First Day at the Green Cup

The Green Cup presented by Chaos started today in Oakland. Here are a couple of pictures of the action that happened on the net courts.





The Green cup is sponsored by Pro Kicker and the official footbag for the tournament is the Pro Kicker Impact

Help relief the Burmese victims of cyclone Nargis

Cyclone Nargis hit Burma (formerly Myanmar) last week-end with incredible force.
The corrupt military government didn't do anything to prevent its people about it and they are very slow to react to the extreme needs of the population.

Here's a page where you can donate to help the most effective network that is out of the reach of the Junta which is the International Burmese Monks Organization. Find out more on how to help: https://secure.avaaz.org/en/burma_cyclone/5.php?cl=86250422

Here's the video of one of the monks and lower on the page a report from the BBC on the extended damages.



and then follow this link for the BBC's

A simple Footbag net tale

Footbag net is a really small sport. Not because it doesn't have all it takes to be more in the public eye. It's fast and spectacular, combining martial art moves with ball control that many professionnal soccer players would envy. So what's the problem?

I guess we just didn't find the right person yet to make it to the mainstream. Most tournaments are poorly organized, not because of the organizers intentions, but you can just go so far without money. No bleachers to sit spectators, no publicity or press releases the tournament often end up being a confidential affair between dedicated players.

It's still a lot of fun from all the people you meet but the sport stagnates a little bit too much for my taste.

I organized 3 world Championships and I think I did my best. We have tournaments here in Montreal since 1989 and more and more people know about the sport but it is still a very small fraction of the population. One other reason why it's still so unknown is that pretty much all the newspapers sports section are exclusively reserved to the 'big' sports. There's no room for alternative stuff anymore, is there room for journalists? I always thought that part of the journalist job was to dig for newer stuff, so I repeat the question: Is there still journalits? I mean real ones. (That would be of course according to my definition :-)

To know more about Footbag

The non sports according to me

I am a Footbag player (aka Hacky Sack which is a trademark), we play over a 5 foot net on a badminton court. When I have interviews with various journalists one question often comes back: Is this really a sport. Well if you have to run to retrieve a Footbag, then pass it and spike over the net I guess it is.

For me it is obvious. What is not so obvious is why people call things like poker, automobile racing, curling and golf, why do they label those things sports? For me sports has something to do with a lot of movement generated by the person, sweating, burning a lot of calories and normally it's a race, on foot, on a bike, a scoring game like soccer and hockey, volleyball, basketball where people move for real.

Poker is a game where people sit down and throw a card from time to time but I find it in the sports section of my newspaper, which enrages me.

Auto racing, the engine does all the work, the driver doesn't even move one inch by himself. Some reply that you have to be really fit to be a race car driver. I had a job once where I had to bend metal corners with a sledgehammer for 12 hours a day. I made me really fit but was I doing sport? Auto racing is not a sport, it's a stupid activity in which grown ups burn fuel for nothing, plus it's so boooring.

I was really laughing when my girlfriend told me that she was traumatized when she was a kid by watching TV and seing some curling. What was the trauma about, she just couldn't understand why these old people brooming the ice were in a sports broadcast. I'm just like her.

Golf now, a dandy game made for rich people to show off their social status. So much fertilizer is spent on the greens alone that it could feed the entire world. Fat people hitting one stroke and then driving a motorized cart to the next hole is that your definition of a sport? Yes Tiger Woods is fit but why doesn't he prove that he can perform something great in a real sport? Why don't they have to run as fast as possible to the next hole? After all it's the only reason why Biathlon is a sport. They have to ski and ski fast to the next shoot.

Well this is a non exhautive list of what I consider not to be sports but (foolish) games.

Sign the petition for a better management of the World food crisis

Nothing you can do to help, think twice, visit that page and sign the petition to pressure the G8, The United Nations and the European Union leaders to make better choices for the future.