A victorious evening in Vancouver has secured the Rainmakers a trip to the conference championships. Seattle beat out Vancouver 21-15 after being down 8-7 at halftime. Elliot scored 3 goals in the game and got on d. More on the game and the rest of the Rainmakers’ season can be found here.
Owen Martel is a thinker. His room is a mess of project parts, sheet music and technological scraps. He the type of guy that is constantly tweaking and analyzing the world. A couple years ago, Owen walked Europe. No seriously, he walked 4,000 miles / 6,500 km from Istanbul to Edinburgh. How many people in their life can say they’ve experienced something like that?
Well Owen is looking to share that experience stateside by walking the American West (from the Gulf of Mexico to Seattle). He’s planning on documenting everything he sees and sharing it with the wanderlust within us all.
I just backed Owen, not only because he’s a friend, but because I believe in his project. It represents a sense of adventure, boldness and a willingness to embrace the world in front of you in a way that is often lost in our internet and media strangled society.
——
For reference: Owen and I worked together a lot on whizARTbang, a theater/art performance project in Seattle developed by Clayton Weller. Clayton subsequently just ran a successful campaign for his Pocket Theater. Here’s a selection from whizARTbang by Owen:
Jordan Swenson, a student at the Art Institute of Seattle, used my poem “The Greatest Poem about Tacoma” as narration for his visual piece.
The piece will be on display at the Tollbooth Gallery in Tacoma from June 5 – June 12.
Just ran into an interview I did a few weeks ago after defeating Portland in our 2nd home game. Very cool!
Slime molds are some of the most amazing creatures on earth
When near reproduction
It must move to an ideal, drier location
Thousands upon thousands of individual cells aggregate
And become an amazing mass called pseudoplasmodium
All those cells that once functioned on their own become a completely new slug-thing
Some cells become the head
Some become the torso
Some the feet-like structures
Those particular cells sacrifice themselves in movement
For the good of the slug-thing
Until it reaches somewhere bright and warm
Acceptable for germinating
Where it releases a new generation of cells
—
The numbers of Insomniacs Anonymous
Skyrocketed that first week
The 8G network launched
Complaints of voices in the night
Horrors of “who’s there” and the
Heightened feeling of “I’m not alone”
Expanded with The Network’s growing coverage
By the time the final generation of wireless
Had reached the computer, smartphone, and tablet
From sea to shining sea
A gradual understanding arose
That we no longer needed those devices to communicate
A receptor
Lost somewhere in our mammalian medullas
Had suddenly evolved and switched on
Or had merely housed the correct slot
For technology’s latest puzzle piece all along
As these people – we
Were not just hearing murmurs
We were receiving them
Suddenly we could tell our lovers and mothers and wives
What we’re feeling because they already felt it too
We could lend lawnmowers to our neighbors without
Granting permission because they already had it
We could determine the capitol of Paraguay before looking it up online
Because we already knew it
It’s Asunción
No headlines announced the epiphany
That we and the online had become one-mind
It was felt by all
And chaos of course erupted
But only for a nanosecond
From the particles
We stood
Brushed ourselves off
And felt the collected support
It was not long before The 8G Network spread
To every city, and every village on the planet
Those next few decades passed in hyperspeed
The people of Earth moving in one motion
Advancing rapidly with a new plot
Unchained from individual achievement and
Independent desire
The people of Earth united at last
To build a better future for all of humankind
And those many million years later
When the sun and our homeland had gone
We were already amongst the stars
Finding new civilizations and
Sharing our knowledge
One day the universe will echo
“We are humanity.”
And then collapse upon itself
I’ve been selected to represent Seattle on the Seattle Rainmakers, a new professional ultimate team in Major League Ultimate.
Click here to read my player profile.
Our season begins April 20th and goes through June 23rd. July if we make the championship.
Cafés have ways of numbing you
As if you’ve entered some carefully organized art museum
Look don’t touch
Drink don’t speak
The exhibits
Are speckled with detail
One wears an expensive suit
Another, a type of hat you’ve never seen before
Is that a feather?
There’s this story behind them all
Maybe you’ve heard it before
Or can guess
But as brains melt into star-white computer screens
And the cloud shields mind
Words become limited to flickers
Like the gleam of framed glass
So you start to imagine
And on their faces you see orgasms
And everything ape behind their glances
How does your light inform them?
I too pretend I don’t see you
But wish I could know you
Know you in a field somewhere
Probably in Switzerland
And we’d kiss and feel the weight of each other
Our heat rivaling the real star high above
And we’d stay there past the 11pm closing time
As the night bugs start their noisy mating games
So late that even the grass and branches snore in the wind
And there we are
Like every poem and song says we should be
Just waiting
I don’t know what we’re waiting for
It has been a while since I’ve updated the site. Look for updates in the coming weeks on what I’ve been up to.
