casual ultimate » general antics

Why? Why? Why?

Where does the fear come from? I remind myself of Stephen when he tried out for Jam in ‘06. You could see that he was afraid of not making it. You could see it.

I needed to play great Saturday. I didn’t. I had a really bad day in fact. I didn’t feel like my team was behind me. I didn’t believe in myself. I didn’t perform. My fear got the better of me.

I’m so disappointed. I just wanted to make my contribution. I just wanted to use my god-given talents. I feel like an idiot.

Some of the plays I made during the game on Saturday AM were nothing short of awful. A high-release backhand to Tyler comes to mind. Another throw into a poach. A flick that had no confidence behind it in a one-on-one drill. A misplayed high disc on a break from Darryl.

So what did I do right? I got a layout D on Schlag on a loose throw. Jeez. Is that it?

I feel like I just never let myself play. I don’t do well in that controlled sterile mindset that some of the Revolver guys thrive in. I need to get in touch with inspiration, something human, something magical. I need to transcend the defense and the point to play my game. My throws and decisions, my execution and my gifts are not best used in a logical this-or-that world. I need to flow through a point. I didn’t get there Saturday. I just didn’t get there. I feel really sad about that.

My disappointment is compounded for this reason too. In 2007, when Idris was captaining Jam, after Justice League had failed the year before, I had my chance to make Jam, and I walked away from it, then they won it all in ‘08. In 2009, I had my chance to be in the middle of Revolver charge to finals, and I walked away from that too. Now, I’ve missed my moment I’m afraid. Maybe I just need to grieve that loss for now.

I’m 29. Was I ever even good? Did I ever play my best? Did I ever achieve my potential?

Maybe more than anything I need to be honest with myself and my team. I didn’t let myself do that. I tried to bottle it up and keep it under control. That’s never worked for me. It still doesn’t work for me. I’m sorry, Chuck. I’ll try not to do that again.

My team, CGNU (Crazy Go Nuts University) lost in semis at Lei Out in an effort to defend our title from ’09, and we lost to some of my favorite people out there: CarBomb.

I draw parallels between CarBomb and Jam for me personally because I really like CarBomb a lot, but I don’t find my values particularly aligned with theirs. That’s not to say anything bad about their values. CarBomb, as I understand it, is about having the MOST fun of any team at every tournament. The people on that team are just fountains of joy, and they are really funny. Really funny. It’s me Chuck, and I spend a lot of time joking around with all kinds of people, and I’m here to tell you that CarBomb is REALLY funny. MVP of humor, in my book, goes to Bogle. Holy shit, that guy’s mind is so rich.

So the reason I don’t play with them every chance I get is because I feel better when I’m playing on a team that is squarely focused on winning and that treats each other well. CGNU is definitely both of those things. CGNU is not, in my opinion, particularly funny. I mean, we get down, and we have good senses of humor, but it feels more like math camp over there sometimes. I think it’s a very quiet, introverted team. Luckily, I really love those people and respect them and enjoy what we’re able to do on the field immensely.

In much the same way that I feel like Revolver is the right team for me over Jam, I feel like CGNU is the right team for me over CarBomb. That being said, every year since 2007, I have been cheering for either my team to win Lei Out or both of our teams to lose in semis, so that we could heckle during the finals. That shit is almost as fun as playing in finals. Next level shit going on there. Hanging with CarBomb reminds me of some of the better One Degrees trips I’ve been on.

For those who don’t know: One Degrees is a great group of often-corpulent former/current Frisbee players from Michigan and North Carolina that takes funny to the next level.

One last thing: CarBomb, the drink, is the best alcoholic drink to have while playing Ultimate. Way better than the CGNU Rumbull. It coats your stomach while it lightens your head. Amazing.

Congrats to CarBomb for winning Lei Out. They did it with great plays and great spirit. A well-deserved win.

so your gratitude post was funny to me because on thanksgiving i actually made a list of things im thankful for in alphabetical order. its in my phone so sometimes i look at it when im having one of those days at work where im crippled by panic and stress. so thats pretty much every weekday.

anyways.. today, in no particular order, im grateful for…

1. the fact that even though the recession is killing my workplace the solution that management has come up with is four day work weeks. so even though im getting paid less im getting 3 day weekends every single week. best recession ever.

2. bubbles. in water. in champagne. wherever really.

3. im going on a badass girls weekend in north carolina in april and i booked a plane ticket today for an unreasonably low price. also my friend amy is in town this weekend.

4. it was warm enough to bike to work today and i love biking to work.

5. im not sick anymore.

6. claire is back from south america so i can call her.

7. being married is awesome but being married to someone who will steal a roll of toilet paper from their workplace rather than stop at walgreens on the way home is priceless.

8. chuck and all of his posts on here.

9. chicago

10. r. kelly

so thats it for today. someday soon (maybe on no-work monday..) im going to post about the wedding. talk about being grateful.. certainly one of the best days of my life so far. in fact i think the reason i havent blogged about it is because it seems so perfect in my mind i dont want to knock any of the glitter off of the memory. however writing things down certainly records details that get dimmed with time so blogging here i come.

edit: take our poll because practicing gratitude will actually make you happier

I’m here to blog about something other than weddings, although I can’t guarantee it will be more interesting. Personally I have a lot of interest in how the nuptial plans are coming along, especially miss casual ordering me an extra cupcake for the afterparty. Don’t forget.

This week started out with the pride parade and will end with fireworks – not bad for summer. The parade was on Sunday. Overall I enjoyed it, but the participant ratio of waving politicians and animal shelters to assless chaps and drag queens was not what I had hoped it would be. I did see the mayor, wearing a white button-down and slacks like he was going to work – you think he’d have tried something more rainbow-y – along with a few old men wearing nothing at all. I wish they had gone with slacks, at least. Here’s a pic of the float carrying the gay calendar boys of san fran, for all the ladies out there. One of the best characters was on the macy’s float; I must admit, marshall field would never have approved.

On Monday I went to the cubs vs. giants game. I’ve definitely never been at Wrigley field when the cubs just blew the competition out of the water – it wasn’t even a good game. We did spot this fellow though, at the game with his friend who also had an intricate balloon head honoring the giants. I went online looking for directions on making one of these bad boys myself but couldn’t find anything. Clearly this boy is a genius of structural engineering. The ballpark was gorgeous, right on the water and a sailboat harbor. Also, the beer cost $8.25 – that’s eight dollars and twenty-five cents American for a bud. The good stuff was a buck more. I should have heeded my friend billy’s advice and brought a flask. Next time.

The low point of the week was bailing out of summer league, thus guaranteeing that this blog will have nothing to do with ultimate all summer unless tony and bjorn post about poultry days, which is already ancient history. Turns out that in addition to the $45 SF ulty league fee, I have to be a current UPA member ($30), which means paying $75 for ~6 games of ultimate. Insane. I understand they need to use the UPA’s insurance (when has anyone playing ultimate sued a league or the UPA?) but how can they charge 45 bucks on top of that? Bah. Maybe I’ll get out to a pickup game one of these weekends to make dragging my cleats across the country worthwhile.

I hope everyone has a happy fourth, and be careful with those fireworks. Don’t start any forest fires.

it’s been so long i almost forget how to blog. i definitely forget how to illustrate blog posts, so please forgive the fact that all the pics i have are of trees in muir woods. they’re pretty though.

Last week I thought all the talk about summer in san francisco being cold and overcast was really just part of an elaborate slander campaign to keep out newcomers. Every day was sunny, 78 degrees with not a cloud in the sky. This week though things have taken a turn for the worse, with a high of 60 predicted through the weekend. Easy come easy go. At least I got nice weather while I was exploring the city, and starting my internship today means I’m inside 9-5 (literally 9 to 5, actually, which is kind of amazing to me given I’m used to the 8 to 6).

Last week I landed at SFO as was picked up by one of my roommates – they are so nice, they actually picked me up from the airport. It threw me off given the SF subletting nightmares I’ve heard, but so far they’re the real deal. And, as mini and friend were excited to discover, one of them is a product manager for the company that’s launching a “revolutionary” new video game from the maker of sim city. Regular readers of the blog will know that misses casual and ultimate do not like to actively engage the TV or computer while sitting on the couch (besides updating this site once a month…ok, every six weeks), but mini’s friend was pretty astounded to discover my a-list connection to the gaming world.

Anyways, I spent last week exploring the sites and sounds of SF, which are largely made up of pride flags, homeless people, b.o. and burning cannabis. Just kidding, it’s a lovely town with much to discover. I live at the corner of market & guerrero, which seems to be smack in the middle of the city and makes getting around easy. I’m kind of between the mission and the castro, and below the lower haight if that helps anyone.

One thing I discovered quickly is that this is a city for food lovers. Last night when I was coming home from muir woods we saw a big crowd in the ferry terminal; turns out they were awaiting to grand opening of an artisan meat artist’s first retail outlet. This was about 6 pm on Sunday, a time when most Chicagoans I know would be at home eating leftovers or ordering six dollar noodles. There are fancy meat, cheese, bread, etc. sections every other block – artisan, I mean, not fancy. Clearly it’ll take me a few weeks to fit in.

In addition to eating, I visited noe valley, fisherman’s wharf, haight-ashbury, the mission, golden gate park and lovely muir woods in marin county. I was approached by a charming gentleman named bear while sitting in GG park eating my sandwich; he wanted to know if I wanted to buy drugs, hang out, etc. but there’s a medical marijuana dispensary across the street that seems much more trustworthy. Bear told me that my name would be chitown from then on, so please feel free to call me that if ultimate is getting old.

All in all things are good here, and starting a desk job for the summer is putting me back in the blogging mood. I miss new haven as well as Chicago now; it was so great seeing everyone while I was back. Oh, and other news is that I got into the business school at mi Universidad, so I’ll be on the east coast for an extra year getting my mba. Interesting. And actually last but not least, I thought I missed the SF summer league signup but turns out it’s tomorrow, so I may even post about ultimate. Crazy, I know. Just when you were getting used to the new all-bike format.

Team Paulina is off to Seattle tomorrow morning. Liz starts her residency at UW in June. We’ll be taking about 10 days to complete the trip, generally following the route on the map below.

View Larger Map
We’re going to see caves and Mt. Rushmore and Deadwood and Sturgis and the thing from Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Yellowstone (hoping for moose sightings!) and Glacier!

We’ll try to update CU with news of our journey when we get settled in Seattle. Thanks ahead of time to all well-wishers. We’ll miss Chicago and we look forward to visiting soon. Of course if anybody is in Seattle, look us up.

the games are starting in four minutes… march 20, 2008, approximately 7pm - scandal has converged to the hotel Milton in rimini, italy and are waiting patiently in a first floor hallway, excited to see for the first time what the titcombs have in store for this year’s dress code. as has come to be expected, scandal was the best-dressed team at the tournament. the in-game uniform: collared polo shirts (made from the latest technical fiber) in pink and baby blue, paired with plaid shorts (again, technical) in blue and brown. the pre-game warm-up attire: an argyle print longsleeve shirt, and a pair of linen-type pants. the off-the-field attire: a sweater vest, a black sportcoat, and some aviator sunglasses to protect us from the glare from the paparazzi camera flashes. we are dressed for success.

the games are starting in one minute… march 20, 2008, approximately 11pm – scandal has put some food in its belly, and heads for the opening party on the beach. time for the paga-rookies to pay their team dues, acting as wine stewards fighting through the crowd to scoop up the cups of (free) red wine being dispensed from behind a row of tables. the rookies prove to be exceptionally good at their job, which led to some personnel/roster issues the following day, but we’ll get to that later. soon enough, the crowd tires of wine and sand and the cold evening air, and the party moves across the street to the paga staple, a place where the beer flows like wine, and the people flock like the salmon of capistrano; a little place called - the barge. setting the tone for the weekend, car bombs are ordered by the dozen, and most of scandal is out well into the early morning hours.

the time is running… but, unfortunately, many on scandal are not, despite our rather late first round start time of 11:30am. it seems our rookies started us off with a little too much wine, and we all finished the job with plenty of car bombs. but our savvy leader, having been through this before, assembled a team of 16 players, ensuring that we could afford to be down a few players at various times on the weekend. so day one begins with yours truly watching (i use that term loosely) from the sidelines, and i wasn’t the only one to suffer this fate. despite the self-handicapping, scandal takes care of a young british team, super mannschaft, with a score of 14-3. mannschaft had been talking a whole bunch of shit the night previous on the beach, but they couldn’t back it up on the pitch. probably because their jerseys didn’t feature a large phallus. next game starts in a couple hours, so we’ve got time to head back to hotel to deal with some incidents at the hotel for which we’re being held accountable. a meeting with the hotel manager, and one player eviction later, we’re free to take much needed naps to sleep off some hangovers. [that situation sounds worse than it was; basically, one player was asked to leave the hotel as an example to everyone that the hotel was doing something about the incident. but the manager was very reasonable with the whole situation; he made a reservation at a hotel around the corner, paid for it (as we had already paid for our rooms), and allowed the player to still come over to the hotel to hang out and eat breakfast.]

the rest of day one plays as expected – we beat the other teams (10-7 and 13-2 respectively), while playing hungover and missing a few guys. i played game 2, but not really in game 3, as my pounding headache returned later in the afternoon. awesome.

friday night comes and goes, and is generally low-key for most. that was both a planned thing to do, as saturday’s games determine whether a team plays up to 1-8 bracket or not, and the natural side-effect of the entire team getting completely shit-housed the night before. but, the night is not completely free from scandalous activity, as one teammate does not return to the hotel that night, and when he does show up the next day, he is without half his clothing and does not have a wallet. these items are delivered to him later that day by the object of the previous night’s affection. most of the team, and a lot of the tournament, has the good fortune to witness this exchange as it occurs in the front row of the stadium bleachers. comedy ensues.

saturday, scandal picks up where is left off, winning it’s first two games 15-4 and 13-5. in the first game, i realized i might be a better thrower when i have a hangover. despite feeling much better this day, i was chucking up pure garbage; whereas the previous day i threw a couple goals and no turnovers. awesome. that 13-5 game was our first of four games played on the arena field, and we used that opportunity to show the rest of tournament that we were for real. freespeed, our opponent, is a solid team and having beaten us in a previous year, thought they might be able to do it again. we answered that question by getting out to a 5-0 lead and never looked back. as the afternoon rolls into evening, scandal plays its final game of the day, a potential trap game against a fiery bologna team. for the first time in 6 games, scandal finds itself trailing by one for a span of a couple points. the italians are playing well, connecting on some well contested hucks, and scandal is off our game a bit. but one mark of a good team is being able to win despite not playing its best, and we were able to do just that, winning our closest game of the weekend 10-9. scandal is in the quarters. have fun tonight kids, but not too much, tomorrow morning we play sexxxspensive; then it’s on to quarterfinals.

saturday night’s party is back at the club, la otro mundo, after a few year hiatus. scandal scores a booth to chill in while the freestyle competition is going on. this party is, frankly, rather boring, so we leave. we go hit up the two brother’s gelato place , and head back to the barge, our home away from home.

scandal is up for an early game (9am) sunday morning, and we’re greeted by a cold, windy, and occasionally rainy, italian spring day. our first game is a placement game versus sexxxspensive; winner gets the better seed in the quarterfinals. given our history with this team, especially after the events of last year, they have no chance against us. no team with a sexxxspensive player on it will ever beat a team that i am on. its not going to happen. anyway, scandal proves that weather will not hold us back, and we beat the euro all-star squad 9-6. the weather continues to go downhill as the day goes on, with our quarterfinal game against hardfisch (germans?) a zone-heavy, super windy game. our offense plays great, working hard up-wind, scoring after having to complete a few dozen passes; and they do it point after point. we may not have been broken that game, which is a real accomplishment in that wind. scandal wins 12-6, with the final goal coming minutes after the real heavy rain started falling. soaking wet, but feeling great to have that monkey off our backs, we pack up our stuff and head for the shelter of the big tent. scandal is in the semis.

