Balancing Aliens never disappointed us. And we were already excited, just opening the box. And from there, it just got more and more exciting. Such an elegantly made instrument of fun, so finely tuned, so subtle, so strategic, so silly.
The kind of silly you have to watch very, very carefully, and think about alot. That you can expect to get when you have a round game board, with bowling pin shaped pieces, that sits on a big screw, that can be raised or lowered, for different skill-levels. A board that has two sides, each of which a totally different game, each just as obviously the only game possible.
I mean, you could play it with 7-year olds who could probably beat you. And the very steady-of-hand 80 year old. And those of the less-steady persuasion could direct others where to move and get just involved in the strategic implications of it all. And you could be each as strategic as you can possibly get, and still, anyone might win, might be drawn inexorably towards adding just one more alien, teetering on the very precipice of improbability. Until lured by both scoring and collective-admiration potential, you upset the delicate balance, and all fall down.
Though dexterity is a definite advantage, winning the game is all about intuiting its strategic and physical dynamics. Even if your hand is not steady enough, you can still direct some younger hand and feel fully engaged in play.
Balancing Aliens is a fun toy and a fun game. MajorFUN. As in award-winning. It's a near perfect model for what a good family game should be like. Because it's based on physical as well as strategic properties, and because the strategic properties are so well expressed by the physical properties, the rules of each of the two balancing games are as apparent to kids as they are to grown-ups. Kids will play with kids. Grownups with grownups. Kids with grownups. Equals in skill and delight.
Counting myself, Rocky (my wife), Michael Pliskin (my friend the photographer), the photographer from the Los Angeles Times, and four passers-by I collared into the games, there were a total of eight participants in yesterday's world premiere of Socker on the Beach. The reporter from the LA Times was almost there, but, from a distance of more than two feet, it was rather difficult to tell there was an event going on, and sadly, she missed it.
It wasn't, as we had "planned," a true game of Junkyard Beach Soccer. The only thing anybody (I) brought that was anywhere close to Official Junk was my extensive singleton sock collection. Despite the goodly press from local papers, and probably having something to do with it being a Wednesday at 2:22 p.m., no one had brought any junk for us to play with. Nevertheless, a truly auspicious world premiere it became.
We never actually played anything that you'd call soccer, either. But we did play with socks. We really did. Hence, the name "Socker on the Beach."
For me, personally, and I mean "personally," as a participant, there were three events that made the world premiere of Socker on the Beach truly monumental in scope:
1. First, there was playing with socks, the beach, and Rocky. If it weren't for her, I might've never noticed how the sand is really part of the "junk," and that you can dig holes in it for Socker Golf, and even dig trenches and lay tracks for a game of miniature golf-in-the-sand-with-socks. Nor would I have ever dreamed of playing See if You can Get the Sockball Stuck in the Volleyball Net and then See if You Can Use Other Sockballs to Knock it Through to the Other Side. Nor would I have had the chance to see, so vividly, after knowing her for 42 years, what a wonderful, fun, spontaneous, responsive, brilliantly creative player she is.
2. Second, there was playing with these strangers - two women and a pre-adolescent boy for whom English was clearly a second language. We were using sockball-stuffed knee socks as hockey sticks, sometimes swinging, sometimes whirling them around like propellers, trying to hit other sockballs into a sandpit.
3. Third. Playing with the wind. The game of Air Socks that we created, following the discovery that the wind was so constant and strong that if we kinda tossed a single sock into it, towards, the volleyball net, the sock would sometimes just get stuck, and, with sufficient skill and luck, it was possible to get a sock stuck very near the very top of the net. We played this with someone who was about to continue running with friends, whom we cajoled into joining us after our other friends left. (They did feel like friends, those people whose names I never learned, with whom I barely spoke, but played so innocently intimately.)
In keeping with our recent rediscovery of the joys of edible fun, and our ongoing appreciation for the art-fun connection, allow me to introduce you to Amezaiku, the Japanese art of candy sculpture.
Now that you've developed a taste for the delights of "sweet art," a brief visit to Home Sweet Home will take you to the perhaps less exotic, but clearly artlike collection of gingerbread creations. Don't overlook this self-transcendent sugar bowl made out of sugar.
As a final treat on this brief, but sweet journey, be sure to visit this tasteful collection of links called the "Science of Candy." Coming from the always remarkable Exploratorium, this compilation of links will lead you to many a treat for both mind and mouth.
