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.
What is the relation of available fun to intelligence?
What kind of emotional architecture is necessary to have fun?
Will eternal life be boring?
Will we ever run out of fun?
To answer questions like these… requires Singularity Fun Theory.
Does it require an exponentially greater amount of intelligence (computation) to create a linear increase in fun?
Is self-awareness or self-modification incompatible with fun?
Is (ahem) “the uncontrollability of emotions part of their essential charm”?
Is “blissing out” your pleasure center the highest form of existence?
Is artificial danger (risk) necessary for a transhuman to have fun?
Do you have to yank out your own antisphexishness routines in order not to be bored by eternal life? (I.e., modify yourself so that you have “fun” in spending a thousand years carving table legs, a la “Permutation City”.)
To put a rest to these anxieties… requires Singularity Fun Theory.
I decided that the Singularity Fun Theory was one of those theories that would be just as much fun if I didn't try too hard to understand what it actually means, and, putting a rest to my anxieties, remained quietly thankful that there are people thinking as deeply about the future of fun as Dr. Eliezer S. Yudkowsky.
Though I have written many articles about volleyball, devoted an entire funcast and even a full chapter of Junkyard Sports to volleyball, I have yet to find anywhere outside of my own writings any mention of the perhaps most profound and, dare I say revolutionary contribution to the very nature of volleyball - the Cross-Court Rotation Variation. Not even in the Wikipedia article "Volleyball Variations," or the obversely titled Thinkquest article "Variations of Volleyball," have my Googling eyes sighted anything approaching actual citing.
Perhaps a diagram is necessary. Perhaps two diagrams.
Here, from Wikipedia, the traditional method of rotating:
While in the Cross-Court Rotation Variation the Number One-positioned player in team A (herein illustrated as the Red Team) goes to the Number Six position in team B (the Green Team) while simultaneously the Number One-positioned player in team B moves to the Number Six position in team A, all other players moving down-position according to the traditional rotation rule.
Perhaps the merits of the Cross-Court Rotation Variation are too numerous to enumerate. Perhaps the concept is too subtle or simple to catch the attention of the sport-minded many. But the truth remains: simply by letting players change sides as well as positions we can not only satisfy all the purposes of the official rotation rules, but we can also make the game a lot more fun for anyone who wants to play. Anyone.
But wait, a note of hope from my colleague Roger Greenaway:
"You will find a reference to this variation of volleyball which forms part of the history of Turntable (née Revolver) ending with a climactic reference to Junkyard Sports.
"As you will discover, the cross-court variation was invented (or reinvented) in Scotland around 1990 by a group of playful trainers inspired by Terry Orlick's creative interferences with the rules of competitive games.
"I am not trying to compete for ownership of this non-competitive variation, although I do claim to be the creator of Turntable where the 'cross-court' move enables participants to take part on all sides of a discussion."
Thank you, Roger. No, no competition for ownership is implied. Key is that this concept is out there, in use, and extending beyond volleyball, eve. Hope is restored.
"...lessons I have learned from computer games...The first...is echoed by kids who talk about "hard fun" and they don't mean it's fun in spite of being hard. They mean it's fun because it's hard. Listening to this and watching kids work at mastering games confirms what I know from my own experience: learning is essentially hard; it happens best when one is deeply engaged in hard and challenging activities. The game-designer community has understood (to its great profit) that this is not a cause for worry. The fact is that kids prefer things that are hard, as long as they are also interesting."
Writing about an event involving Palestinian and Israeli children that was led by the Ultimate Peace initiative - an organization devoted to teaching kids of different cultures to play the sport of Ultimate Frisbee, Al Jazeera reporter Diana Worman notes:
"A sporting initiative like this will always attract its critics, especially at such a sensitive time in such a sensitive place, but the ultimate aim of this week is to allow kids to be kids, and to integrate, and learn with each other and to have fun."
So there they are in Israel, making this incredible thing happen between Palestinian and Israeli children, where they are bridging a cultural chasm, and at the same time being responsible, together, for keeping the game fair - and the big thing, the main thing is that they are having fun together.
Which reminds me about something I learned during Day 2 and 3 in Denmark, at the Lego Idea Conference and a follow-up meeting of Lego designers. I was there to lead participants in my Junkyard Sports Tabletop Olympiad. And, as you know, the game is jam-packed with "teachable moments" about teamwork and creativity, resourcefulness and innovation. And I learned from the participants that what really mattered, every time I played it, had nothing to do with the copiousity of opportunities to gather meaningful insights, and everything to do with how much sheer, all-embracing fun it allowed them to have together.
Winding my way along a tree-lined, dirt-and-gravel "art walk" that winds its artful way past the Hotel Legoland, across a creek, through trees and, here and there, a remarkable sculpture, I paused by an overflowing trash basket, and caught the following train of thought:
It was the second or third time that I took this particular walk and passed this particular trash. And this time, just as I got near the trash, I was thinking about fun, and the patent absurdity of my stated purpose - namely to "make the world more fun." And this time, I guess because I was thinking about fun and the world, I was reminded of signs I saw in an Jerusalem park that I also walked through - signs that said something like "if you didn't clean it up, you made it dirty."
It was funny, and so was I. Every time I passed that unsightly spill of cigarette boxes and knotted bags of dog poop, it made my walk just a little less fun. And this time, thinking about fun, remembering that sign, I actually stopped myself, picked up the trash, and restored a little bit of the fun of that small part of the world and my walk. It wasn't that I had made it unpleasant. But I certainly had left it unpleasant.
And then I continued my walk. And because I was present enough to take on the responsibility, I was more present all the way back to the hotel. A certain, very definite sense of fun was restored to me, and to the people who wouldn't notice, but would appreciate the art path a little more.
Restoring fun. Being a guy who likes the play of everything, I just gotta love the play of meaning that those words create. The fun is itself restoring. The fun is itself restored, as was my fun, as was my self, as was my world.
Obama's hackle-raising reference to the Special Olympics raised several of my own personal hackles, actually, about the Olympics in general, Special or not-so. I rushed to my computer and Googled for the kind of alternative that I'd like to see taking place, an even more special kind of Olympics, and clicked my way over to the Fun Olympics, and I sighed with something like belief relief, saying to myself, as I often do, that there is hope for the healing power of silliness. That despite all the brouhaha, the haha lives on.
Ya-Ya and granddaughter Esther are playing Chutes and Ladders. There are two problems we older folk have with that particular game: 1) it can get very boring, 2) it can only have one winner. The boring part can be endured. The winner part turns out to be the very opposite of why we want to play in the first place, especially when we're playing between generations.
Ya-ya and Esther are playing so that they can be together. Just having fun. Just doing something, anything, really, they both can enjoy. Ya-ya is probably enjoying being with Esther a lot more than she is enjoying playing Chutes and Ladders. Ya-ya is probably very bored with the game. Esther will probably cry if she doesn't win.
They need a variation.
Some of the best game variations come from playing with rules that aren't written down. Like the rule that says: "this is your piece. You can only move that piece. You really can't move any other piece because those pieces belong to other players. Other players can't move your piece, because that piece belongs to you. And, you can only win if your piece is the one that reaches the finish first."
I call my variation the "Nobody's Piece Variation." It works like this: "you can move any piece. Whatever piece you move is yours, for that turn." It's yours, but it's not you. You could call it Myrtle or Smunchnik or Pawn. You could even call it You. But it's not you. It's just a piece. Nobody's piece. And all that's important at the time is who moves it.
So, when it's your turn, you can move any piece you want. If you want to move the piece that's closest to winning, you can do that. If you want to help the other pieces catch up, you can do that, too. It's up to you.
Then the game belongs to all of you. And the winning belongs to anyone who wants to claim it. You can make the game as long as you all want to play it. If you want, you can play forever. And nobody has to be bored. And nobody has to lose. And the one who really cares about winning can win if she wants. And you all can focus on enjoying each other, which is what you're playing for in the first place.
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About the photo: I found it on a weblog called Tundra Topics. It was in a post about Ya-Ya's visit to her Alaskan family. It's a wonderfully personal website, by the way, giving us a clearly illustrated view of Alaskan living, written by someone who, it just so happens, was born in Indiana, my new home.
It was about a year ago, again from Israel, that I wrote about my experiences playing a game called "Sound and Fury." This time, it was one of the last games we played, near the end of our stay, and one of the precious few we got to play with the whole family: Josh (who turned 2 in October), Zev (4), Reina (7), Maya (11), their parents (40), and us grands (66, 67).
Once again, the game was new for me - specifically the part about how much more deeply fun it was to play it with family - particularly with a relatively large family (relatively speaking), explicity with a family whose youngest member is still learning how to talk (albeit in two languages).
We did make up a new rule: If you wanted to pass (just in case you couldn't think of something silly enough to do - the pressure, you know), you could just say something (we had suggested something like "smeegledeebop," but "pass" worked, too), and then everybody would just do anything they felt like (complete with noise and movement). Oddly fun.
Point is, as a family game Sound and Fury is very oddly fun: easy enough for a 2-year-old to understand, fun enough to keep us all involved (we must've played it for at least 15 minutes, maybe 10), pointless enough to keep anybody from caring about having anything other than what we already had together.
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.
As the last days of this visit approach, I have yet one more experience to share with you, perhaps the one that touched me most deeply - a 9-hour workshop I conducted with Laughter Yoga teachers.
The workshop was attended by only a few people - we had eight altogether. But these were an exceptional few - highly energetic, deeply playful, totally committed to making people laugh. Participants included several other laughter leaders (here's Bat-Shachar's website), game facilitators and trainers, a meditation facilitator, a belly dancer, a magician named Caliostro (who was "the primary magician" performing for the Israeli army in the 80s) , a gym teacher, and Shiri Ben-Dov, who leads games and works with an organization that conducts bachelor parties. Each brought their entire being into play - personally, professionally, spiritually.
It's been a long time since I've shared the concept of Pointless Games that I worked/played with people who understood the idea so deeply, so quickly - not just the games, but the immense value of playing without purpose, without score, without excuse - of playing for fun.
For me, this was the experience of Israel I most needed. For all the insecurity, the fear, the hatred, the violence, the worry, the passion, the crowding, the traffic, the sheer intensity of life here - even in the middle of a war - I found people here who welcomed the comparatively small gifts of funny games. I found Israelis who have affirmed with their very lives the wisdom of things like peace and laughter and the power of play, and who bring these very experiences to everyone they can reach - Jew, Arab, Israeli, Palestinian.
During this long/short stay I often felt, well, foolish, in thinking that I could help bring fun to Israel in a time of war. And here, near the end of my stay, I discover these people. True champions of baseless, purposeless laughter. Fun-bringing Israelis all.
The Limits of Fun - more notes on talking about fun in Israel
So, what have I learned so far about bringing more fun to Israel?
I'm glad you asked.
First of all, it's not such a good time for fun in Israel, as well as in general. Not when people are busy dealing with the Gaza thing. And the money thing. And the job thing.
As for the Gaza thing: if you're Jewish or Palestinian, it was a violence that was done to you, even if the violence was not your doing - a deep, shocking, deafening violence that was so thunderous you can't hear much of anything else - your family, maybe, your neighbors, your friends. You certainly can't hear anything that comes from the "other side." Not love, not grief, not caring, not explanation, not apology, not words of peace. And most definitely not play.
Play is one of those words that can only be spoken in a "still, small voice," that in times like these can be only be heard over the din of war by children and puppies. The rest of us have to wait for quiet, inside and out. Even clowns can't make themselves loud enough. Even people like the Israeli group called "Pharsh-the official military of the silly revolution" (thanks for the link, Pat Kane), or the "laughter therapists" you nevertheless might find doing their work in the bomb sheters in S'deroth; can't be silly enough to change anything - not right now.
But they're doing their work, nevertheless. And so, apparently, am I. Thanks to Alex Sternick, I'll be conducting my first Games and Laughter workshop, specifically for Israeli laughter therapists, giving them a chance to learn a few funny games, so they can give people a few more reasons to laugh. Like I said - nevertheless. Even though there is no reason. Except maybe sanity.
Teaching laughter, fun, games, play - it's a funny kind of work, a funny kind of gift we have to bring. Not anything that you might call a "cause." Not anything that you might think of as revolutionary. And yet, something having very much to do with peace, after all.
Here, from the American Public Media show Speaking of Faith, people who like to play on the flying rings in Santa Monica's muscle beach give a near-word-for-word description of the flow-fun connection.
Watch them, listen to them, as they shed light on delight.
On the other hand, sometimes a thing that you do for fun isn't as much fun as it used to be, and some other times it's more fun than you remember it ever being before.
After several tours around the park near my son's house, discussing why it is that some things seem like more fun than others, we came to the conclusion that it has less to do with the fun of the thing in itself, but more with how much fun we're finding in it at the time.