4:40pm sunday; it’s cold, windy, and raining hard. sexxxspensive is beating up on no tsu oh in the first semi-final of the open division. scandal is huddled together in the main tent, trying to be warm and dry, yet still somehow prepare for the upcoming game that starts in 20 minutes. sexxxspensive has just beaten no tsu oh to earn a spot in the final game. and then the we hear that familiar jingle.. the games are starting in four minutes… our semi-final game has been moved up 10 minutes, but no one had the courtesy to let us know. but it cold and pouring rain outside, no one wants to go out there until we absolutely have to, still, we have to warm-up somehow. well, there’s a crappy band playing on stage.. dance warm-up. and so it goes. scandal dances around while the young brits, huck & sea, are out doing a proper warm-up of running and throwing. the games are starting in one minute.. we finally head outside and put 5 on the line. the second semi is under way. the kids from england play a hard fought game, but scandal is better, playing a superb game as if we were playing in the sun while the brits were stuck in the rain. we continue our streak of convincing victories, winning this game by a score of 14-7, and taking the second spot in the open final. holy shit.

scandal, you’ve just won your way into the finals of paganello, you’re cold and soaking wet, what are you going to do now? we’re going to the barge! what better way to recover your body after a hard day of playing than by dividing up for boat races of jager bombs versus car bombs? yeah, i can’t think of anything better either, bottoms up; tomorrow you’re playing for a world championship…

So I, Ms. Paulina, just wrote an awesome, creative post about Team Paulina moving to Seattle. But then somehow my connection was lost…grrr. Anyway, YAY! We’re moving to Seattle! Yay! I got my first choice in “the match”! I’m going to be on Grey’s Anatomy (not really)! We’re bummed we’ll miss the best time of year in Chi-Tizzle, but we’re psyched to be headed to another awesome city for 5 years. That’s all for now, but there will be goings-on to celebrate our time left here, so keep an eye to the blog and an ear to the ground. Speaking of ears to the ground, the most adorable member of Team Paulina, The Rev, celebrates his first birthday today at Grandma’s as our landlord still doesn’t know he exists!

i don’t really know how to break this news to the internet other than saying: jess & julio are getting married. they are engaged to be wed. it’s been in the works for some time but now it’s actually happening. it’s beautiful, our little girl is growing up, their offspring will give maxine and audrey a run for their money and will be riding on two-wheelers before they can walk, we’ll all get to eat cake, etc. it’s pretty damn awesome all around. but now comes the hard part, and what we all need to help them with: planning.

first: do not get married on nationals or regionals weekends; once you factor in the bike season scheduled, i think you’re down to somewhere between the months of november and march. remember: there’s nothing more romantic than president’s day. groundhog’s day is also an option, but your superstitious friends might freak out if that thing does/does not see his shadow. on the plus side, you may be able to rent a live groundhog for use as a prop - ringbearer?

second: food is important, and you have friends and family running the gamut from vegan to hunk-o-steak. i think the safe bet here is pennys for the rehearsal dinner and a co-catered event by piece and hot dougs for the wedding. if tbrizzle is willing he could man the grill and cook up steak for carlo and himself. slider will handle cleanup.

third: cake. i cannot stress the make-or-break nature of cake at any wedding or wedding-related event. alliance is at the top of the list, but i strongly urge you to consider the swedish bakery. also, and i realize this isn’t custom - but who puts that cake under their pillow anymore anway? - but you should also serve ice cream.

fourth: outfits. i hesitate to say “dresses” because we all know that julio is a closet clothes hound and will want to look dapper as hell. i would like to throw in my two cents here and suggest you take all the money you save from catering your dinner with fast food and spend it on clothes for you - and of course the wedding party. it’s already been agreed that you will be coming to new york to go shopping with me and brooke. julio should wear a tie that matches your dress in color and fabric (don’t bother with white…who do you think you’re fooling?). and whatever happens, no one will be wearing shoes dyed to match the dresses. which brings me to my final point….

fifth: venue. if you want to wear stilettos, and i know you do, you cannot have an outdoor wedding. as we discussed earlier, a loft or other such space could be good because there would be plenty of room for dancing, etc. although not the loft michelle rented for new years; those were not all good memories. i plan to be wearing a much nicer dress and don’t want it ruined.

that’s about it for now. i’m sure jess will have tons of ideas, all of which will be scribbled down in a rhinestone-encrusted pink bridal journal of some sort. i hope there are helpful suggestions from martha stewart in the margins. this is going to rock. congrats to jess and julio!

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.”

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.

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.

So tonight I decided to combine two tasks into one. Firstly, I needed to return a few things to the mailbox of my ex-girlfriend (names withheld to protect the innocent). Secondly, I needed some exercise; which I thought could be usefully rolled in with the first task by running the stuff over to her house. Also, it was cold out, so instead of warming up I just ran extra fast. Also, the lights on Charleston were out, which I thought made it kind of nice and contemplative.

Which is how I found myself running a bit faster than usual down a dark street wearing my usual running clothes—black pants, black hoodie, black skullcap and black gloves—carrying a white plastic bag with assorted media in it. I was about three blocks into this activity when I realized that a police car was driving along in the same direction as I was running, at the same speed—I assumed it was just cruising along checking parking stickers and I sped up because it was annoying to have it there the whole block. As soon as I did, it pulled over quickly, and two cops (let’s call them “officer cheney” and “officer obama”) jumped out and told me to stop what I was doing.

I got frisked, put up on the side of the car, my bag (containing a dvd of Eddie Izzard comedy and a “Children of Men” paperback) was confiscated, and I spent the next twenty minutes in the back of the car attempting to explain what I was doing. Officer Obama was pretty cool, but Cheney was kind of a dick. He spent most of the time repeating whatever I said to them back at me with a whole lot of sarcasm. “Oh you’re just ‘running some stuff over to your ex-girlfriends house’? ‘You don’t carry your wallet when you run, huh? You, uh, ‘live three blocks from here’ is that right?” Anyway it was kind of comical except that this guy had no levity whatsoever. Though he did tell me that if I was concerned at how the Chicago PD spent their time I was more than welcome to bring it up with my alderman.

Anyway, though Officer Cheney’s first idea was that we should drive over to the ex gf’s house and have her verify my story (this would have been both genuinely awful and genuinely comedic) kindly Officer Obama shot me a look and then asked if I had a roommate or anything at home who could verify my story. Which is how my roomie ended up getting woken up at 10:30 at night by grumpy Mr. Officer Cheney who demanded verification for my story, which apparently she provided (thanks for not leaving me hanging, miss casual).

Meanwhile, Officer Obama explained to me, while eating an apple (so healthy!) that there had been a lot of car break-ins in the neighborhood recently and there was a task force out all night looking for the burglers and that I shouldn’t really worry about it.

Anyway, I was released into miss casual’s custody shortly thereafter. Despite the fact that the universe was clearly telling me not to get exercise, I changed into a bright red hoodie and went back out for my run. Felt much better after I got back.

so we’re going to try something here at cu: a little column called “ask the viking”. i’m sure you all can figure out how this works- readers submit their questions, i do my best to answer some of them. we’ll see how this works out. anyway, here’s our first installment:

mr. viking,

now that its winter i spend 1% of my time at the gym and 99% of my time sleeping or watching tv. what should i do with my 1% of time at the gym? cardio or weights? or both? in what order and in what quantities?

signed,
weary of winter

ms. weary,

vikings are known for our strength; at our peak, entire villages would flee their homes at the mere rumor that the vikings were coming. in those days, men grew strong by fighting with swords and shields, and rowing our Longship warboats to new territory to raid and pillage. unfortunately, these days raiding and pillaging are no longer accepted forms of recreation, so we’ll have to make do with other activities. i would recommend a blend of weight training and cardio; weight training will give you strength to strike a man down in battle, and cardio will give you stamina to outlast your enemy in a shield wall. or, perhaps more applicable to modern times, weight training will improve lean muscle mass, which in turn, keeps the body’s metabolism running high, which translates to improved calorie-burning (read: fat loss) long after the workout is over. i would achieve this blend of strength and cardio training by focusing your workout on exercises that recruit as many large muscle groups as possible, and minimizing the rest taken between sets. an example workout of this type would be:

1) 3 sets of 8 squats, rest 60 seconds between sets.
2) superset: pull-ups, rest 30 seconds, push-ups, rest 30 seconds.
repeat twice more, for a total of 3 sets of each exercise.
3) superset: 10 cable woodchoppers (video link), rest 30 seconds, 10 crunches on swiss ball, rest 30 seconds. repeat twice more.
4) on a rowing machine, do 4 minutes of: 20 seconds all-out, 10 seconds rest

that little program hits pretty much all of the muscle groups in your body, and will probably get you in and out of the gym in about an hour. do this 3 times a week, and soon enough, your raids will yield more treasure.

skål,
the viking

mr. viking,

so i really like this girl. i’ve been flirting with her, on and off, for about four years now. i’m pretty sure that she’s into it because she keeps ending stories by saying “you know, back when i still had a boyfriend” or telling me things like “i wore these hotpants just for you” and sometimes things like “my roommates not home tonight and i just got a brazilian wax”…but how do i know for sure that she likes me before i, you know, ask her to get a coffee or something?

for now i’m just going to keep playing it cool and only speak when spoken to. i mean, i just don’t want to be in a situation where i put myself out there emotionally to a stranger and don’t get any reciprocation, because that would be embarrassing. man i wish girls were more forward.

signed,
imaginary bear

mr. bear,

you’re a big fucking bear, with big fucking claws. and you can’t figure out how to kill the bunny? c’mon, you’re so money, and you don’t even know it. just club the bunny with your big fucking bear paws, and drag her back to your cave. advice from my favorite self-help movie aside, this viking learned from his elders of the old norwegian secret for getting girls — sit at the bar until one of them approaches you and forces interaction. vikings prefer strong women, and this is an important part of the selection process.

skål,
the viking

I exhaustedly returned to the dirty south after some holiday qt with friends and fam in the city and ‘burbs. Christmas was typical, with gary’s team winning the family ultimate game like every year (no matter how we change the teams around).
Emilee got back at him by being crowned the victor of Mexican train, a game that’s an enjoyable take on dominos and only takes 4 hours to play. Good thing nobody in my family is competitive at all! Christmas is more fun when there are children to spoil. If lily’s list next year included a life-sized Thomas the tank engine, she might actually get it.
Six days is a long time to be at home & away from home at the same time. After gorging ourselves, family-style, at maggiano’s, the fam caught “between barack and a hard place” at 2nd city on Saturday. Sometimes it’s weird to be sitting next to your dad laughing when the guy on state is pantomiming a motor boat. But this time it wasn’t.
The highlight of my trip was time spent and meal prepared by and shared with nate, schmal, baby max and the lovely ladies of casual ultimate. The recovering bartender mixed some magnificent martini’s and the gang caught up on recent goings and doings. Food coma from the lamb and delicious brussel sprouts meant an early end to this evening, but we managed some debauchery first, despite the lowered volume necessitated by maxine’s slumber. Throwing snaps @ pedestrians on Dearborn from the 7th floor never gets old. Nate just might have the best ass in the casual ultimate family.
2008 in Raleigh, nc arrived an hour earlier than in Chicago, weird. The redhead and I partied with some friends on nye and frolfed yesterday in the balmy, 55 degree sunny weather. Supposedly it’s good luck to eat black eyed peas on New Year’s day. We ate some alongside our perfectly grilled ribeyes, smashed potatoes and sipped on some delicious Spanish vino. Happy new year to all!

I’ve gotta say. It’s really not that bad. There’s pretty much no one here. I’m wearing jeans. I’m listening to music. I’ve already masturbated twice. Ok, that last one’s not true. Still though, not bad.

I started listening to Pandora.com on a friend’s recommendation and I’m kinda digging it. It’s streaming music that is similar to Thievery Corporation right now. I just typed in Theivery Corporation, and it makes rocket go. Also not bad.

I’m dating this exquisite creature that the earthlings call “Tracy.” She is like a cross between seafoam icing and freedom. Not bad.

I guess the work that I’m supposed to be doing should be taking priority right now, but I can’t say that I’m too fired up to get it done. I’m happy to say that I’m not too opposed to getting it done either though. Man, peanut butter sounds good right now. Does that mean that I’m pregnant?

I heard some rumors about Ultimate next year. I’ll put them in order of confidence:

1) Everyone will wear helmets next year through Regionals. Nationals: same rules as always, no helmets.
2) All three captains of Revolver are gone for next season (2 retirees and 1 traveler). I sort of had it tucked in the back of my head to play with them this year, but now I’m not so sure. We’ll see.
3) Jam is way more talented than Revolver and has less character.
4) Wendy Chan has a several photo spread of a layout D she got on game point against Shazam in semis against a dude (Jon Ladd to be exact). It’s in the UPA Newsletter I think. Check it out.

Yeah, those last three may/may not be true, but the first one is certain. I suggest Gaia chinstraps by the way. Very comfortable, but order them now if you want them to get across the border by the Fall Series.

I’ve been thinking about the old body and about some of the “greats” of frisbee past lately. There are many that played at the top for however long or not even at the top for however long, and now their bodies are wrecked. It’s a little concerning. I don’t want to have all kinds of junky joints and handicaps as I raise my kids. When we’re playing in the Townhouse Backyard, I want to be able to run around and bend and jump and do all those sort of things with my kids. Basically, I NEVER want to lose in a game of 1-on-1 basketball against my child. The reason I play Ultimate today is to be in shape for when that day rolls around and my kid is up 9-8 in a game to 10 in the backyard. I will beat him. I will rise to that challenge. I will foul him flagrantly if he comes into the lane. This is my house. Ya betta know dat, son!

I think Ultimate is doing a fine job of preparing me mentally but perhaps not physically for that challenge. What if I get really hurt and ruin my whole “knee area” or my whole “face area” (those are medical terms)? Hell, my room-mate had surgery on his eye after playing one game of winter league. I’m not sure this is the best sport for people who want to not be broken old people.

And on that note, Merry Christmas to all of you in the US. If you are not in the US, rot. Cho, I’m looking at you…although I can’t see you because you are very small and at a great distance. If you are reading this, feel my cyber-gaze.

Oh, and Jews. Hope that festival went well. That’s a pretty cute little holiday you guys have. Awesome. Jews.

its that time of year when you are expected to cough up the dough to show your loved ones you.. well love them i guess. also its the time of year when the blog kind of degrades into open emails between ms. ultimate and myself. what can you do?

i finished my christmas shopping on michigan avenue monday evening (except for tbrizzle which well get to later…) and it was actually very festive and fun. i usually hate shopping here because my office is here and as soon as i get out of work i just want to flee as fast as possible from the parade of babystrollers, tourists, and aggressive 100 pound blonds that make up the shopping public. but monday night it was snowy, i had gotten a christmas bonus (woohoo!) and the lights were on so i bounced along and got into the christmas spirit by spending the evening surrounded in a cloud of bliss and consumerism.

and i got everyone taken care of except tbrizzle. the thing i wanted to get him was sold out. but really.. what does one get for the dude with everything? how about a patagonia t-shirt? oh wait… okay how about something with basset hounds? well… or maybe bike related stuff? okay now youre just being mean.

ill figure it out. meanwhile ms. ultimate is finishing up ivy leaguing to come home and shop, eat and watch tv like the good old days. only a couple days to go! lemmings is already on red alert.

It’s Christmas time in Townville. We are all gathered in Pompano Beach, FL to annualize our love for each other. How do I love thee? Let me count the years that I have come to this same place in the month of December.

This year, we tried something new: not playing tennis. Here’s some pictures of the tennis we didn’t play.

(footage not found)

I’d just like to make positive mentions or “Pos Mens” of two gifts in particular. Mama Town has a tradition of giving Jess and I a particular gift every year. For Jess, it’s an angel. For me, it’s a nutcracker. However, this year, she took it to the next level and created a nutcracker of me at Nationals in all my Brass Monkey gear. For Jess, she created this bike-riding angel. I think the symbolism is quite powerful. I have powerful jaws that can be controlled from my lower back in real-life, and Jess is a messenger from God in real-life. That’s why it makes sense.

