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Matt K · Post by **Matt K** » 17 Aug 2009 19:24

I liked butterfly kick>dlo. very stylish and controlled.

Tell Brian that I said hi.

boyle · Post by **boyle** » 18 Aug 2009 03:23

I find that totally the case in Canberra, there are a bunch of free museums and galleries, but I don't get to them all that often, except when people visit. I am always recommending people to go to them, and probably go to them a lot more than most other people I know, which is still not very often.

qphox · Post by **qphox** » 18 Aug 2009 09:05

Man, Brian is so awesome. Tell him that we all think so.

Rieferman · Post by **Rieferman** » 18 Aug 2009 09:24

I'm just happy we made it to page 101 in time. OK OK, done spamming until we reach page 200!!!!!!

C-Fan · Post by **C-Fan** » 20 Aug 2009 03:46

Passed on all the love from you to Brian, which he appreciated. It really sounds like he's getting stoked on playing again, which means I probably won't take time off from freestyle, which was something I was considering doing after Worlds.

Last week I performed a footbag routine at a talent show at work. When I auditioned for it two weeks ago, there were no problems with the sound system, I had lots of space, the lighting was good and I went dropless. At the actual show however, the lighting was a lot worse, the sound quality was bad and dropped out during several performer's acts (including mine), and there were cables on the ground in the much smaller performing space. Despite all these obstacles, I still put on a very solid show. I even got my intern to film it. Unfortunately, he filmed things sideways. Not only that, at times he switched between views.

It really highlighted to me that when you deal with people who are of below-average intelligence, you have to spell out everything, no matter how basic.

I started off my performance by doing a quick speech explaining that footbag was harder than hackysack, and that yes we do have tournaments. I pretty much copied it from one of Clavens' presentations:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RH_6NcQ1zUE[/youtube]

At the end there you see the sound screw ups. At one point the show organizer was mouthing to me: "just keep going!", which I found a bit insulting, considering I just informed the audience I was doing a routine "choreographed to music." And now you are telling me that I should abandon the choreography because you can't run a CD player? Ugh. After a few false starts, they get the music playing passably enough that I can do my routine. My intern missed the first few seconds, and didn't film it very well, but you can get a sense of what I did:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGz6o3OKHBo[/youtube]

So I went dropless the whole way except for the final trick. Overall, one of my best non-tourney performances. I got a good reaction from the crowd, but it's always weird, because you know that they have no idea how hard your performance actually was. Some of the acts that came after me were pretty bad (cliche-ridden poetry, people trying to sing spirituals without using their diaphragms, etc) and got similar amounts of applause. At the end of the day though, all you can do is perform to the best of your abilities, and I did that so I was happy.

About a week later I passed by the director and assistant director of my agency, and they did little kicking motions in the air, which made me laugh. So at least it made an impression on some people.

Sporatical_Distractions · Post by **Sporatical_Distractions** » 21 Aug 2009 21:58

Pdx Flurry!! WTF!? When I saw that, 'big poppa' by notorious b.i.g popped in my head. You will be dubbed big poppa now.

C-Fan · Post by **C-Fan** » 22 Aug 2009 21:50

Got in a short shred with Brian McKenzie on Wednesday. It was humid as hell, and we played for less than an hour, but it was a fun session.

Brian is getting a lot better fast. He hit legbeater swirl and tapdown swirl upon my request.

I enjoyed playing with Brian and hit some combos in his honor.

Ken highlights:

*Smoke-mobius
*bevclickety pdlo
*Ducking pdx egg, and bed bsos

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dajucBRGtLk[/youtube]

C-Fan · Post by **C-Fan** » 23 Aug 2009 23:10

Sporatical_Distractions wrote:Pdx Flurry!! WTF!? When I saw that, 'big poppa' by notorious b.i.g popped in my head. You will be dubbed big poppa now.

Thanks Kevin. I don't know if you knew, but Biggie is my favorite rapper ever.

Got in a shred after work on Friday. Played at my indoor spot to get out of the muggy weather and to play to music again. Had a fun, laid back solo session. Spent a good chunk of the session messing around with hard tricks, and I also read the latest issue of The Onion in between runs. Pretty relaxed.

Inspired by Anssi's latest high speed vid with Lauri, I tried paradox flurry for fun. Within a few tries I just knew I'd be able to hit it that session. Sure enough, I ended up hitting it. The other big trick I messed around with was pixie paradon swirl. I didn't hit it, but I think I made some progress. Given that it combines my strong pixie set and my strongest double over swirl trick, I should be able to get it sooner than later.

