Nick "Houdini" Polini

[F[uns]tylin' Eclectic]

Sup blog-reading-bishes...

Had a sweet session/Footbag 101 class with 2 new guys and Matt tonight...

We had originally planned for like everyone to show up, but only George, Ivan, Matt, and I were able to make it to this one. Nathan stopped by again to help instruct for the first half with me. Thanks for stopping by and helping out, dude.

Awesome session tonight, especially for the new guys!

George has been a hacky slacker for a few years, but hadn't kicked since highschool. He came to the session with Toe ss Mirage and ATW on strongside and he left with Mirage bs, clipper bs, and he even got ss Clipper x3 on strong side, x2 on weakside, almost x3.

Ivan has been a hacky slacker too, and he actually brough along his own pair of Lavers to this session. He came in with Toe stalls bs, outside stalls bs and inside stalls bs, and he left with Mirage bs, clipper bs, Legover bs, and Pickup bs... Also a nice basic string with Legover and Pickup.

Matt nailed Flapper bs (so awesome), Butterfly on flipside, and footed Swirl... He also drilled a bunch of clippers, mirages and other stuff.

All of those guys are showing so much improvements. I love teaching new players. It's the best. Especially when they listen to you and they hit new tricks. I just love the look on their faces. It brings me back to when I hit my first Mirage, or clipper. So sweet.

Both new guys seemed totally addicted to it. George wants to get his own Lavers soon, and both of them want to come to more sessions.

My Highlights:

While trying to demonstrate Pendulum, I got my new record... Pendulum x4 lol
Flipside Double Spinning Clipper!!! About time
Blender BSOS x3 I finally figured them out completely. Stefan actually helped me find the missing piece to my blenders. I will hopefully have these dialed soon.
Symp Whirl> Ducking Clipper rpt
Had a Furious set come up almost to my knee

HOPE EVERYONE IS PLAYING FOOTBAG THIS WEEKEND

[F[uns]tylin' Eclectic]

WE GOT ANOTHER ONE!

New guy (Ryan) who is friends with another new guy, Ivan. Past hacky slacker.. Hit 10 alternating toe stalls!!!, a mirage, and clipper bs. He wants to learn more too! +1 Ryan is our 11th member!

Session tonight was with Matt, Ivan, Ryan, and myself.

Matt has been freestyling for just about 2 weeks and he's already hit 7 3 ADDs. Tonight he added Swirl bs to his list, as well as PLO on strong side. I told him to star working smaller and he agreed. He's going to be doing lots of clippers tomorrow. His mirages, Pickups, and Legovers are all starting to look solid though.

Ivan is really starting to look like a freestyler! He hit Mirage x2 tonight, as well as Clipper> op Clipper, and clipper> ss clipper bs. He's also getting a lot better at legovers and pickups. He modded his lavers last night too, so that was cool to see when I offered to mod his lavers for him tonight lol He's really got the magic hop down too.

My highlights:

Gyro Barrage bs!!! SO EFFING NEW ON FLIPSIDE! I hit it for the second time on strong and it felt SO crisp.. then I also hit it on flip 2 times.
Ripstein BSOS (2nd time sauced)
Ended session on Blizzard BSOS (first sauce)

Tomorrow is officially WORLD WIDE "PLAY FOOTBAG" DAY!!! The time has finally come! I can hardly wait! I'm hoping a lot of crews do some filming.


Happy fucking holidays to you all! Get some new blood in your crew ad have a great time!!!!!

[C-Fan]

Tomorrow is officially WORLD WIDE "PLAY FOOTBAG" DAY!!!

Fixed for you. Props on ripstein bsos too.

[F[uns]tylin' Eclectic]

Thanks Ken haha I totally missed that one! And thanks for the props.

Today, I worked at the Art Gallery. Brought my bags with me because of the day that it is... While no one was looking and I was at front desk, I played in my security guard outfit with dress shoes lol

One highlight:

Clipper> Flapper> Dragon> Flapper bs

I never thought my flip dragon would be strong enough to set to a flip flapper. Kinda cool.

Heading to Harrisburg toi visit my parents, plus they're bringing Jackson! So we're gonna play today, hopefully get some footage. Plus Ryan Straub will be there and kicking with us.

