The MAJOR FUN AWARDS go to games and people that bring people fun, and to any organization managing to make the world more fun through its own personal contributions, and through the products it has managed to bring to the market.
From our friends-in-spirit at Afrigadget , here's how to make your own soccer game:
"Firstly you look for old clothes or blankets. Then you put a few condoms around, which you blow up with your mouth, but not with too much air. Just so it’s the same size as a soccer ball. After this you put either a plastic bag or a piece of old clothing over the condom. Then to make it strong, you tear up the old clothing or blanket into long strips and tie the strips all around the condom to strengthen the shape of the ball and make it heavier. Once you can feel it bounces well, you take a strong plastic bag and wrap it around the ball. Lastly you reinforce it by wrapping strong rope or tire wire around it."Maybe you are surprised but let me tell you about the field. It is not a play ground or a park but it is a field that is full of drains and the half of it has a long grass and some kind of a wetland and a dumping place. And as we all know that when you are playing soccer you need scoring nets. These boys don’t have scoring nets, but take wood or cardboard that is in the carpet and make poles."
Read the whole article, and be sure to look at the commentaries and links for more, here .
BagBall - how to make a ball out of plastic shopping bags
One of the sad truths of being in Israel, especially in Jerusalem, is the amount of, well, pollution. It's just not something you'd expect to see in the capitol, for heaven's sake, of the Holy actual Land!
One form of pollution comes from the proliferation of plastic shopping bags. They're everywhere. You can't go shopping without coming away with a half-dozen or so of these colorfully indestructible, everlasting wonders of modern technology. There are these large cages where you can recycle them. And the cages are often full. But there's the other part of the problem - most people ignore any attempt to keep the city clean. And there are attempts, believe me.
So, as a parting gift, this video, on how to make a ball out of plastic shopping bags.
A few days ago, I got to talk about Junkyard Sports with some key people at the Peres Center for Peace.
Once I learned that despite the images and rumors and rage beyond reason, there are people who are working with undiminished passion to create peaceful, even playful dialogue between Arabs and Jews, Israelis and Palestinians.
Yes, it's become far more challenging. Yes, it's difficult to get people to want to play together. Of late, they tell me, especially when meeting with adults, people are too impatient to play. Anything that seems like fun gets dismissed out of hand. People want action, resolution, they want to be heard, they don't want to, if you'll excuse the expression, play games.
So I talked most about idea of Junkyard Sports, because it seemed to me that this concept could prove the most flexible, the most adaptable, the most fun. I showed them the news clip from the Junkfest we did at Redondo Beach. I gave them a 5-minute demo of The Junkyard Tabletop Olympiad. And they understood it all - implications and applications. Just about immediately.
The sports people talked about how easily sports can transcend culture. One reported how, as a child, he had played his own junkyard sports. His associate, being raised in a kibbutz, described how that's how the kids played almost all the time - using junk, making up their own rules. I mentioned how valuable it would be, just if kids knew how they could make a really good ball out of some of the thousands of plastic grocery bags that have become ubiquitous throughout Israel. The director of Culture and Media saw what a powerful community event it could be: green, fun, celebrating ingenuity, engaging creativity at all levels. The person who organized the meeting and leads the NGO forum, was naturally concerned about how adults would respond to this kind of experience. So I talked about the uses of Junkyard Sports in a training environment, described how it was being used in Southwest Airlines, and specifically in light of the kinds of conversations that might result after people had created and played a Junkyard Sport together.
Conclusion:
It may not yet be the time, and fun probably isn't going to solve anything. There will be challenges - like bridging the differences between language, culture, dogma. But I somehow knew that these people who are very much looking for the opportunity to teach peace, to heal anger, to build community, to bring more fun into the world - wouldn't let anything stop them. Even in Israel. Even now. Maybe especially now, especially in Israel.
Recently, there was a post on the Southwest Airlines Blog - "Nuts about Southwest" in which we learn that they've been using their own particular version of Junkyard Golf ever since! Here's how the post starts:
"We've all heard the age-old expression: 'When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.' But what about PVC pipes, plastic cups, fuzzy doodads, and other random tchotchkes found in any office setting? They too can be repurposed for a higher calling. In this case, it happens to be for the annual weekend of 'Camp Culture' for the MIT (Managers in Training) Level II training class here in Dallas."
I must say - yes, I apparently really must - if the business training relevance of the Junkyard pudding still needs proof, here, then, it is. For even more, see this in the nevertheless much-respected Handbook of Structured Experiences.
Charlie Kalech arranged for me to meet with some of his clients and colleagues today to conduct a short symposium on The Fun of Work. Needless to say, a fun and deep dialogue ensued.
The highlight, naturally, was when we played a game. The game: Tabletop Biathlon, of course. (What you might call "Tabletop Olympics" when played with two teams. I've come to regard this game as one of my personal best. Every time I play it, I learn something else about fun and work and people and life and stuff.)
Pictured here is Charlie, sitting next to a waste basket, holding a paper airplane and a paper ball - the key elements of one of the two sports developed for the Tabletop Biathlon. Both events (the other, business card bowling) were exactly what I had hoped they would be - innovative, a bit silly, and most definitely fun. The paper airplane game involved trying to throw a paper airplane into the basket, whilst opposing athletes tried to knock it away with paper balls. It is today's featured game because it was developed in Israel. The connections to current Israeli events are too obvious to point out. And the subsequent laughter too profound to convey.
Street Games are informal sports, adapted to environment, the materials, and the spirit of the people playing. They are played without adult supervision, without official people or equipment. They are games that you can take very seriously, sports with loose enough rules so that you can play with just about anything, anywhere, with just about anybody you want to play with.
Playing in the street is probably as old as streets themselves. Streets are a natural playspace, depending on the traffic. Just take a look at Breughel's painting of maybe 200 middle-age children (though they may look middle-age, they are in fact children at play in the middle ages) playing more than 80 different children’s games.
In the late 19th century, most of the games Street Games Culin reported on were played on streets that led into vacant lots or were surrounded by fields or crossed rivers and train tracks. By the middle of the 20th century, streets were bounded by houses and each other. Around this very time, most of the games that were still being played in the streets – especially in the streets of big cities like New York, Philadelphia, Chicago and London - became the very games most commonly cited as “authentic” Street Games: Wall Ball, Stick Ball, Box Ball, Hand Ball, Stoop Ball, Skully. Jacks, Marbles, hopscotch, and Double Dutch, too.
For the World War generations, Stick ball and Skully would be grow to be considered the archetypal Street Games. Stick ball would become an official sport, as much like baseball as possible, originally played with a stick for a bat, an old tennis ball for a baseball, a sewer lid for home plate, a car and a sign post for first and third. And frequently no second base at all. And now played on Stick Ball Fields with official Stick Ball Sticks and even Stick Ball Balls.
Skully is like marbles, only instead of marbles it’s played with bottle caps filled with candle wax, and instead rolling, you slide the caps, like little shuffleboad pucks, and instead of playing in a circle, you play on a big rectangular, chalk-drawn field of lines and boxes.
Skully and Stick Ball, like all Street Games, originated as informal sports, adapted to environment, the materials, and the spirit of the people playing. (There are games you can play with half a ball, for example, with just three people, if you have to.) They are played without adult supervision, without officials. They are games that you can take very seriously, just like real sports but their rules are just loose enough to let you can play with just about anybody you want to play with. Street Games can, and have, become formalized, and commercialized. You can buy official sticks for Stick Ball. Official Spaldeens and Half Balls, too.
Street Games are continuously changing and adapting to their environment, to the players and the evolving technologies of play. There are still kids who are playing in the Street Games spirit, but the streets they play in, and what they play, and whom they play with, are, for the most part, a far cry from the way we played Stick Ball. They still play their own Street Game versions of baseball and football, soccer and hockey, but they play for the most part in their private yards or on the sidewalk, and they have nerf balls and whistling nerf footballs and portable street soccer goals and hockey pucks that hover. And yet, as far as everyone’s concerned, they’re playing something very much like what we called Street Games. They are playing in a way so that everyone can play. They are all players. They are all officials.
Though played on Razors and skateboards and BMX bikes, modern Street Games, like all Street Games, are replete with intricate tests of agility, opportunities for invention, and performances of death-defying originality. Each, like the classic Street Game, remains somehow informal, adapted to the environment, materials, and spirit of the people playing.
Street Games have their virtual equivalents in video games, especially in games that involve physical movement, like the Wii, or, slightly earlier, Dance Dance Revolution, each with its many different game playing modes, where players get to choose to cooperate and compete, follow and lead.
In every expression, it’s the dynamics of Street Games – how they are organized and maintained, how they are supported by their community, how they engage players in learning, teaching, designing, and leading open-ended play contracts, where you can change the rules, where winning isn't the point, really, where it's all about getting to play - that are most instructive.
When you begin to explore how a Street Game is governed, how it empowers its players, and becomes redefined by the way they want to play together – you discover an almost perfect reflection of the social architecture of successful communities – neighborhood and national, physical and virtual.
Street Games are remarkably easy to overlook. Many parents who moan over their children's inability to play manage to ignore the Street Games being played all around them.
Part of the reason that parents overlook the Street Games they’re own kids are playing is that they can’t see them. That’s because Street Games are being played on a very different kind of street from those of their parents. Street Games take place everywhere, but most often in spaces noted anthropologist Victor Turner called these spaces "liminal" - spaces that comprise an unofficial, temporary, anybodyland; spaces that exist between buildings and sidewalks, steps and parking lots, between front yards, across fences, behind the library and garage. “In between” spaces. Like the Internet.
Street Games are governed, officiated over by the people who play them. Just like the, oddly enough, Internet.
And, like the Street Games of the past, Street Games of today are played mostly by children in their liminal years – not-yet-adults, too old to be seen as kids – and are played everywhere.
Even on the railing of the library steps. Even on the cell phone and in chat rooms. Even on the Internet.
"Webbytalents is a new website sharing for films made by or for people with disabilities accross the world. It is also a new kind of platform at the crossroads between a social site and a site media designed to break down barriers for the world's disabled.
"On Webbytalents you’ll be able to share and discover videos from around the world. Nonprofits and organizations, Webbytalents helps you publicize activities and events. It is also a good way to learn about disability from different countries.
"Everyone can participate and become an agent of change for better integration of disability."
