Fanzine

[Canthraxsoldier]

I have figured it out

Corvo works for TMS


booooooooooooooooooooooo!

[dyalander]

I've had a blast over the last couple of weeks and although its a bummer the marketing ppl are noobs, I'm happy that we're making the most of it. See you soon.

[*Jethro*]

\
As it looks like now, I'll definitely stick around until the 8th, which means I will get a chance to play with the Brisbane crew.

WOOOOOOO!

thats awesome

[C-Fan]

Still no word from the Nestle people, so I'm still not 100% sure on my schedule, or how much I'm getting paid. I've decided to just forget about it all, and just commit to going home on the 8th, regardless of money or any other factors. Annoying though

Took yesterday off from shred. It's pretty unbelievable how much I've been shredding these last couple months. I've only taken two days off footbag since being in Australia, and in the month leading up to this trip, I was also really good about playing a lot. I feel like my consistency is pretty good as a result.

Had a little shred with the local Hobart crew today. I was stoked to play in my insoled G-Units for the first time. We played in a really nice park, under the shade of trees. Real nice cool, green vibe. We had a stereo too, which meant we got to kick to music. We started off by listening to "The Jilted Generation" by Prodigy, which brought back memories, as it was one of the first CDs I ever bought. It was good for a bit, but definitely gets repetitive. We switched midway to a CD of Notorious BIG vs. Frank Sinatra, and straight away I started playing better. I had a couple real long runs I was happy with, but overall I felt like I played pretty light, but I had fun throughout. Jeremy hit HPD to DLO, as well as flip HPD. He's incorporated my tip on doing the hop to get the second dex, as opposed to "double dex, then clipper", and as such his HPDs look much better.

After the shred I lugged the stereo home, which was exhausting, but kinda funny too. I listened to the Biggie CD as I carried it, and caught some weird looks from passersby. I napped an hour while Jeremy was at work, then met up and checked out some fire twirling. We tried to do firehack by lighting one of the Nestle bags with kerosene, which provided some short lived fun. The polyester didn't hold up very well, so after a few minutes of flaming footbag fun, it burst open, spewing molten plastic death-rain.

Later, we bumped into some of Jeremy's friends, and got a late night 4square session. We listened to a tape of "Greatest Hits of Sly and the Family Stone" while we played, which lent the game a funky beat. We played 3 or 4 fun games, most of us a little drunk. A few good rules went into effect, including the classics: touch the ground after every pass, spin after every pass, unique animal noises after every kick, etc. The cool new rule of the day was "hold your ears and stick out your tongue after you kick the bag, and continue to do so until the point ends." Much silliness ensued.

Once we got tired from 4square, Jeremy did a solo demo of trying to hit tricks. Amazingly, he had a good look at warp, and a bunch of cool blazing tricks. At 1 am, he managed to hit whirlwalk, which looked clean to me. Very cool.

Tomorrow hopefully we can get in some busking. I'm thinking that when I get up to Queensland, it'd be cool if I could try and get a Sick 15, 3, 1 on video for mod comps. We'll see.

[C-Fan]

November 2nd, 2005

Late wake-up combined with unexpected rain killed our plans to busk today. We still got in a shred though, once the rain stopped. We filled the waiting time by watching a lot of Futurama, and Jeremy made nice hot sandwiches filled with baked beans and cheese and a touch of hot chili. Good stuff. I also drank a really nice triple malt tasmanian beer, Dark Isle was it? Delicious.

We walked to town and had a session in the mall. We only had like 40 minutes of total playing time, warm-up included, because Jeremy had work. Amazingly, we still had a good session. Jeremy tried a bunch of blazing stuff, and had an excellent look at blazing egg (same jobs as bedwetter), as well as some attempts at blazing barfly. He closed out the session with ps whirl x2, which surprised me since I thought that flip ps whirl hurt his knee. Oh yeah, in yesterday's session he threw tap-atomsmasher-atomic whirl midstring, which I thought was real unpredictably cool. I like it when people do something that looks like a drill, but has an unexpected twist in it, like rubberman where toe blur replaces the first atom, and flux instead of the last legbeater.

I planned on playing real lightly, but that never happens does it? I was stoked to start a string with hippy legbeater-legeater repeat. I had hit 'eater to 'beater repeat a couple months ago, but flip hippy atom to stepping is still tricky for me, so I was happier hitting the drill this way. My flurry felt real strong today, which led to two links I had never hit before: stepping whirl-flurry, and blurry drifter-flurry! That second one felt particularly satisfying, since I had never hit flurry out of drifter before.

As Jeremy got ready to go to work, I started a string with Mullet-pdx torque, also a new link for me, and went for maybe 15 more contacts. I ended the string with an uncontrolled toe kick, which placed the bag squarely on the roof of a short building. Nuts. I'll try and climb up there and get it tonight In any case, that totally ended the session. Maybe its a good thing, since it forced me to stop playing once Jeremy left. Still.

Hopefully I'll get to sample the nightlife of Hobart tonight.

[C-Fan]

November 4th, 2005

Still no word from the Nestle people, so I'm still not 100% sure on my schedule, or how much I'm getting paid. I've decided to just forget about it all, and just commit to going home on the 8th, regardless of money or any other factors.

I was told the Nestle people were really keen on me sticking around a week, so they told me to name a price. I named what I thought was a very high-end price, hoping they'd reject it... but they ended up agreeing to it. This just confirms my belief that we could have gotten more money from Nestle throughout. In any case, it means that now I'll be around for another week in Australia, and I'll get a chance to see Melbourne, as well as hopefully have a chance at seeing the Great Barrier Reef. The extra money also ensures that my plane ticket and in-country expenses will be all taken care of, and I will go back to Japan with a little extra in my pocket. The downside of me staying the extra week, is that it cuts my time in Japan in half, which is a problem I need to deal with real soon.

Today was a good footbag day. Finally getting an answer from Nestle had the upsides previously mentioned, and we also played some legball too. The weather was windy, but overall good, so Jeremy and I decided to busk in town.

First we hit town hall to get a busking permit. The permit was free, and obtaining it took less than 5 minutes total. We pretty much just had to write our names and addresses down, and we walked out with a permit that is valid for like 4 months.

We staked out a spot in an outdoor pedestrian mall. Jeremy brought a boombox with a CD of footbag routine songs, and I made a box and sign out of an empty tissue box for people to drop money in. The sign read: "Raising Money To Go To World Champs in Germany in 2006." We ended up busking for 2 hours, but we probably only played for 90 minutes, since we were forced to take a couple breaks. 90 minutes doesn't sound very long, but it was only Jeremy and I, and with every touch we tried to do real long strings. It was really exhausting. We also did some doubles hooping stuff, which went over well. We made $82 Australian for our time, which isn't too bad considering it was a Friday afternoon. If we busked on a Saturday at the big market, I bet we would pull down a ton more. Hmm... maybe we can busk in Brisbane on Saturday... but I doubt it'd be as easy to get a permit there. In any case, busking was fun, and it was nice to make some money off it. No real highlights, cause we were busking, but I did hit far ("paradox") dyno for the first time, and I also hit blurry whirl-ripwalk-dyno, which I thought was an easy, but cute combo.

[C-Fan]

Arrived in Queensland yesterday and met Gareth (Kiser Tobias/NotHisRealName), Caroline, and Jesse Malouf (Jethro). I'm still getting my head around what a huge country Australia is. When I got off the plane, there was a while where I wondered if we landed in California, since there were palm trees everywhere and it was balmy. Such a huge change from the cooler weather in Tasmania, where I was wearing long pants and a hoodie everyday.

Brisbane weather has been really weird. Massive downpours of pelt-you-so-hard-it-hurts rain last like 10 minutes, then its beaming sun for an hour. Rinse, repeat. Real beautiful though.

Once we met up with everybody yesterday, we hit Gareth's place to drop our stuff off and catch our breath, and I sewed up the toe areas of my G-Units, which were falling off due to Guido's drunken mod job. I've never really sewn before, but I did a pretty good job, and now my toes don't poke out.