"Junkyard Sports" is on its way to everywhere. There is a junkyardsports.com - currently parked. It's an all-but-registered trademark. And it's the title for a a book that will be published this August. But it wasn't really until yesterday, when I finally put a few clips of it online, that I felt the idea of Junkyard Sports was finally "packaged," finally made available to basically the world.
It just so happened that Marah, one of the players in the DeepFUN 2003 Winter seminar at the Esalen Institute, had a digital video camera. And it almost equally just so happened that we were planning to play Junkyard Sports that very afternoon. We had this beautiful, large "Dance Dome" for our play space. Using whatever we could find, and my sockball collection, we divided into two teams, created two different sports, and spent the rest of the session playing.
Given the collective ingenuity and creativity, both of the newly devised Junkyard Sports proved unique and fun and very much worth playing. But it wasn't only the new sports, but also the way they were played, that captured the real meaning I want us to be able to give to the term Junkyard Sports. And there it is, in the last clip, the one called "We're Number ?" - a moment of vivid, clear, self-evident, joyful competition - the very esssence of Junkyard Sports - for you and the rest of the world to see.
It's called "Spit." It's also called "Speed," which is actually more descriptive of a major prerequisite for playing this game of double solitaire. But I think Spit captures the experience a little better. Not that anyone actually spits. But there are times when you find yourself somewhere between drool and slobber as you try to balance strategy with speed. Given the mind-and-card-bending delight of the frolicsome fray, the game is frequently, and mistakenly relegated to children. It is this egregious error in judgment that led to my renewed interest in the game. This, and the discovery of a most satisfyingly competitive online version that one can play, for virtually free.
I needs must point out that Spit/Speed has been the inspiration for more than one family-frenzy-worthy card game. Like, for example, the MajorFUN Award-winning Qwitch. Qwitch goes beyond Spit, as it were, with its own unique deck of cards bearing both letters and numbers, and the canny use of a special die that changes the criteria for the order in which cards get played.
If you find Spit and Speed insufficiently amusing, you might consider the more sedate, semi-strategic, turn-taking game of Spite and Malice. Very adaptable. Spawning many significant variations. Playable by a minor multitude. Spit-like in concept. But not Spit.
Ze Frank receives the MajorFUN Award for being perhaps one of the most prolifically playful presences on the web.
There are so many examples of his work that he is sharing, virtually for free, that it is difficult to select any as truly exemplary. Let's begin with this rather straightforward collection of virtual matchstick puzzles. Why? Because it's what you'd expect from a collection of virtual matchstick puzzles: clear, challenging, easy to use, fun to solve. Not particularly playful, but respectful of play and the needs of players. Now let's try just one more game-like experience. It's a Memory Game. All right, it's Concentration. But notice how each image is animated? Now it's truly a virtual game, not just translating a card game into the electronic medium, but transforming it.
Now take a look at Ze's Animated Snowflake. Not a game at all, but a unique bit of interactive delight. Technologically sophisticated. Easy to understand. Lovely to behold.
And here's one more, well, maybe two more examples of yet another gift of Ze's playfulness. It's called "Blow." It's an invitation. People are asked to send in a picture of themselves, blowing. Ze adds their picture to a growing blowing collage. It's, well, silly. It's also an invitation to fun and sharing and community. And here's one more: My Cat Annie. It's a statement, is what it is, of the further reaches of Ze's playfulness. And, for those of us who wonder whether this world can be made more fun, it's a reason for hope.
Funday Times reader Erin Dean would like us to visit the world of paper toys. Erin recommends that we begin our journey with a visit to a site most logically and self-evidently called "Paper Toys," and a great starting point it is. With over 80 printoutable plans for creating different paper toys, ranging from vehicles and buildings to party hats and gift boxes, Paper Toys is a gift to anyone who enjoys constructive play. All you need do is print, cut, color, fold and glue.
The paper trail leads to evermore complex and impressive opportunities to play. If you'd rather not do your own coloring, a visit to Print-n-Play Toys has a small, but impressively colorful collection of playworthy printoutable paper things, including a wonderfully official-looking game of Paper Soccer. Not that I'd want to discourage you from exploring the joys of coloring your own paper toys, but for the inkjet-setter, Print-n-Play Toys provides a wonderfully playworthy way to demonstrate the power of your technology.
