casual ultimate » 2007 » September

well as you may or may not know… my lovely bicycle had a run in with thieves this week and they made off with one of my wheels, pink hub, spokecards and all. i can honestly say i didnt cry but i was trapped in a glass case of emotion all day on tuesday when i found out. thankfully mama town was here to drive my me and my bike home but it still means my big birthday present to myself is going to be replacing a wheel i already owned which is not fun at all. i briefly considered just throwing this bike away and getting a new one but ms. ultimate talked me down. ‘your horn broke so now you need a whole new bike?’ now i have to decide what color rim to put on my new back wheel. thoughts? pink again? white? maybe a nice dark eggplant? decisions decisions…

the other things going on in casual land are 1. fall league has started which is awesome because we have an awesome team who is big fun filled with tall dudes and fast ladies. 2. football season arrived with the first turkey chez casual / brizzle. tbr hooked up a crazy thanksgiving dinner for most of briefcase to watch the bears go down pretty hard to dallas. at least there were sally’s cupcakes from heaven to cheer everyone up. and 3. chicks and drinks is throwing a sweet bike race / scavenger hunt type thingy for halloween called the headless horseman hunt. check out the flier. its dope. granted everyone reading this will be in florida for nationals that weekend but if youre not for some reason and youre in chicago you should come out. itll be fun plus its to benefit a chicago homeless shelter so you get a smug feeling of satisfaction with your 5$ entry fee.

so thats all for now. im riding my first century this weekend (thats 100 miles for those who dont know) so ill be missing fall league but im sure public news team will be taking a break from their pledge drive to kick some ass without me. hopefully i dont have to call mama town from the side of the road to pick me up.

Warning: this post will be lengthy.

Saturday was quite a long day. And I’m gonna start from the top.

Morning: Machine has a double practice scheduled so that a Machine/Nemesis potluck could go down. Bill Finn and I jump in the ZamDog (my ‘91 Camry), make a quick stop at McDonald’s so I can fill up, and get to practice just in time. Nemesis, Dish, Madison, and UofC/Northwestern/UIC combo are already in the midst of the women’s sectionals. A BEAUTIFUL day, sunny, blue skies, mid-70’s. God invented ultimate frisbee for days like this.

Practice went well. Doubles are usually a horrid affair where by the end of the day I feel as old as Gary is. However, with the potluck/party coming ahead and the meningitis behind me, I felt great the whole day. The practice seemed to revolve around the escalating O-line vs. D-line battle. The morning had us do some basic flow drills and then an O vs. D endzone game…make it take it. O-line won best of 3. I think there was a game to 7 also.

Lunch break called and we go over to root/heckle Nemesis on. They just started their game vs. Madison in the finals. A lot of hooting and hollering, some calls of “Yeah Dirty! (Megan Sweas)” and “Yeah Skanky! (i’ll leave this one alone ), etc. Dane finally gets over a hangover and starts challenging people to cone races. I beat him and get his plum. Taste it blondy. Andy Neilsen roshams Denis Agniel and loses…consequence: he has to introduce himself as McLovin’ all night at the party. (I’m gonna get a good pic of Andy and McLovin’ for the CU lookalike post). General shenanigans.

We get back into it for the afternoon scrimmage. O vs. D game to 13. A heated battle ensues. Kolb calls a lot of bullshit. Finn calls Kolb every name in the book. Ferrari spikes cones and says something about hating this team. I wish every practice could be like this. D-line pulls away to win 14-12 I think. Both sides were looking more pumped than usual. The fire is building and the only thing that’s gonna put this baby out is a Regional Championship.

Afternoon: The Domers: Butler, Kreece, and Mini come over to RWLS (Real World Logan Square bitches!) so that Mini can make yellow curry, so that we can shower, and for pre-partying. Butler is wearing my former/his current OU Sooners sweatshirt the entire time (it was 90 degrees that day). He paid me 30 bucks, a carbomb, and his shitty rain jacket for it. Biggest mistake of my life.

