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The Hong Kong Asia Open, November 4-5 2000
HONG KONG 2000: Ultimate, English Frat Boys and the "Hard, Hard, Hard Cap" PT Discindo Roster: (1-4 record, party 2nd place) Jonathon Simon PLUS The Discindo Organized Boosters Incorporated (DOOBI): Discindo All Tournament Team (Lifetime Discindo membership conferred): J-rad So Discindo " the sexiest team in Southeast Asia " went to Hong Kong. On our trip we learned: That a SAR is not a bony Jurassic fish; the real meaning of the word FILTH (to find out for yourself, we recommend Carnegie’s bar in Wan Chai on any given Saturday night); that not only Barry Dols can get injured. Most of the crew had gathered in high spirits by Friday night (along with Kate Linebaugh) at the "fishbowl" table in a classic Chinese restaurant " florescent lighting, brusque "what-you-want" staff, pretty good eats (ah, the gracious service of the East). Kimberly Road, home to the official tournament hotel, may just be the neon capital of HK. The big city esthetics were a nice change. After one of Discindo’s renowned plain rice and water training meals, we retired without histrionics " saving it up for the big day " with four games and a party to win on the morrow. Three fairly sweet fields and a brisk 75 degrees. We started brightly against Hong Kong C, which played the "who’s man was that?" defense familiar to anyone who’s been in one of our Sunday pickup games. Jonathon Simon established his position as the preeminent puller of the tournament, we capitalized on their mistakes, and scored early and often, winning 7-4 at the cap (but it wasn’t even that close.) Captain Marcus "Throw from the Knees" Valle was so discouraged by events that he defected to the humorless HK A team for Sunday’s final. On to Shanghai, which turned the tables thanks to playing only one woman on half their points. Since some of their men were in skirts we couldn’t complain. Not a bad effort from Discindo, but our errors mounted and we went down about 7-4. If we could have kept Alfa Singkoh, Agnes Safford and Bader on the field more often this could have been different. Cheer? Ed Pressman’s Manifesto, "So You Say You Want a Cultural Revolution." Then on to Singapore’s statistically precise Ang Mo Freakshow. Though this game was predictably won by the Singaporeans, we scored four goals (an improvement) thanks to the charitably porous zone the Show tried to run against us. Joel and Jonathon shredded this sucker with dumps and swings, and Barry Dols re-found his touch with drilled forehands into the gaps up-field. Greg Feldberg’s cuts began to improve here " next time out the boy’s gonna catch a lot of goals. Our relative success in this one was also down to a strategic marking of territory and lekking display by Discindo prior to the game. Talk about intimidation. After another monstrous Simon pull, Murphy puts a hard mark on Singapore captain Dennis "don’t call me lim" Hu, prefacing the stall with the by-now famous "the force is urine." Says Dennis: "That’s gross man" then follows up with one of his 2.3 throwaways for the whole tournament (I bought Singapore’s non-playing travelling statistician a drink after the game to pry out that little nugget of information). They were so impressed that they gave us their first cheer in three-and-a-half years (the only stat that Discindo keeps). To be fair, it was a pretty good cheer. For tyros. So they beat us, but we were looking forward to the Star Fairy’s of Hong Kong " a team which refers to itself as the "Discindo of the North" and for whom Kate Linebaugh now prefers to play. Whatever. They cheated, the disc was warped, they refused to share their make-up. We lost the game after five injuries (multiple leg cramps for Joel Rubin, Ed Pressman and Dan Murphy), and some sloppy handling. But we looked good doing it. New addition Christine Bader saved Jakarta pride with her first songwriting credit woven around " "Star Fairies, you got lots of tutus and Discindo? We got lots of booboos." As it happened, we were to get a rematch with this team " later that evening. I’ll start with the bad news: The streak is finally, unequivocally over. We did not win the party and there are no grounds for protest. By three AM, we’d dusted off 99% of the players at the tournament " dancers were down to Dan, Ed, Dion, Kate Linebaugh, HK B’s Noemi, HK C’s Marcus "Got enough game to play with Discindo" Valle and Singapore’s Will "What was he thinking?" Oswald. Having run on the assumption that Kate was playing the party with Jakarta, we thought it was all wrapped up. Then Kate devastated us, reporting that "she’d never felt love like she feels from HK" and to "take it on the chin and move on." The party venue was an interesting anthropological experience. Pressman put it best: "A DKE frat party with British accents." But the Ultimate players, from all teams, made it happen. (But next time we travel with team DJ Simon Montlake). So there we were. Kate’s defection left us with a tie at 1500 hours. I scrambled for answers, asking myself: "What would Gary Kasparov" do? Puff himself up and offer a draw, of course. At 1530h I turn to Noemi, put my best poker face on and tell her "we can stop the madness right here. We call it a draw, face is served and nobody has to get hurt." Noemi " the best thing Quebec has going for it now that it’s lost the Nordiques " calls. "No way: Your bald friend is about to crack," she says. Five minutes later Ed cashes it in, combined HK B and C take the party (in Ed’s defense he fought like a lion all day and was injured). We can salvage a little pride by using the UPA’s experimental Party Power Rating (the percentage of dancers remaining from a team multiplied by the number of hours the dancing took place after midnight). Our PPR was an untouchable 99, compared with HK’s 50 and Singapore’s 36 (through no fault of Will’s). If we factor HK A’s roster into Hong Kong’s overall PPR, the SAR’s rating plummets to a truly abominable 30 (But who’s counting?). Unfortunately, the HK party was not played under these rules. We fervently hope the organizers will adopt this more equitable system next year. On Sunday, with no male subs and only three women, we were reduced to running the oft-imitated "Modified Senayan Zone" with the hobbled Joel Rubin in the "deep, deep, deep" coverage role. Fortunately, we convinced a local kid to chase Joelie around with an IV, so this worked out pretty well. Dan "If you have to throw it away, might as well throw it away with the hammer" was relieved of his handling duties, and this seemed to help. We had a pretty good game with Beijing, but fatigue played a large role, and we lost again at the ridiculous time cap 7-5 after trading points for the first half of the game, then fading. Joelie ripped down the last goal of the game at least, Alfa, Christine and Agnes somehow managed to keep running hard, as did Kacang Marterer, who, energizer bunny-fashion, was turning the legs of opponents into Jello. It seemed like a big run was in the offing. Then some idiot blew the Shofar and HK bullied the Beijing sidelines into calling it quits at the cap so they could get their mandatory 15 minutes of warm-ups in before playing the winner of our game. The fun loving Honkies then bageled Beijing before going on to beat Singapore in the finals, giving awards out only to participants in the finals, and starting a new tradition by forgetting to have a "Spirit Award." Discindo, counter-revolutionaries that we are, humbly nominate Shanghai (those shirts, those beads, that hair!) the hard-working Manila Vice Squad, who made a long anticipated appearance, and the star fairys, who beat us at out own game, to share best spirit. Seconds?
Who Fed the LSD to LKY? Comrades: An intrepid if slightly attenuated band paid it's fiscal rip-off tax and boldly went to Singapore to play Ultimate, drink Starbucks coffee, and shop at Borders on Sept. 16 and 17. We challenge you to have more fun in the Lion City without a) feeding LSD to LKY, b) chewing gum, smoking a cigarette and drinking a Big Gulp on the MRT all at the same time, or c) feeding LSD to LKY. Can’t be done. Friday night was a low key affair. An informal gathering of Discindo and groupies at the Penny Black, the "Authentic Pre-Fabricated Victorian Pub, Batteries Not Included" on Boat Quay, then a dispersal, some of the boys and girls on to the Velvet Underground, intrepid captain Dan on to the Friday night captain's party, something which IN NO WAY was connected to the fact he knew he could weasel free beer. Ed Pressman and Bill were also there to provide moral support. The Frisbee gods were very good to us, and we found that our first game was not until 1030 the next morning. The shortish fields were at the Sijori Resort on Sentosa Island (you know, the place where they used to keep that democracy activist in a cage) in the shadow of Singapore's majestic Merlion (which is, I might add, the largest Merlion in the world). So there we were, the generously provided free bagels still clinging to the corners of our mouths, waiting for the pull from Black Jack and Crazy Disc, Taiwan's national team fresh off of coming in dead last at Worlds in Germany. However, they also defended their world championship in GUTS (basically kill the man with the Frisbee. If you've ever done business with the Taiwanese, you'd know why they excel). World champion Michael Hu hucks the disc further than you've ever seen. Nevertheless, we felt up to the challenge, and worked the disc patiently, ed, dan, bill and clay and Barry Dols (A Jakarta alumnus, Southeast Asia man of adventure, and automobile crash survivor) spreading out the handling duties -- then (shock, horror) we turned it over, they hucked it and scored. Pulled. Same sequence of events, and it took the wind out of our sails. They were younger, fitter, and much better drilled. They even had PLAYS (the cheaters), and one of their two non-Taiwanese players was a pain in the ass ex-member of New York New York, which won five world titles in the early 90s. They ran us out 11-3. Not pretty. (MORAL VICTORY. Our cheer to them: "Black Jack, your team was team was pretty fun, but since you hit 11, lets double down and play to 21." This was a very clever gambling pun. Their cheer? Some Taiwanese drinking song, same as they gave everybody else. Suckers. Game, set, match