best of the best online

only the best, never the rest

  • Email Subscription

    Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

  • Watch videos at Vodpod and other videos from this collection.

The best online stores for Ultimate Frisbee

Posted by Andy Huang on December 11, 2009

This post is part of the Best Ultimate Frisbee websites project

I wish I can buy one of these online.

Forget to shave?

Pull!

With that, I can be the first ever Ultimate superhero. Fighting for justice and peace armed with the deadly razor Frisbee.

Oh wait, I think Captain America had that idea first, but he called it a shield. Whatever, it looks like a Frisbee to me.

You can buy the shield, I mean Frisbee here.

Man those things are expensive! I’ll stick with the plastic then.

Now that my dreams of becoming the first Frisbee wielding superhero has been destroyed, I will rededicate my life to curing cancer and taming swine flu.

But in the meantime, let’s take a look at some of the best online stores for Ultimate Frisbee gear. Where you can get the perfect gift for the holiday season for all your non Ultimate playing friends!

Ultimate Frisbee history: Appearances on Tv shows and news programs

Stores for customized team kits

GAIA Ultimate

Everyone either has, or knows someone who has GAIA gear. GAIA has been a big player in Ultimate for years and has built a good reputation for itself. They specialize in custom gear for Ultimate teams offers sponsorship opportunities for top teams.

Five Ultimate

Five Ultimate is a big time sponsor in Ultimate. They specialize in team kits (uniforms) have made kits for dozens of teams at the club and college levels. They also contribute to worthy Ultimate causes such as Ultimate Peace. And for this holiday season, they have a special on shipping.

Spin Ultimate

Lots of shirts and some discs. The best place to get your Chain Lighting gear to pretend like a national champ.

VC Ultimate

Custom uniforms with multiple choices of fabrics. Highly customizable.

Breakmark

Started by a guy who wanted to get team sweatshirts for his team. Now it’s a full blown business selling all types of apparel.

Stores for Ultimate educational products

Ultivillage

The ultimate Ultimate DVD vendor online. They have DVDs of footage from most major tournaments around the US. You can watch the trailers for the DVDs before purchase.

PlayUlty

PlayUlty offers educational DVDs, books, and gear for players and coaches. What I really like are the coaching kits made specifically for Ultimate.

How to throw like a pro

A DVD that will teach you every throw in the game. Created by players and coaches with many years of high level Ultimate experience. If you’re among the first 200 to buy, you get 25% off!

Stores for discs and accessories

Discraft

The makers of the beautiful pieces of flying plastic. You can order custom discs for your team here.

Daredevil Discs

A Canadian company which makes UPA approved 175 gram discs. They are not Discraft, but they look and feel exactly like Discraft. The discs are customizable and even allows prints on the bottom of the disc. A special edition Obama disc is available for purchase here. The disc is designed my teammate and talented artist Adam Doyle.

Internet Disc Shop

The Internet Disc Shop always has discs with funky designs available at cheap prices. They also have a buy 4 get 1 special which is awesome. I’ve bought discs from them before and I was very satisfied with the store. You can also get grab bags of random discs, 10 for $69.95, or 25 for 159.95. Great for teams that need a large number of practice discs.

Ultimate Disc Store

This site is a bit pricier than Internet Disc Shop but they offer more choices for bundles. They also have shirts and hats for sale. Their special item is the Flashlight light up discs.

Disc Ace

Grab bags, custom discs, and ultra-stars at $5.99! Take advantage of the winter sale going on now.

Stores for t-shirts

Cafe Press

T-shirts, mugs, stickers, perfect gifts for the holidays.

That should give you plenty of options for you holiday shopping, and it will help to spread the sport of Ultimate to the unenlightened ones.

Give a disc, make an Ultimate player.

Also take a look at:

The best Ultimate Frisbee resources online

Best Ultimate Frisbee websites project

Posted in Ultimate Frisbee, sports | Tagged: , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Ultimate Frisbee history: Appearances on American TV

Posted by Andy Huang on December 10, 2009

This post is part of the Best Ultimate Frisbee websites project

It’s not often that Ultimate Frisbee gets mentioned in the press or on TV. Most people are still hopelessly ignorant of one of the fastest growing sports in the world. Well, considering some of the other “fastest growing sports”, we are in some interesting company.

