Bernie DeKoven, funsmith

Compassionate Fun

bernie@deepfun.com (Bernie DeKoven) — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 07:00:03 -0600

So now we have a 55th flavor of fun:

Compassion.

There's something fun about compassion. With the fear and the distrust, the powerlessness and the anger, compassion, being compassionate, compassionate acts, seem everso much more deeply fun; tastes everso much more clearly, inherently, well, good.

It feels good to act like a good person.

Despite it all. It's fun to care.

Click this site for more.

For related fun, see also Kind Fun and Loving Fun.

via TED

from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith

EUNOIA

bernie@deepfun.com (Bernie DeKoven) — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 17:11:48 -0600

"Eunoia," quoth the Wikipedia, "is the shortest English word containing all five main vowel graphemes. It comes from the Greek word εύνοι&alpha which means well mind or beautiful thinking."

Eunoia is also the title of a book of, well, poems, by Christopher Bök. The following excerpt should more than amply explain our collective interest in the significance of the aforementioned:

Midspring brings with it singing birds, six kinds, (finch, siskin, ibis, tit, pipit, swift), whistling shrill chirps, trilling chirr chirr in high pitch. Kingbirds flit in gliding flight, skimming limpid springs, dipping wingtips in rills which brim with living things: krill, shrimp, brill - fish with gilt fins, which swim in flitting zigs. Might Virgil find bliss implicit in this primitivism? Might I mimic him in print if I find his writings inspiring?

Play. Word play. Deeply fun word play, cresting the poetic heights of monovowelism.

from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith

Teaching Games

bernie@deepfun.com (Bernie DeKoven) — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 06:36:00 -0600

I recently wrote an article called Teaching Games.

I wanted to share with you some of the second part, especially, because I thought you'd find it especially useful.

It goes like this:

Something gets engaged in people when you teach them new games, and the dialogue is about fun. There are rules to be learned, and rules to be changed. And if the game is really new to them, they have to challenge some pretty basic assumptions about what winning means and what strategies to use. They have to think about what's fun for them. Become sensitive to their own sense of play. They have to discover the unique proposition of the game, and the fun inherent in that uniqueness. And if the game is similar to one they already know, they have to make even subtler distinctions.
See, this game is just like tag, except there's no base, and the only way you can be safe is when you're hugging someone.

And, most important, the teacher, and the player, both have to think about the fun of it all. About what's fun for them, together. And how to make the game moreso.

Here are some suggestions:

Find a game you think you'll have fun playing together.
Look for a game that's like a game you've already had fun playing together.
It's especially easy to teach a game that's like a game you all already know. "This game is just like Tic Tac Toe, only you have to get 4 in a row, and you can use an X or an O."
Start out with the shortest version of the game - the one that will take you the fewest rules to explain.
Teach the game as though having fun together was more important than how the game is supposed to be played.
If winning becomes too important, change sides from time to time, or make it the rule that you both can play either side, or give each side a name, and decide ahead of time which side is going to win, or play a different game - especially a game that doesn't require a lot of skill, or try a game that involves a very different skill.
Don't stay with any one game longer than it's fun for everybody to play. Start out "tasting" the game. You don't have to play it to the end. Just play it long enough to decide whether you want to play it some more.
If it stops being fun, stop the game and play something else. Something different. Something involving a different skill. Or no skill at all.
Take turns teaching each other games.

Something else happens to both games teacher and games learners as they explore more new games. They start thinking not only about the fun of it, but also the shared fun that grows wider and deeper between players and teacher.

And what gets learned, just like what we learned at that physics class, is too deep to be measured. But it enriches us. Enlivens us. Engages hearts and minds and bodies.

We learn how to approach the learning of new systems, of relationships, to our minds, bodies, to each other. We learn how to create and sustain fun. How to pursue happiness together. We learn how to teach games. We learn each other.

Which is why I'm suggesting that this idea of Teaching Games is something that we might take very seriously, in deed. Something we might even take professionally.

When we teach people how to teach games, the focus is on fun. And that's what they teach when they teach games to other people: different games, but always with the focus on fun. Every meeting another game. Helping them find the games that help them find fun, together.

