexless. I managed 16 tricks, and then a couple tries later I got 15 tricks. A bit too many ducking clippers for my taste, but lots of spins too, so it evens out. I was proudest of the 15 string, because it had better variety: more spins and a zulu clipper in there. I would have tried more to get to 20, but I was kicked out of the gym because it was 7pm.

I also played lightly again on Friday, but not nearly as long. Got pixie same clipper bsos, and I also got flip pixie same osis for the first time, and promptly bsosed that too. Flipside pixie same osis is hard yo! At least for me. I also managed to hit pdx drifter to spinning clipper bsos, which is notable because I had never hit that combo on either side before, and I got them both for the first time in a bsos string. Should try and make some kind of drill out of that, like pdx drifter-spin clip-drifter repeat, or pdx drifter-gyro clip repeat.

Just felt real good that I could have light, quick sessions which were fun and yielded new tricks. Didn`t have a chance to play at all this weekend, so I`m itching to play after work today. Footbag!

[hacksterbator]

a-ha. have i started a little clima cool rebellion in japan??? i have completely switched over to the clima cools now. i have some toe technique to perfect, but the shoes are smoothing me out and forcing me to rework alot of my tricks. but it's great, because now instead of hitting these tricks from time to time with bad form, i hit them more often and with good form. i love climacools.

out of curiosity, what type did kim get? the same as mine, the 001's with velcro? or did he get 001's with laces? or some other type of climacool?

glad to hear you're working on your dexless style. i was too untill i pulled a neck muscle doing some ducking. i guess you're kicking my ass with the jfc blogging... i had better get on that. where does the time go?

[C-Fan]

I`m not 100% sure what kind of Climas Kim got... I`ll ask next time I`m in Tokyo. Not to let you down, but Kim`s decision to get Climas was influenced by Jason Crook more than anything. After Orton put out the Crook video, Kim got inspired to try shoes other than lavers. Just like you, he`s liking them a lot, and is retiring his lavers.

I had a small, but rewarding session yesterday. Let me set the scene: I was invited to spend last weekend with my Vice Principal, which meant good eating and fun sightseeing, but no shred. As loyal Fanzine readers know, I had a couple light sessions last week at basketball practice, but hadn`t had a true session since last Wednesday, which made me determined to shred on Monday... except that I got derailed by errands. Tuesday it rained most of the day and I had a dentists appointment after work, so I was going to write it off. Thankfully though, I was done by 5:45, so I figured I had about an hour of light (in a wet parking lot) to get some adds on the lavers. As it turned out, it was a good session!

I warmed up with the usual 100+ kicks, then did a bunch of toe stalls, but got bored so I threw in lots of mirages on both sides while I was doing them. Probably still got over 100 toe stalls. The ground was still wet in most areas, and the sun was setting, so it wasn`t exactly ideal conditions, but I kept my mental game together. I had watched "The Chosen Juan" vid at work, and lately I`ve been kinda obsessed with Rangel`s style, so I started off my session practicing my paradox torques, as well as my spins with the hope of skooling mobius later. The first good combo of the day was hitting zulu clipper to paradox torque for the first time, and bsosing it! I had never even tried that combo on either side before, so it felt good to get it bsos. Another good string I hit early on had tripwalk, pixie butterfly, ducking clipper, and spinning clipper all both sides in one string.

I practiced lots of spins. I got 14 dexless, which felt pretty good because it had less ducking clippers than usual. In the realm of dexless-ness, ducking clipper is the most bail-y move I do. Its like pdx mirage in my regular style, or smear. I think my 14 string included all 8 variations of spinning and ducking clippers. I think I can break 20, but the problem is it gets kinda boring, because I lack the variety to do real interesting dexless. But I`m working on fixing that. On that note, I toyed around a lot with doing spinning tricks off of ducking and diving clippers. I find it easier to spin off of those than off of butterflies. I hit diving clipper-vortex-ducking clipper, without planting on the vortex. Pretty happy with that. One vortex is getting much better than the other. I footed mobius a good 5 times on each side all day, but had trouble sealing it well. Hopefully all the work I put into it will pay off though. I did hit ducking clipper to mobius (with a plant, but using the other spin) but my seal took me near some parking headstones, so I stopped for fear of falling over. My practice place sucks, but at least I was practicing.

