casual ultimate » 2008 » February

this is me as a robot girl from the future, mc’ing the forestry school auction last friday. this is what i do between reading journal articles and writing papers. i was going to be a champagne robot with mini champy cans taped onto my hands edward scissorhands style but figured it would be tough to hold the mic. i’m thinking of doing my hair like that more often. i got a lot of compliments and at least one person is now calling me pippi on a regular basis. against my better judgment i’m posting a second photo so you (miss casual) can see the aluminum foil job i did on my white space boots. it’s a little known fact, but in the future we’ll discover a planet in a distant gallery made entirely of tinfoil - actually it’s the remains of an intergalactic recycling program - which is why my costume (and everyone else’s) was based on foil. trust me, i study natural resources.

kind of a busy week, what with the auction, a saturday bowling trip that involved me driving a 15-person van (i’m getting one) and a visit from the parents. my parents were a good excuse to visit yale’s british art museum and art gallery and the peabody museum. i was wrong, new haven is the bomb - i was blown away by the collections. dare i say it’s almost worth a trip to new haven? *hint hint*? speaking of which, our very own hanging with mr. cooper has been admitted to a PhD program here - if you see him telling him that Washington sucks and he should definitely come here to bolster the pickup frisbee game if for no other reason. anyway, the art collections were fantastic and the peabody museum apparently has more dinosaurs than the field. there was a turtle fossil discovered in south dakota that’s about 11 feet square. it was awesome. i felt like a kid all over again in that museum. in other news, i might be in san fran this summer for an internship. no confirmations but i’m working on it. anyone on the west coast know of folks in need of a subletter?

that’s all the news from the east coast. for the love of god, someone post soon so these pictures aren’t at the top of the page.

Friday February 29. Leap day. Time to get diggity. We’re gonna have some fun in Uptown baby.

The Klob and Geoff “Swoosh” Serednesky (newest addition to the casual ulty world) have moved into a sweet apt in Uptown. They don’t wanna host a party just yet, but BAR CRAWLing, they are all for.

Geoff and I might try calling some bars and setting something up. Let’s not count on it. Just know that we’re gonna drink and move in Uptown. Bars might include: Uptown Lounge, Green Mill, Fatcat’s. We definitely will end up at:

UPDATE! Here’s the bar crawl list:

Time Bar – Location Leap Year Special
9:00 Fat Cat Bar & Grill - 4840 N Broadway St First stop of the crawl!!!! Be on time to pick up your wristbands as there is a limited supply. Ask Kyle, the bartender, for ‘The Crawl Special’.
9:45 Crew Bar - 4804 N Broadway St Show your wristband and get $3 PBR’s. Warning: don’t tap your feet in the bathroom.
10:15 Green Mill - 4802 N Broadway St Free cover with your wristband. Enjoy some drinks and music before the upcoming dance party
11:00 Uptown Lounge - 1136 W Lawrence Ave
I got my work to sponsor a DJ.
Get ready to dance with DJ JEFF BLOOM Spins House, Funk, Soul, Electronic & Old School
Thanks Henderson Mutual Funds!
11:37 Agami Sushi & Lounge - 4712 N Broadway St,
Edamame special $4 with your wristbands. Don’t forget to do a saki bomb!
12:15 Carol’s Pub - 4659 N Clark St

No special. Read a review written on Citysearch.com by user - iline: “Country music the way it should be. Come to the bar Thursday through Sunday and see the BEST BAND IN CHICAGO. These guys will shock you with how good they can play. The prices are moderate and the crowd is eclecltic. This can be the most fun you have in Chicago. It is laid back early, but can get crowded late.”

well another winter weekend goes by mostly uneventfully but at least we topped 40 degrees today. i got to ride my new bike and chat with c(b)r about real estate and slider’s potential effectiveness as a guard dog. although i watched a good deal of television (hey the dunk competition was fun to watch this year!) at least a bit of it was inspirational.

