sports

Segway Polo

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No, this isn’t an April Fools Day joke:


This sport is real, it’s growing, it’s specially designed for and by wealthy dorks and I knew it was only a matter of time for something like this was invented once the Segway was unveiled to the public.
After the jump, read the NY Times article all about this “sport.” Enjoy.

Thwack! Whir!… Whir? Segway Polo Is Born

By Josh Sens

NY Times, April 1st, 2005

WHEN Alex Ko and his companions took up polo, they made some subtle changes to the sport once enjoyed by ancient Mongol warriors, who are said to have played with the severed heads of their enemies.

Mr. Ko and his friends opted for a 6-inch-diameter Nerf ball.

And instead of horses, they chose to ride Segways, the self-balancing transportation devices first developed as a short-distance alternative to the automobile.

“It’s similar to real polo,” Mr. Ko said, “but without the manure.”

He was standing in the thick grass of Ponderosa Park, a shaggy patch of green in Sunnyvale, Calif., preparing to compete in a game that replaces the thundering of hooves with the whir of battery-run machines.

On the first and third Sunday of every month, Mr. Ko, 34, a mechanical engineer from nearby Santa Clara, organizes Segway polo matches with friends and colleagues, most of whom work in the Silicon Valley, all of whom belong to the Bay Area Segway Enthusiasts Group.

Their matches have some of the trappings of traditional polo. Players wear jerseys – actually, colored T-shirts – and use mallets to knock a ball into a goal. Score is kept. And there is an umpire, although players feel free to ignore his calls.

“There are a few guys who take it seriously, but mostly this is a big goof,” said Jon Bauer, 37, of San Francisco.

This morning’s contest pitted four against four. Mr. Bauer’s team wore blue T-shirts. Mr. Ko’s team wore yellow and included Stephen G. Wozniak, one of the founders of Apple Computer and the owner of seven Segways. He is respected, if not feared, on the polo field for his aggressive play.

“My swing feels off,” Mr. Wozniak said just before the match began. He whirled his right arm in a windmill motion and said that he was operating on virtually no sleep, having stayed up at a party and then to watch a movie until 8:30 that morning.

The teams lined up on opposite sides of the field and rushed toward each other when the umpire rolled the ball between them.

At first glance, Segways could be mistaken for large push mowers, and in the early going, as the players found their rhythm on the grass, the game resembled a frenzied act of landscaping. But near the end of the first period, or chukker, in polo parlance, both teams showed signs of organization, even fleeting hints of skill.

“You should have seen us at some of the first games,” Mr. Bauer said. “We were all bunched together. Not much passing. Very little strategy.”

Like the birth of polo, placed variously in Persia or India more than 2,000 years ago, the genesis of Segway polo is hard to pin down. Mr. Ko traces his own interest in it to the fall of 2003, when a Segway polo demonstration was staged during halftime of a professional football game.

“I didn’t see it,” Mr. Ko said of the halftime show. “But it sounded pretty cool.”

Jonathan van Clute, a real estate and stock investor from Sunnyvale, said he had stumbled onto the idea even earlier, while consulting at a software company. “I brought my Segway into the office so everyone could goof around with it,” he said. “And this one guy pokes his head through the door and says, ‘Dude, two words: Segway polo.’ ”

WHATEVER the case, in April of last year, Mr. Ko and Mr. van Clute met at Ponderosa Park and began to tinker with their version of the game. Mr. Ko fashioned a mallet out of plastic pipe. They tried different types of balls before settling on a Nerf. They adopted rules from polo, water polo and bicycle polo, another contemporary offshoot. They outlawed high-sticking, or the polo equivalent of it, and agreed to run their Segways on the yellow-key setting – one of three settings on a Segway – limiting the top speed to eight miles an hour.

“We’ve never had any serious accidents,” Mr. Bauer said. “But there have been some pretty spectacular falls.”

During the match, the prospect of injury seemed to heighten whenever Mr. Wozniak entered the fray. Despite sleep deprivation, he played with zeal, charging after loose balls, leaning forward on his Segway like a ski jumper searching for extra air.

Mr. Wozniak’s opponents attributed his fearless play to his competitive gusto and his fleet of backup Segways, not unlike a traditional polo player’s string of ponies.

“Woz is the only guy who’s always cranking his Segway at top speed,” Mr. Bauer said. “I think it has something to do with the fact that he’s the least concerned with damaging his.”