We got in a shred on South Bank, which was by the beach, and therefore crawling with people. We formed a circle, and before we could even warm up, we had crowds forming to watch us. I was afraid that yeseterday's busking would have left me stiff, but thankfully Jeremy and I both played well. Whenever I play with new people, I tend to play well because I get so excited. Jeremy hit HPD to ps whirl. I hit blurry drifter to tomahawk, as well as blurry whirl to inspinning osis, both firsts for me. Jesse really impressed me with his style. He has a natural touch with the bag, and a good variety of sets, spins, and ducks. Gareth had some good combos like toe blur to pixie butterfly, as well as toe ducking butterfly to ducking butterfly. We played by the beach for maybe 40 minutes, then moved to another spot, and played for another hour or two before cooling down with foursquare. Gareth got tripod footage of the session, which we watched last night, so maybe some of that will get online sometime. Fun session.

Today we've got another big demo. Let you know how it goes when we get back.

[C-Fan]

Today's demo went well, despite sporadic torrential downpours. Jeremy and I did another kickass doubles routine. This time I actually hit my cues, which was a nice surprise I'm glad Jesse came to the demos. Jeremy and I don't spin much, so he made for good variety, and he also just helped make a good vibe for the kicks. We weren't able to get vouchers for food and alcohol, but we still scored free water and Pepsi all day, as well as some real good pastries. The shred was OK all day. Jeremy hit crispy dlo -smoke repeat, as well as assassin-plo repeat. I had a run with 5 flurries, which included flurry to smoke, as well as flurry to smog. Jesse played well.

After the demo, we went to Gar(e)th's and played Star Wars monopoly. It was only my 2nd or 3rd time ever playing the game, and it was a blast. We kept making random exceptions, like, if you landed on ewok village in Endor, you wouldn't have to pay rent if there was a party going on. Shit like that. Jeremy 0wn3d us like nubs, despite Gareth helping me embezzle 1000+ imperial credits.

It's 10 pm and the dice say I should go out on the town, but will I



edited Jeremy's combo

[C-Fan]

Top Australian beers I have drunk on this trip

#1: Dark Isle Triple Malt
#2 Boag's Premium
#3 Redback
#4 Boag's draught
#5 Toohey's New
#6 Cascade
#7 Victoria Bitter

[Canthraxsoldier]

hit the town!

[King Monkey]

Hey Ken i hope you have only drunk 7 types of beer on your trip so far, cos VB should definitely be at the bottom of any list.

"A hard earned thirst needs a big cold cats piss, and the best cats piss is Vic."


Oh and when you walk into the pub tonight, tell the barman you need a beer, because you are "dry as a dead dingos donger". Trust me, they wont laugh at you.

[dyalander]

You forgot James Squires - Amber Ale and Squires Golden Ale they'd probably go between your current #4 and #5.

[Anz]

Oi Ken, have you tasted Fosters? Is it really that bad what they say?

[C-Fan]

Fosters and XXXX are the two beers I am too afraid to taste. Everybody tells me they are just bottled bogan pee.

I also realized after reading Dyalan's post that I have also had Squires Strong Ale, but I had that on an empty stomach, so I promptly forgot that I drank it. Hmmm... I wonder where I would stick those.

I also can't recall which Squires was the golden, and which was the pale, but they were both good as I recall.

Yesterday Gareth kindly took the day off work, so Jeremy, Gareth and myself hit South Bank again and got a swim and a shred in. We swam in a pool with sandy beach next to it, making for an interesting, kinda weird mix of a beach and pool experience. We swam, then shredded, then swam again. It was pretty hot out, so the second swim reeally hit the spot, since we were so warm from shred.

The shred went pretty well. Gareth filmed a good chunk of it, so I won't go into much detail of what was hit, but I hit some hard combos I hadn't hit in a long time, as well as some drills I like. In some cases I managed to continue the drills into decent length runs, in other cases I couldn't, but I felt like I was playing well throughout. One combo I hit off-camera was flurry to dod swirl, which was my second time ever. I also hit the drills barfly-pdx drifter repeat, and down double-barfly repeat. Jeremy hit a real cool torque trick, and also hit sumo-atomic drifter, which is one of the best looking repeat combos in the game, in my opinion. Gareth played lightly, but well. Toe schmoe stood out.

After the second swim, we dashed to the airport, and I literally had to run onto my plane. Unfortunately, I left my favorite hooded sweatshirt at the security check in

Coming back to Sydney felt nice though. Guido and Marisa are such incredible hosts. I really feel like I'm amongst family here.

Today I played a game of Scrabble with Dyalan, and I was really stoked that I played an 8 letter word, clearing my rack. "Recoiled." It felt particularly good, because I managed my rack for the 2 turns before it, to set myself up with good letters. I also pulled the Q late in the game, but played it off in "quran," which I knew to be an alternate spelling of Koran, the holy book of Islam. Good times

[C-Fan]

Double session yesterday!

Yesterday (November 8th, 2005) was overall an excellent day. Mostly it was just good to hang out with Dyalan all day. I spent the morning getting some errands/phonecalls/emails out of the way, and also played my best Scrabble game with Dyalan.

After Scrabble and lunch, we hit the basketball courts near Guido's place. I should say "netball courts" since there's only one proper basketball hoop, flanked by two netball courts. We shot around for maybe 5 minutes when, like a prayer answered, 4 Korean college kids showed up.

The fact that there was only one basketball hoop paid off, since it pretty much forced them to accept our invitation to get a 3-on-3 with us. We made teams by doing rock paper scissors, ensuring that Dyalan and I were on separate teams. That turned out to be key, since it turned out that we were the 2 best players there.

I can't really describe how good it felt to play again. Like feeling the sun on your face, the first warm day of spring. Like seeing the bag come up after just flinging your leg out there for that hopeful blender. Like hearing the DJ spin a Michael Jackson throwback in the middle of his Notorious BIG set, and finding you remember all the words. Like being reborn.

I hadn't played a game since Helsinki, and not even getting stuffed by Dyalan could bring me back down. I also felt happy because I think I struck a good balance between scoring and passing. I even knocked down a few jump shots to keep the defense honest on me.

Our game ended abruptly, when one of my teammates took off his shoe to reveal a blister identical to the one I got in Helsinki. A flap of skin bigger than a quarter just flopping off the ball of his foot We thanked everybody for the game, then busted out my Oxana bag for a kick. It was a real laid-back session where we just worked on weak spots of our game, but it was a ton of fun. I saw Dyalan break his osis record, getting 11. I had a few fun links throughout. Smoke-far swirl-torque felt real stylish. Torque-dyno-torque-dyn..d'oh! Just rolled off the clipper Pdx whirl to flurry, always a classic. 5 pixie legovers, likely a record for me The highlight of this session was probably getting torque-drifter repeat, and tacking on an extra torque at the end just for the stylish seal

We got home right when Guido did, so we decided "what the hell?" and went down to the carpark to get another shred in. My quads felt pretty tired from basketball, so I went pretty easy, mostly just giving tips and advice to Dyalan and Guido on various tricks. I did manage to hit one new stylish drill though: clipper set dlo-ss swirl-repeat Dyalan came super close to whirl-drifter repeat. He also hit drifter x2 a bunch of times, in his quest to get 3. He actually footed 3, but he didn't count it cause it wasn't sealed. Good man. Guido hit 15 ss osis in a row. Overall his game is just more balanced and controlled than it was when I got here. He just improves so quickly. I was real stoked to see him using pdx mirages midrun as a way to guiltlessly get to his pixies. Pdx mirage to phoenix mid run. Since his pixies are so good both sides, I encouraged him to try quantum stuff, since its pretty much just pixie set from the other toe. Sure enough, he promptly got tripwalk both sides, and slapping butterfly once. Nice!

