Nick "Houdini" Polini

[Empty]

Nice 5>5. I like them a lot plus you are hitting them both sides! Cool!
I've recently hit Alpine Legbeater > Pdx torque , that's all about my new five>five.
Have you ever tried to hit 3 fives ? I've hit couple of them, it is not so hard;)
Props man and keep kicking!

[sen]

Big props on the new fearless links. Very very cool that you're doing them both sides.

[F[uns]tylin' Eclectic]

Corey: Thanks dude! And those tricks don't like to be called "retarded"... They prefer "mentally incapable" Thanks though. And I haven't hit gyro diving anything yet. I've hit Gyro Weaving Osis though. I'll give gyro diving stuff a try.

Pawel: Thanks for the compliment man! Props on that 5> 5 link. That's nuts. I've only ducked my atomic set twice and it was HARD lol Glad you liked that I did them bs. It felt good to do that. Anyway, it's cool you posted in here. You're pretty inspiring to me. It's insane that you got to your level in a little over a year You keep kicking too dude. You're getting so good.

Tony: Thanks a lot dude! You'll get there one day if you keep it up!

I just put a list together of 5 fearless that I think I might have a good shot at. Don't wanna reveal it yet, just in case I'm underestimating it Plus, I'm not ready for fearless just yet. According to my drills, I'm just learning 2 adds. That one trick where you toe stall and spin your foot around the hacky sack and land it on the same toe... that shit's hard

Anyway:

Today... I drilled.

Bob got to some more 2 adds he's never hit before tonight... Pendulum lol I don't blame him though. If I wasn't into weird tricks, I would have never messed with pendulums... but I am.. and I did Anyway, when Bob was first trying them, the bag kept shooting directly at the wall behind him.. Luckily, there was a dart board behind him, so I opened it up and Bob went to town. Toe stall> *THUD!*> Bulls-eye Enough ripping on Bob's pendulums, he had some good one's, after all. They'll get better with time. His illusions make up for his lack of pendulum skill. We came up with some good tips for illusions that help make them more understandable and I added them to Bob & Nick's Get Sick Quick Tips (from now on will be abbreviated as "B&NGSQT"). When we finish our drills, we're going to have so many great tips and analogies. We come up with new ones every day.

After the sesh, Jackson, our friend, Paul, and I were hanging out, watching Natural Born Kickers (Yes Doug, the one with the horrible soundtrack lol) and while I was upstairs being annihilated by a chicken, bean & beef burrito, I overheard Paul (who is interested in learning freestyle *thumbs up*) ask Jackson, "How do those guys get so good?" Jackson replied, "It's because they've drilled and mastered their basics..." And from the bathroom, I yelled, "FUCK YEAH THEY DID!" Then... (I heard this with my own ears) Jackson said, "...Which I'm going to start doing because it's the only way I'll get better." YESSSSS... Finally, he gets it.

Dentist appointment tomorrow to get my teeth sealed to I don't get no bad things in there.

Bob's big interview is tomorrow. Wish him luck. He really wants this new job, I can tell. My fingers are crossed for you, man.

In other news, Sunil Jani wants me to come to Philly and kick with him! That pretty much made my day. I really want to sometime, just gotta make time for it.

[The Rhino]

Oh yeah, modern Footbag innovators always call me up and ask me to shred...

Dude.

[h0ag3yb3atZ]

Pawel your a beast, alpine leg>pdx torque is so phat. my nuke/atomic ducking is so inconsistent, teach a brothah.

Good 5's links especially on the both sided ness. the spinning ducking osis b2b is my favorite.

good job working the basics still. 5 fearless is harder then you think, but you will get there some day. my legs feel dead from doing mad mirages.

[g00d33]

For the record, I think you made a good choice in continuing your blog. And, awesome highlights! Can't wait to kick with you, dude. Footyaking will be quite awesome without a doubt.

[sen]

Oh yeah, modern Footbag innovators always call me up and ask me to shred...

Dude.

My thoughts exactly. Nick, make sure you take up that oppurtunity!

Edit: And Paul... you've been shredding with Landes lately so...

[F[uns]tylin' Eclectic]

Kevin: Thanks for the 5's props dude. I was hyped.

