The Darkshredder's struggle

[slapdash21]

ha cool post. im mad baked. yer the man.

[Darkshredder]

hahaha! Oooh Pete. I miss you already, man.
No footbag yesterday, today, and tomorrow. I have a 10page paper I'm writing that draws comparison between Star Wars (Luke and the Jedi Knighthood) with Arthurian knights and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.

I'm a nerd. .

So yeah. The session BEFORE last was pretty weird. Strange practicing tricks instead of shred, but it helped. I was getting double switchovers hit a few times and I hit double pickup and barrage and for some reason could have sworn I cleared the second dex of a symp barrage from clipper . Not sure. So don't take me seriously. But it felt good is all I"m saying.

Mario Galaxy is the shit. The past two days I've been staying up till 3 or later in the morning playing it and DBZ BT2 with some friends. Awesome. From Mario, my new favorite phrase of all time is "snacky happiness". Yes, they actually say snacky happiness in the game.

k I need to go. Looong day ahead. I need a refill on coffee so I can get started on the day. Peace.

EDIT: : I had a nice little string I dedicated to Bowler: smear > dimwalk > pogo far frigid osis > zooming pdx mirage > string.

it's pretty Pete stylie. He freezes things and bails to stepping far osis in his easier links. . . I used to do that a lot. I should start up again. Nice little bail 4 add. I hate adds.

[Asmus]

Double dexes are snacky happiness..

[Darkshredder]

aaah footblog. Modifed. Long time no see. Footbag was put on a more even keel than usual this vacation. I played twice while home, three times in the past 6 days. . yikes. That's unheard of for me. Especially seeing as how when I wasn't playing footbag I wasn't skating or being active in any other way. Thanksgiving + seeing friends again + wii + no real homework (that I'm doing) = not a whole lot of room for anything else. . .

but regardless I'm feeling alright about the hack lately. My mosher bag I got at Wakahakee is very choice. Found the right amount of fill and the right weight for it. Works real well. In fact, Doug and I used it for like 97% of the session we had the other day with very reasonable results. But we'll get to that a little later. My footfighter is still up and running. Only patched with shoe goo once. No pilling. Kind of frayed but that's just the wear of the amaretta I think. It's my flowy bag - when I don't feel like being precise with my osis and don't really feel like drilling and schooling toe game. It's just something I can pull out and really get to bare bones of why I love footbag. FREEEEESTYLE. Nothing gets in my way. I just go with it. "Footbag harmony" in as much as it can happen with me at this point in my game.

I've shewed away the notion of getting climas as my next shredding shoe, though they look cool and not quite as noticeable for non-players who think we're cheating by ripping up our shoes. But no, I say, the next shoe I will get is the G-Unit 6. I put on a pair in NYC (they were Pete's) and found them to be quite adaptable. I think the toe box is better than lavers. Pete didn't cut away nearly as much leather as I will along the sides and so my clippers were a little weird but I just had to think a little harder on where to place the bag when it stalls. They were pretty sweet. When people get over themselves and mark down the price of Quantums I'll probably get them. Maybe Q3's. I liked my pair of quantums - it's just too pricey for me right now. - - - so yes. I'm gunning for the Units.

So like I said I played twice since I've been away from campus. Syracuse shred stylie. Always a pleasure to hack in CNY . High schoolers headstrong with their group mentalities laughing at my shorts, little kids holding up their parents so they can stare and wonder why I'm dancing by myself in the middle of a corridor in the mall. .. with soccer shorts. Aaaand mall cops making sure I'm over 18 and not causing trouble with my flailing legs. I'm a liability and a hoodlum. Not entirely untrue.

So anyway. Some highlights from the first session (solo):
zulu mirage bsos
a few midstring toe torques (I never do this move. Haven't for a year or so. Still got it )
nice long strings (over 10 contacts) where I tried to use a variety of my stronger componenets. ie: stepping and pixie shuffle bailing to some diving and gyro. And usually ending on torque or a double dex. My stepping shuffle was very on that day.
flip tomahawk hit midstring. No it's not new. At all. But I did it midstring and it was very controlled. I think I osis'd out of it though which was lame and easy but whatever. It was done more out of shock and emptyheadedness than anything else.

some dual highlights from the cool session I had with Doug:
Me -
I showed Doug how I've been working on double dexes and so I hit double pickup and barrage for him. Apparently I do my double pickups really downtime. meh
weaving clipper > zulu clipper repeat. Almost got it. I got bored trying it so we moved on. Not too hard.
gyro mirage and pandora bs in one string. Simple. Hadn't done them in a while.
long drifter-based string with a few two pdx drifters and a pixie shuffle thing ending with toe drifter > string.

