Rochester, New York Footblog

cd · Post by cd » 10 Dec 2005 15:45

Greg's coming tomorrow with me. We need to be picked up at 1:40 from the mall.

mess with the bull, you get the horns

Paul Agostinelli · Post by **Paul Agostinelli** » 10 Dec 2005 16:24

matt, its the student alumni union

~NEL~

KronoKicker · Post by **KronoKicker** » 10 Dec 2005 17:19

I'll pick you and greg up Mr. Dean.

Unfortunately I still have not heard back from the reservation office for the SAU.. Hopefully they gave us the time and forgot to email me, or there is nothing going on and it will be open.

cd · Post by cd » 10 Dec 2005 18:40

remember to bring your shorts!

Paul Agostinelli · Post by **Paul Agostinelli** » 11 Dec 2005 08:31

^^^^

KronoKicker · Post by **KronoKicker** » 11 Dec 2005 23:28

This weekend killed me!! My fault of course,.. and had fun in the process, but my mind and body are just swimming in circles.

Today's session really took a toll on my body, cramped up really bad at the end.. and now both legs are cramping when I stress either just in slightest way. Worst of it all its my hamstring cramping, which generally hurts the most and gets stressed most.

But today's session was pretty good for having a buzz half the session

. Had a couple decent shuffle strings, and a couple decent non-shuffle ones. I thought I broke a record, but it appears some one already beat the record I was going for. Fortunately this person only hit 4 more then I did today, so it will be mine (hopefully). I also came close to 4 or 5 new moves, footed some, got the catch but thed a dex on a couple. So hopefully next session I'll have a couple new moves, I got some great ideas for sick 1 for new years.

KronoKicker · Post by **KronoKicker** » 14 Dec 2005 20:23

Quick session with paul tonight. Hit some pretty cool new stuff.

whirling swirl - not new... but only my 3rd time hitting it
inspinning pdx mirage
stomping dlo
blurrage

Paul Agostinelli · Post by **Paul Agostinelli** » 14 Dec 2005 20:52

yeah, good little session tonight.

no new tricks but i hit my toe fives again first try, leg breaker first try, ocean a shitload of times, ocean>pdx mirage,

my spinning rakes were on fire tonight.

a bunch of easy and controlled, long guiltless strings consisting mainly of bops but a few genuine links here and there.

~NEL~

mc · Post by mc » 16 Dec 2005 06:41

Working away... riiiiiiight...

I start college in a month, for classical guitar. I'll have to take a picture of my new axe soon... I had my first lesson yesterday. I am a BAD classical guitarist

I have no fingernails! and they are key. I ordered some of the method books, and I don't believe I've bitten my fingernails today, so I'm off on the right start.

I'm really looking forward to starting school, and for SPRING! I can't wait to play footbag like a madman again! Winter hinders me too much, but once I'm at school, even though it will still be winter, I'll have a gym I can use all the time! and probably some space in the dorms! and, as we all know, chicks dig footbag (fuck I just bit my nail, bad me) so I'm sure to pick up plenty of ladies while shredding

ARIC! I want you to look into getting money from RIT for GRASS. Did the juggling association fly in all those elite jugglers? What if we could get them to fly in an elite footbagger? Or, what if we could get some money to host a live band? possible? How else can we get free money to fly someone in or get a band or something?

I wish I played more, but maybe this rest time will be good for me, my hips and tendons have been feeling in bad shape. Hopefully, I can bust out in the spring again.

See you all at the jam!!!

PS: Personal Challenge to Mike Anello! symp mirage > SS Eggbeater repeat! I was walking around at work and I saw it in my head! do it!

Jdigges · Post by **Jdigges** » 16 Dec 2005 18:38

what school are you going to be going to matt?

mc · Post by mc » 18 Dec 2005 19:54

Fun LONG session today. I hit atomic torque, pixie whirling swirl, a lot of gyro mirages, and footed void. Gyro is coming along well. Also, bedwetter BSOS, I'm glad to get that back into my gameI hit some new links today, and I'm turning my osises into dynos. We had a lot of fun, I'll leave paul and chris and mike to write up their parts of the session.

After the session, paul, chris, and I went over to mike's house, and mike made us an epic meal of salmon, catfish, broccoli, onions and mushrooms, rice, and lots of beer. We got righteously coached and watched a huge slice of the RFA video library from 2002 onward.