Near the end of my session with the Primary conference, we started a conversation about kids and theater. I had mentioned my background in theater a bit earlier and one participant was eager to talk about her experiences in getting her kids to put on plays. She described what great delight parents had in watching their kids perform, and how good the kids felt about being in the spotlight. She mentioned that she did have to work hard to keep the kids focused on learning their lines and especially how challenging it was for the kids to endure the rehearsals. But again, how it all paid off during the performance.
Unfortunately, we ran out of time before I could whip-up a semi-cogent response. A couple days later it occurred to me that we all had a similar experience, right after the end of playing Junkyard Olympics, as each team got to demonstrate their event - not only demonstrate, but actually engage the other team in a world record-setting trial - in fact and actuality experiencing the very benefits that were attributed to children's theater, without the pressure, without the supervision or directorial guidance or pained memorization, all for the fun of it all.
A Handout for a workshop on "When Teaching is Fun"
I used my Mac and a projector to capture some of the thoughts that were generated during my workshop at the Primary conference (a gift from my "Technography" days), and appended them in a notes file to the handout I had prepared for the session.
As you might glean from those notes, what I hadn't prepared for was the depth, creativity, enthusiasm and playfulness of the core participants, all of which was revealed in its fullness in a short game of Tabletop Olympics (a.k.a. Junkyard Olympics, and soon to be known as "The Junkyard Games"). What you see in the photo is a spontaneously generated version of Junkyard Bowling, which, according to its re-inventors, was clearly a sport of Olympic proportions.
All of which gave me a sense of hope for education. Somehow, despite all the bureaucracy and standards and testing that has dominated the inheritors of the No Child Left Behind legislation, there are still teachers who believe in play, who make things fun, even when fun doesn't count.
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:
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.
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.
Do you have an overactive imagination? (We lost our years ago.) Are existing sports not doing it for you? Then dream up a sport of the future and send it our way! Be brief in your description (under 150 words, please). Include basic rules and why you chose the sport. If we like it, we might just give you a shout out. Oh, and please, no BASEketball!
You've no doubt heard of Chapay that Russian version of checkers that is really a game of billiards played on a checkerboard with, well, checkers, and of course pool cues. And yet, oddly enough, you probably haven't heard of the American equivalent - Knockdown Chess. Actually, not so surprising, given that it was only recently invented, by, actually, this guy.
Then there's the equally recently invented sport of Tire Toss - a giant quoits-like game requiring a porch, fire hydrant, and several many bicycle tires.
As modeled by Ashley and Sophie, the invention of Sock Fighting anticipates a time when we might have to things like this for real, or face a future of blistering socklessness.
"a beautifully simple game that can be played by everyone, in any garden where a ball will roll. Hand-made in England the game comes with an easy to wheel trolley and includes 4 hammers, 4 wooden balls, 6 hools [the three way hoops that you shoot through], 6 pins, 4 markers, full instructions, a set of Crolf Laws [only 9 in all], and, of course, a brolly to shade your summer drinks."
Why do I love thee, Crolf? Let me count the ways (I get three):
1. I love thine Hools - thine three-way croquettish golf hole/hoops that seem so much more approachable from so many more directions, and yet so easy to place or displace. 2. I love the Junkyard Sports-likeness of thine silliness - the silliness of the name, the joyous absurdity of trying to play something like lawn croquet in someplace very unlike a flat, well-manicured lawn. 3. I love how thou dost manifest the spirit of playfulness and taketh it beyond the confines of officialdom and tournamentality.
Not that this is the first time there has been something golf/croquet-like. Apparently, there was something Crolfish patented as early as 1925. And Dick Schafer reports on yet another version of Crolf - one that might be called "Snow Crolf" or perhaps "Snolf."
But what and where is Crolf? Well, there's a course in Custer, South Dakota, at the Americas Best Value Inn. A Miniature Crolf course, no less or more, for yet further Crolfish contemplation.
Archery Golf is in all likelihood the one variation of golf in which players take the term "fore" very, very seriously.
Sorry. It was something I had to share. Here's a slightly more inspiring observation: This has to be one beautiful sport. When you think about golf, and that teeny, tiny ball, and how delightful (and challenging) it can be to watch the ball in flight, you can almost vividly imagine the attraction of watching an arrow as it arcs its way towards an impossibly distant target.
This is the second time I've written about this sport (here's the first). This time, I am pleased to bring you further evidence of the beauty of the sport, by way of a most inspiring site, from a most devoted archer/golfer, Eugenio Ciocca. Ciocca is one of the few people to have designed archery golf courses and probably the only person to develop an Archery Golf System for training, equipping and providing for all the glorious needs of the archery golf enthusiast.
Though combining two different sports to create something new is an almost fool-proof technique for creating what I call a "junkyard sport," it is rare when the technique works so beautifully, and the result is so spectacularly playworthy that it attracts the devotion of someone of Mr. Ciocca's ample talents. Whether you play golf, pursue archery, or just know about the sports, a visit to the Archery Golf System website fun and inspiring.
They (you know who) say that kids don't even know how to make up their own games anymore nowadays. You know, what with all that homework and moms on helicopters and sitting at the computer. That's what they say. Here, contrary to all that common sense and conscientious concern, more evidence of the persistence of playfulness and the plethora of junk to play with:
"Waiting for the traffic to clear at MIS after the NASCAR race, we invented a little game to pass the time. You basically kick beer cans on to the other persons side of a line and try to keep them on that side."
People will tell you that the days of game invention, like those described on one of my favorite game sites, Streetplay, are over - that kids are spending all their of their precious childhood online or in Little League, and are bereft of opportunity or motivation. Well, don't waste your time mourning. The Internet virtually abounds with proof that the spirit that led the last generations to the creation of new games and sports and ways to have fun is as alive as you are. Witness Joe and Jord's Ping Pong Squash Game
Swing-Ball, a game played with a soccer ball, and, well, swings, thusly: "...the Red Team in the field (players 1 and 2) and the Blue Team on the swings (players 3 and 4). The game is divided into two halves, with each team spending one half on the field and one half on the swings. The two players on the swings have the option of choosing which direction to face and whether to swing in tandem or in opposing directions...The goal of the Red team is to pass the ball between the two poles of swingsets without the Blue team making contact with the ball. Each time this occurs, the Red team earns one point. Each Red player is allowed just two touches of the ball before their teammate must touch, or the ball is given to the Blue team. The Blue team, meanwhile, will attempt to block and gain control of player 1's attempted pass. They have an unlimited number of touches and may tap the ball to each other to set up a preferable kick."
I'd most definitely call this a Junkyard Sport. The designers incorporated what for soccer players would be deemed "junk" - a swingset, in this case - and used it as the pivotal, so to speak, focus of the game. This is the kind of thinking that transcends boundaries, that integrates the real world into the world of play, that engages new skills, and creates opportunities for the expression of excellence, and the frequently actually fun opportunity to fall off a swing.
Getting the idea of Junkyard Sports to the masses, especially to the family masses, seems to be proceeding apace - a very slow pace, but proceeding nevertheless. The first big break was the article in Famly Fun Magazine. The next, and most recent, is in a publication called Kid Scoop.
It's an issue devoted to junk. And you can download your very own copy. Your very own, full-page, color copy, or, should you desire to print it out and distribute it to the many, your similarly very own, classroom-ready 6-page, black-and-white copy.
Kid Scoop, should you wonder, is distributed internationally, and appears in 350 newspapers around the world.
"The Iditarod is the famous long-distance race in which yelping dogs tow a sled across Alaska. Our Chiditarod is pretty much the same thing, except that instead of dogs, it's people, instead of sleds, it's shopping carts, and instead of Alaska, it's Chicago."
"At the start of the game each player stands facing the other a few yards apart. Both have placed their feet into plastic buckets, one on each foot. For children playing the game a standard bucket is usually perfect – for adult players you may need to search a garden centre for larger specimens. Players hold in their hands an equal number of small balls. The aim of the game is to throw and get as many balls as possible into either of your opponents buckets whilst avoiding too many in your own."
It was at the CPRS 2008, Long Beach conference . And I was facilitating a bit of Tabletop Olympics amongst 5 tables of people who run parks and games all throughout California.
Many most remarkable Tabletop Olympics moments were shared. Many, many events of noteworthy notability and truly silly competitiveness. But there was this one table (I really like to learn your names if you were a tablemate) that happened to have, amongst its various shared personal treasures, some significant conference swag. Namely: a couple battery-operated hand-held fans, and some Lego pieces, and a fingerboard. And they put their stuff together to create a well, Tabletop Sailboard, I guess is what you'd call something made out of the fingerboard, a couple Lego pieces, a toothpick and a scrap of paper. And their Olympic Event was a hand-held-fan-powered Tabletop Sailboard event that proved to be at least as funny as it was demanding of Olympic-like concentration and skill.
Behold, therefore you beholder, the Tabletop Sailboard, as fuzzily photographed on the right. Whilst beholding below the slightly less fuzzy image of a Tabletop Sailor in action.
Now and forevermore embedded in the virtual bedrock of Tabletop Olympics History.
Fairy chess, explains the Wikipedian, "is a term in a chess problem which expands classical (also called orthodox) chess problems which are not direct mates. The term was introduced before the First World War. While selfmate dates from the Middle Age, helpmate was invented by Max Lange in the late 19th century. Thomas Dawson (1889-1951), pioneer of fairy chess, invented many fairy pieces and new conditions. He was also problem editor of The Fairy Chess Review (1930-1951)."
"On the other hand," comments the Funsmith, "Fairy Chess is an invitation to a cornucopious collection of what can only be called "Variant Chess Games," or, shall we say, more ways to play chess than you could shake a pawn at."
"Fairy Chess," continues the Funsmith, eyes akimbo with conceptual glee, "is, in fact, the chessular embodiment of Junkyard Sports, New Games and every one of those noblly playful efforts to return the power of play to the hands, hearts and minds of the players."