I mixed up my spinning practice with some drilling of my stepping ducking sets. Andrew`s advice is really really good. Its so weird, like the second you start trying to duck a step set before the dex is done, it instantly becomes real hard and crap. Its difficult for me to wait for the set to finish, but if I really focus on doing a high step (with no intention of ducking), I can almost always get the duck in by going for it after the dex leg plants. I hit spike hammer for the first time in ages, and then I hit it flipside for my first time ever. Came close to bsos a lot, but no luck. I also managed to hit flipside jackknife for the first time, after like a million attempts. Incredibly, I was able to bsos it in the same string!

As the session wound down, I went back to spinning tricks, and hit zoom-style gyro clipper for the first time, and then hit it on the other side. I came irritatingly close to bsos a good 10 times before I finally managed to hit: osis-gyro clipper-ducking clipper-ducking clipper-other osis-gyro clipper-satisfied hand catch. I was real happy not just that I managed to bsos it, but that I was able to bsos it in a unique dexless string. 6 unique dexless. One little trick that I found helps me with spinning moves is to focus on moving one shoulder in the direction of the spin. So if I am doing a spin starting with my left foot clipper, I will focus on totally spinning my left shoulder 360 degrees. I used to focus on whipping my head around, but I found that I can sometimes turn my head, but my torso doesn`t follow enough.

In light of my improved spinning on both sides, I decided to try doing flipside inspinning. I was never even close to flip inspins before yesterday, but somehow I managed to hit flip inspinning clipper! I recovered from the shock of seeing it on my clipper well enough that I managed to seal it... and bsos it! Woot! Very nice surprise. I should start throwing at least my strong side inspinning clipper into my dexless shred. Maybe if I skool it hard enough, I can get double spins. I`d be real happy if I could get double spins, even on just one side.

The inspin clipper bsos would have been a nice note to end the session on, but on a total whim I decided to try one more thing, and was happily surprised to get it: butterfly kick to same side swirl! I had hit things like eggbeaters, drifters, torques and dlos off of butterfly kick, but getting swirl was real hard, and felt real styly.

It was getting dark as I got that last combo, so I went in and showered. I knew that just playing at all that day would feel good, but I totally didn`t expect to hit so much new stuff in that one short session. Gotta love footbag for the pleasant surprises it sometimes sends your way.

[x+y]

Sorry if I take away your fun to check on your own.

Kim-san's Climas are Euro2004 Model which have same shape as Clima#1 laced.
His blue one is Italian color and Tencho's black one is Germany color.
Last week I heard Kim-san bought another color (maybe England?)
I really envied that

By the way Juan is one of my favorite players!
His butterflies, his drifters, his torques....argh.

[C-Fan]

Yeah, Juan is style. I wish there were more footage of him out there.

Right on, so yesterday I didn`t have a dentist appointment, and the weather was excellent, so I dashed home after work, laced up, and was already warming up at 5:10. I did my usual warmup of 100+ inside kicks, and continued by doing ducking inside kicks on both sides, which is fun and surprisingly challenging. I did lots of toe stalls, but didn`t really count. I also decided to do some skooling of my BOPs, so I did like 32 infinities, 10 osii, and 14 legovers. Except for osis, these were all first try, and kinda half-assed, but I still figure its better than nothing. Because my last session was so good, and I`ve been playing well lately, I mentally warned myself to be ready for a bad session. I kinda figured I was due. But right after thinking that, it occurred to me that I might be able to avoid having a bad session, by mentally being prepared for it. I think that helped me later on.

I began my session with basic dexless, and was rather alarmed to find I had lost my touch with it. I tried to keep calm, but my spins and even dives were really bad. I tried not to give it too much importance, and hopefully it will come back better to me next time. It should, since I`d been making good progress up until yesterday. The best I could manage was 11 dexless, but it wasn`t easy, and it was kinda boring choice of moves. The closest thing I could get to something notable, was hitting spinning clipper to spinning osis bsos for the first time. Not much, but I`ll take it. I also hit spinning clip-spinning butterfly-spinning clipper for the first time, and hit that on both sides. I took some consolation knowing that even on a bad dexless day, I`m still better at it than I was even just a month ago. It`s important for me to keep my progress in perspective.