I wasn't really playing at 100% effort. I was just happy to play with someone and knowing I wasn't having an off day. So it wasn't very groundbreaking or high energy but it was fun nevertheless.

Doug -
cleanest monster I've ever seen. . midstring.
loooong tiltless string at the very beginning of the session. It was epic. Like 20 or more contacts of good stuff. Probably 60% tiltless 40% guiltless. But see what was great about it was that all the guiltless was difficult stuff, not a whole lot of bails to BOPs, and very easy for him.
I was noticing a lot of talk in the BSC blog about him doing gyro and spinning stuff. I hadn't seen any of it in person till now. Yeah. He's good at spinning. I was helping him see what he was doing in relation to the bag and he caught on fast (as usual). His sets are right on, he just needs to work on spinning and not moving too much HIMSELF. Sometimes he'll spin right into the bag and he'll have to hop out of the way just in the nick of time to catch the bag on the clipper - it leaves him off balance a little and is unfortunate in light of how well he did 90% of the other parts of the move.
he's good at toe blurs.

so that's what's been going on with me and footbag in the past week. Not a whole lot, but it was a whole lot of fun. And now it's time to go back to school. I'll probably be heading back in the next couple hours. I have way too many projects to do for school. Not a lot of homework, persay, but just an assload of projects. So it'll be tough to factor in sessions with footbag. I'm sure it'll work out though since I don't have to read nearly as much as I have been this semester. Reading is really what's been taking up my time. I'm a pretty slow reader so I have to budget in enough time for that and all the other things that are on my list of things to do.

so in closing -
FarCry II looks amazing
I want to play more BioShock
I wish I had the money to afford a 360
cherry pie is good
I need to shave
There are no pencils in my entire house with erasers
I want to sell my car
My dog is fluffy

that is all. . good bye.

[slapdash21]

sick dude guy. yeah, i taught doug....nothing. i was going to say "everything he knows" but i realized it would have been a blatant lie

sick highlights. yeah gunnitsss.

[Darkshredder]

Just had an amazing session. 2 hours. Nothing new hit. Everything was on. Zooming osis back to back. Maverik > blur bsos (I wanted to hit it back to back but it's kind of difficult) . Completed my weaving clip > zulu clip repeat drill. New gyro clip record = 7. Pdx DLO midstring without really wanting to. I was going to go for a pdx drifter . Craaaazy long string with some form of ducking butterfly popping up every other trick or every three tricks. Had some diving, some weaving, and tons of regular ducking. Started it all off with back to back muted ducking butters. . String with ripwalk > blur > tapdown > sidewalk > and more combos linked. Toe shuffling was good and could be relied on out of BOPs and blurs. I had some really weird intense string that I can't remember at all what it was. All I know was that I was spent for the next 3 or 4 minutes and had to sit down. It may have gone something like parkwalk > ripwalk > ripwalk > blur > ss butter > blizzard > dimwalk > pdx whirl. That sounds pretty close to what it was. This was done midstring and still had a few more genuine contacts after it. Man oh man. It was crazy. The bag just wouldn't fall.

hole 2 in footfighter.
played mostly with my mosher
stitching on hold (homework)
my roommate's up to about 7 or 8 kicks. He has descent crank. . . but very out of shape and doesn't know if he really wants to do freestyle. Whatever. At least I'm not alone every time in the gym.

ugh . not looking forward to tonights workload. Thank God for footbag and blueberry smoothies, that's all I've gots to say. Peace. Oh and watch Asmus' video. More people should put out videos like that here on modified instead of just ALL footbag. We're all really interesting people and it's cool to see how we chill outside of this game.

* * *

[Asmus]

Your getting really fucking good!
Thanks for the namedropping.

Maverick > Blur [rpt] would look slick..

[Darkshredder]

so I'm taking a break from my work and so I've decided to write about some of my thoughts on footbag et al.

Heeey thanks, Asmus. Means a lot, man. I'm at a point in my game where I know I must be still improving, but I just can't tell. I'm more of a laid back obsessed freestyle than most so when someone says that I'm improving or I did well with something it fills me. . . with the snacky happiness. I hate that feeling when you can't tell if you're improving. You just play and do what you do. HENCE!? The blog.

