Tag: Fun

Clown School Break Day 42: Making Spades for Poker Pros(pectors)

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In which Our Hero stumbles upon something interesting… 

My partner wants to improve at poker. She 1) has the sort of mind that could be very good at the game, and 2) wants to improve her comfort in situations where she makes the right decision but the outcome turns out bad. [She also 3) wants to improve her comfort in situations where she made the wrong decision and the outcome comes out bad.] 

We watched some theory videos together today. It was very fun. I enjoyed it. I’m excited for more! 

–

My partner asks whether there exist little poker drills, à la “hit the ball at this bucket” in tennis, so you can have fun while learning the skill. I said I didn’t know any. 

We therefore invented a way to teach a particular, very-important poker skill in a manner that’s actually fun. Perhaps we will expand this, refine it, and share it with others! 

… and I built an app for it! More info to come… 🙂 

Clown School Break Day 36: Empty Spaces

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In which emptiness permeates Our Hero. 

Today I drove in silence. My partner in the passenger seat, surrounded by calm empty space. 

Usually I drive with music or a podcast. This drive was 3.5 hours. 

For the first two hours, just being. 

Once in a while adding a comment. Saying something. Mostly quiet. 

It was nice. 

— 

It reminded me of some time spent on stage. The increased comfort that comes from increased experience. The greater ease that comes from an acceptance of emptiness. 

I’m reminded of the idea variously attributed to Miles Davis and other musical greats: playing the spaces between the notes. 

It’s pleasant to play the spaces between the notes. 

It’s even more enjoyable to let the spaces between the notes play. 

And then

To level up

To the notes themselves playing 

And you simply helping

😌 

Clown School Break Day 35: The New Player 

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In which a new teammate joins Our Hero. 

What is it like to add a new player to an established team? 

Today we added a new player to our 3-person cooperative poker game. 

Upon adding this fourth person, we reverted back to the basic version of the game as it was a fitting level for them. 

Here’s what the experience was like for me: 

  1. Less psychologically engaging. The game was simpler so the intensity was lower. 
  2. More meta-play. I asked more questions, engaged in more conversation, made more jokes. We all did. The game itself was less of the game. We added other games to fill the empty space. 
  3. It was fun for a different reason. The relationship is one I care about. So I prioritized connection and play with this new player. The other players did too. We all wanted them to have a good time. So we left having enjoyed ourselves, but not as much due to the game itself as we had previously. Instead, it was more due to compersion. 

Our new player stepped away. We returned to our triumvirate crew. We took one round to re-acclimate and then clicked back into it. 

Perhaps much of socialization is knowing what game you’re playing at any given time and effectively switching between them. If you have more capacity, add another game. If you’re overwhelmed, let go more. If you’re welcoming a wobbly player you care about, play with them more (outside of the main game itself). And always know which game is most important. 

Clown School Day 9: Clown Fight!!!

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In which Our Hero proves he’s got rubber balls

Today I pissed off a clown.

It’s better to piss off a clown than to be pissed on by a clown.

We were playing 9-square. It’s like 4-square, but with 9 squares and more chaos.

I was playing legally. The rules say you can’t block another player, but you can wander outside your square. I was the King—the occupant of the center square—but I spent the whole game standing off to the side. Because: strategy.

The owner of that square complained.

The ref said my move was legal.

The owner complained again.

The ref asked me to move.

I moved.

Then I taunted the square’s owner.

The owner complained a third time.

The next ball that came to me…

I smacked it as hard as I could at her feet.

She was pissed. The crowd gasped. She appealed to the ref, who shrugged, as if to say: He played the game hard. What do you want me to do about it?

She stormed off. Later, I caught her venting to another player, confirmed later as badmouthing: “Can you believe that?”

Here’s what I learned:

  1. When I feel someone’s playing shenanigans, I get righteously pissed. When I get pissed, I get determined. And when I get determined, watch out.
  2. My classmates will now play differently with me.
    1. The fun-first crowd will avoid my wrath.
    2. The competitive ones will know I don’t back down.
  3. I may have just become the enforcer of clown school. Neither good nor bad—just a role.

It’s no coincidence that the person I clashed with was the second-best at the game. Competitive people find each other. And when they do, sparks fly.

I respect her. She plays hard. She got the ref on her side, a valid tactic. Later I overheard her admit she’d been feeling a bit touchy today. So maybe we both just hit the limit of our light play energy.

And she got me back. In the final round, she served me a tiny, dinky little ball: barely legal, perfectly placed. I was out. No one else noticed.

Well played. Respect.

