T-shirt #62: Nightwing

T-shirt #62: Nightwing

Brace yourself. I am going to reveal one of those opinions that may rock your world. You may brand me as blasphemous or completely out of touch with reality. But here it is anyway.

I like Nightwing better than Batman.

Those of you who are not comic book fans or only have the most casual interest and limited experience with comics, are probably asking "who?" right now. "Who the Hell is Nightwing?"

Comic book fans are surely crying foul, especially since Batman is one of the most loved super heroes in the history of comics, revered in the grand pantheon of stars alongside the likes of Superman and Spider-Man.

And yet, there, I said it. Let me qualify a bit. As a character, I prefer Nightwing. I cannot argue against Batman's superiority with many of the aspects one would use to make such a judgment of heroic quality. Batman's story is one of the very best in all of comics. Batman has cool gadgets. Batman has had rigorous training. Batman suffers and has compelling pathos (though one could argue for pathos as worthy with Nightwing, Spider-Man, the Punisher, and a host of others).

Batman has also been written dozens of different ways. So, the assessment of his character must include a choice of which Batman to compare with Nightwing (or anyone). In my opinion, many writers have failed Batman. Some writers forget about Bruce Wayne. Since the Dark Knight Returns and Batman Year One era, many writers have made Batman too grim and gritty, too one-dimensional. It's always the same thing with him: he drives himself too hard, he doesn't eat right, he is inflexible, he is silent and deadly, he is not a family guy. Others who have taken on the stewardship of Batman have worked to round out his character by focusing a fair amount of attention on Bruce Wayne and telling stories that involve Batman's relationships with the people around him. And I do not mean the revolving cast of romantic interests since each new writer/artist team feels the need to invent some new woman for Bruce and/or the Bat. I mean the family: Alfred; all the Robins, which includes Nightwing; Jim Gordon, Batgirl/Oracle/Barbara Gordon, Helena Wayne, Talia, Catwoman, etc.


And this is one of the strengths of Nightwing: relationships. Nightwing has also had to struggle to define himself as he has forever been in Batman's shadow. Nightwing is more human, more caring, more imperfect than Batman.

I could write volumes about Nightwing and why I love him, but again, shortish though long for the blog.


Who is Nightwing? 

As the original Robin character, Richard "Dick" Grayson burst onto the comic scene in 1940. After being Batman's sidekick for many years, Dick Grayson/Robin broke away from the Dynamic Duo to pursue his own life and lead the Teen Titans. Dennis O'Neil and Neal Adams defined this era of Dick's life with stories involving him attending Hudson University with separate stories that ran in Detective Comics. Dick led the Teen Titans in the original set of ground breaking comics about young heroes published by DC from 1966-1976, which featured great stories by Bob Haney and Nick Cardy. These stories (both the Robin at college and the Teen Titans stories) are among my favorites in the history of comics.

But it was the revival comic, The New Teen Titans (1980), by Marv Wolfman and George Pérez that truly defined my love for this character. I loved him first as Robin and later when he quit being the boy wonder and assumed the name Nightwing. His new name was later explained as a Kryptonian urban legend, the name reflects Dick Grayson's dual homage to Superman and Batman. Though Nightwing was not featured in his own series until 1996, he was a main character on the DC landscape since changing his name in 1985 the class New Teen Titans issue pictured here. (And also one of my favorite sequences in comics as Dick strips off his Robin gear).

I followed all of Dick Grayson's various incarnations closely since the 1960s. In the late 1980s, I joined a fan organization that published an APA known as Titan Talk. An APA (Amateur Press Association) is periodical created by fans. Similar to fanzines, with an APA, members produce their own copies and pay a nominal fee to a collator, who assembles the book-sized periodicals, often multiple volumes, that are distributed to fans on a regular schedule, sometimes monthly or six times a year, whatever the fans wish. APAs and fanzines served the role of the Internet before the Internet existed. These publications were our chat boards and outlets for fan art, fan fiction, and fan revelry. In the late '80s and early '90s, I wrote a great deal of fan fiction, some of which went unfinished, that primarily featured my favorite character: Dick Grayson/Nightwing. My favorite such story was a "what if" type tale about Dick Grayson married to Donna Troy (Wonder Girl) and loosely based on a holiday episode of the TV show thirtysomething. I was what we call in the fan community a "Wingnut," IE a fan of Nightwing.

