Miscellany!

[sampotter]

I've been absent from the community for a while, due to being out of the country a number of times and lack of enthusiasm with the footbag community. I'm likely to remain preoccupied, and I'm still not that enthused with the footbag community! However, there are elements of the footbag community I do appreciate and sort of miss, so in an effort to remain "here", as it were, I'm going to post random shit in here occasionally. This post will consist of two meta-musings I've had lately about footbag.

The first pondering has some ponderance to me, but I doubt anyone else will really care. When I first started playing footbag almost five years ago, I quickly came to develop the only two goals I've ever seriously held in footbag. After learning of players like Haggett, Mulroney and Crook, I decided that the best way for me to appreciate footbag would be alone -- as a hermit! There's this class of player that's almost god-like for whatever reason. They never come to tournaments, and they don't care about the community... Yet they remain totally venerated. Maybe it has something to do with their footbag careers syncing up tidily to the progression of a cultural movement from its explosive, mythological youth to its dog days. I don't really know.

I'm not saying that I fit those qualifiers -- quite the contrary. People definitely don't venerate me, and I'm certainly not god-like. However, I have come to realize over the past year or so that I have, in my own way, come to reach this goal, and the benefits were not quite what I expected. Despite being out of the loop, I have played a fair amount of footbag over the past year, and not having the stylistic influence of a horde of people subtly pressing down upon my own natural aesthetic and approach has been a real boon. Logging onto modified every day or two and checking for new videos, reading about people's sick shit and all that can really be a downer if you've got a competitive nature. I always used to laugh when people said that footbag is a game you play competitively against yourself, because that is definitely(!) not the case for a lot of players I know! Myself included! Now I can say that I really do play footbag competitively against myself, because there's no one else around that I care to compete with (I don't mean that condescendingly).

Another nice thing about playing footbag quasi-hermetically is that I can approach the game in my own way. The only other person I talk to from the online footbag community every day is Dat, and while we don't really talk about footbag anymore, his adventures into the world of body mechanics inspire me to play more technically than I ever have. I also get to decide what tricks are cool -- I really like reverse-whirling ss toe and my legacy -- rev-up! ( I named that move, for the record ).

My other train of thought was "today's session's highlight." I have been playing poorly recently since I just started playing a week or two ago after about a three month absence. I was wondering about ways to frame footbag in your mind to make play seem easier -- seems like a good strategy to play better, right? The result was an idea to categorize runs before you hit them. This could probably be expanded into a meta-jobs system, but I don't think there would be any real benefit there -- it seems like it would serve you better if you applied it personally. After having my thought, I decided to try and hit runs that would follow a certain pre-defined format. "Okay, this run is going to be five shuffle>five original genuine>five dexless>handcatch." It's surprisingly easy to be productive when you maintain that sort of framing. I managed a 28 genuine which was okay, but I was pretty happy about coming from my crappy game lately. Another benefit reveals itself when you think about framing comparatively. Which run sounds harder: "a run of 15 genuine with 5's interspersed" or "five shuffle to five original genuine to five dexless, with some five add moves thrown in if you feel confident"? Considering that most people phrase their phat shit around here with the former style, I wouldn't be surprised if most people approached hitting hard stuff with that framing. "I'm going to hit 10 fearless!" I wonder why so few people have? Psyche-out, anyone? "I'm going to hit 20!" Ten begins to sound a little more reasonable.

Also bear in mind that framing like this isn't very limited, despite its "limiting" nature. Consider the following run:

Code: Select all

3 atomic > 3 shuffle > 3 dexless > 3 swirl-based > flare

That run could look like just about anything! I wouldn't be surprised if you could average most player's runs into typical bouts of framing. Don't some player's runs seem to look all the same? With this at least you can add some... variability to your sameness?

Here are some thoughts for a basic system of notation, at least so I can describe it here where no one will bother reading about it.

An element will take the following format:

Code: Select all

(~)[number] [modifier1] [modifier2] ... [modifierN]

Elements will simply be linked together with >'s. Enclose a group of elements with repeat(n){ ... } to repeat however many times. ~ is an optional prefix to indicate the slight variability of a number. The number could also just be a range like 4-6.

