casual ultimate » 2007 » July

Good Morning, United States.

Now I will begin vomiting all over this blog, much in the same way I vomited all over the finals of Sandblasty except instead of red gatorade, it will be metaphors. Also, I *think* I can use capitalization and punctuation because my sister is no longer able to stop me. If this sentence and the title of the post aren’t followed by a bunch of commas, then I am wrong. , , , , , ,,,, , ,, , , ,, , , ,,, ,

I’d update you on the West Coast, but what is there to say really? It’s way better than everywhere else, people are open-minded, the straight-male-to-straight-female ratio is 1:10 in San Francisco, and the straight-male-to-gay-male ratio is also 1:10 in San Francisco. In other words: I’m kind of a big deal out here. I’ve been walking around the city, whipping my hair wildly in the summer (50 degree summer) breeze and occasionally turning abruptly to freeze a whole block of Market St. with a little “blue steel”. I usually arch my back when I do that…like a dragon.

Enough about casual though, what about Ultimate? Well, here’s the deal. July out here is for the most part everyone’s break for the season. Players enjoy kayaking, hiking, camping, surfing, and making sweet love on their wives. What have I been doing? Oh, the usual: almost dying at Sandblast, writing profiles for the Brass website (http://brassmonkeyultimate.googlepages.com), and not hating my parents anymore. Yeah, you read that right. I sort of stopped doing that a few weeks ago and by communicating that across the internet, I am making it even more real.

The team I took to Sandblast was called Dago Tea (pronounced “day go tee”) and was dedicated to my mom, Mary Jane, aka Mama Town. We celebrated our Italian heritage and family, and I think that was part of a shift that really took place the following weekend at this thing called the Landmark Forum. Now, Landmark is a little weird, but it sort of gave me permission to make some changes in my life that I really like, and it talks a lot about keeping your past behind you, living a life of possibility, and creating whatever meaning you want, instead of letting your past dictate the meanings of things in your life.

One of the possibilities I created was being responsible for loving my Mom and Dad, exactly as they are and with all of our history. I always have the choice to resent them and in doing so avoid responsibility in my own life. “If my parents hadn’t raised me the way they did, I wouldn’t be such a moody bastard right now.” It’s a fun game with big payoffs and even bigger costs. The costs are that I am not present in my life a lot of the time, and I don’t take responsibility at times for my work, my play on the field, and for my relationships.

…

I feel a little bit like Ron Burgundy after he says, “And that, of course, was our newest reporter, Veronica, Corningstone. She’s really great. I’d also like to share with you that we are currently dating and that she is quite a handful in the bedroom.” Maybe I shouldn’t have broadcast all that to the world, but what can I say. I love my parents, and I wanted to sing it from on top of a mountain, but I didn’t have a mountain, I had a blog and new priveleges from my sister…

So back to disc, Brass starts practices up again next week, ECC (or Spawnfest for the coed division) is in 3 weeks up near Seattle, and the coed division is crushingly good this year. Mischief is returning its all-star cast (including Tyler Grant who played Dago Tea at Sandblast), Shazaam Returns is a Seattle powerhouse team that went out to Boston and dominated for the most part and boasts one of the all-time greats in Steve Finn (Let’s recap his last 3 years of Ultimate, shall we? ‘06 Masters National Champion with Throwback catching a callahan on championship point, ‘05 Mixed National Champion with Brass Monkey, ‘04 Open National Champion with Sockeye), and Slow White is making the trip out from Boston after losing in Finals of Nationals last year to Mischief and beating Brass in semis. It should be a good time, and I hear that they have decided to have Open and Women compete this year as well. How fun for them.

I just joined a new band out here called The Wayside State which you can check out here: http://www.myspace.com/thewaysidestate. They have really good, original songs, and all they want me to do is solo on the fiddle. Perfect.