First off, I had a great session today. It didn't last as long as I wanted but the dining hall was closing so I had to stop in order to eat. I like me my food. No new things hit, again, but some interesting intense stuff. For once I feel like I can utilize about 90% of EVERYTHING I can do and do it midstring. See Doug and a few other people in my footbag world and I have discussed the idea that "bsos" isn't all that great. People give it too much credit. But one thing I DO like a lot is the ability to do things in the middle of a good run. Not tilted. I think that comes out in my writings in this blog.

so if I want, I can actually have a tight-linked string with drifters, stepping, ducking, pixie, one-sided fairy, atomic, whirling stuff, even quantums and nukes in there. Oh and spins. Can't forget them! It's a cool feeling. Finally. But at the same time I'm kind of worried I'm not stepping up when I need to. There are loads of tricks I SHOULD be able to hit. I mean tons. I'm looking at double dexes when I say this. Sternly. I don't see why tricks like motion, loco, barfly, and DDD can't be a very integral part of my game. They'd so be there if I could do motions and its variations. And the same thing goes with drifters and torques and their variations. Mobius? Vortex? Vertigo? Marius? Void? I've done a bunch of these. But I maybe do them . . once? twice? every three weeks? It's just not right.

See I'm not even really too worried about more complicated sets. Sailing. Shooting. Phasing ( it mocks me). Frantic. I mean they're cool. But they're not really all that practical for me right now. Hitting big tricks with them would be great. Add hunting is always fun once in a while. But to be honest having a solid tripless/guiltless , very genuine, stylie game is what I focus on these days. There are a lot of difficult things I should be trying, and not all of them have anything to do with swixie sets. . .

stepping ducking?
flip fairy
more confident toe shuffling and crispy double dexing
spinning ducking
same leg double dexing. Still my bane.

it's all lacking.
I need a knock in the head or, to quote Henry G a ways back in this very blog, I need to eat a whole lot of ambition cake.
it doesn't even bother me so much that whenever I go to comps or play in an environment with more than 6 players that I can't get more than 4 contacts. . . though it WOULD be nice to show long-time friends what I can really do. It'd be helpful if I could send out videos. It's just getting hard smiling at the fact that people must be so confused when they play with me for the first time. Meaning I look like I know what I'm doing, maybe even do a few stylie or interesting links. . but then I drop on three ripwalks? In a row? And what? Did he really just drop after osis > pdx mirage? Huh. Weirdo.

It went from frustrating > nagging > pissing me off > pretty annoyingly hilarious > moving on. Gets old after a while and one of these days I'll put out a video. And I'll make it very balanced and "This is what Pat can do." and people will go "aaaaah that's what Darkshredder looks like. he has a long-ass neck."

Aaaand I'm stopping while I'm ahead.
Tomorrow I'm going to hit a new trick.

[slapdash21]

he has a long-ass neck

the only part i read.



ha jokes.

mmmm i want some ambition french toast...

[mc]

Ambition Sashimi!!

Hey Pat. Glad to hear your game is on an upswing! Want to build your shuffle game? Try doing some really repetitive drills like rip > side rpt and plo > magellan rpt for 20 contacts each, and really focus on the rhythm of what you're doing, consistency, control, and breathing. also, do many contacts of smear > dim > blur rpt, then change the mirages to illusions and do lots of those.

basically, take those 3 drills, and mix up the downtime components. then, once you can do lots of those style combos with ease, control, and rhythm, change the set.

this will really REALLY help get your string length higher and your drop count lower.

then, once you've got that, do drills with your easiest sets (probably pixie and stepping) with a harder DT component like drifter or DLO or eggbeater thrown in as part of it.

When you're trying to build your string length, control, and consistency, new moves are not your friend.

[Darkshredder]

yeah that's pretty much the only thing worth reading in the post anyway, eh Pete? They serve ambition french toast at a diner like 3 minutes down the road from me. It's really overpriced but it's sooo good. Just douse it with courage syrup. A friend of mine puts a slice of focus butter on it but he's a little bitch so no one listens to him.



thanks for writing Matt. I'm going to take a sharpie and I'm going to write those drills on my lavers with a mean face on it. I know them, do them sometimes (I'm getting better at drilling instead of just shredding for 2+ hours. . yeee) but your post definitely just served up some ambition __various baked good__ and I'm excited to get a few drill contacts recorded.

I should name my mosher bag the drill sergeant since it sets like a charm. Or I could call it the cleaning agent because it's not floppy at all and it helps clean up my form. Damn the creativity just FLOWS when coffee's on the brain.

