The Darkshredder's struggle

[Darkshredder]

lucky. I have one more - tomorrow. 8:30. It's going to suck so much. I messed up big time not studying for this till now. I underestimated it. Oh well. Only a test.

speaking of which. Why am I posting? My other tabs behind modified are 6 websites on arthurian legend and a whole bunch of powerpoint notes I'm studying.

I hit symposium dada curve last night in long pants both sides while watching south park. I realized I had a footbag in my pocket (. . well I always have one actually. So not really surprise) and I was trying to get 20 ducking clippers. But then I wanted to see if I could do nova in long pants. And I ended up footing symp dada on accident. So I laughed and tried to do it. It's a pretty wacky move. I think it'd be less of an add hunter when you tack on a symp add. or would that make it even more. Oh well. I think if I do it in shorts I'd make it look stylier and then I doubt anyone would really care or judge me if I did one in circle. Because let's face it. I care a great deal about what people think about me.

I ordered a grilled cheese and bacon sandwich tonight at a diner and was made fun of by the waitress for being too thin. . It came with fries! God these people sometimes.

woah woah. I just thought of something. GYRO symp dada? Huh. That'd be fun as hell. I'll try that tomorrow after my last exam. I plan on doing only three things tomorrow after the exam: Gaming, Shredding, Eating chinese food.

ps. Nightwish is good studying music.

[slapdash21]

ok now i want to hit that. i want to see someone hit surging ps dada.

[Darkshredder]

Ben Rea and I will hit unwrapping symp dada. and get it on video. And by Ben Rea and I, I mean Ben Rea will hit it and I will get it on video. And Doug will be eating pizza in the background give a thumbs up.

Pete, your job will be to hit blazing symp dada. Aaaaaand GO! time's ticking man it'd be your invention (as far as I know. . )

ticktockticktock

oh by the way, I finished my "last" final today. One of the questions was asking what King Arthur was asked to get by the Knights who say Ni. From Monty Python. Yeah so if that gives you any indication as to how I feel about the test . . .

oh and I completed my challenge even FURTHER with recruiting a possible new player. He's of Polish descent (1st gen). he even SPEAKS Polish. So yeah. As soon as he get lavers he'll be better than me in a month. I'm looking forward to it since he's a sophmore and I'll leave him in charge of holding up footbag duties when I graduate, whenever that will be. YAY!

[DTank126]

heh, yea..... I would give a thumbs up.....

Unfortantly Idk if I'll actually be able to do so now cuz I was playin in my dorm just now (I had a good 4 or 5 hours to kill before leaving for my plane, hadnt showered yet, y not footbag?) and then I kinda sorta landed on my ankle...

So yeah.... I still wanna head over to "Cuse tomorrow and kick but Im not sure I'll be able to. we'll see how it feels on the morrow.

Peace

[Darkshredder]

thought I'd dig it out of the second page though I'm sure there are a few people out there just happy it's not stuck in the top four blog spots.

I haven't been playing all that much since I've been back. Hacked with Ben and that was a lot of fun. But I'm going to LA so I've just been with some of my friends I'll be leaving for a couple weeks.

As for the session with Ben, it was good fun. I wasn't feeling too off but my atomics were for shit but I couldn't stop at least trying them. Bad mistake. Should've just let them be and do more things. So I was good, but probably wasn't at full power. I think I may have hit a new trick or at least a new combo. It was a couple days ago so I can't remember. Whatever. I'm hoping to shred more after I'm back in town along with DTank and hopefully I can force myself to go all out - if there's a camera that may help.

I leave tomorrow. It's going to be so much fun, even playing alone. I'm going to try and play every day for at least 2 hours. Just being in LA will give me so much motivation to shred hard. Looking forward to it. I'm going to post a heads up in the LA footbag thread in the travels section.