I’m the CTown Hustler; you stay classy, planet earth.

so some of you probably know that there are some big changes coming to our little blog. lots of our friends have moved our of chicago this year and onto other things and sadly next week ms. ultimate will join the herd of people leaving town. shes headed off to grad school on the east coast and so we had to think… what is the future of casual ultimate? with ms. ulty busy hitting the books and miss casual having no life lately we knew we needed something new.. different.. something exciting.

so we thought hey its not just about us and our quest for ultimate and law and order reruns but about all of us..together! so we are bringing new bloggers on board to talk about ultimate, etc. itll be like the casual ultimate center for kids who blog good and want to learn to do other stuff good too.

you will probably recognize the all star team coming on board if you follow the blog at all. from the west coast we’ll get updates from chuck daniels and dr. welsh. from the dirty south well be hearing from beckhoe. here in the chi we have miss casual (mai oui) who will be joined by gunder the viking, pbgipper our lawyer, bk our chef, akira, brown bear, tbrizzle, and team paulina. also well still be hearing from the lovely and talented ms. ultimate from out east. it should be fun and not just a little dangerous which is how we roll at cu.

so casual ultimate lives on albeit in a new form. if you want to be a blogger or guest post for us email us at casualultimate@gmail.com

otherwise sit back and enjoy.

this summer has been great and all, but it’s speeding along at a different pace than the epic summer of 2006. here are a few things we’ve been missing:

1. frisbee
1(a). potlatch - what a great tourney. we want to put together a chicago n’ friends team for next year. who’s in?
1(b). summer league - the competitive games are great, but we miss playing twice a week.
1(c). briefcase - ms. ulty misses her teammates and sunday practices at uic, and miss casual has no excuse for a manicure since she’s not doing admin.

2. terrycloth
2(a). dresses - last summer we dressed up for a party as good and evil terrycloth, this summer the dresses haven’t even been busted out.
2(b). see (3) below - ms. ulty’s beach towel has only been used once this year. we concede that this is a first world problem.

3. playing in the water
3(a). the beach - every weekend seems so jammed with other stuff, there’s no time for an old fashioned tanning session.
3(b). swimming pools - and the people-watching surrounding them. ms. ulty might have to head up to her grandma’s this weekend for a chlorine fix.
3(c). see (2) - water-based recreation is usually a prereq for wearing and use of terrycloth.

4. good news from the tour
4(a) no more doping people. we cant handle it.
4(b) remember lance? he was so dreamy…

5. happy hour
can there ever be enough? we think not. so in honor of ms. ulty moving to the east coast and tbrizzles birthday and just never having enough happy hour were gonna do something next friday. put it in your outlook.

happy friday

(oh and by the way… how on time are we with the poll about li-lo? she is totally back in treatment by labor day!)

friday was the summer outing for my company so jdot and miss casual rolled to the country club in style. with my heels matching his shirt, listening to black star in the middle of the afternoon after having had a glass of champagne at the house. it was beautiful out and a perfect day to sip on cocktails on the patio with coworkers. however the emergency alarm sounded when the bar opened and there was no bubbly. heres miss casual on the phone to ms. ultimate hoping to get her to call the national guard and get things back on track. this is what is called a ‘first world problem.’ as in ‘gosh i cant decide which overpriced organic grocery store will have the best apples and a copy of dwell’ or ‘there wasnt enough mango salsa on my burrito at lunch’ or even ‘my wireless isn’t working at the house and i can’t catch up on celebrity gossip.’ cause for alarm certainly but only in developed countries.

ms. ulty got back to her briefcase roots this weekend, spending a low-key saturday night at casa(pfil + zales (-pfil)) = casa zales and sunday afternoon at briefcase practice. here are a couple photos from practice on sunday. you know those picture matching games at bars? yeah. we’re going to submit these for the 2008 edition, coming to a peach pit near you. this is the new doctor, he likes this throw and ain’t too bad at it either. watch out for him, moe. i hope you got warmed up beating seiche this weekend - phew!

anyways, sat. night was spent with prof. berg and dube along with new briefcase peeps kim, dave and steve; liz and dp showed up later with jimmy johns in-hand. dp taught ms. ulty and liz how to play Wii while everyone else played quarters and then something along the lines of “ultimate penny,” where you have to get a penny into a can of beer; i’ve never measured the dimensions of a can’s opening, but is it big enough? after bowling we played boys vs. girls tennis doubles with steve. it took some practice, but the ladies were winning games by the time we called it quits. i’m glad it’s taken me this long to acquaint myself with wii, because it could easily become addictive. and, since dube was there, we retired to the roof for a couple rounds of beer pong; i believe dube and i beat kim and her friend, how did we do against the boys? i forgot. i know they staged a major comback, i feel like if they beat us it was by the last cup. we’ll get you next time. the roof also has quite the trailer park (was it white trash?) golf setup. basically their house is like adult daycare. dave even imposed his own naptime.