Possible songs for Darkshred pt. 2 (with no sign of it ever coming out any time soon. . )
Wiedzialem ze tak bedzie by Molesta (Woo! Polish hip hop!)
Warheart by Children of Bodom
Hero by Machinae Supremacy
Fanvacoolt by Machinae Supremacy
Jump Me Silly by Garden of Concrete
Super Rad! by Aquabats
Skate or Die! by Planet Smashers
Any number of about a dozen catch22 or streetlight manifesto songs. Doug knows what I's is sayin'

I have a cold which won't blossom into a big deal but it also won't go away. It is the suck.

oh and I hunted down the video "2 girls 1 cup" on the interweb last night. Apparently it's the most disgusting video on the internet. . this year? So whatever. I had heard about it, saw a video of Joe Rogan (The Man) watch it and almost throw up. So I thought it must be crazy. So I found it and watched it. I think I would've freaked out more if I had seen it with some friends. It's pretty ridiculous, though. I gagged. And laughed. A lot. See what I had to do was quick switch off reality and think of it as either a big joke or not real. Only then could I stomach it. It's a good thing I'm so detached from reality. Otherwise I would've been scarred.

I don't recommend the video, though. The hundreds of videos on the internet of people's reactions to it are 10000x funnier and will save you from losing your lunch or dinner or snack.

peace.

[slapdash21]

i hate the part where she spits it onto her lower lip and then sucks it back in.

[DTank126]

Doug -
cleanest monster I've ever seen. . midstring.

Thanx man, but uh.... whats monster again? haha

Anywho, what Matt said sounds about right. Just drill those basic concepts and then combine the two. I know you already know that and you do do that a lot. Idk. Whenever we play it seems like you go mainly for more complex links rather than big tricks. I know you can hit those bigger tricks but I rarely see you attempt them. I remember the first time I saw you hit mobius was the first time we played in Buffalo.... I dont think Ive actually seen you attempt it since..... Then again I do have a short attention span so maybe you do attempt those tricks...

Anyway, basically what im tryin to say is your game is already pretty sick. You got mad style. Im sure in time you'll be hittin those bigger, more technical moves midstring in no time dude. Hell, you hit barfly midstring less than a week ago!

2 girls one cup < hatchet vs genitals.... idk if youve seen that one or not but if not, well, I think the name says it all.

Woo! Streetlight!

Peace

[Darkshredder]

@ Pete - yep.

@ Doug - yeah sorry. Meant to say motor. Not monster. Not sure what monster is. Jorden does it a lot from like.. gyro symp reverse whirl ___monster___ or something like that. He likes monster.

and yes. I haven't done mobius in front of you since buffalo. When I play with you and Ben I usually just do cool links and at least try to hit longer strings with an occasional Pat Jaw Dropper. But if anyone can force me to try new things it's Ben. It's odd. Like shooting. I'll be like nope not going to do that. And Ben will just go, do it. And I'll try it till I'm out of breath. Strange. It must be related to him footing fusion. Ugh. Can't wait till I hack with that guy again. I bet he's better than me now.

I think you mean the BME Pain Olympics. No I haven't seen them but I heard Joe Rogan talk about them. Yeah. Choppin' off of da balls. I'm pretty sure that'd hit home more than a couple of chicks throwing up a few times and eating peanut butter ice cream.

[Darkshredder]

I drank a monster, ran to the Monster Energy headquarters, kicked down the door, and demanded they sponsor me for footbag. I could sense the fear in them. Long story short. I'm sponsored by Monster now.

I'm dropping out of school and touring with BMX riders and motocross people playing footbag. They feed me hotdogs for every clipper I do. It's pretty sweet actually.

ugh. This has to be the most worthless post next to that time I dropped my footbag on my keyboard and said that whatever key it landed on was a message from the footbag gods. - - I'm not worthwhile.

I sesh'd last night while watching Comedy Central Presents and the Colbert Report. TV and footbag doesn't mix. I was really distracted. But it was a pretty cool hack because it was a 98% schooling session (not really drills) and I felt productive. For a while I was just going all out on fairy and I think out of like 20 fairies I may have dropped 5? It was pretty gnarly. That won't happen ever again, I assured myself. But it was pretty cool - I did every fairy trick I know and almost hit fairy GRIFTER and fairy eggbeater. Style. And I pounded away on my flip pixie and really found my sweet spot with that. I figured out I was leaning away from the dexing leg a bit too much and had my arms all weird when I did it which kind of forced my legs to dex awkwardly, which would always make cleared pixie sets go a little to the left (it's a right leg pixie). But all is well with that and I did a bunch of muted and rooted magellan's bsos in some stylie repeating drills I made up on the spot. And I thought "backside" dimwalk > "backside" ripwalk would feel kind of weird and look cool so I did a bunch of those on both sides till the symple component felt a little more flowy. Sometimes my symple ripwalks are scoopy and I think I made some progress making them. . not.