The only other highlight was hitting tomahawk to blurry whirl on both sides, though I couldn't manage to pull it out bsos.

*Tomahawk-blw-pdx torque
*Tomahawk-blw-psw-psw

In the "Biggest dork in footbag" thread, Mosher wrote:

mosher wrote:I'd say Ken Somolinos for the effort he puts into his footblog. It's like he thinks some day we're going to have modified awards (The Moddies?) and he is hoping to have the award for Best Footblog on lock.

I took this as a really flattering compliment.

Random run to close out the post:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1lNJKMcOr4[/youtube]

C-Fan · Post by **C-Fan** » 26 Aug 2009 13:14

I've spent most of the last week hacking. Unfortunately, it was the bad kind of hacking: I have a nasty case of what I think is bronchitis. Given that most bronchitis is viral and clears up on its own in a couple weeks, I'm just waiting it out. Feel pretty crappy and low energy though in the meantime. Gah, maybe I will see a doctor.

Got in a solo shred on Monday, despite feeling like ass. Unsurprisingly, I played like crap. With all the wheezing and coughing, I decided to stay away from strings, and instead focused on short combos. I spent a good 90% of the session just going for vortex-mobius. For somebody who has always been a bad spinner, that's a dream combo. It's also really hard. I ended up coming agonizingly close to it a bunch of times, but no dice. I bet I'll get it within a couple sessions, when I'm healthy again.

Here's my only good run from Monday. It's completely misleading too, cause for most of the day I didn't surpass 6 contacts or so, due to breathing issues.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8UXEkJKpbE[/youtube]

C-Fan · Post by **C-Fan** » 29 Aug 2009 22:05

C-Fan wrote:I've spent most of the last week hacking. Unfortunately, it was the bad kind of hacking: I have a nasty case of what I think is bronchitis.

This cough has been pretty brutal. I took half a day off of work on Thursday, and took all of Friday off. Made a doctor's appointment for Monday.

I felt a bit better today though, and staying indoors had been driving me stir crazy, so I went to my indoor shred spot and got in a solid one hour session. Unlike last time, I actually went for runs today, and I didn't feel nearly as tired as last time. I really missed playing, so I think just the thrill of shredding again helped me through the session.

I was good about mixing up what I worked on today, which is usually a recipe for success. I've spent a lot of time this week watching footbag videos, which gave me a bunch of ideas for today. Inspired by one of Ianek's videos, I hit rooted paradox mirage, which was a new concept for me.

I was also able to hit vortex to mobius, which eluded me in my last session. I had it unsealed off of my foot, and then a couple tries later I hit and sealed it. The mobius felt a bit forced...I'm going to hit the combo again in the future and smooth it out. Even so, today's was legit and I was proud to hit it.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DaRNWzUkuqM[/youtube]

The other fun concept I played around with, was seeing what was the longest unique fearless string that I could hit on both sides. The best I got was five, but I bet I could get seven. I didn't spend too much time on this, so I was happy with what I got:

*blurry whirl-blurriest-psw-psw-tomahawk-tomahawk
*blurry whirl-blurriest-psw-psw-tomahawk-paradox torque

And finally, here's a random run I was happy with today:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uoKkxlZF810[/youtube]

I'm gonna try and play with Brian tomorrow. My indoor spot will be closed though, so I don't know how well I'll breathe if it's muggy out. I figure the worst case scenario, I can't do strings, but I get some footage of Brian.

Oh, and no Funtastiks for me this year, cause I'm attending a wedding. Definitely a bummer, since I'd like to get in some net practice, and there's always cool prizes at Funtastiks. I should start figuring out my next routine song, even though I have no idea when I'll next get a chance to compete.

C-Fan · Post by **C-Fan** » 31 Aug 2009 15:57

Last night I had the best footbag dream:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qyJIPWDhZ4Q[/youtube]

Tjuggles · Post by **Tjuggles** » 31 Aug 2009 16:25

Great dream Ken. That's awesome that you are that limber even at 7:15 am.

Also, nice samurai shirt (a couple posts back). Mine has some red stains on it, unfortunately.

Hope that you are feeling better.

Oh, thanks for you contribution to JFC. Next year, I will match whatever you give.

zeroman13 · Post by **zeroman13** » 31 Aug 2009 16:31

That was a great dream Ken!

C-Fan · Post by **C-Fan** » 02 Sep 2009 09:03

Thanks guys! The "Samurai" Team Japan shirt is great. Beyond looking cool, the material breathes well and wicks away sweat. It's also nice to have something to remind me of my friends in the Japanese scene.