It's something game teachers can do this at senior centers and kindergartens, coffee shops and recreation centers, playgrounds and hospitals - engaging minds, muscles, hearts, teaching each other the arts of fun.

I'm not sure what to call this profession. Not Game Teachers, because what's really being taught is not so much games. But something deeper even than fun.

Play pals? Fun buddies? Game gurus? Magisters Ludi?

from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith

Hot Bread and Butter - the play

bernie@deepfun.com (Bernie DeKoven) — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 07:03:00 -0500

Among the Games Preserve Reports, you'll find my description of the performance of a game called Hot Bread and Butter. And somewhere amongst the vast collection of articles on the Deep Fun site, is a semi-lyrical Meditation, also about this game. Here's a part:

The children scatter like an exploded lightbulb, shattering into screams. Some stay close to each other. Others gallop into the frontier, probing the darkest secrets of the street. More screams. Someone has found the belt! There she is, rushing around, twirling the belt over her head like a lariat, hitting everybody who dares be near. Everyone races home. Until the last one herds himself into the cowering mass. Laughter. Finally silence. Eyes closed. Listening. She hides the belt."Hot Bread and Butter," among other things, represents an idea of power. To gain power, you must 1) take certain risks, and 2) be lucky. Alliances don’t seem to be of much help. Those who stay too close to home don't have much fun.

Whoever is brave enough to leave home behind, and lucky enough to find the belt, gets to hide the belt next time.

You gain power through risk and luck - not through direct confrontation - but only once the power has already been left for you to find. As a child grows towards adulthood, he ranges further and further away from home, approaching the time in which adult power is left to him - if he can find it. But it is the opportunity that he must seize, there is no person to confront. The power of an adult cannot be taken from an adult, it must be discovered within the person of the child.

See what I mean?

Theater.

from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith

A Brief History of Bottle Trees

bernie@deepfun.com (Bernie DeKoven) — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 09:09:00 -0500

Here's a story about a Bottle Tree, similar in visual splendor and recycled remarkability to the The Recycled Plastic Bottle Tree Hangings of Russia, but of a reportedly totally different tradition:

Glass 'bottle trees' originated in ninth century Kongo during a period when superstitious Central African people believed that a genii or imp could be captured in a bottle. Legend had it that empty glass bottles placed outside, but near, the home could capture roving (usually evil) spirits at night, and the spirit would be destroyed the next day in the sunshine. One could then cork the bottles and throw them into the river to wash away the evil spirits....Thomas Atwood, in History of the Island of Domi (1791), made particular note of the bottle tree as a protection of the home through an invocation of the dead. Atwood writes of the confidence of the natives "in the power of the dead, of the sun and the moon---nay, even of sticks, stones and earth from graves hung in bottles in their gardens."

And I thought they were just for fun.

And I still think so.

via FunSon

from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith

The Theater of Games

bernie@deepfun.com (Bernie DeKoven) — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 11:07:19 -0500

In my article, The Theater of Games, I begin to describe children's games as if they were a kind of literature, real literature, sometimes exceptionally profound literature, a literature like, if you'll forgive the implications, plays.

Recently, I've come to realize how central this insight is to most of what I've been teaching and doing for the last 40 years: how valuable and fun for parents and teachers and youth leaders to think of children's games as performances as significant and meaningful as theater pieces.

So, with this post, I hope to share my sometimes amusing musings, and invite you to do the same.

I first wrote about games (social games, board games, even card games) as a performed art in a series of Games Preserve Reports that I started writing in 1971. But it wasn't until four years ago that I actually realized I was talking about games as theater. Here's a part of it where I write about a game I've probably talked about several hundred times - "Duck Duck Goose."

I had to play it first. And when I did, I realized that the clearly silly game of Duck-Duck-Goose fully satisfied my criteria for a meaningful, kid-produced, kid-acted, kid-directed, theatrical experience. It was highly dramatic. It was something they actually wanted to do, actually could organize and become engaged with. Thus I began work on my “theater” curriculum and my lifelong exploration of the Theater of Games.

