A Master with a Riceball

[Asmus]

EUROS WRITE-UP

FRIDAY

I got up at 4 AM since I had to fly out at 6:20. Took an UBER to the airport, which was really nice. A bit expensive but took a third of the time. Got to hotel in Frankfurt right next to the main train station (German: hauptbahnhof) with no problem at all. I was happy that they let me check in super early and I think they even upgraded my room because of this (free mini bar!). Sent my roommate for the weekend Angelo “Sexy Beast” Rendon a text that I had checked in and he wrote back that he would come a bit later and I should just take a nap since he had been partying all night. I read for a bit and took a good long nap. Angelo came and crashed immidiately. I went out and got a cup of coffee and some baked goods. Went to the lobby and ran into Matthias “Lino” Schmidt and we went out to get breakfast (German: frühstück) for the second time at some thai place. Back to the hotel, pick up Angelo, go eat breakfast for the third time at the same thai place.


The view from our room

Only getting lost a couple of times we got to the main event site. A big gym on the outskirts of Frankfurt. Outside there was people shredding and inside there was singles net going on. It started raining and the circles moved inside. I got in my gear and played with and Christopher Landorfer. Chris is a total legend because of this:

Then a couple of hours of watching shred & net and saying hello to as many as possible. Santeri was nice enough to bring me my favorite Finnish booze Jaloviiina (which I have mentioned in here many times before). So props to him for that. Afterwards David from Berlin, Angelo, Matthias and I went out to eat some excellent moroccan food. Back to the hotel to empty the mini bar and get dressed for the players party that night.


Silbergold

The official party that night was at a club called “Nachtleben” (English: nightlife). Some of the Frankfurt net players played a concert with their ska band and afterwards another ska band performed. Ska is fun but it get’s quite repetitive, so I was happy that when the second band ended their show that I could convince Angelo and Matthias to go to “Silbergold” - the club they went to the night before. Here we danced till the wee hours of the morning to good old fashioned German techno (much more my shit).

New German word of the day: Schadenfreude = Malicious joy / Finding pleasure in other people's misfortune or pain

SATURDAY


Tim Heun

Went to the bakery (German: bäckerei) from the first day to get breakfast with Jan from Hamburg, Angelo and Matthias and then we took the train to the event site. At the event site we met one of my favorite footbag people Tim Heun (who lives in Freiburg but is from Berlin as well) and then went to the freestyle gym. We had missed the first group of routines and then second one started right when we got there. After that I judged all rounds of Circle and then we went outside to hang in the sun and kick.
Final event of the day was the final round of Routines. I judged, Vasek won, the rest was really close.


Ready for Sauna and Pool

Back to the hotel, empty the mini bar with Matthias and Angelo and then head to the top floor for some pool and sauna. I hit the following combo: Pool > Sauna > Steam Room > Pool > Sauna > Steam Room > Pool. This was so great for my tired footbag legs and the view was amazing.

After that we went to a Chinese place around the corner to eat dinner. When we got there some sort of party for a Chinese family was going on. We quickly spotted that the waiters were participating and looked pretty drunk. When the waiter finally got to our table, Matthias asked him “What is going on here?”(German: Was geht ab?) and the waiter put his elbows on our table, his hands over his face and he said “No idea!”(German: Keine ahnung!). It was quite hilarious. The food was great though. After food we headed to Philipp Schäfer Aka Phipsen’s house for a garden party.


Funny poster on the way to Phipsen’s house

The house os located in a big community garden with many small houses and gardens. The space was pretty awesome. The house had a small art studio, bonfire site (German: lagerfeuer) and loud music playing all over. Tim and Phipsen made a watermelon with vodka and we all had a blast.

At some point Matthias, Tim, David and I decided to head to legendary techno club “Rubber Johnsen”, so we jumped into a cab. The club is located in a big house with a balcony going all the way around, on the other side of the house there is another club. We mistakenly went to the other club, realised our mistake and went back to the entrance of “Rubber Johnsen”. The girl in the door told us we couldn’t get in, because she thought that they had told us at the other club we couldn’t get in. We took a few step backs and had a minute of panic. What the hell were we gonna do. David went up to the lady and used his big brown eyes and berlin cham and convinced her to let us in. Awesome.