I am still a Wingnut and wear my Nightwing shirt with pride.

Some Nightwing resources follow.

Nightwing on Wikipedia

Nightwing: DC Comics Database

Dick Grayson on Wikipedia

Teen Titans on Wikipedia

The Many Costumes of Dick Grayson

Thoughts About Dick Grayson Tumblr

Nightwing Fan Page Facebook

Titans' Tower on Facebook

Nightwing Fan Fiction

The Nightwing Fan Club

- chris "Wingnut" tower - 1305.22 - 11:49

PS: Apparently, the movie that may spin off from The Dark Knight Rises (2012) may be about Nightwing.

PPS: Postscript note written 1310.27: Somehow I made a numbering error and so the T-shirt number in the URL for this entry is not accurate. But this is entry #62.

recent issue of Nightwing - April 2013

T-shirt #61: Replicant

T-shirt #61: Replicant: "You Blade Runner!"

Those who know me know that Blade Runner is one of my favorite movies of all time, and those who have spent any time with me know that the Vangelis soundtrack ranks as my number one favorite music, too. These people are probably sick to death of listening to the music of Blade Runner as I play it a lot.

So, when this "Replicant" shirt came through the Previews catalogue out of which I order my comic books and assorted merchandise through the great and awesome Fanfare Sports and Entertainment, I ordered one. A "replicant" is the movie name for the beings called androids in the book on which the film is based (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Philip K Dick). The replicants/androids serve only on off-world colonies as slave labor. Many escape to earth to find their creator and a solution to the fixed four-year lifespan. "Blade Runner" is also a term used (again only in the movie) to refer to the bounty hunters that  track these androids who have illegally emigrated to earth. I will not repeat the entire plot here. If you don't know the plot, you should watch the movie and read the recaps posted online.

There were many great films from my formative years that would appear on my list of favorites. Over the years, I have seen and loved so many films that I resist making just one list of favorites. I would prefer to make several lists, one for each genre, as I think it's unfair to match great comedies like The Big Chill and When Harry Met Sally against serious dramas, such as Citizen Kane or There Will Be Blood. Certainly, a fantastic film for its time period, like Imitation of Life, must be measured on a different scale from a science fiction genre piece, like The Abyss, or a superhero genre piece, like The Dark Knight. All these films should be rated using separate lists.

But if I was forced to make one list of my top ten favorite films, I would have to put Blade Runner on that list. In fact, I am not sure I can think of a single film that has had a greater effect on me as a writer, a story teller, than Blade Runner. When I calculate the impact of the music on my emotional state and individuality through the years, how many times I have listened to that music, let alone the number of times I have watched the film, read the script, studied the images, read the original book, thought about all of it, Blade Runner has had a greater impact on me as a creative person than any other media product.

I cannot claim that it is the film I have watched more times than any other film. One reason is that I have spent much of my life using films as a teaching tool, especially in media studies classes. Thus, I have seen Fatal Attraction and Pretty Woman as many times as Blade Runner (unfortunately). Also, as a teenager, I binged on visits to the theatre to see Star Wars, which I saw 36 times in its original run and at least a dozen times (and probably more) since then. When Blade Runner came out in 1982, I was in college and very preoccupied, and yet I still managed to see it a half dozen times in the theatre. You have to remember that 1982 was still prior to the truly accessible age of video tape rental or purchase, and so paying admission to see a film in the theatre was really the only way to see it until about 1983-84 when videos began to be sold or rented in small shops, and even so, I didn't own my own VCR until 1986.