"This past week, in the absence of soccer practice, my young men have invented a new game. You will chuckle at the name. It's Chunky Baseball. It even has a theme song. I don't know why it got that name or what the rules are. When I've asked for an explanation, they just sort of sigh as if to say, 'Well, Mommy, it's really complicated and you just have to go out and play it to understand it.' So, I'll be content to remain in the dark about the intricacies of this new game. But what I love is that my boys, together with a neighbor, friends from church, a homeschool buddy, a cousin, and others, have spent every gorgeous fall afternoon this week OUTSIDE!!!! Being creative, exercising, having fun. They come in with bright eyes and rosy faces. We made a trip to the store to buy a bigger, brightly colored ball with which to play the game, since the small red rubber ball they'd been using kept getting lost in the thick stand of monkey grass that covers our neighbor's entire front yard.
"I have heard that this generation of kids doesn't know how to play games, doesn't get enough exercise, sits in front of the computer or the TV and lets their brains turn to mush. Maybe if there was a Chunky Baseball game going on down the street, those kids would forget about Halo or whatever else it is they play, say goodbye to their facebook buddies, and head outside. Maybe playing Chunky Baseball would revive their mushy brains and strengthen their atrophying muscles. Maybe they'd find out that being outside, creating a game is way more fun than staying inside playing simulated tennis on a Wii. I don't know. I'm just glad that around here real kids are playing real games in the real outdoors. It seems that there is no end to their creativity when it comes to games."
Please, please share this with those people who want to teach kids how to play. Use it to remind them that kids already know how to play - physically, socially, intellectually. The only things they need from us, pretty much, are: 1) to be given the space to play in, and 2) the time to be left alone, and maybe 3) something fun to play with.
Socetball and Water Baseball - more lessons in the art of Junkyard Sports
I googled across an old Atari forum where people were having a discussion about "made up" games. Here's one example:
"We made one called socetball where you take a soccer ball and a lowered basketball hoop. You kick get one minute to kick the ball, and hit the backboard for one point and make it in for two. You do this with two people and play for two rounds. In the first one will kick and another will get the ball. And in the next round the person who kicked will get the ball and vice versa. Whoever has the most points at the end of the two rounds wins. It was a very fun game but we don't play it a lot anymore."
I liked especially the last line: "It was a very fun game but we don't play it alot anymore" - because it reveals yet one more characteristic of Junkyard Sports. You invent. You play it a few times until the game gets very fun. And then you let it go and invent the next one. That's part of the freedom and the message. The obligation is not to the game, but to the fun of making it fun.
And then there's Water Handball:
"i made up 1 wih a friend at a swimming pool its called water handball...l u use a nerf sort of ball that is round and as small as a baseball or softball and u play as if u wer playing baseball but wen u pitch u must skip the ball acroos the water... there is no bat u must use ur hand to hit the ball...then u must swim base to base..u play 2 outs and u can either peg the runner (throw the ball at the runner and if u hit them off the base they're out) or u can tag the runner...u play 2 outs and first 1 to 21 wins....u can also make an imaginary home run fence...it is also a great 1 vs 1 game.."
"...skip the ball across the water." You can't be having a conversation about how to play baseball in a swimming pool and wind-up with something like ball-skipping. That's one of the fundamental truths of Junkyard Sports-making. The gameworthy delights of things like pitching-by-ball-skipping are not derived by speculation or explored by theorizing. Only by playing.
"From the outset of last year, my roommate (who I also totally dominate in all physical competition) hung his hats on tacks from the storage loft over the windows. I followed his lead, and pretty soon we had a full mantle of dangling headwear. We also had a small foam ball, and, after a few weeks, a whole set of rules printed and hanging on the wall. One person knelt near the door and threw the ball at the hats. Hitting a hat was one point, knocking it down was three, and there were all sorts of other modifiers for caught balls, multiple knocked-down hats, and even defensive rules for the other players. We also invented a game (more of a free-for-all, actually) that involved clearing all furniture out of the living room, turning the lights off, gathering pretty much every ball we had in the room, and throwing them at or tackling anyone else who was playing. This game could get a little violent, and was made doubly scary in my room where, again, one of my roommates was significantly more of a 'physical specimen' than the rest of us. That said, it was great fun and I’d recommend it to anyone so dedicated to indoor recreation."
Penny Football - you know, that soccer-like, footballish game you play with three coins - the game you probably played in the cafeteria - the one where you have to slide or push or flick one coin between the other two?
Nowadays you can even play it online, if immediate satisfaction is what you desire.
It's actually the same game that's called Three-Coin Hockey, a game that's similar in out-of-pocket coinitude to Shove Ha'Penny Football, for which you'll also need a comb or two and the ability to understand many, many rules.
But not, of course, to be confused with Penny Rugby - which, as you well know, is played with only one coin and many, many rules.
I wish you could have been there. It was, in its small way, an historic event of significant proportion. The artists (the Junkyard Symphony and car artist Steve Classic Jasik ) provided everything you could hope for - representing the spirit of play, creativity, and repurposing with great passion, warmth and humor.
(your local Junkmaster, posing proudly in front of Classic Jasik's 2-Way Car )
The games were significant fun - inviting creativity, inclusion and playfulness, exactly as you might hope.
Flying Golf
Giant Pick-Up Sticks and 4-way Trashbag, two-level Volleyball - all presented a genuine invitation to play, each offering a different level of physical and social activity.
Recreation leaders from across Redondo Beach participated in a two-hour training and intense cardboard construction. We had a great write-up in the Daily Breeze . Even the local cable channel came out to help document this landmark event in the celebration of the spirit of fun.
Senior Services led the junk swap and much junk got swapped..
Maybe 50 people attended. OK, so it wasn't what you'd call a huge success. On the other hand, given the goings on in the rest of the world, it was a genuinely remarkable celebration.
The following clip is purportedly to be aired locally (South Bay area, Southern California) on CNN Headline news on 12/3 and 12/4 throughout the day, 24 past the hour and 54 past the hour.
I wish you could have been there. It was, in its small way, an historic event of significant proportion. The artists (the Junkyard Symphony and car artist Steve Classic Jasik ) provided everything you could hope for - representing the spirit of play, creativity, and repurposing with great passion, warmth and humor.
(your local Junkmaster, posing proudly in front of Classic Jasik's 2-Way Car - here's a clip of the car in action)
The games were significant fun - inviting creativity, inclusion and playfulness, exactly as you might hope.
Flying Golf
Giant Pick-Up Sticks and 4-way Trashbag, two-level Volleyball - all presented a genuine invitation to play, each offering a different level of physical and social activity.
Recreation leaders from across Redondo Beach participated in a two-hour training and intense cardboard construction.
We had a great write-up in the Daily Breeze. Even the local cable channel came out to help document this landmark event in the celebration of the spirit of fun.
Senior Services led the junk swap and much junk got swapped.
Maybe 50 people attended. OK, so it wasn't what you'd call a huge success. On the other hand, given the goings on in the rest of the world, it was a genuinely remarkable celebration.
The Cardboard Tube Fighting League, despite appearances and adult-like anticipations, is a highly disciplined, well, maybe not highly, but at least somewhat disciplined play fight.
I exemplify by citing the admirably explicated rules:
First Rule of CTFL: Don’t break your tube. In a duel, the last person with an unbroken tube is declared the winner. In the event that both participants break their tubes at the same time, the game is a draw, and both duelists are considered losers.
No stabbing. Lunges involving tubes are never allowed under an circumstances. Participants who exhibit this behavior, will be ejected from the entire event.
Try not to work the face. Hitting people in the face is heavily frowned upon and can force your ejection from the event.
Once your tube is broken you must stop fighting.
To participate you must be using an official CTFL tube, which will be provided at the event, and have signed a release waiver.
You may not block your opponents tube with your arms hands or legs.
Your tube must always be held near the bottom. Holding your tube in the middle at any time is illegal.
"You need a table, lubricated with washing-up liquid and water, and a disc."
And thus we learn about yet another Junkyard Sport-like event: Tabletop Frisbee-spinning. True in all its dimensions to the nature of sportish events, it involves timing and grace, agility and focus, and has the potential to astound.
It was 2007. October 11. The morning of. Let's say mid-morning. In Atlanta. At the North American Simulation and Gaming Association conference. During my workshop, during which I had planned to spend 90 minutes exploring the various learning ramifications of what I somewhat blithely referred to as: The Junkyard Sports Paradigm.
Because it was NASAGA , and because the people who had registered for my workshop had listened to my keynote and were still planning to come, I found myself inspired enough to want to try something brand new - something I had thought about for many a month, but hadn't as yet actually tried.
And thus was held the world's first Junkyard Sports® Tabletop Olympics.
We had three groups of about 5 players each. Each group was seated around a banquet-worthy round table (officially called a "round").
Their assignment: using whatever you can find in your pocket or purse or elsewhere, create a miniature, tabletop, Olympic-like event.
What you are seeing in this photo is one such event - the High Dive Ski-Jump. The Jumper/Diver (a.k.a. "quarter") is being coached by participant Dave Matte to roll between the two blockish objects (hence kept on edge, so to speak), down the notebook-like ramp, hopefully to land in the glass of water. Yes, some points were awarded for hitting the glass or chair, even. A second team-member, the Jumper/Diver retriever, stood off camera, waiting to catch the rolling quarter before it reached the floor, for that critical extra point.
This was, as you have so intuitively grasped, but one of a minor Olympic myraid of tabletop events, such as, for example, the High Cup Jump, depicted here. Unfortunately, so enraptured were we with our collective cleverness and so deeply impressed by our finger-powered feats of athletic prowess, that we forgot to take any other pictures. And so, the memory fades. The world's first Olympic Croquet game, for example - played with many coins and paperclips and things, simultaneously, in the round - now, despite lingering echoes of all that laughter, partly remembered, partly imagined.
Yes, yes, I wax poetic. Because the Junkyard Sports Tabletop Olympics is everyrthing I had hoped it would be, more than I could possibly have dreamed it would become. An invitation to laughter and teamwork, to creativity and sharing, to surprise and appreciation. Regardless of position, age, gender, family, nationality. And all you need is whatever you have. Pocket junk. A table. People to play with.
"Antietam Drive. To the untrained eye, it's just a quiet, rain-soaked suburban Jersey road on a rather warm February morning. To a man whose lived almost his entire life on this road, save for the first few weeks of infancy & four years of college not in a row, it's the still remains of an Olympianesque game arena. Sure, there are still children who live on this street, & I'm sure they love it dearly, if not now then when it's their turn to grow up. But they don't play on every square inch of it like my friends & I did. They can't look at that picture & point out at least 5 prime hiding spots. Or a bike ramp, or a finish line, or second base."