We partied for a bit, but I was pretty beat and took a cab home to the hotel before the others. Hoping to feel okay for competition. Boy, was I wrong.

New (Double) German word of the day: Heimweh / Fernweh = Homesickness / Wanderlust

SUNDAY

For breakfast me and Angelo had an Irish breakfast, which was basically a British breakfast but from an Irish restuarant. We both considered getting a Guiness but I wanted to be semi-ready for competition. I thought taking it easier on saturday and not playing would make me feel fine for Sunday. But I did not take into account the lack of sleep, the accumulation of alcohol and the walking and dancing.

I got to the event site right when competition was about to start and I barely got any warm up. In Request I failed on Ducking Clipper > Flying Clipper which I should be able to hit anytime anyday. I then proceeded to hit the six next rounds within the three attempts. Goddammit.

Next up was Sick3. I had planned to do Terrage > Quantum Butterfly > Far Symp Whip as my safety and either Pixie Quantum Legover > Phoenix > Reverse Mullet or Pixie Quantum Legover > Phoenix > Swifter. I did not hit anything at all, so I just ended doing ATW > Legover > Clipper. Goddammit.

Afterwards we were hanging out in the sun and Dexter gave a small update on the new Quantum shoe. Here is the most interesting things he said:
o There will be a couple of different versions of the shoe for testing at Worlds
o They don’t want to do a rip off of the Laver. They want to do something better.
o They are very focused on making the sole light, but also make it much more durable.
o The version they have right now is 5 gram lighter than the latest Quantum
o He expect it to be released in 6-12 months.


Your girlfriend’s favorite footbaggers
Photo by Jan Drexler

We moved to the main gym. Vasek scratched from circle finals, since he had been partying till 9 in the morning. I filmed the showdown. People played well. We watched a bit of the net semi finals, then headed back to hotel, got some dinner and headed over to another hotel for the final party. Things were pretty chill and people were constantly saying goodbye and going home. Last time I was in Finland I was pretty bummed that I bought 3 shots of Fernet Branca for 21 euros. Angelo beat my record with exactly double. He bought three shots of Tequila for 42 euros. That’s nearly 50 dollars.


Reminded me of this series with 2Chainz.

New german word of the day: Fusspils = Foot pilsner / A beer you drinking while walking (Fusspilz is athlete's foot)

MONDAY
Me and Angelo slept well and checked out with no hassle whatsoever. We headed over to a park. Talked shit and kicked.


I accidently kicked one of his bags into the lake next to the park.

We came up with the concept of a footbag bar, like the pingpong bars that is pretty popular. Beanbag chairs(German: Sitzsack) like 32panels and crotched bags. And the possibility to kick out in the beer garden or inside, mini net games, 4square, etc. I think the best name we came up wtih was Hacké Café. I think this could actually work.

Mathias came and we all just chilled in the sun. Then I left for the train station and nearly shit my pants on the way. The flight home was other than that a breeze.



I end this with a great quote I read from Hemmingway in Frankfurt:
“Ah, madame, you will find no man who is a man who will not bear some marks of past misfortune. Either he has been hit here, or broken this or contracted that, but a man throws off many things and I know a champion at golf who never putted so well as with the gonorrhea.” - Ernest Hemmingway (Death in the Afternoon)

[Allan]

Epic write up! Thanks for the insider view and all the photos really help. That poster with the two people apparently fucking over a table!?

Thanks for the info on the new Q's too

[boyle]

Great writeup, too bad about the sick 3 (at least you hit something though). Sounds like great progress is happening with the Quantums, look forward to when they come out. The Antarctica video is so sick.

[Asmus]

Thanks for the comments guys.

That poster with the two people apparently fucking over a table!?

The funniest thing about it to me is that they are wild enough to fuck over a table, but reasonable enough to first move the lamp down on the ground. I feel like that is a very German thing to do.