i watched a sports special about the kona ironman triathalon… and if that doesn’t get me off the couch for at least a week i don’t know what will. seriously… 2.5 miles swim, 112 miles on the bike, and then a marathon (26 mi.) how do people survive this? a frickin 65 year old woman completed it! she was happy cheery the whole way. a blind grandfather completed it. a guy with no frickin feet and completed it with prosthetic limbs. a female former winner of the race crashed her bike, broker her collar bone, and rode like 20 more miles before giving up. the first place dude from last year was throwing up as he was riding his bike and didn’t stop for quite a while…!? if that doesn’t give you serious self esteem problems i don’t know what your life is about. i couldn’t even finish 100 miles on the bike this summer and i ride more than most people. not more then triathaletes but holy hell! a flippin 77 year old nun completed the swim and bike portion!

alls i knows is im gonna have my butt in the saddle of a bike at the gym for some serious hours in the next few weeks to pull it together so i dont get sick during the first spring league game of the season because i assure you, cherished reader, that i will not continue to fight on after such an occurance.

it did make me think about doing a little bitty 1/4 triathalon with some of the chicks and drinks ladies this summer. if a legless man can do the ironman i figure i should be able to swim 1/2 a mile, bike 20 and run 3 by july. right? right???

cricket. cricket.

i understand that chicago is under approx. 400 inches of snow and temperatures are arctic. well until a few days ago it was 45 degrees and sunny in new haven. and you know what i said when the weather took a turn for the chilly, dropping 30 degrees overnight with a windchill of negative one? good, i said, now this is winter. i’m sick of the lond island sound’s moderating effects, turning what could be snow into rain - i want lake effect snow, damn it, and piles of it. i hope all of you back home are fulfilling my childhood fantasy of building tunnels to your friends’ houses. i know miss casual has recently fulfilled my current fantasy of making an entire batch of cupcakes and immediately eating them. good work.

if you couldn’t tell i’m on a bit of a chicago nostalgia streak which translates into a casualultimate.com nostalgia streak. remember 2006, and winter 2007? those were fun times, filled with laughter and merriment among friends.

given the allegiance that former chicagoans seem to have for their native land, i think i have a good business proposal: the chicago-of-the-month club. miss casual, if you’re thinking of smurfing your smurf, you may want to pick this up to supplement your income. following the model of the wildly successful bacon-of-the-month club and the somewhat less successful fossil-of-the-month club, the chicago-of-the-month club will send subscribers reminders of their home town through the year. of course a deep dish pizza packed in dry ice will be included, but let’s not forget the other chicagos: that of anarchist labor organizers (May package, which will include vintage bullet casings and a worker’s time card punched for eight hours), racial and ethnic segregation (October package, comes complete with map of north shore suburbs clearly delineating where jews and blacks can live, and cuisines from ghettos past and present including harold’s chicken, corned beef and cabbage, and sauerkraut), and deeply rooted democratic history (November package, containing various democratic paraphanelia including lapel buttons for all 12 Daley election campaigns and a timeline of Chicago history for the 40+ years the family has been in office). But don’t forget a full-length recording and accompanying songbook for Chicago tunes (the Mrs. O’Leary’s Cow song, Go Cubs Go, etc. for July) and clippings from the plants in Millennium Park, to plant in your own yard far away from home (April). Think about it. I’d pay up to $39.95 for twelve months of such enjoyment.

Some people do “strength training” to “build up a base” for “the next season” of “extreme Ultimate flippy-disc”. I, on the other hand, have been keeping busy….I joined a new gym….that’s just one thing.

I had a physical assessment when I joined the gym, and the lady took me around the gym to see what I could do. Number of times I’ve been on the bench since college: 20 times in 4 years or so. We put on plates and gave it a go. 10, no problem except that it wasn’t that easy. We added some 35’s. One….two…thrrr….yup. Two. We took off the 35’s and added 10’s and 5’s or something like that. One…two…three..four…fffff…yup. Four. Nice job, big guy.