[F[uns]tylin' Eclectic]

So thankfully, I did get to play footbag on my own holiday. I had a great time. Couldn't manage to recruit new players but shit, we've been doing that at PSU all year so far

I didn't kick with the PSU Crew, I went to the camper In Harrisburg and kicked with Ryan Straub and Jackson. So nice to see those guys again.

Ryan hit Pdx Dada Curve, which was cool. He also nailed some nice Pdx Mirages and Butters and Osii.

Jackson looked awesome! He hit a bunch of dense ducking strings with Osis, Butterfly, Symp Mirage, and some other boss stuff.

Highlights:

Swirling Torque!!! Almost hit it on flipside too. Going to have to drill my Swirling Near Mirages for a while and work on really planting the swirling leg quickly (after studying the video below, I realized that was my biggest problem.) All in the video posted below.
Swirling Pdx Mirage! In the video below, as well. 2nd one I've hit, first time on camera.
FS Atomsmasher! Only one side, but I didn't have enough time to try it flipside... Will try soon.
Flurry!!! Only one side in barefeet... I know I can manage bs in shoes. I can feel it.
Some more Gyro Barrages. I'm starting to figure out the intricacies of this trick... It feels so much easier on strong side than it used to... Which is always a plus.
Drilled a bunch of Gyro Whirls from bs and both sides feel so much better now that I have the placement correct. (This is the key to Gyro Barrage, if you didn't realize it )
Reverse Swirling Symposium Mirage bs (New on flipside) I love this trick. It got so much easier since the last time I tried it (NYJ last year lol) This is certainly going to work it's way into more of my strings.
Ghost bs (not a first at all on either side, just haven't done these since I got better at Whirls... Now that I've improved my whirls, this trick felt so buttery on bs. Certainly working it's way into my runs.
ALMOST HIT JANI WALKER!!!!!! lol I did a slightly-above knee-level Furious set and didn't expect it to go that high, so I didn't think to do a butterfly at first then I saw how high it went and I tried to rush for the butter and just missed it. So stoked though. Furious now makes so much sense to me.

Da video:

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

It was really great to see my family and Jackson and Ryan this weekend though. I really miss all those guys.

[F[uns]tylin' Eclectic]

Kicked with Ivan, Ryan, and Matt tonight.. Nathan watched for a little until some hot girl picked him up (Props Nate! lol) Nathan gave me a few cool drills he wrote up in class when he was bored and I nailed 2 of them.

Ivan was killing mirages, pickups and clippers today. Ryan was getting some clippers and hit a few mirages. Matt banged out 78 consec alternating toe stalls! He was upset because he couldn't get 100 lol

Highlights:

Nathan's Drills that I hit: Ripwalk> Ripwalk> Osis rpt & Barrage> ss Butter rpt
Spinning Ducking Butterfly> Mobius bs! Psyched.
Spinning Ducking Butterfly> Ripped Warrior!!!! Super psyched!
Like 2 runs with Mobius bs
Mobius> Mobius
Clean smooth Gyro Barrage> dense run with some cool stuff. It felt like I had some stuff that I don't normally include in my runs.
I learned flip Quantum sets for Kevin Hogan. Stay with it man.
I came so close to my very first 5>5>5 link... Not saying what it was, but I think I might be the only person to have this as their first Fearless Sick 3... It's coming soon.


So glad I have footbag... School can be so stressful and rather than snort meth, I can just play footbag Life is good.

[h0ag3yb3atZ]

nice 5>5's nick. Can't wait to see where you'll be at in six months man.

[F[uns]tylin' Eclectic]

It's stuff like that that keeps me going. Thanks man. That means more than you realize. Stuff like that pushes me so hard... hard enough to go drill in the laundry room for 2 hours. Fuck... I forgot my laundry... Will continue this post when I return...

Edit: K, back. Didn't get to blog last night.. too busy with school work. But last night, Nathan and I DRILLED. Like.. after this session, I realized this was my first drill session. It was THE most irritating footbag session I've ever had... But irritating in a great way. I was trying different repeat drills with Nathan that we both made up during classes when we got bored. That was a really sick session. I learned so many new links, especially stuff that was "(set) same side (trick)". I have been so bad at that stuff, and Stepping ss Mirage actually turned into an accidental bail for me during a few drills, which is odd since I've never even hit 2 of those in my life before yesterday. My legs learned a lot that night.