In a couple hours I'm going to go skiing with a few friends. The last few years I haven't really had all that much fun skiing. I've been doing it since I could walk pretty much. What really made it fun again was this game i invented in junior year of high school called the Orange Game. The long and short of a rather epic story is that I stole like 5 oranges from the ski club food area we were staying at when we went back up to the top of the hill. Then when we got off we would kind of play this game of who can catch the rolling orange first. So we'd throw the orange, and race each other after it pushing and shoving and generally being nasty to each other and those around us. It was pretty badass. It was actually a trend that year and it caught on with other high school ski clubber people from other schools. Kind of annoying since they were more about being asses to other and people rather than just playing the game and being goofy.

Anyway the purpose of that was to say that we playing that for two years and then stopped and now skiing has gone back to the "oh um. Sucks I can't do any tricks or hey it sucks there are other people on the hill in my way. . . still." But somehow we come up with something small to do that's different and makes us happy. Just not quite as happy as the orange game made us. There might be a return of the orange game because to be honest I'd rather just stay home and go sledding or play manhunt or something.

oooh well. I'll be checking back here every once in a while but probably not really posting unless something awesome happens on my journey (pff. it's LA of course I'm going to post. who am I kidding?).

[slapdash21]

i just reread what you challenged me to hit and i realized i might be able to do it. dunno how cleanly, but maybe.


have cool in LA.

[Darkshredder]

hah alright. Take THIS: SYMP blazing SYMP dada. And i want it the cleanest ever hit. And so do you.

I'm at JFK. My ears hurt. My head can't depressurize as well as the rest of the human race. And I'm complaining with good reason. It's worse than how you get it. Saying "wow", chewing gum, drinking water, burping, nothing works for me and my brother. We lose at the game of flying.

the headphones we got for the flight came in this little dime bag type jobber and it'd make a good footbag . . bag. I don't know. I've seen footbags sold in little dime bags and it makes it look really cool. Only when they're crisp and fresh, though. My beat up footfighter and my strange dirty little mosher bag will only look slightly awesome in it. just realized I confessed my mosher bag is dirty. Don't worry, Tom. I'm washing it this afternoon for the inevitable session I'm going to have ALL FUCKING DAY tomorrow. Woo! Can't wait. But what's on for today? I'm glad you asked:

1) Get in to LAX
2) Give my brother the look of "don't talk to me. My ears hurt". It's one of the few brotherly bonding things we do. We're nothing alike.
3) Make fun of all the LA "we're slick" people walking around (in my head)
4) Unpack at my brother's apartment
5) Eat dinner at some place
6) Drink with my brother and his super cool Hollywood friends.

[Frank_Sinatra]

I'm at JFK. My ears hurt. My head can't depressurize as well as the rest of the human race. And I'm complaining with good reason. It's worse than how you get it.

Oh yeah?

This happened both times that I've flown into O'hare - but nowhere else: the sinuses right behind my eyeballs fill up with a burning, stabbing pain. One side of my face or the other will start to throb, with pain also right underneath my molars. Tears and mucus run down my face. Mucus like you wouldn't believe. I have to try to breathe out continuously throughout descent or it gets even worse (descent lasting about 20 minutes) as the pressure builds and builds. I can't open my eyes because of extreme light sensitivity (like a migraine) and if I touch my forehead it feels like I'm sticking it with a red hot poker. This slowly subsides over the next day or two.

[Darkshredder]

Well tomorrow I come back to the east coast. I just got my internet back on my computer yesterday and so I wasn't able to get in contact with Anne or any other west coast players. Not too happy about that.

LA is an interesting place. We brought winter here definitely - it's been pretty chilly by southern californian standards I guess. That wasn't too great either, but it was still a trip wearing shorts on Christmas day. People around here go about in hats and thin gloves and it's like 59 or in the low 60s, which is hilarious.

I've been trying to play like normal here, almost every day, but always seemed hardpressed because of family affairs and the like. We ate so much food here it's nuts. I'm sure I gained a layer or two of hamburger fat . I love eating out, but this was just insane. It's like every day we just lived from meal to meal, basing our activities around how close something is to a restaurant. Probably not the healthiest way to vacation. So yeah, after a while I got really sick of going out all the time and not being able to just have a hot dog or a couple slices of pizza and call that a lunch. No no, you have to have a triple turkey club with fries and two refills of soda. Yup. And you'll like it! Ugh.

And footbag in general has been kind of meh here in the land of Hollywood. But fun. The first time I got out and had a good long session I walked for like 40 minutes down Sunset Blvd. and came to the Scientology center at Los Angeles. The hub, if you will. It's hilarious. The main street is actually called L. Ron Hubbard Way. When I saw that I just laughed and said I had to find some place to shred nearby. So I walked to Ron's lane and got to this big statue of this crazy half robot half organic lion thing. It was the most amazing statue I'd seen in a while so I put my bag down and set up camp right there. Played for like 2.5 hours. It was a lot of fun. The scientologists got a kick out of me. They're so friendly. . . and probably on x number of sedatives and other mind altering substances. So yes. I played at the Church of Scientology for a while and then I opened up my laptop and started to play to music. Hardcore punk rock, that is. I couldn't keep a good string going because I kept laughing. They went from smiling at me and saying good job to forming odd groups by the main entrance and some of the elders shook their heads at me. It was so loud. I'm trying to think of some highlights from that session, since it was pretty good. Well, I hit helix in front of a guy on a bike who had stopped to talk to me. Lots of good stepping shuffle if I remember correctly - good use of schmoe.

The rest of the times till today I played at this cool open-air school. Since LA doesn't get weather, it can afford to have some really amazing complexes that don't need roofs. I just it funny that there were signs all over the place saying no skateboarding, but the whole school looked like one giant skatepark. I mean seriously. If you don't want hooligans and skaters messing up your school, then don't make it the most badass, protected hangout/skatepark available in 10 miles.

Played at Santa Monica next to all the other acrobats and freaks of coordination. People enjoyed that. So did I. But I played shitty. If it weren't for the location and the people, I'd have been mad. But I wasn't.

Today I played at the Griffith Park Observatory. A really nice place. Didn't think I'd have the gonads to play there since it's super open and filled with people. But I found a good spot to go and I played for about an hour and a half. My mom didn't want to stay that long so it was a shorter session. But this was by far the best I've had here. Combos seemed to click and I had a lot of energy. My toe shuffle is really coming along nicely finally and I really didn't feel the need to hold back on risking BOPing to toe and starting a string of pixies. Just about every time it worked out for me. It was my spinning and double dexes that made me drop a lot but even they weren't all that hopeless. All in all it was just really solid. I found myself coming up with new combos that were more stylie than difficult, which is pretty much the way I work when I'm shredding and not drilling.

FAR DYNO > BARFLY > dlo > dimwalk > torque
frigid osis > ss symp mirage bs
terrage > pixie muted clipper > spinning osis > pdx whirl
dyno > dyno > symple dyno > drifter > run
some really spinny run that I can't really remember how it went but it just kept going and it was pretty intense. Vague?
weaving osis (w00t) > zulu clipper > weaving butter > ducking muted reverse whirl. Not sure how I did this and it won't happen again for a while, I assure you. I was so happy when I hit this. I did a happy flying clipper with glee.

so it looks like my LA adventure is over. It's been fun. My brother has cool friends. I was introduced to a pretty sweet band called Soul Coughing. The west coast is very likely going to be a future home of mine. After college and getting some money.

So I'm off. Thanks for reading. - - peace

[Darkshredder]

session when Doug and Ian came to town and Ben joined in on the event of the winter as well.

Four people playing. Huh. See it's fun but man is it hard to get warmed up and take each time I get the bag seriously. It's the same with Jams. It really makes me realize just how inconsistent I am.

Drat - and I was doing so well the last few sessions. Oh well. I had a few good runs at least. Spinning and ducking were pretty much spot on. Didn't have to worry about them.

And it was really fun. That's all that really mattered to me, really. I mean it's the last time I'll get a chance to chill and shred with Doug and Ian till Spring Break or else maybe even the summer, but I doubt that. And if I got the bag every now and then that's a plus. I'm guessing we would've played a little longer but we were stopped 4 times by mall people. That's a record - even counting all the times we were kicked out when I was a circle slacker. Not sure what was up their collective asses, but they were really out to get us yesterday. kinda sucked. Didn't help the whole "still not warmed up" anxiety.

After all things, though, I woke up this morning and was really desperate to play footbag again with them just to show them I don't suck at footbag. I picked up my phone and almost called Ben but then decided I wouldn't bother him with it. And my day is pretty packed with non-footbag things anyway. And I'm off to start it off to a trip to the bagelry.

[Asmus]

Scientology is scary.. The LA write-up was cool..
Too bad you didn't get to play with Anne!
Mad props for FAR DYNO > BARFLY > dlo > dimwalk > torque !!!
I can only do like two of those tricks..

[BenRea]

good thing you didnt call, i was PAINTING all day.

not fun artsy painting.

...

sad wall painting


i feel the same way i want to show doug and ian i have imporved since i last saw them but i feel like it didnt happen that way. i felt like doug played really well and so did you, you had some really good runs and they were long too. you played smoothly.

[Darkshredder]

ha yeah Asmus it's funny because far dyno > barfly is kinda big for me but really I was just stoked to hit dimwalk from DLO because it was flip pixie out of dlo. It's always a fun little toss up when I want to do that. I just flick my leg after I think I may have stalled the bag and hope the pixie dex gets cleared.

was it your idea Ben to start doing sick 3's and that rippin run "tourney"? Pretty sure it was. Thanks for that. It got the blood flowing and things started working better. we were kind of pwned by Ian, though. With sick 1 and 3. Pigbeater attempt, pigbeater attempt, bedwetter attempt. Ian's turn. Clipper - FUCK! Well, Ian wins.

didn't play yesterday. And it's sunday now so I doubt I'll play today. not cool.

[Darkshredder]

I don't feel very well but I'm going to play. I got an idea for stuff to try and so I'll hack for a little bit before going to hang out with people.

If people can, go see Juno. It's a real good movie. I saw it in LA before it was released (ah the glory of having my brother be in the Writer's Guild) and I went to go see it in theaters last night. Ellen Page is a fucking great actor.

[BenRea]

my girlfriend sw it today and when she told me about it she said something that reminded me of you. she said it was philisophical or somethin, i dont really know.


if it wee ancient times, you would have the peasants begging for you at your feet.

[Darkshredder]

begging at my feet? Yeah well that's about how it is right now. I walk down the streets of a city and come across beggars and they go "Any spare change sir?" and I'm like. pff "No. Do you? I need to get some lunch, my man. You probably have more money than I do!"

had a really nice random session yesterday. Looong drilling strings. Almost hit ripped warrior. And yes that's the last time I'll try to duck stepping for a while even though it can apparently be done. Why? Because stepping ducking is probably one of my least favorite <dex> <duck> tricks UNTIL you're good enough to do it back to back or at some point hit montage before or after it (when you get around to it). It's just impractical for me. Again, is this the best way to go about progressing? Almost definitely not. But I'll get there. Only a matter of time before I do it. My attempts were pretty smooth and I just need to tinker more with my form so the bag doesn't ram up into my shirt after the step. I hunch.

I did beta blur bsos again though which was cool. I think second try too. I don't do those nearly enough. It's a real solid trick. I like

[BenRea]

beta blur, nice!


yeah, dont worry about stepping ducking. some things just come more naturally for people. doug its pixie, me its stepping, and you i think your spins are majestic.

