Author Topic: I, Joe Kickass, hereby suggest retro tricks be integrated into Modern Flatland  (Read 20960 times)

Offline danger-us

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 I didn't mean to take over and assume that we are all talking about a single combo that that goes through glimpses of tricks spanning 25 years or so, because that may not have been what JKA was implying specifically. But to me that would seem like a neat thing to do and a challenge to be able to do. Not for everyone, but just an experimental thing for whomever.

  TJ,i know you were joking about the audience going home and setting themselves on fire...obviously.

 Yes, it's true that if a rider is known for very progressive stuff and then reverts to older style tricks, it's easy to call regression. But going back to learn variations of stuff we might have passed up or never got around to is still learning tricks and progression in some form. It's true that almost everything is spinning or circular or clockwise and pumping with a few things thrown in like a tailwhip or tire boost decade to end. People are often afraid to touch the tire (other than an occasional power kick). It's easy to say just let people do what they want, but what they want is often to do tricks similar to what's hot in the sport. Even the word "they" is suspect if we get into the free will and determinism argument since we are largely if not mostly products of all external stimuli absorbed and memory which programs neurons to fire in ways that our beyond our control, even though we think we are making an active deliberate choice we assume to be the sole authors/prime movers of. Check out some Sam Harris stuff online about free will and we will really begin to second guess the control we think we have over ourselves. I'm not settled on this issue but it's interestingly shattering to know how little of the "self/individual" may actually be at work.
« Last Edit: June 22, 2012, 01:17:45 AM by danger-us »

Offline pwh4130

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What I mean is by good and bad are basic tricks themselves. Good tricks are always good, no matter the age.  Bad tricks are always bad, no matter the age.  Trevor circles are a great trick.  The power mower, not so much.  I know it's all relative and up to the personal style.  Trevor circles opened doors and taught skills.  The power mower can look rad but it is not a foundation to other moves. 

Call anytime Chase.  Miss you buddy.  I started a blog and wrote about Mt. Rose.  Think you'd appreciate it.


Offline danger-us

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 Yes Brett, that makes sense in that a trick concept/position that so much can be done with is "better" for the sport and therefore good. I don't think there are any bad tricks, since they all probably led to something which sparked a further idea. maybe the power mower made Fred Blood try a decade...i'm not sure. But i will try to call you soon.

chase.

Offline pwh4130

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I can think of a bad trick.  Bubblicious. 

Yoops.

Offline danger-us

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For those of you who are wondering what kind of trick Bubblicious is. Well, on our Plywood Hoods tour 91 driving around Atlantic City New Jersey, we picked up some prostitutes because we were drunk and tarded out. The one "trick" named Bubblicious sitting in the back seat with me managed to pinch $70 from my hip sack. They got out and then i noticed it was missing. Then we went into a casino where i played roulette (still not 21 yrs old yet) and managed to win back the $70 very quickly. Bubblicious was definitely a bad trick. Had to tell the story. I now no longer wear hipsacks and only occasionally mingle with prostitutes...haha. I tried in Panama but language barrier sabotaged  my "functioning"...so now i only do prostitutes with whom i can have deep and intellectually stimulating conversations that turn me on...yoops.

Offline jpoliti

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Chase, interesting point about free will. This could lead to a very long discussion, but going a bit off topic in my opinion if i may say, not because it is not a valid question to ask yourself, but because it is a phylosophical approach that questions every aspect of your life and not only flatland, and this would probably be better discussed in a forum about phylosophie ?

anyway...something very simple i can think of and that would explain why most riders prefer to go in the riding trend of the moment, is that it just simply gets boring to do the same old tricks.

I am myself an old 40 years old rider who started in the mid eighties. Although there are awesome tricks from back then i still enjoy watching,  like rope a ronis, death trucks, hitchiker, etc... i don't feel like doing anymore because it gets me bored to do the tricks i was doing 20 years ago.

What i simply and very humbly say is that what we negatively call 'the trend' is may be just riders doing the newer stuff they see because the old one got boring ? off course there is always the alternative to create you own new moves but thats a lot harder to do so...

following trends may not only be about seeking recognition, as we negatively suggest every time this is brought up, but it might just simply be about the excitment of seeing fresh moves and wanting to do the same, because you grew bored of your old tricks ??

Offline Flatgod

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If people were to revert back to the "old school" tricks then they just might evolve to become more complex and confuse the audience yet again.