Most Bay Area Segway Enthusiast Group members own only one Segway, which sell for around $5,000. Although the stated mission of the group is to promote public acceptance of the machines, many members spend more time playing polo on them than proselytizing for them. Mr. Bauer, in fact, who lives in San Francisco, where Segways are prohibited on sidewalks, said that his was used only for the Sunday matches.

“I used to ride mine more, but part of me got tired of dealing with the negativity,” Mr. Bauer said. “You can’t use them on the sidewalk, and if you do, people are yelling at you. Or they’re thinking of you as a yuppie, which in a sense you are.”

This was not the dream of Dean Kamen, inventor of the Segway Human Transporter, when he rolled out the first model in 2001. Easy to ride and ecofriendly, the Segway was hailed as an innovation that would revolutionize the modern city.

Just how much has changed is perhaps evident in the transportation used by players to get to their polo matches. Most drive. Mr. Wozniak often shows up in his Hummer, hauling four Segways in the back.

If the Segway has yet to transform urban living, it has at least altered recreational sport, if only slightly. It is fitting that it has happened in the Silicon Valley, a region renowned for finding innovative uses for technology. Recently, Mr. Ko said, a group of Segway enthusiasts in Southern California has taken up Segway polo. But his hopes for an intrastate rivalry have not materialized.

“I don’t think they’re quite that organized down there yet,” Mr. Ko said.

At Ponderosa Park, meantime, the match wore on. In the third chukker, Stuart Moore, 39, of San Jose, notched an impressive goal, moments before taking an impressive spill when his Segway bumped wheels with Mr. Wozniak’s. Mr. Moore hurtled headlong onto the grass; his Segway rolled on poignantly, like a riderless horse.

The score was tied in the fourth and final chukker when Mr. Wozniak shot at goal and raised his arms in triumph. The umpire, Chris Knight, 16, of San Francisco, ruled that it went wide. But Mr. Wozniak and his teammates paid no heed, exchanging high-fives with their mallets. The goal stood.

Other things happened. A player’s shin was bruised and another took a glancing blow to his helmet. The blue squad tried a last-ditch comeback. But as time expired, the score was 7 to 5, in favor of the yellow team. The players left the field, laughing and giddy. They were still full of energy, but their Segway batteries were running low.

ramblings

A Movie I Wish Was Coming To A Theatre Near Me

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Once again, I found something cool on Chris’s site. This time, its extra special.

The young geniuses at Untamed Cinema have a created a trailer for a movie that will might never be made. But if there is justice in the world, then maybe, just maybe, it will happen.

The high-res Grayson trailer is well worth the download, even if its a huge file (137 MB). If you have the bandwidth, grab it while you can. Otherwise, watch one of the other versions.

Below is Chris’s review. Please note that he has berated me for liking comics for the past few years and has for the most part bashed the recent comic book movies that have made it to the big screen or that are in development (the upcoming Batman Beyond is an obvious exception). That being said, here is what he said:

“It tells the story of a time when Batman has been killed, and angst-filled Dick Grayson, AKA Robin, trains himself for revenge. He is older now, married with kids, and as his wife puts it, “is training for war.” He also does a little detective work and begins to unravel a conspiracy that runs very deep, through the chief of police, various super villains, and even older heroes. Cameos astound as we see Superman, WonderWoman, Catwoman, Joker, Riddler, and even the Green Lantern. This short film/trailer is spectacular, and is everything superhero movies and comic books should be.”
So, I’m hoping for some real comments get posted about this movie. If the movie is gone, email me and I’ll burn it to a CD and mail it to you. The movie is THAT good. Enjoy.”

Thanks Chris

music

Dance Party Europa

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This video has been around for a while now – its a kid lip-syncing and rocking out in front of his web cam. I saw it back in 12/04 when Chris posted it to Blah Blah Blog. Since then, I forgot about it until someone else sent it to me last week when we were looking for the old hit “The Super Bowl Is Gay.”
So, please watch and enjoy. It helps if you make you window smaller as the flash file will shrink/expand based on the window size.

If you are wondering, the song is called “Dragsotea Din Tei” and its by a Romanian group called O-Zone. You can even buy it on iTunes if you want to thoroughly annoy your friends and neighbors. After the jump you can even read the lyrics.