Love,
Elliot
Ultimate’s first professional instructional videos. The mission of RISE UP is to improve the level of play of Ultimate teams and players through the creation of engaging instructional video resources created by experts.
RISE UP was specifically designed for players and teams who want to elevate their game, but lack the access to high level players and knowledge to help them improve.
Update: We recently raised over $17,500 on IndieGoGo to film Seasons 1 and 2.
Elliot talks to Mark Earley at Ultimate Interviews about starting and running Skyd Magazine.
http://www.ultimateinterviews.com/2012/04/elliot-trotter-skyd-magazine.html
I’m lucky enough to have some awesome friends in the likes of Clayton Weller and co. Clayton and I go a long way back, from collaborating on comedy to our work on whizARTbang. Clayton and the folks at Freak’n Genius are working on a really fun technology that uses the XBOX Kinect to create cartoons. So I can stand in from of a Kinect with a controller and move my body around to make an animated 2d character do my bidding.
I headed over to the Freak’n Genius offices in South Lake Union today and put together a couple videos satirizing the upcoming elections. Enjoy:
This first one refers to an article I wrote for The Melon.
It was two years ago that I started filming and producing Time Shower with my good friend John Espey. The absurd concept was a mad scientist builds a time machine out of his shower (which later morphs into a shower staff for some ill-defined reason). Sort of a Dr. Who (which I had not seen until recently) meets HG Wells. It was meant to be both an outlet for creativity and a means to promote a project I was working on at the time called minutaur.com.
After attending a CLAW meeting recently, I was encouraged by fez wearing colleagues to make more Time Shower episodes. Though I finished editing the 4th episode two years ago, I still have footage we shot for a couple more. This weekend I decided to jump back into the footage and see if an episode really could still emerge. It’s fun for me to look back at those filming memories of what we put together and try to reconnect the dots of how we planned out the shoot to flow into the editing room. I’m pleased to be able to present another episode in the Time Shower series. While the chances of further episodes are low (minutaur is fledgling if at that and John and I no longer live in the same state), there’s still a smile on my face when editing this one and thinking of the future.
A bit about minutaur:
Rodney Flores spent over 35 years in the restaurant business and is now combining his passions for nutritious food, Crossfit and cooking into a project called The Primal Effect. The focus of this project is a video cooking show called Primally Plated which I will be filming and editing hopefully twice a month. I just finished producing our first episode which can be seen below.
Rodney is an incredibly passionate guy with a lot of exciting ideas. I look forward to seeing how this project materializes.
Asleep, I play guitar
Stroking every chord and string with virtuoso speed and guile
Any tune is reality, any song committed to vibration
But in reality, failure is polite
Is quitting still quitting after trading practice for afternoon cartoons
After falling behind in class
After giving up on myself
“Love me tender” by Elvis Presley
Is the only song I’ve learnt fully
On my red Pevay Predator no less
A song which I didn’t even know the words to
Until grandma sang over my playing
Guitar, I regret you
You, my perennial failure, are not alone
My grandfather’s name is Stanley Allen
Or Allen as he preferred to be called
Or Papa as we called him
Papa was always known as a quiet man
Even in death, he went with as little fuss as possible
He wore large, but thin-framed, square glasses
The type you think about when considering Tom Brokaw’s The Greatest Generation
His hair, a gray matted toupee, always gently and neatly combed to the side
Displayed a constant appearance of formality, of honor, of duty
Coming of age during the Great Depression and the Second World War
Papa was a workaholic
Although the details of his death are limited to
Images of my grandma returning from a day’s shopping
Finding Allen’s silent body quieter than usual
Realizing he isn’t responding to her questions
Moving as quickly as her body could take her to call 911
My understanding of his heart-attack through litterings of family conversation
Suggest a struggle to deal with a recent retirement
Retirement being
A notion unthinkable and unknown to the greatest generation
Papa was a Navy man, so my father tells me
During WWII it was his job to flash Morse code signals to other boats at night to communicate
And I can see him there
Standing silently in a starry night
The boat drifts up and down over the sea
Waves splash lightly on the ship’s hull
Allen’s lips sealed and his eyes sternly focused on
The dark distance
He’s waiting
Waiting there listening
And watching for the birth of a new star
It’s the type of night a man like Allen would have found peaceful
My father proudly recounts the story of a horrible
Stormy night aboard Papa’s Navy ship
The fists of Gaia pounded the vessel back and forth
Threatening to shred it apart
And my Papa, still a young man, fearful for his life
Made a wager with god
Should the storm break and he live to see home
He would never complain again
And as far as I know
He never did
That’s really a good way to understand what Allen was all about
He never complained about anything and
Never smiled greater than when taking that big silver dollar out of his pocket
Showing magic tricks to his grandchildren
Waving his hand like a magician
Making that flashing coin jump behind our ears
As if it was never actually there
Chuckling heartily at our surprise
While I admire the bits of his life that I know
Through these stories or childhood memories
I can’t say I know my Papa
And though I may someday learn to play guitar
There are some things I’ll never do
Off in the distance
In the fog of a deep night
Flashing code to me
It shines like a silver dollar
Always in the distance
And when I look for him
He’s not there
Correspondents Zack Smith and Ian Toner provide commentary for a semifinal game. – Photo by Discraft Inc.
