Sunday, April 22, 2007 

Streatham Common Kite Day 2007

Sun Kite

Saturday, April 21, 2007 

Neighbourhood Weird Watch 3

Name: Bjorn (real name unknown)
Location: Westminster Bridge, Saturday 21st April 2007, 3.15pm.
Description: A bloke standing on Westminster Bridge shouting "The Thames should be blue not brown!"

Bjorn
  • Skill - 1/5 (He just about managed to write a sign)
  • Style - 3/5 (Interesting facial hair)
  • Danger - -1/5 (He looks in danger of getting a punch)
  • Context - 4/5 (This is a pretty absurd way to spend a lovely Saturday afternoon)
  • Overall - 1.75/5
Not sure who he thought should actually dye the Thames blue or how, but he kind of has a point... or not. Oh I dunno - he's just a weird!

Tuesday, April 10, 2007 

Paganello 7: Lets do one (Monday and Tuesday)

We had just one game remaining against an American team L.B. Stalkers, win this and we get an odd number finish, top of the bottom half.

It was a really good close game, which to'd and fro'd between the two teams. However, throughout this tournament, we have had the tendency to win in these situations. We dug deep and won the game! It was great to finish the tournament on a high and 25th (our original seeding - so was it a waste of time? :P )

Following the game we "hung out" with the other team for ages having a laugh, especially with the bloke who "won the party" the night before :P Throughout the week our calls were quite imaginative. We had one inspired by the Gladiators Duel with the pugel sticks but using punch balloons with the contenders standing on one leg :) they then had to put the other person off balance by hitting them in the face with the balloon. We also played Show using a banana and even the infamous Bangernuts also made a couple of appearances. Here is John getting a face full of punch balloon:

Gladiators

Eventually we got some beers and went to enjoy / spectate / heckle at the finals. And there was plenty to cheer for, with two (ahem) "British" teams in the finals. I think our chanting helped quite a lot, as Cake or Death won the Women's Final and UTI beat No-Tsu-Oh (remember them?) to win the Open final.

After the presentation ceremony, and our moment on stage, we shot back to the hotel and back out to the Rose and Crown, as this is traditionally the Brits go here on the last night. I was rather tired of pizza and pasta so I had a glorious steak :) I'm surprised that Italians are so healthy - they just eat carbs and protein for every single meal, there is no five-a-day, (unless you count tomatoes). It was consistently good food, but variety is in short supply - I mean who has ham and cheese for breakfast?!

We were out till about 4:30 and wandered back. 4 hours later and its time to do one. All the while in Rimini I must not have left a 2km strip a block wide. So much for seeing Italy :P Its only when I got to the airport and saw off into the hills you realise what else is going on.

Overall it was a great tournament and bags of fun!

Monday, April 09, 2007 

Paganello 6: Slow start, late finish. (Sunday)

It was a slow start with a sore head on Sunday morning against local rivals Flyght Club. As most of their players were drunk we won easily 14 - 6. This set us up with our biggest match of the tournament, against Ischte Bros, our last chance to get into the top 24 and play for 17th. Unfortunately though we didn't really seem to "arrive" for the match and subsequently lost the game. Ah well, all was not lost - we still had 25th to play for (our original seeding) and we certainly didn't want to fall short of that.

We faced another UK team Milf, won 12 - 6, and then defeated Team 42 in sudden death 11 - 10. We finished our last game at about 8 pm, warmed down, got food, and fell into bed around 12ish.

Sunday, April 08, 2007 

Paganello 5: How? Why? Hollywood! (Saturday)

As a result of yesterdays games we set ourselves the daunting task of winning the next four in a row, five if you include the crossover itself. Basically, on Saturday we won our three games :D

EMO 12 - 8 Hallunken (German)
EMO 10 - 6 ZUF (Swiss)
EMO 9 - 7 Hook

After the games I had to rush back so that I could make my costume for the Saturday night party. If there is one thing that EMO excel at it's faffing. We are also good at mincing and procrastinating. So me and Russ decided to develop an anti-faff policy, and it worked! I picked up some cardboard from the supermarket and made, to be fair, a poor quality costume - sorry guys. But it did only take 10 minutes to make and Maggers nearly cut my hand off with a pen knife :S

The theme was Hollywood, which we took literally and dressed up as the infamous sign. It was rather amusing wandering through town (in the correct order of course) and rearranging to make other silly words. See the montage, oooh:

Hollywood Montage

So after taking a whole bunch of photos we went to the party itself. The band were odd to say the least. They started as a Rocky Horror Show tribute and played Time Warp about three times. Then they changed to classic rock which was much better.