Like the previous session, I mixed up dexless practice with stepping ducking practice. Stepping ducking is something I used to be good at, but then I started making it slurry, so I kinda dropped it for 3 years or so until Andrew came to Japan and retaught it to me. Hit spike hammer on both sides a lot, but still couldn`t get it bsos. One of my best combos of the day was hitting ripped warrior to spike hammer. That just seems stylish to me, cause its kinda both sided, and harder than rippedx2 imo. I also hit blurry whirl bsos in the sealing combo. As I was practicing stepping ducking, I recalled having read in the "new fearless combos" thread that somebody in Poland had hit ripped warrior to mullet. I could mentally see the post in my head, and thought: hey, why not? I managed to hit it and seal with an osis within a few tries, which was a cool feeling. The stepping ducking combo that eluded me all day was spike hammer to darkwalk. Twice I managed to clear everything but missed the stall. Like, the pixie dive off the first trick were fine, and I had plenty of time for the butterfly, but I just missed. I think a nice eventual goal would be to link 4 or more alpine fearless tricks.

Late-ish in the session, I got the idea to try frantic sets. I had almost decided to end my session, because I was getting frustrated with my lack of success with dexless, and thought that I could settle with my success with stepping ducking and call it a decent session. But maybe that mental preparation earlier told me to stay out longer, and I`m happy I did.

I had tried frantic sets in the past, but had no success with them. My strong quantum set is pretty good, and my weak pixie is usable, but I could never combine them into a set despite my best efforts. A few weeks ago I finally picked up quantum sets on my flipside, but until yesterday, the thought never crossed my mind to try frantic, even though now it would be with my strong pixie set (which, not to sound too in love with myself, I think is particularly strong). Maybe this was because my flip quantum is still pretty weak, and kinda mid-timey. Whatever the case, I finally tried doing frantic on my strong pixie side, and I was very happy with the results.

My first try at it, I was so mentally confused about what my legs had to do, that I didn`t even toe stall it. But after 3 tries, I was already grinning, because I just KNEW that I would hit something frantic that day, and likely this would become a set that I could pump for some mileage. Sure enough, I hit frantic butterfly within a couple more tries! I found what really helped me hit frantic was to set extremely close to my body, and lean into the set. I hit frantic butterfly a few more times, and usually sealed it with osis to a small string. Soon enough though, I felt confident enough with it, that I decided to try and hit it midstring. Immediately, my first thought was: `hey, frantic butterfly is just bedwetter rewound... wouldn`t it be cool if...?` So I tried bed to e-walk, and hit it a couple times. My first time I hit it I actually yelled out loud: "aw yeeeeeah!" but neglected to seal it because I was busy cheering. I rectified that by hitting the combo again and sealing it with an osis to a run. That`s a pretty cool rewind combo. I practiced the set a bit more, and got a good enough set that I was soon able to hit E-walk to fog, and threw in a flurry in the sealing combo.

While I was stoked that I had gotten the hang of e-walk so quickly, I also thought that it`d be a good idea to try and see what else I could hit off of the set. I naturally tried frenzy a bunch, but I couldn`t stick it. Frenzy definitely requires a more legit set than e-walk does... sort of like janiwalker vs fury. You don`t need a true set to hit butterfly variants. Still, I did manage to pick up a few new moves using frantic. I think my first was frantic ss mirage. I also hit frantic legover (crispy smog) pretty easily, and eventually hit crispy smog to darkwalk. Then, I tried frantic ss butterfly, and hit it within a couple tries. I sealed it with a few guiltless, then in the same combo... e-walk! Then later in the same combo... e-walk again! i was very excited by this. I sealed my first frantic ss butterfly with a run that included 2 more e-walks... not bad for my first day doing this set. Frantic ss butterfly is pretty stylish. One of my better combos of the day was frantic ss butterfly-ducking butterfly-blur-smear-e walk. I also hit frantic osis (crispy pixie torque... crispy porque? Bacon?) and frantic clipper. Just as I figured, frantic clipper is way harder than e-walk, in the same way that high-stepping clipper is harder than Sunilwalk.

