Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Stupid Canadians with their hockey references pollute Beijing Ultimate and threaten to destroy all that is good within our humble community, forever

Yin Kong's Gmail status message just now:

recap of whats been going on
in the world- goodnews:
CAPSCAPSCAPS!
badnews: swine flu

Followed by this conversation:

me: you've been playing caps?
Yin: ....
hockey
me: oh
wow
Yin: youre so culturally insensitive tao
you know i'm canadian
me: that could not have not-registered on my radar any more

UPDATE:

Yin: hmmm
but you fail to see the irony
that the caps are an american team
me: i don't think you understan
hockey does not exist in america
ergo
the caps are nto an american team
nice try though
Sent at 12:02 AM on Thursday
Yin: where can i watch hockey?
in bijieng?
me: canada
Yin: ...

Swine flu pandemic? I blame Canada!

Tuesday, April 28, 2009

RETROSPECTIVE: The first year of China Nationals

This begins a three-week look back at the China Nationals tournament, leading up to the third annual China Natties on May 16-17, hosted for the second straight year by Beijing. REGISTER NOW.



From Char, China Nationals 2007 in Tianjin.

Monday, April 27, 2009

WEEKEND ROUNDUP: Hot or not?

Seen Saturday on the Frisbee golf course (hole No. 7) at Chaoyang Park:



If you throw it into the water, you'll be fetching (or fishing).




The night before, a celebration of Therese and Jim's birthdays:


Kro's Pizza and Alpha (club); the man in the middle arranged the surprise party for Therese.

Jeff was his usual leery self.



Jim was so happy he ended up in a tree.



And this:



All in all, a pretty great time, especially for those wearing matching shirts:



That's Charlotte with Helen and her husband, Mike. Which reminds me of something Charlotte wrote a while back:

a threesome with a christian and her husband or doc and a random asian would be quite fine.

She got her wish. I'm pretty sure Helen's Christian, though I may have made that up just now.

Sunday, April 26, 2009

WEEK IN REVIEW: Happy times on an island called Jeju

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Friday, April 24, 2009

Um...

Looking through Jeju pictures,

Realized we played Stripper, Tandem, Fireman at the bar.

Created a folder titled "Inappropriate"...

Thursday, April 23, 2009

Important China Nationals deadline announcement

DEADLINE FOR TEAM REGISTRATION IS NEXT FRIDAY, MAY 1. GO TO THE OFFICIAL WEBSITE TO REGISTER NOW.

Jeff Orcutt speaking on today's meeting:

Hey everyone,

At the meeting Tao and I discussed the format of the tournament and he is going to go crazy making us multiple scenarios and generally geeking out on the project. In the UPA tournament format document they start by saying all you really need for a tournament are fields and a schedule.

Congratulations, I think we can truthfully say that we have a tournament now.

But about all that other stuff....

Hotel deposits are in and sponsors are coming in. We are picking up 500 discs from ultipro (trying out the tiananmen design) in Shanghai and we have the fields up north. The restaurant in a muslim place right next to the hotels.

We now have a number of estimated expenses and only hypothetical revenue. Please encourage the people you know to register. Dalian, Hangtime, and air woo (wuhan) have all registered. Remember to remind all the chinese people that you don't have to pay tournament fees next year if you win.

And what do the tournament fees get you?
Awesome fields -- 2 Days!
Lunch -- twice!
Kick ass dinner/boozey party with some games (and drinking)
Field food (forever)
Beer on Sunday (after noon)
Probably a disc (if we don't go broke)
Transportation
A crap ton of Facebook photos

Joe mentioned that maybe we don't need a theme to the party. We can still play the interesting games. However, I don't believe I would get to know people well enough to make the questions. could someone please volunteer to help the teams make hints about people who are coming? Probably could be done a short time before the tournament (like in the last week?). Right?

With no theme we can also concentrate on fun games and getting to know each other. And it doesn't stop people from dressing funky anyways.

So what do you guys think? Theme? No theme? Cowboys? no pants?

tomorrow morning I want to send out a email to all of the captains giving a deadline of the 30th to get all of their team registered. I would love to be able to tell them the party/theme. If I do not hear disagreement about the Cowboys theme I say let's do it.