Thus begins Mike Fireball's historic tour of his neighborhood, seen from the unique perspective of a kid at play. Here's more:
"After dinner, my front porch there became the jail for a nighttime game of what we called Jailbreak, & what you probably know as Manhunt or Freedom or Spring... or whatever you called the "1-2-3 you're my man no breaksies" variation of tag with teams. Odd how an entire country of children can play the same game & call it by a different name. Not as odd as the fact that an entire country of children used to pretend that the floor was lava & the couch was some kind of magic, lava-resistant boat, but still something of note."
It's the The Art Car Fest! "The West Coast's Largest Gathering of Art Cars!" And you're looking at "Tom Kennedy's 'Ripper the Shark & Max the Fin Truck'" - Tom Kennedy being one of the artists whose presence will grace the First Annual Redondo Beach Junkfest.
"The unique aspect of our medium," say the Fest-designers, "is that we bring art into the world every day as we drive our vehicles to work, to the store and on the highway." Very fun stuff, these art cars, transforming reality, like all good art.
ArtCars. Another kind of Junkyard Sport, it seems to me. A whole nother kind.
I found my mouse pointing me to this video on the Internet.
Here's the only explanation of I could find:
"Milwaukee kids pass a summer's day in what one of them calls 'The Ghetto Olympics' -- doing back flips and other gymnastics on mattresses stacked on the ground. They're joined by a man who was driving by and stopped to relive a bit of his childhood."
And I find myself watching and watching and thinking: "improvised sport," and "Hmmmm," and "isn't that what Junkyard Sports are/is? Improvisational sports?" and "Ghetto Olympics?!" and isn't it even more cool that we have yet another name for it? Improvisational Sports? Sports that you make up as you go along, so to speak, even though there's a, also to speak, 'script' with roles and rules and stuff."
Note how the designer keeps to the "assemblage" spirit of Junkyard Golf - not really securing anything to anything or ataching anything - just putting things together.
Not also the devotion, dedication, degree to which this whole silly thing is taken seriously.
One of the hopefully unintended consequences of the whole sports industry - from physical education and soccer camp to Sports Networks to shoe commercials - is the message that we have the wrong stuff. We have the wrong kinds of bodies, the wrong kind of equipment, the wrong kinds of clothes. In sum, what we have and who we are isn't good enough.
In a way it's a valuable message - one that challenges us to improve ourselves, physically and materially. And for those of us who are motivated by that challenge, it proves to be a remarkably successful path to self improvement.
Unfortunately, those people are in the minority.
For the vast majority of us, the message is: you're not good enough. You don't have the right stuff. You're not made of the right stuff. And you never will be.
And for these people, the only path is consumption. Watch others play sports, eat granola bars and trail mix, drink sports drinks from sports bottles, wear athletic socks and shoes and t-shirts, eat vitamins and subscribe to health publications. Junkyard Sports, Junk Art, Junk Music - these are celebrations of the wrong stuff - of all the fun we can have, the art we can create, the joy we can share with the wrong stuff. With the stuff that is thrown out, rejected. With torn socks and pantyhose and plastic shopping bags, water botles and newspaper and bubblewrap, we can make games of deep and lasting fun, we can make art that makes us laugh, music that makes us dance. We can play we can dance, we can create, all of us together, fat and skinny, English and Hispanic, seniors and juniors, able and labeled.
Sports Inventors. They are meant to be a joke. You can even see how much of a joke they take themselvs as by watching their video.
But, you see, we who are the promulgators of Junkyard Sports, we know that such jokes are the very stuff, the very meat, the very core of new and meaningful paths to peaks of playful performance.
As in, for example, Bowling Shotput, as illustrated in the video.
Not to mention Lacrasticball, as also illustrated here.
I select but a few of my favorites from their collection of half-formed, undescribed, yet clearly inspired conceptual leaps:
Crocockey - English croquet meets full-contact hockey.
Darchery - extreme barroom darts played with a mini crossbow.
Double Racketed Tennis - six-foot-long pole with a racket head attached to each end - doubles with half as many people.
Escalator Surfing - the Zen of surfing balance performed while standing on a descending escalator step.
Extreme Tetherball - three-tiered professional tetherball.
Fat Abner - oversized baseball bat for easy contact. (After baseball inventor Abner Doubleday).
Golfzilla - aggressive full-contact golf with running, blocking, tackling, and bigger holes for more hole-in-one's.
Hackie Bag - beanbag chair-size hackie sack.
Horseshoe Tag - players wear spiked helmets and try to ring toss one another.
I Got It Mitt - oversized baseball mitt for the visually challenged.
Jet-Ski Jousting - just like the medieval equestrian competition except played on jet skis.
There's something inherently funny about saying the words "Pool Noodle." Go ahead. Give it a try. Say: pool noodle, pool noodle, pool noodle. See what I mean? Even thinking about a pool noodle, a noodle in a pool, a pool full of pool noodles is kind of fun. And playing with a pool noodle, in a pool, of course, sitting on one, lying on one, lying on several...fun, all fun.
Well, what Chris Cavert and Sam Sikes tell you what you can do with pool noodles, on the land, even, is every bit as fun, and even more inventive than that. They've written two noodle books, as a matter of fact: 50 Ways to Use Your Noodle and 50 More Ways to Use Your Noodle.
Now, before I go any further, I want to warn you. Page through these books, and you're going to want to invest heavily in pool noodles. At about $3/noodle, we're not talking junk. Though you could purchase Tubular Polyethylene Foam Pipe Insulation, Pre-Slit, 3/8" Wall Thickness, For Use On 1/2" Copper Pipe Or 1/4" Iron Pipe, for maybe $3 for 4 3-foot sections. Which is more junk-like, but not much cheaper. Not only are you going to want to buy many, many pool noodles (at least one for each player), but you're going to want to (dare I mention this? yes, yes, I must) cut some of your noodles into 3-foot "Midaronis," 3-inch "Minironis," and 1-1/4-inch "Meatballs."
OK, by now you get a good sense of the tone of the whole thing: fun, funny, creative, inventive. So you're ready for at least one game. Like, for example, Balloon Volleyball, played with Midaronis. Do I need to explain this any more? Everyone with their own Midaroni. Trying to hit a large balloon over a volleyball net. Do you need me to tell you what fun this can be? Or how about the baseball-like "Bustin Burgers" game - where one player sails pool noodle Meatballs to the Midaroni-swinging batter?
You might not expect the more creative activities, like the semi-self-explanatory "Noodle Doodles." And in all likelihood, you wouldn't have begun to anticipate the group team-building, problem-solving aspect of the whole thing, with exercises like seeing how many Meatballs or Minironis two people can hold between them. And yes, in the 50 More Ways book you'll even find pool noodle games you can play in the - can you believe it - pool.
Together, the Noodle books are a treasure of creative, playful, problem-solving fun that should prove an invaluable resource to any youth leader, team builder, or provocateur of playfulness.
RE: Noodle Economics
Chris comments: "we found that the foam pipe insulation is okay for some of the noodle book activities, however, it doesn't have the rigidity for most games. Also, you lose the "visual" pull the colors have. Even though you might pay $3.50 (or so) for a noodle, you'll cut the long ones in half - thus cutting your cost in half. And, as long as the participants don't pick on or chew the noodles they last a very long time - the return on investment is great. Bonus: if you buy in the fall they are really cheap - stores don’t like to warehouse them because they take up so much space (some stores give them away to educational programs just to get rid of them before the winter months)."
(voice hushed)"Welcome once again to the World Stone Skimming Championships, to be held once again this year at Easdale Island, Argyll, Scotland, September 23. Stone Skimming, or, as you Yanks have it, Stone Skipping. And, yes, and ah, the excitement is palpable, is it not, the anticipation fairly overwhelming. Each competitor, don't you see, is allowed 5 skims using specially selected Easdale slate skimming stones. For a skim to qualify the stone must bounce at least three times - it is then judged on the distance achieved before it sinks, last year's winner having achieved a remarkable 63 meters, in deed."
In deed. And in fact. Stone skipping or skimming is what one must call an archetypal Junkyard Sport, at least until someone invents plastic stones, or some such. And it is very much alive and significantly well, both hither and yon.
Chapay is a Russian game similar to shuffleboard played on a checkerboard.
I quote:
"The goal of the game is to sweep all opponent's checkers from the chessboard by flicking your own checkers. Players make flicks by the turn. Red Army (what a surprise!) starts the game. If you destroyed at least one opponent's checker without losing any of yours, you get an extra flick. When all opponent's checkers are destroyed, winning army moves one line forward, if the army wins without loss, it moves two lines forward. The army which reaches the opposite side of the chessboard wins the game."
I found this game, in case you wondered, while searching for the world's largest game of Giant Pick Up Sticks. I learned that there was a game of "Monster Mikado" staged by Werner Holz where 41 eight-meter-long tree trunks were used instead of sticks and weighed around 3.5 tons. There happened to be a link on that page to the Wikipedia collection of Games of Physical Skill. And there, under "C," was Chapayev, Coconut shy, Cornhole (game), and Crud (game). For some reason only known to the gods of Internet randomness, I picked Chapayev.
And I was gladdened thereby, for it is just the kind of game, built on the combination of two other games, that reminds me and you so much of how Junkyard Sports are made. Inspiring, in its way, making you wonder about combining say shuffleboard with perhaps chinese checkers or football.
And a good game it is. One deserving of passionate Russian intensity. And you can even play it online.
FreezeTagBasketball (invented by Phil Anker & David Fisher)
"You see, FreezeTagBasketball (invented by Phil Anker & Dave Fisher) combines basketball and freeze tag. Each team has an 'IT.' The IT can tag people on the opposing team to freeze them, or tag people on ITs own team to unfreeze them. Everybody becomes unfrozen when a point is made. The ITs can make points and everything else everyone else does. The rest of the game is played just like basketball."
"But," you ask, "won't people just stay away from the ITs? Why not give the ITs the ball and let them make points?"
"Certainly," the designers respond, "ITs have an offensive advantage, but don't let that fool you. ITs can freeze each other, and once frozen cannot unfreeze themselves. So if an IT is given the ball, other players might stay away, but the opposing IT would go for the freeze. If your team's IT is frozen, you can see how you would have an obvious disadvantage. The opposing IT could freeze your entire team, and unfreeze all of the opposing players. Bad news for you."