All these paper-based joys will almost inexorably lead you to the amazing world of Paper Machines, as already amazed at in a previous issue of the Funday Times. But before you get too animated, consider the sturdier joys of Corrugated Cardboard Toys. You'll be bordering on hobby here, extending yourself way beyond desktop devices to things like jig-saws, sand paper, rubber bands and rods. Which is, of course, the whole point.
It's my personal contention, as if contentious is something I could personally be, that an exploration of Intergenerational Fun can be far more productive than that restricted to Intergenerational Games.
I have, nevertheless, compiled a rather stunning collection of Intergenerational Games to which I herewith link. What I find especially stunning about this collection is that the games are each and all fun - the kind of fun that a grandchild and grandparent uniquely share and can create uniquely for each other. Uniquely. Fun.
Yet I still find myself needing to point out that it's really not the games at all. Or only insofar as the games are invitations for grandparents and grandchildren to become partners in fun, wherever they want to go with it, wherever it takes them, playing a game, singing a song, taking a walk, maybe a nap, even.
The astute reader will all but immediately note that 10 Days in the USA is highly likely to be found MajorFUN Award-worthy, given it's obvious similarity to the already MajorFUN Awarded 10 Days in Africa.
What is of such noteworthy note, however, about the 10 Days in Africa and 10 Days in the USA similarity is that 10 Days in the USA is not actually identical to 10 Days in Africa. Of course, you may nod in your uninformed glibness, it is not actually identical to 10 Days in Africa. It's in the USA! But that, you see, is not the only difference. True, there are significant enough strategic differences necessitated by the immediately apparent differences in political geographies. But that is not all. There is, for example, the rule pertaining to Hawaii and Alaska and the color of the airports therein.
So noteworthy are the differences between these two sister games, that, for the first time in the history of the MajorFUN Award, we find our royal selves recommending to those who have the therewithall: go ye and purchase either or both, 10 Days in Africa and 10 Days in the USA, because each is just different enough for each to be, separately, and together, found trans-globally MajorFUN Award-worthy.
As to the 15 Day in Either Africa or USA variation, that, actually, applies to both, when only two people are playing, and gets our "Why Didn't We Think of That Ourselves" award.
This just in from an unamed source, purported to be the president and lead games designer of Out of the Box Publishing, distributors of the 10 Days series: "10 Days in Europe, 10 Days in Asia, and 10 Days in the Middle East are all in the works, and each will have unique features. Hint: a mode of water transportation."
Who can count the strategically geographic joys awaiting us?
Rhino Toys, makers of the Major Funly Oball, have introduced the world at large to two new play-saving devices: The Skyblaster (on the left) and SkyO. After hours of fun testing, both in and out of the Fun Testing Lab, both were found to be Majorly Fun, and both herewith granted the esteemed MajorFUN Award.
Let us begin with the perhaps subtler significance of the SkyO. It's a ring-shaped tossing thing, similar, in concept and function, to that which has been called the Flying Disc, and, of course, the FrisbeeŽ of registered trademark fame. Only SkyO is easy to throw, and easy to catch. And this is a big, big gift to all of the sensitive of hand or weak of throwing arm. Which means it is a greater boon to the rest of us who like to throw and catch things that hover, because thanks to SkyO, there are so many games that so many more of us can play.
As for Skyblaster, the whistling, rubber-tipped dart that you launch with a self-contained rubber band, it is a direct path to many a flight of fancy. Almost soft enough to catch, with everso subtly bendable, path-guiding fins, and so easy to fly so far. However, let this be a lesson to you: use the finger. I tell you this despite the remarkably clear instuctions embossed on the underside of the dart head, because I tried to use my thumb as the launcher, over and over again. Using the finger, you can send SkyO soaring to remarkable heights, even if you are short.
I haven't yet made up any games for the Skyblaster, though I'm thinking a SkyO would make a wonderful Skyblaster target....
Balancing Aliens never disappointed us. And we were already excited, just opening the box. And from there, it just got more and more exciting. Such an elegantly made instrument of fun, so finely tuned, so subtle, so strategic, so silly.
Counting myself, Rocky (my wife), Michael Pliskin (my friend the 
Funday Times reader Erin Dean would like us to visit the world of paper toys. Erin recommends that we begin our journey with a visit to a site most logically and self-evidently called "