John: You'll like the story I'm about to post. A kayaking adventure. I hope our's this Thursday doesn't turn out the same lol Thanks the the props and I'm really glad I started my blog up again too

Tony: I'll definitely be shredding with him sometime in the near future. WILL NOT pass that up. Trust me haha

Today, I filmed a symple pickup and symple legover tutorial for Tony. I demonstrate every type of 2 add symple pickup and symple legover. Jackson helped me with it. We took it seriously, but we also DEFINITELY goofed around and made it sorta funny. I like tutorials, but I always think they need some pizazz and humor slipped into the mix. That's what I did. Matt Cross's blender tutorial inspired me for this one. I hope you guys like it when I post it. It's uploading now... 33 minutes left. Will post here when finished.

Anyway, only one highlight today, kinda excited about it though:

Highlight:

Catacomb (Pixie ss Drifter) Only strong side. But once I get my flip pixies up to par, I think I have a shot at it. Strong side was actually hit first try and in my swimsuit, so I had a pretty restricted range of movement. It really wasn't as hard as i had intended it to be.

Jackson finally hit Blur... TWICE. I was so excited. Oh and he also nailed Sidewalk a few times. That kid's getting there man.

Anyway, after we kicked, Drew K, Jackson, his cousin Darian, and I all went Kayaking down the river. Drew and I were in my Dad and my Kayaks and Jackson and Darian were in my canoe. The trip started off great. We started paddling down the river and it was so nice out and al conditions were perfect. Drew and I kept taking Jackon and Darian on paths that I knew were too shallow for the canoe to get past, because it would be funny to watch them have to get out and walk the canoe... Unfortunately, every time we took them down a shallow path, they flowed though and WE got stuck somehow. One time, I made it through, then Drew got stuck, so i went back to help him out... I freed him, then I got stuck lol Was alot of fun though and like I said, weather was PERFECT for a kayak trip. Then, when all seemed to be just that perfect... there was the sound of crackling all up in the sky. OH PHUCK. Thunder. We paddled and paddled but the thunder was getting louder and louder, like a god damn dinosaur gaining on us. Our trail is a loop to get back to my house, and on the way back, it was thundering even harder. It didn't seem like it was going to rain though, which was cool. I was just thinking heat lightning maybe? So we continued on our marry little way. The kayaks are faster than the canoe, so we were a bit ahead of Jackson and Darian, and I turned to Drew and said "Ya know, I really don't think it's going to rain with this storm... although a little rain might feel good..." Just then, like fucking clock-work, a heavy rain shower pounded upon our boats. Drew yelled at me for jinxing us. A little bit further down the water road, the rain started to let up and slow down a little. I turned back to the others and yelled, "It looks like it's stopping finally, guys!"... Just then, we saw a WALL (and when I say "wall" I literally mean "WALL") of rain approaching us head-on... this time, the rain was 10x as heavy as the first shower and all we could do was take it on head first... Everyone yelled at me again and jokingly said I should probably just not say anything for the rest of the trip, since it really seemed like I have control of the rain when I'm in a kayak This rain storm was accompanied by really loud thunder and lots of lightning dancing in the skies. So sketchy, especially because there was a 9 foot long floating aluminum lightning rod traveling with us. So, we try to beat out the storm and high-tail our asses toward home. We were getting clobbered by rain for a good 10 minutes, when all of the sudden Drew and I (who were in the front of our brigade) heard yelling and splashing coming from behind us. We turn around and see Jackson and Darian floating in the water, splashing around with a capsized canoe floating next to them. We panicked and fled back to help them. Thankfully, they were able to get to the bank safely and dump the water out of the canoe. Apparently, the story was that Jackson was trying to be a hero and powerhouse the canoe downstream as fast as he could... but he was thrusting his weight on the same side of the boat that Darian was on and BLOOP, men overboard! When we knew everyone was safe, Drew asked Jackson, "So would you say it's 80% or 90% you fault?" Jackson replied, "Like 85'ish..." We all laughed. We were just glad everyone was safe. Drew was saying, "Yeah, I'm not suprised... If anything, I'm surprised it didn't happen sooner". I said, "yeah I could have totally seen something like that happening". It made for good conversation on the way back haha Anyway, by the time we were getting close to home, it stopped raining and thundering. When we arrived at the final bank to take our boats back to my place, there were these guys standing around fishing and they told us to "stay there for a second if you wanna see something crazy.. There's this car down there towing this kid on a skimboard." WHOA, WHAT?? Sure enough, these kids came down on the road next to us in a car and their friend got out of the trunk with a skimboard. He plopped himself in the water on his board, holding onto a rope tied to the back of the car and 3, 2,1, off they went. We were really surprised because the kid on the skimboard was actually really good. He did some 180's after he took off and some other cool tricks. That made our night. They said they might be putting it on youtube, so if I find the video sometime soon, I'll post it.