FreezeTagBasketball is what I, Bernie DeKoven, author of Junkyard Sports (as soon to be seen in Family Fun Magazine), registrar of the registered trademark Junkyard Sports®, host of Junkyard Sports, the Blog, call a Junkyard Sport - even though it doesn't (but certainly could) involve the using of junk. What it does involve is the putting together of a sport and a game in such an ingenious way as to create a new sport. A new, fun sport. A new, fun sport good enough to be played very, very hard; and new enough to be really fun, and stay really fun, for anyone who really wants to play.
My Junkmasterly blessings on you, Phil Anker and David Fisher. Play on!
In Kris Bordessa's blog, Great Solutions to Team Challenges, she does me the great honor of not only blogging my Festival of Junk concept. Kris is the author of an importantly playful book called "Team Challenges," and I even managed to interview her in a FunCast not too long ago. So it's not too surprising that she would grok the idea of a Festival of Junk so thoroughly. She writes:
Beyond the financial feasibility of this, it's an opportunity to bring some environmental awareness to a community. Not only is there an element of reuse, but there's an element of NON-use. In other words, if the activities use scavenged and found items, it WON'T require new products to be purchased and consumed.
And, kids participating in an event like this will learn how to think beyond the usual bounds of playthings and discover the joy of cardboard and bottle caps. Or should I say REdiscover? The joy of cardboard boxes is well-known to toddlers, but as they become little consumers, they learn that the box is garbage and expect something grander to entertain them.
And I am touched and close to overjoyed, not only by the discovery that Kris has so compassionately captured the politics and purposes of the Festival of Junk, but also by her taking it one step further with her mention of a most admirably silly venture called "The Box Doodle Project."
The Box Doodle. Lovely, supremely junkish in concept and spirit. Box Doodler David Hoffman explains: "the rules are quite simple: rearrange a box to make any kind of figure or object. Make the most of least." It's inspiring, really, to see the collection of whimsical, cardboard-backed delights contributed by artists of all callings. For our immediate gratification, there's even a virtual Box Doodle Tool, taking the concept beyond cardboard entirely, should we, for some reason, find ourselves so called.
Years ago, when I was writing for Games magazine, I proposed that we do an article on what I called "Two Balls Tied Together." We actually got as far as doing a photo session for the article, but, ultimately, it got killed. I suppose because of the semi-salacious significance of what I was calling the game. And perhaps also because the game didn't seem to be "real." Nobody we knew of was actually playing it. Even though it was clearly fun. And most definitely playworthy. There weren't any Two-Balls-Tied-Together Leagues or clubs, even.
Recently, maybe 20 years later, I heard from a company called Yazoo. These Yazoos were in fact marketing their own patented version of something remarkably similar to TBTT (Two Balls...etc.). Coming to me as it did in this enlightened age of the Internet, I gleefully Googled for evidence of this game elsewhere. And behold, it was, in truth, a game called Double Ball, played by our Native American brothers o so many years ago, as further explicated here.
There's something to be learned here about the nature of new sports, and timing, and naming, and patents and stuff.
Last November, Philip Ella Juico wrote published an article called "Sports for All" in the Philippine Star. The article was the result of several exchanges we had over the previous months, about bringing sports to the far reaches of the Philippines. Dr. Juico was very active with the major sports organizations in the Philippines, and, because he had access to some of the major players, he thought about organizing a tour in which they would run demonstration games in the nation's villages. This led to many fascinating conversations, a wonderful meeting, and, ultimately, my crafting the following proposal:
A Celebration of Junk is a festival of play- an event that affirms the human capacity to play.
A Festival of Play - a public gathering that combines spectacle with empowerment, that provides a platform for the display of both athletic and artistic achievement, while providing an invitation to equal participation by all members of the community - all genders, ages, abilities - to everyone who wants to play. A Festival of Play - celebrating genius in body, mind and spirit; genius in sports, in individual and team performance, in individual and collective art and invention, in music and dance.
Last week, I wrote about the Camp wiki, extolling its promise as a much-needed, collaboratively developed repository of camp-worthy games and activities. The theory behind all this wikification is that, given a community of like-minded fun-seekers (or fun-minded like-seekers), it should be possible to develop an extensive, ever-growing repository of gamish knowledge, that only becomes more valuable as more people contribute.
This week, it is with at least equally profound pleasure that I inform you that Streetplay, one of the few sites devoted to the inner-city street games of the 40s, 50s and 60s, has launched its very own Streetplay Wiki, a.k.a. SPwiki. Now, you, too can exhume and immortalize your rapidly fading memories of those ad hoc, informal, unofficial, homemade neighborhood games that you played on the streets and sidewalks and front steps and back yards of your childhood.
Today's sending, apparently from the Oaqui (him, her or them)selves(f) - ostensibly about a game of Oaqui Pong, which, according to the Oaqui, is the progenitor of all games pongish, contains a curious comment. And I quote:
"Then, when we arrive at the idea of the Serve, well, Table Tennis, bound as it to its OneBalledness, begins as a game in which one player has to Serve to the other, trying, can you imagine, not only to get the ball over the net and hit the other side of the table, but to make the other player MISS! It's beyond odd, when you think about it, that a game would arise in which one player, in the name of SERVING, would try to make the other player lose! These are the consequences of UniBallistic thinking: SERVING each other by trying to make each other LOSE!
Which, of course, leads inevitably to the way they keep score. Here, Table Tennis, merely because of its MonoSpherical premise, makes the oddest of all leaps. Where as you, being sensitized to the Oaay of the Oaqui, would think BOTH players would LOSE a point every time the ball goes out of play, well, need I/we say more?"
I need, apparently, to say it again in today's FunCast, fortuitously titled: "Oaqui Pong."
The Hoseball, Son of Schmertlz, came into being as a direct result of the propinquitous ubiquity of both knee-high and thigh-high hosiery. A 2-3-sock sockball, stuffed into the toe of these hose forms, creates a thing to fling of such stretchy spinworthiness that it is oft likened to a weapon of soft, but nonetheless intimidating attribute. A well-flung hoseball, trailed spectacularly by its gauzy, wobbly, hose-formed tail, beckons every eye on the playground.
Thus, the inevitability of Ultimate Hoseball, a game, remarkably like the game of Ultimate Frisbee, but not with a wind-surfing frisbee, but a skyrocketing, filmy-tailed, ineffably catchable Hoseball.
Let's see, how do you play Ultimate Hoseball? In teams. Kinda like soccer, only without the kicking or the butting. Just with the throwing. And with the no-running-with-the-Hoseball rule, and the having to get it to a team member who is standing in the opponent's goal. You could have just two on a team, if you wanted. And three teams with three goals. And two hoseballs. Ultimately speaking.
Take a look at this picture. It's a, so to speak, hole, in a game of Junkyard Golf as played during Leadership Training Camp at Southwest Airlines. You see here standard Junkyard Golf equpiment: a collection of junk. Note the use of the green swimming pool inner tube as a, well, cup, for example, and the cunning placement of the toy obstacles and cardboard box ramp. The only thing missing is the club, unless, perhaps, that inflatable harmless head-basher on the left is the club. Which might mean, perhaps, that the toys are not obstacles, but the balls themselves.
The only piece of Junkyard Golf equipment that you can't see is actually not junk at all. It's the camera they used to take this picture.
It took me three, maybe four years to realize this. Junkyard Sports was published in 2004. Well, really in the fall of 2003. So that means that I had it completed by the spring of that year, so give me another year for writing and revising. O, my gosh, it is 4 years!
Now that I think about it, cameras are sports equipment in every sport you can think of. But in Junkyard Sports, you might not think of cameras at all. After all, it's all about junk, and people having fun, it's not about taking pictures. And you'd be just as wrong as I was.
See, Junkyard Sports are what you call "evanescent." No two games of, for example, Junkyard Golf, are alike. And I don't mean snowflake-non-alikeness, I mean species. And every time we play, we don't want to let go of what got made - not without showing it off to the world, without stamping it into the virtual permanence of at least a digital photo. Because it's new, ingenious, lovely, and we made it. Because it's got to be captured before we can finish with it.
And photographs themselves, the very definition of photographs, are changing. As the visionary Sascha Pohflepp says:
Photography has become a networked process. It no longer ends with pasting putting prints into an album. Instead, making them public through services like Flickr is rapidly becoming one of the main ways how we treat our visual memories. The photographic process extends from preserving a moment to an act of telecommunication, with numerous implications on how we perceive reality, how we make our memories and how we create a narrative from it.
Which is why I am now deciding that cameras are as important to the sports part of Junkyard Sports as they are to the junk parts. They make it possible for us to complete the game without anybody really winning - just everybody, really.
There's an older version of the game of Jacks, called Fivestones. It's Jacks, all right, but played with, well, stones. Five of them.
Sure, sure, everyone remembers Tali, the Fivestones-like game Roman kids and gods purportedly played, with, well, goat knuckles. (And beautiful goat knuckles they were.) But it's the stones version to which we need pay the majority of our collective attention. Because it's played, see, with stones. In other words, junk. The very kind of junk upon which Junkyard Sports is so amusingly built. Found junk. Free junk. Everyday, all around you junk.
It's Junkyard Jacks, is what it is. And it you can't find rocks, bottle caps will do, and if you can't find bottle caps, coins would certainly do, and if you can't find coins, God bless you. In fact, if you can't play Jacks, you can change the rules to exactly the Jacks-like game you play best. Like, maybe, One Jack. Or Horizontal (no throwing) Jacks. Or, for the Post-Apocalympic-minded, Three-Handed Jacks.
In his "My Turn" article, Newsweek's Nicholas O'Connell writes about The Pickup Game as a Model for Peace? (there's that question mark again - I guess someone at Newsweek wasn't ready to commit to the idea that a pick-up game could actually prove to be a model for something as desperately sought after as world peace - must not have read the whole article):
"Over the centuries, there have been many utopian schemes for world peace, now mostly consigned to the ash heap of history, but soccer offers a vision of how such a world order might actually work. There are none of the vague platitudes you hear at UNESCO conferences; the sport allows for plenty of competition; it's not just about love and brotherhood, as witnessed by the recent World Cup. People push, shove and sometimes foul. They want to win. But they must subordinate even the fiercest rivalries to the game itself. If a fight breaks out, the game stops. No one wants that...
