CARdBOard SaMuRAi
Posted by
CMOR
Posted on: 06/16/08
CARdBOard SaMuRAi
Cardboard Samurai...Recently I witnessed the most bizarre form of recycling one could imagine... It was a cardboard tube fighting tournament, held by the CTFL, or Cardboard Tube Fighting League... One can only wonder the amount of free time us 'westerners' have at our disposal, to form a league based around swashbuckling with paper products, purchased specifically to be destroyed and disposed of... Yet I beheld innocent folk engaging in the art of having fun, and this is quite a precious commodity...
My first glimse of the melee was the two coordinators who were going about the park, preaching their good news with a smiling invitation... They were simply sparring here and there, and then yelling for individuals to come join them for free... There were even some hardcore swordfighter guys in nearly authentic armor, though when they were propositioned they laughed and politely snubbed the cardboard-tube-conspirators...
Young and old gathered at Gasworks Park on this brilliantly illuminated sunny day... The tournament crossed gender and racial boundaries, easily bridging gaps between physical size and swift cunning as well... Smiles united one and all, inspiring even the losers to feel as if they had earned their place among the league's past trophy winners...
The rules of the tournament were as follows... Each contestant was given a four foot long tube to duel with... Just imagine a toilet paper tube, before it's chopped into managable, butt-sized sections... The rapiers were both flimsy and fragile... But this was the point... The first tube to be broken or bent beyond a 45 degree angle was out of the tourney... No head strikes were permitted, as well as other below the belt foul play... Also frowned upon was holding your tube in the middle, or behind your back in a 'cowardly tube tucker' way...
Nobody was ejected for these reasons, just as no one who wanted to fence was refused... People were eagerly watching others as they battled, waiting their turn to test their cardboard samurai prowess... Some combatants quickly developed sparring styles like medieval knights in heavy steel armor... They appeared clumsy and clunky, swinging at nothing but the ground, which unfortunately broke their tube and sent them packing...
Others I observed had more of a sleek speed to their martial art... It reminded me of Uma Thurman in 'Kill Bill...' One girl in particular, (who ironically appeared Japanese) rapidly rose to the top with her over-the-top stroke... She would snap her sword down so swiftly that her opponent would look down and see their own weapon sheared in half... She could have been a recycling ninja for all I knew...
Early on in the competition I noticed a small piece of tube laying on the ground... I had an 'aha!' moment and placed it over the camera lens... It was a brilliant low-budget effect, and half the video footage I shot was with this tube... It was great to get that tube's eye perspective!!!
I regret that I only took video footage of most of the melee, and captured no pictures of the grand prize, which was an elaborate cardboard battle axe... After the head to head competition the combatants all took the field in teams of three for an all-out war... This was an amazing 30 seconds of hit and miss bliss which left me laughing so hard I could barely get the shot... In every direction I heard those familiar 'thoomp' sounds, people screaming gleefully as they took a 'whump' on their backside... One by one the tubes broke, and son there were but a few ambitious souls holding their tubes for dear knife...
In the end the victor was a kid, still running around and waving his tube wildly... It brought to mind the scenes of children gone amok in 'Lord Of The Flies...' with a much more positive vibe... I had a hunch that somewhere close was supervision, ready to reel the kid back to reality if he began to feel too empowered by his tool of dueling destruction... My intuition was confirmed as the kid was presented the battle-axe as his grand prize... I watched the kid's face light up with glee, and then he promptly handed it to his dad to tote around the rest of the afternoon... Ha! So hard to please the virtual generation... I say give them some dirt and some decent values, they'll be fine...
Even the clean-up for this event was fun... Grown men were doing bellyflops onto the piled up broken tubes, which is a sight to see if you are quietly snapping a still photo of an inert pile of tubes and suddenly there's a full action shot exploding in your lens' view!!! Soon the kids were all over the dead tubes, sticking them up their sleeves and muttering something about being general grievous... I could tell that the humor and antics would reinforce their awareness about our mass consumption of paper products as a species... How could one look at a cardboard tube the same way again... It makes me want to roll the papertowels back onto the tubes and even plant them in the ground, heh heh...
On the whole, I found the Cardboard Tube Fighting League's tournament to be a fine display of human spirit... It's uplifting to see people gather under one cause, especially when that reason is no reason other than having fun... We sometimes forget that in our unending attempts to amass those other paper products called dollars, we are all capable of having too narrow of a mindset, or tube-vision...
Visit the CTFL website for more info and some hilarious photos!!!
CMOR
Is Rolling With The Hunches...
1
share
subscribe
contact
subscribe
RSS
Leave a Comment