james_dean wrote:
I'm interested to hear why you call it Johnny Quest. Where did the name come from?
Lynton Stephens invented many many cool, and incredibly hard toe-toe moves in the 1990s. Unfortunately, communication in the footbag world wasn`t what it is today, so several American players later on "invented" those moves all over again, independent of Lynton, not knowing that they had already been hit and named. Since these players attended tournies and appeared on videos, the names they gave to these tricks stuck for a lot of Americans. That`s why atomic mobius is usually called Irish Cream (Pete Irish) and neutron smasher is called Johnny Quest (Brian MacKenzie). I think another factor that influenced this renaming trend, is that Lynton gave pretty crappy names to a lot of tricks (no offense at all). "Wenttletrappe" and "tunguska" don`t really roll off the tongue, and aren`t too memorable (even now I`m not 100% sure what tricks these names refer to). So even when people learned that Lynton had hit and named said tricks before, there wasn`t much of a push to change the names back to the originals.
Anyway, as my profile indicates, the cat is finally out of the (foot)bag. I`m in Japan baby!
Thank you to everybody who knew about this and kept the secret (Josh, Tony, Jauss, Alex Uranos [thanks for fixing your blog after posting] etc). The reason I kept things secret so long, is that I really wanted to surprise the Osaka crew (mostly Kenzo and QP), but my second week in Japan I developed horrible dental problems. So while I intended to go to Kansai (Osaka/Kyoto area) a week ago, I had to postpone it to this weekend.
My trip to Osaka was a mixed bag, but I`d say it was 85% excellent. I`ll blog it more in depth later, cause I don`t have much time now. Anyway, in good news, today was my final dental appointment. Considering I no longer have insurance in Japan, it worked out to be surprisingly affordable. But more than anything, I think I made the right decision to seek treatment early, cause I didn`t want to spend the rest of my trip nursing headaches.
Even though today was a weekday, we managed to have a real good turnout at Yoyogi park. All told there were 5 of us: Takumi, USK, X+Y, Karzu from Okinawa, and myself. Both Takumi and Karzu went to Worlds, and they both picked up pairs of Quantums. Takumi still mostly uses his old Lavers, but at one point in the session the circle was made up of 2 pairs of GUnits, 2 pairs of Quantums, and 1 pair of Lavers (X+Y).
Overall I`d say most of us were off our game. But somehow, I didn`t really mind playing badly. I feel like a "bad" session was long overdue, and I never really got too frustrated, so it wasn`t terrible. The weather was also noticably better than usual, with much less heat and humidity.
Highlights (not real proud of any of these, but you take what you can get during an off-day):
*ps whirl x3
*some good janiwalkers
*ps whirl-ps whirl-pdx torque
*fog-atom-legbeater-fog....butterfly!
I could have done an atom smasher too, I just brain-farted. Felt happy that I got through the hard part of the drill with no problem.
*blur-legbeater-blurry whirl-blur-legbeater-blurriest. I liked the wrinkle at the end. I kinda like drills with wrinkles in them, like doing rubberman but changing one atom smasher to a toe blur, and one blur into a blizzard. At a certain point drills can get too predictable and boring, so little changes can be cool.
[EDIT]
I guess another highlight was that I got to try on the Quantum shoes. Though I`m excited that footbag shoes now exist, I kinda feel like the timing of their release was unfortunate for me. I spent 8 years playing footbag in Lavers, but 8 months ago I made the switch to G-Units and never looked back. The feel of G6s and Lavers is pretty different; Lavers feel real alien to me now. The reason this matters, is that Quantums are essentially like Lavers. Had they been released 8 months ago, I think I would have been able to use them, and appreciate their good qualities. But since I no longer play in Lavers, the Quantums felt weird to me (through no fault of their own). That said, I thought they were kinda slippery on the soles (but then, I find Lavers to have bad grip too). In any case, I`m glad I got the chance to try out a pair and do a few runs.
[EDIT]
Takumi really was off his game, so no highlights come to mind (except for gyro pogo set, which I had never seen before). That said, here are a few highlights from sessions over the last couple weeks:
*surreal-swifter twice.
*surreal- spinning blender.
*clean alpine bigwalk... bsos
*spin whirl-pdx whirl repeat to start a string that had mobius bsos, a vortex, and a bl. whirl.
*gyro swifter
*rubberman pretty easily.
*foot on spinning mobius
*some good looks at gyro gauntlet
Towards the end of the session we decided to play some 4 square, cause nobody had much gas left in the tank. We ended up playing 2 games (1st to 10, then 1st to 7) which were superfun. Really great way to cool down after a shred. In the first game, Takumi and USK really were gunning for me, because I have a reputation (in Japan) for being "tricky." Unfortunately for me, my game was really off today, which combined with them gunning for me, meant I scored all of zero points in the first game
. This wouldn`t be as shameful if somebody had won in a blowout, but nooooo, everybody else had like 7 or 8 points (remember, 10 point game). The next game I also got off to a bad start, and when I finally did score a point, it was a big deal
I ended up finishing the day with a grand total of one point, from both games combined
Despite this, I really really enjoyed the games.
After the shred and 4 square, we all went to a family restaurant and got dinner. I showed them some pics of my Osaka trip, USK made lots of jokes about Morio`s girlfriend, and good times were had. The way my schedule works out, I probably will only have one more chance to shred with everybody before I leave. Definitely excited for it.
Hopefully seal soon.