"This is not to say that national identity didn't matter. The Arabs and Africans favored showboat dribbling and cartwheeling bicycle kicks in front of the goal. Irish, English and Americans like me preferred a more team-oriented, ball-control style. The more repressive the political system, it seemed, the more individualistic the soccer. These styles mixed and meshed and sometimes clashed, but when a long pass arced across the mouth of the goal, no one was thinking of the ethnicity of the person who passed it, only of heading it into the back of the net."
All right, all right, so maybe it's not a model for world peace. So how about "world play?"
I had the good fortune to meet Dr. Juico a few weeks ago. We discussed how Junkyard Sports could provide an opportunity for people in the Philippines to celebrate their own culture, and perhaps be encouraged to become more involved in athletics. He recently published this article. I quote enthusiastically:
Junkyard Sports emphasizes fun and creativity, teamwork and leadership, inclusion (as opposed to exclusion and exclusivity) and adaptability, compassion and acceptance, humor, playfulness and community. The activities are designed not only to engage mind and body but also to help participants develop the arts of collaboration and effective teambuilding, acquire leadership, and experience the power and practicality of using problem solving and the scientific method.
The Preface to "Junkyard Sports" states that "Junkyard Sports" is a play on a TV series called Junkyard Wars. Like junkyard sports, Junkyard Wars is a team effort, requiring ingenuity and collaboration in the use of found materials. The similarity stops there. Junkyard sports are not wars or even competitions, and the purpose is not to build machines but to build community.
As one goes over the book, one realizes that it is a collection of ideas for new, fun and challenging invitations to sports. For example, when looking in the baseball section of the book, you will see a baseball-like demonstration game played with a tennis racket for a bat, a beach ball for a ball, five traffic cone bases, and the batter sitting on a gym scooter.
Each demonstration game really is a collection of innovative principles — ideas that can be used to create other demonstration games. Borrowing the gym-scooter idea, one suddenly has a new way to play soccer or basketball. Every demonstration game gets refined as it is played. In refining the demonstration game, players create a new demonstration game, which in turn results in the creation of another and another.
It's a maze made out of cardboard boxes. Constructed, according to the terse description, "out of cardboard boxes, duct tape, and 300 bolts. The maze spans two rooms and a hallway." (See this for a larger, annotated image.) Cardboard-box-maze-making being a minor passion of my son and his family, I cannot but applaud the joyous absurdity of the abovementioned.
Take, for exmple, the Shopping cart art of Ptolemy Elrington. Contemplate, if you will, the depth of the artist's knowledge of shopping cart architecture. Note the consummate skill, the intimacy of the dialogue between form and substance, sculpture and cart. Now consider the artist's collection of Hubcap Creatures. One could only say the same.
Mr. Erlington is an artist who understands playfulness. He knows his junk. He knows what it will let itself be made into, and then he plays with it, right there, right at the edge, always honoring the essential junkitude of his medium, junk and artist making something new together, something lovely, something fun.
"QOLF," (pronounced KWALF) is, according to the manufacturers, "an indoor/outdoor game that is a cross between golf and croquet." It is, again according to the manufacturers, a popular leisure game in South Africa, which "now comes to the U.S. as the ultimate family fun game, as well as a unique golf practice tool."
Heartened by all these promises of patently family-friendly goflike glee, now, at last, available indoors and out, one is drawn inexorably to a contemplation of the various implications of the vertical target with both hole and arch, especially when combined with the shot-shapable nature of the Qolfball.
There's been a lot of very focused playing around here. The path from golf to Qolf, clearly, was by no means direct. The goal here was not to come up with what one might consider a "new" game, but rather with a way for people to practice an old game in new environments. Replacing a golf cup with an arch (as in croquet), but still playing by the rules of golf (no, you don't get to knock your opponents' balls off the green) certainly make things a lot easier to set up. But adding an extra hole on top of the arch is what we in the game biz call a "significant variation." By managing to pitch the ball through the hole, the player gets bonus points, and a chance to pull closer to the lead. Thus sustaining hope almost all the way to the last stroke.
Here's a Google video of a soccer game played with a very big soccer ball and a bunch of noticeably small cars.
OK. It's an advertisement. But the clearly noticeworthy point of the video is the fun of it - the fun that the announcer is clearly having, the fun of the idea itself.
Google Video now has a "comments" section, bless their blog-like hearts, wherein I found this:
"They are not Smart cars, but Toyota Aygo, a new for Europe only small car. The TV was brilliant, but I was at the filming and it was one of the most fun things I have ever witnessed. To see cars racing after a giant ball is truly amazing. The cars played several more games live at a show before Christmas in 2005 and are still going strong after a bit of TLC."
This week's FunCast is taken from an article I wrote called "Ex Checkers." It's about a class I taught to prisoners, and the lessons thereof. It concludes:
Class after class, variation after variation, the convicts, the people in my checkers class, and I, played, and learned together. We even created new variations borrowing rules from one and fitting them into another.
As the classes progressed, I began realizing what my checkers classes must have meant to people who have lost their freedom:
* there’s more than one way to play checkers * the more ways you know, the more you have to play with – more things to think about, more people to think with, more opportunities to keep the mind alive * the only variation worth playing is the one that’s fun for both players * because there’s more than one way to play, every game has to start with negotiation * all the rules of a game are negotiable, the only rules that aren’t negotiable are the rules that keep you playing together.
I'm sure you remember my personal hoo haa over the Junkyard Golf Course and Community Building Event with Potluck (click link to download). I managed to get a very big vision for a wonderfully positive, fun-for-all event into a 10-page document. And I decided to give it away!
As you might have by now surmised, I've been experiencing a kind of leap, quantum-wise, with this whole junkyard thing. It started when I decided to think about using Junkyard Golf for a community celebration. Which is weird, because Junkyard Golf, the very first time I played it, was part of a community celebration, remember, for a preschool in Palo Alto called "Leaping Lizards."
So, to answer your question, what else I've been doing with Junkyard Golf is inventing the Junkyard Golf Conference Kickstart Kit. Which is a simulation game for the business community. For business to build community. For business to help people learn about how to build a better business community. Probably right after breakfast on the first day of a conference.
I made it a version of Junkyard Golf that you can play on tabletops, in a banquet room. Sure, you can play it on tabletops in the cafeteria or on a long table for a few small groups, even. And, yes, of course, you can even play it on the floor. But the point is, it can be played right where and when people most need this kind of experience, and most can use this kind of learning. Early on. Right after a meal.
Then I found a place that collected really "neat junk" - thick, colorful cardboard tubes, beautiful fabric and cardboard pieces, smooth chunks of wood, eye-blinding strips of Mylar. Who made it possible for me to make identical kits of really lovely junk - one kit for every table. Thus eliminating what seems to be the apparently overwhelmingly challenging requirement of people having to collect and pack their own junk.
And then, because it's designed to be played at conferences, at a dinner or breakfast or lunch or something, I decided to call it what I did. It's golf, but you don't even need a golf club. In fact, you can, with more control even than hitting a ball with a thing, slide or even flick. Kind of as in shuffleboard. And then I made changed a little about the game to make it at least as relevant and discussion-worthy as it was fun - relevant to learning about building the business community.
And now, can you believe it, you can order your very own Junkyard Golf Conference Kickstart Kit (from me, for the nonce). Soon, even, you'll be able to order it online. Now, you can even ask me to run the game with you. Soon, you'll have others to help you.
It's a business game, you know. A "simulation." It's fun you can take seriously.
Mondo Croquet - played with bowling balls and sledge hammers.... (sent in as a comment to my story on Collosal Croquet).
I must apparently add an observation: Mondo Croquet is perhaps the junkiest expression of junkyard sports that I've so far encountered. Sledge hammers. So deliciously tool-like and constructively destructive in their veritable essence. Bowling ball - clearly, bowling balls of the used persuasion - getting hit and chipped and potentially utterly disfigured by the carefully channeled violence of it all. Smashing. Simply smashing.
Beach Tennis? But, of course. Kinda like beach volleyball, because it's played on beach volleyball court. Even more like badminton, except you play it with tennis racquets and ball. Apparently, Beach Tennis started in Latin America and vicinity. Like on the lovely but, currently unfortunate island of questioned-repute, Aruba.
If you're over 16 (apparently, something untoward happens when you reach level 5 that makes it inappropriate for the younger set), you can even play it online (uses arrow keys and space bar).
One visit to the Beach Tennis websites, especially the highly polished Beach Tennis USA site, makes you realize how seriously some people are taking this patently junkyardly sport - serious enough to do what is necessary to earn a write-up in USA Today.
Which leaves us with this question: what makes a junkyard-like sport get transformed into a "serious" one? Clearly, Beach Tennis was born out of a spirit of playfulness - the same kind of rule transforming playfulness that gave birth to Baggyball. What makes Beach Tennis a "real" sport, and Baggyball remain Junkyard?
My guess: it's all about how much it gets played. Which is all about how much fun it is for how many people. Until, finally, it gets to be all about money. And that's about all.
I had several remarkable opportunities to work with some of the remarkable people studying with the USC School of Cinema-Television- Interactive Media. Teaching them everything I knew about fun and games, from New Games to Junkyard Sports.
Of all the games I taught them, I think two stood out as being pivotal - as a learning experience and for the sheer fun of it all: the most junkly sport of Junkyard Golf and the absurd, profound, and insignificantly competitive Rock-Scissors-Paper Tag. Junkyard Golf because these are game designers, and design, really, is the center of the experience, collaborative design, in fact. Rock-Scissors-Paper Tag, or, as some would have it, Rock-Paper-Scissors Tag, is, from the design perspective, a most delightfully edifying model of a game that is both competitive and fun-centered, a game that can help build community, regardless of how "good" or "bad" people are at playing it.
For a similarly amusingly edifying experience, click on either link, or both.
Debaucheryball, similar in certain highly suggestive ways to Rocky DeKoven's much-vaunted "Shoreshoes," and no doubt born of similar influence to that which gave rise to "Subversive Golf," and a direct descendant of Urban Golf, Debaucheryball is Shoreshoes played with bocce balls. Or, as some might call it, "Free Form Ad Hoc Bocce."