I ended my session with a couple attempts at some frantic quad dexes, but was already pretty tired at this point. It`s funny... in a recent fanzine entry I wrote that I didn`t think I`d be able to hit anything big off of my weak quantum set, but now that I do a pixie in front of it, I feel confident I can hit something cool, given just a bit more time. I also think its kinda funny how just a couple weeks ago I was pretty much only skooling dexless play, and now I`m back to 3 dex combos and other fearless shenanigans... that`s the beauty of footbag, you can always find something new to have fun with. Endless possibilities.

[hacksterbator]

way to go ken with the frantic set! bedwetter> e-walk is so cool. have you hit it the other way around as well? props on all the stepping duck stuff too!

Yeah, Juan is style. I wish there were more footage of him out there.

juan is the bestest! i really wish he hadn't moved out to california, because now he never trekks up to winnipeg, which he used to do twice a year. i miss that guy. maybe he'll venture up during the summer?

that`s the beauty of footbag, you can always find something new to have fun with. Endless possibilities.

indeed! probably my favorite thing about footbag is that there is always one million things to busy your self with, either cleaning up this or that, or working new stuff, reworking the old. there's always work to be done.

[C-Fan]

So while my epic session on Wednesday felt great, I definitely overdid it with the frantic, and my left hip flexor let me know about it, even before the session was over. Stretched out as much as I could after the session, didn`t exercise at all on Thursday, and started feeling better by Friday. I decided to play basketball on Friday cause I was feeling good, and that didn`t exacerbate it at all, so on Saturday I decided to shred with the Morioka crew.

In retrospect, I should have still taken it easy, and not done any frantic sets, but I really wanted to show off the set, and Shin-chan brought a camera, so I couldn`t pass up the chance to see my frantic on video to see if it was clean. I struck a decent balance, hitting a few frantic sets, but mostly playing lightly and just doing my normal stuff.

The shredders who turned out that day were Shin-chan, Ayako, Yukari, and a new shredder; Enta. Enta is a guy, and has only been playing since April (2 months), but already has good mastery over toe tiltless, doing ATWs, mirages, and legovers. Saw him hit like 4 mirages in a row. His biggest trick is symposium mirage. I gave him some tips on symposium mirage, about raising your arms when you jump to generate more lift. I explained to him how you apply that idea to ALL symposium tricks, but he didn`t seem to really incorporate my advice. In those situations I always am left to wonder if he didn`t understand my advice (because of my Japanese) or if he just didn`t want it. Yukari played well, hitting clipper a few times, and some consec mirages. Ayako is becoming much more consistent, and I can see her easily becoming one of Japan`s best shreditas if she really sticks with it. She`s throwing in more legovers into her strings, and her strong clipper is getting more consistent. Shin-chan has a good session. He hits Alpha Smasher again. He also hits one of the challenges I give him: spinning clipper to ripwalk. He gets double handed props for that one.

The highlight of the session for me is seeing my dexless return. I`d been skooling dexless pretty hard since TSG ended a month ago, and was happy making progress. But during my last session, I really felt shaky, and was worried that I had lost it. Thankfully, my confidence with it came back, and I had a few real strong runs of dexless play mixed into my regular strings. Spinning clipper to spinning osis on one side felt real strong, and I threw that in a lot. I also hit spinning clipper -gyro clip-spin osis in midstring, which I want to make a staple combo. My best string of the day was over 40 contacts, and had lots of long dexless sections in it. We filmed it, but it was tripod, and I figure over half of it must have been off camera, so I didn`t bother rewatching it. Maybe I should have, just to estimate contacts. My best combo after that was 30 contacts, but was notable because I kicked it off with an e-walk. So that`s my most legit sealing combo of that trick to date. We got that whole string on tape, so I got to re-watch it. My 21st trick was blurry whirl, and I also managed spinning osis bsos in the combo, which is still kinda hard for me.