Other teams had dressed up as A Clockwork Orange, Ghost Busters, Pirates of the Caribbean etc. It was great to see that most teams had made an effort. I found out the next day that Russ spent part of the night dressed in just a feather boa. I don't know whether to be pleased or disappointed I missed it...

Saturday, April 07, 2007 

Paganello 4: Highs, Mediums, Lows. (Friday)

So today the tournament actually begins, and as luck would have it we had an easy warm up match against title holders No-Tsu-Oh (Houston backwards - geddit?) :S In the spectator arena no less :S :S

What followed was one of the best frisbee matches I have had the pleasure to play in. No-Tsu-Oh started on O, meaning they had the disc, and we were trying to stop them scoring. In front of a considerable crowd and against considerable odds Si got the D and then hucked it to Rob in the endzone! The crowd went wild and so did the team as we stormed the pitch to congratulate ourselves! For that one point we were effectively winning Paganello...

No-Tsu-Oh didn't look back as they proceeded to beat us 15-6 :P Not before I scored though :D I celebrated in customary "salkswagon" fashion for about five minutes (after the game they awarded me a MVP prize for it - they gave me a houstonist t-shirt which is pretty cool).

I don't think any of us had delusions about beating them, but I think we all enjoyed the game. Its not often you get to play teams of this standard, let alone go 1-0 up :) It transpires later that we scored more points against them than a European team called seXXXpensive in their semi final, which is pretty cool.

Our next game was far less memorable despite beating Swiss team "Wombats" (13-8) but this set us up for our next game against fellow Brits "OW!". If we win this game we break into the top 24. Unfortunately for us OW! played pretty well and made very few errors. The final score was 15-5.So a day of highs, mediums and lows but still plenty to play for over the next few days. If we win our next four games, we get a chance to recover back into the top 24...

The evening was spent at a pizzeria with the team. I busied myself trying to create nicknames for the new guys, simply because I kept getting their real names mixed up. So Al became "Spoon", Sam became, "Drew Peacock" and Rob became "Rab" (which didn't stick). The party at the big-top was pretty quiet so we set about letting everyone know where EMO are from:

sign post

Friday, April 06, 2007 

Paganello 3

Missed breakfast, and for some reason Maggers slept in the hall way of the hotel. We waited for the rest of the team to show up.

Being a much nicer day than yesterday we hit the beach and pretty much just minced about.

The evening was spent at the opening party, within a huge big top which had been erected on the beach. I was taking it easy because of the two previous nights efforts, but the rest were happy to consume vast quantities of manky free red wine. This meant lots of messy drunks, wrestling on the beach and a huge danger of ending up with purple clothes :S

On the plus side there was a belly dancing show, fireworks and a strange drama performed by people on stilts. I think the good guy won. Something exciting happened anyway.

It was nice to have the whole team together looking forward to playing the games. Especially our first match (in the spectator arena) against title holders No-Tsu-Oh. Dun Dun Durrr!

Thursday, April 05, 2007 

Paganello 2: Snacky, Nookie, Timmy (Wednesday)

So I avoided the drizzle on Wednesday morning in the amusment arcade, franticlly writing a blog-post and watching the guys play a surreal game involving bongos and ghosts. Tom managed to win enough tokens for a pack of cards.

As suspected, we ended up visiting the bar we had been to the day before, and along the way we picked up some other frisbee players (Bob, Gash and Felix). The free snacks this time had soft cheese and garlic bread thrown into the mix. Then, whilst sitting in the bar playing cards, we were entertained by the very talented Italian version of David Blaine :P He amazed us with his horrendously bad magic tricks and somewhat slow slight of hand, and was amazed himself when Maggers figured out how he had performed the tricks.