We could at the time be finding a lot of fun in, for example, just walking together, father and son, in the relative peace and loving relationship in which we are finding each other, on this remarkably warm day in this lovely little park in Jerusalem, while there's no war in Gaza. On the other hand, we were finding at least as much fun talking about fun, in the conversation, in the intimacy of shared thought. It's not that the talk was in itself more fun than the walk. It's just that it was in the talk and in the walk that we were finding the fun.
The fun of the walk, on Csikszentmihalyi's chart, was something closer to what I've been calling minor fun. It's fun. It can be great fun. But talking, conversing, being in dialog, is higher on the flow channel. It can become far more complex, far more demanding, require far more of our minds and hearts. But, again, walking is not necessarily more fun than talking - when they're really fun, walking or talking, they're really fun - one just as really, as deeply, as totally as the other, separately or together. The same being true of mountain climbing and daydreaming, giving or getting a massage.
The thing about the kinds of fun you find in different positions in the flow channel is not that one is more fun than the other, but that each is the kind of fun you can get more or less of yourself and the world into - the kind of fun that can amuse you or challenge you to the very edge of all your vast abilities; the kind of fun that can lead you to regaining, or losing your very life.
Which, when you think about it, is something - depending on how much fun you are having, and what moment of the world you find yourself in - you could also say about talking and walking with your son in a park in Jerusalem.
My son and I were on one of our rare and most delicious walks through Jerusalem, when we got to talking about fun and flow and the connections and differences, not only between fun and flow, but also between the various kinds of fun, the degrees of flow. The more we walked and the further we walked, the clearer we were both able to get, at least about how I see the connections and degrees of it all.
Looking at a relatively simplistic image of flow as described in this article about the implications of flow on the nature of design, or a more recent, and more complex chart from an article about flow in the workplace, it's natural to conclude that among the various forms of flow, there are those which are "higher" and more fun, and those which are "lower," and not so much fun. Like, for example, watching TV, when it's fun, is not really as high or as good or as complete fun as skiing down a mountain, when it is fun.
Fact is, at least as I understand it, fun is fun. Fun is flow. And flow is flow, no matter how high or low it is in the channel. There are the apparently nobler kinds of flow, like those surgeons sometimes experience. And there are the oft-derided baser, more immediately accessible kinds, like those experienced by people who chew or smoke for fun. There are forms of flow that seem more like fun, like riding a roller coaster, and forms of fun that seem less like flow, like collecting stamps. But the whole point is that when chewing gum is fun, it's just as much fun as bungee jumping - when bungee jumping is fun. That's the big contribution of this whole idea of flow. Rock climbing or rock dancing, the joy, when it's joyful, is just as joyous, just as all-embracing, just as time- and mind-transcendent.
And what we were able to conclude in our most fun and flowful walk of ours was this: For me, flow is fun. And fun is fun. My playful path is not at all about having deeper fun, or looking for fun that's more major, or trying to identify the particular flavor of fun that is most profoundly and deliciously flow-like. It's about finding the kinds of fun that are fun for me, whatever they are - the kinds that are most reliably, most deeply, most thoroughly fun - and having them, living them, entirely, whenever I can, for however long they are fun for me. And most often, it appears to me that those kinds of fun tend to be the kinds of fun I can share with you, my son, and you, too, my cherished reader.
A week or so ago, at the benevolent prompting of my son, I added a new advertising section to my blog, called "FUNsponsored Ads." These are ads for things I personally happen to believe in - sponsored, as it were, by my sense of, well, fun. I don't get paid for them. Nobody's counting clicks. But it makes me feel good to know that I've been able to somehow further the good fortune of what seem to me to be "good" things.
The FUNsponsored Ads section currently features three organizations. (You can find them - and soon other sites of similar ilk - by clicking here). Each of these sites demonstrates a different approach to helping people do good. They are all fund-raising efforts. But they are also somehow fun.
One site allows you to give smal loans to people who really need them - loans without interest, personal loans to people who are genuinely trying to improve their lives and their world. People you can believe in. It works, because it's more fun to give to people than it is to give to institutions. It makes it personal, even though, if you choose, you can remain anonymous. And they're just loans. Acts, not so much of generosity as of trust.
Another offers you the opportunity to give other people the opportunity to give charity - a gift of giving, you might say. In a way, it's the ultimate charitable act, giving others the chance to be charitable - for free.
Yet another lets you bring a fun technology - a playground toy - that in turn brings clean water to villages whose very lives depend on it. The toy itself is fun. It's fun to see people having fun. It's fun to know that that the fun you are helping to give people is constructive, meaningful, healing.
Each tells us something about the art of fund raising. Each honors the fun inherent in giving. Each invites fun as much as it invites giving.
Too often, the people who are involved in trying to raise funds get a little too desperate. They send out pleas, they cajole, they beg, they try to make you feel obligated, to make you feel that if you don't give, you're somehow a bad person. But giving is not about being "good." Giving is about fun. It's a kind of fun, I guess you might even say "flavor" of fun, that feels good all by itself. It feels good when you get thanked. It feels better when no one even knows you're the one that gave them that gift of health or sustenance or promise.
For the fund raiser, each of these sites represents an approach that honors the fun of giving. Each seems like fun, looks like fun, feels like fun, and yet each is clearly about charitable acts. They're not about dinners or auctions or raffle tickets. They're about the joy that comes with giving joy.
Now that times are hard, now that giving is even more desparately needed, it's these invitations to fun, these initiatives that are sensitive to what makes giving so much fun, from which we all have the most to learn, the most to gain.
This is not an easy place for me to be, not an easy time. In Jerusalem, at a time of war. Where people like the very people I love, like my very own family, are just as convinced as they are of God, that this war is necessary, justified, just.
Just like in Gaza. Just like in America.
It is an especially hard time and place for me to be talking to people, even the people who love me, who are blood-deep connected to me, about fun. Such a weak, silly thing to believe in, to teach about, compared to the dead seriousness of things like war. Bill Moyers has a very clear and moving essay about all this, about being here, Arab, American, Israeli, Iraqi, so very far beyond fun.
Yet, I'm finding people here who want to know about making things fun again, some of them, even desperately. I'll be meeting with the one of the principals of one of the schools called "Hand in Hand," where Arab parents and Israeli parents, together with Arab teachers and Israeli teachers are not letting the fun stop. I've had meetings with visionaries and entrepreneurs at PresenTense, with business leaders and soon with fund raisers and laughter therapists - Israelis, all of whom somehow believe that it can be, has to be, more fun than this.
It's funny, in a way. Here, at the borders of sanity, just where the fun stops, it leaks through. Here, hidden from the press of fear, from the din and clamor of hate, just like life does from death, the fun also rises.
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.
I was in Chicago O'Hare, waiting for a plane. We wanted desperately to call our daughter and couldn't find a pay phone that worked. Can you imagine. So we asked an iPhone-possessing young man if he could let us use his i- for a quick call. He obliged, and after we had finally contacted our daughter, we introduced ourselves.
Jon Lind, it turned out, is involved with a company called Defeats the Car, which, it turns further out, is a Dutch bicycle company named De Fietsfabriek, which kinda sounds like Defeats something. He just happened to have on his iPhone some rather delightful photos of their rather delightful creations. I was more than rather delighted by this bike, in particular. Jon writes: "The headlights...are battery powered LED lights. We went away from using the generator lights as they typically require more maintenance than we want our customers to have to deal with plus they create drag that can slow you down. Our customers are typically young families who want to have an alternative to driving their kids around town for local trips. Their reasons for desiring such a bicycle may come from concerns for the environment, saving on gasoline or avoiding the stresses of driving everywhere and having fun. We also have a large base of customers who get one of our city commuter models and they again have similar motives for getting things done without the dependence on automobile transportation. In addition to the practical purposes for purchasing one of our bicycles many people love the unique designs and styles plus the opportunity to personalize with either their names in the frame...or the sides of the cargo boxes can be used as blank canvasses with limitless opportunities for artistic expression."
Amazing what a chance meeting and a little kindness can lead one to.
As I was walking down the streets of Jerusalem, I was delighted to be reminded of my veritable path. For suddenly, appearing as if by divine intervention, I saw the word "Fun."
It was where the word appeared that struck me the deepest. Because it reminded me of the existence of the kinds of fun, especially the commercialized kinds, that have only a remote connection to the kind of fun that has occupied my life for the last 40+ years.
They might be able to take you there or bring you away from where the fun isn't, but they themselves are not what I'm talking about when I say fun, even though they may be advertised as such.
Adventures on the the Playful Path - with Gary Berlind, Gambaist
Gary Berlind is a friend of mine. About 25 years ago, he helped me develop PR materials for my Technography initiative (see, for example, this archived page from my Coworking website). I asked him to share some of his story with us, because he clearly understands what I mean by following a Playful Path. Here's his response (click here and let Gary complement his story with a background music - Gary performing a Couranto from Simon Ives):
"Theoretically, I’ve been trying to have fun ever since I can remember. Usually, however, what fun I was able to muster would muster itself somewhere else, and then, feeling that I had been punished by the Universe for the "sin" of pursuing fun, I would try more conservative endeavors. Eventually, whatever tidbits of fun may have been lurking in those reasonably conservative endeavors dissolved mostly into nothingness, the pain became intolerable, and then I usually chucked it all and embarked on fun again.
"My life was therefore, in hindsight, mostly a fun/not-fun checkerboard. Back and forth, back and forth, until I was 61 years old. That’s a lot of checkerboarding. And come to think of it, a checkerboard has only 64 squares on it. It was looking to me like I had already used most of them up.
"So, in the beginning of 2002, when I was just turning sixty-one and a half, I left Berkeley California wherein I had hatched many shards of checkerboards, and moved myself to Istanbul, Turkey.
"In my last black square, (please forgive the continued use of the metaphor, but it seems to fit), I had been a hi-tech public relations consultant in the Silicon Valley. This square had lasted for a full 16 years. Itself, it was checkered: sometimes fun (Bernie DeKoven had been a client of mine in the early days), and sometimes not fun (I won’t name names). But mostly not fun. Coming to Istanbul made practicing public relations impossible, which was what I sorely needed.
"In 2002 I was convinced I didn’t want to sell out to the non-fun face of the world anymore. Maybe only two squares left. What could I do?
"Almost immediately I realized that my music career, which I had left in despair and sadness back in the late 1960s, might be a path. I wasn’t sure, but a few years teaching music at an Istanbul university made me realize that music was fun. Glorious fun. Playing music, I mean. Not so much teaching it to the unteachables, but going back to basics and playing. Making wonderful sounds. Expressing myself, digging deeper into myself to squeeze out ever more music from wood and gut. Burrowing more deeply into the musical minds of fun-thinking composers who had been dead for more than 300 years. Learning to learn. Learning to play. Learning to have fun.
"It’s been seven years now, and I’ve had lots of fun doing this. Purpose, meaning, fulfillment, have all been there, along with considerable amounts of hard work, deep introspection, and not a small amount of frustration and impatience. But ALL OF IT has been fun.
"It’s what I really wanted to do when I was playing on the home-rows of the checkerboard of my life, back in my teens and early twenties. Music was fun then, although I eventually ran into obstacles and limitations that seemed insurmountable at the time. And they WERE insurmountable to me back then, given the realities that imploded on me every time I attempted to keep the fun in music. My own limitations, and the vicissitudes of my circumstances.
"But a new country, a new instrument (actually an old instrument!), a new Gary, and a lifetime of experience that constantly shouted at me to avoid the black squares, worked. I kept my head down and practiced a lot. Learned a lot. For seven wonderful years.
"And now I’m in South Turkey, in a small resort village on the Aegean called Gümüşlük. Turkey is my playground. I’m playing the viola da gamba and it is a constant joy for me. Whether I’m playing for myself, for friends, or for audiences, more and more of my checkers are getting "kinged."
"It took a long time. And, hopefully, the experience is not over yet. I think often that I could have done this many years ago, theoretically. But in reality I couldn’t, and that’s that.
"When the player is ready, the fun will come. Not before."
During a recent conversation with my friend Zalman (see this story to get an idea of what a blessing his friendship has been to me), I asked him how he was feeling - a perfectly reasonable question, considering what getting older does to people. He said something like: "for a man as old as I am, everything's fine." I knew this was not a good report. And so ensued a dialogue about getting old, about the failing body and the increasingly apparent justification for kvetching - Zalman being stolidly anti-kvetch, Bernie, nevertheless, pointing out the actual fun, if not necessity, for a good kvetch.
It can most definitely be fun, don't you know, kvetching: embracing the abject agony of existence - in particular, yours; rejoicing, in your miserable way, at the extent of your daily suffering.
For Zalman, however, it turns out to be a joy best denied. For him, it is better to spend life celebrating life.