The perhaps most significant contribution of D-Ball to the lexicon of game wackification and further Calvinballism could perhaps be seen as the "Fair Rule" concept.
When a team scores three times in a row (three consecutive turns) that team is allowed to make up a new rule. A new (fair) rule is defined as one that affects each player exactly the same, or one that all the players agree is fair. The purpose is to make the game more complicated and more challenging, or simply more annoying.
Any standard fair rule is fair, regardless of what some loser who you barely know but your friend brought thinks. There are some rules which come up in debaucheryball again and again, and history says, “Live with it.” Some societies, the more advanced of the primitive societies, start their games with several fair rules and go from there.
While there is no limit to the number of fair rules allowed, more than three can become somewhat confusing. It’s a good idea, when creating a fourth rule, to make sure it negates an existing rule.
Though, arguably, one could make a case for the even vastier implications of the Unfair Rule
When a team scores four times in a row (scores again after just making a rule), that team is allowed to make an unfair rule.
An unfair rule is defined as one that affects only one person—not an entire team. The idea is to single out and pick on one person, you know, to build their character and sportsmanship or make them look like a complete tool. This is a great way of getting back at the guy who drew all over you with magic marker the last time you passed out at a party.
Unfair rules can be a lot of fun, but they can get out of hand. Be prepared for a war if you pick on someone too hard. The unfair rules listed elsewhere are only suggestions.
There are probably more connections between junkyard sports and the arts than there are between junkyard sports and, um, sports. The same drive to transform the "useless" into the playworthy, the same spirit that transforms plastic bags and scrap into a soccer ball, the same need to engage, explore, express - can be found in junk sculpture, junk jewelry, junk fashion, and especially, wonderfully, in junk music.
You know, of course, about the junk-playing, dancing art of Stomp, and maybe you even know about the Taiko-like celebrations of junk-made instruments, creativity and choreography of Scrap Arts Music, but for a taste of what junk-inspired musical innovation leads to, take a long look at Odd Music. Spend maybe 15 minutes, or hours, exploring their gallery of traditional and invented instruments. Yes, the art and craft, the discipline, the hundreds of hours that went into the creation of each instrument - these all may seem a far cry from the slapdash improvisations that lead to the creation of things like the Junkyard Golf Club. But the spirit, the need to break from the constraints of the "official," the taking up of the freedom to innovate, even within the confines of the most traditional of forms, the ingenuity that inspires us to make our own, out of whatever, simply because we want to play - these are all, most gloriously, the same.
The following is an idea from the folks at the Halfbakery, "a communal database of original, fictitious inventions, edited by its users. It was created by people who like to speculate, both as a form of satire and as a form of creative expression." So, this should give you some idea about what to expect - creativity combined with unfettered wackiness and irreverence.
Someone called "ldischler" came up with this half-baked idea: "Stringball resembles soccer, except the ball is one meter in diameter, and is very heavy, being solid string. One end is tied to a peg, and as the game progresses, the stringball unwinds. As it slowly shrinks, the game goes faster and faster until no more ball."
And here are the first three contributions from a virtual plethora of playful personae:
Perhaps there could be an additional player for each team whose job it is to 'peg down' the string. One player per side; the new peg can only be added between the ball itself and the last peg to be placed. Obviously, either "pegger" would be vulnerable to body-checking when not in the act of pegging the string. Suddenly, this game begins to sound like Quidditch. Trout, Nov 08 2004
Count me in, I wanna play too.....do we have to kick the ball, or could we have a hockey-style stick with a razor blade on it? When the string is cut, you are penalized, the string is restaked at that point and play begins anew. I think shin guards might be a good idea too..... normzone, Nov 08 2004
"...and certain lengths of the string could be elastic for added boingy." "If the string breaks while in play the team having had possession at the time of the break loses points or" an eye.... Cubical_View, Nov 09 2004
Enough said. Add large balls of string, yarn, and rubber bands to your Junkmasters' toolkit. And then read the entire halfbaked sports collection.
A few years ago I helped evolve a game that’s a natural for anyone with a mismatched bunch of stuff lying around the house – certainly a snap for most American households. I began by wandering all over my own mismatched home, garden and garage earlier in the day, collecting a pile of both ordinary and not-so-ordinary household items; i.e., light bulbs, clothes hangers, unused electrical and plumbing supplies, yard décor, odd clothing, shoes, plastic bags, intriguing looking kitchen utensils (colanders and wire whisks are especially useful), assorted odd containers, various pieces of cords, ropes, hoses and other household items, basically anything that looks like it might be worthy subject for what’s to follow.
I then divide the objects into various piles of approximately the same size – one pile for maybe every 5 or 6 people you’re expecting – and put each pile into a bag. When it’s time for the activity, I find a creative way to get folks into groups of the approximate size and give each group one of the bags of stuff. I tell them their mission is to get together with their collection of junk and figure out how to use all of it for a new invention which solves a basic need of humanity or whatever. Only rule, if it is one, is they have to use everything. Or I suppose they could throw what they don’t want out a window when I’m not looking. I give them 30 to 60 minutes to work out their challenge - depending on how much fun they’re having doing it - and provide them with pens, tape, string and anything else they want that I can locate.
I also invite them to devise a skit showing off their invention to the rest of the group .. this may take the form of an “infomercial” or trade show display or street huckster or whatever scenario they want. I suggest leaving it as open as possible to allow the creativity and humor to flow. It’s always amazing what ideas the group devises and the humor that comes especially through their sales efforts. Oh, and the “audience” can vote unofficially for their favorite skit with their applause and other sounds of support or criticism – which pretty much happens naturally. This is always a hit with all age groups – usually a highlight of gatherings.
I do find it’s more fun for me collecting the stuff and visualizing how it may be used than it is putting it all away the next day, but it’s worth it all the while. Shows you how much junk you have lying around the place, too. Maybe the next logical step is the nearest donation drop – except you may want it again next time. I’ve even been known to keep the stuff in its own boxes in the garage awaiting the next party.
Imagine my chagrin - go ahead, take a minute - when I learned that the plastic bags most frequently available to Netherlanders are either too thin or too thick for Sacky Sack-building. The too-thin variety, distributed in most grocery stores for fruit- and veggie-bagging, requires maybe three times as many sacks per Sacky Sack. And the resultant Sacky Sack is dense and hard, almost like a super ball without the bounce. The too-thick variety, available everywhere else except grocery stores (where you have to bring your own), are almost too stiff to stuff, so to speak. By the time you've managed to create something roughly spherical out of one sack, you're left with something too hefty for harmlessness and too bunchy for bounce, as it were.
Does this mean that we, for the sake of world play, need to be exporting our used plastic shopping bags to those countries who suffer different thickness? Is there some greater purpose here becaouse of the superior Sacky Sackness of our shopping bags? Is this then our mission - to have, to make, and to send to Holland?
You may or may not recall the all-but-passing mention of the Sacky Sack with Belt Loop. Or perhaps you do recall, and it is I who may or may not. In either event, one can only be remiss at the shortness of the shrift given to this remarkable break through in Sacky Sack envisionment. Sacky Sack with Belt Loop in deed. But why?
Just today I found myself crafting such a Sacky Sack, only not with three sacks, as described in the aforelinked, but with eight. Somehow, I wound up, as it were, with a compactly hefty Sacky Sack bearing a significantly extended loop. And, for one reason as another, as reason goes during such investigations, I found myself with a finger in that loop, twirling the sturdy little sacky with notable force, when suddenly I chose to slam it into another Sacky Sack of the famous Softball-Sized girth. And both behold and lo, said Sacky, when whacked by the aforesaid Sacky Sack with Belt Loop, did launch itself clear out of the door almost to the actual porch.
You may recall my various, but clearly semi-satisfactory soft bat-making attempts, that led to bizarre uses of the Hoseball as well as the seriously questionable Limp Stick. Well, it wasn't until much later and much deeper investigation of the properties of the Sacky Sack with Belt Loop that I discovered the nature of the Length vs Accuracy Phenomenon: the shorter the handle, the easier it is to control.
And suddenly I beheld in my very hand not what I had thought to be the referred-in-passing-to belt-looped Sacky Sack, but what can only be called the veritable inspiration for such soon-to-be-ubiquitous sports as Sacky Sack Croquet, Sack Bat Beach Hockey, and, of course, Ponyless Polo.
Take a look at what these kids are doing. Making a Sacky Sack, no? Exactly as described in the afore-underlined link, they are balling up plastic bags and putting bagged-up bags in other bags. And I must tell you that I, as one who has actually constructed such Sacky Sack, find myself, as I ball and bag, at one, in play-potentiating delight, with the children of Burundi.
OK, so they had to go to the town dump to get the plastic bags and they're not really making a Sacky Sack. So they're going to cover it with scraps and make it into a soccerworthy joy for-relatively-ever, and my Sacky Sack stops with the last sack. Though I sometimes put them into panty hose.
But the connection is there. And immediate. And I can feel it. And I am honored. As if I had been handed a kind of a Peace Prize for Play. To experience, in my moments of gleeful Sacky Sack making, that we are of the same spirit and in the same world, playing together, the children of Burundi and I.
"The best roofball ball is one of those cheap, light-weight jobs, about 10 inches in diameter, with all the swirly colors. You find them at the drugstore, dollar store, toy store, and even the supermarket when they're "in season". Of course, you may use any sort of ball that works for you...The basic game is played by 2 opposing players. They are both positioned on the same side of the building with the roof in question. Let me spell that out clearly in the negative mode: the players do NOT play on opposite sides of the roof. One player hits the ball up on the roof. Gravity (whatever that is) causes the ball to slow down, stop, change directions, and then start back down the roof, picking up speed as it does so. After it comes flying over the edge of the roof, the other player is obliged to smack it back up on the roof. As in tennis, a player has the option of hitting the ball "on the fly" - that is, before it hits the ground - or else letting it bounce once on the ground before hitting it back to the roof."
There's more. There's lot's more. There's also this.
We really only got to play two junkly sports at the Redondo Beach Fun Fest last Sunday: Ultimate Hoseball and the Fling-off.