Ok, Let's do this thing.

Cheers,

Jeff

Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Back from Jeju



So much to discuss from the weekend that sentence fragments bullet points:

  • Pink shorts:


  • Lauren's and Mike's costumes...

  • Lauren and Mike by night's end...

  • Joe winning a party award on Saturday night at the Rubik's Cube-themed party and Jim being Jim, eventually returning to the hotel to crack a 20-minute monologue Robin-Williams-Live-On-Broadway-style.

  • Big Brother playing great Ultimate the entire weekend before developing a serious case of the drops in its semifinal game against Korea, the eventual tourney champion.

  • Sandy being honored on the Gnarly Nines all-star team.

  • Brian and I being called into what can only be called a porn shoot. We were ushered from our hotel room to another one across the hall, in which Jim -- shirtless, of course -- was giving directions to Mike, who was taking videos on his camera from his knees.

    Oh, you want to know...

  • The Sunday party.

Here's what Beijing looked like, by the way, on the day of our return (Monday):





We love you, Beijing!

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

RETROSPECTIVE: The group


From Kevin Reitz.

Monday, April 20, 2009

WEEKEND ROUNDUP: Jeju

A successful trip! Big Brother got in on Friday night, played seven games over the weekend in absolutely perfect weather, partied like it was a Frisbee tournament on Sunday and escaped just before a monsoon cancelled all flights out of Jeju. Seriously, ours was the last flight out on Monday morning.

More (many more) details to come later.

And for the record, Big Brother's games:

Jeju - Furey, W 11-5
Soft Wood, W 11-6 (after trailing 5-2)
Xtacles, W 11-4
Huwa (Shanghai A), L 11-6

Kuru, W 11-0
Quarters: Kim Jon Illin', W 10-8
Semis: Dirty Old KUNTs (Korea A), L 13-8

Thursday, April 16, 2009

China Nationals website

Jeff Orcutt writing:

Hey everyone,

I hope everyone has cleared the weekend of the 16th and 17th of May since this year’s China Open (Nationals) is going to be awesome. After some technical difficulties we are ready to go live with our website. Please visit the site http://chinaupa.fiveultimate.com to get information from around China concerning Frisbee.

Captains should sign up and register their teams for China Nationals through this site. Please email orcutt.jeff@gmail.com or nationals09@chinaupa.com for detailed instructions.

Thanks guys and we all look forward to seeing you in May.

China Nationals Crew

大家好,

我希望每个人都已经清楚比赛将于五月十六号、十七号举行。今年的公开赛(全国赛)将会非常棒。在解决了一些技术难题后,我们的网站将投入使用。请登录http://chinaupa.fiveultimate.com 来收集国内外关于飞盘的信息。

队长们应该在这个网站上注册,并且为他们的队伍报名参加今年的全国赛。详情与说明请致电邮到orcutt.jeff@gmail.com 或者nationals09@chinaupa.com

谢谢大家!我们都期待在五月见到你。

中国全国赛团队

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

RETROSPECTIVE: Jeju retro


Jeju 2008, "Scandal"; Big Brother as Chinatown.

How will Beijing conquer Jeju this year? Stay tuned...

POSTSCRIPT: Jeju tournament, THIS WEEKEND.

Monday, April 13, 2009

WEEKEND ROUNDUP: Kickball!

The gregarious Candice Lee invited about 100 friends or so to a six-team kickball tournament on Saturday, which she organized as part of her birthday party, and it ended up being about as pretty as you'd expect a kickball tourney with eight kegs of beer, and vodka.



Kevin Reitz takes it from here...

The tournament itself was fun enough, but some obvious contributing factors led to a few inevitable problems.

Factors:
  1. Eight kegs of beer. We finished them all and the heat from the day left a lot of people drunker than maybe they normally would be.
  2. No one really remembers how to play kickball. We've all played it at one point, but rules are subject to debate.
  3. Most people were more interested in beer than kickball.
Problems:
  1. Every game was argued pretty intensely. There were some pretty heated emotions and sometimes tended toward no longer being fun.
  2. The huge amount of beer and vague understanding of the rules led to some fights. Nothing serious, and everyone ended up friendly again, but it was just kinda lame.
  3. Wrestling.

No one knows what happened to members of the Beijing Ultimate community as they dispersed afterwards and ended up at places like Luga's, Tun, and the pit of despair.

Friday, April 10, 2009

WEEK IN REVIEW: The Tianjin Ultimate event

TIANJIN -- Manure is part nitrogen, part phosphorus pentoxide and part potassium oxide. The composition ratio depends on the type of manure -- farm yard manure, compost manure (a rural and urban variety), green manures, sewage and sludge, oil cakes, bone meal, sheep and goat droppings, Nickelback albums... just to name a few -- but for the sake of simplicity, we'll focus on three elements: nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium. Together in fertilizer, they are sometimes expressed as N-P-K. These are the building blocks of manure, and they are, in isolation and proper proportion, excellent sources of food for the soil, like nature's vitamin. (You will remember from high school biology that the nitrogen cycle involves ammonification of compost and living detritus by bacteria and fungi, followed by nitrification to produce nitrites and nitrates that yield nitrogen (N2) into the atmosphere while feeding it back into plants and animals. Manure, essentially, helps plants soak up atmospheric nitrogen in a process called nitrogen fixation, thus feeding both the soil and itself.) Phosphorus, a desiccant, purifies the soil while potassium facilitates absorption; working in tandem, they set up nitrogen like a pair of practiced eunuch wingmen.

Now, that said, it all still smells an awful lot like shit.

Ergo, should never, ever be used near a sports field.

Manure is best utilized on grass, but there was none in the gray, drab, utterly depressing conurbation of concrete and construction dust that was Tianjin. A man could set foot in the city and lose his soul. An extraterrestrial scout may land in this dustbin and figure Earth another asteroid, devoid of cause for salvation. This is where spirits go to die, like the lone gray grassland wolf with its tail between its legs, sniffing talus and rimrock, having traversed a desert flaked with the seed and saliva of the deceased. Never mind that there was no green grass -- there wasn't even green artificial grass, as the turf was mostly covered with black rubber pebbles -- artificial manure. Slick and hazardous. The "grass" fields were awash in yellow, with large blotches of black, like tarmac, probably due to Chinese New Year's fireworks. Surely no groundskeeper was fertilizing this area, since they didn't even bother cleaning it up. What, then, could have been the source of the stench?

And I assure you, it was as foul a stench as they come.

I submit to the panel three possibilities:

1. Pit gas poisoning. Pit gas poisoning describes the release of hydrogen sulfide gas, produced through manure degradation, into the atmosphere in excess quantities. If you've smelled sulfide gas -- think rotten eggs mixed with curdled milk -- you know this isn't pretty.

2. A large pit of filth and excrement situated directly underneath the turf field where the showcase games were played, connected via pipes or tunnels to smaller pits and repositories underneath the school's squat toilets. This is actually the most likely scenario.

3. A game of farting one-upsmanship between Joe and Jeff taken beyond its natural conclusion. Or, simply: gaseous brinksmanship. This, incidentally, is why nuclear states are so worried about rogue states like North Korea possessing atomic warheads: because lunatics control them. Mutally assured destruction? Deterrence? Forget it. One fart and the world goes KABLOOEY.

The after-party was good, though. I will let the pictures and videos (they'll be up as soon as China re-unblocks YouTube, I promise) speak for themselves. Just know there was good food, then battle caps, then announcements, then guys taking off their shirts for, it seemed, little to no reason, then Yin taking off her shirt, then Jeff's China Nationals announcement, which he was only allowed to give after he took off his shirt -- after much hesitation, mind you -- and -- the cause of the hesitation -- noticing two strips of bandaids covering his nipples, ripped them off like a man. He did not whimper or wince, or if he did I, along with everyone, was too mired in laughter to notice.

Someone from Air Kazak stood and -- shirt off, of course, because half-nakedness was our version of the conch -- announced to the room that Kazak only had 10 players at this tournament so maybe they underperformed, but come China Nationals, "We're going to have a surprise for you." The Tianjin players, sitting in a roundtable next to ours but opposite from Kazak, only smiled. (I have Tianjin pegged as the favorites, by the way.)

Then there were disc races, the first one won by the team of Joe Pellicano and Jason Lippman -- barely -- over Shanghai's Phil Wiese and Phil's partner. This went on for a while. Again, videos will surface later.

All in all, a successful tournament. Edward Wang -- tournament director -- was the star of the show, and befitting a star, he chugged at least one full bottle of beer at the after-party -- shirtless, of course -- this on top of the beer he drank at lunch (yes, they served beer at lunch, along with pretty delicious box meals) and all the drinking he did afterwards, much of it prompted by Beijing's Jim Kirchhoff. We're not entirely sure what became of Edward, but if he survived the night, we'll see him at China Nationals in about a month.

This last paragraph was written while on a wine buzz and I absolutely, positively cannot think of a witty/good way of ending this post.

China Ultimate's coverage of the tournament here.

Thursday, April 9, 2009

A quick recap of the Tianjin tournament


All-female 2v2 disc race at the after-party; photo via Mike Shyu

This post is reposted on the China Ultimate blog.

We're still in the process of collecting information for the official recap of this past Saturday's Tianjin tournament, but here were the key happenings:

Shanghai Huwa -- an abridged version led by Jon Greenberg -- won the A pool, beating ISB, Tianjin Waiyuan, Beijing Bang and Tianjin Speed.

Beijing Big Brother won the B pool (though word was Beijing was the No. 1 overall seed), consisting of Changsha (长沙, a Tianjin/Qingdao mix), Teda (with some Dalian players and foreigners), Air Kazak and Tianjin Speed Up.

The pool winners met in the finals. Shanghai jumped out to a 2-1 lead before the teams engaged in a long fourth point that saw two goal line turnovers and an injury (Beijing's Tao -- okay, me -- as he tried changing directions on an in-cut). Shanghai took half at eight and extended its lead to 9-6 before Big Brother clawed back with three unanswered points. An energized (or intoxicated) murmur wormed its way through the crowd -- chilled by a brisk wind on a suddenly cloudy evening -- but the suspense quickly ended when Shanghai scored the next two to win 11-9.

Beijing Bang won the Spirit Award and, like Shanghai, got a trophy out of which they drank beer. Shanghai's players also each received a Frisbee and a municipal government official-signed/endorsed certificate in the form of a red card.

Pictures here.

Tuesday, April 7, 2009

RETROSPECTIVE: Dolla dolla!


Shanghai 2008, "Conspiracy"; Big Brother as Monopisparacy.

Monday, April 6, 2009

WEEKEND ROUNDUP: Tianjin

Congrats to Shanghai for winning 11-9 over Beijing. More later.

Friday, April 3, 2009

WEEK IN REVIEW: Beijing Ultimate's newest face

HINT: It's not Doc Tobin.



Quoting from February 22 at 4:37 a.m.:

so the story goes...in order to get to the year 3000, one must actually catch his plane. and he replies, "yes yes but what is modern convention for a post modern man who is a writer nonetheless?" who can argue with idealistic artistic rhetoric except that the registration went on and the writer let his disappointment feed into a novel that will go to win the hearts of modern men...some of whom actually happened to go to that registration party where everyone had the best time ever and no one missed the writer at all, even with his choice of monochromatic fashion. well there were two people that missed the writer...one was in the corner waiting for a map and the other couldn't remember where she was but definitely remembered that a threesome with a christian and her husband or doc and a random asian would be quite fine.

The two love making comments on each other's Facebook photos, but the best -- most notable, I mean, or perhaps funniest, or sublime, or worthy -- series of comments, by far, was the one to the following picture --



-- which I reproduce in a screen grab below:

Thursday, April 2, 2009

All aboard the Tianjin party bus

Beijing has a thing with party buses...

From Jeff Orcutt:

Hey everyone,

Are you ready for some great disc this weekend? Just in time for another round of warm weather is the Tianjin tournament.

Meet for the party bus at 7am at DZM and in the evening we will be starting the trek back at around 11 or 11:30. So we have a full day of disc and partying in front of us.

Games start at 10am and the fee for the tournament is 80 RMB. The bus should be around 50RMB per person which, if you have gone with us to TJ before, you know is insanely cheap.

If you are not sure if you are on the bus please contact your captains for more information.

Hope to see you all out there in your Saturday best!