Which reminded me, as I apparently needed to be, of why I chose to call myself "Major Fun" in the first place. Sure, I know the joys of kvetching, believe you me, and how much fun a good group kvetch can be. On the other hand, kvetching isn't something you do with a guy called "Major Fun." Laughing. Playing. Being silly. Not wallowing in the muck of misery, not delving into the depths of despair - but jumping as high as you can, for joy.
Times being what they are, I need to be constantly reminded. And if you remind me, maybe I'll remember to remind you.
So yes, call me Major Fun. And when you ask me how I'm doing when I'm not doing well or feeling well or acting well, I'll probably say something like "I can't complain." Because, see, as Major Fun, I can't complain - not as Major Fun, not now, not when there's so much fun to be made.
This wonderful collection of art made from recycled cardboard. It is enough to restore one's faith in things like art and fun and playfulness. It's enough to make one believe that, out of little more than our passion for play, we might actually save the world, yet.
"Sugata Mitra has a PhD in physics and heads research efforts at New Delhi's NIIT, a fast-growing software and education company with sales of more than $200 million... But Mitra's passion is computer-based education, specifically for India's poor. He believes that children, even terribly poor kids with little education, can quickly teach themselves the rudiments of computer literacy. The key, he contends, is for teachers and other adults to give them free rein, so their natural curiosity takes over and they teach themselves. He calls the concept "minimally invasive education."
To test his ideas, Mitra 13 months ago launched something he calls 'the hole in the wall experiment.' He took a PC connected to a high-speed data connection and embedded it in a concrete wall next to NIIT's headquarters in the south end of New Delhi. The wall separates the company's grounds from a garbage-strewn empty lot used by the poor as a public bathroom. Mitra simply left the computer on, connected to the Internet, and allowed any passerby to play with it. He monitored activity on the PC using a remote computer and a video camera mounted in a nearby tree.
What he discovered was that the most avid users of the machine were ghetto kids aged 6 to 12, most of whom have only the most rudimentary education and little knowledge of English. Yet within days, the kids had taught themselves to draw on the computer and to browse the Net. Some of the other things they learned, Mitra says, astonished him.
So we gather further evidence of the play-learning connection. Hopefully, conclusive enough evidence, at last, to help teachers brave the inevitable disapproval that comes from trying things like this, for real. Play and learning, as we so well know, are synergistic forces, and they meet evermore gracefully on today's Internet. We follow no particular texts, take no tests, get no report cards, and yet learn, by ourselves, from each other, simply by playing. Simply because it's fun.
So, if it doesn't seem like a job, maybe it isn't.
Because the whole idea of calling something a "job" is to help you remember that it's not something you do for fun.
That should be your first warning. That should make it obvious that of all the things you need to be having in your fun-loving life, a job is maybe not one. Work maybe probably yes. A job. Maybe definitely not.
The Pipe Cleaner Dancer. Play it long enough and it turns you into a choreographer with good keyboard skills.
Silly little game. But it's fun, too. Fun enough to make you want to learn it - learn which key makes the Pipe Cleaner Man do what, learn how to create moves, so to speak, so it more and more appears like the Pipe Cleaner Man is dancing. Even though it's your fingers doing the dancing. And especially because it's your fingers doing the dancing that it gets more involving, more fun, more instructive. Just as challenging as you want to make it.
And it's simple. Simply understood. Simply made. With a pipe cleaner and a camera and a smattering of programming. And a very good sense of fun.
Here we can actually taste yet another flavor of fun - the taste that comes from transforming the mundane into an expression of what? Art? The Persistence of Spirit? The Power of Whimsy? A Bunch of Different Ways to Tie Your Sneakers?
On the other foot, it's the 4th of July. Independence Day here in the United S's of A. Is there perhaps a fortuitous and unanticipated connection between a day of such vasty significance and an accomplishment of such artful triviality as shoe-tying?
This fun, the shoe-tying kind, has a flavor shared by everything you can think of that celebrates the unnecessary. Celebrating the unnecessary is also a celebration of our ability to free ourselves from necessity. And thinking that we can free ourselves from necessity leads to an almost intoxicating fun, like a fine wine, dry, yet defiant, like the taste you get decorating your house just before it goes into foreclosure.
A rebellious fun, yet unobjectionable. Rebellious, yet safe. Not like the rebelliousness we're celebrating today. Not like the fun of starting a new country, but a fun that tastes very much like that country-starting kind. Minor fun, granted, but sometimes lovely, sometimes essential.
Like the quietly delicious fun of making your signature extra fancy when you sign a Declaration of Independence.
Crafteress Ulla-Maaria Engeström is the author of the Crafter Manifesto, which can be found on her site as well as in the archives of my favorite DIY publication, Make. In her "draft manifesto," she lists 12 cogent observations about the various joys of crafting. The last is "At the bottom, crafting is a form of play."
I know the taste of this crafty fun. It tastes like accomplishment. Accomplishment for no particular reason. Ultimately, despite appearances of utility, accomplishment for its own sake. Not like prize-winning or child-bearing accomplishment. More like something deep fried, if you know what I mean. Often delicious. Ultimately as necessary as pop corn.
By deep study of the Codex of the Lost Ring, we hope to gather insight into the mystery and vasty significance of the The Lost Sport of Olympia. We seek further guidance from Ariadne, who says of herself: "I woke up in a Labyrinth of Feb. 12. They call me Ariadne." Ariadne, should you consult the Wikipedia deeply enough, also refers to: "Ariadne's thread, named for the legend of Ariadne, is the term used to describe the solving of a problem with multiple apparent means of proceeding - such as a physical maze, a logic puzzle, or an ethical dilemma - through an exhaustive application of logic to all available routes." Ah. Ariadne's thread.
The mystery deepens and at the same time widens. What actually is the Lost Sport? Where is Olympia? Who lost it in the first place?
ARG, don't you know, stands for Alternate Reality Game. Ah, so we are not speaking of an actual Lost Sport of Olympia, but something of a fantasy, something perhaps made up?
Perhaps in deed. But, reality-wise, the reality to which the alternate reality is an alternate, what we actually have is a quite fun game, which, as my colleague, covisionary and general friend Celia Pearce is quick to point out, is very much in the spirit of New Games of yore and ours. See, for example, this.
In 1972, in a revised version of the Teacher's Guide to Interplay, my very own and only curriculum in children's games, Dr. Vytas Cernius and I wrote an article describing what can happen when an adult joins in children's play.
I republished it here, because we were saying important things, then, revelations, even, like this:
"It is an amazing discovery, one that has to be continually rediscovered, that the attitude of openness and acceptance, the genuine desire of the adult to be present as an equal player within a group of players, are powerful forces which inevitably result in a positive social movement by all participants."
Robots. Robots made from junk, like these, from Lockwasher.
I was first introduced to the wonders of junk robots by the artist Liz Mamorsky when I was developing the prototype for Thing-a-ma-Bots.
My fascination with the play value of junk in general, and this junk art form, in particular, has just taken one more small step for Berniekind.
Speaking of giant leaps for mankind, I am now imagining a Terracotta Army, you know, like all those statues of soldiers in formation they found in China? - only made of junk art robots. Huh? How's that for something you'd go to a museum to see (and be proud as heck to see) your very own home-made junk robot join the ranks of?
"Sometimes I get religious about the whole thing, sometimes I think of fun and laughter as a spiritual experience. Our lives have become increasingly fragile, our world increasingly harsh. It is a miracle that we can laugh at all. And that's the whole point."
I finally found the source for a particular insight that has been bothering me for quite some time. Apparently, "Dr Fry, a psychiatrist at Stanford Medical School, found that children laugh an average of 300 times per day, while adults only laugh between 15 and 100 times per day (reported in the Townsend Letter for Doctors and Patients August/September 1996 p. 10)."
This particular observation has been echoed almost endlessly by just about everyone who is pushing happiness, humor, laughter and all those positive things we so desperately wish we were feeling.
My observations, though not conflicting with Dr. Fry, are based on at least 10 years of grandparentage, and 40 years of parenthoodness.
Children cry at least as often as they laugh, if not more.
Oddly, as I get older, I find myself crying more easily, and more often. And I kind of like it. I'm not sure if I laugh more often. But I've always been a laugher.
If we are to take any message from Dr. Fry's research and my personal findings, it might be that adults would probably laugh again the way they laughed as children if they let themselves cry more often, as they did when they were children.
The title of the collection of images is Extraordinary Art from Metal - another remarkable collection from the remarkably collectible people at Dark Roasted Blend. Of this particular collection, the Dark Roasted Blenders comment: "Todesfee has collected in this set whimsical sculptures made from not so funny material: scrap military metal, left from the Yom Kippur War (Mount Bental was the site of large-scale tank battles in 1973)."
Thus, we uncover yet another fun flavor, one which I find myself impelled to name "ironic fun." Scrap iron, don't you know, from tanks and stuff of military horror, transformed into a funny, junky sculpture of two cartoon-like figures, trying to shake hands, and yet, because of their very ironically iron-like nature, doomed to fail.
Many, many, many years ago, when I was in high school, in Omaha, actually, I had the amazingly good fortune to participate in an experimental physics class that was experimental in every way possible. The course itself, developed by MIT, was just being tested, and the whole program centered around what seemed to me to be very much like fun (see this article for a teacher's perspective of the program). I probably learned a lot of physics in the process, but for me the biggest learning was that learning itself can be fun (I was in high school, where I went from classroom to classroom, discovering over and over again that fun and learning were supposed to be two very different experiences). In many ways, this whole program was a validation for everything I hoped would be true about education. We played. We made our own instruments out of, basically, junk (a micrometer out of two mirror slides, a toothpick and rubber band). We learned. We learned not just about physics, but our world and ourselves.
This was 50 years ago. Today, thanks to computer technology and a few illuminated science educators, we have physics simulations - virtual playthings that allow us to explore the interdependence of all things physical. For the most part, they are refreshingly fun, immediately accessible, inviting hours of observation and experimentation.
I don't think they can effectively replace experiences like making your own micrometer, but they can ignite the curiosity and playfulness that are native to all scientific enterprise. The best of these physical simulations are the most game-like, igniting wonder, inviting play.
There are many such resources available online. Here's one more example, called "My Physics Lab."
One of these days, educators will learn this lesson. One of these days, the distinctions between play and learning will no longer be so obvious.
Here's a good collection of street games from the UK. There's nothing fancy about the website. The games are submitted by the people who played them.
This is where I found a game called Knock Down Ginger. I personally never thought of it as a game. To me, it much more closely resembles a prank. I quote:
"Knock Down Ginger and it's alternative named variations has been played since there were front doors to play it on. Usually carried out in the hours of darkness, the aim is to ring a doorbell or knock loudly on a door, as though very urgent, and run away as fast as possible.
To make this game even more exciting you can play variations such as after knocking you hide as close to the door as possible, in shrubs or behind a tree, behind the owners gate or just around the corner.
The test comes when you try a second time on the same door, giving the owner a few moments to settle down in front of their TV, the quicker you do this the more exciting it can be."
Variations, yet. Alternate rules, even. As for example, this one, posted by David from Essex: "And the perpetual motion version where you tie two knockers together and knock on the first door, when they close their door the other knocker knocks ad infinitum."
It has all the flow-inducing properties of a good game. For the players, that is. There's a definite sense of challenge/risk. You can apparently make it more or less challenging/risky as you see fit.
This is a good example of a particular flavor of fun that leaves a certain bitter aftertaste - certainly for the victims, but also, despite the hysterical peals of laughter, for the perpetrators as well. Moderately mean fun, perhaps. Slightly irresponsible fun? Lacking-in-compassion fun? Fun that tastes like the joke's-on-somebody-else.
Several years ago, when I was teaching at Esalen, a woman named Magdalena Cabrera came into my life. Last Sunday, Magdalena invited me to help her and a significant passel of her wonderful friends celebrate her birthday. I led a two-hour version of my 5-day program. And, because of her, and her friends, and the park and the finally perfect Palo Alto weather, we created something profoundly playful, lovingly fun.
In one of our discussions, we talked about the politics of fun - namely about how we so often feel that we don't deserve to have fun, that we are doing something wrong, something immoral, given the harsh realities of harsh reality. Magdalena was reminded of something she wrote me in response to a rather profound insight from my rather profound brother-in-law. It captures much of that feeling:
I too feel unable to enter into Fun when so much feels wrong and sad and overwhelming in the world today, everyday. I forget your teaching, so to speak, that Fun IS part of the solution and not just a form of denial, an escape, a narcissistic indulgence at the expense of others who are not as fortunate as I am...Just thoughts, which bring me back to the mindfulness practice that DeepFun is for me. It is the practice of Minor Fun all the time, despite the trying external circumstances on this beautiful and fragile earth I love and despite the woe I see. And as I practice this path, I want to change my paradigm and begin to really believe that having fun, living fun, teaching fun, being fun, can transform this world, that it is part of the solution to the distress. IF not the world at large, it may have the power to transform MY little world, my circle of influence, I hope. And that is a step in the right direction.