After this we needed more substantial food. I had Gnochi (pronouced nookie) in what turned out to be a gay bar :S Wasn't expecting that.

Later on me and Maggers found our hotel, had a quick power nap before going out again to the Rose and Crown. Had a bite to eat and far far too much to drink. I also got a massive wedgy from the Super Manschaft guys - those pesky kids! We played a couple of rounds of a drinking game called "Kings" and "Johnny, Noddy, Timmy" which was very amusing and considerably confused the locals (i'll put up the pictures when I get back).

Wednesday, April 04, 2007 

Paganello 1: Touch down, Rose and Crown (Tuesday)

I am in Rimini, Italy for the Paganello Beach Ultimate Championship with East Midlands Open. It starts in a couple of days, finishing on Easter Monday.

I touched down yesterday morning with Maggers and Tom, along with a couple of frisbee teams. Me and Maggers made the error of not booking somewhere to stay for the first night we were here, so stayed in the same hotel as the great guys from "Super Manschaft".

Yesterday, myself, Maggers and Tom went in search of our hotel for the rest of the week, but got bored and hit a bar. Which was amazing because we got loads of free snacks :D The more we drinks we ordered the better the snacks became. We had crisps, nuts, olives, mini pizzas and some smelly cheese too! Tom put the smelly cheese in his pocket though because he didn't want to offend the nice bar man, as he was obviously quite proud of his snacky gifts. He even made the best of a car alarm by dancing to it. Something tells me we will be frequent customers there this week. Even if just to see what interesting snacks we might get :)

Already quite drunk, we went in search of food and had pizza. This might sound predictable, but the main strip in Rimini is simply made up of hotels and pizzerias. We were living it up in the Italian version of Eastborne and loving it!

So, obviously we went on to your typical Italian pub. Wrong. Established in 1964 the "Rose and Crown" is the first English style pub in Italy (I wonder if there is an Italian themed pub in Eastborne?). It was a cosy affair, familiar English bears and footy on the telly. Tom and Maggers set about losing at darts to the locals. They soon gave up and decided to try their luck against a couple of yanks. They were an "interesting" pair to say the least. Neil, a waiter from Seattle, is an aspiring freestyle frisbee player, here for the World Freestyle Championships which is held alongside the beach tournement. He told me EVERYTHING he knew about the Paciffic Rim. The older guy, from Boston, was a poet who used to play in the NBA, and his son is the current World Freestyle Champion. He blew my mind with his rhyming theories on paralell dimensions :)

Then, while the house band performed, Nathan and Tate from Super Manschaft turned up. They were thouroughly ashamed of our drunken state, and we regailled them with our adventure so far. Again. And again. And agian. Mostly about the free snacks.

So, to the slotties! I disgraced myself on the dance mat game, which Nathan recorded for posterity and my shame. Thanks. I was dancing like I was posessed by the spirit of Mick Jagger! A few woeful attempts at a driving game (Don't drink and drive. Really - don't!) and we ran home becasue Maggers did and that made some sort of strange sense at the time. We lost Tom who went in serach of "Mangina Pizza Parlour" or some such fast food place.

I crashed into bed and slept. Until I was woken by the sound of the Earth shifting to due to Toms almighty snoring. I woke up feeling bright and cheery, went down stairs for breakfast, the usual continetal affair. I stocked up on packets of chocolate spread :)

P.s. Its raining today so I have found internet access in an amusement arcade.You type in a special code and stick some money in the slot. A little warning pops up when you are about to run out of time, which I missed, so this is the second time I have typed this out. D'oh! For some reason its never as good at the second attempt, apologies for that and my spelling errors due to frantic typing!

Sunday, April 01, 2007 

Yeti spotted in the fridge!

This is not a hoax! A strange creature has been spotted in my fridge....

Yeti in the fridge

Scientists suggest it could be one of the following:
Other boffins reckon because it has just one eye it might be a bit Cyclops-y as well!

Stranger still, he answers to the name Boris and won't let me near my Kopperberg!