Here are the pictures:

this email discussion happened today and i thought it was appropriate to share. anyone have any others???

ms. ultimate : I thought you prodejiners would appreciate this: apparently my school has its own font. It’s called Yale Design. weird.

miss casual : our office has its own font too. we just call it ‘lucien’. i think instead of christmas presents we should design fonts for each other.

i would like mine to be called ‘jesstown classic’

tbrizzle : cbr and i talked last year about designing family crests for each of our friends—like quartered shields with relevant symbology on each quadrant. i think the russells would be fun:

enormous dog, Ohio State, big sweatshirts, and People Magazine, divided on invected saltire.

volkmans:

brussel sprouts, ham sandwiches, disc golf, and a toyota echo, emblazoned on a cross fitchy.

towns:
great hair, frisbee, tennis, and saturns, on an azure plain with dovetailed fess.

by the way, in the course of my research into medieval heraldic terminology, i came across this image, which clearly must have been the crest of the early Brown family. I can just picture the early Charlemagne Brown, lovable loser that he was, constantly being let down by his friends and family, suffering through the crusades with a wry “good grief!” and getting a rock in his stocking at Whitsuntide.

c(b)r : not sure where Whitsuntide is but Charlemage Brown is awesome.

ultimates’ - recycling symbol, star of David, crucifix and a beagle.

miss casual : b-r’s - a hyphen, a pickup truck, a basset hound and laptop

well right now as im typing ms. ultimate is flying across the country to come back to chicago for casual ultimate 60622: thanksgiving reunion special. hopefully this will involve some if not all of the following

- lemmings, piece, and quenchers (this is already in the works so if you’re in town wednesday night holler)

- brunch, manicures, and light shopping

- napping, arrested development, and live blogging the law and order mini marathon drinking game i have devised

- a battle of wits between slider and the door of tony’s truck

- more bulleted lists

also in an unrelated incident… i overheard a conversation this morning about oprah’s ‘favorite things’ show, which is on today. its the one where she travels around and gives people in georgia presents like new cars and diamond jewelry for taking her to the best hot dog place south of the mason dixon. the conversation in question was between two guys who decided she should say her favorite thing in 2007 is ‘making it rain.’

the idea of oprah saying ‘im gonna make it rain’ tio a bunch of old ladies in macon is more than i can handle right now.

well yesterday was not going all too well. work is especially brutal lately and i was having one of those ‘milk in the cabinet, cereal in the fridge’ kind of days. i wasnt sure if i had even washed my hair or just stood in the shower under the hot water thinking about light and vent schedules and how to get an obscure piece of the integrated headset for the new bike. i was sitting at work thinking about whether to just get up and quit a la half baked or whether to just cry and then throw my computer out the window.

and then someone sent me my first missed connection. silly as it is, and clearly from a friend whos messing with me, it still cheered up my afternoon.

‘Miss Casual m4w - 29
Date: 2007-11-14, 2:27PM CST

aw shiiiit girl, you don’t need that foo’ jdot. you gots me, baybay.

meet me at the altar.’

so thank you invisible romeo for helping me get through a tough week.. even though you are probably ms. ultimate. happy friday everybody.

Hey, while all you cats were in Tulsa playing frisbah in awful weather, I stayed in Chicago to take part in this live design competition called cut and paste. A live iron-shef style illustration showdown, with an audience of around 800, sponsored by the big names in design software/hardware and taking place in 11 cities around the globe. The deal is that you get 15 minutes to create a design based on a specific theme, judges vote on the winners, and you advance bracket style to a championship round. Awards include about 8 grand worth of software and hardware.

The good stuff: I was happy as a clam in mud. I would do this every weekend if they let me. I had a most enjoyable night and was very entertained by all the goings on. I made one pretty sweet image right off the bat and got the crowd on my side. First category was themed “currency”; and for no particular reason other than it had to be a crowdpleaser, I decided to render my currency concept in the guise of a TRON lightcycle metaphor. Even better, the crowd got it the joke, freeing me from my nightmare of having a Chief Wiggum moment (Treehouse of Horror VII). I was one of the guys chosen to continue on to round 2, got some nice compliments from the judges and one aggressive skinhead in the audience, and all was well.

Hmm. Then came round 2. I had planned to create an underwater image for the “Through the Looking Glass” theme (required integration of a digital photo taken on site). For some reason it took me forever to get through with taking, importing and arranging that photo, at which time i felt very behind in my work and made a series of bad decisions that led to a completely ugly result. I swear that it looked good when i did it at home. Audience comments included “what the fuck is that”. Honestly, I had no good answer. Sometime in the last minute I just gave up and laughed at the monstrosity, hoping my casual attitude would endear me to the judges and they’d advance me for reasons of pity. Didn’t work.

Spent the rest of the evening watching the finalists go at it. Some things I was impressed by, others not so much. One thing I’m pretty sure of is that 15 minutes ain’t much time to create anything worth looking at, even with prep. Oh well. All in all though I got a big kick out of the idea of a photoshop duel, and it pretty much made me want to hole up in my basement and get faster at everything. One other good thing; at the close of the evening they announced the “audience award” based on american-idol style text message voting from people in the room (or in Tulsa…) and I did win that thing, so either people really like TRON or there were alot of bored frisbee players waiting by their phones. In either case, thanks to those who contributed, I got to leave with some self respect and a pile of new software at least.

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.

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.”

Here are some pictures (poached from Bea’s blog) of Wyatt Riot’s show last Friday. It was at Pier 23 which is a bar that they named an entire pier after - talk about unoriginal - and it happens to be next to the bay which is where we play and make things out of clay. It was a damn good time and the alcohol tasted like a giant glass of “freedom” (which is a concept and now also a taste). Damien showed up and convinced the barstaff to concoct a long island iced tea in a bucket because who wants to get a bunch of glasses dirty? He then proceeded to allegedly tell the girl I was chatting with that on a scale of 3 to 13, she was a 7. Thanks, buddy. Glad I didn’t even invite you so that you could show up, drink my bonus and insult the girl I am hitting on. Good looking out.

In other news, the Labor Day Ultimate Champies are this weekend with coed up in SF and Open/Women down in Santa Cruz. It should be a pretty solid tournament as usual and if nothing else changes this weekend, I will be living in a place called the Pink Palace when it’s over. Nothing gay about that. Let’s a do a quick recap of my life as a straight male since last spring:

In the beginning, I am in a long-term relationship with a woman (Dr. Welsh) in the heartland.

Then….

1) I move to San Francisco, gay mecca, to “explore something new”.
2) My relationship quickly falls apart.
3) I move to the city to “explore something new.”
4) I begin biking a lot and drinking cocktails when I go out.
5) I move to a bright pink house.
6) I put some of my hanging clothes in the closet.
7) I come out of the closet.

So anyway, I live in a pink house in the Sunset and I love Extreme Frisbee. As Joe Ferrari would say, sweet. (Here’s a picture of me hanging out with my guy friends in San Francisco. That guy in the shades is definitely checking me out.)

“Is there anything more beautiful than a beautiful, beautiful flamingo, flying across in front of a beautiful sunset? And he’s carrying a beautiful rose in his beak, and also he’s carrying a very beautiful painting with his feet. And also, you’re drunk.” -Jack Handey

with chicago’s first-ever recorded hurricane passing through town last night, things got a little dicey for folks in the chicago area. i have to say, i do like me some severe weather, it’s pretty cool to watch. i mean, if it’s going to knock out my satellite reception, it better offer something in return. there’ve got to be a bunch of stories, good (tbr enjoying a 4wd vehicle) and bad (mercedog losing his roof), but this was my bout with the bad weather.

driving through that hurricane last night was awesome. i left my company’s lincolnshire office at about 3:20pm, just as the first front of the storm approached; i saw it coming and made a beeline to my car to get on the road asap. i -just- made it to the dry confines of the car before the rain started coming down. within a couple minutes, it was like driving through a carwash. the 60+ mph winds power-washed my car with the buckets of rain coming down. once on the freeway, i couldn’t see a damn thing at any speed above 40mph, even with the wipers on high. and it felt like i could start hydroplaning at any moment, there was that much water on the roads. people were stopping under underpasses to wait it out, which i thought was a bad idea because i bet at least a few of them got caught in high water. water was pouring off overpasses like waterfalls. there were lightning strikes all around me, super close on some; using the old “count one second between lightning and thunder equals how many miles away the strike was” rule, there were at least a handful of strikes under a mile away. and the winds had ripped apart the trees along the roads, i’ve never seen that much pulverized tree debris on the freeway.

soon enough though, the first wave of rain stopped, and i settled in for the bumper-to-bumper traffic on the edens trying to get back downtown. i made it back to my river north office in about an hour and a half, actually not bad considering what happened later on with all the flooding and road closures.

i got back to the apartment just as the second round of heavy stuff started coming down, so i sat in the car for a while, hoping to wait it out and not get totally soaked on the 20 yard walk to the front door. not gonna happen. so i changed into my gym clothes, which i had ready in the car since i was supposed to run track last night, and made a mad dash to shelter.

after reading about the extent of the damage and such this morning, and hearing about merce’s roof, i’m feeling pretty lucky about how well we escaped over on my street. fortunately, there weren’t any trees ripped down, and we didn’t get flooded out. but just to be safe, i parked on top of a speed hump, trying to get on high ground as best i can. i’ve had a car get flooded once, and i don’t want it again. that shit stinks.

I have nothing useful to report but i wanted to post this pic of Slider being our test subject for our first in-office green screen shoot. He’s even happier in person than he looks in this photo. If that’s possible.

(this just in for ms. mimms, our nemesis correspondant)

It’s been an exciting week to be a Nemesis player.

Last Friday, the eleven of us that got into Boulder early went on a rafting trip where we almost, but not quite, managed to launch Candice out of the raft going over a class IV rapid. That girl is tenacious.

Saturday we mostly got whooped on by other teams (ok, all our games were actually close but we only won one, grrrr), but that night featured a pre-hot tub group shower and an exciting 45-minutes of full-contact pool keep-away. During keep-away, we learned that Candice “has no off switch” and that Val thinks it’s amusing to pretend to lick the ball.

Sunday brought one more win (Layuma - avenging a Boston Invite loss), and two other losses by small margins. It’s clear that we need to learn to close games. That night 6 of us didn’t get into Midway until 2am due to a delayed flight. Thanks to Brownbear, Bill Finn, and other Machine boyz for making the time fly by.

Wednesday featured practice followed by the Beefster’s 21st birthday celebration. I think she said it best, so I’ll just reproduce her “morning-after” email verbatim:

“First and foremost, thanks to everyone who came out and bought me drinks last night. I had a great time and it just reminded me how much I love Nemesis. Seriously. I love you guys and couldn’t have asked for better teammates.

But now to recap:

From 9pm to around 10pm I consumed more shots than I can remember. I tried to count them this morning and came to the conclusion that I consumed AT LEAST 10 drinks between 9 and a little after 10.

10:30 - Ended up in the Black Beetle bathroom (that was inevitable) at which point Yaya decides it’s a good time to head home. Good call, Yaya. So we head home and I’m going to assume we teleported back to Hyde Park because I don’t remember the 30 minute drive home AT ALL.

The next thing I know it’s 4 in the morning and I’m waking up on my bathroom floor. So, I crawl into bed and wake up 3 hours later at 7am to get ready for work. While walking to the bathroom I was shocked to discover that I didn’t have a headache and wasn’t feeling nauseous.

And that’s when I realized I was still drunk.”
Finally, Thursday involved an email exchange with the TD’s to Cooler, at which point we realized that Nemesis does not in fact have a bid. They won’t just add us because 9 teams is wacky, so we’re now exploring a situation where we split into two teams. We have no idea whether that will work out, but opposing team names are being solicited nonetheless. Meagles favors Autobots and Decepticons. Beef’s suggestions include: Unicron and Primus (more transformers), Apocalypse, nemesis of Cable (more X-Men), Ares and Cheetah, nemesises of Wonder Woman, Deacon Frost, nemesis of Blade, Doctor Doom, nemesis of the Fantastic Four, Judge Death, nemesis of Judge Dredd, Sabretooth, nemesis of Wolverine (X-Men, again), The Legion of Doom, nemesises of the Justice League. Candice votes for Dumb and Dumber. Your suggestions appreciated.

Yes, I said tax-free weekend and welcome to the dirty south. They actually do something really cool in NC by eliminating tax for a weekend so everyone can save money on back to school supplies. So how does someone with no kids who isn’t in school benefit from that? SHOES! (now I have Ms. Casual’s attention…) Although my purchases were functional and not fashionable, I hit up the New Balance store on Friday and then Great Outdoors from some hippie sandals on Sunday. I would’ve done more shopping but my stomach kept me close to home.

How or why might one sabotage this wonderful weekend, you ask? So I accidentally got hammered Friday night. I know some of you are wondering how you “accidentally” get wasted, but it starts off with a lovely idea called First Fridays in downtown Raleigh. Art galleries, beer vendors in the streets, live music… forgetting to eat dinner, 7 hours feels like only 2, Sierra Nevadas, Big Boss beers, old pal Budweiser and his good friend Jameson. Apparently, after you turn 30, hangovers last 48 hours instead of the normal 8. I guess playing ultimate in the 98 degree heat (90 billion percent humidity) doesn’t really assist in recovery. For “fun” – we played nearly savage make-it take-it ultimate at practice on Saturday. The team had a pool party social Saturday night, it was remarked that Beckhoe lacked a beer in hand. Couldn’t choke one down…

After Sunday morning’s gnarly practice – I turned on some golf to nap to. Does anyone else think Twirly is a dead ringer for Rory Sabbatini?
The afternoon got better with a 2nd viewing of 300 (HOOH HOOH HOOH) at the dolla fitty theatre down the street. Next time I’ll bring some Febreeze for my seat. Stinky people see cheap movies.
Looking forward to the Colorado Cup updates…. Peace out from the SE side.

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!)

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?

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.

well as you can see from out super technical map here the weekend is shaping up to be lovely. there is a high crunk system moving in from the west … the rwip party is lurking on the horizon. so tonight theres a slight chance of pbr with the winds shifting tomorrow to bring in a sparxx front at irving park in the evening. with ms. ultimate still out of town it will be a tough weekend for casual ultimate but well get out the rain gear and batten down the hatches.

also we need to send a get well shout to mr. tristan who got hit on his bike yesterday. thats three of our friends who have gotten hit in the last two weeks and hopefully thats the end to this spree. best wishes for speedy recovery and good painkillers to tristan, neil, and jessi (of c’n'd fame.)

your long term forecast is a steady drizzle of antics throughout the holiday week with a hurricane of activity beginning thursday when the dego teas start rolling in from the west coast and the dirty souf. stay tuned for flash flood warnings and torrential shennanigans.

xoxo
miss casual

I am blogging live from Wimbledon. I just nearly ran into Serena Williams on the stairs - literally. i can’t tell if she looks tougher or like a regular (of course world-class) athlete in person. Laura won her second match handily; I would say she destroyed her Austrian opponent’s soul, but I think tennis is more polite from that. but for the record, she did. It’s looking like she’ll be playing Hingis next. I’d make her blog nickname casual tennis but, you know, she’s hardly casual going into teh third round and all. The all-white dress code is also making me think briefcase may want to make Sunday whites an all-weekend thing.

so, yeah, things are exciting here. i have to say an all-access pass is the best way to see the greatest tennis tourney in the world. i feel like i’ve been in the cafeteria line next to every major player; too bad i can only recognize a few of them. i could get used to this. and cheering for laura is so fun!!! i’m her no. 4 fan, besides her parents and sis.

the city of london ain’t too bad either. Meet the london fixed gear boys (of course no girls) for a few pints was fun, of course, and the tour de france prologue et al is going to be a blast. I hear there are some pics posted on their site; I want to say it’s lfgss.com, miss casual please correct me if i’m wrong. sorry no pics, i forgot my cable.

this is going to be quick because i have to go to the airport in a little bit. if i can i’ll be blogging live from wimbledon and then the tour de france, but more likely miss casual will be taking things over for the next couple of weeks. it’ll be like training wheels for august (sniffle sniffle).

there are no pics from beach last night, so we’re posting this stock footage of sand. a ton of people were out: all the regulars plus some newbies that brown bear and dan knew, and rachel who is apparently the newest addition to briefcase….this is what happens when you don’t go to practice, you have to learn about your former team on the streets. there might have been over a dozen boys out; kind of sucks when you’re playing 5-2, but people we’re trying to attract and retain women to thursday beach, and we all have to make some p.t. sacrifices. tiger asked if we blog about beach: yes, we do, every single week - where do you think your girlfriend got her gchat picture?

after the game ms. ulty, morgan, the viking, brown bear, c(b)r and prof. berg hightailed it over to corcoran’s for some fat tire and burgers. the waitress there was…not good. she forgot the bacon on my burger and got all confused when i asked about it; then she came out five minutes later to bring our beers (finally) and gave me a face/attitude and said, “your bacon’s on the way, they are actually cooking it” - emphasis on ‘actually cooking it’. as opposed to what? defrosting already cooked bacon? anyways, we needed the grub to fuel brown bear storytime…ask him the one about kolb. hee hee.