some other cool things was the fact that I went through my toe DLOs on both sides and did them over and over never dropping for just about 10 attempts. And then I stopped and went to my flipside (10 on my strong. . maybe 5 on my flip since it got boring and I wanted to do more shreddy runs). I have no patience for repeats and schooling. And that is why I fail.

an overall good long session. Over two hours. TV helped make the time go by fast. Daniel Tosh is a good comedian. I like his style. If I were a comedian I'd probably have his kind of delivery. I don't think I could pull off his douchebaggy jokes, though. Well anyway, this post went from being a "hey I'm taking a break from the project! I'll change my avatar and maybe post something about it in my blog" to a regular entry. Well only an hour and a half before dinner so I'd better get more of this work done. Peace.

[Darkshredder]

when did it start saying fearless over my avatar? Ha. I just thought of a fearless combo I may be able to do pretty soon.

ps whirl > barfly > ducking ps mirage. but first I have to seal a ps whirl, then be able to barfly out of it. But hey. it's the thought that counts, right?

I forgot how much fun typing up a powerpoint presentation can be when one has motivation (caffeine) and momentum (I need to get it done before sunrise). Something about writing tiny bits of info and pasting obscure charts and images just puts a smile on my face.

sorry for making you read this. Wait. . I didn't make you. HA! You brought this upon yourself! wHy are you still reading this? Stop. It's over.

fin

[mc]

hey homey, barfly is a 4. you'll either have to add stepping set or do it symposium.

go for the gold.

Sorry you won't be making it to YEAH. It's gonna be a good time. I'm pretty sure tom mosher will be there! maybe we can get bev and aidan to come again.

how's that black and white MC bag doing (the only MC bag to ever have black in it)?

[Darkshredder]

shiz, yo! I stared at that combo for like 5 minutes making sure it was all 5's. Ugh. I'm sooo tired. My mind is fried. It was even back then.

Anyway yeah I'll have to make it a blurriest since I haven't hit superfly and don't plan on it for a while. Though when I do I'm definitely going to get it on camera, hit it, and then walk up to the camera and go "SUPERFLYYYYY" like Derek Vandall. . . I saw that way back in the day when all I knew was hackrifice.com and footbag.org and the only hacks I had were a shitty 32 panel sand pilled thing called a Stalling Star (pff) and like a dozen crocheted bags.

Sucks something fierce I won't be making it to YEAH. I hope it goes over really well and I hope everyone who says they go can. It'll be pretty sweet. It's one of those jams that kind of happened randomly last time and was pretty low-key and sweet like Wakahakee. I know I had fun especially my battle with Paul A. where neither of us could do any tricks to try and stump each other because we were both really tired and kind of not too into it. Haha I remember we both kind of agreed to not do each other's signature stuff since we knew we couldn't do them. So I stayed away from things like ducking pdx illusion and stuff and he stayed waaay the fuck away from neo. God I love that set. I wish I could do more than just the basics out of it. Neo torque is still high up on my "I wish I could hit that" tricks.

fuck how did this post get so long. Bye. I need to study. Presentation/bibliograhy/revision of paper complete since I last posted. Woo! Now I just need to cram for a test. Or sleep.

[Darkshredder]

I need to cover up that last post. Not good. So I'm going to play a bunch today. Hopefully more than 2 hours. We'll see. But I've got an agenda:

vertigo midstring
smear > dimwalk > blur rpt and then smudge > dimwalk > blizzard repeat. I know I can do this. Never did the illusion'ed variation, though surprisingly. But I know I can do it.
flip reverse whirlygig. I realized the other day I never got around to a flip. So I'll do that. Probably be one of the first things in the session. And this is me being a cocky son of a bitch. You should re-read this because it's probably the only time you'll see it coming from me.
pixie and atomic out of eggbeater (bs) sounds funny as a goal in a post but this is seriously how low I set my standards when I solo. Not even aiming for a repeat. I know it's hard for me so I just take baby steps.

and I'm sure I'll try some other things that happen to arise but these are the things that have come to mind since waking up this morning. Look for an edit later tonight. I'll play from 4 - 6:__.

[Asmus]

I wish you a good session.
Im looking forward to the video even though you are a cocky son of a bitch.