However, there is good news. According to this article on CNBC, Ultimate Frisbee saw a 20.8% increase in participation in 2008, good for #1 on the list. At least we know we’re kicking lacrosse’s butt, another sport claiming to be the “fastest growing sport.”

Now the question is: If Ultimate is growing so rapidly, why is no one paying attention?

That’s a good question. My take on the matter is that as a sport Ultimate is still very young. The vast majority of players are either current college students or recent grads with only a few years of working experience. So on the whole, the Ultimate Frisbee community doesn’t have that much pull in society when it comes to affecting change and making decisions. Unless you’re a mover and shaker, the media doesn’t really care how much you care about Ultimate.

However, the fact that almost all Ultimate players are college educated and ridiculously good looking means that they are heading up in the world. What will happen is that as more Ultimate players reach the upper levels of companies and organizations, our collective pull will cross the tipping point of wide recognition.

The best Ultimate Frisbee highlight videos

Until that day, we can scrap together bits and pieces of media coverage and give ourselves a pat on the back for being the stepping stones that helped Ultimate reach its peak.

1976 Frisbee World Championships

The earliest footage I’ve seen. The bit about Ultimate comes at the very end.

1978 National News

With Tom Brokaw! Guts looks fun, we should play it more.

1978 Special Edition

Watching this report, it sounds like Ultimate would have exploded in the 80’s. Oh well.

1989 ESPN Amazing games

A feature on Ultimate and the legendary NY/NY team of the era. I would be scared of Ken Dobyns if I played against them…

1991 MTV sports

“If something looks like it’s too far in front of you and you’ll never get to it you have a motorcycle, keep going!” Motorcycle Ultimate, now there’s an idea worth pursuing.

Bill Nye the Science Guy

Bill has been known to be an Ultimate supporter, and here he gives a physics lesson on how a Frisbee works.

2000 National Geographic

Coverage on the club nationals in Sarasota Fl.

“When I go to my grave … it’ll be as a frisbee player.”

The Disney Channel

I love how the kid thinks the Tomahawk (hammer) is only thrown by the “pros”.

ESPN cold pizza

Tony Leonardo and Adam Zagora go on the show to promote their book on Ultimate history.

ESPN Sports center

Sports center, we’ve made it to the big times!

Watch this entire game here

Bonus clips

ESPN cheap seats

More about freestyle Frisbee than Ultimate, but it’s worth a mention. Pretty funny.

It’s possible that Ultimate Frisbee may just skip the television age altogether and skip forward to the web 2.0 live streaming age. Seeing the reports of the UPA live streams of club nationals gives me great hope.

Let’s keep up the good work guys!

The Best Ultimate Frisbee websites project

Posted in Ultimate Frisbee, Videos, sports | Tagged: , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

Best stop motion videos part I – Patrick Boivin

Posted by Andy Huang on December 10, 2009

Maybe you’ve seen the movie Fantastic Mr. Fox. If not, here’s the preview

I haven’t seen it myself, but that’s cause I’ve been spending most of my time finding great videos for this post, so there.

10 bizarre uses for Post-it notes

Fantastic Mr. Fox shows off some of the latest technologies and techniques of stop motion animation, an art form/film technique that started in 1898 in The Humpty Dumpty Circus created by Albert E. Smith and J. Stuart Blackton.

Stop motion animation also saw heavy use in George Lucas’ Star Wars Trilogy. The Tauntauns and AT-AT walkers were all animated using this technique. Other more recent notable movies include The Nightmare Before Christmas, James and the Giant Peach, and Coraline, all directed by Henry Selick. I saw Coraline on the plan on my way back from Manila. It was good, but creeped me out a bit.

Enough with the history lesson, let’s get to the videos!

The best super slow motion videos

Today’s videos showcase the amazing skills of Patrick Boivin. I found his channel on Youtube and it became an instant favorite. I won’t show you all his videos, I’ll just show you my favorites. You should check out his channel for more great stuff.

Black Ox Skateboard

This was the first video of his that I watched

Iron Man vs. Bruce Lee

Just who is under that suit of armor?

