KICKASS 2005
I will go through this chronologically and try to barf out as many details as I can, though since it's been over a week since the event I am sure I will miss many bits. Regardless, here we go!
Friday October 14th:
My day started early with a 3 hour lab wiring circuits on a breadboard on an empty stomache, this 'treat' awaits me every Friday morning. I think that they use something like that as a form of torture in some countries. While I struggled to get my operational amplifiers and gizmots and whizbangs to do their.. thier?? their.. i before e.. thier thing I frantically smashed out MSN messages to whoever could help me pull together the final details of the event. I had the issue of $600 worth of shirts being in Toronto and me having no real way of getting them to Kingston in time for the event. Also, Bawls, one of the sponsors, allowed us to have a few cases for the event.. if I was able to make it to a Compusmart location to pick them up.. there are no Compusmarts in Kingston. I was stressing out pretty hard because I wanted so bad to pull everything together for the event. I really regret passing my stress onto the really kind people that were being helpfull to me.
I have to appologize to Jon Haber once more for my rudeness in putting pressure on him to help me out, he was already under alot of pressure to pick up his carload of people and at the same time juggle all the other things he had going on in his life. It was selfish of me to be so pushy and to dump more responsibility on him, the tournament was my doing and it wasn't his fault that I still had things to sort out.
The reason the Bawls stuff was so last minute was (apparently) because the lady at Bawls hadn't received my last few e-mails regarding sending me the cases and she only received the one where I called her rude and unprofessional after I had gotten the impression that she was ignoring me. She decided she still wanted to sponsor the event but the only way to get the shit was for someone to get them from Compusmart, I convinced Jon to go way out of his way and stop off at the Scarborough (near Toronto) Compusmart where the lady said there would be 2 cases waiting for him but the manager claimed to have no idea about the transaction and shot him down.. so in the end my stressing Jon out was for nothing.. I AM SORRY JON!!!!!!!
Still friends? 
I eventually convinced my buddy Jesse in Toronto to go pick up the box of shirts and put them on a bus headed to Kingston, I gave him a free shirt for his troubles.
I got out of my lab after 3 painful hours and headed home to get stuff ready for the event. I tidied my room a bit even though I knew that it, along with the rest of the house, would soon be trashed. I don't really remember what happened over the next few hours but eventually I wound up down at Confederation Park with Peng, Pat Thomsen and Pascal where we commenced the hacking. We circle kicked for a while to get the legs into the swing of things and eventually busted some shred. When our bellies started to feel empty we took off to get some food at a restaurant. I felt safe leaving the location considering I knew that the majority of people wouldn't be arriving until sundown-ish or until the next day.
Midway through the meal I got a call from Ben Roscoe, a new-ish shredder from Orillia Ontario, who was at the site wondering where everyone was. I filled him in on what was up and said we'd be there ASAP. Once we were all fed we headed back to the park and sparked up some 4-square. By then it was me, Pat, Pascal, Ben, bens friend, Chris (local kicker) and Peng. Things get foggy here...
At some point we headed back to my place to get organized for the night.
Soon after Jon's carload arrived! yay! That meant that Jon Haber, Ryan Seath and Dan Cyr were now present! I don't know the orders of arrival but soon there was also two loads from the NY area that included Matt Cross, Chris Dean, Paul Agostinelli, Josh Digges, Willie Digges, Pat Tallon and Nikki Something. Before the people started showing up I ran out and bought $100 worth of beer that got guzzled in no time flat. Being mister organizer party man is expensive stuff! At some point more KFM dudes showed up, Derrick, Jack and Ben.
I don't really remember the order of anything for the rest of the night but we wound up shredding in my house, 4-square in my back-back room and boozing all over the place. At some point there were more people that wanted to shred than there was room for so we headed to the parking lot behind my house. Peng's house is attached to mine and basically directly behind mine and hence her window faces that parking lot. We ran an extension cord from her room down to a set of speakers and an iPod and shredded and partied in the parking lot for many many hours, it was a blast! Some of that parking lot fun can be seen in the KICKASS video I made.
blah blah blah eventually we all crashed, some people at the Holiday Inn, alot of people scattered on couches around my house and a few at Peng's place.
Saturday October 15th:
The day got started with breakfast at this greasy spoon called Morrison's. The food is typical stuff but the rate at which it arrives is sometimes shocking. We got fed and ready and then headed to the competition site. I am really really really happy with how the location worked out!! There was just the right amount of space and all the amenities (sp? dont care) you could want! If you got tired of shredding you could hit the pool or chill out in the hot tub or the sauna.. though I guess neither of those are ' chilling out' in a physics sense.
At some point the Montreal crew showed up!! That included Ianek Regimbald, Claudia Gucciardi, Nick Laroche, Mathieu and another. (I'm bad with names!) I was glad that they finally made it, they are all so awesome!
Pat Thomsen was very very helpful in driving me around to get things that needed to be got. He drove me to pick up the box of shirts from the bus terminal, to the beer store to get the keg and to the music place to get the sound system for the DJ. THANK YOU PAT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I am really happy with how the shirts turned out, the logo is so bold and badass (kickass?
) and the colours are cool and crisp. If you want to buy a shirt to help dig me out of the deep deep financial hole I dug myself into with this event PLEEEEEASE PM me and I will hook you up, they are inexpensive and awesome and the money goes to a good cause!!!
I sold a good amount but I still have a pretty big pile that I need to sell in order to pay back the loan my housemate gave me in order to buy them.
Lots of good shred happened and there were many fun circles all around.