Anyway, that was our kayak trip, in a nut shell... What have we learned??? That's right, Jackson is a mighty viking.

But yo, shoutouts to Drew and Jackson for being a part of this interesting experience. And Drew, thanks again for the lead shot, that stuff you got your hands on is awesome. Can't wait to fill up some bags with it. Hope your foot is ok (Drew stepped on a nail with his bear feet next to my house )

JOHN GOODE, I picked up my kayak mount today. Totally ready to go on Thursday. Let me know if anything changes. I won't say the word "rain" when we go on our voyage, promise lol

OH YEAH... Also, VERY IMPORTANTE!!! PLEASE CHECK OUT THE GENERAL FOOTBAG SECTION AND CLICK ON MY NEW THREAD "GO FOOTBAG DAY???" PLEASE REPLY AD LET ME KNOW WHAT YOU THINK. A few people already like the idea, but as I've stated in my recent post in there, I can't plan this alone, I need your help. Thanks for listening to my story and hopefully thanks for replying to my thread.

[F[uns]tylin' Eclectic]

My Symple Pickup & Symple Legover Tutorial:


[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UNkxNXdGr4E[/youtube]

Enjoy, and provide some feedback if you can. Good or bad, whatever...

Thanks for watching.

[Empty]

Pretty cool tutorial but this ain't POGO set, it's stepping. Pogo is symposium stepping which means you need to land on the dexing leg.

[sen]

Thank you Nick.

[g00d33]

Hahahaha dude, awesome story. I just checked and rechecked the chance of rain for tomorrow, and it's 0% all day lol. But I guess to be on the safe side, you probably still shouldn't say anything And I just texted you my address. See you soon!

[mc]

haha, funny video.

I assume you're using iMovie. When you're starting a New Project, make sure to set the aspect ratio to "Normal (4:3)" instead of Widescreen. That way, you won't chop off the top and bottom of your shot.

[DTank126]

Good to see all that basic stuff paying off. Symple pickup is a very underused element. Like Matt said though, try and get the entire lower half of your body in the shot next time so it's easier to see how you're starting/ending the trick. Good video though. Jackson and I eat the same way.

[F[uns]tylin' Eclectic]

Pawel: Thanks for pointing that out man. That makes a lot of sense to me now. So what I demonstrated was Stepping far symple Pickup and legover. Fuck... haha oh well, I tried I'll fix that in a minute.

Tony: I hope that helps you understand the symple concept a little better. PM me if you still have any questions. I know I cut the feet off a little bit :\ But hopefully, you get the gist.

John: Haha yeah man, I won't say the "r" word. I just got your text a bit ago, plugged it into my gps. You JUST texted me actually haha But yeah, I shall reply to that in one second. I'm gonna strap my kayak on down to my car in a little while too. Never used this mount before. I hope it works Anyway, glad you enjoyed the story.

Matt: I'm glad you enjoyed my tutorial, Matt. your blender tutorial gave me the idea to make it funny. As for the iMovie tip... THANK. YOU. SO. MUCH. I've been wondering about that problem for a long time now. Just tried it out and it worked. YESSSS. Thanks for pointing that out man. No more amputated feet in Nick's videos FTW!

Doug: I'm not even gonna bother writing back to you.... Hardly worth it Nah, thanks for checking out the video. And yeah, I'm really happy to see that my basics work is really paying off. I'm really starting to feel it kick in. You and Jackson should start a special club, just for you two. You could call it, "The Special Club"

Helped do some weeding and bush trimming at my grandparents' house today...

Highlights:

Mobius with my work glove in those new feet glove things Harder than you'd imagine. You have to get the glove to sit just just right on your shoe. So frustrating.