We continued that dialogue, Magdalena, myself, and Bruce Williamson, long after everyone had left. Two things we noted: 1) starting anything with fun is probably the best way to prepare for everything else that isn't, and 2) given the world and being a grown-up in it, having fun is inescapably a political act.
O, as they say, MG! I think we might have found the difference between the fun we have as children, and the fun we have as adults:
Kids play because they have to. It's how they learn the world, how they grow, how they cope. Grown-ups play because they choose to. It's how they change the world. It's how they endure.
You know those beautiful crystal-looking balls you see jugglers play with - the kind they roll on the backs of their hands and arms and stuff? Ever wonder where you can get them? Well, wonder no more, or make your own wonders. Try Out Toys not only sells these beautiful acrylic spheres, in many spectacularly different colors (and several sizes, even), and metal spheres, and wooden ones, too; they also promote play, for play's sake.
Here's a bit of what they have to say:
"We believe in promoting the importance of positive play. You could say that our mission is to offer the highest quality toys and entertainment, but really it's way more involved than that. We've developed what we call a philosophy of play.
"There are lots of ways to play, so we'd like to tell you about our approach. Play is an art. The kind of play we promote is interactive, creative, artistic and builds important physical and social skills."
They even organize something they call a "Play 4 All" - a celebration of "skilled play." In addition to their surprising variety of spheres, they also offer a virtual toybox of skill-inviting playworthy stuff.
They perform, they teach, they clearly love the stuff they're doing and the stuff they're selling.
Amazon lists some 270,564 publications that have something to do with Happiness, the preponderance of which are serious, in-depth, carefully researched explorations of what has become the science of Positive Psychology. I've read several many of such books, but it wasn't until I found Eric Weiner's book, The Geography of Bliss that I felt truly happy about the study of happiness - mostly because Weiner is the first "happiness author" I've encountered that actually has fun researching and writing about happiness.
Weiner, a correspondent for NPR in New York, Miami and, currently, Washington, D.C., begins his search for happiness in Holland, where he meets with Ruut Veenhoven, the intrepid researcher and compiler of the World Database of Happiness. Veenhoven's database identifies the relative happiness of citizens of different nations. Weiner visits some of those nations (Switzerland, Bhutan, Qatar, Iceland, Moldova, Thialand, Great Britain, India and even the United States), hoping to discover how happiness manifests itself in each.
The result is spiritual travelogue, a funny, personal, and revealing exploration of the "states of happiness," so to speak, as it were.
I don't want to tell you where he found the greatest happiness, personally or politically, because that discovery is the heart of the book, and that's where you will probably reach the most provocative and profound conclusions about the state of your own happiness.
The Geography of Bliss is a study of the politics of joy. Revealing, honest, entertaining, fun to read, fun to think about. A profoundly rewarding travel book that is probably the happiest book on happiness you've ever read.
"I love Flickr. The content is amazing and some of the photographers have ability that is other worldly. I was looking for some interesting pictures and I typed in “holding the sun” and below is a sampling of some of the great pictures that came up (sources for the photos are at the end of the posts). Enjoy!"
After you've looked at all the pictures and sent the link to everyone you think might not have seen it already, consider the following:
This is an example of yet another significantly unique taste of fun. Unique and complex, made out of at least two different fun tastes: the taste of fun you have trolling through something like Flickr and thinking up things to look for, like, for example, all the images that have anything to do with "holding the sun" - and then discovering such an amazing collection of images; combined with the taste of fun people had when they took those photos - when they created illusions together. Illusions that could hold the sun.
Seeing as how it combines accident, illusion and technology - how about: "magical fun?"
She explains how she remembered the hours she spent with Waldo books, searching endlessly for his image, and made the connection between her childhood pastime and the delight she takes looking through Google Earth.
It is a brilliant connection. Coles creates a remarkably effective translation of a familiar, well-loved, print-based activity into the endlessly complex realities of the virtual world, adding a new layer of fun to our global vision.
In his article Islamism and the Politics of Fun, Asef Bayat writes: "Drawing mainly on the experience of Muslim states, notably postrevolution Iran, I explore why Islamists are so distinctly apprehensive of the expression of 'fun' — a preoccupation most people in the world seem to take for granted....Fun may be expressed by individuals or collectives, in private or public, and take traditional or commoditized forms. Fashion, for instance, represents a collective, commoditized, and systematic expression of fun, yet one that is constantly in flux because it deems to respond to the carefree and shifting spirit of fun. Fun appeals to almost all social groups (the rich and poor, old and young, modern and traditional, men and women), yet youths are the prime practitioners of fun and the main target of anti-fun politics, because youth habitus is characterized by a greater tendency for experimentation, adventurism, idealism, drive for autonomy, mobility, and change. Perhaps that is why fun is often conflated with and identified by 'youth culture.' ...But the differential habitus of these social groups tends to orient them more or less to different fun practices and therefore subject them to different degrees of prohibitions and regulations that can be subsumed under the rhetoric of 'anti-fun.' For instance, whereas the elderly poor can afford simple, traditional, and contained diversions, the globalized and affluent youth tend to embrace more spontaneous, erotically charged, and commodified pleasures. This might help explain why globalizing youngsters more than others cause fear and fury among Islamist anti-fun adversaries, especially when much of what these youths practice is informed by Western technologies of fun and is framed in terms of 'Western cultural import.'"
Perhaps Anti-Fun should be considered yet one more flavor of fun. Similar to the taste of paying taxes or experiencing one's own mortality. A tad bitter, don't you think?
"As I approach my 35th birthday, I wonder if I'm having too much fun....Granted, what I call 'fun' is not what most people do. Here I use the term in a broad and intentionally self-deprecating way, to refer to anything my heart deeply wants, from meditation retreats to writing a novel...I think that, when push comes to shove, I have made these choices because I deeply wanted to make them. Sure, these deep yearnings are different from simply wanting to get some kicks. But they are still about 'fun,' I think: about the juiciness of life itself, about experience, about enjoying life, in the deepest sense.
"...Why are we supposed to grow up and stop having fun, anyway? First, at least for me, there is what Anthony Kronman called the 'firestorm of regret.' I am now at the age where peers of mine are not just rich tax attorneys, but also influential politicians, respected professors, and writers and editors at publications (even) more well-known than Zeek...These pangs of regret occur because of an underlying anti-fun value: that one should make something of oneself. This is a particular, Western value that is not shared by all civilizations. Probably the most obvious counterexample is the Rastafarian (or pop-Rasta) value of spending an entire life delighting in the pleasures of Jah -- working, to be sure, to better social justice, but never losing sight of the gifts of creation, which are here to be enjoyed.
"A third reason to stop having fun, along with regret and the value of achievement, has to do with dignity and maturity. It's just undignified, isn't it, to be the balding guy on the dance floor.
"A fourth reason to stop having so much fun is, of course, that life isn't always fun. Pleasure, even in its deepest form, is only one of the important aspects of life. In a long-term relationship, for example, pleasure waxes and wanes, but if the pursuit of immediate sensual pleasure (affairs -- fun!) is placed above commitment (less fun), the end result will likely be sorrow. Or in terms of health: the burger is fun, but heart surgery is not....
"Fifth, if life is only pursued for the delights of the self -- even highly refined delights like reading post-structuralist theory or creating art -- it becomes a dead end. It's too easy to keep searching for the next thrill; this is how people become addicted to drugs, like an acquaintance of mine who died, at age 38, because of his years-long crystal meth addiction. At first it's fun; then it's less fun; then you need to do it to have any fun at all. So, too, with spirituality. The first meditation retreat is such a high! You think you'll never come back down. But then you do, and you start searching for the next high: samadhi becomes a narcotic.
"Finally, I think we're meant to stop having fun, at some point, because of a sense of deeper responsibilities, most importantly to family and community. Of course, since I've defined 'fun' to include anything that provides a sense of joy in life, family is fun too. But I think it's distinguishable, in that the intention of the family man or woman may be less 'I am doing this to taste the joys and sorrows of life' than 'I am doing this because it is my role, or my duty, or my responsibility.' Likewise for career; it may be fun, but it's mainly responsibility."
Of course, Michaelson's six reasons not to have fun: "...regret, achievement, maturity, truthfulness to life, avoiding the dead-end, and taking responsibility" are, at the same time, of course, six very good courses to take, actually, to bring more fun into your life: try letting go of regret, the need to achieve, the illusion of maturity, the belief that you could be anything other than true to life, try letting go of dead ends, taste responsible fun.
Once I learned to see the connections between theater and children's games, I began to understand the wisdom contained in their playful dramas.
Once I started sharing this wisdom with adults, it became the thing I liked to do best - more, even, than designing games or reviewing games or writing about games and fun and stuff. I first discovered this when I was leading a workshop for teachers at the Durham Child Development Center in Philadelphia, and rediscovered my joy in ths at the Games Preserve and at the Esalen Institute.
I play with grown-ups, especially playful grown-ups. We play a kids' game together. I talk a little about the theater of the game - the play and interplay of roles. And then everyone talks about the "drama" of the game, as if the game were really some kind of theater piece - especially about the drama they experienced, personally. Not so much about their own, personal drama, but about about the drama of the game itself, about relationships, about the way of things in gameland.
I like what happens as we play and talk, play and talk - some kind of healing, playful, loving wisdom starts manifesting itself. Because we are grown-ups playing these games. Because of the growing honesty and openness and depth of sharing we are capable of, just the act of playing each game reveals to us a depth, a drama more profound, more personal, a truth more mutual, more freeing.
"I have learned to see children's games as scripts," I write, "for a kind of children's cultural theater. I see them as collective dreams in which certain themes are being toyed with - investigated and manipulated for the sake of sheer catharsis or some future reintegration into a world view. They are reconstructions of relationships - simulations - (myths) - which are guided by individual players, instituted by the groups in which they are played or abstracted by the traditions of generations of children."
I like to do this best. Teach people to see this. The artistry, the clarity, the wisdom of games.
And frankly, I'm hoping that by telling you about it, I'll get to do this more.
Clive Thompson, a contributing writer for The New York Times, writes:
...By the looks of it, we're entering a new golden age of social, face-to-face game playing. Consider that in the last year, the biggest breakout hits have been music games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band, and the Wii's sporty and casual titles.
Each of these games explicitly encourages social playing -- people hanging out together. (Here's a revealing cultural moment: I was walking down the street in the East Village last month and overheard two female college students complaining vociferously that they hadn't been invited to their friend's Rock Band session.)
Perhaps we're simply going back to the roots of gaming. Though you wouldn't know it from the perennial hysteria about games turning kids into walleyed, anti-social zombies, videogames were originally a social pursuit, because the best games were available only in arcades, and those places were as convivial as Irish pubs. You'd watch one another play, you'd share techniques, you'd talk trash, gossip.
In the late '80s, the rise of home consoles broke up that sociality, making gaming a more solitary pursuit -- something you pursued alone in a basement or a bedroom. But 10 years later, the rise of multiplayer gaming brought the public vibe back to games. That was particularly true of world-games like World of Warcraft, where players log in often for the sole purpose of chatting.
So maybe it's no surprise that we're coming full circle. We don't want to play alone. We want play dates.
Playing alone is fun. There are puzzles and solitaire and running around trees and stuff. Playing together is funner.
In an article in the New York Times, Alexander McCall Smith describes what can only be called The Really Terrible Orchestra. He begins: "WHY should real musicians — the ones who can actually play their instruments — have all the fun?" A profound question that set this particular funsmith's heart conceptually aflutter. He continues: "Some years ago, a group of frustrated people in Scotland decided that the pleasure of playing in an orchestra should not be limited to those who are good enough to do so, but should be available to the rankest of amateurs. So we founded the Really Terrible Orchestra, an inclusive orchestra for those who really want to play, but who cannot do so very well. Or cannot do so at all, in some cases."
Similar in spirit to Adam Sandler's Opera Man, The Really Terrible Orchestra completely avoids the question of "good music" by providing its audiences with very human performers who are having a great deal of fun making music that isn't really that terrible.
Smith concludes: "There is now no stopping us. We have become no better, but we plow on regardless. This is music as therapy, and many of us feel the better for trying. We remain really terrible, but what fun it is. It does not matter, in our view, that we sound irretrievably out of tune. It does not matter that on more than one occasion members of the orchestra have actually been discovered to be playing different pieces of music, by different composers, at the same time. I, for one, am not ashamed of those difficulties with C-sharp. We persist. After all, we are the Really Terrible Orchestra, and we shall go on and on. Amateurs arise — make a noise."
Cacophonic fun. But of course. Related, but not to be confused with, Musical fun.
I, myself, am somewhat of a virtuoso on the Cacophone...since I was in elementary school band, and discovered that if I played quietly enough, I could pretty much play anything.
I have been in touch with the people who've been organizing, running and developing "the Fun Fed" since before they opened their doors in 2005. According to their new website, "The Fun Fed was created with the aim of offering opportunities to adults on the lookout for more joy, upliftment and laughter. We do this by running games, singing, dancing and clowning sessions up to four times a month."
This is a good and much needed thing, this Fun Fed. To catch a bit of the goodness, click your way to their collection of games. See, for example, Stick Swap - a game of exemplary silliness, and purposefulness. I better let them explain:
"Our sessions offer physical activity, laughter, joy, creative opportunities, stress relief, a space to meet new people and the chance to let your hair down and your selves go.
"Most importantly, they offer you a natural high and a feel-good factor without the morning after!
"A question people ask us all the time is 'What kind of people come to your sessions?' – which is so hard to answer. The sessions are aimed at anyone and everyone who would like to be play games and have fun. They are not 'therapy' although of course having fun always makes you feel better, think clearer and smile more. In terms of the demographics, about half of any session is likely to be 28-38 with the other half spread throughout the other ages groups. And people come from all walk of life. The other week we had a session with 20 people, here’s what they did: Student, Coach, Managing Director, Massage Therapist, Recreation consultant, Marketing, Media Buyer, IT Consultant, Fundraiser, Photographer and Unemployed – and we had a fantastic time."
It is something of a testimony to something to discover I have friends like these, who think of me so lovingly as to send me something like this:
Bernie,
Thought of you as I just finished reading Alan Alda's memoir, Never Have Your Dog Stuffed And Other Things I've Learned. (Highly recommended for anyone with a theater background!) The back story on this quote is that in October of 2003, he was in Chile working on an episode of Scientific American Frontiers. Filming at a remote mountaintop observatory he came within probably an hour or two of dying from an obstructed bowel but through a wonderful series of events involving both grace and luck was successfully operated on and is still thriving.
[page 218] Chapter 21. Golden Time.
"On a movie set, after the crew has worked twelve straight hours, they go into overtime pay in which every hour is worth two. It's called golden time. After Chile, I was on golden time. It was clear to me that everything I did was something I couldn't have done if I'd checked out in La Serena. Now, at last, there was no pressure to succeed. There was nothing I needed to prove to anyone. There was only the chance to have another day and to have some kind of fun with it; trivial fun or deep fun, they were both good. I still wanted to get better at what I knew how to do, but that was just another kind of fun."
"There was only the chance to have another day," says Alan Alda, "and to have some kind of fun with it; trivial fun or deep fun, they were both good. I still wanted to get better at what I knew how to do, but that was just another kind of fun."
What a wonderful connection. What wisdom. What a good friend Bruce is to have remembered me with this. What fun. What a fun way to embrace all 54 flavors of fun.
Improvisational Fun - The Imaginary Text Adventure
Here is what one might call a relatively perfect example of a central, oft-overlooked, and yet genuinely delicious flavor of fun: Improvisational Fun. Follow this imaginary text adventure as improvised by "Double Fine's Tim Schafer, designer of Full Throttle, Grim Fandango, Psychonauts and upcoming god of gwar epic, Brütal Legend. Prior to the release of those games, he worked on The Secret of Monkey Island, Monkey Island 2 and Maniac Mansion: Day of the Tentacle, as described in the Joystick article Return to Quest Quiz - Tim Schafer."
You peer into the glowing red eyes of the mechanical bear, curious about the purpose such a dangerous contraption could possibly serve. You briefly wonder if there are any robot trout nearby.
>W
You see a rusted mailbox marked "T. Girtlebee." Behind it lies a quaint cottage surrounded by (seemingly non-hostile) garden gnomes. Several puffs of smoke escape the home's crooked chimney. You smell bacon.
>open mail box
The mailbox contains ... mail. You don't know why you were expecting anything different.
>examine mail
"You may already have won* ONE MILLION DOLLARS!"
*an opportunity to be eligible to win a chance at winning the possibility of winning.
>examine sealed manila envelope
You open the envelope and reach deep inside. Like, really deep. It seems the interior of the envelope, err, envelops a magical and infinite amount of space. You could pull anything out of this thing, you reckon.
Try playing it on your next car trip, or with the person behind you in line, or online.
Probably one of my favorite flavors of fun is the taste of what happens when we get funny together. It tastes just like laughter. Spicy. Embracing the full geography of your bio-conceptual landscape.
I quote myself. You can, too:
"Sometimes, we are funny together. All of us. At more or less the same time. Singing a silly song, maybe, playing a funny game. Walking a funny walk, talking in funny voices, in foreign accents, in slow motion.
For me, being funny together with my wife, my kids, my grandkids, is almost always the funniest, the deepest, the most deeply funny.
We’re not being silly. No way. We’re being funny together. Magically funny. Even when we are doing silly things, it’s not at all about being silly, it’s all about the funniness that we’re creating together. The magic of it. All about the laughter we are sharing.
I think those times when we are funny together, those amateurish, funny together times, we are funnier than comedians and clowns. Funny beyond clever. So funny, we are taken by surprise by how funny.
That’s funniest fun, it seems to me, the fun of being funny together."
This is not an image of the Moon, Fish, Ocean game, but rather of a variant of the aforementioned - Pearl, Lotus, Bowl. I'll explain in a moment.
Developed by Craig Conley, the same Craig Conley, author of, amongst other significant scholarly works, the Magical Dictionary, about whom I've waxed so enthusiastically; Moon, Fish, Ocean is actually Rock, Scissors, Paper, only with different gestures. It's also, as described above, as Pearl, Lotus, Bowl, as well as Bridge, Stream, Boulder, and equally Candle, Incense, Fan, and even more equally Brush, Circle, Paper.
But is it, you might ask, actually, as Conley implies, a Zen game, as played by Zen masters to help acolytes to Zennish wisdom? Claims Conley, perhaps tongue-in-cheekily:
"Zen disciples play Moon * Fish * Ocean as a form of mindful meditation, or to determine who will chop wood and who will carry water. Disciples typically sit in either the full or half lotus position, upon round cushions atop square mats.
Zen Masters use the game as a test of a disciple’s reflexes and non-attachment to outcomes. The Master holds a pebble in his palm. The pebble remains hidden when the Master plays 'Moon' or 'Fish.' It is revealed only when the Master plays 'Ocean.' If the disciple can snatch the pebble quickly enough, he automatically wins the round."
It is, upon further retrospection, probably not an authentic Zen activity. But, on the other hand, as it were, what is authenticity other than illusion?
Point is, it's almost worth believing, and it's definitely worth playing. Learning the different hand motions is a good enough challenge to add interest to introspection. Appreciating the art, and the humor of it all, is a path to enlightenment, at least.
Craig comments: "First, I must confirm that you were correct that my tone is tongue-in-cheek. It is a whimsy that Rock Paper Scissors is a Zen game, and I set out to 'prove' my imaginative quirk with 'evidence' from Zen poetry. (This rather exhaustive research is more evident in the book version of the game than on the website.) HOWEVER, a distant relative of mine wrote that he has a friend in Taipei who confirms the legitimacy of 'Moon Fish Ocean,' though a better translation would seem to be 'Moon, Water, Fishes.' His friend also confirmed that the game is of Japanese origin and is studied mainly among Buddhist priests. His friend assumed that I am a Zen teacher or scholar. This is all beautiful confirmation that 'You can't make it up.' I suppose it's a lesson that if humor goes too far toward the deadpan end of the scale, it becomes cast iron! Perhaps it's also evidence that sincere playfulness, freed from ulterior motives, can lead one directly to the honest truth."
Should you still require further instructions from the cosmos, take a spin on Craig's Follow Your Bliss Compass.
"In the Navajo tradition we have what we call Chi Dlo Dil, or a Laughing Party, for a newborn.
"The Laughing Party is the first laugh you hear from a child. It's usually around six weeks. It's the baby's first expression to the world, saying 'I'm ready to interact.'
"Before that, the baby is still in the soft world and you aren't supposed to put anything hard and fixed on the body, or they may take on those qualities. But after the laughing party, you can give the baby jewelry or bracelets or other decorations.
"At the party everybody sits around the baby and has a big meal and plays with the baby. The person who makes the baby laugh first plays an important role in the child's life." - Nancy Evans, Shiprock, NM (Navajo Nation)
Here's a moment of inspiration as seen on a Backyard TV. I quote:
"Daniel took the TV outside and smashed it in. Then we all got out the paints and started making the TV beautiful. What a great family project. I don't think I need to explain why we did it. Most of you already know how we feel about media and advertising. I believe we waste way too much time with it on. It's so tempting to plop down in front of it when you are tired from life. But why are we so tired? Why don't we have the energy to do the things we really want to do? Maybe if we weren't staying up late watching the tv we wouldn't be tired the next day:)"
The Sound and Fury at the Educational Centre for Games in Israel
I learned about The Sound and the Fury more than 30 years ago, when I first joined the New Games Foundation. Since then, I've been teaching it almost every chance I get. I have my reasons, in deed I do. It's a great way to get people involved, engaged, open, willing to play, exploring their own capacities for public silliness, and a perfect introduction to the idea of Coliberation.
I had the chance to teach the game again with some rather remarkable people in a rather remarkable place. The remarkable thing about these people was that they came from all over Israel because they value play and games and toys as tools for restoring health. The remarkable place was called "The Educational Centre for Games in Israel." And the remarkable woman who invited me to speak was its director, Helena Kling.
"Helena is by profession a psychologist specializing on Children’s Play in Hospita, and has for many years been working on projects about play. At present running the Educational Centre for Games in Israel, a non-profit association which she describes as follows:'We have a small building full of stuff, a veritable 'heritage centre' of play; there is 'hands on play' available; a work room where people can make games and toys; an exhibition room with miniature rooms and two model railways; a library that has become a centre of information on play; a large collection of Israeli board games and collection of collections and dolls and so much more that if I go on writing about it I am afraid of disbelief!'"
Such wonderful energy. Such a deep commitment to play. Such an honor. Such a fun person to play with.
"We know you've covered our previous work on your website so we thought we'd send you some info about our new publication and, if you're in London at the time, we'd like to invite you to the launch of 'A Mis-Guide To Anywhere', a playful handbook for exploring cities. The book will be launched at the ICA, The Mall, London, on the 8th April, 6pm till 8pm, following an afternoon of walks, each based on a page from 'A Mis-guide To Anywhere' and each 'led' by one of us.
"Numbers for the launch are strictly limited so let us know if you want to come so we can put you on the guest list.
"If you would like to come on one of the mis-guided walks in the afternoon then let us know or contact the ICA direct (places are limited). The walks will each last about 90 minutes and will set off from the ICA: 12.30pm 'The problem of shopping' (Cathy), 12.45pm 'Out of place' (Stephen), 1pm 'Scales' (Simon), 1.15pm 'Masses' (Phil).
"Walking?" I respond, querulously. Phil elucidates:
We have been three years in making the new book, including walks in Shanghai, rural Zambia, Copenhagen, Barcelona, Manchester, Paris, the island of Herm… 'A Mis-Guide To Anywhere' is our new guide to seeking out places of change in the city, the Anywhere that anyone can find. When we published 'An Exeter Mis-Guide' three years ago we were very surprised that it attracted an international readership - it's now taught in numerous theatre, fine art and geography departments in universities around the world. The fact that a guidebook designed for use in a small provincial English city could be used in cities like Bangalore, Melbourne and Washington, inspired the making of 'A Mis-Guide To Anywhere'.
"If you can't join us in London we will be having a local launch in Exeter as part of the Exeter tEXt Festival on Saturday May 13th, 12.30pm at the Phoenix.
"This is a quick stitched together note to let you have some information about various walk-orientated performances, events and objects.
"First of all the show I have written based on my Easter 2007 walk following the route of acorn-planting Charles Hurst a hundred years before will be performed by New Perspectives from mid-February and the tour schedule is here.
Dee Heddon's new book on 'Autobiography and Performance' is now out from Palgrave and has a section on Place and Self which includes material on 'the art of walking' including Crab Walks.
John Davies has published an instant book on his walk alongside and around the M62 at the end of last year called 'Walking The M62' and you can get that as a hard copy or a download.
Alyson Hallett, who has an ongoing project – the migration habits of stones – in which she carries stones around the world – has a new volume of mostly landscape poetry out ‘The Stone Library’ – I loved it and recommend it. You can get it here, or at all good libraries.
walkwalkwalk, based in London, are building up a network around 'walking as art' and are holding regular meetings.
See also some of the lectures and workshops offered by Propeller including lectures on 'Rain' and 'The Look of Things' and a workshop on 'Performing Landscapes.'
Finally, MPA are holding a four day 'Territories Re-Imagined' festival of psychogeography in Manchester in June, details .