I soon discovered I was working within a global theater. Searching for more and more games, I found books of games from all over the world. The Games that are played out in the Theater of Games are in fact a form of literature – not written, maybe, not even oral, perhaps, but “enacted” – and thus handed down, from generation to generation, brother to brother, culture to culture. The literature of games can convey complex relationships, roles and consequences, issues of conflict and heroism.

The Fun of Teaching and Learning

bernie@deepfun.com (Bernie DeKoven) — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 06:52:00 -0500

With a little help from friends and bloggers, I'll be launching a new series of programs about the Fun of Teaching and Learning. The programs will include presentations and workshops that focus on the psychology, sociology, and dynamics of fun in learning and teaching.

As advertised, they will be about the fun of teaching as much as the fun of learning, and I hope to offer them at every level of education.

Some of the concepts and experiences I'll be including in the program:

Muska Mosston's Slanted Rope theory
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's theory of Flow
My theory of Coliberation
Ralph Koster's Theory of Fun for Game Design:
Gary Schwarts' Group Games Model of Learning.
My collection of Pointless Games.
My Junkyard Golf game/event.

For me, being in a position to make education more fun has been a lifelong goal. I figure that's a far more sustainable goal. I'll be offering the program for modest, negotiable fees, wherever I can.

I could most definitely use your assistance in word-spreadage.

from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith

Best Birthday Present, ever

bernie@deepfun.com (Bernie DeKoven) — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 19:11:54 -0500

I really don’t know for sure who or what gave me this - my parents, their and theirs - the gift of life. So many people. So many other lives. So much love.

All I know for sure is that it’s the best birthday present, ever.

from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith

Hi8us Interruptus - The Ad Consumer Experience

bernie@deepfun.com (Bernie DeKoven) — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 12:30:53 -0500

We interrupt this hiatus for a special message.

Any attempt to bring humor, lightheartedness, laughter into this world - even when it is supported by the most blatant of commercial exigencies, is worthy of note. Especially when it takes the form of an interactive weblog. And even more especially when that blog is written by my son, Elyon.

The ethno-Judaic expression for my personal experience in reading this blog is nachas (the Yiddish meaning, as opposed to the purported Mexican slang). His blog, the Ad Consumer Experience, reports on signs of commercially-inspired compassion, caring, playfulness, and humor.

What he brings to light is rare enough in any context, and particularly inspiring to find in a world dedicated pretty much solely to making money.

It's a good read. Noteworthy. Inspiring even. He's a fun son. I'm a glad dad.

from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith

Again with the Hiatus

bernie@deepfun.com (Bernie DeKoven) — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 12:59:23 -0500

Given the culmination-like message of my last post, and my smug-like experience of having done what I set out to do, fun-flavor-wise, and my recurring need to pay closer attention to family and friends, and the endless joys I find in intimacy... well, it all seemed inevitable.

And so it goes.

And so do I.

from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith

Complete Fun

bernie@deepfun.com (Bernie DeKoven) — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 07:14:00 -0500

With this post, I simultaneously complete, and, given the last-in-first-out nature of basic bloggery, introduce my collection of actually more than 54 Flavors of Fun. I do this by playing with two related, but clearly distinct tastes of fun: "completed fun" and "complete fun."

Let us begin with the taste of completed fun, insofar as this post is in itself a completion, and the taste of the fun of it all is still very fresh in one's mental mouth. The deliciousness of the fun of completing something comes completely from its aftertaste. When it is at its best, it tastes like something both well done and rare.

Which brings us to complete fun, the kind of fun that you have when everything is fun, when you are not only having fun, but being fun, with people who are fun, doing fun things in a fun place, having a fun time. It is complete fun. Well done. And rare. The most delicious of all possible delicacies.

Fortunately, the subtle complexities of this aftertaste I was describing has a way of making everything seem complete anyway. So, since this is both the first and last in my collection of fun flavors, it can taste like the whole thing was completely fun, every taste, every exploration of fun. Completely fun. Complete fun. Completed.