Thanks Chris as the comments to your post provided the extra info

UPDATE (2/26):

Today there is an article in the NY Times about this kid. He’s actually from NJ. After the jump, you can read the entire NY Times article. Also, I found a link to the actual music video as well. There are many other versions floating around as well but I don’t think they are that good.

Translated Lyrics:

Hello [on a cellphone], greetings, it’s me, an outlaw,
I ask you, my love, to accept happiness.
Hello, hello, it’s me, Picasso,
I sent you a beep [cellphone signal], and I’m brave [or strong],
But you should know that I’m not asking for anything from you.
You want to leave but you don’t want don’t want to take me, don’t want don’t want to take me, don’t want don’t want don’t want to take me.
Your face and the love from the linden trees,
And I remember your eyes.
I call you [over the phone], to tell you what I feel right now,
Hello, my love, it’s me, your happiness.
Hello, hello, it’s me again, Picasso,
I sent you a beep [cellphone signal] and I’m brave [or strong],
But you should know that I’m not asking for anything from you.

Internet Fame Is Cruel Mistress for a Dancer of the Numa Numa

By ALAN FEUER and JASON GEORGE

There was a time when embarrassing talents were a purely private matter. If you could sing “The Star Spangled Banner” in the voice of Daffy Duck, no one but your friends and family would ever have to know.

But with the Internet, humiliation – like everything else – has now gone public. Upload a video of yourself playing flute with your nose or dancing in your underwear, and people from Toledo to Turkmenistan can watch.

Here, then, is the cautionary tale of Gary Brolsma, 19, amateur videographer and guy from New Jersey, who made the grave mistake of placing on the Internet a brief clip of himself dancing along to a Romanian pop song. Even in the bathroom mirror, Mr. Brolsma’s performance could only be described as earnest but painful.

His story suggests that the quaint days when cultural trinkets, like celebrity sex tapes, were passed around like novels in Soviet Russia are over. It says a little something of the lightning speed at which fame is made these days.

To begin at the beginning:

Mr. Brolsma, a pudgy guy from Saddle Brook, made a video of himself this fall performing a lip-synced version of “Dragostea Din Tei,” a Romanian pop tune, which roughly translates to “Love From the Linden Trees.” He not only mouthed the words, he bounced along in what he called the “Numa Numa Dance” – an arm-flailing, eyebrow-cocked performance executed without ever once leaving the chair.

In December, the Web site newgrounds.com, a clearinghouse for online videos and animation, placed a link to Mr. Brolsma on its home page and, soon, there was a river of attention. “Good Morning America” came calling and he appeared. CNN and VH1 broadcast the clip. Parodists tried their own Numa Numa dances online. By yesterday, the Brolsma rendition of “Love From the Linden Trees” had attracted nearly two million hits on the original Web site alone.

The video can be seen here.

It was just as Diane Sawyer said on her television program: “Who knows where this will lead?”

Nowhere, apparently. For, in Mr. Brolsma’s case, the river became a flood.

He has now sought refuge from his fame in his family’s small house on a gritty street in Saddle Brook. He has stopped taking phone calls from the news media, including The New York Times. He canceled an appearance on NBC’s “Today.” According to his relatives, he mopes around the house.
What’s worse is that no one seems to understand.

“I said, ‘Gary this is your one chance to be famous – embrace it,’ ” said Corey Dzielinski, who has known Mr. Brolsma since the fifth grade. Gary Brolsma is not the first guy to rocket out of anonymity on a starship of embarrassment. There was William Hung, the Hong Kong-born “American Idol” reject, who sang and danced so poorly he became a household name.

There was Ghyslain Raza, the teenage Quebecois, who taped himself in a mock light-saber duel and is now known as the Star Wars Kid.

In July 2003, Mr. Raza’s parents went so far as to sue four of his classmates, claiming they had placed the clip of him online without permission. “Ghyslain had to endure and still endures today, harassment and derision,” according to the lawsuit, first reported in The Globe and Mail of Toronto.
Mr. Brolsma has no plans to sue, his family said – mainly because he would have to sue himself. In fact, they wish he would bask a little in his celebrity.

“I don’t know what’s wrong with him,” his grandfather, Kalman Telkes, a Hungarian immigrant, said the other day while taking out the trash.

The question remains why two million people would want to watch a doughy guy in glasses wave his arms around online to a Romanian pop song.