At around 4:30 I finally got all the competitors readied and we started the competitions. We did shred 30, sick 3 and sick 1 and the whole thing ran really smoothly. I competed in each event even though I am terrified of competition. In shred 30 I took 5th even though my legs decided that they didn't want to hit any of the tricks I tried. I didn't hit any good sick 3's, I really wanted blurry whirl>torque>blurry whirl even though I'd never tried it before doing it in competition. hehe
Sick 1 went way better than the other two. I started off with a 5 I knew I could hit, pixie symp whirl and nailed it then I decided to be brave and go for something harder on my next attempt... Cripwalk! I nailed it!! I was so surprised to hit it first try considering I havn't really tried it at all since Europe this summer. The video shows that it was uber clean but Jorden and Jeremy have questioned the mirage dex in the set. I think they are being retarded!! think about it, after the swirl, which happens behind the set leg, the mirage dex happens around mid-thigh and then the bag keeps rising well past my leg. what is not legitimate about that?? they are ignoring reality I guess. It is basically impossible to the the second dex in the set.
My remaining attempts I failed to hit whirlwind and whatever else I tried, I was still really happy with my success though.
Johnny wound up winning EVERYTHING because he is so damn hein. I love his style and confidence and his general everything. He is a really great guy that is overly modest about how incredible he is. His winning sick 3 was fairy ducking butterfly>matador>tombstone and his winning sick 1 was nuke torque! is that a 7? paradox silo? regardless, way bad ass! Willie nailed fairy tale in sick 1 and we agreed to tie for second place.
Josh Digges and I attempted to shred in the pool with Mr. Sandbags.. very very difficult to say the least. The currents just yank the bag off your foot when you try to set it. I found seeing how many lengths of the pool I could do underwater to be more fun.
After the comps were done we went back to shredding for hours until it made sense to stop.. at some point.
Once back at my place everyone chilled out and relaxed after the action packed day. We needed to rest up for the partying that was ahead of us!
Around 8-ish we cracked the keg and started boozing. Around 8:30-ish the DJ showed up and the beats got started. People were shredding and chilling in the main room, 4-squaring in the back back room and boozing all over the place. At one point there was a pile of 13 grams of weed busted up on a table and so I started packing fat bowls and handing them out to people. I am VERY proud to say that I smoked NONE the whole tournament!!! I have been almost completely smoke free for a while now and I am very happy about it.
The party was effing sweet! Ive never thrown a kegger before so I felt obliged to do the traditional kegger things like.. KEG STANDS!
For the uninformed, these involve doing a handstand on the keg while people hold your legs up in the air and you have the keg nozzle in your mouth. You drink upside down while everyone yells out the count of how many seconds you've been going at it. I don't know why exactly you do this.. but you do, dammit! Those were a blast and it got lots of people really drunk. I was walking around with a team sized pitcher and I was filling up peoples cups the whole night. At one point I made a round of the house with a bottle of coconut rum and a shot glass giving out shots to whoever wanted one.
Midway through the night Nick Laroche let me know that it was time to do something that had been coming for a long time.. He wanted us to shave his head!!!!! Nick and Matt have always been well known pony tail shredders, at TOFU I was lucky enough to be the person that got to shave Matt's head and now Nick was placing Matt and I in the position of de-hairing him! I shaved everything except for the center mohawk strip and Matt did the honors of removing the final locks. What a crazy experience!!
It got filmed by somebody, so maybe that will wind up on the internet eventually. PS I heard that Tom doesn't know how to edit his blog. True story!
I got kinda (extremely) upset when I saw something happen that I didn't want to see and I guess I overreacted. I wound up punching holes in walls, breaking a parking lot gate, smashing a chair and (most stupid of all..) cutting a footbag in half that was a gift to me. I realise I went too far.. perhaps the alcohol made me react more extremely than was warranted.. but I was genuinely really upset by what I saw. It seemed so rude and I felt so insulted... I admit I was in the wrong in going so far though..
hah, one funny thing from that though, I threw a spraypaint can so hard at a wall that it stabbed right into it!! This was a *wooden* wall too! The can is still stuck in the wall poking out at like 70 degrees to it, it looks really cool. I am a dumbass sometimes. Sorry to anyone that had to be around me when I was all upset and shit. Also, I am really sorry to Vida especially.. but I don't think she wants to be my friend anymore anyways.
Sunday October 16th:
We were back at the Holiday Inn and the day went much like the day before with shred and 4-square and pool and hot tub and fun. I kept giving Mr. Sandbags to the people playing 4-square and telling them to play a round for it, I think they enjoyed that.
The day wound down eventually as people left in clumps and carloads until there were just a few people left.
All in all it was a very successful event that ran totally smoothly and it seemed like everyone had lots of fun.
Thank you very very much to everyone that came, also, thank you for respecting my house and not smashing everything and punching holes in walls like I did.
If anyone feels like making a tiny donation to me to help me pay off the several hundred dollars I now owe as a thank you for some of the fun you had I would be forever gratefull. Chris Dean has already stepped up and made a very kind donation that way more than covers the bong he accidentally broke. Please please please help me if you can, it sucks owing people lots of money that I don't have.
Thanks for reading all this. If you feel you had more fun than you paid for then pleeeeease help me cover the massive debt I now have!
Cheers.
) and then the next string he started with spikehammer! sheeee-it! Oh yeah, and at one point he was like "Hey Tom, watch this, I know you're not ready for this..." then he footed DOD SWIRL first fucking try!!! This kid is going soooooo far in footbag!!!