Checking out walkwalkwalk, I learn:
"Walk walk walk: an archaeology of the familiar and the forgotten is a participatory live art event, with a walk at its core. The project begins with an exploration of urban routine. Starting from the routes we take to and from work and home, part time jobs and friends houses, we established a methodology for the systematic exploration of the areas in and around Bethnal Green, Spitalfields and Whitechapel. Stepping outside, or aside from the absorption of the day to day in order to examine the places that we pass through and the narrative of pathways afresh.
"Drawing on precedents and ideas ranging from the never performed Dada walks in the 'terrains vagues' of 1920s Paris, to Iain Sinclair’s investigation of Rodinsky’s London walks in the late 1990s, we began to re-explore our walks through and across the east end. Creating a new routine: meeting at the same time and place each week to walk and work we have exhaustively researched this locale. Walking individually, then walking one anothers’ routes has shown us each new spaces, sights and places that alone we might never have encountered.
"Collecting and collating artefacts and anecdotes from our research walks has been the starting point for the ‘archaeology’ of the subtitle. Objects, images and descriptions from the route speak of the real physicality of the city fringe – the places where it extends out into the edge and vice-versa. The walk we have created will take you to the cut off spaces trapped between railway and road, down alleyways that block the less-than-determined from pursuing a route through, past ‘fine art’ graffiti, a Hawksmoor church, numerous taxi garages and abandoned pubs in a continuously evolving cityscape."
I mean, who knew? Walking as art? I mean like a Dada kind of thing even?
826NYC "is a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping students, ages 6-18, develop their writing skills. We offer evening and weekend workshops and afterschool tutoring, and with the help of our talented team of volunteers, we're able to host class trips and offer teachers in-class support. We specialize in writing-based projects, including college essays, student publications, creative-writing assignments, and expository papers."
This aforementioned organization is organizing the world's first Scrabble for Cheaters Tournament.
I prefer thinking of it as "Creative Scrabble." Because, as you can see from the list of "official cheats," you really aren't cheating, as long as you pay for it.
Here's what you can buy:
1. Trade out a letter—$25 2. Wheel of Fortune: buy a vowel—$50 3. Flip a letter over and make it blank—$100 4. Add 10 to any letter’s value—$150 5. Add Q, Z, or X to any word, anywhere—$200 6. Passport: play a word in any language—$250 7. Consult the dictionary for one turn—$300 8. Consult the Scrabble word list for one turn—$400 9. Reject another team’s word—$450 10. Invent a word (must have a definition)—$500
So, OK, OK? It's a fund-raising thing as much as it is a fun-raising idea. But it's an innovative kind of fun, significantly innovative. Buying cheats. Some cheats, apparently more significantly game-affecting kinds of cheats, cost more. Use each once, and once only, but whenever you want. And though there's no reflection in the final score, one must wonder what happens to the player who wins the game without using any of her cheats? Is that cheating?
Here are some more details:
"Sign up on this website between now and January 19. Each team member pays a $50 entry fee. As soon as a team has signed up, anyone and everyone can come to this website and pledge their support for the team(s) of their choice. By donating money to the teams, the pledger buys the team certain cheats. It is therefore advantageous for team members to raise as much money as possible. During the tournament, teams will use their cheats against opposing teams."
Takes cheating to a whole new level, is what it does.
"I need to lighten up," Wade muses, "and remember that whatever happens will be tiny from the perspective of the universe. Regardless of the amount of suffering in the world, the beauty of the universe heals."
I go on to quote Wade quoting: "The Lifelong Activist by Hillary Rettig," says Wade, "-- a manual for self-actualization, community building, and political activism -- helped crystallize this awareness for me (Many thanks to Eva Paterson for recommending it!). To help me in my effort to be less serious and for your information, I take note of the following quotes from Rettig's book:
'Strive to step freely and lightly around your activism, to plunge into it and back out of it at will, and enjoy taking risks around it, knowing that some of those risks will inevitably lead to failure. Yes, there will be stress--an activist career is perhaps the most stressful around--but it is essential that you not only learn to handle that stress gracefully, but recognize that, at any given moment, you are making a choice as to how stressed you feel.'"
My point being, you, too, could be choosing, right now, to have fun, even.
Jonathan Fields has some valuable insights to share with us on "How to Make Exercise More Fun Than Sex." Well, all right, not necessarily more fun than sex, but, on the other hand, you have to admit that, exercise-wise, aerobically-speaking, if you had to choose between making love for 20 minutes or jumping on a treadmill...
He writes:
"If you want to love exercise again, you need to break out of your exercise box. Shift your mindset away from the futility of the pure 'physical efficiency' model of exercise and back to the mind-engaging ambrosia of play.
Indeed, the demand for 'play' or 'activity-based' exercise has begun to fuel a recent explosion in alternative forms of movement among adults that actually engage the mind, cultivate passion and inspire joy—activities like martial arts, power yoga, dancing, team sports, boxing, badminton and rock climbing.
This renewed mindset is also inspiring a return of many distraction-based exercises, like the treadmill and stationary bike, back to their mind-engaging roots. More people are walking, cycling and running outside and on trails where the mind becomes much more involved, challenged and focused on the activity and the ever-evolving environment."
Once again, see, it's about fun. It's all about fun.
There are far too many games for young kids in which someone has to lose so someone else gets to win. Sure, it's a basic truth of life and all, but many young children really have difficulty with losing. And playing a zero-sum game isn't a very good way to help them learn how to cope with losing and/or winning.
"It appears that spending time relaxing is the secret to a happy life. Cost-free pleasures are the ones that make the difference — even when you can afford anything that you want."
This common sense, obvious, and, (given the commercial pressures of our modern economy) remarkably difficult to believe observation comes to us courtesy of genuinely scientific research from the fortunate few at the University of Nottingham.
"The research [by Dr Richard Tunney of the University’s School of Psychology] found that happy people — whether lottery jackpot winners or not — liked long baths, going swimming, playing games and enjoying their hobby. Those who described themselves as less happy didn’t choose the cost-free indulgences. They rewarded themselves with CDs, cheap DVDs and inexpensive meals out instead."
Which reminds me how my father, the Rabbi, would spend his Sabbath afternoons, lying in the tub, balancing a chess set on his tummy, afloat in the well-earned wonders of Shabbos peace.
In a New York Times article titled "The Dance of Evolution, or How Art Got Its Start"(login required), we read about the theories of "Ellen Dissanayake, an independent scholar affiliated with the University of Washington, Seattle," who "suggests that many of the basic phonemes of art, the stylistic conventions and tonal patterns, the mental clay, staples and pauses with which even the loftiest creative works are constructed, can be traced back to the most primal of collusions — the intimate interplay between mother and child."
"The tightly choreographed rituals that bond mother and child," comments the author of the article, Natalie Angier, "look a lot like the techniques and constructs at the heart of much of our art."
Dissanayake explains: "These operations of ritualization, these affiliative signals between mother and infant, are aesthetic operations, too... And aesthetic operations are what artists do. Knowingly or not, when you are choreographing a dance or composing a piece of music, you are formalizing, exaggerating, repeating, manipulating expectation and dynamically varying your theme."
Yup, comments the author of this blog post, and yup again. Art, shmart. It's all about fun - fun of the loving kind.
"Cruel 2 B Kind," they say,"is a game of benevolent assassination."
"At the beginning of the game, you are assigned three secret weapons. To onlookers, they will seem like random acts of kindness. But to other players, the seemingly benevolent gestures are deadly maneuvers that will bring them to their knees.
"Some players will be slain by a serenade. Others will be killed by a compliment. You and your partner might be taken down by an innocent group cheer.
"You will be given no information about your targets. No names, no photos, nothing but the guarantee that they will remain within the outdoor game boundaries during the designated playing time. Anyone you encounter could be your target. The only way to find out is to attack them with your secret weapon.
"Watch out: The hunter is also the hunted. Other players have been assigned the same secret weapons, and they're coming to get you. Anything out of the ordinary you do to assassinate YOUR targets may reveal your own secret identity to the other players who want you dead.
"As targets are successfully assassinated, the dead players join forces with their killers to continue stalking the surviving players. The teams grow bigger and bigger until two final mobs of benevolent assassins descend upon each other for a spectacular, climactic kill."
Ah, yes, death, and then transfiguration. Hence, fun.
The Hema department store has created what might arguably be the most playfully frame-breaking vision of an online catalog absolutely ever, so far. Click, watch, and, in a most Rubenesquely Goldebergish manner, be amused.
A few months ago, I wrote about some wonderful puzzles from Think Fun. I received the following comment from Bogusia Gierus. She wrote:
"I happened upon your blog recently, and had fun reading it and enjoyed doing some of the puzzles you suggested. I wanted to introduce you to a puzzle I have developed. It's called: Hexa-Trex. It's a math puzzle, but doesn't require extreme knowledge of mathematics to have fun with it - only basic arithmetic is essential. The object of the puzzle is to find an pathway through all the hexagonal tiles that creates a valid math equation. It's a simple concept, but is challenging and fun for the 'puzzle' type of person. If you wish, check out the puzzles on my website, I try to post a new puzzle each day."
A few months later, she sent me a copy of her new book of Hexa-Trex puzzles. And it seemed pretty clear to me that it was time to let you know about this - about a teacher who has such a love for kids and learning and, most significantly, such a deep appreciation for the fun, the inherent fun that learning is all about. And about these gifts: the free, online treasury of Hexa-Trex puzzles, and this most puzzling, innovative little book of good, hard, fun - with numbers, even.
If you lived here, you'd be home by now - rendered in White-o-Glyphics
If you lived here you'd be home by now. At least, if you could read the White-o-Glyphics, which, as you look more closely, seems like you, as a matter of fact, can read White-o-Glyphics.
"MY IDEA," says author and originator Matthew White:
"If we took all the common graphic symbols floating around nowadays, would we have enough to make a viable hieroglyphic language? Would it be possible to translate Finnegan's Wake or Moby Dick entirely into dingbats, whim-whams and clip art?
"We'll go at it in two steps. First, let's harvest all the signs, symbols, icons, etc. in common use. For example, as I write this, I see dozens of standardized symbols at the top of this screen indicating copy, cut, paste, save, undo, print, etc. On the way to work this morning, I noticed 10 distinct graphic symbols on the elevator control panel -- up, down, open, close, stop, phone, alarm, fireman, handicapped and exit. In fact, now that I've spent a few months poking around and noticing these things, I've compiled a vocabulary of some 500 pre-existing symbols that some -- maybe most -- of you will recognize immediately.
"Second step, we fill the gaps. Rather than trying to draw a specific picture for every object and concept in human experience, let's instead use various combinations of our five hundred or so root glyphs to create compound words."
And a fine idea at that. So fine, that one might fail to notice that, elsewhere on this very site, exist an amazing compilation called the "Historical Atlas of the 20th Century. And, by golly, if that isn't just what it turns out to be. Complex. Detailed. Animated. In depth.
This guy, Matthew White, is doing some serious playing around here.
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.
Artist Trading Cards - cards, made by artists, traded by artists with other artists who have also made Artist Trading Cards.
That's it. There are no other rules. Except that to be official Artist Trading Cards (with capitals), "ATC must be 2.5"x3.5", or 64x89mm." There are some conventions that this writer explains:
"First, an ATC mustn't be sold, only exchanged, as the whole essence of these tiny works of art is about artists meeting (by correspondence or online if need be) and exchanging their works, thus meeting many artists and getting exposed to many personal styles. Second, on the back of each ATC the artist writes part or all of the following information: name, contact information, title of the ATC and number (1/8, 2/8...) if it's part of an edition. By definition ATCs are made in limited numbers, often no more than one of a kind. Unique ATCs are called originals; sets of identical ATCs are called editions and are numbered; sets of ATCs that are based on one theme but that are different are called series. Don't be intimidated by the concept of small editions or originals: very few people are anal about this. What most collectors really want are cards that were made with care. Based on that, numbers are meaningless."
From the online Village Voice, a virtual gallery dedicated to artistic Bart Simpson creations. Really. And you can watch it like a slide show, not just a picture or a picture-by-picture, but as sit-back-and-watch. Click on this link and watch for a while. From, like I said, the online Village Voice, 50-Plus Artistic Visions of Homer's Kid.
How fun is that? An online gallery with a dynamic slde show, so many images of clearly silly works by the Bart Simpson-inspired artist. A celebration of art as fun. And vice versa.
It's called "The Gratitude Dance" - an invention of Matt and Brad of Junior Attractors - something just a wee bit silly, playful, and spiritual - the Gratitude Dance.