Anyway, prior to Mobius with a glove, I was weeding the front yard and listening to Pennywise (really good punk band) through my headphones. I was right next to the mail box, and I opened it to see exactly how it shut, because I'm interested in how different things work. It was some crazy magnetic system that shut the door to it. I shut it and felt that magnetic tug you feel when you pull two magnets apart. A new song just came on my ipod and it started off slow, with little pulses of fast guitar and drumming. I, being the imaginative and odd person that I am, opened up the mail box door in the rhythm that the song was pulsing loud and soft in the beginning. I acted like the sound from my headphones was trying to escape from the mailbox, so I would push the door shut when the music would get soft and when the music got loud and fast, I would pretend it was putting a pressure on the door and pushing it against my strength of trying to shut it, like it was trying to escape from the box. After about 1 minute of this pretend fight against the mailbox, I realized there had been some 15 year old kid walking his dog, watching me for, oh I'd say a good 30 seconds... I tried to look normal again, so I opened up the door one last time, looked in, and pretended that I was looking to see if any mail was in there... there wasn't, so I assumed weeding. The kid gave me this really bizarre look, and walked past me. Damn, I really must have looked like a crazy person. So the kid and his dog go up the road a bit and I see one of those wishy seed things floating by. I try to catch it. No luck, try again, can't quick get a grip. I was reaching up into the air, just trying to snag that little bastard, but I couldn't get it. Just then, I look out of the corner of my eye... THAT BASTARD KID AND HIS DOG HAVE TURNED AROUND AND ARE COMING BACK MY WAY... AND THIS TIME THEY CAUGHT ME DANCING AROUND TRYING TO CATCH LITTLE IMAGINARY FARIES FROM THE SKY!!!! FUCK! Now I REALLY look like I belong in the looney bin! There was no playing this one off, so I ran around the back of the tree I was near and hid behind a bush next to the road. I thought to myself, "this kid already thinks I'm a fucking nut, let's just screw with him." SO... when the kid walked by my bush, I started to laugh maniacally out loud and I barked a few times. That kid's got an interesting story to tell his buddies now, at least.

Gotta have fun, ya know?

Anyway, tomorrow, I plan on getting up around 8, getting out of the house around 9 with my kayak strapped to my roof and being at John Goode's around 11ish. We're going to be playing footbag and kayaking all day. Really looking forward to it.

I might kick a little later with Jackson when he gets home from work.

Peace!

[F[uns]tylin' Eclectic]

Just finished up a sesh with Jackson. He had a better sesh than I did, I just strung a few things together. Nothing major. Jackson realized tonight that he is awesome at stepping out of osis lol He did it many times. CRAZY. Oh yeah and he hit Smear> Dimwalk, and osis x3. Kid's getting good, man.

My highlights:

Blurry Whirl> Spinning Osis
Blurry Whirl> Torque

I really wanted this last link flipside to end my session, but I realized something... I really SUCK at Blurry Whirl on flipside. I think I've hit 2 in my life and they didn't even feel right. So I spent the end of my session schooling Pdx Whirl a little bit, just so I might have it for my strings every now and again.

Pdx Whirl> hand catch x5 (not consecutively.. took me a little while :\ ) I figured out a few little tips to help me with this. Now... it's still hard, but definitely getting easier. If you're having trouble with P Whirl, then Far Pickup totally helps.

Going to bed now. John Goode's in the morning for some footyaking. LATER!

[sen]

Love the story from your weeding experience. It cracked me up. I read it at work and told my manager and it cracked him up too.

[F[uns]tylin' Eclectic]

Yo Tony, glad you enjoyed that! That has probably turned into one of my favorite life stories now lol

This morning, I mounted my kayak on the roof of my car, and chucked my shred pack in the back seat and jetted off to New Jersey to chill with John Goode for the day. The trip took 2 hours, but they went fast. My kayak was actually falling off of my roof on the highway and I had to get on the soft shoulder and fix it with HUGE trucks whizzing by me like they barely knew I was there. So sketchy. After I fixed that, I arrived at John's about 30 minutes later. As soon as I arrived, I met John's brother, who's a pretty cool guy, then we went to play footbag at the tennis courts. We kicked for a while. It was a fun sesh. While we were kicking, we were kept occupied by these lil' ghetto youngins and their baby sitter. At one point, the babysitter said something like, "I don't even wanna watch you guys no more, I just wanna go home". Lol they were pretty funny. Anyway, John hit his first 6 add BSOS. Pretty sick. He also had some other good highlights, like Vortex> Mobius bs. Just check his blog for more.

