casual ultimate » sandblast

In big points, I‘m good enough to be out there, so all I have to do is play. It seems like in big points, particularly in coed, it’s a possession game. The team that can control the disc when they get it will win. The problem never seems to be getting the disc: coed teams love to cough it up. The problem is always controlling the disc. Controlling doesn’t mean anything more than trusting that the right opportunity is coming and being patient with the disc. That means resetting early and often, taking what they give you, and only striking deep when the point is demanding it.

I feel like as players, we are simply trying to demonstrate our skill at responding to the game, that’s all. We don’t make the game. The game is the way it is, and at our best we are able to dance with it. We never actually control it. It feels like double-dutch; we can either jump in at the right time and keep pace and not disrupt it and wow the crowd, or we can try to force it and mess it all up. Of course, that’s just what works for me. I see players like Seth and Beau who can just step into a game at times and completely change it. (That would be pretty cool if you were at a party and Seth and Beau were able to change the music by the way they danced…)

At this point in my Ultimate career, I feel like suddenly I have this voice that is good. I have things to say suddenly. I swear I never thought I had much to say to club players. Now I realize, after inflating my ego for a couple of years with the uber-supportive Revolver and uber-young BCBC, that I know some stuff. What’s more important is that I know stuff that most people don’t. My observations, in case you haven’t read this blog, are pretty much all about how it feels and the spiritual side of things. That goes largely unaddressed by most teams, so I feel like I can just walk around blessing teams and leaving them better than when I greeted them. That’s kinda cool, even if my knee is pretty jacked up.

I played Sandblast last weekend, and I only spoke in the huddle a couple of times, but when I did, I usually just said that we are a positive team, we look for opportunities to support our team-mates, and we try our hardest, trusting that our team-mates will do the same for us. All really simple stuff, but it was surprising how well-received it was. Of course, it was the worst result I’ve ever had at Sandblast, having never lost a game on Saturday before and never losing before Finals. Becky is officially better than Bjorn and I because as soon as she was gone, we suddenly were bad at Sandblast.

Who DID win Sandblast was Hector’s posse of young players. I’ve always been impressed with him and have never had more than basic conversations with him. I get the sense that he stresses discipline and buy-in. Whatever he stresses, he seems to be a great player and teacher. I imagine that his philosophy would fit well with Revolver’s values of intensity, humility, and discipline.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Akira wanted me to post more, but I think he just wanted to see more Akira on the blog. So here it is; this boy was very excited about Sandblast, despite his debilitating rib injury. You would think he was on a Hawaiian island with those shorts, but really it was just Montrose beach. I wonder if they have that much glass hidden in the sand in Hawaii.

Team anything-but-M pulled out a win tonight, but it was close. Both lady ultimate and miss casual would have been unhappy to lose to that particular team - lady ultimate did get to hear some fun gossip related to miss manly crazy/hot pink socks, though. We had to cap the game because of the eerily dense fog, which left a few extra minutes for post-game Piece. Miss Cas. finally heard the scoop on mr. “your blog is strangely erotic” - i hope it was worth the wait. as, i hope, was this picture of bikini man. nice visor.

my self esteem is in the gutter after i couldnt find anybody to waste time at estelles with me last night. although ms. ultimate did offer to make me a martini as long as i came to her house wearing pajamas so she wouldnt be underdressed. mike d. sent a cryptic text saying that sparks made him do bad things and he was still recovering. we at C.U. are dying of curiosity so hopefully he’ll make it to piece after summer league tonight.

after work i went to some young architect happy hour thing. no wonder i dont go to those. they are filled with nerds. except rob of course. here he is coming correct with two beers.

and if my cool points are suffering at least i am not offering to do obscene things to earn them like dan baker and evan in this photo from our monday night win at summer league. here are some more photos from sandblast etc.

sorry for the late post but it took me all day yesterday to recover from sandblast…and i didnt even play. and by ‘recover’ i mean ‘eat an absurdly large brunch with the towns and sarah and jason t. and hit the movies with bk’. it was so great to have chuck and sarah in town this weekend. here’s a picture of chuck about to go to work on saturday.

and work they did. briefcase played a sick nasty tournament this weekend with our own ms. ultimate having one of her best tournaments ever (this is a third party opinion from numerous sources). unfortunately she wasnt around for sandburst saturday night becuase she was watching a mariachi band at her parents house. sandburst was awesome. we ate at el cid (heres a pic at right with chuck in his work you dog shirt and sarah throwing us some blue steel) and then chilled at the BR’s with beer and mini kit kat bars. no wonder i love those guys… the talk turned to soccer, moisturizer, and how miss casual needs to marry a mob boss. i already have the pointy toed italian leather heels and big gold hoops so if anybody knows a soprano, hook me up.

akira and cho didnt make it because they were bringing the pain to the official sandblast party. through a C.U. correspondant we got reports of them stumbling home late and not being able to open their front door with either of their keys. (we are working on getting a photo of the offending lock to inspect it’s obviously defective nature.) then cho proceeded to shoot said correspondant using his finger as an imaginary gun. gangsta.

so unfortunately be’ach got upset in the quarters on sunday, possibly because of their a-game tactics at cherry red the night before and briefcase had to watch / play against the speedo team. ick. however we did get the C.U. MHP (most hilarious player) out of that game. Jarrett shaved his number into his back hair and so goes down in history… (does anyone have a pic of this?)

bjorn, who was off filming a doublemint gum ad on saturday night, brought his a-game on sunday where he and becky and their madison team bested briefcase in the finals. it was sad to see briefcase lose but it was nice to have some casual peeps on the winning team. so big ups to bjorn and becky and the volkmans whose divine dinner sunday night made losing a little easier to take.

last night at beach….nothing really happened. which was weird becuase two weeks before sanblast it seemed like lots of people would be out. but it was still gorgeous out and we had enough people to play fives so alls well that ends well.

the best things going on….ms. ultimate threw another fierce hammer, tony and bjorn sized up the people on the path based on whether they could beat them up or not (’him, not him, maybe him if he’s not fast’), bjorn left early for a mystery non-date type thing (i know this is not really gossip but this week is slow), and there was some freaky guy that literally had the worst sunburn ive ever seen passed out a few yards outside the endzone. it was fascinating and painful to watch.

the other topic of conversation seemed to be a general grumble about the lack of of respect given to the returning champions of sandblast. the post title actually comes from steve who figured briefcase could secede from the tournament and have their own beach throw down. yall know where i’d be…i already bought brown face paint to put a tie on my belly…not really but i should. or allison should. big time.

moral of the story…kicking ass is the best revenge so im lookin for briefcase to bring their a-game next weekend. totes.

UPDATE - sandburst is turning into a sandblast after party at tony and carlo’s saturday night. email us at casualultimate@gmail.com for details.

this morning i got an email with chucktown in a flier for sandblast. i hope this is an omen that this year he is coming back to town to work. you. dog. i also think sarah and akira and carlo are on the banner for the sandblast website.

ms. ultimate and i brought our a-game to summer league and piece last night. here is a picture of jeff and mike looking intimidated by our game faces. actually that might be mike throwing blue steel…i can never be sure.

so far our nameless summer league team is winning some games but im concerned that we lack what the french call a certain ‘i dont know what.’ hopefully our chemistry will get better as the weather gets warmer.