Played some footbag with Mathias Blau, Troels Westh and Kim Mortensen yesterday. Weather was perfect and it was great to see the homies again.

Me and Mathias played around with tricks ending in muted swirls. I had runs starting with both Pixie Muted Swirls and got super close to Quantum Muted Swirl. Mathias hit Atomic Muted Swirl [bsos]. He also had a run starting with Mobius > Inspinning Clipper. Troels looked good. Kim ended the session with Spender > Ripwalk.

SUMMER OF FOOTBAG!

[LinoSphere]

awesome write-up, my friend! just for correctness' sake, and in case anybody ever wants to go there after reading about it in your blog, and because rubber johnsen sounds kinda wrong, the club's name actually is Robert Johnson i blame my alcoholic self for pronouncing it wierdly

here is 2 other examples of that poster campaign, currently all over cities in germany:
http://www.bzga.de/bigpix.php?id=1a26a8 ... =560&h=700
http://www.bzga.de/bigpix.php?id=15c6a6 ... =560&h=700

love that boy group picture of us, it has really good lighting! and the tequila did taste good. not sure the taste was in any relation to the price, but it did taste good. oh, and i can relate to that hemingway quote.

hope to see you again soon-ish, but i guess distortion next year it shall be!

[boyle]

Matthias - have you read Bob Green's blog? There is a German footbag history question in there on the most recent page. I think we have the answer already, but maybe you can confirm.

[Asmus]

the club's name actually is Robert Johnson i

I like the name Rubber Johnson better.. Haha.

Here is my sessions for June. Pretty decent month.


I hadn’t played since then, but I had a 30 minute solo session today.

I played in my backyard. This small kid kept stealing my bags. He was probably 2 or 3 years old. I had brought a couple of bags, so he wasn’t interfering too much. But it sure did stress his dad out.
Pretty funny. I mainly just worked the basics, but I did manage to foot Moebius twice. That would be a cool trick to get.

Here is a pic of the spot where I have my solo sessions:


So why haven’t I been playing you might ask? Well, I have been enjoying my summer holiday. I have partied a bunch with the legend Lise Thygesen Aka Rubberwoman Aka Tigerson Aka Footbag Dutchess. I have also been going on little trips around Denmark. When I have been at home I have been plucking away at a bunch of creative projects - some of them footbag related.

Every time me and Lise travels we bring back a pair of cool sunglasses to the other person. Here is what Lise brought home for me from her last trip to LA:


I also finally got around to frame and hang this cool print from former footbagger Jacob “Spoon” Dahlstrup:

[Asmus]

I had the entire month of July off , but I only managed to play once. It still was an eventful month. I went to Hamburg with my girl, visited friends and family around Denmark, got a shitty flu, turned 27 and grew a very suave mustache.

Live stream from Worlds is the greatest thing ever. It comes on when I am basically done with work, but still have to sit at the office. I love it. It also inspired me to set up a session yesterday.

We played at our old outdoor spot in Nørrebroparken. In attendance were Troels, Verena and Kim.

I started playing with Troels. He looks really good. He also playing a bunch. He hit two new tricks: Tap and Pdx DLO. I was happy to start a run with Blurry Rev Whirl > Far Symp Rev Whirl > Far Symp Rev Whirl. I haven’t hit that for a while.

We then merged the circles together and did our thing for a while. Earlier that day I had written down all the combos from request contest at Worlds and we decided to try them out. Kim got to round 8, which I thought was good. I tried the combos after I got out and was happy to hit Gyro Butterfly > Reverse Swirl within 3 tries. Definitely a new link.

Fun session!

Let's end this with something visual. I have a couple of homies in this clip (the guy with the watch and the guy with the last trick) and I have played footbag at the spot back in the day.

[Asmus]

I just came up from a little smoke break during work. My boss finished a full hack with a perfect toe stall. Sometimes work is okay.

Yesterday we had a board meeting in FootbagDenmark and then we played footbag. In attendance were: Troels, Nis, Kim, Rasmus and yours truly. Only missing board member was Mathias Blau who is manhandling Mannheim in Germany for the next six months.