Then a bit ago, Matt and I went downstairs into the laundry room and had a session. We both worked on our own level drills. Matt is on cloud 9 right now... He hit his number one goal for right now... 100 Consecutive Toe Stalls!!! He also got 3 alternating clippers! It's so gross down there right now... The floors are soaked with our sweat... Good thing our building is filled with pricks and douche bags

Highlights:

Blink BSOS (I really enjoy this trick and there's no doubt in my mind that it has improved my revups and rev swirls, in general)
Flapper> Reverse Swirl BSOS
Pixie ss Mirage b2b x3
Smear> PLO rpt (Hooray for my longest toe shuffle link! :\
Merkon> Dimwalk rpt
Blur> Dimwalk rpt x4
Torque> Infinity rpt
Blur> Toe Whirl rpt
Schmoe> Dimwalk rpt
Ducking Butterfly> Whirl rpt
Consecutive Flipside Smear x4
To end tonight's session: CLEAN Pdx Whirl> Hand catch x10 and Pdx Whirl> Pdx Whirl

I'm really going to concentrate on Pixie drills... because quite frankly... Mine blow harder than the big bad wolf.

Random story: So there has been this girl who is in my Wildlife Science class. She sits next to me and hits on me every fucking day. She's really annoying and doesn't understand that I just want her to cease excreting words through her mouth hole. But today... She decides to let everyone in our row know that she is a FURRY. Everyone kinda just froze and was baffled... Then she goes on saying that she's down with the whole "yiffing" thing (on that link, "ctrl f": "Yiff"). After class she turned to me and said, "Now I bet you're never going to think of me in the same way again, huh Nick?" I laughed it off and said, "Yeah, probably not, heh" But in my head I was thinking, "You're damn right I won't! I used to think you were weird and annoying.. Now I think you're a weird and annoying furry fucknut." So yeah.. that was fun...

Tonight is the balling'est night ever... My girlfriend is driving 4 hours to visit She's leaving in a little bit. I haven't seen her since the night before I left for college. I'm really excited to see her again. She wants to stitch another footbag too So we'll probably do that this weekend.

I gotta go clean some stuff up for her visit.

[F[uns]tylin' Eclectic]

So long story short, my girlfriend and I had an AMAZING weekend. It was so good to chill with her again Can't wait to see her again. Long distance relationships suck :\ 3 hours isn't too bad though... could be worse. Plus she'll be up here next semester We went to check out some future apartments and she settled on a really nice one that's actually right down the street from me. I'm excited

Soooo, footbagggggg...

Matt spent a while in the livingroom tonight trying to hit Smear. He footed it in the video below. Before this, he hit Toe Ducking Clipper bs barefoot. His Pixies got a lot better too.

Highlights:

This is the only new thing of the day, considering I really didn't play seriously and with shoes on today... Capuchin (Flapper Swirling Flapper) BS
...Then I BSOS'ed it!
...Then I hit it in a drill! Capuchin> Solesis rpt !!!

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7AQQdNy ... ideo_title[/youtube]

Now I just need to start hitting this one with my Quantums on

Oh and for East Coasts, the confirmed names for our PSU Crew are Nathan, Matt (My room mate), Ivan (new guy, the guy who had his own Lavers when he bumped into us), and Ryan (Ivan's friend). Still have room in my car for 2 more guys. Hoping I hear from them tomorrow.

Big day tomorrow. First Stat quiz. Hoping for the best. Shouldn't be too rough.

Night all.

[F[uns]tylin' Eclectic]

So I've been trying go get my flip swirls and rev swirls up to par with my strong ones for such a long time now, and I had a few minutes before class to mess with them a little bit. And I think this month is the mark where they are pretty much up to par with one another. I'm pretty happy about what I just did.

Highlights (In my unmodded Lavers):

Rev-Up BSOS a few times
Swirling Mirage BS (A few time on flip, I don't often get it flipside)
The smoothest Revstein I ever hit. Support foot fully planted, tight dexes... It really felt like a Milan Revstein (though his are way better lol). I'm pretty happy about that though.
Flapper> Reverse Swirl BSOS
Reverse Swirl> Swirl BSOS

Some other swirling and reverse swirling stuff went down as well, but I forget. I gotta jet to class now. Drill session tonight with Matt and whoever else.

[F[uns]tylin' Eclectic]

Haven't actually kicked with shoes for like 4 or 5 days... I have a slight pain in my shin when I do atomics so I want that to chill for a little before East Coasts.