In no particular order:

*The big news is that I found a good shred spot in my own backyard. I recently learned that the deck belongs to my house, and not to a particular tenant, which means I'm free to use it for footbag. And boy do I intend to. It's just nice to know I have a safe spot with easy access to a shower, toilet, and fridge. The fact that it's wood is also good news for my knees/joints.

*I recently re-read my post in the Footbag Profile Survey thread, and I was happy to see that a few of my answers had changed after Worlds:
1. I've now been to Berlin (and it lived up to my expectations)
2. I got my dropless routine
3. Worlds 09 is now the best tourney I've attended

*Went to the doctor on Monday to get my cough checked out. Looks like I probably don't have anything serious, which is great. I'm taking mucinex now to help my cough be more productive, which hopefully will allow me to heal sooner. More than anything, I'm just getting annoyed that the cough has stuck around this long.

*Anita Lenneis is in town now, so hopefully I'll get in a shred with her at some point.

Here's a cute little fearless (first trick is frontside) run from Sunday:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dLaVCB9z54[/youtube]

Ian Brill · Post by **Ian Brill** » 02 Sep 2009 18:08

Hey Ken,
Congrats on the dream. I am glad that you have had so many highlights in the last couple years. Dropless, dropless, dropless, and dropless. Wish I could have been there in Berlin to see that last one.

C-Fan · Post by **C-Fan** » 04 Sep 2009 10:18

Went to the doctor this morning, and he confirmed that I have bronchitis. Gah. I got an inhaler and antibiotics, so hopefully I'll finally start getting better in the next few days. I played yesterday and the day before, and both times I thought I was gonna cough a lung up. Just rough. I'm so tired of having this.

Wednesday night I had a rare treat: a four man shred circle in my backyard, on a weeknight. How awesome is that? Brian McKenzie and Vince came by after work, and Anita joined us shortly thereafter, when she got back from sight-seeing. Anita and Vince didn't want me to film them, but I got some good stuff of Brian:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4WmktXaNkk[/youtube]

I spent the first 30 minutes of the session or so coughing violently. My sides hurt and my eyes watered, but eventually I got enough of the bad stuff out that I could play. The most surprising highlight for me was hitting my second ever paradox flurry. Other than that, I mostly just went for runs, and had fun playing:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fzlo5g2OCJI&fmt=18[/youtube]

In non-footbag news, I got invited to a "decades" party this weekend. The idea is that people show up dressed as their favorite decade. I'm guessing there will be a lot of people in 70s and 80s clothes, and maybe some lazy people who show up dressed normally (this decade). Not me; I'm making a robot outfit out of cardboard boxes and aluminum foil, and going as the decade of the 3030s, when robots rule the world. I'll post a vid when I finish it up.

CIC flurry · Post by **CIC flurry** » 04 Sep 2009 12:06

yeah boy. cardboard robot ftw.

C-Fan · Post by **C-Fan** » 05 Sep 2009 14:29

Still not feeling much better. Playing footbag with bronchitis is just awful. I feel like I can't generate any speed or power, and you never know when your run will be interrupted by a sudden urge to cough your brains out. Just horribly, horribly frustrating. Didn't even bother with a Stephen Barnes one shot today because of it. I feel like I'm drowning in my own viscous mucus. It disgusts me. I'm missing Funtastiks this weekend because I have a wedding tomorrow, but even if I could go, I doubt I'd be able to play well because of this damn bronchitis.

[/vent]

Here's a run for you for putting up with the complaining:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nEqEPlXt2Mo[/youtube]

Matt K · Post by **Matt K** » 05 Sep 2009 17:28

Could you try dsc>scorp when you feel better?

C-Fan · Post by **C-Fan** » 07 Sep 2009 13:21

CIC flurry wrote:yeah boy. cardboard robot ftw.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8WasaKpHY9M[/youtube]

"FTW" is right; I ended up winning "best outfit" at the party I went to. I stayed in character the whole night too. One of the most fun things though, was riding the subway to get to the party. It was an obvious choice to do it in full costume, and it made a lot of people laugh since it's not halloween yet or anything. Lots of people surreptitiously took photos of me, some people came up to me and posed with me, and some people danced the robot with me. One girl even tried to pick me up.

When she asked me for my number, I said: "010110001010101110." I don't think she got the joke.

So the big news is that I'm still sick. This is just ridiculous now. I feel like my quality of life is suffering because of it.

Matt K wrote:Could you try dsc>scorp when you feel better?

Man, I'm having trouble even remembering what it feels like to be healthy. But yeah, sounds like a good challenge. I'd like to improve my double spinning, so this could be a good long-term challenge.

Random run:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7c1XkCbzAk&fmt=18[/youtube]