Chase, it is possible to separate your thinking from anything that society has ever taught you to the point that you will realize "reality" closer to what it really is. People are filled with so many misconceptions and preconceived ideas about the way the universe operates and it's largely due to the fact that people will not question what they were taught in the first place. Many of the answers are not too complicated -- they are too simple.

Offline danger-us

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 "If people were to revert back to the "old school" tricks then they just might evolve to become more complex and confuse the audience yet again."

 I'm actually confused by this. Are you saying it would be a good thing to confuse the audience in that by being confused we have given them a mix of generations of styles that intrigue them? or confuse them so that they are bored and uninterested? either way, this seems like worrying too much about what the audience wants. I don't think anyone is suggesting that we revert to old school tricks. I don't think that complex combos are bad in any case, especially if riders are challenging themselves to venture into unfamiliar territory whether newer or older styles.

"Chase, it is possible to separate your thinking from anything that society has ever taught you to the point that you will realize "reality" closer to what it really is. "

 No doubt we can become aware of what we've been programmed with and begin to perceive reality in a more clear and evidence based  way, but certain conditioning that transcends this will probably always dictate our thought and behavior to a large extent. And making a distinction between those may be impossible.

 "Many of the answers are not too complicated -- they are too simple."

 I'm not so sure that that the answers are not too complicated. I mean intellects who study particular subject matter their entire lives would not say it's simple. Simple is ignoring the investigation and contemplation it requires to even chip away at life's biggest questions. In this sense, most people are simple in that they adopt ready made dogmas that poorly compensate for the the great unknowns.
   

Offline danger-us

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"anyway...something very simple i can think of and that would explain why most riders prefer to go in the riding trend of the moment, is that it just simply gets boring to do the same old tricks. "

 Take a look at most riders and they  ARE doing most of the same tricks they have stuck with. Very few dramatically change their styles and bag of tricks.

"I am myself an old 40 years old rider who started in the mid eighties. Although there are awesome tricks from back then i still enjoy watching,  like rope a ronis, death trucks, hitchiker, etc... i don't feel like doing anymore because it gets me bored to do the tricks i was doing 20 years ago. "

 I'm not familiar with your riding so i won't speak of it. But i can say for myself that i did a fair share of trick concepts throughout the years and there is still no shortage of variations of all of them that i never got around to and learning them would provide that little excitement we all look for. Not many riders can say they've done every variation of every trick concept...so to be bored of even old trick concepts shouldn't be a problem unless one is unwilling to explore more of what can be done with them. If i had my full health back and rode 5 hours a day 5 days a week for the next twenty years i probably wouldn't finish everything from the 90's.  The beauty of flatland is that there is always some little twist on a trick you can pick up. Boredom is not really an option unless one is incapable of learning them. And even lesser skilled riders can always find something to try and probably learn.


Offline Flatgod

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JoeKickass was the one to suggest that we integrate retro tricks.  No, I don't want to confuse the audience. I'm just saying that most of them can't grasp what's going on in the first place and I'm sort of assuming here that the subject of this thread is to gain audience attention by making the sport more simple. All I am doing is pointing out that if we resorted to doing retro things then even the retro tricks would naturally evolve more and become more complicated in ways that were never experimented with before. This is actually intriguing to me and not for the sake of gaining more exposure (because I don't give a rat's ass about what the audience thinks) but for the sake of building on old things in new ways.

For the other topic -- I said MANY of the answers are simple -- not ALL of them.  These intellects you speak of are often times burying themselves in thought that is so cyclical and contradictory that they make no progress with their thinking. When people think in cycles they get nowhere fast. They often times have no idea as to what answer they are even looking for because they don't even realize that they are not even asking the correct questions in the first place.  I have seen it often times in my academic endeavors. They hardly ever exercise rationality but instead place their systems of belief first and prior to logic -- and I mean they won't even exercise basic logic.  When one doesn't try to use rationality and prefers to believe in something even in the light of contradictory evidence it is religion!

Many of the so-called "intellects" that I have associated with are in fact guilty of the very religion and dogma you are referring to.

Offline danger-us

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"What i simply and very humbly say is that what we negatively call 'the trend' is may be just riders doing the newer stuff they see because the old one got boring ? off course there is always the alternative to create you own new moves but thats a lot harder to do so..."