Other highlights for me were hitting blurry whirl-ps whirl bsos, without really trying. Got that first try. I also hit barfly-torque repeat on my first try... not sure if I had hit that before (in Osaka maybe? Cant remember, I had the flu), but I got it real clean and easily. E-walk to fog again, this time on video. I could only watch my strings by looking into the eyepiece of the camera, and it was a tiny black and white screen. I really just wanted to see if my frantic sets are clean, and I think they are. Hopefully I can get better confirmation on my next Tokyo trip, which should be next weekend.

We started off our session playing to FBS "You`ve come a long way baby" which always makes me think of Mulroney fucking shit up on Windsor`s old vid Just Shred. We played the second half of the session to J5s "power in numbers", but it was kind of a rhythmic letdown after the frenetic beats of Fatboy. Still, good vibe throughout.

[C-Fan]

On Sunday I went to a barbecue, and brought my lavers along for the hell of it. As I figured, I only dicked around in them a little bit, but it was still fun. No notable tricks or combos really, but the session helped me appreciate how much fun footbag is, and how far I`ve come. On Sunday I played on grass, in baggy shorts, with unrelenting wind, by myself, and it was kinda chilly. So in other words, absolutely terrible conditions. But despite that, I still had fun, and I was still able to hit all sorts of things that used to be hard for me even under good conditions. Things like, 6 unique dexless, lots of spins, flurries, beds, etc. Hell, even just a month ago I wouldn`t have tried for spinning tricks on a windy day on uneven grass, but now I have enough confidence in them that I could hit some decent stuff even in crap conditions. That made me happy.

Yesterday I did lots of errands after work, but was done with them by 6, so I strapped on the blades figuring a light, one hour session, would be better than no session at all. I was a good boy and did my warmup regimen, and then just played lightly, not really going for much new stuff. The one combo I was hoping for was gyro clipper-pdx egg bsos, but it was deceptively hard and I couldn`t land it. I hit inspinning mirage on my flip for the first time, but missed my seal my first two times hitting it. Finally, I sealed one with downtime plo (like dlo set from opp toe), which felt good cause I normally seal new tricks with BOPs. Anyway, I managed to bsos the trick, and also got blur bsos and like 5 or 6 contacts of ducking clipper-spinning clipper repeat in the sealing combo. Inspinning mirage bsos! Whoo! That combo was easily the highlight of the first half of my session.

At some point in my session, I started to get frustrated, and felt my mental game start to slip. Little things like missing an easy trick a couple times when starting a string, or the bag rolling off my toe when I placed it there before going for a string. Just as I started to get pissy, I thought about Justin Dale. Out of nowhere his name just popped in my head, and it really illustrated how selfish and childish it is of me to get annoyed at a bad footbag session. Talented footbaggers are out there injured, and would kill to play, would kill to have a `bad` session, because it`s better than no session at all. And here I am crying that a footbag won`t stay on my foot. Almost exactly one year ago I started playing again after an injury-induced 2 month absence from the sport. Thinking about that, and how lucky I was to be playing at all, uninjured, outdoors... it just kinda cut through the fog in my head, and I got a grip on my game again. Session improved after that.

As the sun dipped under the horizon, I strongly contemplated going inside. Instead, I found myself thinking about how weird it is that I`d only hit shooting sets on one side... and that was my weak stepping AND weak atomic side. That`s really strange to me. I figured that my atomic and stepping were both good enough that I should be able to hit shooting on my flip, so I tried a couple on a whim. Similar to Kenny`s whirling swirl story from Tricks of the Trade, I got an encouraging result on my second try, which was lucky, cause otherwise I would have likely given it up and gone inside.

Instead, I prolonged my session for another half hour, til the sun was definitely set. I had tried shooting on that side in the past, but never with much success. What made the difference for me yesterday, was probably the fact that I`d been practicing pogo sets recently, and working on real high pogo sets to hit 5 add variants, like pogo pdlo, or pogo pdx torque. So now the way I approached flip shooting, was to think of it like a high pogo set real close to my body, and then a kinda late atomic set thrown after the pogo. This helped me keep the dexes clean. At least I think it did... hard to say without video. In any case, I managed to hit and seal shooting butterfly 3 times with good runs, which was extremely satisfying. Shooting gets a bad name because its slurred so often, but let me tell you, when done properly, it`s a really hard set. The ones I hit yesterday felt really clean (like a clean pogo set), and required lots of concentration and precision. Since it was getting dark I headed inside, but I`m definitely going to explore this set some more during my next serious session.