there was also a bit of talk about sandblast 2007: glass shards in your feet. only time will tell, but briefcase will have a tough time overcoming bjorn/chuck/becky’s team, also known as quite possibly the hottest beach team known to humankind. it should be a killer tournament, definitely worth spectating for the finals/semis/quarters even. too bad ms. ulty will be biking along with the prologue and 1st stage of the tour….oh wait, no, that might be kind of cool too.

so its a big week for birthdays because today there are two more. not only is it my brother’s birthday, mr. chucktown, who is kind of a big deal (better reckidnize), but its our friend amy’s (of chicks and drinks fame) birthday too. miss casual spent an hour on the phone last night with mama town trying to scan and email some baby pictures to chuck in honor of his big bday. clearly miss casual is not cut out for i.t. phone support. happy birthday mr. town. cant wait to see you for sandblast.

also im not sure if we made it clear but chicks and drinks is big in hungary. ms. ultimate better look our for our fans on her european tour. amy’s picture of chicks and drinks last week got some more rousing responses from our admirers overseas. im sure tonight’s photographic evidence will be equally compelling. therell be some birthday shennanigans for amy… and some tricks and drinks of course. since regular tricks night imploded chicks is the new tricks. should be good times.

and i almost forgot… ultimate. monday night team close your eyes faced off against baker’s team in the rain and wind. i believe our entire roster showed up which was weird and we saw a huge rainbow when the sun came out. the disc slipped through lyrica’s hands at one point because it was wet and adam had the encouraging speech at halftime that included ‘just get in front of it. if it slips through your fingers… you have airbags.’ nice. we pulled out a win just in time to get one piece of pizza. thankfully. ciao.

the blog birthday party on friday night was a riot - thank for coming, everyone. the OG crew was there in force: tbrizzle, who brought an amazingly casual cupcake cake, bk, joe, baker, professor berg, hanging with mr. cooper, the boss, akira, roadhouse, candice, hendude, brownbear, anderson, the d.a., liz - all those guys. we saw paulina liz later on in the evening, at pfil’s; she got a little carried away at the air guitar championships. play freebird! kolb played the part of the viking, who had to be at a wedding out of town. poor excuse, but he looked good in the homemade backstreet boys-style t-shirt we made.

unfortunately for the ultimate folks the bike kids got there earlier and drank the lion’s share of the free pbr. adam, oren and public emily initiated a frosting fight with the aforementioned cupcake cake. good times, but a bit of a mess to clean up. you know ms. ulty got into trouble doing something similar with ice cream on her 12th bday at zephyrs. we should have seen it coming, especially since she did the same thing to carlo about six months ago. someday we’re going to play ultimate with ben vc, simon and all the other fixed gear kids so that the blog worlds can truly unite. a few of our respective (former) coworkers rounded out the group - way to represent, ladies, kolb loved meeting all of you. the manager of high dive went so far as to say it was a great group, come back any time. too bad he didn’t show his affection with free drinks.

this is one of the few photos the c.u. staff has of the evening, as our new staff photographer was snapping professional pics left and right. you can check out his flickr album here. thanks triple-a! we’re not sure if it’s reality or the filter on his camera, but take a peek - you all are very good-looking people.

of course we had to pour a little out for the out-of-towners who couldn’t be with us: becky, dr. welsh, denardis, cho and of course chucktown. c(b)r and ms. mmms were out of town too, and rick and ea….well, we’re not sure about them but i’m sure the excuses are good.

the rest of the weekend was recovery and fathers day. saturday night the c.u. staff, tbrizzle and morgan made a fantastic meal that included pork chops draped in bacon and a twenty six dollar apple pie, served a la mode with klondike bars. casualultimate, inc., a subsidiary of let’s get crunk llc, is thinking of launching a brunch spot if only to serve our newest creation: an apple pie with a thick granola crust and a lattice top made of bacon. i think everyone here can agree there aren’t enough places in wicker park to eat brunch. ms. ulty spent sunday in the warm glow of her family and had to miss briefcase tryouts….not like i’ll be playing this year, but i miss playing with you guys. thank goodness for competitive league tomorrow - cross your fingers for no rain.

today’s post title comes from one of chicago’s finest, who was overheard on his bike-mounted radio on our sideline at summer league. even we admit that some things are more important than ultimate. namely, missing children.

last night team ‘close your eyes’ had a crushing 12-15 defeat vs. team ‘baker i can’t believe you allowed our opposing team to form despite the new player rating rules’. it was a great game, though, and playing with all these fun people is beginning to make ms. ulty very sad about leaving chicago at the end of the summer. everyone on team close your eyes had hot plays, and billy only yelled “c’mon! are you kidding me?!’ at one foul call. we probably should have done a better job baiting him. here’s lyrica finishing up one of the coop’s fudgesicles; ask jake why a medical supply company sent him haribo gummy bears instead of enzymes. funny story. also ask about their next family vacation.

last night was also our experiment biking to and from wash park - we’ll be doing it from now on. what a fun ride: we got warmed up and energized to play on the way there, and it was a relaxing and traffic-free way to get home in the evening. at about 25 miles roundtrip, it’s also a nice way to put miles on our majestic steeds. we talked tun into escorting us all the way back to piece, and a chifg’er-turned-cusl’er buddy came as far as the loop. we ran into j.simon from chifg downtown, and he came to piece for a pint.

piece was…piece, of course. the only drawback to that bike ride is there’s no chance of us getting any pizza. luckily we scored some of the jacobs pie and settled in to catch up with friends. professor berg was wearing a necklace he claims to have “found” today during his summer relocation from the ‘burbs to chicago proper, but in fact it was purchased last weekend at a dave matthews band/hootie and the blowfish inventory sale. this is why his students love him.

all this talk of summer league of course means that today’s throwback post has to be dial m for passionfruit. mostly because it features one of the top three baker pics.

with miss casual holding it down in chitown this past weekend/week, ms. ulty traveled to wisconsin to visit sis anna banana (yes she went to carleton, no she didn’t play for syzygy) in beautiful southwestern wisconsin and catch a couple of ballgames in milwaukee with anna, professor berg and some new friends.

spending time in the country is so relaxing, especially when your sister lives miles away from the closest internet machine and cellphone reception. highlights of the trip include moonrise s’mores over an open fire (more authentic than the s’mores we had with bacers), anna’s new puppy, baby bunnies everywhere, sunbathing, etc. we went hiking in wyalusing state park and had the first actual cicada sighting of the year (see photographic evidence, miss casual), saw the monument to wisconsin’s last passenger pigeon and dipped our toes in the mississippi huck finn style. also, ms. ulty learned the hard way that biking is not 100% fun when there are hills involved - it can actually be exercise. a 1.5 mile hill followed by many many other hills taught her that; turns out i need to go running more.

tuesday brought a trip to a ginormous bike store in madison and a long drive to milwaukee, where we met up with professor berg, his roomie, and his roomie’s 10 closest friends who were all attending the brewers-cubs game. we learned a few things in miller park:

(1) the vendors there sell sparks - here’s prof. berg as living proof
(2) it takes 18 minutes to close the roof
(3) tobacco tastes like a farm when you’re in wisconsin
(4) there are almost more cubs fans than brewers fans in the stands when they’re playing eachother
(5) brewers fans cheer for packers during baseball games

and, oh, milwaukee is a really cool town. ms. ulty loves its old industrial stylo and thinks it’s better than madison (sorry georgia). before the day game on tuesday we went to a place called comet cafe for a fantastic brunch. the bloody mary there is super good and come with bacon and a pony bottle of high life. all of our sandwiches were delish, even though our new bestie (bffn, not bff, brian) barely ate half of his mr. awesome (it would go well with piece’s baron von awesome). there are so many cool joints in that city, plus the parks, buildings, zillions of square feet of future loft space - buy real estate now, people. we were having so much fun prof. berg and ms. ulty barely made it to the train station in time. we will be organizing some trips to our neighbor to the north soon.

now it’s back to chicago, where hopefully the rain holds off and we get to play some beach n’ bikes tonight. there’s a rumor the prof. might be joining us. it’s also weegee’s 1-year anniversary and they’re giving away free drafts from 6-10; not sure how that will factor into the night’s activities.

last night was the beginning of chicago summer league and was the first night ever of competitive league for cusl. if you want to read or comment about the ups and downs of this system check out the forum, but id like to congratulate mr. baker and the cusl people cause last night was bananas. maybe its just because we have an overabundance of fun people on our team, or the fact that we won in spite of the rain, or that fact that we got to piece so early there was tons of pizza and no fighting… but summer league is looking good.

you might already know some of the lovely people on our team. bk, from such accomplishments as he cooks a mean brisquet, and joe little, from such quotes as ‘daybreak… chicago’. rachel from such posts as ‘rachel saves our lazy butts at fall league’ or lyrica from such skills as ’shes the best lady with a plastic disc in this city’, and tiger from such feats as ‘he had to guard kolb who’s a foot taller than him and still brought the pain at beach’. or even thor and liz, who youll recognize from ‘they won summer league last year and are the coolest couple ever.’

ive already warned the team that if they dont want to be on the internets they best come up with a new team to play for so its on. ill be passing out waivers next week. ms. ultimate missed our first game but we won in her honor. due to a name game played at the half with our eyes closed im dubbing the team ‘close your eyes’ until we think of something better.

cant wait for next week already.

friday evening started with some chicks and drinks with the usual ladies plus a new amy, simon’s wife. we messed around for long enough for miss casual to fall and skin her entire right side from a bad skid before retiring for dinner at handlebar with simon and amy. ms. ulty stopped for a beer with the boss, the hales, and the viking along the way. we waited out the rain discussing the phenomenon of surly waiters at handlebar and then went across town for saturrday night’s race preparty.

we were worried approaching a club in the gold coast called funk, but hey, free drinks from 9-10? we drank a few. and then took over the dancefoor and then the stage with the rest of the chifg crew. who knew coyote, adam, friendhugger, amy and emily had such fierce moves? unfortunately ms. ulty was out for the race because shes visting her sister but amy and miss casual took the viking and barreled through traffic for a couple of hours on saturday night. heres a pic of bjorn and amy with their race faces on at the last checkpoint. the viking rolls with sparxx natch. team c’n'd finished the whole course and definitely earned the beers that flowed freely at tumans. tbrizzle came out to meet us and the picture at the top is of all the racers bikes on the fence at the bar.

tomorrow night marks the beginning of summer league so heres hoping competitive league starts with a bang.

the people were fun, the food was veggie, the birthday was ultimate. the c.u. staff plus out-of-town reinforcements plus zibsters and agatha celebrated ms. ulty’s b-day (21, finally!) with a chic dinner at the green zebra, followed by drinks at fulton lounge and the new fulton lounge (what was that place’s name? not sure it was filled with loud music and crazies) before realizing we weren’t meant for that kind of class and finished things off with a pbr at gold star. green zebra was delish, but we were surprised by the repetition of certain ingredients throughout the tasting menu (lots of asparagus, fennel). we were also hungry about two hours after dinner because of the total lack of protein - real vegetarians couldn’t eat that way. we also think they could spruce up their decor a bit - too much grey. all in all though, good times and it’s fun getting dressed up every once in a while.

that was only the start of the b-day weekend, though, as ms. ulty and bacers hit up the batting cages on saturday afternoon and won exciting prizes (bouncy balls, paddleboards) at skee-ball. we ran into mel; actually she was something like the sixth person we’d run into in 24 hours, with schultzie, sfolk, ruth, liz and even old family friends out and about in the double deuce. of course we also saw pirates of the caribbean on friday - good, go see it, but watch the 2nd one on video first. no the out-of-towners are gone and we’re back to the usual. it’s sad, but we’ll see everyone again soon, and bacers had to go take care of her kitties.

and speaking of our usual antics: happy hour, a.k.a. balloon time! we’re thinking of doing a regular balloon time this friday, but put *friday june 15* on your calendar: it’s the blog’s 1-year birthday and we’re having a party at the high dive on chicago near damen. it’ll be at happy hour time, of course (6-9), and we’re buying the first 50 beers for our friends and then it’s $3 drafts from there on out. everyone’s invited. be there or be in the spirit division.

theyre out there. i can almost hear them through the doors. and the duct tape over the seams in the doors. and the plywood over the windows. cicadas have come to chicago. i know because i watch the news. its been three days since i holed up chez casual with slider, a box of saltines, two bottles of champagne and cable tv to wait out their brief lifespan. i have my tennis raquet in case one sneaks in and i looked for goggles but couldnt find any so im just wearing my sunglasses. i called tbrizzle and told him to stay with mk because i couldnt risk a security breach by opening the door for him to come home. ms. ultimate offered to bring us some food and lemonade but theres not much that can be slid in the hairline space between the door and the metal threshhold so were gonna have to hold out on our own.

im halfway through the second bottle of champagne trying to get my courage up to leave the house tonight. it is going to be an epic evening. not only are we celebrating ms. ultimate’s day of birth but we also have reinforcements coming to our bacchanal of eating at green zebra and who knows what after that. plan A is coming in from brooklyn. bacers (as shes knows to ms. ulty) has already arrived from the west coast. we also get the pleasure of zibby von tramp coming to 21 year old us. only the strong will survive. and thats just friday night. holler at us this weekend if theres shennanigans happening near you.

im going to watch one more episdoe of law $ order svu and then unpeal a bit of the tape around the back door and see if i hear any buzzing. i mean were running out of champagne anyway…

we’re posting this 2006 pic of lucky’s new hi tops because (1) it’s too hot to do anything blogworthy and (2) parents are writing to us that their children are getting frightened by brownbear’s ’stache. guess it’s just too awesome for them to process.

a lot of folks have been complaining about the heat recently - but isn’t this what we’ve been waiting for? beach weather? and isn’t it going to get much, much hotter and more humid? ah, chicago summer, i love you. at least the zibster’s back home and we can set up our lemonade stand in wicker park. it will be part performance art, part commercial venture. seriously though zibby: i’ll give you 10% of profits, just like in the old days. remember how fun it was?

no cicada sightings yet for miss casual. i feel like tomorrow’s gonna be the day. please send us your updates on cicada watch 2007. hopefully they don’t come out tonight, because ms. ulty’s going to the sox game. the cicadas love america’s favorite pastime.

well this weekend was quite a marathon of frisbee and beer so we need to break it down into three pieces. hence the post title courtesy of the king of r&b, kels. (when is that new album dropping anyway?)

the show

baker had told us very directly that we were not allowed to get crunk the night before the tournament so friday night the cu staff prepped for the spring league tourny by hanging with the ladies of cnd in the double deuce and neglecting bike tricks in favor of dinner and lively conversation. jessi’s newly finished bike is so pretty it makes unicorns jealous. then saturday am it was road trip dance party with dp and liz and the cu staff. all of team paulina was singing my humps by 830am. the first game for teamocil was a close one which we lost by a single point inspite of heroic leaps by rory and rob. so into the loser brakcet we went to face off against our own it dept. and his partner in crime ms. angela. baker tried to psych us up by performing some sommersaults on the sideline and yelling and jumping a lot but to no avail.

thats when the beer came out.
and then it was on to our last game which we won long after everyone stopped caring. our only sustenance was old style and pizza that tasted like cardboard. it was hot and we were tired. however in spite of all the hardships and the fact that we are the most underperforming team in cusl history, we had more fun playing with teamocil than we deemed possible. funnest. team. ever. we watched the finals in which there was briefcase on briefcase action, mr. phillips vs. the volkmans (or team earmuffs as we like to call them). team ledonne took it to the house and won spring league again. nice work people. must be in the dna.

our team’s spirit award went to mel (seen above avec beach towel even thought she ditched us later on) and the league spirit award went to teamocil although it was totally unmentioned and apparently means nothing at all. our cu spirit award goes to vijay and his bumble bee shorts and new moustache, seen here flexing for the camera. on the way home listening to my humps again, the part about mixing ‘your milk with my cocoa puffs’ came on and all that could be said was ‘im not sure what a cocoa puff is, but ill bet ive seen vijays.’

the after party

after being comatose and icing the heck out of various body parts we lost our ride to the lee-martins wedding celebration. congratulations to you two. you are the best and most fun couple ever and were sure you have many more years of love and happiness and winning summer league together. we ran into some people coming from oak park at twisted spoke. the spring league party ended up being very nice. beautiful night out. great location. fun crowd. we spent the evening chatting with the coopers and baker and rob. lets just say middle names were changed in leaglly binding contracts and im getting a package in the mail which i am not allowed to open at work. the real insanity began after miss casual went home to dreamland so im gonna let ms. ulty explain since she brought her a-game to the hotel lobby portion of the evening.