 Again, there is the alternative to creating (if it's too hard for the person or happens to not be very imaginative and still wants to ride and progress and have fun) and the alternative to following the tends is to check out other eras of riding and still find interesting and challenging stuff to do. I think being boredom is an excuse  and that really people are often too afraid to be seen doing stuff that is perceived to be not up to date.

"following trends may not only be about seeking recognition, as we negatively suggest every time this is brought up, but it might just simply be about the excitment of seeing fresh moves and wanting to do the same, because you grew bored of your old tricks ??"

 Following trends does not necessarily bring recognition yet rather can make a person disappear in the midst of the trends and ironically it backfires and they are not known for doing anything un-unsual.  If you want to do the same, then a part of wants to be the same, and i can't think of anythingmore boring than realizing you are doing what most others are doing. How dull is it to dilute ones identity in this way? They may get a superficial pat on the back or place well at a comp for doing trendy stuff but it's pretty fleeting and vapid overall.

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If this cocktail of midschool tricks was adopted by the new school ... Would it make older riders feel less "old" or out of date since they may be able to compete again with the new school?

Offline danger-us

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In one sense the audience can't grasp what is going on because flatland is not a "traditional" sport that they can identify with. they can identify "kick ball" "put puck in net" "hit home run" etc because these are all games everyone knows. They can't grasp what the starting point would be to learn the flatland tricks they see so they are confused from the get go and are further from knowing what switch or flip they just saw in the blink of an eye. On the other hand, like what JKA said to start this post, i think the audience can recognize when most riders are in a similar position (steam/half pack/mcCircle whatever) and always going in a circle or spinning and this becomes homogenous to their vision. I think the crux of this topic is that a greater variety of riders in a greater range of positions and styles of tricks might be more captivating and noticeable even to the untrained eye when they see more diversity in each rider who enters the contest floor. and again, to me this whole captivating the audience should only be a biproduct (if it works) of riders naturally desiring to and doing greater ranges of tricks from different eras. I'm not even saying they should. It was just a suggestion that some riders might ponder to say "hey there is so much to do other than steam and spin and flip and switch and pump". Again,i'm still not saying it's wrong or bad because like i said in one of my ART mag articles, even riders who strive to copy will probably fumble onto some slightly different twist of the trendy stuff which is still pushing the sport. But like you said "building on old things in new ways"...and maybe that should be intriguing to more riders...but it generally isn't.



 I wouldn't say intellects hardly ever utilize rationality. I don't have an academic career but from talking to Brandon Fenton, he has said some things along the lines of what you are saying in that they are sometimes more strictly going along for the academic ride and not really thinking for themselves. he even caught his professor  on some bullsh*t stubborn elitist bias. I totally agree with you that academics/intellectuals can cater to their foundation of dogmas instead of fearlessly allowing them to be shattered by ideas or evidence that clearly should bring it into question, hence they may never truly break new ground in thinking. Or else just use their indoctrination to twist everything in a desperate attempt to make it all compatible.

Offline danger-us

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"If this cocktail of midschool tricks was adopted by the new school ... Would it make older riders feel less "old" or out of date since they may be able to compete again with the new school?"

 Well, probably most older riders (unless they are really talented and on their game) wouldn't be able to hang with some of the newer concepts, because admittedly a lot of it is quite advanced. I know i would have a really hard time doing some of it even if i got back to my personal best. It's not going to happen any ways and this thread is just for talking mostly. If it did happen though then TJ might have to set himself on fire after watching old fogies pretend they are current Pro level...haha.

Offline Flatgod

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I wouldn't say intellects hardly ever utilize rationality. I don't have an academic career but from talking to Brandon Fenton, he has said some things along the lines of what you are saying in that they are sometimes more strictly going along for the academic ride and not really thinking for themselves. he even caught his professor  on some bullsh*t stubborn elitist bias. I totally agree with you that academics/intellectuals can cater to their foundation of dogmas instead of fearlessly allowing them to be shattered by ideas or evidence that clearly should bring it into question, hence they may never truly break new ground in thinking. Or else just use their indoctrination to twist everything in a desperate attempt to make it all compatible.

Yes, this is exactly what I was referring to and I'm glad Brandon has brought that to your attention so that you are already familiar with what I was getting at.  I'm just simply trying to say that dogmas are everywhere (as I know you are already aware), and that they even commonly exist among certain fields of academic study.