We are all looking forward to the new year's jam, and I can't wait to personally host you all at my house for a huge party! See you soon.

setman · Post by **setman** » 18 Dec 2005 22:54

pixie whirling swirl is great. i wanted to hit yesterday, but i didn't. did You do high wihirling set or what ? props on that !

mc · Post by mc » 19 Dec 2005 04:39

forgot a new move from yesterday, i hit muted blazing SS butterfly like Jorden does in Gym Session, first try

I was psyched about that...

Kamil, I did a pixie set to about my stomach, stepped to the side to position it for the whirl, did a high, fast attack on the whirl dex, and busted the swirl around after I cleared the whirl. Soon I'll have it blurry

mc · Post by mc » 19 Dec 2005 06:38

urg, I'm feeling that long session now

I need a massaaaaaaaage.... I'm going to fall apart.

my next step in worldwide shred domination is SITUPS!

my little brother is a good diver, so he's got a lot of experience with balance and spinning, and when I told him about my problem with gyro, he suggested that I might want to try building up my core strength for all kinds of reasons that sounded good at the time but that have slipped me for now. I want to give it a try, and see if it helps with my balance and accuracy. Paul suggested that I try my gyro mirages from a freeze, and I was having some good luck with those. I think they're coming along.

Gyro! You will be mine!!!

mc · Post by mc » 20 Dec 2005 09:13

11,111th viewing of the rochester footblog!!

Chris and Paul! you guys hit nasty stuff at the last session! POST IT!

Paul Agostinelli · Post by **Paul Agostinelli** » 20 Dec 2005 11:04

i actually cant remember hitting anything of note on sunday, if you guys remember, feel free to fill me in haha. i cant wait till i have my camera and i dont have to remember shit.

yesterday i had a good 3 hour session with chris and greg and i was stringing really well. lots of bsos tricks for me, like blur, legbeater, ripwalk (these arent necessarily new, just good), stepping far osis, flux.

i hit almost all of my 5's first try

phoenix first try to start a run with ducking butterfly bsos in it.
legbreaker 1st try
pixie atomsmasher 1st try
alpha atomsmasher 1st try
pixie legbeater 1st try
ocean 1st try

number 2 through number 5 were one after the other with a handcatch seal for each.

there were one or two others, but i cant remember

thats pretty much it from my recollection

~NEL~

cd · Post by cd » 20 Dec 2005 19:02

I dont remember hitting a whole bunch of groundbreaking stuff for me, except the AtomicTorque>kick kick>flip AtomicTorque, and then a perfect NukeTorque the next time around. oh and then there was that NukePickup>FairyDivingButterfly (muted) link that i have been working on. And Mike got me working on doing same side mirages and butterflies out of sets... I should do more of those instead of standard shuffle moves all the time. ummm more later

mc · Post by mc » 21 Dec 2005 07:39

Paul and I kicked for about an hour last night in my living room. Neither of us had time to warm up, but we had fun. Gyro is starting to make more sense, bit by bit. I haven't started those situps yet, hopefully those will help. I hit clipper set ducking gyro toe both sides a bunch of times after Paul left. I felt that they were the most clean when I made sure that I saw the bag after the duck, before turning my head into the gyro. That was a satisfying move, I look forward to throwing that down in strings.

I'm meeting with Red Bull today at 3:30 to pick up the product

I have a feeling I'm going to be given a RIDICULOUS amount of Red Bull for us all to drink. More on that later.

I'd like to post the letter that I wrote to the Bush Mango in hopes of convincing them to give me the space for the tournament for free. I feel that writing a good letter / email is absolutely instrumental in getting people to do things for you for free, and in a situation where a large venue fee can prevent a club from even thinking they can start to organize a tournament, the possibility of free space and / or product sponsorship is particularly attractive and extremely beneficial for the community; the fact that this event is free for me to put together is what's going to enable us to get together and party and shred a hole in the floor. I hope someone can use this as a reference, or as inspiration, and it helps lead to more events in the future.

A few notes for writing positive emails to appropriate sites:

1) Coffee is your friend

It makes you excited and optimistic, a good state of mind to be in for writing emails.

2) Pick a good target. This will be a lot easier in more metropolitan areas. I tried to think of some place that was oriented around the arts, dance, community, etc. That way, when you're selling the concept of footbag, you can focus on the parts of it that relate to what they do (as you'll see below). So, look for grassroots dance organizations. People who put their time into something cultural and artsy for not a lot of profit are the kind of people with the kind of outlook on life that will get them excited about a big footbag jam.

