Super Frog

Ever since Ken Feit taught me how to create what became for me the Frog of Enlightenupment, I have been fascinated by anything having to do with frog-making. Imagine, therefore, my delight at discovering instructions for creating an oragami Super Frog. Better yet, don't just imagine it, make one of your own.

Extreme Ironing

Extreme Ironing is, apparently, the name of the game.

I quote from a clearly informed source:

"Extreme Ironing is a sport which combines the danger and the spirit of an extreme sport with boring housework you have to do. By Extreme Ironing the sportsman gets a great fitness and he is always looking smart.

"Extreme Ironing calls on you to take your iron and your board to extreme places to iron your clothes there. That can happen on a mountain, in a forrest, in lakes, rivers, etc, on crowded public places or wherever you like. There is no limit.

"Extreme Ironing... is also dangerous. So you have to handle your iron very carefully and at the beginning it is a good advise to do Extreme Ironing at not too dangerous places. Just practice on not too steep slopes or in your backgarden. Do never ever Extreme Ironing on your own if you are not a professional. Otherwise you ask for danger. There are some protections for your arms and so on. Please use it."

"The object of extreme ironing, which was apparently invented in Britain, is 'to take ironing to the edge by demonstrating a spectacular or creative ironing style, whilst taking the creases out of your clothes'."

My favorite part - the slogan: "HAVE FUN, LOOK TIDY"

Link courtesy of Bruce Williamson

Wheelchair skateboarding

Wheelchair skateboarding is the very kind of sport activity that demonstrates the heart and soul of the "junkyard" approach to sports. Like all skateboarding, the world is a skatepark. Sure, it's always neat to find a dedicated skatepark with artfully constructed ramps and stuff. But the heart of skateboarding can be found on curbs and stair railings and in empty swimming pools.

Using a wheelchair instead of a skateboard, Tyler Deith manages to transform even the official skatepark into its junkly origins. Skateparks aren't designed for wheelchairs. Nobody ever thought that people in wheelchairs should even consider skateboarding. There's no term for the sport that Tyler has created, because, as yet, there are no such things as wheelchair skateparks. The closest I've seen to a label is "Extreme Wheelchair Sports." Me, I like it, a lot, that there are no official names for what Tyler is doing, because it makes it a little more obvious that Tyler is doing it for fun - making fun that much more accessible, that much more universal.

- Thanks for this find go to Grow-a-Brain -

Bruce Williamson on Vacant Lots

Bruce Williamson asks:

Hi Bernie,

Appreciated your recent post about playing it safe! Our culture doesn't do anything in balance, so I guess the next pendulum swing from this over-rigid, fearful, lawyer-dominated, control freak approach will be what? Articles extolling the little manhood-building benefits of small boys playing in traffic?!

Do you know anyone who has/is/might be exploring the role of the vacant lot in many of our childhoods? These have mostly disappeared, I think, in the way we knew but maybe not. I do know for sure, however, that in California all of those vacant lots are worth about $500,000 each! For all I know there's already a book out celebrating their anarchical wildness.

And then answers:

Followed the advice I hadn't taken yet and googled vacant lots. Most of what I found was about the toxins and dangers lurking in vacant lots, and I certainly do not discount the reality of any of these hazards ? especially in urban areas where vacant lots have become the dumping ground for everything from garbage to chemical waste to bodies, and which are often the hangouts of people waiting and wanting to do our children harm.

Perhaps what I'm really trying to rediscover is the feeling of the vacant lot. I think there's some of that intent in your junkyard sports approach to play. If we can no longer safely encourage vacant lot play, what do we have or what can we create that helps replicate its surprise, diversity, wonder and wildness?

I Love Thickets

Back Yards & Vacant Lots

Whatever Happened to Play?

This article reminds me of a mother at one of my workshops who told me the story of her five-year-old daughter. The daughter was in kindergarten and each day the teacher gave the children tiny bits of homework. Her mom told her that it was important to do her homework first and that after she was done they would play together. This arrangement went well for a couple of weeks. But then the daughter marched up to her mom and said, "You make up rules. I want to make up some rules." With a sparkle in her eye the mom replied, "What do you mean?" So the daughter told her. "I want to play first, 'cause when I play it gets me smart for my homework."

The Keyboard to the City Award

Today, I quote utterly and totally from Phil Shapiro's DDN (Digital Divide Network) Blog - why? Because it's fun. And funny. And clever. And worthy of us.

As part of a tradition, mayors often present visiting dignitaries with a "key to the city."

Mayors who are forward-thinking might consider a twist on this and offer an annual "Keyboard to the City" award, honoring an individual or organization that has used creative thinking (i.e. ingenuity) and hard work to expand access to technology in the city.

How much would the media enjoy covering an event where the mayor solemnly declares, "And I now present you with the keyboard to the city." He or she would then ask the recipient to kneel on one knee, and the keyboard would be tapped lightly over their shoulder. (USB keyboards only, please. If the keyboard is wireless, the tap on the shoulder should also be performed wirelessly.)

Mayors could use a little playfulness in their work day, too.

Playing Safe

I somehow Googled my way to this discussion, called "Safety at All Costs," in response to a blog article that contained this observation:

"Children learn to cope with the world through outdoor activities, writes a British educator. But adult fears are restricting children's ability to explore the world. And they're not any safer as a result."

and I was, well, delighted, positively, absolutely, actually. With organizations like The American Association for the Child's Right to Play struggling to keep schools from closing down their recess yards because of liability concerns, it is genuinely soul-restoring to find so many people recognizing and affirming that the need to play freely actually transcends the need to play safely.

Here's a sample - one of many fun, funny and often provocative contributions from readers. This one's from Arty:

"I lived by a lake when I was growing up. Playing on thin ice and swimming to the opposite side were just a couple of the water-based activities my parents gave up lecturing me about. I rode my bike without any brakes all one summer and had an unhealthy attraction for bridges, train tracks, powerlines and anything that could be weaponized. We always had a pack of smokes hidden in our tree-fort too (just in case we escaped accidental death). Now my daughter complains because I make her wear hockey pads when she plays video games.... if she only knew what she was putting me through."

WaveLength

The topic is BUBBLE GUM. We've got a minute. List the first five kinds of bubble gum that you can think of. You make yours. I'll make mine. And when you're finished, rank them from 1-5. No, I don't know how you should rank them, by your favorites, by what you think is the most popular. Wait. Let me correct that. List the five kinds of bubble gum that you think I'll be able to think of. And then rank them the way you think I'll rank them. OK? Here goes. I got: 1. Dubble Bubble, 5. Skittles, 2. Bubblicious, 3. Bazooka and 4. Bubble Yum. We get one point for each gum. And an extra point for each gum we ranked the same. OK. OK. So maybe Skittles really isn't bubble gum. All that's really important is that we both think it is.

You know, for a trivia-style game, this was kind of different. It's about Pop culture, for one. For another, it's fun. A lot more fun. One might almost say, to coin a phrase, Major FUN. It's called WaveLength. What makes it so much more fun than your average trivia game? Three things: one, you're not working alone, against everyone else. It's you and your partner. Two: everybody plays, all the time. There's quite literally, "never a dull moment." And three, it's not so much trivia as it what you might call "Family Feud meets the Match Game." How "right" your answer is depends completely on what the other guy has to say. It's a trivia game (over a thousand questions), but you're all playing together, you're actually trying to get more connected, trying to think like what you think the other guy's thinking. It's got all the ingredients of a good trivia game. It's all about facts and memory. But it's even more about connecting to the other guy; getting on, what you might call, the same "wavelength," so to speak.

Major FUN-wise, Wavelength is what the award is all about.

4-Square Volleyball

We reinvented Four-Square Volley Ball at Friday's "Sports for Fun, for Free, for Everyone" workshop. We were in a large carpeted room, maybe about 70 of us. Chairs were placed against the walls so that there was plenty of room for us to play. I had my bag o' balls, including a baseball-ball-sized sacky-sack. In order to illustrate the concept of Junkyard Sports and all implied thereby, I asked the group to make up some kind of game we could all play together. Since most of them were involved with very active youth, and because it was almost lunch, they elected to play a game with a lot of movement. Because the room we were in could be subdivided into two rooms, the carpet design was in two sections - with a broad strip down the middle. Apparently, this seemed like a volleyball net to some people, so volleyball was the game of choice.

I explained that though this would probably work, it seemed to me that not enough players would be involved. The suggestion was that each team had to hit the ball at least five times. Or maybe three. Or anywhere between three and five. Since there were maybe 35 on a team, it seemed to me that there would still be a problem with participation. Someone suggested that we divide the court in half again, so that there were four sections, as in the game of four square. We used people's jackets (including my just-cleaned sports jacket) and laid them on the floor, perpendicular to the dividing strip. This gave us four teams of maybe 17 on a side. Since we didn't really want to keep score, someone else suggested that if a team misses, they'd lose a member. This raised a concern about people having to be "out" - a major no-no, Junkyard Sports-wise. So, we made it the rule that the last person to miss the ball would join the team that served it.

And it was good.

OK, other people have invented their own versions of 4 Square Volleyball. But, a) it was ours, and b) that "if you miss you join another team" rule was uniquely Junkyardly, manifesting a certain sensibility that the real and maybe only purpose of a good sport is to keep everyone in play.

Skee-Ball Revisited

Skee-Ball, in case you need to be reminded, is described most poignantly by Paul Lukas on his Inconspicuous Consumption website, as:

"...that coin-operated game where you roll a series of nine balls, one at a time, up a gently inclined lane that has a hump at the far end. The ball sort of launches off of the hump and then lands in one of several holes -- the farther away the hole is, the more points that hole is worth. It's a swell game, but the key moment for me is when I drop my coin in the slot, which releases the nine balls down a ramp -- the balls are all released at once and proceed down the ramp in unison, one after the other, so they all come to a near-simultaneous stop when the bottom ball reaches the base of the ramp, which produces a spectacularly satisfying Click! sound that resonates throughout the room. The appeal of the click (which is actually comprised of eight separate and distinct mini-clicks, which are separated by a nanosecond or so as each ball collides with the one in front of it) is hard to describe, but it's one of those exquisitely perfect noises that's exciting and comforting all at once."