And if our little exploration of what fun would taste like (if it had a taste) worked, you may very well find yourself feasting on endlessly subtle varieties of fun, rolling them around with added appreciation on your newly educated conceptual tastebuds, discerning amongst the many works of fun, those prepared by masters, those straight from the garden, those well done, those exceeding rare.

from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith

AfriGadget

bernie@deepfun.com (Bernie DeKoven) — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 07:34:00 -0500

Take a closer look at this checker set. Nothing but a random collection of bottle tops and a piece of cardboard. And yet, it's checkers, and it's most clearly as playworthy as a checker set should be.

This is the lesson that AfriGadget teaches us, post after post after post: that we can make do. We can make do beautifully.Even without the newest and jiggiest. We can make do. Especially when we have to. Which, given the current state of the world, is something we should strongly consider making part of the basic curriculum, if you know what I mean. Courses in ingenuity and junkwork.

Founded by Erik Hersman, AfriGadget is edited by a team of African bloggers, and was recently selected by Time Magazine as one of the 50 Best Websites of 2008. You'll want to know more about Erik. Here's a recent interview.

from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith

Drinking Straw Construction Kit

bernie@deepfun.com (Bernie DeKoven) — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 06:36:00 -0500

The Drinking Straw Construction Kit provides a collection of rubbery plastic soda-straw connectors that can be used "to construct a variety of designs, including straws that allow you to drink from multiple glasses at the same time."

The idea of drinking from multiple glasses at the same time makes me think about what one might put in those multiple glasses - perhaps chocolate milk in one, seltzer in another, and cream soda in a third for a kind of chocolate/vanilla egg cream delight. Which makes me wonder how good, exactly, all this would taste, and whether using longer and shorter straws between the various glasses would impact the taste. Which, of course, leads us directly to the contemplation of yet one more flavor of fun - a flavor one might call the taste of "constructive fun."

This could easily lead us to a contemplation of the many kinds of construction toys, and their inherent deliciousness. They seem to have a meaty, almost steak-like taste. Steak-like because only dedicated chewing can release their flavor. Because they require an investment - it takes time to eat a steak. Because their pervasive smells allure you to exploring their possibilities in depth. Because often the best taste lies close to the bone.

from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith

Hopscotch 2.0

bernie@deepfun.com (Bernie DeKoven) — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 07:20:00 -0500

I found this hopscotch court outside my very own house. It was drawn by 9-year-old girl named Erica, our neighbors' kids' cousin (artist's name and relationship included to establish proper "provenance").

According to my unfounded deductions, it began life as what one might consider to be a regulation hopscotch court. For some reason, Erica decided not to stop when she reached 10. So she continued. By the time she reached 12, she decided that the next square should not be a number, but rather an L, as in "Left foot."

She goes on, the next square being also an L (requiring a hop), the next an R, then another L, then two more hopworthy Rs, followed by two Ls, an R, and then a "clap" square. (A clap square! O, the intimations of hopscotchly variations yet unexplored!) Followed by more Rs and Ls, and so on, into illegibility.

My point: Contrary to popular opinion, kids are not only still playing games like hopscotch, they are still inventing it.

For more detailed hopscotch contemplation study, view the image in its full, hi-res glories.

from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith

Rethinking Work

bernie@deepfun.com (Bernie DeKoven) — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 06:42:00 -0500

I'll be speaking and playing at the Rethinking Education conference in Dallas, Sept. 4-7.

I'll also be giving a keynote on "Rethinking Work."

Should you be so moved, you can read and download the abovementioned here.

from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith

Faux Fun

bernie@deepfun.com (Bernie DeKoven) — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 07:00:00 -0500

The problem with things like drugs, alcohol, sex, food, pornography, gambling, shopping, and related acts of consumption, from the fun perspective, is that they are, in fact, up to a point, exactly that - fun. And then they aren't as fun as they used to be. And then you do them anyway. You do and overdo. Dose and overdose. And then they kill you.

This is because they are each, in one way or another, artificially sweetened. Artificial. They look like fun. They feel like fun. But eventually they turn into its opposite. They take life away.