(Though I’ve since heard others reacted to her venting with a kind of “Wait, what’s she mad about?” bemusement… so maybe the last laugh is still up for grabs.)

—

But what is this about, really?

Is this a story about clowning? About performance? About theater?

Maybe.

In a way, 9-Square is theater: it’s a miniature social hierarchy. The King in the middle. The peasants below. Everyone clawing their way upward by knocking someone else down. Game of Thrones played with rubber balls.

In singles, you play for survival and glory.

In doubles, it becomes a romance—your fate tied to your partner’s. You win not through aggression but through sync, trust, and conservatism.

It’s a lesson in status, alliance, and timing.

And like all good clown work, it’s about how you handle the fall.

—

As for my reputation: some classmates already dodge competing against me. Fair. For me, winning is part of fun, but the real goal is shared joy. I just happen to find joy in playing hard. Someone has to be clown game king: might as well be me.

Clown School Weekend 1: The Tragic Flaw

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In which Our Hero contemplates monkey business

Why is it funny to watch someone trying so hard? Repeating the same failed strategy over and over? Exaggerating a single specific trait?

Is clowning the humor version of a character’s tragic flaw? Is the same element that drives us to extrapolate a whole character from one personal or physical or psychological deformity also the same that makes us love this repetitive, heightened, exaggerated play?

Do monkeys clown? They certainly have tragic flaws. Do they goof? Perform mockery? Satire?

—

I visited a clown performance today. Half a dozen clowns stuffed into one small stage. One read the story of Snow White and walked oh so slowly across the stage. Another pantomimed a horse and played the audience like a musical instrument. A third sang Disney songs and perhaps was a burlesque performer not a clown. My favorite was a clown singer. Here’s what he did:

  • Appeared on stage in a shiny jacket and ascot to announce “and for my final song…” (which is already a funny opener)
  • Followed it up by announcing it would be “one from my new album…”
  • Cued the DJ by referring to him as “song boy”
  • Performed precisely three funny gestures
  • Sang the beginning of a song
  • The song had some small snag, so he stopped and refused to sing again until we the audience showed him enough love (eg by demanding an encore)
  • Repeated from the beginning

I loved the whole thing. My only gripes were 1) the women behind me who were talking during the show, and 2) the ending could increase our love for the performer rather than merely end it.

I have a few hunches on how to execute #2. I’ll share them with the performer when I see him. (It’s unfortunately not legal to execute #1.)

—

The funniest-in-concept performer was a poet who wasn’t obviously a clown nor obviously a poet, who prompted the audience to not know whether it was intended to be earnest or funny. I couldn’t stop laughing.

After the show, I approached this poet. I needed to know if he was real or not. My conclusion: he’s a real poet who really did just find himself repeating reordered sequences of the same sentence of words at an underground clown show.

Maybe that’s the secret: the clown, the poet, and the rest of us: each repeating our flaw until it becomes a performance worth watching. And perhaps that fact is the funniest of all.

An In-Depth Review

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Airbnb reviews only permit 1000 characters. So here’s my full review of a place I stayed in Cairns, Australia 🤪:

“I’ve been a poor university student for the last four years, but staying here is the first time I’ve felt like it.” —a fellow guest at Anita’s Airbnb

Internal tension is not, generally speaking, what one seeks in an Airbnb. Yet during my 6 days at Anita’s place in Cairns, I found myself not only experiencing a profound sense of dissatisfaction, but somehow enjoying that dissatisfaction and feeling grateful for its lessons.  

Anita’s place somehow provides slightly-above-spartan accommodations at slightly-above-discount prices, but in a hodgepodge of uncanny ways. I’ll give an example: The room boasts plenty of wall outlets — at my count 6 — which is very desirable in an Airbnb room. However, the majority of these outlets are placed above the head on one’s bed, and at no point has any person said “I’d like to plug in my devices right here, above my pillow, with no location to place the device while it’s charging.” The shower, too, isn’t quite wrong but seems like it was designed by someone who had heard what people like in a shower but never used one themselves, as it boasts beautiful tiling, ample hot water, and bountiful nozzle settings, but also dampens your towel because the only place to hang it is on the inside of the shower door. The outdoor dining table is a lovely place to chat with a fellow traveler on a warm summer evening, yet this delight is diminished by the requirement that you wave at the automatic light sensor every 30 seconds to turn it back on. 