The main topic of discussion for the meeting was Danish Champs 2016. Beforehand I saw two options:
1. Have a small tournament soon
2. Have a bigger(more like a Danish Open) tournament much later in the year

We decided on the second option and it will probably be the last weekend of October. Couple of good ideas on how and where to do it was also brought up.

Our famous thursday training spot is unfortunately turning into shit. The municipality really wanna close/sell the location and I feel like they are doing what they can to make it worse and worse for us and others to use. First they changed the floor to something really slippery after Lauri made a giant dent in it during Danish Open 2013, then they pretty much fired our favorite employee (who is madly in love with Rasmus), then they closed all the doors and installed air con that doesn’t work before after an hour and now they removed half of the light sources in the room we use. They also ruffed up our shred mat. This spot is legendary and it is really sad. Couple of highlight videos from the spot:
1. Much of Europe On Fire is filmed in there.
2. This video with Jorden.
3. This classic video from Mads Hole.

I had one highlight: Stepping Legover > Magellan > Pixie Legover > Dimwalk [rpt]

Still working on lots of footbag related projects - more on that later.

[Asmus]

Played footbag yesterday with Kim, Verena and Troels. Nis arrived just when I had to leave.
The weather was perfect and a lot of weird things happened.

Before Verena and Troels got there, me and Kim were warming up and some old fat guy on a bike kept circling us. First he asked “Is it called footbag or hacky sack?”. He was half joking - he clearly knew what he was talking about. He kept on starting and ending each session by saying “yes, yeah, uhm, yerh”. He told us he used to stitch his own bags and then he tried to describe and demonstrate without a bag some trick he could still do on both sides. I did not understand any of it. I think since his glory days of footbagging he had probably done a bit too many drugs or drank too many beers. It was pretty funny.

Some little girl was very interested in footbag and borrowed a bag. You can see her to the far left on the photo above. I think his mom thought we were hot. She kept on smiling at me.

Some lanky guy drew an ugly giraffe and wrote “rich people swe on their villas while the rest of us goes shopping” on the white festival toilet on the photo. You can also see that on the photo above.

Some good stuff was hit. Kim hit Vortex > Void - which looked really cool and Troels hit a perfect Ducking Rev Whirl. I had a run with Pixie Muted Swirl [bsos] and a run with Smear > PLO [bs], Stepping [bs] and a Pixie Ducking Clipper thrown in the mix.

I am planning on going to Worlds this summer in Portland. The plan right now is to have a week in New York beforehand to visit galleries and museums (probably with my girlfriend) and then do Worlds after.
I am trying to save up 300 dollars every month up until then and then also spend my summer bonus on it (should be around 500 dollars). That means I should be able to save up around 3500 dollars, which should be enough.

- Tickets to New York and back to Copenhagen should be around 350 dollars.
- Tickets from New York to Portland and back again should be around 250 dollars.
- I should be able to stay with a footbagger in NY, but if I bring my girl I think we will get a hotel or an AirBNB. That should be doable for around 600 dollars (split in two between me and my girl).
That leaves me with 2600 dollars for accommodation in Portland and living. It should work out.

I will talk more about this later. I am for example gonna post what I plan on seeing in Big Apple.

[boyle]

sounds pretty cheap for the plane tickets, going to be about 1000 + for me. We'll see though.

[Asmus]

sounds pretty cheap for the plane tickets, going to be about 1000 + for me. We'll see though.

Flights to New York has gotten really cheap. A lot of companies offer them and they are competing on the prices.

Session

The weather this summer has been pretty “Meh!”, but this week it has been great and yesterday we had session in the sun. At first it was Kim, Verena and me kicking, a bit later Troels also showed up and just when I was about to leave Nis came through with his wifey.

Nobody played that well, but I did see Kim hit a beautiful Fusion and I hit a neat little Sick3 with Terrage > Dimwalk > Twirl.

I hope to kick again on friday! FOOTBAG!