Skyd Magazine was named the Official Coverage team of the 2011 Club Championships that took place in Sarasota, FL on Oct 27-30, 2011. Working in conjunction with USA Ultimate, Skyd brought a team of top notch correspondents down to the heat (and rain) to cover the action as the nation’s top teams in four divisions competed for gold. Skyd provided a video stream of games as well as daily preview and recap shows, write-ups, interviews and more.
Read all about Skyd’s coverage here and check out one of our preview shows below:
I’ve been selected for the second year in a row as the Official Videographer of Seattle SketchFest – the longest running SketchFest festival in country. Organized by Clayton Weller and crew, Seattle SketchFest brings together some of the finest sketch comedy groups in North America to the Theater off Jackson including the likes of Ubiquitous They, Charles Comedy and Dk & Morgan. This year, I was please to be able to catch and film the work of Peter & Chris, Charles Comedy, Comedian Barbara Holm, the Don’t We Boys and more. Congrats to the Seattle SketchFest team for putting on another amazing show.
Last year at the Fest, in addition to helping to film SketchFest’s project called MashUp, I put together a documentary about Ubiquitous They and the creative process. Below you’ll find a Ubiquitous They clip from last year’s SketchFest.
Not only was I pleased to have the honor of playing an awesome season with an incredible group of guys, I was excited to be a part of the design task force that would outfit and create a look for one of Seattle’s Elite Level Open Ultimate Frisbee teams – Seattle Voodoo. I built a wordpress site, augmenting a template and with Adam Restad and Vehro Titcomb of Five Ultimate helped make decisions about jersey designs and logos.
I also filmed a number of player profile videos for individual roster pages. You’ll find a good example below.
Founded in December 2010, It’s Recess is an event management company dedicated to reclaiming the moments of childhood where play and fun were the most important, most treasured things in the world. We organize events that recreate the best parts of the playground experience.
It’s Recess’ first event is the Seattle Tug of War Spectacular which pits like organizations against each other in a one-day tug of war tournament and benefit for Big Brothers Big Sisters of Puget Sound. The event will bring in over 50 teams and upwards of 400 participants to compete for the Seattle Tug of War Championship in what may be the most exciting Saturdays of existence.
Find out more at ItsRecess.com and check us out on Facebook.
Seattle Tug of War is a one-day tug of war tournament and benefit for Big Brothers Big Sisters of Puget Sound. The event will bring in over 50 teams and upwards of 400 participants to compete for the Seattle Tug of War Championship in what may be the most exciting Saturdays of your existence.
Teams of eight compete in multiple matches toward the Tug of War Championship. Teams can consist of anyone: your buddies, your coworkers, workout-partners, cubicle-mates or people you just met. The event is set up to encourage “grudge matches” in which industries compete for the best of each category (cafe vs. cafe, gym vs. gym, office division vs. office division, etc.). Each team will compete in at least four matches over the course of the event. Matches includes up to three “pulls” in which teams tug against each other. On the whistle, teams have up to three minutes to tug the middle of the rope (indicated by colored tape) over their line. Once the colored tape clears the line, a whistle is blown and teams are allowed five minutes to reset. Like all great competitions, best of three wins.
Teams work their way through brackets with the opportunity to make it to the 2011 Seattle Tug of War Championship bout.
Sign up your squad and find out more at SeattleTugofWar.com.
Check us out on Facebook and RSVP to the FB Event.
UPDATE: Unfortunately this event has been cancelled.
This past weekend I spent time 5 days in Boulder covering the 2011 USA Ultimate College Championships for Skyd Magazine. In addition to producing a ton a videos, liveblog, webcast, tons of recaps, interviews and photos with an excellent team for Skyd, I worked with CBS Sports and USA Ultimate to do voice over and talent work for a few daily recaps.