“It definitely has to be something different,” said Tom Fulp, president and Webmaster of newgrounds.com.

“It’s really time and place.”

“The Numa Numa dance,” he said, sounding impressed. “You see it and you kind of impulsively have to send it to your friends.”

There is no way to pinpoint the fancy of the Internet, but in an effort to gauge Mr. Brolsma’s allure, the Numa Numa dance was shown to a classroom of eighth graders at Saddle Brook Middle School – the same middle school that he attended, in fact.

The students’ reactions ranged from envious to unimpressed. “That’s stupid,” one of them said. “What else does he do?” a second asked. A third was a bit more generous: “I should make a video and become famous.”

The teacher, Susan Sommer, remembered Mr. Brolsma. He was a quiet kid, she said, with a good sense of humor and a flair for technology.

“Whenever there were computer problems, Gary and Corey would fix them for the school,” she said.

His friends say Mr. Brolsma has always had a creative side. He used to make satirical Prozac commercials on cassette tapes, for instance. He used to publish a newspaper with print so small you couldn’t read it with the naked eye.

“He was always very out there – he’s always been ambitious,” said Frank Gallo, a former classmate. “And he’s a big guy, but he’s never been ashamed.”

Another friend, Randal Reiman, said: “I’ve heard a lot of people say it’s not that impressive – it doesn’t have talent. But I say, Who cares?”

These days, Mr. Brolsma shuttles between the house and his job at Staples, his family said. He is distraught, embarrassed. His grandmother, Margaret Telkes, quoted him as saying, just the other day, “I want this to end.”

And yet the work lives on. Mr. Fulp, the Webmaster, continues to receive online homages to the Numa Numa dance. The most recent showed what seemed to be a class of computer students singing in Romanian and, in unison, waving their hands.

Mr. Reiman figures the larger world has finally caught on to Gary Brolsma.

“He’s been entertaining us for years,” he said, “so it’s kind of like the rest of the world is realizing that Gary can make you smile.”

ramblings

Buy This Tee Shirt For Me Por Favor

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My bro-in-law just sent me a link to a site that is devouted to “gamers, geeks and hackers.” Gotta love that. It has tons of stuff to buy in all sorts of lovely categories. The clothes are the by far the best. After briefly scanning the tee shirt page, I really would love for someone to buy me this one. Why have I never seen this on St. Marks Place? Thanks in advance to whomever is buying it – if you need my snail mail address in order to ship this to me, send me an email. Thanks in advance!

Thanks Amos

ramblings

Neu: I Get to Hit You

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Dr. David Graham, associate director of science for the office of drug safety at the center for drug evaluation and research for the Food and Drug Administration testifies before the Senate Finance Committee and shows them what is colloquially known as “the flying asshole.”

If only George, Turtle and a few others read my blog, I could hit them too…

politics

A Day at the Pool

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Bill Gates was spotted at Wild Waves in Seattle – check out the photos that a STAR 101.5’s listener took! Funny that he doesn’t have his own wave pool in the backyard – I mean, its not like he’s the richest guy in the world…wait, he IS the richest guy in the world…cheap ass

tech

Search Engines In The News

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It seems that everyone these days is talking about Google, about how it’s impending IPO will give it a market cap greater than every the market cap of every other company in the world combined (okay, that is not really true), about how its one of the few companies to have its name turned into a verb (you are going out with her on a blind date and you haven’t googled her?!) and how search is the true killer app of the web (how many true killer apps are there anyway?). What isn’t talked about are the other search engines out there – no, not Ask Jeeves or MSN but the small guys, the ones that want to be the next Google. Appropriated from the 3/29/04 edition of Newsweek is this handy list of four cool search engines:

  1. Vivisimo – clusters search results into meaningful categories. eBay uses it to sort auction outcomes.
  2. Topix.net – Credit ex-Netscapers for the ability to automatically build pages around 4,000 online news sources.
  3. Coneteq – A Lebanese project (to be launched later this year) will let you search products by brand, price and location. NOTE: This may get my mother to finally start really using the ‘Net
  4. Feedster – Allows searchs of the thousands of personal web logs (this this one) and ranks results by dates
  5. Grokker – Plugs queries into the major search engins and uses home-cooked algorithms to analyze the pages and organize them into cagegories.

Check them out and post your reviews – I haven’t had time to yet…