So with my “One Degrees 2008: Year of the Sideboob” body condition, I think it’s safe to say that I can bench about 1/2 of my body weight or another way to think about it, which I think is the metric system (not sure what the metric system actually is): I can bench at least the amount of food that I eat in a week if you could somehow turn it into a bar that I could lift while lying on my back.

Another thought about this exercise: you really should be sitting up if you want to digest your lunch properly, so I would say don’t eat RIGHT BEFORE YOU WORKOUT. That’s a late breaking fitness story from the West Coast. You heard it here first on casualobesity.fat.

Next, they did a body-fat test to see what percentage of my body is actually undigested milkshakes. It’s 27% with an 8% margin of error. My confidence level is high that I am above the “suggested level for a guy your age” of “ideally 10% but no more than 15%”. C’mon. Really? What year is it? 2000 BC? Am I (a) hunting for my food every day or (b) talking to some former D1 soccer player who did both her knees and is now a trainer in the Financial District of a major city in the fattest nation in the world? Darken in the oval by the letter B on your scorecard completely.

I found somebody with 10% body fat in my journeys, and I found another person with a body-type similar to mine as well. They are both small and fit on your lap. Here they are side-by-side.

Kindest Regards,

Chucktown: Population Fat

i think i have election fever. its great to watch the primaries and realize that all three of the front runners have some qualities that i admire and some stances on issues that i can get behind. hillary gets lots of bad press i think but she ultimately has a pretty great track record as a senator. obama is my man and the thought of a very new face in the nation’s highest office is exciting. and mccain is pretty great too. all in all its going to be a really interesting road to the white house.

i mean i think that to make it more interesting we could turn it into a reality show where they all have to live together on the campaign trail and allow people to vote via text message but that’s not going to happen in this election. maybe 2012. we can hope.

anyway i am officially sick of winter. like for real. i have such cabin fever. i have barely ridden my new bike which is rediculous but so is the fact that every other day we get another 6 inch heap of white fluff. im trying to look forward to spring league ultimate, a summer of racing on my bicycle (ive joined a sweet cycling team called team pegasus) and feeling the sunshine on my face…. but its snowing sideways right now.

so i was inspired by vijays post to man up and start repping my blog again. (cu for life!) i miss everyone! turns out the tv isnt my real friend no matter how safe it makes me feel. i miss chuck-town, and bk, and ms. ulty and especially willis and little joe. ive been having some work drama so ive been trying to focus during the day and not blog but the blog must go on.

I haven’t posted in awhile, and this blog is starting to become stagnant, so I’m gonna inject some of brown bear’s life into it. I apologize in advance.

1. School

I’m currently freaking out. I will be applying for residency positions soon and I’m starting to wonder if living/breathing ultimate for most of my adult life is gonna catch up once I start applying against other applicants who have done their dutiful research/volunteering/learning. Will my “I went to Ultimate natties for the past 2 years!” stand up against medical student alpha male’s “I am a lead author on 4 different articles in the New England Journal of Medicine dealing with the molecular genetics of B-cell lymphomas”? Probably not. Crap.
Then, there comes the possibility of getting out of Chicago? I have, for the most part, settled on Emergency Medicine as my career, and Chicago has 6 (and one combined) programs that are great. However, I have a lingering longing to get to Portland. A good buddy from college lived there for awhile and Finn and I made a trip out there 2 summers ago. One of the best weeks of my life, and honestly, the first time I’ve been to a city out of Chicago and thought the whole time…I could live here! Only one program, but it’s quality. 3 years away from Chicago however? I went for one week when it was sunny…could I stand 5 months of incessant rain? Would I like the guys on Rhino (would I even make Rhino with my schedule?)? Would my parents freak out and move to Portland with me???? Dear lord. And even though I’ve made a niche of being the Indian guy that hangs out mostly with white kids, could I live in a city that would only allow that social situation to happen? (One week in Portland and I didn’t see one black person the whole time. We flew back to Midway and felt a culture shock).
Finally, even with my lamenting of how my dedication to ultimate will probably be a hindrance to my career, I am starting to get scared about the upcoming school/ultimate schedule. Some tough rotations in the summer, and then, if Portland is really a probability, I’m gonna have to an away rotation during the season. Hmmmmm…… (more about ultimate later).