What we have here, especially vividly given these extreme cases, are examples of what I choose to call "faux fun."

Faux fun looks like fun, acts like fun, tastes like fun, even calls itself fun. It tastes good, very good, sometimes extraordinarily good, and then it sours, becomes rancid, bitter. It tastes like sweet fun, only to become sickeningly sweet.

The taste of faux fun feeds on you until there's nothing left. Eventually, it's not you at all, it's the alcohol, the drugs, the game, the machine, the insatiable need, the disgust. You can have faux fun seeing people in pain - schadenfreude - from making other people afraid, from hurting people. And it tastes just like fun. But it's not.

Faux fun also tastes like something bad for you, something you shouldn't be having. Real fun, the fun that faux fun is falsifying, tastes like life, like health, like you at your best, like a day at its finest, like love at its deepest.

from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith

Minimally Invasive Education

bernie@deepfun.com (Bernie DeKoven) — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 07:22:00 -0500

The story starts like this:

"Sugata Mitra has a PhD in physics and heads research efforts at New Delhi's NIIT, a fast-growing software and education company with sales of more than $200 million... But Mitra's passion is computer-based education, specifically for India's poor. He believes that children, even terribly poor kids with little education, can quickly teach themselves the rudiments of computer literacy. The key, he contends, is for teachers and other adults to give them free rein, so their natural curiosity takes over and they teach themselves. He calls the concept "minimally invasive education."

To test his ideas, Mitra 13 months ago launched something he calls 'the hole in the wall experiment.' He took a PC connected to a high-speed data connection and embedded it in a concrete wall next to NIIT's headquarters in the south end of New Delhi. The wall separates the company's grounds from a garbage-strewn empty lot used by the poor as a public bathroom. Mitra simply left the computer on, connected to the Internet, and allowed any passerby to play with it. He monitored activity on the PC using a remote computer and a video camera mounted in a nearby tree.

What he discovered was that the most avid users of the machine were ghetto kids aged 6 to 12, most of whom have only the most rudimentary education and little knowledge of English. Yet within days, the kids had taught themselves to draw on the computer and to browse the Net. Some of the other things they learned, Mitra says, astonished him.

So we gather further evidence of the play-learning connection. Hopefully, conclusive enough evidence, at last, to help teachers brave the inevitable disapproval that comes from trying things like this, for real. Play and learning, as we so well know, are synergistic forces, and they meet evermore gracefully on today's Internet. We follow no particular texts, take no tests, get no report cards, and yet learn, by ourselves, from each other, simply by playing. Simply because it's fun.

This is hard to fit into a curriculum.

via Chris Saeger

from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith

The Fun of Tickling

bernie@deepfun.com (Bernie DeKoven) — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 07:23:01 -0500

This clip from a Brazilian TV show illustrates just about everything one needs to say about the fun of tickling and being tickled. It is no coincidence that the woman looks like she is being crucified, nor that someone looking very much like death is peering over her shoulder.

The people on the Brazilian game show are, fortunately, despite their vulnerability, well-prepared. They have an entire audience to remind them that this is all supposed to be fun. If they didn't, it would be much closer to what it looks like - sheer torture.

Of all the tastes of fun, tickling is perhaps the the most complex. It is delicious the way eating Fugu is delicious. Prepared correctly, it is sheer delicacy. Incorrectly prepared, it tastes something like death.

from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith

Another Deep Fun

bernie@deepfun.com (Bernie DeKoven) — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 07:33:03 -0500

One of these days, the bridge will be even wider - the one connecting this Deep Fun website to a book of games published by the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations - a book called Deep Fun.

In the mean time, what we have is a generous collection of games, many of which echo the spirit and purpose of this website, its articles, and its collections of Pointless Games. Generous, because there are 31 pages of games - each of which is written from the perspective of a youth leader devoted to developing community and social skills. Generous also because the entire booklet is available online, for free, in HTML as well as PDF formats.