Ultimate Hoseball took a good hour to play. Not that it couldn't have taken a good half-hour, or probably good half-day. Each of the two goals (there could have been more, you know) was made out of a water bottle (half-filled with sand so that it wouldn't blow over). The game was based on Ultimate Frisbee, of course. Basically, you couldn't run with the hoseball. So you had to throw it to a team mate, who, in turn, had to throw it to another team mate, who was hopefully close enough to the appropriate goal-bottle to knock it over. Yes, I know, there were some very important rules left out. But no one seemed to care. The game worked. People came and went, as is the tradition in most good and funly fests, joining this team or that. Or just watching. Or maybe blowing bubbles, as was their wont.
The Fling-off started when some younger kids joined, and the older amongst us had had enough. The goal - to see how many hoseballs we could get in the air at the same time. This was a perfect finish to our fest-part. The high-flying hoseballs were just the thing to attract people from all over the field. It was self-explanatory. And seeing all those hoseballs in flight was kind of, well, spectacular.
Having discovered the near-infinite possibilities of the Sacky Sack, I found myself chafing at the conceptual bit, pondering the potential of the further development of Junkyard Sports equipment.
Sorely lacking, until this very moment, has been a fun, safe, junkly equivalent of the bat or club or mallet, even. Initial experimentation led me to a deep contemplation of "pantyhose-stuffed-with-bublewrap as bat," pictured here with its coffe cup friend.
Actual investigations of the swatting power of p-s-w-b bat led to the selection of its official name: "Limp Stick." The Limp Stick doesn't really have that bat- or club- or mallet-like rigidity. On the other hand, with some experimentation, it: 1) is relatively possible to quite satisfyingly hit a 3-sack Sacky Sack or even a Bag Bag a most reasonable distance, 2) with a quite pleasant whap, and 3) most significantly, is soft enough to sustain engagingly pain-free-for-all jousting and sword play.
Urban Golf. Some call it an "extreme sport," I call it "junkyardly." Very, very junkyardly. An embodiment of junkyardliness. Absolute junkyardification.
Who needs Pebble Beach? What's a master, anyway? Where's my Bullhorn?
From the people who brought you the Urban Iditarod, the Urban Golf Association brings you the 4th Bi-Annual Emperor Norton North Beach Open.
That's right folks, golfing in North Beach. Nine Holes, Nine Bars, and not a Nine Iron in sight. Bring any club you can find (a 3 iron is handy, but a putter is great) as we golf through the streets of San Francisco. Each hole offers fun urban challenges, hazards, and yes - even danger!
Why wait in annoying lines at Mini-putt course? Why suck up to 6AM tee times? The UGA (Urban Golf Association) offers you non-stop fun all day long, with plenty of watering holes for every putting hole."
Yes, yes, I know, it's an adult-only kind of thing, combining a plethora of potentially precarious putting with the increasingly debilitating joys of bar-hopping. So, it's not what you might consider a paragon of junkyardhood. But in every other aspect, in the creativity and spontaneity and sheer foolery of it all, it is an apotheosis of extreme junkyardliness.
Also known as Crossgolf, according to the BBC Sport Academy, traditional Urban Golfers (yes, it's been around that long - since 1992, at least) use a leather ball filled with goose feathers." I of course, would recommend the three-sack Sacky Sack.
Made of approximately 14 plastic store bags, three of which were of the thin, translucent variety. It might have been 12 plastic store bags. I smushed and twisted as in the making of the regulation-size Sacky Sack. Actually, it was more of a smush, stuff, twist, turn inside out, twist kind of thing. All I know is that it god so big that I could get each of the handles of the outside sack to just----barely--------fit around the whole Sacky. A couple of the inner sacks seemed to have had some air trapped in them, which gave the Super Sacky a nice extra bounce to complement its round, firm, and smoothly packed softball-sized self. It is very cool, and fun, too.
The true origin of the Hoseball is shrouded in mystery and buried in the coffin of time. I first learned of it when it was called a Schmerltz, during days of the New Games Foundation and all that was implied thereby.
At last Friday's first official Junior Junkmaster Training, where the chosen ones, leaders of recreation throughout the vast holdings of Redondo Beach, participated in something similar to an hour of madcap Junkyard Sports making. Our junk collection included a large repository of panty hose and socks, a couple plastic bags full of plastic bags, a few paper grocery bags, and some plastic tie-downs.
For demonstration purposes, I had prepared several Schmerltz-like objects that I had made by stuffing a good-size ball of socks into a leg cut from a pair of pantyhose (as illustrated). For some reason, when I introduced these to the group, I didn't call them Schmerltzes, as I once had, but referred to them as, yes, Hoseballs.
There are other definitions and uses for the word, I must admit. There's not-so-vaguely sexual game and a baseball-like game that uses a piece of rubber hose for a ball. And there are other words for Schmerltz, including a commercial thing called a Fling Sock, and the more traditional "Socks-in-Pantyhose" or "Socks in Sock" or "Socker Thing."
But as of Friday, regardless of precedent or what, it became, officially and forever, a Junkyard Sports® Hoseball.
In this episode (one of only ten I was able to find on the remarkable collection of C&H strips found on Calvin and Hobbes at Martijn's) we see the following: "Calvin and Hobbes are playing Calvinball. Calvin stole Hobbes' flag. Hobbes hit him with the Calvin ball. He has to sing the 'I'm very sorry' song. Calvin protests he was in the 'no song' zone. Hobbes corrects him, as he had touched the 'opposite pole,' so now the 'no song zone' is a 'song zone.' Calvin complains that Hobbes didn't declare it. Hobbes says he declared it oppositely by not declaring it. Calvin starts singing, and Hobbes joins in. When they're finished, Calvin says he gets free passage to wicket five. Hobbes tells him they did that last time. Calvin makes up a new rule to jump until someone finds the bonus box. As they jump away, Calvin says the only permanent rule in Calvinball is that you can't play it the same way twice. Hobbes says the score is 'Q to 12'."
The most obvious connection scholars will one day make between Calivinball and Junkyard Sports is, of course, the Permanent Rule, which both of them more or less share, except for the fact that in Junkyard Sports you are allowed to try playing a game the same way twice. A perhaps more definitely subtle connection can be found in the relationship between the players. If one of them were really trying to win, the game would fall apart, immediately and completely. If you remember playing with kids who don't quite understand this subtlety, you'll know immediately what I mean. True, kids'll change a game, at every possible opportunity, but usually only as long as they can change it to their immediate advantage. Whereas C&H, like the true Junkmasters they are, change the game to keep it fun. For everyone.
This, as found on Milk and Cookies, should prove of enormous benefit for those of us who needs must envision all the possible outcomes of Junkyard Sports. including the Extreme.
Is it possible that despite my vasty efforts to embed the sense of fun and love along with the spontaneity and creativity of the Junkyard moment, there will be those who take it too far? For whom danger and damage are as much part of the Junkyard experience as fun?
Yes, Bernie, as so clearly demonstrated by Nike's vision of Extreme Junkyard Rugby, apparently there will.
And yet, nevertheless, I play on. Bringing Junkyard Sports® however I can into the world.
"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.
You know the game of Quoits (as described herein last month)? Well, it turns out that there's a quite Quoit-like game called "Washers," played, not with Quoits, or even horseshoes, but with, can you guess? "Standard round metallic washers, 2.5" in diameter with a 1" center hole." As for the, excuse the expression, "pits:" "The game of Washers is played on two pits, each with one circular recessed cup as a target. The easiest, although not necessarily the best, option for cups is a standard 32 ounce tin can (4" diameter x 4.5" depth). Remove both ends and recess the can flush with the earth in each pit. A better choice is thick-walled PVC of the same dimensions. Repeated hits of the tin can will distort its shape and necessitate regular restructuring while the PVC remains almost impervious to damage. White or light-colored PVC is recommended as an aid to aiming, and will allow competitive matches well into dusk."
The Washers game reflects exactly the kind of spirit we need to keep games games. The informality and humor of the concept model playfulness at its best. As the author readily reflects "The history of the game is cloaked in mystery but lends itself to colorful conjecture. 'Betcha I can toss this here washer into that oil can over yonder,' someone might have wagered years ago. Most certainly humble roots fathered the game as participants used readily-available parts, a hallmark of the game that survives even today."
Sadly, the Washers website doesn't appear to be very active. The links to the Forum and Guestbook are no longer active. But someone put some real love and very good information into this site, and, happily, it's still there for us to celebrate.
Southwest Airlines Blog - "Nuts about Southwest"
Near the end of my session with the 
Giant House of Giant Cards
Crolf
Archery Golf
Swing-Ball
It was at the 
Behold, therefore you beholder, the Tabletop Sailboard, as fuzzily photographed on the right. Whilst beholding below the slightly less fuzzy image of a Tabletop Sailor in action.
Penny Football
The Cardboard Tube Fighting League
It was 2007. October 11. The morning of. Let's say mid-morning. In Atlanta. At the North American Simulation and Gaming Association conference. During my workshop, during which I had planned to spend 90 minutes exploring the various learning ramifications of what I somewhat blithely referred to as: 
This was, as you have so intuitively grasped, but one of a minor Olympic myraid of tabletop events, such as, for example, the High Cup Jump, depicted here. Unfortunately, so enraptured were we with our collective cleverness and so deeply impressed by our finger-powered feats of athletic prowess, that we forgot to take any other pictures. And so, the memory fades. The world's first Olympic Croquet game, for example - played with many coins and paperclips and things, simultaneously, in the round - now, despite lingering echoes of all that laughter, partly remembered, partly imagined.
"Antietam Drive
It's the 
(voice hushed)"Welcome once again to the 
Chapay
The 
Take a look at this picture. It's a, so to speak, hole, in a game of 
Shopping cart art
Hubcap Creatures
QOLF
Here
Mondo Croquet
Beach Tennis
Debaucheryball
Imagine my chagrin - go ahead, take a minute - when I learned that the plastic bags most frequently available to Netherlanders are either too thin or too thick for 
You may or may not recall the all-but-passing mention of the 
"150" align="left">Roofball
We really only got to play two junkly sports at the Redondo Beach Fun Fest last Sunday: Ultimate Hoseball and the Fling-off.
Having discovered the near-infinite possibilities of the Sacky Sack, I found myself chafing at the conceptual bit, pondering the potential of the further development of Junkyard Sports equipment. 
Urban Golf
Made of approximately 14 plastic store bags, three of which were of the thin, translucent variety. It might have been 12 plastic store bags. I smushed and twisted as in the making of the regulation-size 
Calvinball
This