I grow sometimes suspicious of these things that use fun for a purpose, and there's something quasi-religious about gratitude, but, for G-D's sake, already, the Gratitude Dance is good, sweet fun, loving fun - just the kind of fun you'd want to think of your teens having, just the kind of fun that even your silly old self might want to be having with them.
catbishop's Recycled Assemblage photoset, is what you might call it. Wonderfully faith-restoring signs of playfulness, is what I see. Junk, genuine junk, like, for example, a dirtbike gas tank, a bocce ball, a jigger, and two gooseneck lamp bases, transformed into a, well, duck. Or something enough like a duck to be clearly ducky, duckish, and ducklike.
Like it says, it's Internet Anagram Server, where you can make anagrams of anything. Actually:
Anything Hag Tinny Hang Tiny Yang Thin Yang Hint Gay Ninth An Nighty Ant Hying Tan Hying Nay Night Nay Thing Any Night Any Thing Nag Thy In Yang Nth I Gay Nth In An Gin Thy
What do you know about this "Adult Recess" thing? And, if you forgive me for asking how often do you get it?
And when you do get it, do you think it's what this article in Natural Awakenings Magazine means when the events planner says she gave herself a very adult recess, once a week, at least, for the last eight years:
"I’ve made a weekly date with myself to do what feeds my soul. I start with a fun-to-do list that changes as I change. As I add things and cross things off, it punches through the inertia of 'Someday I’ll do that when…' It feels good when I look at how much I’ve done. And I can always repeat special treats. There’s no set time. I just fit it in each week.
"Nothing I do depends on another person’s schedule or preferences. This is guilt-free soul food and mind candy that inspires and makes every day more productive. One afternoon I splashed around acting silly at the water park. One week I recorded my favorite television show and gave myself a manicure and pedicure while I watched all five episodes. I like to make appointments with friends on the other side of the world simply for the joy of conversing. On an Alaska tour I visited the Anchorage library to look up things just for fun, not because I could use them at work. My latest craze is sudoku number puzzles."
Or do you mean the kind of adult recess that this article describes as taking place for 15 minutes every working day when " workers at Masel in Bristol, PA., (are) engaged in outside water-balloon tosses and basketball...indoor remote-control-car races, electric-slide dances in the lunchroom, and games of Simon Says."?
Or maybe this kind of recess like what my friend Christopher Noxon describes in Rejuvenile? The Capture the Flag and Kickball kind?
Or are we talking about the whole thing? The entire range of the Adult-perpetrated Recess-like, actual time spent doing only what you want to be doing experience?
How often do you get to take recess? Adult recess. Of any kind. Enough? Alot? Ever?
Did you ever know professor Randy Pausch at CMU? Apparently, he did a lot of work with creating virtual reality systems/games. Pancreatic cancer will take his life in a few months, and he gave a "last lecture" at CMU. Here's the whole thing:
President Cohon to Pausch - "Please tell them about having fun."
Pausch - "It's kind like a fish trying to give a talk about the importance of water. I don't know how not to have fun. I'm dying, and I'm having fun. And I'm going to keep having fun every day I have left. Because there's no other way to play it."
Apparently, silliness can be put to some significant service. I quote extensively from this:
"'White Power!' the Nazi’s shouted, “White Flour?” the clowns yelled back running in circles throwing flour in the air and raising separate letters which spelt 'White Flour'.
"'White Power! the Nazi’s angrily shouted once more, 'White flowers?' the clowns cheers and threw white flowers in the air and danced about merrily.
"'White Power!' the Nazi’s tried once again in a doomed and somewhat funny attempt to clarify their message, “ohhhhhh!” the clowns yelled 'Tight Shower!' and held a solar shower in the air and all tried to crowd under to get clean as per the Klan’s directions.
"At this point several of the Nazi’s and Klan members began clutching their hearts as if they were about to have a heart attack. Their beady eyes bulged, and the veins in their tiny narrow foreheads beat in rage. One last time they screamed “White Power!”
"The clown women thought they finally understood what the Klan was trying to say. 'Ohhhhh…' the women clowns said.'Now we understand…', 'WIFE POWER!' they lifted the letters up in the air, grabbed the nearest male clowns and lifted them in their arms and ran about merrily chanting 'WIFE POWER! WIFE POWER! WIFE POWER!'
"It was at this point that several observers reported seeing several Klan members heads exploding in rage and they stopped trying to explain to the clowns what they wanted.
"Apparently the clowns fundamentally misunderstood the nature of the rally, they believed it was a clown rally and came in force to support their pointy hated brethren. To their dismay, despite their best jokes and stunts and pratfalls the Nazis and Klan refused to laugh, and indeed became enraged at the clowns misunderstanding and constant attempts to interpret the clowns instruction."
Infuriatingly funny, don't you think? Powerfully silly, nicht ja?
Before you click to read this article, the one called "Are We Having Fun Yet," - the one written by Matt Labash of The Weekly Standard - you should know that the subtitle is: "The infantilization of corporate America."
Basically, Labash pans the whole idea of fun-at-work. At least "the 'coercive fun,' the forced-march through the land of clenched-teeth joviality that so often takes place under the dreaded guise of 'team -building.'" His arguments are literate and powerful, and one finds oneself having to agree with the lad, especially about the coercive thing, fun-wise.
Labash is obviously having his own sort of fun, at fun's expense, of course. He writes: "If you thought there were only 301 Ways to Have Fun at Work, as suggested by the smash book that's been translated into 10 languages, then you're shortchanging yourself, because technically, there are 602 ways, according to the follow-up, 301 More Ways to Have Fun at Work. Using examples culled from real companies in real office parks throughout America, the authors suggest using fun as 'an organizational strategy--a strategic weapon to achieve extraordinary results' by training your people to learn the 'fun-damentals' so as 'to create fun-atics' (most funsultants appear to be paid by the pun)."
However, just in case you think he's simply having fun being funny about fun (he really is a very clever sort), try this: "Like a diseased appendix bursting and spreading infectious bacteria throughout the abdomen, fun is insinuating itself everywhere, into even the un-hippest workplaces."
I am not sure that such pun-pounding punches to the comedic kidneys of consulting corporate kidders are really necessary. I'm thinking that the people that are managing to bring fun into the corridors and carrels of the workplace are more like Emergency Services, bringing oxygen to an institution that is gasping for breath, an oppressive, fear-driven institution, mistakingly called "work."
Take us, for example, you, in particular. What are you doing reading this long article from someone who calls himself a "funsmith?" You are "having fun, yet," aren't you? You're doing something that interests you, that makes you feel intelligent, that makes you think. You're thinking, and maybe learning something, and maybe thinking about all the other links there are to visit. So much to learn. So many connections to make. So much real work to do. So much like real work should be. So much fun.
This installation by Tom Witzlius exemplifies why I think Burning Man is such a significant event for devotees of the arts/fun connection. For me, taking something like a temple bell and turning it into something like a side-to-side swing set embodies the connection between fun and spirit. Of course, I wouldn't want to visit a playground full of these things without earplugs, but, on the other hand, it makes me wonder why, with so few exceptions (like this musical see saw) and something very much like this), there are so few, um, exceptions.
But, be that here or there or not, the many images from Burning Man help us make more and merrier connections between art and fun and community and the sheer, silly magnificence of it all.
It comes to us via frequent fun-finder Noise and can be found on his website here.
Matt "is not rich. Matt also doesn't have some magical secret for traveling cheaply. He does it pretty much the same way everybody else does. Matt thinks Americans need to travel abroad more. Matt was a very poor student and never went to college. When he got older, he was pleased to discover that no one actually cares. Matt doesn't want to imply that college is bad or anything. He's just saying is all. There's other ways to fill your head."
Like with fun, country-spanning, culture-transcending, world-uniting fun.
Here's the artists' statement: "Our source objects are fundamental to the world’s oil distribution infrastructure, and are pertinent examples of our culture’s unmatched production of carbon dioxide. By altering these symbolically rich objects, the sculpture is a celebration of humankind’s raw power on earth, a visual metaphor for non-sustainability, and a contemplation of our unique ability to recognize and change our most destructive actions."
Here's mine: It takes a practiced and playful eye to imagine how two old trucks could become a monumental two-headed snake. Yes, yes, it is a monument that plays with power and fear and waste. But, most of all, a monument to the power of fun to transform and embrace even the rawest edges of our world.
"As part of my doctoral dissertation work I spent several hours on a school playground observing children. I had previously studied the rough and tumble play of boys in my classes, and was well aware of the increasing gender differences in relation to affection (boys becoming much less affectionate than girls as they get older, as affection is often considered 'gay' by boys). It struck me as I observed the children playing that rough and tumble play could be considered a masculinized affection--and thus considered appropriate by the boys--because outwardly it looks like fighting, but in actuality it is a way for boys to touch one another--indirectly showing affection--without receiving charges of being "gay." This section of (the) video portrays the differences in displays of affection, the accusation of a boy when two others are 'too affectionate,' and the development of rough and tumble play between the two boys subsequent to this accusation. When I show this, I sometimes like to play an excerpt from 'All You Need is Love' by the Beatles. Unfortunately, that would be a copyright violation here, but of course you can play a copy of the song as you watch the video. To see my complete dissertation, as well as other links to the Internet Archive with dissertation video data of mine, see this."
As any teacher or recreation worker can tell you, allowing children to engage in rough and tumble play is fraught with parental perpetrated perils. Until I saw this particular video, the only person I knew who dared to champion this kind of play was my friend and co-mentor Brian Sutton-Smith. But it appears that his influence has spread far and wide. For a brief synopsis, try this and, for a more in-depth discussion, this.
It's a 535 ft. long Slip 'n Slide, is what it is. And yet another example of the great lengths some people go to just to do something for fun. It's enough to restore one's faith, enough to make one actually consider that fun may be as a matter of fact something important - important enough to use a bulldozer for, and get at least 535 feet of 5 .mil "Vapor Block" vapor redardant plastic coated vinyl, and at least one air mattress, and risk your entire body for 60 seconds of.
I don't know what it is about is and fun - the great lengths we go to, the significant sacrifices we make, and yet the public disdian and distrust we have for. Look closely. This Giant Slip 'n Slide project is proof of something more than the power of beer and buldozers. Way, way more.
Mes amis, it is with great pleasure that I present to you Jean Yves Blondeau, le Rollerman.
According to this, Blondeau "first conceived of his plastic Buggy Rollin’ suit in 1994, while he was a student at Olivier de Serres design school, in Paris. But the invention, which allows a wearer to top 60 miles per hour while maintaining any position found in the Kama Sutra, didn’t exactly catch fire with consumers. Not one to give up, Blondeau recently refined the suit to a stripped-down 31-wheel version and developed his own playbook of moves, like the Zaphial (rolling flat on your back with all four limbs pointed straight up) and the Smooth Buggy Dog (three limbs on the ground and one rolling along a wall)."
When it comes to fun, size most definitely matters. Witness this guy eating a huge donut. How fun is that? Witness an entire blog dedicated to "Comically Large Things." How much more fun to see so many ridiculously oversized things?
So, what do we learn from all this hugeness? Apparently, that that's all it takes - a shift in scale - and things start looking fun.
I'm not saying this because Todd Strong and I are working on a book of games to play with comically large balls (you know, like those exercise balls and cage balls), but rather because, as the Comically Large Things blog so clearly points out, small things, made large, become clearly and consistently comic.
Mark Applebaum writes about his Sound Sculptures: "The instruments consist of threaded rods, nails, wire strings stretched through a series of pulleys and turnbuckles, plastic combs, bronze braising rod blow-torched and twisted, doorstops, shoehorns, ratchets, steel wheels, springs, lead and PVC pipe, corrugated copper plumbing tube, Astroturf, parts from a Volvo gearbox, a metal Schwinn bicycle logo, and, indeed, mousetraps."
And, in case you wondered, Applebaum appends:
"I play the sound-sculptures with my hands and with a number of different strikers and gadgets including Japanese chopsticks, knitting needles, combs, thimbles, plectrums, surgical tubing, a violin bow, and various wind-up toys, tops, etc. Located in the midst of the sculptures is a mixer and a small rack of electronic signal processors with their associated triggering pedals, mostly junky analog delays, early-era pitch transposers, unnatural reverbs, and the like."
There's this guy Yehuda, from Jerusalem, who writes a weblog about games. And the guy is a game maven. Let me tell you.
So, just the other day, this guy writes a blog piece titled: Games are not supposed to be fun. Honestly. That's what he wrote. And he has some good stuff to say about games and art and fun, and how easily one can get in the way of the other.
But me, I think that not only are games supposed to be fun, I think fun is a lot more serious than we admit. I think that fun games about serious things can get even more serious than games that aren't any fun at all.
You are probably not aware of the nascent filmic extravaganza called "Going Nuts," a stop-motion film in which "a prestigious fairytale illustrator is hired by the psychiatric hospital director. His job there will be to decorate the hospital walls with his drawings to improve the place’s atmosphere. It seems like an easy task but things get complicated when the sketcher discovers a dark corridor from where chilling screams come out." And now informed by the clarity of the preceding synopsis, you may still be taken by surprise by the discovery that the illustrator is, himself, a nut. And he's not the only one. In fact, all the characters in the film are nuts. Peanuts.