[Darkshredder]

aw that's swell of you to say. I like to think of myself as that prodigal "young man" in old kung fu movies that is kind of lame at everything he does for a while, maybe gets kicked out of his village or gets beat up by the local thugs who are either stealing from his father's dojo or just making a mockery of his school of kung fu. But then he finds some crazy old guy, either blind or drunk or just really old, who teaches him the ways of something and his talent and destiny is revealed to him and he ultimately becomes really badass and comes back to his village and saves the day.

but we'll see.

had a short session because it was warm out. Some things happened. I found myself just trying strange tricks or harder tricks I hadn't done in a while.
zulu and weaving osis bs
ducking frigid osis bs (technically bsos, but we won't count the toe stall)
tapping whirl bs - - - hurt my foot on this and had to sit a while
vortex bs
spinning dyno (not new, just so's y'all know. I've done it both sides. But it's been a while. )

I had a pretty intense run that was just wacky. It should'nt have gone as long as it did and I didn't play like I usually do. Style was really different. HUGE stepping sets and really delayed osis. Almost drunken style I'd say. It was more out of dim lighting and confusion rather than purposefully saying "I'm gonna do this all loosey goosey"

Probably going to stay in tonight. I've been having a couple really busy pseudo up all night . nights lately and although I'm bored out of my mind right now, I think I'm going to turn down an invite to a house party at my friend's. Meh. I'm fun, huh. Whatever. There's a block of cheese and some sweet tea with my name on it in the kitchen. And wii. I almost have all the stars for Mario Galaxy.

Should I email Monster and tell them they should make a category for misc extreme sports so footbaggers can be sponsored? They have such crazy things you can apply under and none of them have anything to do with things like rock climbing or sky sports. They have snowmobiling. What the fuck. Jorden, Lon, or Penske are at least 350x more entertaining than someone riding a snowmobile.

[Darkshredder]

I hate Syracuse right now. It's not snowing so it's too cold to do anything - unless you have more than 5 dollars to spend (which I don't). There are no good indoor places to play unless you have a membership (or live in North Syracuse) and, obviously, there's only so much of cold winter shred I can handle. I have poor circulation, kind of. I was incredibly close to going to my old high school and asking if I could use the gym after school was let out. I was actually in the parking lot thinking it over and cursing the situation. I really didn't want to be there. There was a time, the first year and a half after high school, where I used to go back a lot - see teachers, friends who were seniors, etc. But not now. Clearly now it would be far to creepy and sad for me to go back. But I'm thinking if I went in a side door, straight to the gym, and played then that'd be cool. I played outside at this park for about an hour and a half and all I really wanted was just a LITTLE more shred time. But whatever. This upcoming week will probably see me fall into insanity and I'll just walk in and demand to use the gym. All of my friends go back to school starting sunday so this week is going to be hell. Absolutely nothing to do. I guess there's footbag.

I could always put vegetable oil on my sled and go down the hill by my house. We did that this past summer, my friend andrew and I, and that was good fun. We slicked up this 7 dollar piece of shit plastic kids snowboard I saw at a drugstore one winter. It's a deathtrap, even in snow, so we were really excited to see which one of us would break something going down a hill. I remember it was really hot that day and the grass stains burned like hell. I want to say it worked better on grass and dirt and rock but that'd be silly so I'll just say we're lucky to be alive today.

I've always held a grudge against people who live in the country or the city for their whole lives and have these amazing adventures and fun little things, like a tire swing or Old Man Johnston's Pond they would ice skate on or something. I never thought I had anything like that - until now. It's weird. When I drive around Syracuse or the different suburbs I need to drive through, all these old stories and fun memories come up, things I haven't thought of for years. So I guess all that wasn't a total waste after all. Yay.

I think my parents are listening to a story being read on the radio downstairs right now. oh AM radio.

Ben and I will play hopefully a couple more times before I leave. If today then I'd like to get a head start and play for like an hour before he gets to wherever we are. Gonna see if I can do a few challenges. So if you challenge me, check back at that thread to see what I've done.

[BenRea]

will you on sunday? maybe sat but im pretty packed in the afternoon.