My Highlights:

First Revstein for like 2 months or more.
Mobius b2b
Some weird stings with BSOS Flapper and Solesis's and dustpan's and whatnot.
Symple Dustpan (John was the first person to actually witness it, he gave me props and said it looked cool.. I'll def try to film it soon, now that I know it's pretty legitimate and not lame)
Some ok strings with stepping and pixies

After the footbag session, John loaded his kayak on his car and I followed him in mine down to the river. The river was more like an estuary to the ocean, very interesting place to kayak. Before we loaded our kayaks in the water... We couldn't help but take some footkayiking pics...



Shit, you can't tell from this pic really, but we DO have footbags on each of our kayaks. Mine is the lime green and John's is the orange.

After we shenaniganed around with footbags for a bit, we put our boats in the water and headed out. There were so many jellyfish in the water. John wondered what it would be like to poke one in the head. He did so and sounded very happy. Then he said "Try it, it makes you feel alive." I tried it and was giddy with joy. It really did make you feel alive. When you poked them in the head, they would squish in toward themselves and I joked that John's new favorite hobby was inverting jellyfish lol. Anyway, we continued on down the river toward where the ocean started I think, and we faced some monster waves. We got pretty far out and then stopped to chat about footbag and life in general for a while. It was just so nice to be out on the water in our kayaks today. Just hangin out, letting the waves bounce us around. John is able to lay down and pretty much sleep in his. Pretty rad. After a little while on the water, we turned back to get back to John's place. And after John made me a really Goode sandwich, we said our goodbyes and I headed out to go home. The only cool and notable thing about my ride home, was that around Philly, I hit a huge traffic jam... Which would normally bum someone out... But not if you have bubbles in your car specifically for this occasion!!! I cracked open my bubble bottle and released bubble hell on the drivers behind me. The only people I know that were enjoying it for sure was this car full of hot chicks. They were giggling and smiling, it was awesome.

I just got home a little while ago, and I'm freaking exhausted, so I'm going to bed. Good news though, John said he wants to try to come down to PA to kick with the PA Crew and go kayaking in PA waters. So stoked for that.

Night all.

[TokenHippie]

Just wanna say, the video on symple legovers and pickups was very informative. As soon as I saw it I knew I could hit them and I did! Love the blog and the enthusiasm you have for the game. Sure we'll meet up in the future.

[F[uns]tylin' Eclectic]

Yo Nick, glad that video helped a lot. And thanks for the compliments man. I plan on shredding with NYFA again sometime. I'll let you know in advance.

Tonight, Drew Krause, Nick Pasquarello, Corey Gerges, Jackson Raap, and I got together and played footbag in Phoenixville for a while. Great session. Loads of fun. Bummer Bob couldn't come.. busy packing for family vacation. We're going to text each other when we decide to drill, and then we'll still be drilling together without actually being in the same state. Anyway, tonight was awesome. It was great seeing Nick P again. He's back from Ohio and home for a few weeks. Looking forward to kicking with him a lot next week.

It was such a cool session, because I hadn't kicked with any of those guys ('cept for Jackson) for a little bit and I saw improvements in everyone's kicking. Nick hit his first flip Atom Smasher, Leg Eater, and Merlin. Jackson's stepping was still looking gnarly. Drew was just flowing so nicely with a new addition of some Ducking P Mirages, Swerves, and some other cool things. Corey had some nice runs too, he also hit Pixie Muted Swirl, which looked great.


I was really pleased with how I played tonight...

Highlights:

Whirling Swirl> Pdx Whirl
In general, I had some pretty long (longer than usual) runs. My flip Pixie was actually starting to feel reliable for midstring use tonight. I was stoked about that.
Flux bs

Like I said, nothing really that notable, but this might have been my best session to date. I was doing little shuffle-y links in there too, with just pixie and stepping though, but still, it's a start. I wish I would have played how I played tonight when I kicked with John yesterday, but what are you gonna do... Three of my old highschool friends saw us kicking and yelled my name, and came over to chat for a while. God damn, it was great to see those guys again. They were some of my better friends from highschool, ones that aren't all about partying and doing nothing with their lives.

Anyway, it was nice to get some of the local crew together for a session and seeing my old friends. They were glad that I stuck with footbag. Last time they saw me, I was hitting one sided clippers and around the worlds lol Always fun kicking and hanging out with the local PA Crew. Also a nice surprise visit from my old friends. Hopefully we're organizing a day to hang out.

Going to the camper tomorrow til Tuesday. Planning on kicking with Tim Harper and his little brother, Josh, and their friend Derek. Hopefully Ryan will be there too. Can't wait to kick with them.

That is all.