Watched the Art of the Game again last night. Good shred, but there are some flaws with it too. I think I'll write up a review today.

Gonna go shoot some hoops now, since Dyalan lent me his basketball. Yes

[C-Fan]

. 5 pixie legovers, likely a record for me )

So yeah, most people who know my game know how crap my flip pixies are. I've hit stuff like phoenix bsos, pixie paradon bsos, pixie ss swirl both sides, etc, but flip pixie has never been a reliable set in my repertoire. At most I usually throw a flip parkwalk or dimwalk into my runs. Since coming to Australia however, i've become inspired to really skool my flip pixies and make it a reliable set midstring. This is probably due to having played so much with Guido and Jeremy, both who have beautiful, reliable flip pixies on demand whenever they feel like it.

Yesterday, November 9th 2005, I got in an epic 2 hour session with Guido in his carpark. I went into the session thinking I'd go easy and not hit anything. For some reason, I decided to work on consecutive PLOs. I think consec PLOs is the best practice possible to strengthen your flip pixies for several reasons. One is that for every flip PLO you do, you do a strong PLO. So you can easily see what you are doing incorrectly, by comparing flip to strong. It makes it easier for you to compare the two, and hence mimic the strong. Another positive, is that legover is the opposite of pixie set. So by doing a legover before every pixie, you are reinforcing and strengthening the motion 2 fold, while a drill like pixie ss mirage back to back would only reinforce the pixie motion once.

3 days ago, my PLO record was either 2 or 3. Skooling with Dyalan 2 days ago, I got 5 pretty easily. So the goal of yesterday's session, in the early stages, was to hit more than 5. I hit 7 or 8 pretty early on, without too much trouble, which got me real confident. I was purposely being lax with my counting, because I knew that if I was unsure of how many I hit (did I hit 7, or 8 in a row?), it would force me to hit more to be sure of the number. Using this method, I hit 7 in a row a few times, then 9 or 10 (again unsure), and finally I hit 12! What? As Guido gave me a high five, he said: "props on 11!" So again, I was forced to aim for a higher number to kill any ambiguity. After a couple more tries which yielded 9, I found a real good rhythm, and hit 14 plos in a row! Not bad considering my record was 2 or 3, just a few days ago.

The secret for me for doing PLOs was to really focus on cushioning the legover before my flip pixie, and then not forcing the flip pixie. Rather, I'd use the cushion, then slowly stand up, and I'd get a usable flip pixie. Inspired by my success with the PLOs, I went on to try several other both sided pixie drills. Sure enough, I also managed to hit the following.

*magellan-plo-repeat
*magellan-smear bsos
*smear-pixie ss mirage -repeat to plo x2
*parkwalk-schmoe-dimwalk-blur-repeat
*smear-plo repeat

I vow to make consecutive PLOs a part of my warmup each session. The way I see it, I do strong smear in so many of my runs, that if from now on I make a point to do PLO-flip pixie anything out of every strong smear, I should have a good flip pixie in no time.

While I spent the majority of the session skooling both-sided pixie drills, I also hit a couple of cool non-pixie things. I hit reverse whirl flipside for my first time, and bsosed it. I also got some good flurry links. Up until yesterday, the only set I had ever hit out of my flurry was pixie. But yesterday I managed to hit flurry-toe ripwalk, as well as flurry to legbeater, both for my first time. I think today I will try for flurry to atom smasher, so I can be as cool as Ahren in 2000

[*Jethro*]

Hell yeah Ken!

I too also have a bad flip pixie. You may have noticed....

Race to ASSASSIN>PLO RPT and 20 plo's!!!

[C-Fan]

Today, November 10th, 2005 was a pretty rough day. Flies and wind shitted on my attempt to play basketball, and the ominous weather kept me from exploring the city. I tried to shred in the afternoon, only to find that the toes of my Guido-Units busted out again. I spent a good hour and a half re-stitching them, this time taking special care to stitch through the sturdiest parts of the shoes both on the in-stroke and the outstroke. They look better, but only time will tell if the mod holds. Once I get back stateside, I will likely just buy a new pair for myself, and mod them real carefully. I think I'm gonna make the switch to Gs for the forseeable future. They just straight up look cooler.