Discindo.) No rest for the wicked, and we were on to Singapore's C team, called, oddly "Economist Conferences" (the barefoot longhair godfathers of the game would not be amused). Looked an easy game on paper for us, but we were shaken by the pasting from game one. In what became a pattern, we let them get up on us early 3-1 before we buckled down. Our defense was smothering and we were the much better team, but continually threw it away, particularly near the endzone. Many long, swilly points, but in the end we outgunned them 11-7. Our women started to come through in this game, particularly Agnes Safford. The win was a huge relief, particularly given what lurked ahead us -- Singapore A, Ang Mo Freak Show. (Again, we out-cheered them. I remember that Ed Pressman found a rhyme for "conferences" and they laughed like hell, but forget the details.) We were exhausted from our second game and perhaps a little intimidated, and we let the Freak Show jump all over us. Again, 11-2 or 11-3. It was an upwind, downwind game in which we could have performed better, but never won. We were too tight for our own good and learned from the experience. On top of everything else they had a rotation of 18 players. The Singapore team of the moment is the best team that Asia ex-Japan has probably seen. (Actually, I believe in the twelfth edition rules of ultimate we won that game, since we never received a cheer in return. This was no doubt due to the fact that this cheer was probably our best effort of the tournament -- to the tune of "all of me" maestro: "Singapore
The beauty of the tournament was that everybody got to be the bully sometimes, and shortly after the coup de grace from the Freak Show, we had botanical gardens, the worst team in Singapore. I have to admit gleefully kicking a little sand in their faces. I might have even shown the disc. And don't deny it, Bill: I saw that gleem in your eye as you hucked long again and again. Jay Solomon, who got stronger with every game, started to come on, Kate Linebaugh made her presence felt with teasing backhands into the endzone, and I believe andre got onto the scoresheet for the first time (a scoresheet, btw, that was diligently maintained by player/statistician Agnes Safford.) Crushing Jakarta victory 11-2. (They were a pretty cool bunch through -- our cheer? A clay carroll inspired rewrite of the mod Devo hit "Whip it." Brian M. supplied the riding crop, which he apparently never leaves home without.)
beachside at Sunset Bay, with a surprisingly good reggae band... but which PT Discindo was forced to play under protest, due to the inadequate availability of performance enhancing substances. Sheesh, I thought you could get anything in singapore? But play on we did. Most of the usual crew dropped out about two in the morning. To Discindo's credit, we did buy a few bottles of tequila and spread the love around to our competitors, particularly to Bangkok, whom we had in the quarterfinals the next morning. And certainly no team out-danced us. The only player making a special effort was Kate Linebaugh, who stayed out past four, stole a sea kayak, braved the oil laden waters of the Singapore Strait, and still played like hell the next day. As always, our party MVP. On to the quarters against Bangkok, the Soi Dawgz, a team we matched up well against but that has a little more experience. As usual, we spotted them a large lead just to be sporting -- 6-1 at halftime, after which we pulled to them, and let them go up 7-1. Then something happened, it was like the whole team was channeling Jack Molyneux -- every cut crisp, every throw on the money, suffocating defense with layout bids on both end of the fields. We would not go quietly, they were going to pay with blood for every other point they took off of us. No one to be singled out here, as the kind of defense we played can only be done by a team. Perhaps Alfa, who was a presence in the middle of the field and caught two of the goals in an amazing 8-3 Discindo run (Ed and statistician Agnes inform me) in the second half, which got us to 10-9, in a game to 11, must win by two. Simon Montlake, truly blooded in the crucible of tournament pressure for the first time, also imposed himself on this game. They start to march it up field, looking formidable, but our defense is giving them very little on the deep cuts, they get impatient and go for a quick 20 yards underneath AND ITS POACHED by a Discindo player, who spots an open Brian Marterer all alone in the endzone. This is the big moment, tie the score and Bangkok unravels. The player loads up for the big inside out huck and DRILLS IT into a bangkok player. They punched it into the endzone a few throws later and it was all over. Heartbreaking, but the best we played all weekend. Both teams collapsed into a loose circle in the middle of the field and thanked each other for the game. As an addendum, Bill, Dan, Brian and Andrew picked up with Botanical in their consolation game, and helped that team to their only victory of the weekend, which thrilled them no end. So, we came in fifth out of nine teams at the tournament and had
an outstanding time. |
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