Michael Jackson vs. Mr. Bean

The moonwalk!

Bumble Bee beats Optimus Prime

I love the audio dubbing!

Evolution of Dance – Optimus Prime

The parody of the world famous video

Jazz, with a general problem

How does he do it?! Is it dark magic? Luckily he demonstrates his techniques in this handy video.

The making of Jazz with a general problem

Bonus clip:

Youtube Street Fighter

Choose your character, and then fight! Stop motion style!

Did you enjoy those videos? Which one was your favorite?

I hope you’re excited for the next series of stop motion videos!

Posted in Funny, Videos | Tagged: , , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

The best Ultimate Frisbee highlight videos

Posted by Andy Huang on December 9, 2009

This post is part of the Best Ultimate Frisbee websites project

Do you love watching huge hucks and sick layouts grabs?

Do ridiculous skies and awesome d blocks get you pumped up?

Do you love Ultimate Frisbee highlight videos?

Best videos of Ultimate Frisbee tournament matches

Well of course you do!

And you have come to the right place.

Here is a collection of the best Ultimate Frisbee highlight videos available online.

Best Ultimate Frisbee resources online

Watch them when you are feeling down, and it will pick you right up.

Watch them when you’re about to go play Ultimate, and it will get you pumped for practice.

Watch them before a date, and you will be so money you won’t even know it.

Don’t watch them after the date, cause you don’t want to be too excited… =P

Here they are, in no particular order. Because you cannot rank pure awesomeness.

Ultimate Clips

Assorted clips, great music!

Ultimate Frisbee Highlights

Top open division action, from Ultivillage.

Best Ultimate plays of 2008

2008 club nationals and worlds.

Best Ultimate Frisbee women

Hot! Er… disc playing that is.

College nationals 08 highlights

2007 club Ultimate highlights

UPA club 08 trailer

Assorted awesome clips

Ultimate higlights

World Ultimate and Guts Championship 08 highlights

Sockeye and Fury at Dream cup in Japan

That was a hell of a lot of layouts, skies, bids, and Ds. Sure makes me wanna get out there and throw some plastic. Hope you enjoyed them all!

Share with your friends and teammates!

This post is part of the best Ultimate Frisbee websites project

Posted in Japanese, Ultimate Frisbee, Videos, sports | Tagged: , , | 5 Comments »

The best training scenes in fighting movie history

Posted by Andy Huang on December 7, 2009

I just finished watching Rocky Balboa and let me tell you, nothing gets me more pumped in a movie than the training scenes. And Rocky Balboa definitely did not disappoint.

Let’s start building some hurting bombs.

By the end of this scene I was ready to put on my sweats and run out into the cold for my own Rocky style training. But of course I had to finish the movie so I’ll get to that training tomorrow.

The best 10 action movie shootouts

In the meantime, watching Rocky inspired me to put together this list of the best training scenes in fighting movie history. And at the top of the list, the Rocky that started it all.

Rocky I

This movie has inspired way too many people to run up those steps and shadow box like idiots. But Rocky makes it cool.

Rocky II

Sylvester Stallone always uses large blocks of wood or farm equipment during his trainings. I wonder if any actual boxers followed this technique.

Rocky III

An in sync video of this was hard to find! Found it on some Russian site.

Rocky IV

In my opinion the next best of the Rocky movies after Rocky I. There was something evil about Drago that just made you want to see him get destroyed.

Bloodsport

Jean Claude Van Damme used to be so freakin awesome! The muscles from Brussels was my hero after this movie.

Kickboxer

Another Van Damme great before everything went downhill. I blame it on Dennis Rodman and that stupid movie Double Team

Batman Begins

Where can I find a secret ninja base in the mountains where I can train like this?

Karate Kid

The classic American martial arts movie. Mr. Miyagi says, wax on wax off!

The Matrix

Morpheus is fighting Neo! Not exactly a montage, but a great scene that set a new standard for action choreography in Hollywood.

Bonus Clip:

Ridiculously strong guy training.

If you know of a great training montage, please let me know!

Posted in Videos, movies | Tagged: , , , , , | Leave a Comment »