Deep Rope

There was a minute or two in that increasingly amazing movie Mystic Ball (increasingly amazing just in the memory of what you've witnessed: the love, the play, the skill), when you get a glimpse of a few girls playing rope. Take a look. Click on the image if you want to see it bigger.

Looks like they're playing Double Dutch. Except the girl in the middle's balancing a ball on one foot. Balancing a ball one one foot and jumping two ropes at the same time! OK. Now look at this picture. Also from the same movie. Also the same kids. Only they're all balancing a ball on one foot!

This is the kind of stuff that gives me chills, that makes me just about want to pray to the spirit of play, if you know what I mean, if there is such a thing. Double Dutch, from 4 corners, while balancing a ball on one foot. And, o, wait. Isn't the girl in the middle also jumping her own rope while she's jumping the two crossed ropes while keeping a ball balanced on her foot? How utterly accomplished is that? How fun, how lovely, how spiritual, how miraculous how the spirit of play has moved these girls to such profound and practiced depth!

Play. Do not doubt its powers. Even when no one wins, everyone wins.


from Junkyard Sports

Life is For Sharing and Making Commercials Out Of

It's called Life is for sharing, and, yes, it's a T-Mobile Advert, very, very much in the spirit of the nobly playful antics of Improv Everywhere. Very, very.

And intriguingly commercial. Something so, well, upliftingly fun, and yet so unflinchingly commercial that you'd expect to read about in Elyon, yes, DeKoven's Ad Consumer Experience blog.

It's playful, all right, but it's play for a purpose. Which is OK, actually. Good to see, even, for all it's high-powered derivitivity. It's fun. It sells. So, well, without condoning or condemning, I'd like to at least draw the distinction between that, and this.


from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith