Freedom Footbags

Though I can’t remember the exact date, I clearly remember getting the phone call from Lon Smith: He was so excited, “I’m going to be in a Modest Mouse video and they are going to pay me for it!” “Wow” I said, “That’s totally awesome!” And to boot, it was actually a decent amount of money - nothing outrageous, but whenever you can get paid to do something you love to do, well, that’s “da bomb”.

At the time I’d heard of Modest Mouse, but I wasn’t particularly familiar with them. So when I got the news, it certainly didn’t strike me as much as it would have if I’d known the group better. Many, many months have passed since that original phone call, so it wasn’t on the top of my mind when Allan (our webmaster), asked me, “Did you know Lon was in a Modest Mouse video!?” “Oh yea, I knew that” I said and then he gave me the YouTube link:

Not only was Lon in the video, he was the star, and he shredded up the footbag the whole time. This is hands down the best public exposure I’ve ever seen for footbag. I can totally relate to the theme of the video as well. It’s Modest Mouse’s song: Invisible. Lon is right there in everyones face performing magic yet he’s totally “invisible” to the people around him. I know that many other die hard players like myself have experienced this very same attitude from passers buy - they’re just too busy with their cell phones (or whatever it may be) to even spend one second to stop and experience something new and interesting.

While the actual footage of the footbag play was good, it had room for improvement. I think it’s important, especailly when showing hard core shred to a non-footbag savvy audience, to show it in slow motion. It the fist sequence he lands two Scorpion’s Tails back to back (this is the trick where he spins, goes around the footbag twice, and then catches it with his legs crossed in a clipper stall). In the the second section of the video (in front of the large crowd), the fist trick Lon does (where you can see his whole body) is a flurry. To to the untrained eye, this move does indeed look like a flurry, but you probably wouldn’t realize that Lon actually circles the bag three times before catching it on his toe.

It was cool to see the nice close-up of his footbag at the beginning of the video. I immediately recognized that footbag, having had the chance to use it myself the last time Lon visited us here in Idaho. It’s a 32-panel Jacob Raye footbag, similar to the ones his brother Josh makes, which we sell in our shred shop.

I can say that I’m now a Modest Mouse fan. I appreciate their music and I like where they are coming from.

You can download the video (10 Meg, .flv - flash format) from Lon’s Player Spotlight Spotlight section. Also you can check out what others have been saying about this video in the modified thread.

On a side note, Lon will be moving to Idaho in about a month! In addition, two other hard core shredders, Aaron Shepard and Sam Colclough are going to be moving here (to the Shredquarters) as well. With all this talent around, Idaho is really becoming a hotspot for footbag.

Thank you Lon Smith for being so awesome (and modest)!

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 13th, 2007 at 12:12 pm and is filed under Lon Smith, video. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.