I just love how I can go outside for a casual session, just looking to mess around, and then go back inside to shower an hour later with a new set/trick/whatever under my belt. How many other sports can offer you that? Seriously. In a month and a half it will be my 8 year anniversary playing footbag, and in the course of the last week I`ve picked up 2 new double dex sets. You really gotta love footbag. I know I do.

[C-Fan]

Got chilly all of a sudden... but hopefully I can still sneak in a session today. Contemplating going to Tokyo this weekend, but the forecast says its gonna rain from Friday through Monday. Poo.

Found this on the J-forums, but haven`t watched it yet. http://footbaka1.fc2web.com/shred/douga ... 04zero.wmv
Hope its not something I already posted.

While I`m here, I also read that Takumi recently hit his first 5-5-5. Phoenix-blurry whirl-mobius. He also hit food apparently. There`s a decent chance he will be at worlds, so hopefully y`all will get to see the Truth first hand.

[shreddaily]

pictures:
the jim carry pose and I'm a virgin shirt on the last page are awsome. You don't look like a young english teacher in the first one, you look like an old dude . Lots o pictures rule, thanks ken.

[C-Fan]

Yeah, Henmo`s shirt is great. As I mentioned/hinted on the first post of page 13, that shirt has an extra joke on it written in small type below the eye-catching: I`m a virgin.

I`m real happy I keep a footblog. Not only is it fun to reminisce in here (as well as track my progress), but it provides me with a chance to reflect on how my sessions go. I find myself being conscious of having to "answer to my blog" while I have a session. Like, when i start to get frustrated during a session I will sometimes think: "Ken, you have 2 choices now. Get pissed off, and have to write about how immature you are in your blog tomorrow, or get a grip and write about how your mental game is improving." The reflection helps a lot too... for example, yesterday I had an intense 2+ hour session, and throughout it I didn`t feel like it was a very good session. I found it mostly frustrating to tell the truth. But when I started thinking about what I had hit (ie, what I would blog about), I came to realize that in many ways it was a productive and good session. I`m not sure I would have changed my view of my session like that if I didn`t have a Zine to write in.

OK, onto the session. The weather was pretty nice yesterday, and I was already warming up in my lot by 5 pm. I started off with 100+ inside kicks, then did lots of toe stalls and toe tiltless to warm up. I got 27 legovers in a row, which must be a personal record. I know that sounds lame, but I`m kinda proud of that. I began the session somehow convinced that I would hit a quad dex. I don`t know why... something in the air maybe. But yeah, I started the session off alternating between spinning practice and trying to hit quads. I felt the session got off to a decent start when I started a run with pdx whirl- spin clipper repeat, on my first try. I worked on my shooting set for a while, but got frustrated and tired by it. I got a few clean sets, a bunch of bad ones, and I couldn`t hit anything better than shooting butterfly to osis, which I managed on several occasions. I decided to invest my time and energy into frantic instead, and spent a good chunk of time tooling around with that.

I still don`t completely understand frantic, but at my current stage, I can hit basic frantic stuff pretty easily and consistently. I know that my current set won`t cut it if I want to get bigger tricks, so I`m still experimenting a lot with different subtle variations in how I do it. Applying some of those concepts to sailing, I managed to hit some real good sailing butterflies, and also hit sailing eclipse for the first time. That was pretty easy, but I was still pretty happy with it, since its a stylish flyer, and I think yesterday was my first time hitting it. I hit Ewalk to Fog a couple more times, and then remember Andrew asking in my Zine if I had hit Ewalk to Bed (cause I had hit bed to e-walk). I gave it a few tries, and managed to land Ewalk-bed-pixie... drop. I concentrated a bit more, and soon enough managed to get Ewalk-bed-smog-pig. That combo really worked my abs, and I held my breath through the last two tricks, but I managed to hit it. I think I could hit 5 unique triple dexes if I really focussed, which could be a worthy goal.