2. Social

Living with 4 other dudes. It’s a recipe for trouble, but it’s worked out unbelievably great so far. Everyone has their own schedules, 2 of the roomies have lady friends, and everyone is laid back. Moy cooks a lot, and I’ve started cooking more. We’re no Bryan Kings yet, but my egg curry is starting to rival my momma’s.
Chicago weather promotes a lot of indoor activities and we have jumped whole heartedly into 2 board games…Settlers of Catan and Ticket to Ride. I know I know, there’s no reason to publicly advertise that we’re complete losers, but these games are awesome. Come over and play. Seriously. Right now.
I saw There Will be Blood on Friday. One of the more intense movies I’ve seen, but a couple days after I still have this gnawing feeling that it was missing some sort of finality. I feel like epic movies should leave you with some sort of construct to much on for awhile. And while there was a lot going on, I got nothing that stays with me. Does this make any sense? What did you guys think? I still have to see Persepolis and Juno, and there will be a lot more time to see movies cuz….

2a. Fermentation Free February

Not drinking this month. Most of it stems from the fact that as a 25 year old I don’t recover as well as when I was 19. (I realize that most of you are hitting the decrepit age of 30 and are rolling your sad, old, tired eyes at this). But, successive shitty Sundays have led Moy, Finn, and I to renounce alcohol for 29 days. Yet, all of us have already made amends to this. We’ve already saved a weekend where we CAN drink (Finn in Vegas, Moy and I possibly at Mudbowl). But Moy and Finn have already decided to drink ANOTHER weekend also. Craziness. Can mid-20 somethings even have fun without alcohol? How sad is it that I even have to ask this question? I don’t even know what to do on a Fri/Sat. night except go to a bar/club/lounge/party, etc.
We went out last night to the Holiday Club, a bar at Irving Park and Sheridan that driving by you would be certain was a strip club. Fun bar, good music in the back, mix of cute/ugly girls, cheap enough beer, etc. I couldn’t wait to leave. I spent most of that time talking to this guy that I’ve only seen socially when both of us were wasted. He wasn’t drunk when we got there and I was stone sober…not as great a dynamic this time around. With all the MJackson and old school hip-hop I normally would be tearing up the dance floor (rubbing myself on every female there) and I didn’t even budge last night. This is gonna be one long month.
On the flip side this has been a great Sunday so far. Got an early brunch at Victory’s Banner (best French toast ever) and lots of work in before Super Bowl shenanigans. Ok, let’s end this section with…

2b. Ladies

2007 was an…interesting…year. Equal parts feeling heartache and equal parts dishing out heartbreak. Ladies of ultimate, ladies of medicine, and ladies in between. Now, I know it seems like I’m blowing it up, but as my friends would attest to..it was nothing like that. To put it gently, the year unfortunately was one of quantity and not so much quality. (Man..that’s offensive, even for me…but it wouldn’t be directed at anyone in the world of reading this blog.) But if white ultimate girls and brown medical student ladies aren’t gonna work….WHAT IS?
Hector does a great job writing about this in his blog…but skirt-chasing in the ultimate world (or any insular communites like ours i guess) is a tricky proposition. Do you plunge into this trap even though you know all about the pitfalls out there or do you enter the outside world, and engage women who will have no idea how to fit in to your obsession in to such a fringe world. (I have no idea but I assume it’s the same if you flip-flop genders in my diatribe). Maybe women in the periphery? Girls who don’t play but still understand what it’s all about. A certain ex of mine and a certain teammate are “talking” and I’m interested to see how this plays out.
Maybe I should just go on a lot of dates in Feb. I love dating. But when’s the last time you went on a date and didn’t drink?!

