In a very pleasant and unexpected turn, my body feels pretty good. The reason this is surprising, is that my body was feeling kinda tweaky since about a week ago, and then on Thursday I spent a good 7 hours playing almost non-stop. I'm going to try to make my next few sessions pretty light, and then try and get back on track for building my stamina for worlds. On that note, I should also record that I've been pretty bad about listening to my routine music. Not having an iPod anymore, and working a ton will do that to you.
My schedule has been really strange lately. Normally, I have Wednesdays off, but this week a member of NYFA wanted to use me in a footbag promo video, so I asked for Thursday off instead. This meant that I got to the city on Wednesday night, showed my face at the normal wed night shred, spent all of Thursday filming, partied at Bruce's on Thursday night, and then went back to work on Friday morning. So Friday at work felt like a monday. To make things even weirder, I volunteered for work on Saturday morning, so even though I hung out with my sister tonight, and I have plans in the city tomorrow, I still need to dress up and go to work in the morning. Very weird.
Thursday was a really fantastic day, so it deserves a good blog entry. Its weird how when you have really good days, they leave you so tired that you dont have the time or energy to always properly record them in your blog or diary. But if I don't try now, I doubt it will happen at all.
I was pretty excited about Thursday because I knew it was going to be a pretty professional shoot, and so I had (have) high hopes for the final product. It will be cool to have a well-shot and edited video to promote footbag in NYC, but I'm also excited for personal reasons to have a well-made video of myself. I learned to play footbag in NYC, and I'm NYFA at heart, so there's sentimental value in having a video of me playing in Washington Square Park. So many memories.
I woke up feeling nervous about the shoot. I slept over in NYU dorms, and even though it was a Wednesday night, Barret's dorm-mates were partying loud and late. I don't function well with less than 8 hours of sleep, and I ended up with only 5.5.
Rough. My stomach let me know it wanted more sleep, as I felt it flopping around for the first hour of the day. Waylon showed up early to help us carry the film equipment, which was ridiculously clunky and heavy. Super props to Waylon for helping out; he had a lot of the hardest and most boring tasks of the day: carrying equipment, and then watching over our stuff while we filmed. Looked shitty, but it needed to be done.
We hit WSP by 10 am (or was it 9?) and I warmed up slowly as Barrett discussed shots and logistics with the cameraman and the still photographer. Early on we picked a bag to use for the whole day, and we ended up going with my red and white Lesh bag. We picked it because its size and color made it the most visible bag, even though it is slightly too floppy for my taste on some bigger tricks. I'm amazed how playable it is though, given that I won it at the Rochester NYJ 18 months ago. One of my alltime best bags ever.
Shooting went well. The weather was absolutely perfect, and my body held up admirably. We got a lot of angles, and even used a wheelchair to get some dolly-shots. At times it was tedious, having to hit the same trick over and over again so we could get it from different angles. It reminded me of Milhouse playing Fallout Boy. Hopefully though, it will all pay off with a good looking final product. We were also lucky in that we had lots of good live music throughout the day, which definitely helped keep me going. There were also some fun breaks when I got to watch street performers or bands, and one part of the day when I got to ride around on a Segway. At first I felt silly like GOB on Arrested Development, but soon I was scooting around. It was really fun; I was impressed how easy and intuitive the controls were.
We finished up the shoot in Union Square, with the hope of getting some crowd reaction shots. Unfortunately, I was pretty tired by then, and playing solo on a weeknight without a radio made it even harder to draw and keep a crowd. I could also see the rest of the production crew was getting pretty burned out, so I just hit a few tricks and strings to give us some more footage to work with.
While we were shooting in Union Square, I thought I noticed a cute girl checking me out. She was wearing sunglasses though, so maybe she wasn't. In any case, I figured I had nothing to lose by going to talk to her, so when we were all packing up to leave, I went over, said hey, and set up a date for Saturday night. Score! If a girl sees that your hobby is kicking around a beanbag, and she STILL agrees to go out with you, that either means she's a keeper, desperate, or blind (that would explain the
). We'll see which it is on Saturday.
On that happy note, we all headed to a Thai place for dinner to celebrate the productive day of shooting. We all worked really hard, but I think we got a lot done. The food was really good, and not just because I hadn't eaten much all day. After dinner I went to Brooklyn and celebrated some more with my favorite local beer (Brooklyn Brown) and some Wii bowling. I set a new personal record: 167! What, I never said I was any good.
Hopefully I'll help Barrett log the footage soon, and the video will get done in the next month or so.
It was in chalk, but it was perfect dimensions with straight lines, and the kingsquare was even marked. Very weird. We took advantage of it and played 3 games which was a lot of fun. 