A list of ideas for modifiers:

• kickless
  tiltless
  guiltless
  tripless
  fearless
  beastly
  godly
  genuine
  unique
  shuffle
  dexless
  zooming
  ducking
  spinning
  original
  crispy
  muted
  toe
  clipper
  crossbody
  symposium
  double
  wonky
  repetitive
  momentum-shift
  [component]

Some clarifications: I feel like clipper and crossbody have gotten far enough from each other these days that a distinction sort of needs to be made. Anyone can do a clipper -- not everyone can do one well. There are some of those really crossbody moves that just take that extra degree of finesse. Whirling and swirling moves mainly. Drifter is a lot more forgiving than swifter or symposium whirling swirl, usually. Double is a same-legged double dex like whirr or barfly. Wonky is all of those, well, wonky moves people seem to like to hit. Wauxpin, rake moves, unusual surfaces, freezes, blah, blah, and blah. Repetive is doing repeats of a move or two. Momentum-shift is doing moves that are hard links because of the implicit balance issues. Vortex>sumo>mobius>weaving osis, or whatever. Ducking and spinning refer to all variations of each.

Tomorrow I'm going to experiment with this concept.

[sampotter]

I haven't been playing around much with my notion of algorithmic shred, as I haven't been playing a whole hell of a lot. :p

However, for the sake of documentation, here is some stuff I have hit semi-recently:

11x blurry whirl
7x blurriest
symposium torque
symple vortex

I'm getting some new shoes (climacools! haha! what a concept) from Kyle, so hopefully this will give me some renewed shred vigor. I'd like to hit something like mobius>symple drifter. That would be neat. Also, developing some approaches to practicing algorithmic shred is high on my list of priorities. I think it would be pretty cool if someone could look at my style and say, "How algorithmic!"

In other news, I got some new wool socks which are very handy for keeping my feet warm when I walk from my house to campus to study.

[sampotter]

I had a session with Justinian and Colclough earlier today. I experimented with mixing Danish Orchards (delicious) preserves into oatmeal prior to that. The results were highly satisfactory.

I didn't hit much during the session, so to speak, but was able to access certain parts of my game I haven't been able to for a bit. I also had a stylistic revelation regarding ps whirl and was able to duck my steps pretty easily.

Justin broke himself ten minutes into the session, so he called out combos for me the rest of the session. I don't really remember what I hit, but I was able to work some fearless combos that appeased my fiery libido somewhat. While working on stepping ducking, I managed to snag ripped>bw>bw>ps>sw>(drop on scorp) which was okay; only remarkable because it started with a ripped. I also grabbed my flip alpine bw, and did a bunch of whirligigs, which was nice. My hips got worn out pretty quickly, though, so I had to move onto other stuff. Not a particularly note-worthy session beyond getting my game back a little more and playing with good style. I did have a good look at inspinning clipper>double spinning clipper and mobius>inspinning clipper, though.

Reminder to myself: practice bedwetter>reactor>fog>pixie paradon on both sides so that I can try and snag that monster of a fearless string.

Second reminder to myself: remember what Justin told me about how to hit paradox whirling swirl -- fast body positioning and a well-positioned (further back) set is how to set yourself up for this move

[C-Fan]

Mob-in clip is hot. Sorry to hear Dale got hurt.

[DannyW]

Potter! Long time no talk!

I've picked up the hack again. Gonna have to get a session in with you all. You kids in Seattle will have to drill me HARDCORE again, but i'm completly cool with that.

I'll be hittin' you up reeeaaaaallll soon.

Danny

[sampotter]

As I'm going to the US Open this weekend, I've resumed playing with Justin and have gotten a good portion of my game back. I'm happy to be getting some exercise again. Throughout the academic year I was having a difficult time balancing cerebral and more physical pursuits. I have a tendency to lapse into anxiety and depression when I get too wrapped up with things in my head, so hopefully I'll be able to find a more natural balance when fall comes.

I visited Dylan Fry and his family in Victoria a few weekends ago with my girlfriend Meg and had an excellent time. He was leaving the following week for a pilgrimmage of sorts to India for a while, so it was nice to catch up with him and reconnect. Victoria is a wonderful city. I hope to have a chance to spend some time there in the future.