the hotel lobby

…that two-hour dinnertime nap must have done the trick, because after closing down the party at twisted spoke ms. ulty followed rob, jake and much of the spring league committee (sans baker) to carol’s for some country style dancing. technically we dragged jake, by dismantling his bike and putting it in sparks’ car before he knew what was happening. we’re tricky that way. man carol’s is fun. we even ran into one of ms. ulty’s former neighbors; we couldn’t be friends because our parents were feuding like the hatfields and mccoys, and now whenever we run into eachother it’s some sort of awkward hello. but what’s more awkward is when rob and jake start yelling her name in a bar. repeatedly. there was dancing, pitcher beer drinking and even sleeping on tables. not sure whose idea it was to stay until the 5 am close (probably the friend of the blog who wished to remain nameless), but it almost killed poor devin/david. next it was an ill-advised trip to the burrito joint next door and then over to chalet sparks for a sleepover party. thank goodness sober was driving - you’re the best, not sure if we told you that enough on sunday morning. i’m still not so sure how i feel about going to sleep when the sun is coming up and the birds are chirping, but it couldn’t have been with a better group of kids (unless miss casual had stayed awake, of course).

this might be my new favorite picture of ye olde beache ultimatee, even though it’s just the viking and miss casual waiting for everyone else to showe uppe. the cold weather didn’t keep the faithfuls away, and we had five-in-five almost all night. a fun time was had by all, with baker and tun showing up to everyone’s surprise. it took a while to get tun to take off his bike helmet and shoes, but he eventually joined the game. our team was the c.u. staff, baker, tun and sally, so other than sally it was good warmup for the tourney this weekend. way to squeeze in that extra practice, teamocil. baker, we promise to be good girls and not go out tonight (other than chicks n’ drinks, which is wholesome fun and games) so we’ll be ready to rock tomorrow morning, 9:00 am sharp.

the c.u. staff ducked out of beach early discuss 1st birthday party plans with the manager at lemmings. he told us something lame, like we’d get a quarter off of drinks for our friends, but we’re going to bargain with them until everyone drinks for free. or, for a dollar off drafts. ms. ulty is going to put together a posterboard matrix of bars at which to hold this party, then we’re going to do the hard work of visiting each one and weighing the pros and cons. we might have to visit some of them more than once just to be sure. quenchers, the green eye, cleos II and high dive are all on the docket.

after dinner at pennys (of course), ms. ulty persuaded miss casual to come to tricks n’ drinks by using the kryptonite-like powers of champagne: casual can’t resist it no matter how hard she tries. it’s good she came though, because her skids are dead on and we’re about ready to have a ladies skid comp. we finally met andrew, the owner of the bike baby that our bikes would make, last night at Tn’d. i know that doesn’t make much sense, but luckily we have this pic to illustrate [photo credit: morgan]. ms. ulty got the very basics of a bunny hop down and we’ll be practicing all this and more at chicks n’ drinks tonight, top secret location, etc. tricks are fun, we’re getting good at them; soon enough we’ll be able to do the two backwards circles and 720 front wheel spin that steve may or may not be able to do, we haven’t seen the proof yet. speaking of steves, work steve stopped by with the fiance while walking their pup. remember this at your desk today, steve: the only thing better than working any good job is working no job at all.

it was a tough decision to put up another post since chucktown’s was so entertaining and actually, you know, about ultimate, but life goes on. and so do we. how we do it is no mystery - we blog.

beach is tonight at north ave. 6 pm sharp. we’re hoping the weather cooperates; it’s actually pretty cold outside. ms. ulty attempted to go yogging this morning and had to wear tights. the general plan is to head from there to lemmings, and we might be going earlier rather than later if it’s too cold and no one shows. but we’ll at least be tossing for a bit. there might be some tricks n’ drinks in the works, but we’re not sure yet. ms. ulty’s just about over her fear of bike tricks and miss casual’s numerous and inexplicable injuries seem to be on the mend.

for those of you who will be heading out to the polo fields for the spring league tourney this weekend, we couldn’t help but notice that this weekend is naper settlement’s civil war days. if your team gets eliminated early, you might be able to catch a discussion on fashions of the civil war (1 pm), or the Gettysburg address delivered from the paw paw post office porch by none other than abe lincoln himself (130 pm). unfortunately the big battle is on sunday. thank you, free subscription to timeout. team teamocil will be missing the festivities, however, since the finals aren’t until the end of the day and surely we’ll have to stick around for the awards ceremony as well.

in other news, el presidente shared this story with us last week and we thought you’d want to hear it too. true story:
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This woman that works with my child therapist friend was a chaperone on a special education class trip to the Shedd Aquarium a few weeks ago. One of the boys in the class disappeared for a while, and the teachers couldn’t find him. He mysteriously returned to the group towards the end of the trip, and his pants were wet. No big deal, they thought, he probably wet himself…special ed….blah blah blah. They didn’t say anything to him about it, and put the kids on the bus to go back to the school. As they drove away from the aquarium, a police car pulled the bus over. The police boarded the bus, and asked the teachers if they had any students on the bus with wet pants or shoes…a penguin had gone missing from the penguin exhibit at the aquarium! The teachers interviewed the boy with the wet pants, asked to look in his backpack, and….there, among his pencils and notebook was the missing penguin!

How do you steal a penguin and your teachers do not notice? Didn’t it make noise? Maybe even smell fishy or something?

Meanwhile, you should know that I hear the penguin is okay and has been returned to his little penguin friends and family.
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sure it was 7 on 5, but at least mr. serious showed up this time. he and his band of illinois brothers couldn’t throw a cup strong enough to contain teamocil’s desire to win that game. too bad not a single woman on their team felt like playing ultimate on the most beautiful day of spring league. props to the one lady they had, who was speedy and savage. arguably the turning point in the game was mr. serious’s soul-crushing turnover in front of his endzone, which was immediately followed by a swing and a huck to ms. ulty for the score. congrats to team teamocil on our two wins (isn’t it fun to win?). this is our fearless leader doing a victory dance, thinly disguised as g.o.b.’s chicken dance [stock footage]. drink lots of water and visualize success for the tourney this weekend - if we don’t win spring league we’re nothing! thanks to our #1 fan for watching both games and going on a beer run - we’re nominating you for the spirit award.

thank goodness for vitamin i, or else miss casual and ms. ulty might have missed all the action saturday morning. both ladies were crazy sore from the inaugural meeting of chicks n’ drinks, whereby ladies with shiny bikes practice their tricks away from the boys in an undisclosed location. here are a couple pics of the members of team unicorn practicing their skids. next friday, everyone on the team will receive a self-destructing notice of location and tricks to be practiced 90 minutes before meeting time. miss casual informs ms. ulty that holding a cloth soaked in white vinegar to a bruise “sucks the bruise out” - doctors, any truth to this? because we’ll try anything at this point to be able to wear shorts again.

sunday was a day for culture and legal education. after calling their respective moms, the c.u. staff brunched it up at toast and then rode to the art institute to catch the last day of the cezanne to picasso exhibit. good show, but approx. 300,000 mom-and-child pairings had the same idea and it was a little crowded. given their bike- and ultimate-induced injuries, we went back to home base to relax on the couch for a bit. “a bit” turned into “seven straight episodes of law $ order” and one plate of nachos and a frozen pizza later it was time to call it a night. too bad we couldn’t make it to beach, but we were dying. oh, and ladies, there’s a pair of hot pink pedal cages on the market if you’re interested.

I wish this could be some kind of epic post about cinco de mayo hijinx and the first weekend of the rest of ms. ulty’s life, but the fact of the matter is that the biggest accomplishment of the weekend was a 4-hour nap on Saturday afternoon.

Friday was ms. ulty’s last day of work, and the ladies and gents of her workplace made sure it was a night to remember. or forget, depending on how you look at it. toasts were given with bottles and bottles of veuve at bin 36, and louise convinced some of the youngins to club it up rusky style after cocktails and dinner. ms. ulty was rather moved by the may day immigrant rights march, but louise taught her how some of the p.y.t.’s of eastern europe earn their citizenship solo. upon seeing one of our inebriated coworkers getting his groove on with a beautiful and scantily clad young lady, she observed, “she took one look at him and said, that’s my greencard.” god bless america. narwhal, we need to go dancing again soon when i’m not carrying a vase of flowers.

Saturday was spring league, of course. it felt like we played well - seemed like mel was open all day, of course rory was catching (almost) everything, hendude had some nice weaving once he and treemboat felt like showing up, miss casual made a sweet trailing edge catch in the endzone - but still, losses. it’s getting a bit frustrating, but at least we have fun, right? right? it’s been decided that we’re going to have the most fun team BBQ in the league, to be hosted by liz sometime in the next couple of weeks. details on that to follow.

the c.u. staff had lunch at kumas; it must have been the burgers that put us in comas (which sounds like kumas…coincidence?). soooo good; eating all the beef on their menu clearly has to be a summer goal. saturday afternoon was ms. ulty’s aforementioned 4-hour nap. miss casual, against all odds, stayed awake and even had dinner at the new cleos with the russells, TBR and julio. unfortunately even a restful afternoon didn’t give us the steam needed to get the most out of otherandy and baker’s mayo5 par-tay. luckily andy represented for teamocil, as evidenced by his expertise with the pinata. lesson learned saturday night: adults don’t get enough smarties and sweetarts.

sunday was dp’s surprise b-day party, which turned out to be not such a surprise. still, good times were had by all. their yard has a grassy area that is *perfect* for bags, so that’s where you’ll find us between frisbee games and bike rides.

that’s about it. let’s get our toss on this evening, it’s perfect outside.

Ms. Ultimate just got a beautiful bouquet of bright yellow flowers from miss casual, tbrizzle, the Viking and c(b)r. you guys are the greatest friends ever!!! I wish I had my camera hookup thing so I could take a picture because they’re so pretty. Also, we don’t have a picture for today’s post.

today is ms. ulty’s last day at work before a summer of fun and games or, as our post title inspiration and future guest columnist chris put it, I’m about to be funemployed. it’s going to be weird not coming to work every day, but the transition to full-time blogging, ultimate playing and bike riding should be a smooth one. the only thing needed to make a 14-year-old boy’s dream summer perfect is daytime access to the cartoon network, which miss casual is reputed to have at her new pad. please make me an extra key this weekend.

last night we got things started off on the right foot by hanging out in an empty parking lot, watching bike tricks and getting champagne crunk on a school night. Miss casual is still the trackstand master, but ms. Ulty has the rear dismount down to a science. Eh, it’s a way to stop so it works. Tbrizzle and the Viking showed up for a few minutes before heading to the peach pit for dinner; tbrizzle’s going to tweak his derailleur so that every time he shifts a little electronic voice is going to say “gears are magic.” It sounds complicated but luckily the viking’s an electrical engineer/dejiner of some sort. Thanks for coming, because ms. Ulty was scared to be hanging out with so many strangers and misses the comfort of the c.u. nest.

Lucky for us, the tricks kids are the nicest bunch ever. And a little bit crazy too, but a good crazy: friendhugger and others are going to bike 160 miles on Saturday! And we thought two morning games of ultimate was a lot to handle. Evan tried convincing ms. Ulty she could do a social century in the near future but she’s going to leave that hardcore riding to miss casual for now. After the fuzz came we all hit the no-name bar across the street for a nightcap and a little chris isaak.

And the best part of it all is, the weekend hasn’t even started yet. It’s gonna be packed with playtime and cinco de mayo hijinx. Miss casual just downloaded fergilicious….things could get crazy.

people who know casual ultimate will know that miss casual is not an ‘overtime’ kind of girl. she is more similar to that chubby helmet wearing stunt kid in the bud light commercial who says ‘im going to work 2 minutes passed 5… on a friday!’ then watches the clock tick passed go-time and breaks into a sweat and hand tremors.

living the casual life is a full time job in itself which very leaves little time for things like ‘commitment to one’s career’ and ‘dedication to work’ and ’staying at you desk past 530.’ once upon a time, (i believe they called it ‘the 50’s’) people defined themselves by their life’s work… and at casual ultimate we still do. its just that my life’s work is clearly organizing happy hour and writing about it in a self aggrandizing fashion. what can i say? its a gift and i have to maximize my god given potential. so while others toil at their desks, miss casual takes to the streets of the double deuce looking for ms. ultimate, trouble, and a good glass of prosecco, in that order, so that the real ‘work’ can begin. to use a phrase often heard in our house at the holidays, she heads out to ‘work. you. dog.’

so here at my ‘real’ job at 7:02 on a beautiful wednesday evening i just thought id check in with the blog, my one true calling. when the book deal comes through it will be sad to leave all this ‘architecture’ biznass behind but for tonight i will relish my smug feeling of satisfaction at working late into the evening for a change… or at least for another 28 minutes until my boss will pay for my dinner.

this weekend was so much fun. thank heaven for sunshine and blue skies. we thought the summer of 2006 was the best it can get, but 2007 is shaping up to be fantastic.

friday night worlds collided at happy hour (hereafter to be known as h60), where bike and ultimate friends drank beer and discussed the land ethic in harmony. everyone was laughing, having fun and the bartender even poured the c.u. staff a couple of beers on the house, but a shadow was cast over the evening when we learned of a death in the family. The death of ameri-can, that is. Lemmings has *stopped serving American beer*. You heard it here first. The replacement is milwaukee’s best. Replacing American with the beast is like replacing ultimate with freestyle. If freestyle tasted like water and hated democracy, that is.

saturday was spring league, and we went 1-1. we’re still not sure what’s up with teamocil; even a saturday night viewing of “switch hitter,” our inspiration, didn’t provide any usable strategy tips. (other than sending miss casual to work for the competition for a week.) regardless of a frustrating loss, we had a ton of fun. rory showed up, finally, and turned out to be at least six inches taller than you might think at first look. baker and casual did their best chicken dance impressions; we’ll see if we can get the video up later. in the end, though, miss casual’s threat of “no burritos for losers” didn’t inspire the masses in that first game, although we rallied for the second. the c.u. staff, dp and hendude still went for burritos after the game, though. note: lemming’s may be out of american, but the margaritas at chipotle aren’t half bad. new h60 venue?

by nighttime we were too pooped from daytime fun to do anything crazy, so it was packing and a.d. for old time’s sake. it’s sad that c.u. HQ will no longer be the 1200-1400 blocks of paulina, but miss casual’s in a better place. the set-up at the former br ranch (the k-br ranch now?) is awesome, and slider’s already learning to love hip hop. miss casual already taught him to bark ‘wamp wamp’.

sunday morning was moving and brunching, respectively. miss casual cleared out the last of her household goods while ms. ulty brunched with bike friendlies. you wouldn’t think it, but oval waffles are actually better than round ones; maybe because they hold so much fruit and syrup. after brunch, while casual and tbrizzle were setting up the new place, ms. ulty peeled off ot spend the afternoon at the velodrome in northbrook. it was *awesome*. it’s like a rollercoaster you make yourself. there’s a very small chance ms. ulty might even start a new blog, www.seriouscycling.com. if you see her in a bike shop considering the purchase of spandex anything, please try to stop her. here’s a picture of two speedracers going faster than pegasi.

some briefcase peeps and the usual beach suspects played at north ave. sunday afternoon, although c.u. missed out. it was a tough call, but guiding movers and going to the track won out. this is only just the beginning of summer; there will be plenty of days wash the sand out of our toes in the coming months.

so wednesday night (the new thursday) found the cu staff antsy and ready to explore a new and exciting location. and by location i mean bar. so we went to cleos for pizza and grilled cheese because ms. ulty had never been there and then retired after dinner to high dive, which you might remember from such posts as ‘revenge of happy hour : who will survive?’.

miss casual, who we all know works in a very high design snooty pants architecture firm, was explaining to ms. ultimate the intricacies of the design process in the firm. ‘this kid who sits across from me was playing with jenga blocks at his desk all day because he like their proportion’. ahem. ms. ultimate suggested knocking them all off his desk and screaming ‘jenga!%^@’ in his face. sad but true revelations from the world of the pro-dejiners. so we played our own jenga with ashtrays and candals much to the dismay of the bartender.

and speaking of pro-dejiners check out these people at the milan furniture show. seriously. look at that guy. ugh ’shudders’. miss casual decided she will become this girl by getting a severe haircut and straightening, continuing her all black rampage in wardrobe, adopting an austrian accent and going by the name ‘jesika taunhaus’.

also discussed was the fact that when working overtime at the office the people with kids always have an out. like ‘i havent seen my kids in days’ blah blah blah. hey buddy…i have a kid too. its called the blog. and i havent posted in days so lets not all cry about our life stories. just because you chose to procreate and we chose a loftier goal, total internet domination, doesnt mean that your problems are any worse than ours. so can it.

on this dreary friday morning miss casual is giggling about our weekday antics and wondering how ms. ultimate’s night went last night watching some track bike race at friendhugger’s and then celebrating with aaron for his big bday. also we are looking forward to spring league tomorrow am and an epic happy hour tonight in honor of ms. ultimate’s last week at work. get on the party train people. you know where its headed. the land of ameri-CANS and shennani-gans, lemmings. hope you all come out. holler at us.

xoxo
miss casual

p.s. hey rob why did you move to mke from chicago again?

