Je sais que certain français sont venu écoutés notre émission. Je dois avouer que nous avont eu beaucoup de problèmes à diffuser l'émission mais l'enregistrement n'est pas trop mal
. On va faire mieux pour le prochain!Notre invité est CrAsH (Alex), organiseur du WT.
Rapidshare || Putfile
Voici une transcription de la première partie avec CrAsH (par firebird):
TRANSCRIPT (PART 1)
by firebird; special thanks to Zombo for corrections
Typographical and interpretational accuracy not guaranteed. I'll make corrections people point out.
For those of you who want to re-post this somewhere else (e.g. at different sites/boards, etc.), I would appreciate if you gave credit where it is due, as this takes a while to do (longer than it looks). Thanks.
Key
S= strat1227
C = Crash (Alex)
J= Joshua
Z = Zombo
S: Hopefully this will be the first podcast that the Research Department will bring you. Me and Joshua are hosting it. We're going to talk to Alex, aka Crash, the person who organized the world tournament.
J: Alex, you there?
C: Oh hey guys.
S: So, we got a lot of questions for you. Hopefully we can get them all answered and everybody will be able to hear us this time.
C: (laughs)
S: So, ok. I guess we can start with "What motivated you to start a world tournament?"
C: Well basically I started pen spinning when I was 13 years old; that was about 8 years ago now. And during that time, there wasn't many boards around. So what I had to do was I had to stop spinning for many years and then when I came back to pen spinning I found out there was more boards on the Internet. And during that time, not many of the boards were connected to each other, meaning like, not many of them were speaking to one another. So what I decided to do was, I spoke to many people on all the different boards and I made friends. So what I then did was I decided to make a tournament linking every single board together. And so far for the moment I think it's worked out quite well.
S: Yeah, I'd definitely have to agree. How long in the making was this tournament? How long did it take you to get everything set up before it actually got started?
C: Well, I had the idea, I think it was early in January and basically I think it was in one month I had the idea and I set everything up in a month. And then it got quickly started off in a month so it was really a quick thing that happened. And I admit there were a few problems with the setting-up. I mean, I could have done things a lot better. For example: the judges, the scoring system, etc. But I think this was maybe just a test, so we can improve it for the next tournament.
S: It's definitely worked out fairly well so far. There have been problems but that's good for us to [patch] up next time.
J: Yeah.
C: Yeah.
J: If I could cut in here strat for a second...I'd like to know Alex, did you expect once you posted the 1st round videos that you'd get any news coverage or any print coverage or anything like that?
C: Well I didn't really expect [it] at the beginning. But what I decided to do was, because there's not many.... much pen spinners in this country (there's only 4 pen spinners in the UK including me), so what I decided to do was I took a chance in writing to my local newspaper, which is read by about 4 million people everyday. And basically they decided to print an article and interview me about it. And since then I had a few TV channels that contacted me to go and speak about it on television. And then I had a few pen manufacturing companies phone me up, Bic and Stabilo; they wanted to sponsor the tournament event. They're considering: Bic made that Pen Spinning Academy website which didn't go down very well. Basically...
S: I'm still waiting on my pen from that. (laughs)
C: (laughs) Well what happened was, the Pen Spinning Academy website, not many pen spinners like it because they can see through the commercialization of Bic. So that’s why I’ve turned down their sponsorship, because they don’t really care about pen spinning at all.
S: Right, exactly. And Bic doesn’t exactly make the best spinning pens to begin with. So ...
J: Chyeah.
C: (laughs)
S: So no big loss there. Hopefully Pentel will work with us though. We like them. Pentel, Dong-a, and all those ... But you’ve gotten– like you’ve said, you’ve gotten a lot of [publicity] due to this tournament. How many times did you say you’ve been on TV now?
C: For the actual tournament?
S: Yeah, the tournament has got a lot of [publicity] right?
C: Yeah, I was on television twice. Once on BBC (one which is a very big TV channel here which is watched by the whole country) and also I was on ITV news as well for a bit talking about the world tournament and pen spinning in general during the month of February, which is a few months ago now.