Jesse: playing with you was another thing that inspired me to really work my flip pixies. I'm gonna decline your race challenges though, cause my main goal is to just do a bunch of flip pixies every session. If I get 20 PLOs, that'd be nice, but that should be the byproduct of my skooling, and not the goal. I'm happy with 14 for the moment... I'd rather get around 10 PLOs consistently, then having a fluke outing and hitting like 25.

I really love footbag. Without footbag, today would have been pretty shitty, but I had another excellent session with Guido, which redeems the day. Nine Inch I/Iails also helps out a lot

I think today I will try for flurry to atom smasher, so I can be as cool as Ahren in 2000

Whatever dude, nobody can be as cool as Torch 2000. Still, this was one of my 2 goals entering today's shred. I didn't feel particularly energetic going into the session, but I wanted to make sure yesterday's flip pixies weren't just a fluke, so the goals were to skool flip pixies, and to try for flurry to atom.

I didn't break my PLO record today, but I did hit 9 or 10 on several occasions, which was reassuring: yesterday's technique stilll worked today. Probably my best flip pixie run went: magellan-plo repeat, to PLO x2, to dimwalk-schmoe-repeat. So 4 pixies on each side. I also hit a few more runs with flip parks and smears in them, but since they weren't drills, I can't recall them too well. Oh yeah, one pixie combo I hit yesterday was magellan-smear-pixie ss mirage-smear-magellan-pixie ss mirage. I was going for the drill but got confused

I tried flurry to atom smasher, and on my first two attempts I hit everything except the last toe stall. There was never any doubt that I'd get it, and sure enough, attempt #3 landed the combo.

When I came to Australia, I think my consec osis record was something real low, like 22. A couple weeks ago, I pushed it to 28, using the Guido Units. Today, I gave another shot, and shattered my record. I counted 51 osis, but Guido counted 47. That just means I need to break 51 with meticulous counting, so I have an unambiguous record. For now though, 47 is a way more respectable record than 28. Huzzah.

The other big highlight of the session was messing around with whirling swirls. Whirling swirl isn't my strongest trick by any means. I'd hit it bsos, but I'd only ever hit it from clippers... before today. Today I managed to hit and seal some real deep and legit toe whirling swirls, which felt awesome! As usual, I decided to push myself, and put it in a cool combo. A few attempts later, I had hit fog to whirling swirl Maybe my best combo yet in Australia. Another fun link I hit today was blurry whirl to flurry. I had hit that over a year ago, but it felt good to see it again.

Guido had a good session too. I really enjoy playing with him, we feed off each other's energy real well and pace each other. Guido hit 25 consec osis, but I know he can get 30. I also was glad to see him start doing guiltless bails, using osis and butterfly. Drifter times 2 was good, but I know he can hit at least 4.

At the very end of the session I decided I'd mess around, and so I announced that I'd give 3 tries at pdx whirling swirl, and then we'd head back home.

1st try: drop the bag to my left clipper, pivot my hips, dex the whirl.... then dexed and delayed the swirl?!?!? Hell yeah! Pdx whirling swirl! On that high note, we ended the session and had some beer.

[*Jethro*]

Hey, good work!

Thats cool about the flip plo challenge.
BTW, I hit 18 consec plo's tonight
I still feel as though SOME of them are too rolled off the shoe, cause the bag spins alot. Thats why I need a smaller bag. Im averaging around 7-8 now though, which I am happy with.

Another tip, it works for me...
Try school smear>magellen and magellan smear. It gives you sooo much more control over that flipside.

Peace
-Jesse

[Just call me hagesy]

Nice work ken on the flip pixies. In reading it seems that you are enjoying footbag more than ever. It is inspiring.

A couple of questions

1) Is guido going to nationals, it would be great to see him there

and

2) And what do you think of australia, will you ever be back to shred again.

anyway peace and mega props on the flip pixies bro

hagesy