3. Ultimate

It seems like the club season never ends. As soon as Nationals are done, you recover, and then you try to start working on improving your skill/physical set for the next season. This should once again be an interesting year. Exciting prospects, disappointing losses. Bill Finn has requested not to captain this year, preferring to improve the soldier instead of continuing the soldier-general. Two years later, Billy has instituted a lot of changes that hopefully will last. Joey (agreeing to continue), Akira (reprising his captaincy), and Matt Stupca will come in as the trifecta in charge. It seems like 3 dudes with diff. ultimate backgrounds, different ideas, and different strengths. Will it be chaos or beautiful symmetry? I hope and think the latter.
SubZero will be returning most of its team including a lil’ Korean we all love…Tyson Park. Unfortunate, but if you’ve spent any time with Ty, it’s not at all unexpected. I really am sick of losing to these guys. Is it finally the year where we reassert our dominance in the Midwest? No doubt a challenge with them acquiring Tyson and regaining Q-tip. Can’t fucking wait.

3a. Winter League

Been a lot of fun so far. Our team hasn’t been faring that well, but it’s been fun nonetheless. It’s a nice way to keep running, and the fields are sweeeeeeet. The game is also different, with 3 games to 25 min. I was scared that the quality of play would suck, and while it hasn’t been stellar by any means, it’s been good enough.

3b. Spring League

Is this the year that every club player in Chi joins?!!! Why the F not? Spring league is by far the most fun of the leagues, and if enough players joined, there would be less weekends where you can’t pull a full team. (I think Ferrari’s team worked through that a lot last year). Ladies of Nemesis/Briefcase…why NOT join in full force this spring?? Ladies are the limiting factor and the better the quality/quantity, the more fun it would be.
I know there are a lot of arguments as to whether strong ultimate communites lead to stronger club teams, etc. etc. and I’m sure there are arguments ad nauseam either way on RSD. I’m not well versed in any of these..but it’s always bothered me that the Chicago ultimate community SUCKS. There’s such a disconnect b/t league, club, college, etc. Why do people come from Madison or Minneapolis or Atlanta and lament on our poor state of affairs here? I don’t know and I def. don’t have the answers. I’m sure the causes are multifactorial, but we can start to make changes as individuals and members of our respective club teams. Why not join Winter, Spring, Summer Leagues? Why don’t we start coaching more of our area college/high school teams? Coaching/organizing ultimate is a time-sink and I realize club activities take so much time as it is, that it might not be beneficial to one’s life to put that much time into ultimate. But PLAYING ulty, even at league level? Gary LeDonne hasn’t missed a league in the last 45 years of playing (he’s seriously like 60 now); and he is/was better than you were/are/ever will be.
Now that I got some steam….I’ve had multiple conversations with Jacob Dee as to whether strengthening league play/interaction would lead to better recruits for clubs. For the most part, he is not convinced that it does. I have no theoretical/statistical proof, but I do have Ed Uram. Eddie was a rookie on Machine this past year, and has played ulty only for 3 years. As far as I am concerned, he is the most exciting player in Chicago. The kid is like 21 or 22, and is SIIICK. He’s an athletic phenom, and he only has room to improve. The only reason he had the skills (which are soooo raw….his flick still makes me cringe), is cuz Gary and his old-dude crew took him under their wing in LEAGUE PLAY. That is the only reason that kid is as good as he is now. One year of league play under those cronies and he dramaticaly improved. And now he plays on Machine, and he gets pretty good playing time for a rook. One of the more distinct memories I have from summer league was with Akira. I’m sure he doesn’t even remember this, but he spent a game kicking my ass and then telling me why. It was AWESOME.

I’m getting kicked out of this coffee shop. This has been way too long. Join spring league assholes.