The topic of this entry, though, is unrelated to either of the previous sentiments. I have been largely disconnected from the footbag world for the past couple years. Surprisingly enough, to some of you, after a while you do lose interest with things like obsessively checking forums like modified. Naturally, this implies a lack of interest with doing things like watching footbag videos, following tournament results, or even being aware of what tournaments are on the horizon - I'm actually rather surprised that I'm going to the US Open at all (a good kind of surprised, though!).

Anyway, now that I'm playing again, Justin has been showing videos that have come out recently to me. He showed me finals footage of Euros, and I found myself overwhelmed with a mix of disappointment and resignation. Why has no one sorted out routines in this sport, yet? Is there really no one around that cares enough about the sport to fix some of its most glaring problems? I know that most of the people who play this sport are narcissists, more interested in their own shred than anything else, but wow!

As I see it, the routine presently exist as a form of competition that is, first and foremost, a wrongfully venerated hold-over from the sport when it was in its infancy, maybe initially borrowed from freestyle frisbee. At this point, freestyle footbag has evolved into a highly technical behemoth of a sport with a staggering learning curve that does not lend itself to amateurish artistic representation. Idealized footbag competition today exists in most narcissistic young shredders' minds as an artful interpretive dance, done synchronously to a two minute piece of music. There are many hurdles to overcome on the road to realizing this process! Among them are learning the game with proper and ergonomic body mechanics, being competent enough artistically to realize an interpretive dance (let alone competent physically enough to do so with a hacky sack), and then wise enough to alter the footbag vocabulary selectively enough so that it can even be used to this end in the first place. Of course, at the same time, there are the less narcissistic players, who believe that by attaching themselves to a dying art form like vaudeville, they can somehow breathe new life into the routine without significantly altering it - or at least, this is what their actions would have us believe. In either case, the routine itself is still defined by out of date rules and judged by untrained judges (no, a quick primer is not enough for this task).

There are other problems. If the routine allows for as much self-expression as has occurred so far (and not players offering their interpretation of, say, a canon of works), judging on both a technical scale and artistic scale simultaneously is inconsistent. Judging on an artistic scale drags into it matters of past works, concept, execution, etc. Using less technicality can be an artistic strong point, yet if high technicality is the universally preferred case, neither can be judged fairly. And of course, there is the old footbag constant that anyone who does not play footbag has not a chance in hell of understanding it, which renders the whole process moot. Maybe this is why no one seems to care enough to really, actually solve the problem (for real). Other sports have done it. It is by no means impossible, or even out of reach, for someone who cares enough! Of course, on the other hand, if there were no competition, there would be no problem - and no guilt. After all, most people only go to tournaments to see old friends and shred with each other.[/i]

[Kyle Hewitt]

i hope i can make it man it would be awesome to shred with you

[sampotter]

Just got back from the US Open last night. I had to leave early, unfortunately, because I had class at 8:30AM today - ended up sleeping over at Meg's house and then catching a bus in the morning. I guess that means I'm still soaked in sweat from kicking yesterday!

The event was a blast. It was great seeing where all the new guys are -- everyone seems to have made real leaps and bounds in their games! I feel a definite fire under my ass to start practicing again, but I'm not sure what I should work on. I'm close to regaining the consistency I used to have with the core of my game, so I'll be able to start working on new stuff before too long. At this point, I'm not really sure what's hot in the game or not, so I'm at a definite vantage point to take my game in a fun direction. I think I'd like to start working on advanced spinning, advanced symposium concepts, harder crossbody moves, and getting some larger moves down.

Much more important than shred, though, was reconnecting with some players I hadn't seen in a while. Hanging out with Ben, Aaron, Caro, Steve, Red, Jake, Sunny, and Ming the Destroyer was great. It was really cool to see the Zerbes again with their kids and in the context of Jane getting inducted into the hall of fame. As a lot of my recent jadedness with the sport has stemmed from primarily associating with people who are entirely focused on getting better at shred, being in this environment throughout the weekend has reminded me as to how important the community is. In light of this, I'm thinking strongly about how I can contribute in the near future. More on this later!

For my own records, I didn't hit very many things I was particularly happy over the weekend, but I did manage to hit paradox flux (thanks Alex), and pixie paradon swirl barefoot, again.