After 45 min of telling jokes, Kreece decides he’s gonna bake a cake for the potluck. This is about an hour before we’re supposed to leave. I hate this guy. He mixes everything together and decides to bake it there. Mini has a delicious yellow curry, I have hummus and jello shots, Moy has beef with rice noodles, and Rich Aycock made Irish sodabread. We’re ready to roll baby. In the car, Butler decides what with Mini having an entree, and Kreece making dessert, he’s gonna have to make appetizers. He puts peanut butter on 20 Triscuits. They are the hit of the potluck.

Potluck: So the potluck was an idea I’ve had for awhile. We used to do these at OU all the time and it was fun to see people get creative with food, and then it was more fun to eat the food. So we decided to have a Machine/Nemesis Potluck with a party for everyone afterwards. Both teams threw down…very impressive. There was a wide array of entrees and desserts with a scattering of appetizers. Some notables: Beef’s “Better than Sex” cake, Moy’s beef/noodles, Shiel’s enchilada casserole, a lot of food I can’t remember. It was good. Nemesis decided to have a team theme and they showed up in meningitis prevention gear. Very funny ladies. Machine was thinking of wearing Sectionals Champions t-shirts. OHHHHHHHH SNAP! Nooooo he didn’t?!! Well…you bet your ass I did bitches.

(I forgot to mention…Nemesis lost to Madison in the finals after being up at half. We saw them shake hands while we were practicing and a lot of dejected faces but none of us believed it until I talked to Beef quickly during practice. Revenge is sweet ladies; show those college hussies what ultimate is really about in Tulsa.)

Back to the potluck…our theme ended up being dress as your favorite Chicago Ulty player. A lot of good ones out there, but the winner by far was Hensley dressing up as our boy Denis Agniel.

I wish the pic was better, but you get the gist. The potluck proceeded, everybody ate a little, but there was a whole hell of a lot of drinking going on too. This is where it gets interesting. Weasel and I agreed to go 1 for 1 for the whole night till one of us passed out. I brought the leftover Bacardi O I had from the jello shots and we started the night with an O-bomb. We decide at the party that we have to go one for one on drinks, food, and girls. Beautiful.

Party: The potluck quickly escalated into the party. I think I was drunk by 8:15. Weasel and I have 2 more beers and another shot somewhere in there. At some point, Schulze gets 2 of Ferrari’s American Apparel underwear that really only look good on him. One is purple, one is neon green. One for one. Weasel and I don are new gear and the party continues. Many of the Nemesis ladies showed up a little buzzed and the dancing went down full swing. There was the requisite flip cup in the kitchen speared by Zales/Berg. Schulze, the veteran partier that he is, sets up an ulty frisbee version of “The Dating Game”. 6 girls sit on Bryan King’s futon while Weasel sits in an office chair facing the other way. Kolb is the moderator and asks all sorts of questions that the girls have to answer. By far the best question/answer…”What 3 things would you bring to a deserted island?” Bachelorette #6 (Annie Miller): “I would bring a razor, shaving cream, and Bachelorette #4 (Shawn Wall).” #4 ends up being King Weasel’s pick. More drinking ensues.

So most of my party memories are sketchy at best. I’ll tell you my highlights and other people can add theirs.

Highlight #1: Sally shows up with carbombs. I request 1 for her, 1 for me, 1 for Weasel, and 1 for Butler (it’s his fav). We’re all set to go and Butler says..”Vijay, shirts off shot right?” How can I argue with such logic? Shirts come off..and I get pwned.

Highlight #2: Weasel and I take god knows what number shot around 10:45? with Brody’s gf. Weasel and I are gasping, Heather is ready for another shot. Weas calls it quits. He goes and yaks in the bathroom, in Dane’s bed, and on himself. I’m worried the entire time that Butler is gonna pee on him.

Highlight #3: Candice. That girl brought beer can chicken (delish) and her drunk ass to boot. Every time I turned my head, she was headbutting Katie B, wrestling Kolb, getting wrestled to the ground and having her pants ripped off, etc.