I ended up pissing off my left hip flexor again, due to frantic. That annoyed me, but I figure its the cost of learning how to do the set properly. Growing pains if you will. Once I figure out how to do frantic real well, I hopefully won`t have any more flexor pain. Still, this means I should probably lay off frantic for a week or two. I did manage to hit a new frantic trick though, so that also redeemed/justified the injury somewhat: frantic ss osis. So I`ve hit both butterflies and both osii off of that set. I think one thing that I learned about frantic yesterday, which is very useful, is remembering to keep my miraging dex leg as straight as possible, sort of how I think of my flip pixie.

Inspired by Jorden`s vids, I gave some tries at cloud stalls, which was fun. Blurry cloud, pixie same cloud, stuff like that. The hard part is playing out of it guiltlessly. The best I could do was pixie ss cloud to same leg osis. It`d be rad if I could start incorporating that into strings. I also did a few `normal` runs with my usual assortment of shuffle and downtime components, and was pleasantly surprised by a couple combos. I started one run with flip pixie butterfly, and about 7 contacts into the run hit ducking clipper-mobius (plant) and then went on for another 7 contacts or so. It was cool to hit that without planning it out, and getting it first try. I also started a run with Spike Hammer, and in the same combo hit spinning clipper to fog for the first time.

When I was playing `normal` style, I thought about something Loren Baum wrote that day. He made some comment about us having similar styles, and said something like: "who else hits flurry to phoenix midstring?" or something like that. I didn`t really understand his comment at the time, so I hit that combo midstring 4 or 5 times in the hopes that it would help me understand what he meant. The combo is fun and relatively easy, but it didn`t help me understand what he was talking about.

I tried working on spins and dexless, but found it pretty frustrating. Do you ever have sessions where you feel like shaving your head, cutting off your ears, and ripping your shirt off? Yesterday I had moments like that, where my shirt sleeve would mess up a spin, or a dive would run into an ear. Even the easy stuff in footbag is hard. Did a decent job keeping my mental game together though, and came to an important realization: I need to focus on my breathing when I play dexless. It took me a long time to start doing that with my regular shred, and I realized I was holding my breath at times when I shouldn`t when I was going dexless. Probably because dexless is still new to me. So I worked a bit on forcing myself to breathe during certain moves, and that had a pretty noticeable impact pretty quickly.

I tried to work on breaking my dexless record, and for a good 20 minutes I couldn`t break 10 dexless contacts, which really irked me. But on the other hand, I would usually get 7-9 contacts which were mostly unique and somewhat creative. When i noticed that I was getting so many unique, I decided to try and go for 10 unique dexless, because I had challenged Jeremy Mirken to that goal about a month ago. It took me a bit, but I eventually managed to hit gyro clipper- diving clipper repeat straight into ducking clipper-spinning clipper repeat to ducking osis-osis-osis-hand catch. 11 unique dexless! That last osis to osis is kinda lame though, so in the future I will try and throw in a couple zulu clippers, a spinning osis, and an eclipse. So my next goal is to hit 20 dexless, or just improve on my unique dexless record.

It was getting dark by this point, and I had to shower before doing some errands, so I headed in after getting the 11 unique dexless. At that time I was glad to have ended on a positive note, but at the same time kinda felt disatisfied with the session. But looking back on it now, it actually was pretty good. Looking at it objectively, I hit lots of stuff which I should be proud of. 4 unique triples in a row. 11 unique dexless in a row. New, styly 5 add flyer. New frantic 5 add. Midstring mobius. Any 2 of those achievements should have made me happy with my session, but it wasn`t til I thought about it in retrospect that I realized it was a good session. So yeah, thank you Fanzine for helping me have a better attitude.

On a slight down note, the weather forecast this weekend is awful, thanks to a typhoon, so no Tokyo trip for me. Probably a good thing though, cause if I hit Tokyo, I know I wouldn`t be able to resist showing off my new frantic, and I`d probably piss off my body even worse. This weekend gives me a chance to rest that muscle, and practice more dexless.