Talent

I am gonna write a bit about talent, it is inspired by “The Great BAP discussion of 2016” and a really dope video by an artist named Jake Parker. I have been really into his stuff lately. Worth checking out.

Jake defines talent as what comes easy to you and then divides that into two kinds of talent - fluid talent and channeled talent.

Fluid talent is what you are born with, what flows through you naturally. Like a 5 year old prodigy playing the piano. Or this guy who shows up at his first footbag session and hits a bunch of tricks right away. This is also physical talent like crank for example.

Channeled talent is what you have to work for. This is the guy who works for years to get as good as the 5 year old prodigy. This is what you build brick by brick. The accumulation of all your successes and failures.

A perfect example of this from footbag was when I asked Bevier how he could just mix and match all of his tricks. How his runs was always fresh and he just answered “10 years of hard work”. The footage in this video is from when I asked him that.

So the bad news is you can’t do anything about fluid talent, but the good news is you can do everything about channeled talent.

So to take your talent to the next level you need to put in work = time. Other factors are how much knowledge and expertise you have access to, how much money you can put into it and how good your tools are.

The person with high fluid but low channeled talent will peak early. High channeled but low to average fluid talent is most successful people. High channeled and high fluid are the true masters - Vasek comes to my mind.

Another thing Jake talks about in the video is the various levels of expertise.

Student level: Has knowledge. Needs knowledge.
Amateur level: Takes knowledge and does something with it. Playing with knowledge.
Professional level: Purposeful knowledge. Works with knowledge.
Expert level: Using knowledge creatively to solve problems.
Master level: Inventing new way of doing things. Not just solving problems - creating new ways.

What level are you on and how can you get to the next one?

[Tjuggles]

Cool writings.

“The Great BAP discussion of 2016” <- The discussion on modified or on FB? If the latter, I may never see it since I said F.U. FB a while ago...

I think I am at the Professional level when it comes to footbag.

[C-Fan]

I'm excited for you for your NYC trip. It's one of my favorite cities in the World. So much good food, so many sights to see, transport is super easy, and you have a good footbag scene there on top of it all. You're going to have a blast.

Artwise you kind of can't go wrong, but two places I'd recommend that sometimes get overlooked are:

PS1. Its a modern art museum in Queens, that is housed in an old school. They usually have awesome exhibits, and its less crowded than some of the big name museums.
The Neue Gallerie at 86th and 5th Ave. Its small and specializes in early 20th century austrian and German art, like Egon Schiele and Gustav Klimt. Lots of great pieces here too.

Foodwise...you need to figure out what you want to try, and go from there. I have some recommendations if you're interested. The local NYFA crew is probably a better resource though.

I hope we both can make it to Worlds. It'd be cool to do a pod with you there!

[Asmus]

“The Great BAP discussion of 2016” <- The discussion on modified or on FB? If the latter, I may never see it since I said F.U. FB a while ago...

Yeah, there was a discussion on facebook. Some of it was good, most of it was stupid and/or silly.

Yesterday me and Nis helped our friend Emil move out of his apartment. It took around 45 minutes and was pretty exhausting, but the Chairman and Vice Chairman still managed to play for another 45 minutes afterwards in my backyard.

I played pretty well. Decent run lenght, lots of BOPs. I also managed to hit Quantum Legover > PLO [rpt]. I plan on drilling DLO > PLO [rpt] for a bit. I think that will help my DLOs immensely. Nis played well even though he is dealing with a bunch of small injuries. I saw him hit Sumo, which I have never seen him do before.

This session also meant I have played every week in August. Success!

I'm excited for you for your NYC trip. It's one of my favorite cities in the World. So much good food, so many sights to see, transport is super easy, and you have a good footbag scene there on top of it all. You're going to have a blast.

Me too! The only person not excited is my mom because she is convinced I will stay forever.

Foodwise...you need to figure out what you want to try, and go from there. I have some recommendations if you're interested. The local NYFA crew is probably a better resource though.

The only food place I have planned for so far is Baohaus (http://www.baohausnyc.com/). I am a big fan of Eddie Huang and I am very fond of Chinese food in general. My dad lived there when he was young (and he is an excellent cook) and I visited Beijing when I was a kid.