I did have the pleasure of teaching Blade Runner along with the book Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep in several classes in the early years of my teaching career. But eventually, I moved on to films and books that lent themselves better to the course objectives and less to my own personal oeuvre. But I had a lot of fun with the subject matter as a teacher. Back when Blade Runner first came out, I studied all related materials. There were books of art work, a partial book, and both books and magazines devoted to describing and explaining the special effects. I also bought a copy of the shooting script from a script service in California, which was how one obtained unpublished scripts before the Internet existed. I studied all these materials with a great passion.

The film's aesthetics carried greater weight and impact (at least one me) than the film's story and certainly more so than the performances in it. The film combined the talents of concept artist Syd Mead with special effects by Douglas Trumbull and Richard Yuricich. Director Ridley Scott also added many elements both to the visualizations and the film's story and dialogue elements that enhanced the film's overall tone and atmosphere. Scott has referred to the film's landscape as "Hong Kong on a very bad day" and has cited source material, such as Edward Hopper's Nighthawks painting, art work by Europeans such as Moebius from the magazine Métal Hurlant ( known in America as "Heavy Metal"), as well as Fritz Lang's Metropolis film ("Blade Runner," Wikipedia, 2013).

According to the Wikipedia page for Blade Runner, Philip K. Dick ultimately approved of the David People's rewrite of the original script by David Fancher and the 20 minutes of SFX he was shown prior to his death. Dick said,

"I saw a segment of Douglas Trumbull's special effects for Blade Runner on the KNBC-TV news. I recognized it immediately. It was my own interior world. They caught it perfectly." Dick also approved of the film's script, and of it, he said, "After I finished reading the screenplay, I got the novel out and looked through it. The two reinforce each other, so that someone who started with the novel would enjoy the movie and someone who started with the movie would enjoy the novel."[41] The motion picture was dedicated to Dick ("Blade Runner," Wikipedia, 2013).

There are some great resources on the web dedicated to Blade Runner. One such resource was the 2019: Offworld site, which has gone into retirement (pun intended by the site's author; BR fans will get it). But I made the link work because there's still a page that archives a lot of Blade Runner content. From that site: "For people looking for extensive, organized Blade Runner sites, I recommend BRmovie.com and BladeZone. They are two of my favorites and are full of information and links. (And I always recommend checking out Wikipedia for entries, including theirs on Blade Runner.)"

Blade Runner continues to have impact on me today, after over 30 years. I could write volumes about my thoughts on this film. But I want to keep this blog post relatively short. But before closing, a couple more things.

Recently, I read a great book called Ready Player One, which had references to Blade Runner among many other references to favorite '80s media. This was a GREAT book, and if you love 1980s geeky media as much as I do (and even if you do not), you must read it. (Basically, everyone should read it.)

The music. I am crazy for the Blade Runner music. Though there are cuts I like more than others, and I listen to those in sorted, special playlists rather than the soundtrack and its arrangement. As a huge fan of the music, I had a difficult time waiting for it. The actual Vangelis music from the film was not released for over a decade. The first music released was a weird interpretation of the score by the New American Orchestra. Yes, I owned it. Yes, I listened to it MANY TIMES. The first authentic Vangelis release of the music came out in 1994 with a trilogy of CDs with the comprehensive music and soundtrack in 2007. I have listened repeatedly and religiously ever since.

Here's my favorite cut, the "Love Theme"

There's nothing better than this.

- chris tower - 1305.21 - 16:13

T-shirt #60: MUSL 2007 - Team Venom

T-shirt #60: MUSL 2007 - Team Venom

People in Ultimate usually fight over which team gets to be black. Even though the shirts can be beastly hot in the summer due to black's heat absorbing properties, people still fight over the black shirts.

As an aside, I did get some field burn as the photo below demonstrates. Also, these photos date from the era in which I had long hair. I was also still wearing the ace bandages I bought in 1990, which is ridiculous.




In 2007, I had the pleasure to be chosen to be part of a truly great summer league Ultimate team.