sunday practice was soooo fun for ms. ulty. i’d really been missing the sunday morning search for sunscreen and cleats and that bike ride down to uic. the team is looking good: old favorites from last year, plus a bunch of new ladies and gents including c.u. interns like carter, the new doctor and mom, a.k.a. allison (we’re so glad you’re back on the team!). all three of the volkfolk were there. maxine is days, nay, hours away from walking and is already being trained to throw leftie.

today is summer league and a sunny sunny roundtrip bike ride. ah summer ultimate, you make everything better.

looks like paris hilton and her gang of toughs have been tagging up the double deuce again. this showed up across from ms. ulty’s pad overnight. scary stuff. she shouldn’t be risking petty crime given her parole and all.

last night team pizza pizza beer, formerly known as team close your eyes, staged a masterful win against our former nemesis, team 7. we’re sure baker would say “they only lost because i wasn’t there,” but really we know he’s too scared of the c.u. staff’s tight game to play on the same field. you could tell it was a competitive league game because there were a lot of picks called, one potentially spiteful travel, and thor and goff ganged up on one of the opposing players at the end of the game. not sure what that was about, but we won and that’s all that matters in this league. our cameras were broken/forgotten at home, so here’s stock footage of our captain looking like the fearless leader he is.

we’d played this team before (seems to be a league theme this year) and it had been a tough and exciting game. thus we were worried when we saw the additions of mel, of teamocil fame, and dr. jason to their sideline. fortunately for us, paul was a long scoring machine on h.o.t. throws; caleb showed his dad who’s the boss; and bradley lived up to his new nickname of ‘b train’ by steamrolling several members of the opposing team in addition to our very own miss c. both teams went on scoring runs during the game, but we pulled it out, inspired in no small part by our halftime chant of “pizza pizza beer.” we figured that if we put our noses to the grindstone to finish the game fast we’d be the first team at piece. and we were right.

we laid claim to a of third of the pit at piece, positioning ourselves for optimal pizza acquisition once the pies came out of the oven. we got some rude glares and comments from other players, but guess what: this is competitive league. you can get a table and talk to a waitress if you want a guaranteed dinner. a couple burned fingers and a stack of greasy napkins later and we were stuffed and sleepy.

miss casual went home, and ms. ulty stayed around just long enough to learn that matt anderson will be moving to south bend tomorrow to start a new gig as a lawyer - sad that you’re leaving, but congrats! is everyone going? lyrica, tiger, eventually thor and liz - who’s next? it seemed like there were a lot of young and unrecognizable faces at the peach pit last night. sunrise, sunset. clearly there’s only one rock of stability and honor you can count on at times like this: rick russell. *vote rick russell for cusl board now!* woo hoo!

our trusty readers may have noticed that we were lacking blogspiration last week. so no posts. but in an effort to get back on track, and since neither of us are playing nearly enough ultimate this summer, we’re going to start posting about just about anything. some of you may be thinking, “don’t you already do that?”. kind of, i guess. but the posts may be more random than usual, maybe not as long, but who can say. for example, this is a picture of a cow on parade in copenhagen - i hope whoever came up with the cows on parade public art idea trademarked it, because they’re everywhere.

ms. ultimate got back from an action-packed european vacation last week. It turned into a sports trifecta when, in addition to hanging out backstage at Wimbledon the first week and getting a prime spot at the Tour de France Prologue in London the last weekend, the european union triathlon turned out to be in Copenhagen the Saturday she was there. who knew? Not to be lost in the shuffle was the bizarre city-wide rollerblade race that was held the following day. Those crazy danes!

after a bit i began to miss you guys and, of course, the ol’ disc. in an effort to keep up my ulty spirits i decided to scope out potential fieldspace in London, Copenhagen and Amsterdam. London has by far the most space, as perhaps Lyrica can attest to, but they have a thing about not walking on the grass that may be hard to overcome. This first one’s a shot of some potential space in Kensington Gardens; lots of open grass area, but big patches were left unmown. good for aesthetics, maybe not so good for ultimate.

these next two were taken in copenhagen. there’s not too much open park space here, and much of what exists is heavily manicured, so field-size expanses of lawn may be cut in two by a path. (those used to playing on sewer grates in washington park may be able to get over this.) this first photo was taken in the rosenborg slot (palace) gardens, which were absolutely beautiful. it’s no surprise hans christian andersen was from denmark/copenhagen, because parts of the city look like an absolute fairy tale. to the right is a gratuitous castle shot; this is rosenborg palace. what you don’t see in this pic is the surrounding moat, complete with mama duck and ducklings. what you also don’t see is the lawn on the other side of the palace: enormous, perfectly maintained, completely flat, guarded by gentleman with a machine gun. three out of four ain’t bad.

last and sadly least, amsterdam. there’s not much room to play in the city proper, although my map showed greenspace just outside of town. i guess they sacrificed grass for canals. or, actually, they didn’t sacrifice grass for anything. heh heh. heh. i’m hilarious *and* mature. anyway, here’s some lawn on the museumplatz, amsterdam’s museum campus. the van gogh museum, the rijksmuseum and the big concert hall surround this park, where i saw folks playing soccer/football in the evenings. the van gogh museum was fantastic, by the way, you should definitely go if you’re in the neighborhood.

sadly, i never actually saw anyone playing ultimate anywhere. i saw some folks tossing with a 175 g disc in Hyde Park after the tour prologue, but that’s it. by that time i almost abandoned my new bike friends to toss, but it was late in the day. i’m crossing my fingers that the rain holds off and summer league happens tonight.

oh, and of course, the finest grass was at wimbledon: the courts looked like the plushest of putting greens. are we surprised that they were already reserved for another sport?

sandblast weekend is drawing to a close. as i type this i am sitting in my living room with the bulk of team dego tea who took it to the finals today and then lost by 3 in a tight game against hurt locker. tyson and georgia’s team took home the title again this year but it was a good day of ultimate for the dego team regardless. the semi final against briefcase was an especially good game. it came down to two points between case and their former teammates and friends. we spotted the lovely maxine on the briefcase sideline and dr. welsh was in town holding it down with the other usual beach suspects.

dego had faced some serious competition from friends and family earlier in the day also. becky scored the game winning point in quarters going up against her own sister with her brother close by. if theres a more gifted family in ultimate we at casual ultimate have yet to see it. the pool play on saturday was a bit more easy going although it was a bit hotter and the water was closed because of ecoli so we almost melted. here’s chucktown pulling down the disc in spite of the heat.

in the final game dego tea was dropping players left and right due to sickness and injury. megin was tough as nails when her shoulder dislocated. kolb was all over the beach until he got sidelined by cramps. even chucktown hit a wall with the heat and had to come back chez casual / brizzle for an ice bath before our current viewing of anchorman. here are two of our chitown peeps who were uninjured - becky working it out on d and bjorn getting up in the air. chicago represent.

outside of the ultimate field… the town kids ate some burgers at kumas on friday night after putting down some dego tea chez casual with bjorn, jess cookie, foxy, brian, and goetz (who you might remember from spring break). dego tea is a concoction developed by bjorn and becky which consists of a special proportion of ice tea and lemoncello. danger. saturday at the fields we established our supremacy in the ‘most parented sideline’ category with the towns and the merce-dogs in attendance. we missed having bjorns mom and pops but theres always next year.

looks like ms. ultimate will be back in the chi-tizzle tomorrow night so well be getting back to bizness as usual around here. it was nice to hang with such a great group of west coasters and southerners this weekend on the dego sideline. hopefully well see them all again next year on the sand.

last night miss casual got a chance to see transformers at 11pm so she jumped on it even though it was way past her bedtime. the movie does not disappoint. i wont go into it too much but go see it. right away. it was worth staying up late even if its going to make today long and tired.

but tonight will be ‘chicks and drinks : the holiday rampage’ so it should be fun and we can all sleep late tomorrow to celebrate the independence of our country and stuff. speaking of celebrating.. the cu staff both missed the rwip party this weekend unfortunately so were trying to get a guest blogger on the event. brown bear might be our man. last night team close your eyes played team brown bear and lost by a heartbreakingly slim margin. from the reports at the game it sounds like rachel was the flip cup champion at the house and at golden nugget, where brown bear matched the upholstery before crawling into bed next to bk. we need details people! we need reports from the scene! send us your stories. its your civic duty.

okay that is all. have a great pre-holiday and maybe when we get back brown bear will be in the driver’s seat.