J: Nice, nice. [maniok] from the GPC wants to know when will that be uploaded online, if possible?
C: Well, I think because I got it on VHS cassette (my parents taped it from my VHS player), so basically what I’m going to have to do is I’m going to have to like, put it through a VHS system and attach it to my PC to do that. I think I’ll only be able to do that at my university because they’ve got all the equipment down there. And because I’m working through this year and I’ll be going back to university in September, so I think I’ll be doing that in September.
J: Ok, well I think we all can wait then for that. It’ll be worth the wait.
S: Yeah, definitely. There are obviously a lot of really good pen spinners that were entered this tournament and now we’ve [dwindled] them down to 5. Were there any specific examples that you had where, like, maybe the spinner was disappointed that he didn’t win or you were disappointed that somebody didn’t win?
C: Yeah, I was actually disappointed in round 1 with the bonkura vs. Nanna match. Basically, Nanna is one of my favourite spinners, and the reason I was disappointed was because he made something like 5 or 6 videos prior to that battle and he sent me all of his videos to see which one I preferred. And they were absolutely amazing videos. They would’ve easily beaten bonkura if he had handed in one of those videos. And the one he chose was absolutely a culling choice out of the six. I think it was the worst one, and I really don’t know why he chose it, so that’s what really disappointed me. Like, Nanna could’ve easily gone have gone on to be in the finals. That’s probably the biggest upset for me.
J: Maybe he wanted bonkura to win.
S: Heh. He’s probably saving the really good videos for the later-on rounds if I had to guess what the choice reasoning was there.
J: Yeah, that makes sense.
C: Yeah, that’s what I thought to myself.
S: Ok, now that we’re down to the 5 finalists, right? How do you determine who wins? What’s the process?
C: Well what happens is, each of the finalists will make a video and the judges will grade the videos as normal, and the two best scores from those 5 figures will go through to the head-to-head battle for 1st and 2nd positions. The other three spinners will make 1 video each, and the best of those three will get the 3rd position. So what I kind of did is, added a little more action to the final.
J: Now will that also determine the 4th and 5th positions?
C: Yeah, it will. It will do.
J: Ok.
S: Alright, speaking of where the finalists now... the prizes for them. I know UCPSB has their insert prize. What about all the other boards? I noticed your website doesn’t have any prizes up for them. Do we have any ideas on that?
C: Yeah, at the moment I’ve got a Dr. KT from JEB which was a specially designed one from them. Mr. LSC is going to send me a specially designed Com-ssa pen for the winner. UCPSB is sending me the designed insert. GPC is making a pen– I haven’t been told which pen yet, but I’ve heard it’s gonna be pretty good. The SweSpin also and FPSB have recently designed a specific modded pen to the French board. And it’s only been designed I think like 2 or 3 days ago so it’s very, very new and completely 100% French. So I’m really excited to see what that’s going to look like.
S: Sounds really...
J: Sounds like Christmas for a pen spinner.
S: No joke. Man, I wish I could win the world tournament. Maybe next time, huh?
J: Speaking of, Alex, who do you think is gonna pull this one out this year?
C: Umm, well I’m not gonna really say ‘cause they’re all my friends so it’s gonna be a bit bad on me too.
J: If you had to guess.
C: If I guessed? Umm... probably Eriror.
J+S: Yeah, we’re all rooting for him.
S: Yeah, us at UCPSB are. When [...] about [...] the next world tournament will be?
C: Well, what I’ve done is, I’ve put together a World Tournament Committee, an organization which consists of 7 spinners, and what we’ve done is, we’ve basically...I’ve spoken with the committee about it and I think we’re gonna have the tournament once every two years.
S: Every two years.
C: Every two years. And since Zombo’s idea with the team tournament, we’re also thinking about having that every two years as well and like alternating years.
S: That makes sense. And would you encourage other people to try to organize big tournaments like this also, or would you say that, you know, just yours and the team spinning tournaments are enough?