3) Remember to put some focus on what putting on the event offers them (publicity, the opportunity to do something fun and special and inexpensive).

Anyway, see below, and let me know if you have any questions, or need help writing a letter.

"Hi, my name is Matt Cross. I'm a Rochester area dancer of a different variety than I'd guess you've seen. I am a freestyle footbag player, and founder of the Rochester Footbag association.

I am writing because I want to organize a Freestyle Footbag jam session on the weekend of New Year's Eve, and I need to find an appropriate venue.

First, a word about freestyle footbag. I'm sure that you are familiar with hacky sack. Freestyle footbag is a conceptual evolution of hacky sack. Instead of just kicking our footbag around in a circle, we do extended "strings" of tricks with it. The concept is to choose a small, moving point in space, and move our body around it, next to it, under it, or along with it in as many different ways as we can think of. Basically, it is the human body dancing with gravity. If you want to see what I mean, here is a video of my friend Jorden Moir. http://www.missoulafootbag.com/Videos/M ... ession.wmv

He's a 17 year old boy from Ontario, and would most likely be in attendance at this event. He is the best player in the world as far as I'm concerned, and I'm sure you'll be impressed.

I've been to some of your Bush Mango events. I felt an air of community and positivity much like the one I feel in the footbag community. As our major east coast New Year's tournament has been cancelled this year, I'd like to propose that we put together some kind of cooperative footbag / drumming party for the afternoon / early evening of New Year's Eve and the afternoon of New Year's Day in your space. Music is an intrinsic part of the footbag community, and the prospect of having live drummers jamming and keeping a constant beat for us to play along with gives me goosebumps.

Your space is perfect for the kind of event I am envisioning. I'd expect between 40 and 60 freestylers from all over the Northeast US and Southern Canada to be in attendance. We require nothing more than a flat, relatively open space with heat, electricity, and running water / bathrooms. I'm also exploring the possibility of getting a live band for this event, but were we to have lots of area drummers, I think there would be no need.

Do you foresee a possibility that this could work out? Myself and my team of players from the area are willing to do all the legwork, including publicity / advertising for the event and your space, print and television media coverage, setup / breakdown / cleanup, etc. There is also quite a market for concessions for my tired, hungry, thirsty freestylers, which could generate some nice extra revenue for the space.

So what do you say? I'd love to put on a subcultural extravaganza of the highest order, combining improvisational, high energy music with improvisational, high energy dance.

Thanks for your time, I look forward to hearing from you and putting together a New Year's event to remember!

Matt Cross
Founder, Rochester Footbag Association"

so... that's all... tune in next time, same bored time, same bored channel

mosher · Post by **mosher** » 21 Dec 2005 10:31

Great letter matt, you seemed very enthused and you had just the right tone to the whole thing. It's true, letters like that make allll the difference in some cases.

Huge props for putting this all together, I know what the stresses of running a whole event are like and I am glad you're taking it upon yourself to chuck one together too.

mc · Post by mc » 25 Dec 2005 06:38

Tom, it's my pleasure! ABSOLUTELY my pleasure, to be surrounded by my family on New Years, and to have a great time together. Organizing this tournament has been a dream come true. I've had complete success with everything (except getting Johnny to come), and I haven't had to do anything more than ask for whatever I wanted. Free place to hold the tournament? got it. Free energy drinks for the tournament? got it. Free high class footbags for the tournament? You KNOW I got it. A pile of friends to shred with me and party? proliferance!!! This tournament is great. I can't wait.

hmmm... okay... that said... I WISH FOR A HOT AWESOME GIRLFRIEND who likes FOOTBAG!!!! let's see if I get that, too... Not so inconceivable, eh

?

I started this post to say thank you to the RFA. We've had some great times this year representing ourselves, our club, and the east coast. We partied hard, shredded harder, and some of us managed to PUKE ALL OVER EVERYTHING!!! (well, okay, me)

You guys have motivated me with your good styles, positivity, and support. We've got a great club with a lot of talent and some really cool people, and I am incredibly thankful of that. I've been so lucky to have the RFA nearby to play, and as I get ready to leave, I know that I'll miss you guys and the scene we built. I hope some of you guys can make it out to Fredonia from time to time to help me represent footbag. FRED SHRED!

Merry Christmas, to RFA members from Saratoga to Oregon (don't think I forgot you, Nasty Nate. Our time together this year was one of the moments that shined the brightest). See you at the tournament!