Speaking of which, Nathan and I are taking 4 of our noobs to ECC! They're stoked and so are we! Booked our hotel last night. Hype!

So since my Atomics are hurting right now, I figured maybe it was my form... t'was. I was doing a weird push off with my left leg, which hurt my shin. I fixed it now and was BSOSing Atomsmasher a few nights ago barefoot. But yeah, since I want to take a break from Atomic, I figured I'd really get crackin on my Pixies. I have something I started doing last night, which I call "Midnight Magellans". Every night, in barefeet, I will do concecutive Magellans until I break my old record. So last night's progress:

Midnight Magellans:

Strong: I hit around 7, which I'm only calling 3, because I want to start out evenly.
Flip: I hit 3

So tonight I will aim for 4. Last night I think I actually cracked into my Pixies a little, because for once, the bag was going straight up in front of me with no travel. Felt good.

And just before class, Matt gave me a little drill that I hit in my unmodded Lavers:

Swirl> Ducking Clipper rpt (meh, not too hard, but I've never done it before. Might help with some stuff if I practice it)

[F[uns]tylin' Eclectic]

A very droll day studying after classes today... humdrum, boring, lame, however you like to say it... Just then... *RING-A-DING-DING!* "WHAT COULD THAT BE!?", I exclaimed. I jumped up off of my bed, facing it, and menacingly pointed at the culprit harder than I've ever pointed before... "YOU!!!!" T'was my cellular phone! *RING-A-DING-DING!* ONCE AGAIN, SHE MAKES THE DASTARDLY SHRILL! I look at the screen, "It's Ian Brill!"

I pick up the stupid beast by the throat and say, "YO DUUUDEEEEEE". Ian replies, "Hey! Let's play footbag! I wanna play footbag! Let's play now!" It sounded like he was under the influence of some cocaine or some illicit shit, but I mindlessly agreed anyway.

I bolted downstairs to the basement where I keep my trusty steed tied up, untied her and peddled as fast as my muscular-beast-man-legs could take me. Eventually I arrived at the Art Museum where I met up with Ian and then we embarked on our perilous journey... to played hacky sack... We filmed this session too and thankfully we did, because we both hit some ridiculous stuff.

Highlights:

Spinning Ducking Dyno (Inspired by Marco H)
SPENDAAAAAAAAA!!!!!
Pdx Blender BSOS!!!!!
Run with FS Atomsmasher> stuff> Double Spinning Clipper> Reverse Swirl!
Couple Rev-Ups BSOS
Some sweet Midstring Mobii
My 5th Food Processor ever and 1st on on camera! Yay!
One of the longest Pixie shuffle runs I've ever had

FUCKING EPIC SESSION. Ian said he'll be putting our footage up soon.

On a fun note, our downstairs neighbors came to our door and asked what the loud thumping was... They said they thought it was a hardcore sex session or UFC or ballroom dancing..... I informed them it was "extreme hacky sack" lol They laughed and the one girl even said she saw me kicking out by the hub before. They were kind of baffled by it and I asked them if they wanted to see a demo, they said yes, I demonstrated, and they were totally wow'ed. I told them we'd stop playing up here and they were cool with that. they walked away saying things like "that was fucking amazing"... You're damn right that was fucking amazing... that was freestyle footbag

[g00d33]

Epic post lol. Props!

[Drew]

you're a monster. I love it

props x 10^23

[Ian Brill]

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

[C-Fan]

A very droll day studying after classes today... humdrum, boring, lame, however you like to say it... :

Actually, droll means the exact opposite.

On a fun note, our downstairs neighbors came to our door and asked what the loud thumping was... They said they thought it was a hardcore sex session ...the one girl even said she saw me kicking out by the hub before:

I think they were dropping hints for you.

[h0ag3yb3atZ]

Run with FS Atomsmasher> stuff> Double Spinning Clipper> reverse swirl

your flailing set was so legit. sometimes i feel like mine look really sketchy but i was really impressed with how high yours was, especially because frontside atom is awesome, i need to hit that now .

you should hit legbreaker and stampede, especially stampede its really fun.

also i liked that run because even though it was short i feel like you need a shit load of control to reverse swirl out of a dsc so props on that.

[Outsider]

A very droll day studying after classes today... humdrum, boring, lame, however you like to say it... :


Actually, droll means the exact opposite.