Party is escalating, and the 1.5 kegs for the party are bled dry. Angela and I make a quick beer run and we get back to the house with 4 cases and some liquor and walk into drunk Dane trying to calm his downstairs neighbor who is not happy with the partying/noisemaking. Classic: Dane trying to explain to his livid neighbor that our contraband would not keep the party running. Neighbor wins and we have to get everybody out. Only after a rousing chorus of Happy Birthday! for Mini and some shotgunning. Exiting the party became a mess when Akira told everyone to go out the back and Ferrari told everyone to go out the front. Everybody just returned to the kitchen and drank more.

Finally people got hustled out. Most went their merry way. A brave bunch of 15ish made it to some local dive not far from RWIP. Crew: “You’re only open till 2 right? We’ll have enough time to get a beer I suppose.” Bartender: “Naw man..we’re open till 5.” Dropped jaws and gleaming eyes. The bar was when the beast was let loose. Men, women, and alcohol. Inevitability folks. Although at one point I think Ferrari gives Bjorn quite the lap dance. Men and alcohol. Inevitability folks. Winner of the party: well, the pic says it all.

Weasel made it to church the next day. May god have mercy on his soul.

My team-mate Coco likes to say that the most meaningless stat in sports is the halftime score. The second most meaningless stat is who won Northern California Mixed Sectionals (unless you count last year when that team went on to win Nationals). I’ve lost my point.

Reset button.

Brass played great. The sun shone. The children laughed and danced. That one kid shouted angrily and just gritted his teeth for 8 bars when I gave him one of my solos. There was singing and laughing and guitar-playing and fiddling. There were beers to be drank and teams to be heckled. There was a full beer can to be thrown at my chest by a girl named Molly who thought that would be funny. You’re not funny, Molly. Go away and give me back any beer that you have on your person.

Mischief was missing Tyler and it was windy. Both of those things played to our strenths. I am still very happy about a decisive win over Mischief. Of course, Sectionals means nothing, and the score is officially 0-0 again. Nothing that happened counted. The Flycoons are really frickin good (even with Tim Murray on the roster), Mischief is really frickin good (’06 champs), Shazam is really frickin good (’04 champs reloaded with 1 loss on the season), and then there’s Family Style (SC studs with awesome women), CTR (deep and good), Horde (formerly Whore$hack), Golden Spike (punked us at Labor Day on Sunday morning), and at least two more teams that could play big at any time and beat damn near anyone. I hate our region sometimes. Other times I really love it. Regionals should be fun. If we get out of our region, then there’s a bunch more teams, not the least of which is Slow White who is the only team that has beaten us at Nationals since 2004 (2005 in pool play, 2006 in semis). My captain, Nate, always responds to news of really good teams or great players being picked up by our rivals/opponents with “Great, I wouldn’t want to win any other way.” Or something like that. I like that attitude. I want to beat all these teams at their best. I want us to be our best and to just be better than their best. That would be fun.

Oh, details? Yeah, I don’t know many details really. Our deep game was clicking against Mischief, even in the high winds, and we took half by a lot and never let them back in. Final score: 15-8? Not really sure. This was not Mischief’s best effort by any stretch.

I somehow missed Revolver beating Jam at Sectionals. That is pretty cool. Idris blogged that Revolver would pretty much have to be the 2 seed at NW Regionals with Furious as a 4 seed or else there would be some flawed logic. Idris is always right.

sectionals sends machine out to the plush polo fields of naperville for the third weekend in a row. if meningitis doesn’t take down our team, this three week stretch of running on concrete will. one layout was enough to let me know that i didn’t ever want to do that again; i think the grass out there is currently more abrasive than that old-school astroturf. fortunately, we weren’t going to have to hit the ground too often to make it through to regionals.