PS1. Its a modern art museum in Queens, that is housed in an old school. They usually have awesome exhibits, and its less crowded than some of the big name museums.

Added to the list for sure.

The Neue Gallerie at 86th and 5th Ave. Its small and specializes in early 20th century austrian and German art, like Egon Schiele and Gustav Klimt. Lots of great pieces here too.

I am bit hesitant about this one. I love German art. But we have a lot of it Denmark and in the neighbouring countries (Duh! Germany is a neighbouring country after all). Do you know how much George Grozs they have? He is probably my all time favorite painter.



Here is what I am planning to see this far:

Galleries
The Hole - http://theholenyc.com/
Sandra Gering Inc. - http://www.sandrageringinc.com/gallery/

Museums
Whitney Museum of American Art - http://whitney.org/

Other
Tour of Madison Square Garden - http://www.thegarden.com/tours.html

Now when we are on the subject of art: A little while ago I posted this digital drawing by an artist I really like named Andrew Jeffrey Wright. I wrote to him about it and I ended up buing the original pencil drawing. Here it is framed on my wall:


Would you guys be interested in a post about my little hobby of art collecting? Or should me and C-Fan maybe talk about it on a podcast?

[Asmus]

Had a session yesterday with Kim. We played a bit later than usually since he had to go to soccer practice with his oldest kid.

That meant we got to watch this beautiful sunset while throwing down.


We played with a big floppy bag for the entire session, but both of us still managed to play well. Kim is a beast. He hit stuff like Janiwalker to start a run, Pixie Muted Swirl which is a rarity from him, Barfly [bsos] with a Paradon thrown in there and something along the lines of Spinning Whirl > Void.

I can’t remember any real highlights of mine, lots of spins, lots of bops, lots of decent length runs.
We played for close to an hour which is good for two veterans like us going hard from beginning to end.

I really like footbag!

[boyle]

good to get that cool energy from footbag, it can be a fun game. Awesome sunset too. Hope to hang out at Worlds but it will be a long time for me before I am sure if I can go.

[Asmus]

Hope to hang out at Worlds but it will be a long time for me before I am sure if I can go.

I hope so as well!

Yesterday was the warmest September day in 69 years: 30°C/86 fahrenheit was recorded. So of
course we had to kick a bag around. The session consisted of me and Nis shredding it up with Michael and my colleague Anan doing a bit of kicking. Anan has been kicking with me doing our smoking breaks at work (I probably mentioned him earlier), and he can do stuff like ATW and Legover. I hope he starts to actually play.

I had more trouble with my breathing than usually doing this session, not sure if it was because of pollen or that I am getting sick (my GF has been sick for the past week). But I still managed to play pretty well. Two highlights I was very excited about:
Blurry Legover > Magellan > PLO > Dimwalk [rpt] > Run
Pixie DLO [bsos] > Run with both Spinning Legovers and a Ripwalk
Both of those were first try and I don’t think I have ever hit a Pixie DLO first try and I definitely haven’t [bsos]’ed it.

Those two highlights makes me think that I am probably at my highest level ever. I think I should make some kind of solo video because of this. The solo video I have right now with highest level and that I am happiest with is this one, back from 2008: I can definitely do waaay better than that now.

FOOTBAG!

[Asmus]

On tuesday I played with Nis. It was a pretty terrible session honestly. We played at the gym we used for Worlds and it was hot as hell, the air was terrible and I also felt a little sad and nostalgic. All of this made it very hard to get anything going. Nis was also not feeling it at all. It still felt good to play though.

Two shitty highlights:
- 16 infinities
I feel like I am gonna break 20 very soon - Been a goal of mine for 28 years and I am only 27!
- 14 contacts of PLO > Same Butter > Pdx Mirage

Here is the conclusion to my survey: http://bsos.it/?p=468

[acxel22]

enjoyed your video with Rory this morning! I'm not a fan of crazy effects but I always like your special touch that makes your videos quite different!

Keep it up!