Skee-Ball is manufactured by the Skee-Ball Company, and though it is their core product, it is one of many game machines they have invented. They produce a significant collection of Midway and Coin-op games. But Skee-Ball remains their most traditional, and for many, most beloved contribution to the world of pay-to-play. It is also something that could be easily made out of junk. For free. Granted, you probably won't be able to reproduce the proverbial "click," and the balls probably won't return automatically, let alone near-simultaneously, but with a few old golf balls, or maybe some Sacky-Sacks, a couple cardboard boxes and some old coffee cans, something most satisfyingly skee-ballish could be yours.

More Chickens, More Fun. B'Gawk! revisited

What I love about the Internet is the people it brings to me, and me to.

In reaction to the game of B'Gawk as described in Monday's story about The Ultimate Camp Resource

Roger Greenaway commented:

"Make this game even better by changing 'elimination' to a 'forfeit' e.g. infringers slide circled fingers up their foreheads to make chicken shades, then strut round the circle as a cool but miserable chicken. After completing the forfeit you are a full participant again."

And then Bruce Williamson wrote:

"This B'gawk game reminds me of an activity sort of like a "wave" in a circle that I used to do with groups. I think I called it "Synapse." Everyone joins hands. The leader starts a simple squeeze of either the hand on his/her right or left. When this is first done it's fun to see the hands jerking around the circle as the signal gets to each person. The leader then sends a squeeze in the opposite direction. Next the group experiments with sending the one-direction signal in such a silent, stealth manner that it is hard to see the impulse as it passes around. The ultimate challenge is when the leader squeezes both hands simultaneously and the impulse travels around in both directions at once reaching that poor soul opposite the leader who on a good day successfully passes it on in both directions at once.

"I love the utter hilariousness of B'gawk, but what I really HATE about it is the elimination rule, even being out for just one round. To me it runs counter to the New Games approach that so wonderfully and magically transformed many of the hatefully competitive games we were subjected to and humiliated by when we were children. With children I don't think it is fun to be individually eliminated, to be singled out and feel you are not good enough, especially if for various reasons (I think of my own lack of sports coordination when I was little) a child always seems to find himself/herself in the losing group. What price is paid when a child is always thinking inside "I'm not good enough or I'm too stupid or I'm (fill in the blank) to stay in this game."

"By changing just that one rule, B'gawk can easily be turned into an utterly fun test of a group trying AS A GROUP for its next personal best, where the group cheers on the ones who don't always get it RIGHT. Just amend the rule to say that "everyone stays in and that . . . the goal of the game is to look ridiculous and go as fast as possible . . . and see how quickly the GROUP can successfully B'gawk TOGETHER."

"I mean, I know a game like this shows up in a camp handbook for all the best reasons, but this bit about eliminating people deserves to die, at least until a group has played together for a good long while, and even then I am not so sure, not even with highly self-aware adults. I think fun disappears when players get individually eliminated. It doesn't mean those kinds of rules aren't enjoyable in certain circumstances. But I strongly believe they are mostly joy killers. The only thing that could make the existing B'gawk rule about elimination even worse would be for the game leader to blow a classic coach's whistle really loudly, point at the person who just messed up and yell that they are OUT.

"Looking at my own nefarious career leading many different kinds of groups in various playful activities, ropes course challenges, New Games, etc., and from examining my own childhood history, I think the amount of shaming and bad feelings that have been generated by competitive games in people's lives is really amazing. I think one of the reasons that New Games took off so quickly in the 70's was because our generation was sick and tired of the old rules. Today? I would imagine that the video game generation as it "matures" (is that an oxymoron?) will probably want more competition than ever, the bloodier, more violent and ruthless the better."

I shared these comments with the Resource, and, within say a coupla hours, got an email telling me a new, revised version had been published, as follows:

B'gawk! (The chicken game!!)

Stand in a circle. Make two circles (one with each hand) with the index finger and the thumb. Hold a circle over each eye. The person starting drops one hand (a quick bounce, as if the hand was tied to elastic) and says "B'gawk!!" The direction is decided by which hand is used; if the first person drops his right hand, the person to his right must then continue the action. If he drops his left hand, the person to his left continues.

If BOTH hands are dropped, the action continues in the same direction, but the person directly opposite is skipped over. The first person cannot use a double B'gawk, because direction has not yet been established.

If someone messes up (ie: B'gawks when they shouldn't, or hesitates too long), they must run around the circle flapping arms and making chicken noises until they return to their original spot, and rejoin the play. Note: the group continues to play while the chicken run around the circle - this adds to the chance of being distracted, making mistakes, and becoming a chicken. More chickens, more fun!

The goal of the game is to look ridiculous and go as fast as possible.

It is this kind of responsiveness, this ease of and openness to change, that makes the Internet such a deep and inviting playground. "More chickens, more fun!"