saturday morning greeted us with crisp fall weather - clear skys and chilly air, with temps in the mid 40s. good hittin’ weather, as john madden would say. the open bracket consisted of 7 teams, which makes for a less than ideal schedule, with 2 guaranteed spots to move on to round two. but with regionals in scenic tulsa, it stands to reason that pretty much any team that wants to make the trip, will get to play. oklahoma, the sunshine state. gorgeous. gorgeous. anyway, first game puts the 1 seed (machine) against the 2 seed (haymaker), because that makes perfect sense. whatever. the game goes to machine 13-7. i think, you’ll have to verify with score reporter. during a game, i, at best, know what half we’re in. what’s the score? i don’t have a fucking clue. when people start shaking hands, that’s how i know the game is over.

next game puts machine against the wizards of ball state. for a while, i was worried they weren’t going to show, it’s not sectionals without ball state. the one thing you can ALWAYS count on from ball state - as a defender, you have no fucking idea when, how, or from where they are going huck the disc; but huck they will. they don’t give a shit if their receiver is 5′2″, 50 yards downfield, and double covered; that disc is going up. i think they scored 3 on us, in a game that lasted about 35 minutes, resulting in an hour and half wait until our next game. sweet. i love sectionals.

next game was against some team, presumably from indiana somewhere, and apparently not good at ultimate. i wish i had more to say on this one, but i don’t know what happened, i blacked out. 13-2.

at this time of the day, we’re scheduled for a 4th round bye. as is the team we’re going to play in the 5th round (illinois). and there’s an open field. wtf? i love sectionals. captaining occurs, and machine vs. illinois gets under way promptly. good work guys. illinois comes out fired up, as they always do against us; we come out mildy awake, as we always do against them. half is 7-5 machine, with our offense getting broken twice (good work us). but, we will not have a repeat of 2005, and machine takes the second half 6-1 to make the final score 13-6 (again, score reporter, it’s highly possible that i’m an idiot).

saturday night’s entertainment was supposed to be watching the michigan/notre dame game (tivoed), with tbrizzle and pfil doing shots for their respective team’s miscues. two 0-2 teams.. two rookies QBs.. the scouting report said tbr was going to be hammered quick, and that’s almost as entertaining as drunk cho. but someone had to go throw a wrench in those plans. dissappointing to say the least.

meanwhile, back at sectionals sunday morning. first round bye for machine, awesome. apparently some team bailed saturday night, which left the schedule at one more game of round robin, then finals. the last round robin game was illinois B. we almost let them score a point, but brown bear had some sweet goal-line D to deny the youngsters. 13-0 machine. saturday afternoon, illinois had beaten haymaker in a tight game to take over the #2 spot and earned the right to play us again in the finals. again, illinois was hanging around early in the game, thanks to some offensive miscues by machine. but again, we woke up at halftime and only let them get one in the second half. 13-6 maybe? yay, machine is sectional champs. sweet.

at this point, some rookies went on a beer run, and we settled in to watch the haymaker/illinois rematch game-to-go; or some meandered over to heckle the briefcasers. post-tourney shenanigans included:
- watching football on a tv that schulz brought out (plugged into tbr’s truck for power).
- brown bear trying to make me do a shot of soco with him. no way i’m sharing a bottle with menigitis boy, so i suggest we wrestle for it; he wins i do a shot. i think you can guess what happened.
- kolb getting hammered off 2.5 old styles and running around the coed field between points.

i don’t know what to say about this weekend other than (a) puppet regime is an awesome team to play with and (b) we won our section. i am so psyched to be able to play this fall - i realized at around 10 am on saturday morning, as i was changing my pants on a sideline filled with strangers, that i would have gone nuts without playing some sort of organized ultimate. plus, it was great to play with justin again (same attitude, different glasses) - no carrie this weekend but i’m looking forward to seeing that lady again. i also ran into tucker of 30-year-old spring break fame, although apparently i’m blacklisted because i couldn’t score her a sandwich. sorry.

enough mushy stuff, onto the weekend. thankfully we had a first-round bye saturday, because it was raining cats and dogs and quite cold. we pulled up to the fields just as the sun was coming out. after a round of introduction, running, stretching, tossing etc. we played mako (15-4 - they seemed to do better in other games later that day), then levitation holmes (15-6), then a long delay followed by sandwiches and then AMOB out of brooklyn (12-3) and harpoon, the new haven team (12-6). it was windy as hell, every point was upwind-downwind. puppet’s offense did very well against the wind, aided by a number of h.o.t. lady and gent handlers.

a bunch of us went for dinner at el bandito, a killer local mexican joint in middletown, ny that serves tequila shots with the check. luckily we didn’t have to pick up that check, because the TD was with us and bought us dinner in exchange for garbage and cone pickup on sunday. we drank the tequila shots anyways, then watched men in black II and went to bed.

the best thing about going into the finals game on sunday morning was the 11:30 start time. the hotel crew ate a hearty meal of pancakes, french toast, oatmeal and lots and lots of butter at a local diner. seriously we each had a half a stick of butter on our meals. that gave us all the energy we needed to power through a game of long and windless points against crafty, another brooklyn team and the #2 seed (shocking sectionals spoiler: top 3 held seeds). we ended up beating them 15-11. i felt like there was a bit more competition than we had last year in the
central plains section. apparently there are a few former puppeteers playing for crafty.

that’s it for the east coast correspondent. the surprise in the region was in the east new england tourney, where slow white lost to quiet coyote and had to play through the 2nd place bracket on sunday, eventually beating quiet coyote to take 2nd place overall (tandem was first).

Dudes and female-dudes, it’s time for some of that hot nasty Frizbone action. Brass Monkey is going to compete until you can’t feel anything but pure ecstasy. We are going to swing your dumps and pump it deep to our streaking strikers. We are going to have intercourse on your team, bigtime. Here’s a picture of me intercoursing two people.

Yeah, the series starts this weekend, and as Zaz would say, “I’m getting old and I like math.”

We get to play Mischief this weekend who is missing (I presume) Tyler Grant who is “the straw stirring the drink” for that team with a pretty bad ankle sprain. They’re pretty damn good without him though. A win against them would be big because they have a couple of girls that are faster and taller than me or so, and their offense is REALLY hard to deal with because they throw to people that aren’t open and oftentimes do that without putting any air under the disc. It’s like playing Ball State or something where you have your guy so covered that you just assume the throw won’t go up and then the guy catches it behind your head and you bitch at your team-mates for not making “up” calls because you’re still blaming your parents for your shortcomings as a man. Actually, that wasn’t really as much of a hypothetical as it was a snapshot from my past.

We, Brass Monkey, played Shazam twice a couple of weeks ago on home court at Labor Day and split games with them. They have Steve Finn on their team, who is extremely old and also plays boardgames with people on my team when he comes to town. I still don’t understand the boardgame thing. Tony, Carlo: I don’t get it. They were boring when I was a kid, and they’re still boring. You guys should hang out with Steve Finn. Anyway, other than that one loss, Shazam has had their way with everybody they’ve played this year, including the final of that tourney in decisive fashion over Brass. Mischief has had a couple of close ones with Shazam, including once being up 7-2 or something in pool play at ECC and then losing on double-game I think. Shazam is still clearly the team to beat in the coed division, but luckily, I love beating the team to beat. There’s nothing more gratifying than playing big and upsetting a 1-seed and then taking all their girls out for a nice seafood dinner and then never calling them again.

There’s literally nothing better. I challenge you to find something better than that…………..Dorothy Mantooth is a saint.

Time to take Glucosamine, Chondroitin, and MSM combo pills. Is everybody ok after the meningitis outbreak? That’s a serious disease from what I understand.

our friend moved away to be brainwashed in some kind of ‘tree and squirrel saving landbound cruise type graduate program’ on the east coast so we have an opening for a new friend this fall. the right applicant will be trained via teleconference by the original ms. ultimate herself. they will be crunk, smart, ride a sweet bike and have a sweet forehand.

we will be conducting interviews friday at lemmings between 6 and 730 pm. please bring a resume and headshot as well as a desire to drink beer out of cans and a thirst for adventure. please answer the questionnaire below to see if you pass the first hurdle.

1. (submitted by trbizzle) you are cutting towards the end zone. you are looking at
a. the disc
b. a puppy on the sideline
c. your united shoelace

2. it is saturday morning. you are
a. sleeping in
b. drinking your intelligentsia coffee, listening to npr, and reading back issues of the new yorker
c. out for a run

3. weeknights are for
a. catching up on sleep and laundry
b. watching law and order and getting takeout
c. working late and microwave dinners

4. friends dont ask your opinion on _______ unless they REALLY want to know.
a. high heels and lindsey lohan’s progress in rehab
b. carbon offsets and the new patagonia fleece colors for fall
c. tax shelters and rock climbing gear

if you answered mostly b’s come out to lemmings cause we want YOU!

I would like to announce the new addition to Team Paulina, The Reverend. It’s plain to see that The Reverend is a rabbit, in fact a half-French/half-English lop, which explains the floppy ears. I’ll have to post a picture showing some scale because The Rev is bigger than those little city rabbits you see in the park; he’s actually the size of a cat.

You may be wondering why we chose a rabbit and why we chose the name. First off, we didn’t actually intend on recruiting a rabbit to Team Paulina. The Rev was a birthday gift from Ms. Paulina’s siblings … that’s right, the rabbit was a gift. Prior to a few weeks ago I was under the impression that you never give a pet as a gift. The only exception to the rule that I knew of was if you lived with the person so that you could bear some of the responsibility of pet care. Maybe the rules are different with siblings and I just never knew growing up as an only child or maybe the siblings didn’t ask the follow up question, “Are you sure you want to take care of a rabbit?” every time Ms. Paulina expressed interest in getting a cute little rabbit. In any event we now have a pet who’s pretty damn cool when he’s not pooping everywhere.

I’ll be brief with the explanation of the name as I am not certain of its origin. Initially the rabbit was called “Fropsy” like flopsy with an R. I think the full name was “The Reverend Fropsy” but I’m not entirely sure. Knowing that the rabbit was a buck (male) I was adamantly against the feminine name and suggested we shorten it to “Rev.”

There you have it. Team Paulina is now one stronger. If anybody wants to rabbit-sit for a few days in October let me know.

Ms. Paulina says, “seriously, come give our rabbit hay and greens and watch him slide all over the hardwood floors.”

so this weekend was the most epic roadtrip miss casual has ever attempted. driving from chicago to savannah georgia is not for the weak willed. on our way out of town we heard the new britney track on b96. it starts off with her all breathy whispering ‘its britney bitch’. classy with a k for sure. i might have to put the post title as my outgoing massage on my voicemail. so it was a good start.

on the way down we spotted a weird petting zoo type thing at a gas station. heres an ostrich posing for us. we stopped into the a-town and had dinner and then went to savannah. lovely lovely savannah. it is so beautiful there when its not raining. which it was. all weekend pretty much. (this is the part where you tell me how f^&*ing gorgeous it was in chicago / san fran / new haven all weekend and i tell you to ‘wow thats awesome. really.’)

but it was so beautiful there with the fountains and our pretty little bed and breakfast and the ghosts and getting to walk around outside with beer in your hand like youre at a frat party that the rain didnt bother us too much. it cleared up for a bit on sunday so we got to bike around and do tricks and hit the marc jacobs store. we wouldve gone to the evening social at our b&b but we were younger than everyone there but about 2 decades so it seemed like we didnt have too much to share. ‘what do your kids do?’ ‘ummm…’

the ride back was no big deal really except for when a bloodthirsty cricket got into the car and miss casual screamed and cried til we pulled over and killed it. im pretty sure it was the vampire cricket variety with fangs and hair and stuff. also i think if i never go back to indiana again it will be too soon. not just because of the cricket but it also smells really bad there and we got a speeding ticket and i think we got ripped off at the popeyes just north of indianapolis. i was too scared of the people working there to complain.

anyways its certainly good to get back to normal in beautiful chicago. i love this city so much. cheers.

xoxo miss casual