Don't listen to Ken, Nick -- a more nuanced meaning of droll would actually say "amusing, but barely... like a poor pun that makes one groan rather than laugh". One might use the world droll when something is supposed to be funny in theory but really isn't very funny... Somebody like Ken might crack a lame joke (an unintentionally lame joke) and you could say back "how droll..."

[F[uns]tylin' Eclectic]

John: Thanks bud-dude! Can't wait to see you this upcoming weekend!

Drew: Thanks bro-man! Wish I couldn't wait to see you this upcoming weekend if you were going! Can't wait to kick with you during Thanksgiving though!

Ken: What did you put under there?

Ian: Thanks for posting thar!!!! I love the foot(b)age! Good stuff from bohf of us.

Kev: Thanks man! It really means a lot to hear that you think my flailing set looks good. It's definitely new to me. That was only the second one I've ever hit. I was SO stoked when I hit the DSC> Rev Swirl... That was actually a freaking bail... Did not plan that at all. What are Stampede and Legbreaker? You inspired me again tonight dude. Read below.

Jon: Thanks a lot for posting in my blog. I definitely got really excited when I saw that you had made the most recent post in my blog We gotta share some [uns] ideas at ECC this weekend... I've had some cool ideas lately. Totally looking forward to kicking with you again. Definitely will try to show you some flapper stepping ducking. Are you competing next weekend? Oh snap, and you're gonna love our one noob... He will be doing Doofs in the future and his dragons are SOOOO ridiculously bendy. We just found that out tonight. Cya Soon!

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Greetings Foot-Junkies!

I'm proud to report that I have had the best session of my life tonight. In terms of hard stuff in my strings.

First off, it was Stefan, Ryan, George, Ivan, and myself tonight. Ryan got his new Lavers just in time for the tourney! George ordered his a minute ago lol Anyway, The guys are all so excited for their first jam.

Ivan was linking some legovers to pickups and legover b2b and mirages and stuff.

Ryan worked on his clippers and mirages. I also modded his new shoes for him.

George worked on his clippers and he also nailed Toe ss Mirage b2b x3. Stoked for him. George is also the dude who had Landes Legs. He saw me do a heel delay and wanted to try it, then went for it and cranked his ankle FAR beyond what is needed for the heel delay... Of course I grabbed at my hair and yelled "What the fuck?! Ew! Awesome!" He put his foot in dragon position and i put the bag on his foot to show him... completely balanced... then he put his foot in doof position... I put the bag on it... COMPLETELY BALANCEDDDD!!!! These guys are all going to get good, I can tell.

Stefan, who can't go to the jam, is probably the best out of all of them so far. Sucks he can't go. He's been kicking longer than the others though. But he was nailing longer tiltless strings with a lot of flowy pdx mirages and butters...

My Highlights (Which I was actually blown away by tonight):

Sumo> Stuff> Pixie Shuffle and Stuff> Spinning Ducking Butterfly> Stuff> Double Spinning Clipper!!! I felt like a young BAP player after I dropped the bag.
Atomic Ducking Clipper> Run with a lot of Stepping & Pixie Shuffle
Dustpan> Stuff> Tootsie Roll> Atomic, Pixie & Stepping Shuffle> Ripped Warrior> Hand Catch.
Ducking PS Mirage bs (First time for each.. Inspired by Kevin Hogan, because I thought of his Alpine Beta Blur, wanted to try it, but realized I had never done anything ducking symposium)

So I'm also happy to report that my Pixies are feeling how they did before my Atomics turned into a bail... A while ago, they became semi useful on both sides... But I could never really get a straight enough set to do like Magellan> PLO> Smear> Dimwalk... Now I can catch my breath with those Pixie tricks. I'm so happy about where I am right now..

Oh and I also got a nice long string filmed by this camera man who said he'd put the footage up soon... I'll post if I find it.

Taking a break this weekend so I can study :\ Try to organize my routine this week sometime.

[h0ag3yb3atZ]

hahaha word good shit son. The Sumo string sounds awesome, props on sealed atomic ducking thats something thats been getting buttery for me lately too.

stampede=full symp tap. symp atomic ss symp mirage, such a fun trick, not too hard and it looks phat.

legbreaker=frontside legbeater. thats you.

gah i wish i was going to east coasts.

dustpan>stampede on tape please!