If there’s a word to describe my stay at Anita’s in Cairns, that word would be it: “uncanny”. It’s uncanny that I would find the mattress perfectly comfortable, yet also awaken with a hip pain of a sort that I’ve never before experienced. It’s uncanny that I would have a long conversation with the host about making the internet work in my room, which it definitely didn’t beforehand and after which it somehow magically does. It’s uncanny that the Airbnb listing includes twenty-three (23) rules which one must follow during tenancy, and then posters and text messages upon arrival add an additional three (3), and yet existing in this space gives you the sense that breaking the majority of them would simply be ignored. As I was leaving, I snuck a glance inside Anita’s room, and was shocked to see it resembled a security office. If she has three screens of cameras, all presumably monitoring and recording, then why are the drying rack and kitchen trash can always overflowing? I suspect the only rule that Anita enforces strictly is the “absolutely no guests” policy, but somehow also get the niggling suspicion that her uncanniness would give me the thumbs-up on updating my Airbnb reservation from 1 guest to 2 as I’m walking home with a sweetheart in real time.

Anita’s Airbnb gives the impression of an earnest person really truly trying their best but tripping in random ways. Sure, she spams you with a bunch of tour and travel options immediately after you make your reservation, but after that initial volley it’s not like she’s pushy – or even brings them up again. Yes, she’ll make a bit of huff when you’re on your phone at 8:58pm and quiet hours start at 9pm, but it’s the sort of gentle and direct huff that makes you wonder whether you actually were being too loud for even pre-quiet hours. And then, when you’re quieter, it’s somehow totally fine that you talk until 10. The place is spartan yet functional, and isn’t functional what matters? If travel is about exploring a new place, and therefore yourself, isn’t it appropriate that you finally feel like a poor university student if that’s what you are? Still, it’s not particularly pleasant to feel like a poor university student, so I give Anita’s place three stars. 

Diveball: Your Next Favorite Game

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Today, only dozens of people in the world know how to play this game. In 5 years, it will be massively popular (on the order of 100k or 1M+ players). I’m going to popularize it. I’m publishing this post in part to spread it wide and in part to plant my flag before it becomes huge.

How to play is linked here. (I’ll update that document as I iterate on the particularities of the rules. The basic structure, however, is solid.) I’ve also pasted the current version of the rules below:

Diveball

Materials:

  • 1 pool table
  • 1 cue ball (that’s the white one)
  • 1 7 ball

Setup: 

  • Each of the 4 players stands at a corner. 
    • Players are on a team with the person directly across from them (i.e. the player with whom they share a long side). 

Definitions: 

  • The 7 ball is “dead” if it stops moving. 
  • The 7 ball is “scored” if it enters one of the corner pockets. 
  • Each player has a “kitchen”, which is the one-forth of the table closest to them. The boundary of the kitchen (the “kitchen line”) is formed by connecting the second dots on the side of the table. (Players who share an end will share both a kitchen and a kitchen line.) 
  • A team has “possession” when it is their turn to play. 
  • A player performs a “shot” when they touch and/or release the cue ball such that it hits the 7 ball. 
  • A player performs a “pass” when they transfer the cue ball to their partner (without the cue ball touching the 7 ball). 

Play: 

  • A team wins a point in one of three ways: 
    1. Making the 7 ball dead during their opponents’ possession
    2. Scoring the 7 ball (note: scored only applies to a corner pocket). 
    3. Their opponents commit a foul. 
  • “Possession” works like this: 
    1. The serving team begins with possession. 
    2. A team passes possession to their opponents by touching the cue ball and then the cue ball touching the 7 ball. 
  • Serving works like this: 
    1. Set up for a serve by placing the 7 ball in the middle of the kitchen line opposite the server. 
    2. A legal serve is one where the cue ball hits the 7 ball, then the 7 ball hits the back wall before it stops, goes into a pocket, or hits a side wall. 
    3. A server has three attempts at a legal serve. 
      1. If they fail, the opposing team receives a point and the 
  • Note: the 7 ball is not scored if it enters one of the side pockets. Instead, if this happens, no teams score any points and the player who hit it into the side pocket chooses the next server. (They may choose any of the 4 players.)  

Illegal actions (i.e. “fouls”): 

  1. Touching the 7 ball. 
  2. Touching the cue ball when it is not your possession. 
  3. Touching the cue ball while it touches the 7 ball. 
  4. “Playing from the side” – i.e. failing to have both feet behind the horizontal line that determines the end of the table when making a shot. 
  5. “Playing in the air” – i.e. failing to have at least one foot on the ground when releasing the cue ball in a shot that prompts the cue ball to hit the 7 ball. 
  6. The cue ball contacts the 7 ball while any part of the 7 ball is in the releasing player’s Kitchen. 
    • To avoid violating this kitchen rule, you should pass the cue ball to your partner when needed. 

A game works like this: 

  • Randomize the first server. 
    • After each point, the partner of the player who last legally transferred possession serves the next point. 

A match works like this: 

  • Play “best two out of three” games (i.e. the first team to win two games wins the match).

Clarifications: 

  • If the cue ball goes in any pocket, the point continues. Whichever team has possession had better fish it out fast! 
  • If the 7 ball jumps off the table, award no points and serve afresh. 
  • The 7 ball is only scored in the corner pockets. If it’s hit into a side pocket, no points are scored and the player who hit it into that pocket chooses the next server. 
  • The 7 ball is only deemed to have “stopped moving” when it is no longer rolling nor spinning AND the cue ball is stopped or touched by a possessing player or touches a wall. 
    • Therefore, the balls do not have to collide before the 7 stops moving; a team need only release the cue ball before the 7 ball stops moving, so long as the cue ball hits the 7 ball directly thereafter. 

17 syllables on my most exhausting week in memory

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New job + old job = tough week. I couldn’t do it, but I care.

(I started a new job this week. It’s co-founder at a startup. I’m still ghostwriting for some people & editing for others. The co-founder role is a full time gig. My former job is still a full time gig. Dear Lord [that’s you, Smidgen], How are we gonna get through this?)

(The ending “I couldn’t do it but I care” is intended as an allusion to the impossibility of stretching oneself until necessity and desire intersect. I’ve done things this week that I couldn’t have done. But must + want => can. So I do.)

A Chaotic Neutral Grocery List

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A Chaotic Neutral Grocery List

  • Peachy-O’s stuck to the points on an aloe 
  • Hot Wheels cars joined as a bathroom mat
  • Cigarettes before bed, but not after sex
  • Cats in tiny bikinis 
  • Ringing the doorbell instead of calling upon arrival 
  • Toe socks*
  • Thinly veiled criticism 
  • Mr. Pibb instead of Dr. Pepper 
  • Not complimenting another drunk girl in the bathroom 
  • Arguments with your mom but not with your lover
  • “Enjoy your meal!” and responding “you too.” 

*Remind Chaotic Evil to pick up toe shoes

This guest post brought to you by Maggie “Maximal Awesomeness” Harper.

Two Terrific Ten-minute Jottings

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Dr. Seuss on Breakups

One sheet, two sheet, three sheet, four.

Slam that paper to the floor.

Rip it, tear it, burn it good.

Light it up as though it’s wood.


As you hear the crackling flames,

As you feel the warm remains,

Eyes reflect the flickering embers,

Spleen and liver scarce remember…


What he did to break your heart,

How you swooned back at the start,

How you cried o’er these letters,

Before he ripped your heart to fetters.


Now kiss all the gifts he gave.

Rub your cheek and feel his shave.

Toss this bear into the fire.

Hear it roar like your desire.


You may feel crick in your neck,

Weighty eyes as though you’ve wept

Tickling soft palate above your tongue,

Ringing ears as you’ve been wrung.


All these wants, stuffed in your mind,

Salty-sweet of love unkind,

Prickling poke of lover’s yoke,

Brilliant blaze, gone up in smoke. 

A Humorous Happening

“I did not knot the naughty Norwegian nurse, nay!” I say to the barrister as she lifts her haughty head higher, sliding her specs down her protruberant and bulbous nose. I wish to honk that nose and I know that she knows that I know she knows it!

“But sir,” the barrister bellows in a reedy, sinewy snarl, “You were locked in her chambers, the only one!”

I snort and hock a particularly phlegm-filled hunk of malevolent mucus into the bin.

“And I’ll have some decorum in my courtroom!”

“Awright,” I relent, congealing into the visage of an upstanding citizen. “I’ll take you there: see, the shipmate and I had spied a trifle of glinting gold in that there stowhole not two days prior to her nursehood’s ‘napping. An’ we, ‘aving ‘eard of ‘er reluctance to part with treasures, either internal or ex-, went a-sniffing our way ‘round the floorboards above, where the bilge’d been spilt and reeking and rotting salty sea water only a few days prior. So the mate, ‘e says to me, ‘why don’t ye stick yer wooden leg under that there board and heave to with yer hips and cascade it over, lettin’ us shimmy downward into Her Highness’s quarters and ransacking her all good ’n’ proper?’ Only that cankered, leprosy-ridden, flea-infested mate sneaks down ‘imself and grabs the gold and hoists ‘imself back up, only to push me down into the hole myeself, to be caught by yer most High and Honorable lawmen!”