My good friend Andrew "Little" Hamilton drafted this insanely good team in the South Bend, or more specifically Michiana Ultimate Summer League (MUSL). Since no one really knew the Kalamazoo contingent, Little filled his team's roster with our car pool of folks coming down each week to play in South Bend.

Prior to 2007, only a few of us had played in South Bend and were "known" commodities. Our car pool to South Bend is the birth place of our Kalamazoo Ultimate Disc League as we asked the question: how come we don't start our own league? We all enjoyed the car rides together and our discussions, and yet in  2006, we formed our Kalamazoo league. Some of us continued to car pool down to MUSL once a week for a couple of years, though we all mostly bailed by 2008, preferring to stay close to home, which was the whole point of starting our own league.

Because the South Bend captains did not know well the talent level of the Kalamazoo players, Little was able to draft Jacob Meyers in the seventh round. In our Kalamazoo league, Jacob was drafted in the first round, and some captains considered him the first all-around pick out of all the players in the league. Like Jacob, all of the Kalamazoo players were under-valued and ranked much too low, and so Little was able to stack his team with top talent.

I am not top talent, and yet I was honored to be drafted on the team. I was probably Little's last or next to last pick. But he likes me, and we enjoy joking around, and he knows I make the occasional great throw or get a block, so I have my role and my uses. In the end, Little was wise to draft everyone, even his friend "Big," who was tournament only, because of what happened to Little in the Finals.



Surely, Little will remember the events of the tournament day better. He has an eidetic memory for Ultimate games, which is pretty impressive given how many he has played. I will try to recreate events as best as I can. I remember that tournament day was HOT, especially for August. The fields were dried barren scrub. Nearly all the grass was dead, and there were gnarly sections of field not really covered with grass at all.







We played our way into the finals. I remember throwing one sweet forehand for a score in the semi-finals. I ran well and made some plays.  In 2007, SIX YEARS ago, I was younger and running better than these days. No heavy hitter as an athlete, I held my own against my match ups for the most part.





And then the worst possible thing happened, just before half time in the Finals, our team down a couple of scores to a very tough South Bend team stacked with club players, Little collapsed in heap, having town his ACL. Our captain was out for the count and unable to keep playing.

Our team rallied, and we came from behind to win the finals and take the league championship. It's an impressive thing to have a team click like ours did, especially coming from behind to win the game and the tournament for our fallen captain. Little was overcome with emotion during the award ceremony. Not only did it mean a lot to him to beat his friends in MUSL and take a championship with his skill in captaining and playing Ultimate, but the way we played and won for him made a huge impact on my friend, Little, an me, too. It was a very emotional win for all of us.

This 2007 win at MUSL remains one of my favorite moments in all my twenty-nine years of playing Ultimate.

Thanks Little!

- chris tower - 1305.20 - 14:49

L-R Back row Chris Tower (me), Andy "Big" Momotiuk, Matt Bateman, Jacob Meyers, Sarah Spruitt, Ira Bilancio, Alex Momtiuk; SecondRow: Mya Hernandez, Danica Hernandez, Kyle Shelton, Ed Kenny; Front Row: Andy Brewbaker, Andrew "Little" Hamilton, Chris Young. (I may have a couple of these names wrong.)

T-shirt #59: KUDL T-shirt 2007

T-shirt #59: KUDL T-shirt 2007

I wanted a pink KUDL shirt for my 2013 team.

Last night, we held our KUDL (Kalamazoo Ultimate Disc League) draft, at which we select players for teams to achieve a well-balanced and all-inclusive league. We do some training for new and former captains, and we build our community with camaraderie, a kind of joking we call heckling, and good spirits. Friends. We are all good friends.

After we draft teams, we do a similar selection process for the color of each team's shirt. Once again we draw for order, and each pair of team captains gets to select a color.
For the first year since we switched from cotton shirts to the moisture-wicking shirts, pink is an available color choice in both women's sizes and, amazingly, in MEN'S sizes as well. As a fan of pink, I was hoping to snag it as your team color. But we drew the seventh pick of ten. Pink was chosen two picks before ours. "Stolen" from me in a blatant attempt to screw me over, which is part of our heckling camaraderie. I am not really upset (a little disappointed maybe), but  this subject is fodder for good-natured heckling all season long.