Even before you look at all the wonderful games, take the time to read the first chapter - The Five Steps of Community Building. My favorite part, the last two points in very final section on "Accessibilities and Comfort Levels." I quote:

3. It is always ok to pass: Make it clear that any participant can pass at any time during the activities. If you are doing an intense activity, also make sure that chaplains or someone else is available to help someone process the experience.
4. Modify! Modify! Modify!: If someone cannot take part for whatever reason ask them how the activity might be modified so that they could take part.

Amen. Amen.

from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith

A Taste of Nonsense

bernie@deepfun.com (Bernie DeKoven) — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 09:17:20 -0500

Nonsense has a funny taste.

If one were to ask the posthumous Edward Lear to elucidate further, one might easily be led to conclude that nonsense tastes very much like a Crumbobblious cutlet, the making of which being most tickletakingly manifest in the following Learish recipe.

TO MAKE CRUMBOBBLIOUS CUTLETS

Procure some strips of beef, and having cut them into the smallest possible slices, proceed to cut them still smaller, eight or perhaps nine times.
When the whole is thus minced, brush it up hastily with a new clothes-brush, and stir round rapidly and capriciously with a salt-spoon or a soup ladle.
Place the whole in a saucepan, and remove it to a sunny place, -- say the roof of the house if free from sparrows or other birds, -- and leave it there for about a week.
At the end of that time add a little lavender, some oil of almonds, and a few herring-bones; and cover the whole with 4 gallons of clarified crumbobblious sauce, when it will be ready for use.
Cut it into the shape of ordinary cutlets, and serve it up in a clean tablecloth or dinner-napkin.

Nonsense has an often somewhat harsh and salty aftertaste, less like sweet, more like sweat. Hence, it must be artfully prepared to be at all palatable. As Hesse wrote in one of his books: "My story is not a pleasant one, it is neither sweet nor harmonious, as invented stories are; it has the taste of nonsense and chaos, of madness and dreams, like the lives of all the men who stop deceiving themselves."

from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith

Giant Tepee of Giant Cards

bernie@deepfun.com (Bernie DeKoven) — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 06:36:00 -0500

Giant House of Giant Cards, as a matter of fact, was in deed played at the Giant Card Event and Finals as the final project of the USC, School of Cinema - Television, Interactive Media Department's Fall, 2005 course called "Experiments in Interactivity I.

Giant Card-wise, there were two major Giant House of Cards-like mini-events. One was depicted here, of course. But the second, more classically tepee-like, somehow, until this moment, escaped our well-deserved collective attention.

I direct your attention to the two "cards" on top. You might note that these cards are basically naked sheets of cardboard, cut to card size. Interestingly enough, it doesn't seem to matter to the giant card tepee constructors, at all, in the least.

Which might make you think next time you decided to make a giant set of cards.

from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith

The Eye Candy Machine

bernie@deepfun.com (Bernie DeKoven) — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 07:00:03 -0500

Speaking of the flavors of fun, one of the sweetest that has come to our virtual world is often conceptually packaged as "Eye Candy."

Of the various manifestations of the endlessly alluring varieties of eye candy, the kaleidoscope predates, and yet somehow anticipates the visual confections of the virtual world.

This is an image I made with the aid of a site called "make your own kaleidoscope." It was all I needed to be reminded of the dessert-like pleasures of visual delight.

Like kaleidoscopes a lot? Perhaps, as the Make Your Own Kaleidoscope people suggest, you should consider joining the Brewster Kaleidoscope Society, Sir David Brewster being the actual inventor of the optically delicious kaleidoscope. Should you desire to commune with some kaleidoscopic artists, the society has an impressive list (with email addresses) of said same. Amongst the impressive resources therein, you will find a detailed history of the kaleidoscope, and an overview of some of the different types of kaleidoscope.

Want to make a non-virtual kaleidoscope? Here's how.

from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith

Professional Fun

bernie@deepfun.com (Bernie DeKoven) — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 06:39:00 -0500

Professional fun tastes a little bit like candy-coated beef jerky. When you first bite into it, it's sweet. I mean, swwwwwweet! And crunchy. Gritty, even. And once you're at the jerky part, it's tough enough to chew on for a very long time. Enough to keep you, as advertised, occupied. Occupied, in fact, with a certain full, meaty, droolworthy flavor.