Yes, you heard me correctly. Peanuts. Hence the title.
Hence, also, the topic of today's post - a most visually snack-worthy contest, whose results are herein featured, inviting the masses to submit their own, hand-drawn, peanut characters.
Another taste of whimsy, and art, and a junklike, commercially-sponsored rejuvenation of the spirit of play.
Wordplay seems to be something we all do, regardless of language or culture. Wordplay like tongue twisters - as documented so comprehensively by the editors of the First International Collection of Tongue Twisters. What a joy-producing way to rediscover our global community. Need more convincing? Then take a look at this wonderful collection of videos of People fumbling over words that rhyme.
For further, English-speaking explorations of the sheerness of it all, joywise, don't miss S. E. Schlosser's collection of Tongue Twister Tales from American Folklore.
Funny, how much fun nonsense can be. And how much we can learn from it.
Game Cafe is one of the very few game stores that actually invite people to come and play. I wrote them to find out more. Naturally. When I read their response, my first reaction was "finally." At last, a game store that understands, respects, and provides for play. My second reaction - I have to share this with the known universe. Here's what they sent me (shared with permission).
"Game Cafe is a retail game store started, owned and run by my husband and myself.
"We are all about fun and have worked hard to create a comfortable and inviting environment that is family oriented. We are located on the Historic Independence Square in Independence, MO, and have been open for just over a year now.
"The way our store is set up is that the front area is our retail board and card game section. We sell unique games for ages 3 through adult. There are many types, from light-hearted family games, group/party games, 2-player games, kids games, educational games, strategy games, puzzle games, collectible card and miniatures games and more. We have a large Chess/Checkers table in front that is free to anyone who wants to use it.
The middle of our store is a cafe area with snacks (candy, chips, ice cream, small microwaveable pizzas and sandwiches, etc) and drinks (soda fountain and bottled). It is also a place to play tabletop games. We have a game menu were you can select a board or card game from our growing game library to play in-store for $1 per person. We have games for kids, families, adult groups, couples, etc. We also host many game tournaments and leagues in this area. Tuesday nights is new game night where I teach a board or card game to the group that comes that night. (This particular group is designed for older teens and adults and is free) There is no charge to use our table/play area in general.
"The back area of our store holds our computers and video games hooked up to wall mounted flat-screen T.V's. We have PC games, are connected to the Internet, and have XBOX 360's, a Game Cube, and a Nintendo Wii. To play in this area, there is an hourly fee. We have many game titles to choose from and allow people to bring their own game titles to use if they choose.
"We also have a game room in the back that can be rented out for group games or for birthday parties and such. We have a basement that is in the process of being finished and will become a hall to host large scale gaming events, and be available to rent out for groups or even receptions."
The Q Drum - it rolls, you can pull it, kids get the same kind of fun from it that they'd get from a good pull toy, and it can contain 50 liters of deliciously sloshing water.
So in places where women spend half their day just getting water from the well to their village, carrying it in heavy jugs and drums and barrels, here's a simple innovation - a donut-shaped barrel that can be pulled on a rope.
OK, so maybe it's not as fun as pulling a wagon, but it certainly is a lot more fun than having to carry the water, and since it's easy enough for kids to do, it's a lot more fun for them than having to watch their mothers suffer. It's fun to help. Fun to be valuable to the survival of your own village. Fun to walk around with a giant, sloshing pull-toy.
And it's simpler than a pull-toy, more durable. And the inspiration that made this possible, it was like the inspiration that you get from an act of deep playfulness, where you finally arrive at something new, something simple, something that transforms reality, something that changes the world. For good.
All work and no play makes jack a dull boy goes the saying. And a report by American Academy of Pediatrics says essentially the same thing. And by PLAY, they don't mean structured, adult-organized team sports. They don't mean get smart videos, or so called enrichment activities. What they mean is old fashioned spontaneous free play.
Numerous studies have shown that unstructured play has many benefits. It can help children become creative, discover their own passions, relate to others and have fun. Yes, FUN. Remember that?
Montague Blister, in his playful weblog "Strange Games," recently wrote about "Main Gasing," the game/sport/ritual of top-spinning as practiced in Malaysia. In his article, he writes that "Teams, consisting of up to 40 people (throwers, makers, catchers), set their tops spinning at the same time and it is the longest spin that wins. A good length spin is a staggering one and a half hours. An excellent spin lasts an almost unbelievable 2 hours long."
Two hours long!? A single spin of a single top?! This immediately set me Googling. It seemed to me that any body of people, watching a top spin for two hours, has got to achieve a state of significantly deep fun.
I eventually clicked my way to this video showing a top of proportions significant enough to redefine my entire understanding of tops and the spinning thereof.
I also found an excellent article, of almost anthropological clarity, in which Eric Hansen describes a Main Gasing event. The article, called "White Bean vs Tiger Cub," notes the rituals, the socializing, the trade, and the celebration of community surrounding the event. I was especially moved by the Hansen's description of the players themselves. "The art of top-spinning," he explains, (is) "part dance, part discus throw, requires physical strength as well as finesse. With a reasonable amount of practice, most people can get one of these tops to spin, but real skill comes only after years of experience. Thus, though competitors vary in age, a tukang gasing, or 'master of the top,' is usually middle-aged, and when one of them prepares to throw, people fall silent to watch the performance."
To read about a thing we know as a toy, elevated to a work of art and display of mastery, is to find oneself on the border of understanding the mystery of deep fun.
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.
Adventure Playgrounds! How could it have taken me so long? The epitome, the apotheosis, the sine qua of junkly pursuits: a playground made entirely of junk. So junky that no one cares what it looks like - just what it plays like. So informal that even kids could build their own playground apparata, should they be so moved.
What you see in the photo is part of one of the few remaining Adventure Playgrounds - this one, in the Berkeley Marina. Why so few? Because they're unsightly. And there just dangerous enough to make kids want to play there again and again and again.
"Adventure Playground emerged from movements in 1960s Europe that worked to reclaim derelict urban spaces, many caused by the devastation of World War II. Filled with trash and debris, the sites were considered unfit even for parking cars and were therefore abandoned by developers. However, children had no qualms about these forbidden sites, often playing happily in rubble heaps. They seemed to prefer the informality of dirt and scraps to formal jungle gyms. Eventually parents and park designers realized that these non-traditional materials inspired creative, thoughtful play. The adults and children worked together to construct the kinds of play spaces the children wanted."
Here, in the States, the main argument against Adventure Playgrounds is safety. It is that very same concern that is slowly but methodically closing all kinds of playgrounds, all across the United States. I found, in perhaps my favorite Adventure Playground site, this insightful perspective on the "safety issue":
"Conventional playgrounds are safe only if children use them in the way adults intend them to i.e. if children do not climb where they are not supposed to, stay behind railings, and don't climb on top of certain structures. Children do not necessarily abide by these rules and often get injured at conventional playgrounds.
"The safety record of adventure playgrounds in excellent,"states Joe Frost, a professor of education. The Mountain Park adventure playground in Houston, Texas recorded few injuries. Only .014 percent of the 15,000 people attending the park during its first 4 months of operation sustained injuries and these were mostly skinned knees, scrapes, and hammered thumbs."
When you compare these so-called dangers with the benefits, to kids, to community, you have to start wondering about what price we're paying for all this safety. O, sure, the playgrounds themselves may not be pretty. But the play that goes on there, the inventiveness, creativity, the sheer wonder of shared fantasy - is a thing of great and lasting beauty.
There are times when silliness, creativity, technical mastery, and the love of children coincide. And among those times, there are moments of surprising delight. This is one of those moments.
It looks like one of those photos of a kindergarten class. One of your typical collections of runny-nose darlings. It is definitely that. It's also a musical instrument, allowing you to create a kind of music out of a collection of tunefully rhythmic rheums. Once you've composed your sweet suite for serendipitous sinuses, click the "play" button on the lower right of the screen to hear your composition.
It will warm the cockles of your virtual heart.
It will make you want to see what else you can make it do.
Finger Jousting"...is a sport where two consenting players square off in an attempt to prod their opponent with their lancing (right) index finger before the opposing player can. The competitors must keep their right hands locked in an arm wrestling fashion and not use their legs or latent (left) arm in an offensive manner. The competitors are known as jousters, and the act of touching the other person’s body with the index finger is known as lancing. A player can lance anywhere except the lancing (right) arm."
Finger Jousting? Could it be just a jest, this jousting-with-the-finger concept? A jest? Surely, you joke. How could anything as challenging and artful and demanding of physical prowess and as contest-worthy to lead to the establishment of the World Finger Jousting Federation be taken as anything but or else? Verily, one could, having perused and pondered the patently Pseudo History of Finger Jousting, conclude that it is little more than a laughable lark, a prank, a juvenile josh. And yet, at heart, there is a clear smackage of something fun and physically sportlike and worthy of patently public approbation.
Since I published my article on some of the new puzzles from ThinkFun, I've heard from two more, very different, very dedicated and innovative sources for yet more puzzles. Though the focus of this weblog is on games as social experiences, puzzles, even though designed to be solitary exercises, can easily become the source of a great deal of focused, collaborative, social play. And it is in that light that I share with you yet two more resources.
First to contact me was Bogusia Gierus, inventor of Hexatrix, an elegant and challenging arithmetic puzzle in which players try to connect all the numbers and signs to create a mathematically correct statement. It's what you might call an "elegant" puzzle - simple to understand, challenging, and almost infinitely variable (click this to see the solution for the puzzle in the illustration) - unless you don't like playing with numbers.
And today, I heard from Alex Colket, about his website Play with your mind. I quote: "PlayWithYourMind.com is about mind games, brain puzzles and IQ tests. Between the various word games, logic puzzles, typing tests, memory challenges, multi-tasks, and a mind sport, PlayWithYourMind.com boasts nearly 100 original games - among the largest such collections on the internet. Challenging abilities as diverse as memory, focus, logic, spatial sense, perception, verbal skill and numerical prowess, the brain games here provide plenty of opportunities to play with your mind."
My suggestion, find a friend and try any of these puzzles together. Play with you shared mind.
With their collection of Pips: Original Card and Dice Games, Samuel and Jacob H. Stoddard have gifted us with, among many other delights, a collection of, as advertised, original playing card, dice and domino games. Original, well-documented, and apparently most worthy of some significant segment of your playtime.
No, no, there's nothing to buy, unless you don't have a deck of cards or a couple dice or a set of dominoes. I know that's going to make you feel that these games are not, like, "real" games. And, if these guys wanted to make them into genuine, commercial, K-mart-worthy games, well, they'd probably make some significant money. But they most apparently have a very different goal. They want to make some significant fun.
Which becomes even more apparent if you look at the stuff on the rest of their site (called "Rinkworks"). I, following a suggestion from the noble Presurfer, wound up in a subsection of a subsection called "Fun with Words," where I learned about... Wait, let me give you some examples. Can you guess what the following words have in common?
BOLT, FAST, GRADE, HANDICAP
No, silly, it's not that they're all written in upper case. It's that they're all "Contronyms" - words that are also their own opposites. Like BOLT, as in bolt the door, or bolt away; or FAST, as in moving fast or something made unmoving.
Mark well this site, for is much fun to be had therein and by.
Writing about an event involving Palestinian and Israeli children that was led by the 
As the last days of this visit approach, I have yet one more experience to share with you, perhaps the one that touched me most deeply - a 9-hour workshop I conducted with 
So, what have I learned so far about bringing more fun to Israel?
Here
Gary Berlind
This wonderful collection
"What is the greatest lesson you have learned in your career?" the interviewer asks Dinger D. Dragon, mascot for the Fort Wayne Wizards.
The Pipe Cleaner Dancer
Here
Thing-a-ma-Bots
You know those beautiful crystal-looking balls you see 
, the preponderance of which are serious, in-depth, carefully researched explorations of what has become the science of 
Teen/Nerd
This
"In the Navajo tradition we have what we call 
Here's a moment of inspiration as seen on a 
If you lived here you'd be home by now
The Cardboard Tube Fighting League
Artist Trading Cards
From the online Village Voice, a virtual gallery dedicated to artistic Bart Simpson creations. Really. And you can watch it like a slide show, not just a picture or a picture-by-picture, but as sit-back-and-watch. Click on this link and watch for a while. From, like I said, the online Village Voice, 
catbishop's Recycled Assemblage
President Cohon to Pausch - "Please tell them about having fun."
Apparently
This
this
This
When it comes to fun, size most definitely matters. Witness this guy eating a huge donut. How fun is that? Witness an entire blog dedicated to "
Game Cafe
The Q Drum
video
Adventure Playgrounds
Finger Jousting
Hot Dog Sculptures