I do have a pink KUDL shirt, though. This one comes from our fall team in 2007 when we did a run of cotton shirts and were able to select pink as a color.

As for the pink moisture-wicking shirt, there's always next summer.

- chris tower - 1305.19 - 10:50
KUDL 2007 design by Ryan Walters

T-shirt #58: Grey Area

Grey Area - 2005

T-shirt #58: Grey Area - It's an age-related joke

Time for another Ultimate shirt.

This time it's Master's Ultimate.

Master's Ultimate is for players 33 years old and up.

I helped form this team, which we called Grey Area,



I pushed to form this team after attending a Regionals Tournament in Columbus in 2001. UPDATE 1306.15: I verified my records, and I am now fairly certain that the Regionals I write of here was in 2001.

My friend the "The Brewmaster" and I (Greg Kormelink, the guy holding the beer on the left in the above photo) car pooled down to Columbus along with a few east siders to pick up with some guys from Minnesota who were short on players but wanted to play in the Master's division, which was only fielding five teams at Regionals with two teams advancing to Nationals. I had never played beyond Regionals before, and since I was still trying to run around like an idiot at the, then, age of forty, I figured I only had a few years to go to Nationals before I might have to give up the sport due to old age (BTW, still playing, if you can call it that).

Our rag tag almost took second place. We started with 13 players and ended the tournament with NINE. Somehow, we played seven or eight games in two days. I have rarely been so tired, but it was a good tired. Our final battle for second place and a bid to Nationals went into "overtime." We lost a close game 17-15 and took third place with a bunch of guys who had never played together before and two subs.

So, needless to say, we were encouraged that with a real team of experienced players and some actual practice, we should have no trouble going to Nationals the next year. Returning to Michigan, I worked together with a few friends to form a team we ended up calling Grey Area, for the double meaning of grey hair and the middle ground of complexities between the polar opposites of black and white thinking. We practiced. We went to Regionals, and so did a bunch of other old men. Our competition was suddenly much more fierce. Chicago's Chronic and some Ohio-Kentucky conglomeration each had about 40 players. We played well, but we did not advance to Nationals.

I played with Grey Area for a few years in the middle 2000s as we tried again and again to advance to Nationals, always falling a little short. There are many potential causes. For my part, I ran out of both money and means. I could not afford (more in time than money) to journey to a tournament for a whole weekend and play only a half dozen points. Meanwhile, more players were joining ranks in Kalamazoo because of our KALAMAZOO ULTIMATE DISC LEAGUE (see T-shirt #56), and, ultimately, we formed a Kalamazoo Master's Team (Senior Discount) to square off against the east side Master's team (whose name I forget but has something do with the Motor City). Grey Area disbanded.

I have fond memories of my years playing with Grey Area. I have many good friends from those years and that team. We had a great group of guys.

ABOUT THE SHIRT: This is one of my first ever moisture-wicking shirts. I love our logo. I chose the number three to acknowledge two of my favorite sports players Alan Trammel (who wore number three for the Detroit Tigers) and Ben Wallace (who wore #3 for the Detroit Pistons).

- chris tower - 1305.18 - 12:13

T-shirt #57: Batman the Animated Series and my Mimobot

T-shirt #57: Batman: my Mimobot Died

I had planned to feature another Ultimate shirt today. Plans change. This is why I eschew theme weeks. I know this was surely of great concern to you, my readers (all two of you), but do not fret, 365 T-shirts will remain random and open to the vagaries of life and existence.

And so, today's shirt is brought to you by a sad event in my life: the death of my Batman Mimobot flash drive.

I love my Batman Mimobot flash drive. Well, I "loved" my Batman Mimobot flash drive. It has died. I can no  longer access its contents. It is kaput. These flash drives do not last forever. This one lasted about four years, and it had enjoyed nearly daily use.

I am a back-up freak. I back-up constantly. I am terrified about losing data. Back in the olden days, when my computer had no hard drive at all and all long-term storage was committed to 5 1/4" floppy discs, I spent an entire day writing a brilliant (at least I thought it was brilliant) chapter for a novel only to have it vanish in an unexpected power outage. I had not saved it once that entire day. I am sure I am not the only one who has ever had this experience. But for me, this experience heightened my neurosis and anxiety about saving and backing up data by an exponent factor so immense it takes scientific notation to measure its true value (how about at least 6 x 10^24 times the anxiety?).

Here's my neurotic back uppityness explanation: Every time I pause, I save. At least once an hour, and usually more like three-four times an hour, I drag the current files on which I am working to my flash drive, which is always plugged in. Folders are always open for quick drag and drop backup. At least once a week, I move all the recent files to my laptop, backing them up again, and a couple of times a month I backup to a third computer and a backup, external hard drive (totaling at least four backups in all). It's on my to-do list to set up an automatic backup to the external drive from the desktop, but then there are a lot of things on my to-do list. I am running a power backup after years of not having one, so at least, I am more protected from the unexpected power outage. I do not store very much in the "cloud," simply because I have not investigated its best use AND I do most of my writing in Word Perfect, which is not currently supported (as far as I know) in Google Docs. ALSO, I have found the Google Doc system to be slow quite often, and this annoys me.

I know that some of my astute readers will proffer advice about auto-back ups or synching systems in a way that would save me time. I do spend more time than I probably need to spend moving individual files one at a time off a "new file" temp folder on the flash drive to the laptop, the third computer, and the backup hard drive. But I like the process. Having to manually move the files forces me to think about them and consider ways to improve my sorting system.

Granted, my system is a bit old school. I was happy as a pig in slop when I upgraded from my original non-Batman 1 GB flash drive to the what seemed like a huge 4 GB Batman Mimobot drive. Still, I had to be selective as I could not store all my data files on the flash drive with only 1 GB or even 4 GB to work with. However, with my main data folder at 5.9 GB, and probably only another 3 GB at most of vital files I need to move around and backup frequently stored in other directories, I am surely going to be able to store all of that data on my new 16GB Batman Mimobot drive. Yay! Soon, Batman will be back in the HOUSE, suckahs.

Still, the death of my first Batman Mimobot makes me sad as well as increasing my determination to transfer files more often. Checking my records, I had not transferred files to the laptop since May 9th. So, to update the laptop, I ran a search for all the files on my desktop modified between May 9th through May 16th. I am still not quite done with the laptop update. And yes, I could achieve these ends with a wholesale overwrite of all the directories, but yesterday, in a rush to get to a class where I would have time to transfer files, I only had time for the search and moving a few files.


Bored yet?

OBVIOUSLY, I find my whole backup process quite fascinating as you may have inferred from the copious text I have devoted to it. In part, I am just working through the process as I describe it, analyzing whether or not it's the best system for my work, or at least a system I am willing to live with despite its inefficiency. At the very least, I will be moving files more often to the laptop to prevent finding myself in this situation again.

As for the T-shirt, it's one of the many Batman shirts I own. I already featured Batman or Batman related imagery/characters in T-shirt #7 and T-shirt #28. I love the cross-referencing. This one commemorates the Batman: The Animated Series TV show that aired originally on Fox from 1992-1995 masterminded by many people, but primarily, Bruce Timm and Paul Dini. The show gave Batman a stylized look that has become known as "Dark Deco," a very film noir-based approach to Batman. The show was outstanding and won many awards, including four Emmys.

I was sad to see the show end. But I am more sad to witness the death of my beloved Batman Mimobot. Luckily, I can buy another one.

- chris tower - 1305.17 - 9:51

T-shirt #56: Kalamazoo Ultimate Disc League(2009)

T-shirt #56: Ultimate:Kalamazoo Ultimate Disc League (2009) 


Looking for something fun to do in the sun this summer?

Play Ultimate.

I play Ultimate. Most people know it as Ultimate Frisbee. But we Ultimate players just call it Ultimate. And the thing we throw? It's a disc. Frisbee is a name trademarked by Whammo. Using the word  "Frisbee" for discs is like calling all facial tissue Kleenex or all copy machines Xerox.

You may be surprised, if you know me at all, that I have reached Day 56 of the T-shirt blog without devoting any space to Ultimate, one of my great loves, and one of the things that has most significantly defined my life for the last 29 years. Yes, you read that right. TWENTY-NINE YEARS of playing Ultimate. I started playing the summer of 1984 and have played ever since.

In the weeks to come, I will be giving some love to some of my favorite teams and favorite Ultimate experiences. I have TONS of Ultimate T-shirts. We're going to see a lot of these T-shirts in the weeks to come on this blog (assuming you're following, and I hope you are).

I have not neglected Ultimate on this blog. I have been waiting with purpose and foresight to start my Ultimate blogging as our Kalamazoo league nears its annual draft day. Our draft will be held Saturday the 18th (two days from now), and on that day, we will draft teams for our EIGHTH annual Kalamazoo Ultimate Disc League summer season. I am very proud to be a founding member of this great organization.

You can find Kalamazoo Ultimate Disc League on Facebook in group of that name.

You can find us on the web at Kalamazoo Ultimate Disc League (KUDL).

Links to registration can be found on both the web page and the Facebook page.

Or here:

So… If you are a lady ultimate player (or want to be) please follow the link below.

https://scorereport.net/ultimate/KUDLsummer2013W/instructions.html

We closed registration to men, though we maintain a wait list. We are in our final push to recruit women players as we are a co-ed league, and we always struggle to maintain a 5-2 or 4-3 gender ratio on the fields. If we increase our women players total to 40 women, we can expand to ten teams, a number of teams which we have only enjoyed once in our eight-year history.

Men who still want to register will want to write kalamazooultimate@gmail.com to be placed on the wait list. OR we have a special deal in which we add a man if he is "baggaged" (our term for players who want to be on the same team) with a woman player.

WHAT IS ULTIMATE? It's the greatest sport ever invented. 

Simply put, it's a team sport in which a disc is used to score goals. Teams of seven face off. The offense works the disc down the field in a series of passes until someone catches the disc in  a 25 yard by 40 yard goal area. Total field size is 70 yards long, 40 yards wide, with two 25 yard long end zone at each end of the field, just to give you an idea of how much distance is traveled with all the running. Chasing discs, chasing other players, or running hard to break free and get open (what we call making a "cut") involves A LOT of running. For new players, disc skills are not important (though catching is usually a plus). If a player is willing to run, especially in playing defense, a player will find the sport challenging but a total blast.

Ultimate is a non-contact sport. There is no tackling. Players do not run with the disc. Dropped discs, discs that sail out of bounds, or blocked throws cause immediate turn overs, in which the other team takes possession and begins making passes toward their end zone. Because of this offensive scheme, Ultimate is a fast paced sport. It's not the disc golf game. It's the game with all the running.

It's funny. I started today's entry intending to share about a shirt from a team I was on years ago called Grey Area (not a KUDL team); however, when I started to write about Kalamazoo Ultimate Disc League, I decided that the natural choice was to switch to a KUDL shirt. This is not even the most significant year of KUDL or my favorite shirt. The image actually has a small printing flaw (designed by my friend Ryan Walters). But I knew I had good action pictures of myself in this shirt from 2009 when my wife came to the field and took the shots.

Summer Ultimate season starts June 3rd. 

Though some weird miracle of longevity, I am still playing after twenty-years though I am not sure we can call what I do "running."

I am blessed and excited to start another year of ULTIMATE.

If you are reading this and have never tried it, there's still time to register, especially if you're a woman player or know a woman player who will sign up with you.

PLAY ULTIMATE!!

- chris tower - 1305.16 - 16:01