Things are slow at the c.u. ranch, where we’re still recovering from our earth day hangovers. Brutal. Teamocil went 1-1 this weekend in spring league, although ms. Ulty was in Wisconsin and miss casual was in Michigan, so we can’t take any credit-blame. Ms. Mmms, wanna fill us in on the action? There was a mini briefcase scrimmage in smith park on Sunday, too – sad to miss everything, the weather was unbelievably gorgeous as anyone with 4 out of 5 sense already knows. Ms. Ulty did run into Biz (briefcase 2005 fiscal year employee) in a Culver’s in Wisconsin on Sunday, though, heading back from a tourney with her high school team. And yes, carlo, she’s totally beefed up – it looks like she’s been drinking protein shakes and lifting weights all winter. Watch out for that girl.

Last night while ms. Ulty was eating sea bass and drinking decaf with titans of industry and finance, miss casual was at home drinking beer and eating waffles. It was Oberon, though, so that evens things out. Miss casual is moving in with tbrizzle this week, which is a pain and seriously detracting from time that should be devoted to engaging in blogworthy events. We hope tbrizzle likes pink razors and bar tape as much as we do. Speaking of pizzazz (that’s what we’re talking about, right?), what about this grassy banner for the c.u. summer site….we were looking for grass when we set this thing up at the end of last summer, but it never happened.

It may seem early, but put happy hour (hereafter to be known as “H60”) on your calendars for Friday. This Friday is ms. Ulty’s last real excuse for a Friday happy hour, as the following Friday is her last day of work before a summer of relaxation and fun. Probably lemming’s, no need to fix it if it ain’t broke.

im dedicating today’s post to that guy rob because of his outstanding achievements in disregard for health, the laws of chicago, and the laws of physics and his continuing excellence in the field of troublemaking. i believe he, or colonel sanders, said it best when he said ‘im too drunk to taste this chicken.’

last night was no exception. turns out rob has siblings. and they are also awesome. his brother and rob talked miss casual into after work antics at the tasting room which wasnt difficult because it is one of her favorite locations. after the second bottle of champagne things degraded quickly. its not worth recounting all the details but robs brother told out waitress she had nice eyes while we contemplated his upcoming weekend driving ferraris and jumping out of airplanes in san diego. clearly we need a guest post. long after miss casual peeled off to stop by tricks and drinks the mayhem continued it seems because she got a txt at 730 from rob leaving his brothers house. not a good sign for a happy well rested friday.

ms. ultimate was all tuckered out so she didnt come join the fun because as she said ‘we all know robs goign to wake up four months from now in milwaukee, realize he made a huge mistake, and be back here within 6 months.’ so true.

lastly in some other business (not the kind liz deals with at work) the cu staff will both be out of town this weekend so teamocil will need baker and rob to step up to the winning plate and hit us a home run in our absence. also this week miss casual is moving off of paulina. sad to leave but she is the new BR as she will take cbr’s spot in tbrizzles apartment. at left is a picture of casual friday at tbrizzles office submitted by the vessel boss himself. it looks like a good time surely but not a safe place for children.

We’re a little worried about our target audience given we seem to think about bikes more than discs lately, but so it goes. Wednesday night was no exception: after scoring free passes at the cycle smithy, misses c and u went to a premiere of ‘the flying scotsman’ with some chifg friendlies. This is the UK-made film about Scottish cyclist Graeme obree, who built his own track cycle out of old bikes and washing machine bearings and went on to set world records in the 1-hour and 4-km sprint races. I think I got that right. Overall it was a good flick, but word on the forum is that the book is better. Ms. Ulty thinks it could have been improved by better character and plot development, while miss casual thinks putting ‘eye of the tiger’ on soundtrack repeat would have made all the difference. After the movie we bike-ganged it the map room, where we made friends with Ian, who is coincidentally a buddy of our very own adam of briefcase and c.u. banner fame. You kids are fun, we should hang out and drink beer that tastes like salad all the time (3 floyds rabid rabbit – learn it, know it, love it).

It was an inspiring sports movie to be sure, and we’re totally gearing up (or down, I suppose) to hit the racetrack in northbrook in the next couple of weeks. We hear it’s relatively flat, so it should be a good starter track before we hit the majorly banked walls of the velodrome in Norway to set world records of our own. It’s gonna be fun.

The movie made us think of putting a dramatic ultimate story on the big screen. It would follow a scrappy Chicago co-ed team from the first spring practice, where we are introduced to the main and supporting characters, and follow their development over the summer months. We would explore the motivations of a few key players, and how those motivations combine with love of the game and team politics to create an explosive performance on the field. Needless to say the storyline would lead up the finals at nationals, where The Flying Suitcases win in a nailbiter, only to be disqualified by the UPA because the game disc was of their own design, 175g and all the right geometry but carved from a 1978 samsonite instead of manufactured by discraft and available in the commercial market. Soundtrack will involve ‘eye of the tiger,’ ‘here I go again on my own’ and ‘rock you like a hurricane.’ We haven’t nailed down an ending yet, but suggestions are welcome. Since madam zibby’s going to be in town this summer instead of working on ‘where the wild things are,’ she can direct the action. Let us know if you’re interested in producing.

ms. ultimate: phew, i’m exhausted. what did you think of today’s games?

miss casual: well, i got mauled by a cougar, i didn’t learn anything about ultimate, and i ruined my crystal gale shirt. how do you feel?

ms. ultimate: like committing harey carey.

miss casual: take me out to the ballgame?

ms. ultimate: no, like the samurai suicide ritual.

that pretty much sums up saturday’s performance on the field. we’re not sure how it happened because our team is actually stacked full of ballers, but there it is. it might have been a result of ms. ulty’s boxstep and miss casual’s broken fingernails. a bit frustrating. needless to say other performed like a squeaky bionic man; tun came out of nowhere to handle like a maniac; we found out matt is on our team; mel was everywhere; and we caught just a fleeting glimpse of roadhouse, thanks to the end of tax season. baby you know we call you that because you love it. it turned out that joe was a good trade, 85% because of the hat he was wearing.

it all started off so positively, with dp, liz and the c.u. staff carpooling to save the planet and fueling up on victory twizzlers. they soon turned to bile in our stomachs.

we had given up the weekend as a lost cause, but then rob called ms. ulty to say that he and the benders would be in the city in an hour. she was on the couch in her PJs in the dark when the call came, but against all odds she rallied. miss casual was long gone. luckily mini, doobs and rob brought fun back to town, and we went to annette’s party in logan square. it’s a little known fact that playing shoulders with the rodells is the best way to de-lame oneself. it was all fun and games until ms. ulty got voted off the table in survivor cups. one northside and an underdog later, she had recovered.

sunday brought sun, taxes and potstickers. lookout for mayhem as that guy rob is abandoning us for milwaukee next weekend. this week may be dangerous.

Another weekend is here, which means another Saturday afternoon playing spring league games in sub-par weather. It’s looking like serious competition for team teamocil, however, with our first game vs. feats of strength. Both teams will be playing down some good players, with teamocil missing rob and dan (without these two, who’s going to serve as captain? Ms. Ulty?) and feats sans one j. Ferrari. we’d worry it could devolve into an outright carnival of turnovers if we weren’t so sure that teamocil is ready to win. other andy’s drinking OJ to get healthy as we type. Miss casual mentioned getting to bed early tonight so as to be able to bring her a game; ms. Ulty is finally going to see blades of glory for inspiration. Someone may be showing up to the game with sequins tomorrow. sadly miss casual lost her ‘members only’ jacket; that thing was so f*ing cool.

See you in study hall.

24 is like a security blanket. even if i forget about it sometimes, when i come back to it, it always makes me feel safe. even when things are looking bleak for jack bauer, he is a hostage of some kind of chinese terrorist organization and has a nasty looking beard and greasy hair and is wearing funny looking chinese pajammas, in the next scene he is clean shaven, wearing a t shirt and dejiner jeans and biting off peoples’ ears in order to save our country. some things i have noticed about this season of 24 in no apparent order just because its tuesday and nothings going on.

jack bauer never eats.

does jack not notice that nothing really scary happens until 10 til the hour every hour? i mean going back to my first point youd think he could stop for a mcmuffin at about 25 after because a life-threatening explosion / abduction / shooting isnt gonna go down for another half hour at least.

they must’ve run out of middle eastern actors to typecast as terrorists because this years bad guy, abu fayed, looks just like that french head-butting soccer player zidane or whatever his name is. look out frenchies and italians, youre the new terrorists.

did they have to kill off kumar in the first three episodes? he couldve been great comic relief. maybe he and fayed couldve gotten orange mocha frappucinos and made the characters a little more ‘human.’

anyway thats all. i still love 24. and jack bauer of course. especially now that hes started a man purse trend.

clearly my friday will not be as good as ms. ultimate’s since she is already sleeping late and planning on throwing a softball and biking to hyde park. miss casual, however is holding it down at work. however we at cu, as well as our buick driving friend here, that a good friday comes down to happy hour. so after work itll be off to a going away party for my one friend at work, yoo joung, and then who knows? it could get crazy. all i do know is that tomorrow team teamocil is playing against the volkmans and then cu and that guy rob are going to the ritz carlton for cupcakes. seriously. cupcakes. like a diabetic coma’s worth of pastry and champagne. hopefully well behave ourselves. but probably not. but at least well be wearing cute shoes.

lots of our faithful readers are in italy enjoying beach ultimate at its finest so well have to make do without them this weekend but hopefully well do them proud. signing off.

miss casual

first off, congratulations to team teamocil, again captained by captain berg. apparently only three team members showed up saturday but we only had to forfeit once. capt. berg negotiated a 13-13 tie for the second game. ms. ulty missed had to miss the games because she was hanging in the big apple with her little sis and dan the man. miss casual needed to, uh, taper so as to bring the pain next weekend.

the weekend started friday with dinner in little italy; it was supposed to be little india, but we couldn’t make it that far. we ended up not going to this restaurant, although the name alone promised culinary treasures beyond imagine. word on new york: new yorkers like to defend the fact that they leave piles of garbage in the street by saying that real estate is too valuable for alleys. truth is, it just makes all the streets smell and look like alleys, but actually even worse because there aren’t enough garbage cans. points to chicago on this one. anywho, after dinner we walked past an awesome bike shop; ms. ulty thought of miss casual and wanted to go in, but it was 11 pm so no dice. there were some late-night phone calls about bikes that had our rims (miss casual, i saw yours too. sugarbomb is cuter though). z&u hopped the train to williamsburg to hook up with some of zibber’s friends and go dancing. i wish i could have spent more time there, because it’s the wicker park of nyc and vice versa. we tried to convince zib’s friend shawn to move to chicago and produce a double-deuce based version of the burg - so far we have ‘the park,’ ‘wickertownvillage’ and ‘22′ as working titles. auditions will be held next weekend. it will be a wealth dejin, inc. production. in other acting news, zibbers may not have provided a law$order walking tour, but the big news of friday night was that she’s friends with a special victim. unfortunately ms. ulty didn’t have her season 7 dvd bixed set with her, so no autograph. new york is clearly the celebrity capital of the world.

saturday was shopping in soho and coffee. ms. ulty pondered buying miss casual these shoes as a passover present before trudging across manhattan to chelsea to go gallery hopping instead. someday perhaps she’ll be able to afford the works of art on display. until then, she’s going to rely on zibby becoming a famous filmmaker to hob-nob with the artistic elite.

saturday night was off the heezy thanks to dan the man, a former obie and ultimate playa. and by “off the heezy” i mean we ate mexican food and then played settlers of catan for three hours with the hil formerly known as gerson and mr. mike. according to tony, bk and little have this game and are mildly obsessed with it. there’s a reason why. this game might make an appearance at future happy hours.

sunday brought a little moma action and late afternoon naps. zibby has fallen asleep in the course of writing this post. it’s probably a sign that this should be the end. i hope the weather improves in chi-town and we can get back to our frisbee ways.

well this weekend with ms. ulty out of town yours truly didnt. do. anything. spring league? nope. sunday bike ride? nah. make it out to the sprints at the bar on saturday? heck no it was raining. heres a picture of jdot bringing his a-game at the sprints while i was at home watching florida finish off ucla. actually watching the tournament was about all i did accomplish.

cant that noah boy cut his hair? im surprised his mother doesnt make him since hes on national tv. im sure this is the kind of raw sports reporting our dear friend j only dreams of.

saturday afternoon that guy rob was in a frisky shopping mood and miss casual never argues about a trip to barneys coop so off we went with dennis in tow. turns out shopping after a cocktail (or two) at lunch is difficult. its almost as difficult as doing math. somehow we started talking about the square roots of numbers and it devolved into a long stretch of quizzing each other about our times tables. embarrassing but necessary for the furtherment of science. yeah i said furtherment. what?

quotes of the day
1. dennis at barneys - ‘chain mail is totally my thing’.
2. rob at active endeavors - ‘this store is for all the std swappers.’

i cannot compete with that. i did in fact see blades of glory but i was underwhelmed. i am not questioning the comic genius of will arnett and amy poehler or my total devotion to everything will ferrell ever does but my ribs didnt hurt from laughing afterwards as they did upon witnessing the awe inducing splendor of anchorman.

so hopefully ms. ultimate will fill us all in on her rowdy weekend in nyc hob nobbing with ivy leaguers and hey lets ragers. im sure her post will not be as half assed as this one.

with ms. utly out of town exploring her ivy league options, i am holding it down solo at headquarters. it is difficult having to not only follow the plot of law$order but also order thai food with just one person but so far there have been no major incidents. this weekend will be a little hectic though. i’m still recovering from milwaukee but blades of glory is opening so there will be at least one viewing, hopefully there will be bicycle brunch again sunday, and saturday night there is some crazy bike sprints competition at a dive bar called the mutiny. sounds sinister. and this is all aside from spring league, basketball on saturday (i hope ohio state just wins the whole thing at this point) and many naps.

last night was tricks and drinks. good times but miss casual fell doing a seated trackstand and now has an enormuos bruise on her right leg. the viking even came out since the weather was so temperate and we drank some slovak beer called the golden pheasant. lovely. no one broke anything (i dont think) and j dot and tristan were doing one legged over the bars skids like no ones biznass. this bodes well for summer.

this is an email exchange between ms. ulty and myself today. our friend, that guy rob, who you all know by now, said he was going to start a business involving wealth design of some kind. i just thought we’d share a little of our day to day at casual ultimate.
___________________________________________________________________

subject : wealth dejin intern position

i am writing this email to inquire about the internship position for wealth dejin, inc. i have experience as a pro-dejiner in an architectural firm however i have been reconsidering my career lately as i have been working on area plans all day that i feel could be generated by a high powered computer machine of some kind or drawn by a very intelligent primate / remedial high school student.

my qualifications are that i am a world renowned blogger with casual ultimate, a crunk life company, affiliated with ‘hey lets rage’ corporation. i can drink sparxx at 8oz per minute (7% alcohol by volume) and have a history of leadership experience as i have arranged happy hour for upwards of 20 people on very short notice.

also i make excellent coffee.

i think you will find my record of excellence speaks for itself. i look forward to being a part of the wealth dejin empire.

yours
jess ‘miss casual’ town

____________________________________________________________________

Dear Ms. Town,

Thank you for your inquiry regarding our open intern position for the summer of 2007. Your cover letter is compelling, although you may have forgotten to attach your resume. While a formal resume is not necessary, a list of 2-3 references, along with brief descriptions of your relationship, would be appreciated. Website submissions will be accepted as a weak substitute for references.

Best regards,
Clara Ultimate

Chief Financial Officer and Executive Recruitment Associate
Wealth Dejin, Inc.
1444 N. Paulina
Chicago, IL 60622
(312) 123-4567 (312-get-crnk)
- Show quoted text -

____________________________________________________________________

Ms. Ultimate
My references include :

one mr. robert. pro-dejiner and member of the aia young and crunk subcommitee.

also one mr brown bear. he is studying for a phd in pants free living as well as heading up the flip cup special interest group.

I have enclosed pictures of my references for your convenience.

Yours desperately
jess town

_____________________________________________________________________

These are impressive references, Jessica. Brown Bear has served on our board of directors for a number of years. You will be hearing from us shortly.

Best regards,
Ms. Ultimate

so after our lovely evening with girl talk the cu staff split up to cover both fair cities - ms. ulty took off at the breaka breaka dawn to bring it at spring league and miss casual stayed in mke to ‘race’ in her first alleycat and see the city with our most gracious hosts evan and emily.

ms. ulty and team teamocil went 2-0 beating vijay and finn’s team and taking us to week 2 undefeated. miss casual got coerced into racing in the milwaukee messenger invitational with a fantastic group of people including a couple from mke on a tandem and some other chicago natives. we did most of the checkpoints but got lost somewhere just north of evanston and stopped for directions (read: beer) at a bar called buck’s on the south side of milwaukee. the ride back was a breeze and we made it back in time to eat ourselves silly at buck bradley’s (how many dudes named buck live in milwaukee anyway?) and drink some pbr.

sunday was a meteorological miracle and upon arrival back in chicago miss casual got on sugarbomb and met bjorn for a ride to rogers park to have brunch with monica and tbrizzle. aside from our surly waiter and a flat which j dot and bjorn fixed, it was a perfect summer day…albeit in the middle of march. milwaukee was fun but its good to be back in the chi.

were trying to be quiet because julios watching star wars and evan is in sleepy town. girl talk saved the day, after 3 hours of amateur djing he brought the pain to our friday night. we discarded clothing at this at this bar in order to facilitate our dance mayhem and yet thats just the beginning. we stopped three times looking for our orange and black can and came up empty handed. unless you count friend ship with a lovely youngster who pointed us to a liquor store and a one legged gentleman who ensured ms. ultimate that she need not pump her own m’fing gas. thats chivalry such as we havent seen since the boss ushered us around bucktown.

this is complicated and well talk to you later. we love you.

im staying put, ms. ulty is coming with her a game to spring league. better reckidnize.

xoxo

cu

photos later

okay so this isnt the girl talk were goign to see tonight but it might be an image of the cu staff getting prepared for our invasion of milwaukee. i believe ‘milwaukee’ is from the german meaning ‘lets get crunk’. and thats what were gonna do. we are piling into papa john’s jeep and hitting the road with an i-trip, some three six mafia, and the kittens for company.

last night miss casual got pink bar tape put on her bike to complete its total barbie-fication in time for the trip. also her bracket is kicking some major arse. look out denardis. im coming for you… itll be good for spring league to start up again. itll get us in good shape especially now that the league went 4-3 so well be playing savage every week. by summer well be fast as pumas.

have a great weekend. well try and post an update sometime saturday on our take no prisoners friday night and biking / ultimate saturday am. team teamocil faces off with vijay and finn saturday morning and its gonna be wet and wild judging by the weather forecast. but weve got our tuxedo t-shirts and were ready to party.

yesterday was the spring league draft, the official start to 2007 ultimate for the c.u. staff thanks to a canceled tourney a couple of weeks ago. ms. ulty and baker are captaining team teamocil in the seinfeld division; we decided to name the team after arrested development since seinfeld is so 1997. baker was a little upset about getting hosed in the draft pick order, so ms. ulty, vijay and finn had to take turns giving him shoulder massages. vijay and finn’s gloating negated their massage effects, though - just wait until we play you!

we added a few briefcase peeps to the core, chengstein and rob, along with their buddies, and some new names and faces. it was touch and go at the end of the draft but we got treemboat, our secret weapon. he’s been running with that new-fangled nike ipod gizmo all winter and is ready to open a can of whoopass on the fields. baker and another captain pulled the ultimate friendship test by calling their mutual friend joe o-r and asking him who he liked more and wanted to play with (the other team had gotten him and bakes wanted him). apparently we’re not the only ones who think baker’s a swell guy, because joe picked him without hesitation.

we can’t wait for frisbee to start. this friday is girl talk in milwaukee, but ms. ulty is torn. does she go to girl talk, brunch, ride bikes and miss the start of spring league on saturday? go and drive back to chicago saturday morning (morning games)? skip girl talk so she can spend all of friday night watching rocky, friday night lights and bring it on to get herself psyched for the games? hmm…sounds like a good poll topic.

you can tell from our surrealist poetry post that we had a good night friday. any night that starts with andrew trackstanding in the kitchen with a sparxx in his hand wearing ms. ulty’s white sunglasses couldn’t be bad. even though this photo is the last time anyone will ever see miss casual’s enormous phone the night was bananas.

beginning with sparxx, champagne and thai food chez ultimate, we moved on to the clipse show where there were approximately 120 dudes for every female in the audience. it was a sweet show and the cu staff made every effort to keep brown bear posted on the progress via voicemail. when the show was winding down ms. ulty looked me in the eyes and we both knew what we had to do - get ourselves to carol’s pronto. after phoning the boss and mike d in the cab and losing the phone, we drank some pbr and danced til the breaka dawn. there are some more photos of the aftermath at ms. ulty’s involving more sparxx, a candy hamburger, and sass in the gallery if anyone is curious.

the next morning we made some pancakes and bought miss casual a new bougie phone before recovering with arrested development season one and naps. new ringtones include : milkshake by kelis, aint no fun by snoop, and get low by lil jon and the eastside boys but ballin outta control was a close runner up. last night we went to see zodiac with the boss which was long but also quite a good way to wrap up the weekend.

it is 3:56 am. we tried to make contact with the boss but he was out of range. we made it to carol’s after seeing the clipse however we needed more sparxx to get miss casual to dance with any skill. it was sad. the boss was the only one who could dip her, its sad but here we are. outkast, leftover pizza, cocktails, we called vijay big time, etc.

hamburger cake biatch.

We’re not particularly religious here at c.u., but we’ll concede this much - God, or the gods, made three things with staying power: the planet, ambrosia and sparxx. Rumor has it we’ll be ringing in the Sabbath in style tonight with celestial gift number three, lovingly bestowed upon miss casual and ms. Ulty by their new best friend, Andrew. And this had better be 7% a by v, Andrew, not the orange can circa 2005. this should be just what we need to get rolling for the clipse show at the metro – this and our hi-tops, of course. As the photo to the left proves for life, these gentlemen like ice cream just as much as we do. There was talk of outfit coordination but it looks like we’re running out of time. Ms. Ulty got new kicks that are either the most fun or ugliest shoes she’s ever owned, we can’t be sure yet. It’s gonna be a good night for sure though. maybe we’ll even talk about the new CUSL gender distribution policy, who knows. Things could get crazy that way.

Also on tap this weekend is a trip to south bend, at least for ms. Ulty. Miss casual is storing up his mr. briefcase fun reserves for the season. Dubes, hoffman and george Clooney will be hosting what promises to be the Party of the Weekend. Any briefcase players who have been on the fence should check their oil and wiper fluid and hit the road tomorrow evening. I hope there’s time to celebrate treem’s hott news about getting into his program at northwestern for the fall. He’s the PhDizzomb.

oh how miss casual misses that guy rob… work is such a lonely place without him. so for the second night in a row yours truly rolled up to map room on a school night. how is this place so packed on tuesday and wednesday? apparently when im home watching law $ order the rest of the world is drinking exotic beer on armitage.

tuesday night worlds collided over maudite when our chifg friends and our ultimate friends all ended up at one table by sheer coincidence, nay destiny. then the next night rob and his pro-senior-dejiner friends and miss casual went back for more unibroue. too bad rob had an allergic reaction to awesome and we had to leave early so he could get an emergency traecheotemy in the cab. rob actually works out at depaul gym and spotted our favorite viking there last week but he says its not okay for guys to approach other guys at the gym. is this true? i mean they’ve met over beers before and stuff… i am putting this up for discussion since girls obviously play by other rules.

worlds colliding… as bg says ‘a casual divided against itself cannot stand.’

after our monster brunch on saturday we hit the waterslides and played tube crawl in the wave pool. plus there were hours of water-basketball. tracy made us all look bad with her outside shooting, especially joe little shown here trying desperately to guard her even though shes half his size. bk didnt make it this year, what with sending cho off to china, so we almost died of starvation. luckily he had made dinner and sent it with akira so we just had to assemble it. sounds simple but actually it took three pages of email, me, joe, liz, and bk on the phone talking us through the more difficult parts. thankfully the tupperware full of ‘pure flavor’ arrived undamaged.

then it was time to get in our jammies, watch bad boys 2 on the projector and drink some beer. liz and miss casual had a private screening of some old 30 rock episodes which is now cu’s favorite tv program next to law and order. i wonder if we could get tina fey to guest post… the next morning we all said good bye to fireplaces with on switches and log themed furniture. actually i think cbr said something like ‘i wish slider couldve been here’ or ‘oh look at the bears in that painting’ or something but i figured he meant ‘gosh this was the best time ever. thanks guys.’ it warms my heart still.

its always tough to leave great wolf but this year was especially challenging what with the 11″ of snow and all. it took thor, ms. ulty, and two strangers plus a community shovel to get us out of the parking lot. thanks to ea for the photos. til next year…

with bryan not yet in the picture, most of us slept until 11 to conserve calories. thank the sweet lord for thor & liz, who hooked us up with egg scrambler, french toast and sparxx (7%). sometimes 2 cups of coffee just doesn’t do the job when you have a full day of waterslides ahead of you.

the c.u. staff arrived in the dells around 4, but had to stop by the outlet mall to look for hi-tops before buying copious amounts of booze and heading to the lodge. thank goodness we arrived before the blizzard, unlike bjorn, who has never hard of pythagoras or his theorem and therefore went through milwaukee instead of the clearly shorter madison route via 90. tbr and monica did the same thing but had a reason (custard). they arrived just in time to join us for law $ order (that was intentional, it’s money) and a coloring contest at the loose moose bar and grill. ms. ulty ordered the fettucine alfredo despite our waitress’s warning that “to be honest, it’s not as good as olive garden.” ms. ulty couldn’t figure out if that was a good or bad thing.

fast forward eight hours, when the rest of the crew arrived. it might have been the blizzard, the long drives or the blackout blinds, or all of them, but for some reason people thought it would be a good idea to stay up until 4:30 in the morn watching bad boys (1). we love early will smith as much as the next blogger, but no one wants to wake up that and a loud game of ticket to ride.

with the cyndi lauper playing, bathing suits dried and sparxx in our system, we’re ready to get this party started. joe just started dance party 9000 and it’s only 12:21.

great wolf is many-splendored thing.

you’re going to have to turn on your speakers and go here to understand the title.

we here at casualultimate are more than a little excited about going to great wolf with 13 of our closest friends this weekend. it’s been a hectic week at work for ms. ultimate, and miss casual is still reeling from playing magical desks in the office, so we need to unwind. and what better way to unwind than in a plastic log cabin condo watching bad boys 1 and 2 while bk whips up yet another fabulous meal? it’s going to be so fantastic that ms. ulty had to buy blog cabin long underwear for the big sleepover; that’s a close-up and, yes, those are brown rhinestones.

the general itinerary is something like: drive up at noon on friday, buy beverages once we get across the state line, arrive at aforementioned plastic cabin, take off clothes and go on the waterslides (we’re wearing our suits underneath), go in hot tub, jump on floating lilypads, eat dinner, drink beers, watch movie, play scattergories, repeat. we might bring a disc to toss if it’s nice, but why go outside if it’s always 84 and sunny inside the lodge. mini was upset there was no blogging from baker’s party last weekend (although we hear phone calls from dube are more than entertaining enough–dube, meet me at the military base in two hours), so we’ll try to get it together in the dells. we’ll be coming to you live from the top bunk.

Our dear friend the letter j who you might remember from such posts as ‘too much sparxx at rwip’ and ‘we guest posted on his sports blog’ is taking over our space today to talk about the oscars and other fun movie stuff. hes an actual writer in real life so it will probably blow. your. mind. so with no further interruption from me…. heres jeff

_____________________________________________________________________

I know this might go against some deeply help rule, but I am using capital letters. (edit: i think our blog is actually not set up to recognize capital letters and yours will be edited out when it posts automatically. sorry. - miss casual) Again, I apologize if this hurts your eyes or defeats the true nature of being casual. I’m just used to typing with the big guys and that’s that.

I mainly talk sports and movies. I have this sort of time on my hands since I am 95 percent retired from ultimate. I break out the cleats for a reunion tourney, Poultry Days and Sand Blast (though technically I remove the cleats for the latter and just complain about how sensitive my feet are to the hot sand).

Anyway, on to the movie talk …

I will be watching the Academy Awards, like I do every year. Sometimes I like to think of it as my Super Bowl. Not this year though, the movies I love didn’t get nominated enough, the host is good (Ellen Degeneres) but not great (Jon Stewart) and the Bears made the Super Bowl, which made my Super Bowl the actual Super Bowl.

Dp and Liz will be able to give anyone insight about how I view the awards afterwards. For the first time, they are joining a small group of friends to watch. Denardis will also be there before he leaves us all for the East Coast.

I will be doing a running diary for beep central and hopefully everyone reading this has already voted for the Scorecard Movie Awards … but here, now, before anyone else gets to see it, I present my Top Ten Movies of 2006 … with a couple extras thrown in … and in the true spirit of being casual, screw the capitals.

1. the departed - everything felt intense - suspense, laughter and violence
2. borat - no comedy has made me think more about the ugliness of America
3. little miss sunshine - it’s nice, with just enough cynicism
4. thank you for smoking - really might be the smartest spin in the group
5. notes of a scandal - it’s a drama where you sit on the edge of your seat
6. last king of scotland - great performances
7. children of men - sci-fi done really well and i didn’t hate Michael Caine
8. united 93 - for the subject, this movie couldn’t have done any better
9. mission: impossible: III - i don’t hate tom cruise’s acting
10. brick - high school crime noir, sounds awful but it’s not

close:
stranger than fiction
the heart of the game
inside man
an inconvenient truth
the painted veil

That’s it. That’s the list.
special guest - Jeff Schwister - signing off.
jschwister.blogspot.com
thedailyscore.blogspot.com

younger siblings today: what are they thinking? first i find out my very own zibbers is a vimeo star (zibbo i’m disappointed you don’t know all the words to lovefool). but this is nothing in comparison to the fact that lainers’ little bro is never going to work in this town again. dude that’s disgusting; i judged the scavenger hunt back in the day and nothing like that happened. maybe i’m getting old and boring, but it seems like things got out of hand.

don’t these kids know that employers google?

friday night miss casual and ms. ultimate broke out of our normal social circle to make friends with some chifggers. we found them to be very philosophically similar to ourselves. nat (the one in the front there) even gave us this post title, which was so good we should’ve said it. after trading glasses and drinking some high life at gold star it was time for dance party 9000 around the corner with andrew tending to the music and everyone else tending to the pbr. miss casual made instant buddies with tristan whose bike is so pink she fears she will never be able to compete.

then saturday it was all about alaina and dan baker. yes mr. baker turned 30 and we all got to celebrate. plus we had reinforcements in from florida in the form of ms. ulty’s oberlin buddy. we started at club lucky waiting quite a while for a table and making plans for carols with mike d. unfortunately our full bellies made us too sleepy to swing dance with denardis and we were punished for it by repeated verbal abuse via text message. heres a picture of ms. ulty in her swank new headwear being charmed by our favorite south bend resident tom carter.

sunday the ja rule to my ashanti picked me up and we checked out the cusl town hall meeting. i think im gonna leave the recap and debate to the forum. lets just say baker wasnt making a lot of sense in the wake of his bday.

There’s been a lot of back-and-forth on the upcoming CUSL planning meeting on the c.u. forum over the past few days. CUSL, after reviewing the league survey results and talking with “previous UC leaders” is proposing format changes that fall into the following general categories (from CUSL website):

———————
Competition/skill appropriate play
Many people have stressed a desire to play in more or less intense environments from how some of the current leagues are formatted. As a result, we would like to add a “tiered league” system across all seasons. This is already happening in Spring with the two divisions. In summer, it will likely involve adding a “competitive” league to run concurrently with the standard CUSL league. In the fall, it may mean dividing teams into and A and B division.

4/3 gender play
All leagues will play a maximum of 4 men and a minimum of 3 women. The large majority of survey respondents preferred a 4/3 split to other options. This will likely mean that some men will not be able to get into some leagues unless they bring a female player. If there is a large enough pool of people unable to get into a league, we may try to organize and open league or individuals league for those players.
———————-

Does this 4/3 rule mean that the number of women in the league will magically double from previous years, or does it simply mean that hundreds of men will be forced out of the league, even if it is stratified? Will it spur formation of an all-men’s league? If so, what will be the consequences?

Yours truly thinks that everyone should be free to play or not play in whatever capacity they wish, but having the option of a men’s league will suck the majority of the male talent out of the co-ed league, leaving it full of mediocre players (um, myself included) and, possibly worse, a lot of women who we’re conned into playing so that the guys they know could get into the league – I’m worried these women won’t show up at games. what about keeping it 5/2 and stratifying based on skill level instead of making both those changes at once?

Moreover, women already end up playing savage in league *all the time* - wouldn’t making it 4/3 instead of 5/2 make that worse? My attendance at leagues has always been good, but the times I don’t show up to games it’s because it’s hot out, I’m tired from playing earlier in the week, and I know I’ll be playing savage (again). If the quality of play in the co-ed league is degraded, where will that leave the good ladies? Will they opt out of the league, too?

What’s the best way to build ultimate in Chicago, either as a recreational activity or a competitive sport? Can a citywide league accommodate only one of these goals?

I just got the following email from the godfather of CUSL himself:

“Dividing CUSL into two division is a very bad idea. It will suck the talent from the league and will keep the new players from learning. It will eliminate the party together concept that we enjoy. Women will move adding to an existing problem. The elite players and those who play the Fall Series should enjoy CUSL as a casual alternative before the competitive season.”

casual or serious? will league format make the decision for us? Throw down your thoughts in the forum if you’d like, and show up at the blackrock (3614 n. damen) at 4 pm this Sunday for the league discussion.

the best valentine ever is still undoubtedly the one that ralph gave lisa in that episode of the simpsons but in the absence of decorated shoe boxes and valentines with choo choo trains on them, this post will have to serve as my valentine to our readers. as you could expect i love valentines day because im a big sap. much more so than ms. ulty so i am putting none of the responsibility of this post on her for the record.

even inspite of the 8 ft of snow outside on the sidewalk and some drama with our battle of the beach plans, miss casual is in a fantastic mood. how can you not love a holiday about cupcakes and pink? i mean that’s what its about right?

cricket cricket

well whatever. anyway on this cold and snowy valentines day, miss casual has lots of love for all of our casual ultimaters, near and far, who make this blog remotely readable and wishes you all hearts and puppies and professions of undying affection from handsome, witty suitors.

a little while ago we posted some of the search terms that lead unsuspecting surfers to the land of c.u. we’re still getting some relatively logical hits that aren’t “casualultimate blog,” such as “wicker park best diner” and “pajama boxer briefcase gallery,” but they’re getting stranger. the foreign ones are particularly intriguing. here are some recent searches, in no particular order (joe, apparently you have a fan/stalker out there):

fun and flirty business casual
casual beer season pants
her pointy ones…photos
i’m not gonna lie it’s gonna get weird
you can take girl out of ghetto
the bat cave WI
messy casual bun
your dirty mind VIP crew
spiderman girlfriend name
chicago machine ultimate joe ferrari
VIP Crew - you know how we do it…. (Germany google)
munition metal piercing (france google)
embarassment after a drunken night (UK google)

well this was one of the less blog worthy weekends in memory. the cold weather and lack of biking is really starting to send yours truly into winter hibernation mode. as soon as the sun goes down, which is at approximately 3:30 you can find me on the couch watching arrested development. thats pretty much my saturday night in a nut shell although at least ms. ulty braved the cold to see aaron and treem and celebrate aaron’s new job. there was some mexican food friday night and a bit of shopping saturday but other than that the only thing worth mentioning is seeing volver last night. great movie. i was not a big fan of penelope cruz in general but now i am. we are going to hold regular seminars in ms. ulty’s living room to try and get her perfectly messy, half up, half down hair thing happening.

also since its almost time for the oscars and weve been attending the cinema regularly of late, check out the scorecard movie awards brought to you by our good friend the letter j. better than your average awards show since you have a say in the out come. (the dixie chicks won everything? thats the best we had? is this what the kids are listening to these days? sigh….) if someone had a fun weekend, say, designing currency for dogs and cats to use, or participating in a traditional viking winter sport ritual, email us at casualultimate@gmail.com. you can guest post.

last night the cu staff and c(b)r decided to get our culture on by attending a lecture at the art institute by one of my (s)hero’s, winka dubbeldam. the work is certainly impressive and we are looking at hiring winka and her band of ragtag wonder interns to design us a headquarters, “the manor”, if you will. god knows miss casual doesnt have time for extracurricular architecture what with the blog and training for BOTB.

but seriously, why is it that contemporary architects feel such a need to stress that their work is not ‘formally driven’ when it clearly is at least in part. one does not chance on a bathroom that looks like this without some intention at formal architectural gymnastics. do oblique angles like that occur by chance or out of a material concern? miss casual thinks not. but hey just say ‘i wanted to make a bathroom that looked cool.’ why is that so bad? making things that are cool and actually get produced is no small accomplishment in these days of mediocrity and value engineering.

all that theory made us hungry so it was off to rodan where ms. ulty got her design on by setting the table and encouraging our waiter to sculpt our rice. c(b)r even acknowledged ms. ulty’s latent design prowess. it was tough deciding who the sexiest players on briefcase were but somehow we managed and ended up full and sleepy before heading back to paulina. its almost friday. hang in there.

what could follow a night of such magical wonderment as friday? well saturday i guess. the cu staff recovered by hitting bongo room for brunch followed by light shopping and naps. the evening found our team split between two neighborhoods with ms. ulty throwing down for martha’s bday in wrigley and miss casual and the boss taking the lovely ladies of the er out in bucktown.

dr welsh had finished her test and freshened up before coming down to meet us at piece. (in a side note, the cu staff, inspired by ferrari’s manuary, will be throwing femuary, a midwinter celebration of being girls, and it will involve lots of freshening up for sure, as well as manicures, sleepovers, and romantic comedies.) then we moved on to rodan for icicles and hot toddies. do you know how much heat a person gives off? 150 btus per hour, which was enough to partially thaw out the window at rodan.

after all that we barely had enough energy to bake a mountain of cookies to take to the boss’s crib on sunday to watch the superbowl. the callaways were nice enough to bring their little one for ms. ulty to gush over and tbr was nice enough to bring thanksgiving. turns out the cu ladies would make excellent lesbian mothers. witness miss casual helping ms. ulty with her beer while she holds audrey.

the game itself was a bummer since our team lost and the ads were all sinister and depressing. the boss dubbed it the ’superbowl of crying’ after an ad with a sad robot almost brought miss casual to tears. she recovered in time to discuss the referees’ high waisted pants and what to do about them with tbr and monica. the only reason we remember any of this is because we transcribed our notes from the evening off of miss january.

even though the bears lost it was a good night and it was nice to watch nick swardson like 4 peas in a pod after the game. tv makes us feel safe.

at some point around 2am, ferrari was wearing cho’s speedo over his jeans doing pushups by the fire. he stopped to beat denardis with a belt. (miss casual was thinking this bodes well for the mayhem to come at BOTB)

joe little in his disturbing pink shirt received the best dancer of the party award from timmy.

the guest of honor was getting sick in the bathroom upstairs while an unnamed couple got busted in his room.

denardis fumigated the living room with cho’s secret stash of axe. thats where the party ended. with the axe.

after a huge brunch we are looking forward to an afternoon of tv. holler if you want to join us.

we hope to god were not still logged in on bk’s computer.

we heart RWIP.

we’re just not sure what to write at this pioint. it’s whatever time; cho ripped off jor ferrari’s underwear and it’s on tim halt’s head. and then ms. ulty threw up a little bit in her mouth and ad to run to the toilette.

cobb pushed bjorn down, there was no struggle for supremacy, which is in fact surprising. it is difficult for me to type on the keyapd at this time,

tyson has a mustach drawn on his face

we;re not sure ifthe stains on on cho’s shirt are going to come out. we’re also not sure if we’ll make it out of here alive,

thor just stampeded thru,. this is potentially not good.

after having six people in cho’s bed everyone had white powder in their lungs. gold bond powder actually.

tyson’s reasoning for problems in vegas last weekend : ‘we didnt have liquor. just beer. and mushrooms’

cho replied to vijay’s criticisms of his plan to move to china by pleading ‘wait jayadev don’t leave. don’t be mad.’

apparently the boys get emotional over the water show at the bellagio.

ferrari offered miss casual 5$ to punch denardis in the face and denardis offered me 5$ to kick tyson in the… shin, yeah shin, with my gilded pointy toed shoes

joe little is predictably violent and the boss needs a new belt buckle

bk yells out ‘wait ill tell you when we’re starting. its in my pants,’ and ms. ulty responds by doing a plie in the kitchen.

joe little says rachael is knitting and its getting too real on the futon

little dick.com is actually c(b)r’s online alter ego

see you in 30

xoxo
casual

i have tb! i can give it to you right now! you don’t have to go to china!
- vijay, 2.2.07

10:20 pm CT

someone brought cho pussy (cat). but given the “free samples” of axe he had in the room, we can be sure it’s gonna stay in quotes until tomorrow morning.

we’re working to get cho to 7% al/vol, per the new sparxx. all we know is: we’re not leaving until we see that smooth, smooth chest. thankfully we have a doctor on hand.

- end transmission -

well its friday but i swear this was the longest. week. ever. i don’t even know if ill make it to 530 when ill pick ms. ulty up in the casual mobile and head back to the double deuce to start the weekend with a manhattan and a fresh kitten chez ultimate. last night we regrouped to plan our attack of the weekend with the boss and treem at sweet alice. why have we not been to this place? it has good greasy food, fat tire, and a bald bartender who calls me hon. what more could we want? since it is a stone’s throw from paulina im sure we will be playing a lot of foosball there in the near future.

the boss has a cold so it’s lucky for him that dr. welsh is in the heezy this weekend. she is in an aeroplane right now headed towards chicago to help us throw down for the super bowl. it has been a week of stressful showdowns at casual ultimate headquarters but it didnt even give miss casual cause to buy a pair of gucci sandals so it couldn’t have been too bad. however stressing out is against dr.’s orders so we well be putting an end to that and say a little prayer for our friday to go smoothly.

dear lord baby jesus, in your tiny golden pajamas watching baby einstein videos and learning sounds and colors, please let us last through our workday and bring the pain to this weekend with dr. welsh. also please let the bears beat the living tar out of the colts and let our hangovers, be they from food or 40s, be mild on monday. also because of a contract which stipulates that i mention happy hour at every grace id just like to say that it will be delicious and that i hope the boss’s surprise for ms. ulty involves video games. amen.

with five weeks left to go before battle of the beach, miss casual and ms. ultimate decided to kick our workout into high (fixed) gear with a grueling triathlon on saturday, which lasted until the wee hours of sunday morn.

Stage 1: Wake up at 8:00, don’t eat breakfast because it makes you fat and slows you down. we’re trying to convert 100% of our winter energy reserves into lean muscle by march 10. drink coffee to get your heart racing, and then jump on a high-performance bi-cycle racing machine for a 15-mile ride in frigid temperatures. luckily about 20 other people had this same idea, and we met up with the lady and gents from chicago fixed gear for a ride from montrose to the planetarium and back again. here’s a pic of some of the tri-athletes at the start of the ride, courtesy of our man fro. upon completion of this stage, it is acceptable to have a light brunch of bagel and cream cheese (as pictured here) or almond croissant, followed by a repeat of the same after some book shopping at myopic and quimby’s.

Stage 2: After a quick shower to warm up, we went for a consultation with one of our trainers, monica, where she was working the gatorade table/hostess desk at the peach pit. she advised us to drink a beer each (full frontal and double d are choice selections this time of year) and consume a pizza as quickly as possible. this kind of training will prepare for between-game hydration and bagel consumption in florida. we then turned to an endurance sitting session by watching seven episodes of arrested development season three in quick succession. when you’re watching this many episodes on DVD, it’s important to conserve seconds on the clock by fast-forwarding through the credits and opening song of consecutive episodes. we had to sit through the first five episodes only to get to the sixth, which contained steve holt (steve holt!) gems of training wisdom. our favorite adages include the post title, as well as: “don’t ask ‘can i’, ask ‘i can’” and “no blood, no oil”. words to live by as we moved into the all-critical third stage.

Stage 3: stage three was all about isolating muscle groups that will be necessary for beach ultimate dominance down in florida. we chose to focus on the quads, abs and glutes - “wind your waistline to the bass line” was our battlecry as we rolled up to the darkroom for a merciless three-hour dance workout. it’s important to dress appropriately for this stage, particularly for the quads, so we had to wear our heels. one of ms. ultimate’s dance partners showed what a great workout dancing could be, as he refused to dance without holding his shirt up and fondling his six-pack. someday that will be us. just as miss casual was beginning to wonder, “can i?” she ran into inspiration in the form of an old college buddy, j dot. his drunken posting makes us think he’ll be guest posting about dance moves here in the near future.

it was an arduous 16-hour marathon, but that’s what a girl’s gotta do if she wants to play serious ultimate. we plan on repeating this every weekend between now and botb: stage 1 with our chifggers, stage 2 switching it up each week, and stage 3 at various venues including carol’s. we’re going to run out of arrested development, though, so anyone who bought season two of the office is welcome to join the workout. we’re looking forward to an update on the weekend in arizona, gentlemen, so don’t let us down.

xoxo,
c & u

well this week has actually sped by and its already time for another wicker park weekend. this time though most of our peoples are out of town in tempe playing ultimate of all crazy things. pfil, dp and chucktown will be bringing the pain to arizona and hopefully some of it will make it onto this blog come next week…although were not sure itll be b-rated. other friends of cu will be posting soon about their time in acapulco last weekend. if you don’t know already, the trip has spawned its own very funny blog about food, one of our favorite topics here at casual ultimate. theres even a thread about food happening in the forum right now….

the cu staff, holding it down at the manor, will be inverting our normal pattern of ‘take no prisoners’ friday followed by ‘recovery’ saturday. we’ve got a nice little saturday planned. tomorrow morning we are getting up early to ride bikes with some of the fine people of chifg and then napping to rally for dancehall mayhem at the darkroom tomorrow night. we might even huff kittens…i dont know. i dont know if we’ll have time… so it looks to be a chillax evening on paulina but tomorrow night we will be ready. i am going to get my nails done like this so that people know we mean biznass. holler.

we were just alerted to the practice of kitten huffing and felt the need to share this tragic story of animal abuse with our readership. thanks to stacey the bronze goddess for the tip - and keep your kittens away from lainers.

what a weekend. friday night we started out at handlebar with a paulina sub-committee meeting. dp, liz and the cu staff talked weekend strategy over samosas and alpha king. we were joined by other vips and discussed future party themes such as ‘the rubix cube’ and the ‘2007 is like a tuxedo t-shirt’ before settling on turtle races in two weeks. ms. ultimate noticed a mailbox with the name ‘p. frisbey’ on it so we left them our card assuming their first name is ‘play’. before leaving for lemmings we made friends with people we already knew at the bar through cookies and bicycles. the guys at boulevard bikes are the best. they didnt even need the cookies cause theyre already so sweet. also we think in ms. ultimate’s future senate run ‘peace through cookies’ could be a powerful foreign policy.

but her main campaign slogan, ‘i motherf%^king love this country’ was born of ameri-cans at our next stop, lemmings. ahhh lemmings. packed though it was it always brings the best crowd and beer that tastes like freedom. we stood at the bar next to some people we’d end up going to the bulls game with the next night strangely enough. the cu staff discussed the attendees later and realized that we had a perfect storm of a guestlist… all our favorite regulars plus some new people to keep it interesting. ms. ulty’s cool uncle and mac (an old nemesis cohort of dr. welsh) turned out. and the professor and vusi showed up just in time to debate the winning potential of bears vs. snakes with miss casual, the boss and a very unfriendly ‘young’ lady. our conclusion? snakes by two.

it was a winning weekend in many regards… the bears, lots of friends old and new and cookie distribution seem to be the major themes. we laughed, we cried, it was better than ‘cats’. in conclusion miss casual has to print a retraction of a previous comment regarding payton manning and if you want to know about the post title you’ll have to ask the staff or the boss since it is not b-rated (safe for blogs).