C: Yeah, I’d definitely recommend, like, put in more tournaments. The only thing is, is it’s very, very difficult to like, keep every single board happy when you’re organizing this because every board has different opinions on what’s better than another video, etc. So basically, you have to be very, very careful because the Koreans [have] different opinions to us. The Japanese might have very different opinions to the Koreans and to us as well. So basically you have to keep every single person happy and that’s very, very difficult to do. But what I’ve done is I’ve talked to the committee and we’re thinking about having several different tournaments done throughout the year. And basically the [world] tournament, the Master Series, a league for the top 16 spinners. So basically it’s gonna give more opportunities for other pen spinners to participate.
S: Speaking of trying to keep the boards happy, have there been any problems in this first world tournament you organized? Any major things you can think of?
C: Any major .....?
S: Speaking of trying to keep all the boards happy, have there been any major problems so far in this first world tournament?
C: Uh, yeah. During the 4th round, when Coochun lost his battle, basically there was many Koreans that were very unhappy about that. So, that was a main problem: trying to keep them happy.
S: Yeah. We’ve got some questions from people joining us in the chatroom. He says, “Who is the person in the website, on your homepage?”
C: Pardon?
S: Who is in the picture on your website homepage?
C: Oh, that’s a photo of Eriror.
S: Of who?
C: It’s Eriror...
Zombo notifies Crash via text that strat and Josh are referring to the other picture.
C: Oh, that’s um, I’m not allowed to say his name. I’ve been asked not to by his best friend.
S: Oh. So we’ve got Eriror on the homepage and then Secret-person-who-we-are-not-allowed-to-say-the-name-of. Ok, coming up, in UCPSB, is the team spinning tournament you were talking about earlier. You’re managing a team, right?
C: Yeah, I’m managing a team of PDS spinners.
S: Who’s on your team?
C: It’s gonna be Nanna, Cloud Traveler, Whiskey, RainyD, Bethlehem and Taeryong.
S: Wow, that’s a tough team.
J: That’s an all-star team right there.
S: Yeah, definitely. I’m in the tournament. I'm in the tourn-
C: There’s also gonna be an all-girls team.
S: Yeah, I’m in the tournament also, hopefully we don’t have to [go] against you.
C: (laughs)
S: Ok Alex, here’s a question for you: how do you feel about the sponsorship of pen manufacturers? Do you think it’s a good thing, I’m guessing? Or how ...
C: Um, it really depends. With pen manufacturing, it’s very difficult to get [genuine] sponsorship opportunities because they’re interested in selling all their pen merchandise, so they don’t really care about pen spinning. So we have to be careful about which companies we choose to sponsor us, etc.
S: That makes sense. So, you would recommend smaller companies?
C: Pardon?
S: Would you recommend smaller companies to sponsor teams?
C: Not really smaller. I’d recommend companies that are not pen manufacturers. For example, some are Coca-Cola, Nike, Adidas: companies that have got nothing to do with pens.
S: That makes sense.
C: So basically [we’re] sure they don’t want to just sell their own pens.
S: Yeah, they’re not just trying to commercialize it.
C: Mm. (Yes.)
S: Ok, I’ve got a question from the chatroom: he wants to know more about the TV show you were on. Like, maybe what they asked you about, stuff like that.
C: Well, they just asked me a few questions about– the same questions you’re asking me here: about the whole why I did (organize the world tournament), and they also asked me about pen spinning in general. Because in UK, we don’t have pen spinning here. So basically they were very interested to find out about pen spinning in general. And that led on to the world tournament afterwards.
S: Alright, sounds good. I think that’s about all the questions we had for you to ask. It was good having you on our podcast.
C: Thanks a lot guys.
S: And thank you for organizing and setting everything up for us.
C: Thanks guys.
J: See you later, Crash.
S: We’ll see you around, Crash.
C: See you guys.
S: Alright, it’s just me and Josh now.
Si quelqu'un pourrait traduire, ça serait bien
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Rah franchement excellent, j'avais déjà tout lu et tout compris en anglais, mais là j'ai relu tout en "français" tellement c'est fantastique xD, j'adore les traducteurs, ça veut tellement rien dire... 