Getting paid to play. That's what it's all about, isn't it. And that's what they get - all those actors and musicians and athletes and surgeons - paid to play. Paid to have fun - well, a certain kind of fun. Professional fun. Responsible, focused, skilled, well-trained fun.

See also my article on Playing and Getting Paid, my FunCast on the aforementioned, and my collection of articles on the Fun/Work connections.

Every one of us who has experienced fun professionally, whether playfully or dangerously, knows exactly what professional fun tastes like: Candy coated beef jerky.

from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith

Serious and Silly Fun

bernie@deepfun.com (Bernie DeKoven) — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 06:39:00 -0500

There is a difference between serious fun and silly fun. They each have a different taste. Where Silly fun is sweet, Serious fun is sour. Where silly fun is chewy, serious is brittle.

But combine them, and you get something genuinely exquisite, like this story of how Serious and Silly tried to play hide and seek and wound up finding god:

Of all the players on my inner playground, Serious and Silly are the best known. They've played together for years. They understand each other intimately. They can play the most complicated games you can imagine. And, from time to time, they can really play beautifully together. There's one particular game that they can never play particularly well. Yet they play it almost all the time, and seem to really enjoy it. It's a variation of hide-and-seek and peek-a-boo and achieving enlightenment.

Typically, Silly suggests the game. Serious always wants to be Seeker. This, actually, is a good arrangement. Serious is an expert at keeping rules and being fair and defining what's off limits. Silly, on the other hand, is remarkably good at being the Hider.

Next they decide on Home Base. The inner playground is full of potential home bases and hiding places, from Toe to Tongue, Throat to Lung. Silly usually picks the Nose.

Silly will play Hider, and Serious, as we already predicted, will play Seeker. Serious focuses all attention on being the breather, the nostril, the sensor of the air. And then begins to count (backwards, by primes, from 97). Silly is supposed to be hiding by the time Serious reaches zero. Despite years of practice, Serious just can't ignore Silly for the whole count. So, as usual, Serious has to start over again several times before Silly is really ready to hide.

Finally, Serious completes the count. At last, the moment of truth. Serious, in a blink of the inner eye, reaches the unavoidable conclusion that Silly is definitely hiding. At this point, the game almost always breaks down. It's just too much for both of them. For Silly, hiding is fun, but only for a little while. And for Serious, just the thought of being all alone, leaving Home, without Silly...it's almost too frightening. Even Serious doesn't want to have to be that serious.

Fortunately, both Serious and Silly have had a lifetime to play. All it takes to get Silly out of hiding is someone to say "Allee Allee Oxen Free." I don't know why they keep on playing Hide and Seek. Tag is a much better game for both of them. They'd never have to be apart. And, together, they could even find other players to play with.

I tried to ask them once, when I thought they were between games. And they started running after me, yelling "You're IT."

More.

from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith

The Real Big Bopper

bernie@deepfun.com (Bernie DeKoven) — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 07:39:01 -0500

Ever play Bop It, Bop It Extreme, or Bop It Extreme 2 even? Heard about Bop-It Download (available in the UK - see also this for more details)?

In that case, you can appreciate the potential playworthiness of a giant playground Bop It.

Called the i.play system, the device purportedly provides "...a great new way to exercise without even realizing that’s what you're doing. You can select single player or multiplayer games, and there is also an option to play at 'base' level which eliminates the high switches. The activity switches have bright LED lights that flash, and switches produce sound so you know which one to go to."

According to the article in Popsci, the "system costs $45,000 installed... All the electronics are powered by a solar panel that comes with the installation. Software updates with new modes and different games are included with any installation. There are currently 30 installed in parks and schools across England."

OK. So maybe it is not so realistic to expect to see such marvels coming soon to your local playground. Maybe things like this will eventually become part of tomorrow's amusement parks or retirement villages or enlightened rehabilitation centers. The point is that technology is leading us to new ways to play, to engaging mind, body, and the other in healthy and healing pursuits. And this is something to celebrate, even now.

from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith