Games

Games





GUGGENHEIM





BE A PAPERBACK WRITER



SQUID LIPS!



Emphatic Drawing






TELEPHONE PICTIONARY



WHO ARE YOU? WHO AM I?




SLOW LOOKING with Peter
The Pet Show

I introduced this game a few weeks ago at our Family Friday cocktail hour, with this image by Ezra Jack Keats, after reading the Slow Looking books.  The goal was to get people to look closely and carefully at something and though a Zoom game session with drinks may not have been the perfect setting, it did slow down our time together to create pockets of interesting conversation. At one point, someone commented that a group of adults has probably never stared at this image for so long, which was probably true. 

It can be played in a Museum, through Zoom or anywhere.

Players: 2+

Age: old enough to be able to write the alphabet.

The Gear: an image of some type, pencil/pen, and paper, timer.

The set up: 
If you are playing from home with people in the room with you, find an image from a book or magazine.
If you are playing virtually with others on Zoom: find an image on your computer and share the screen so everyone can see it.
If you are in a Museum (do you remember those?), find a work of art everyone agrees on and sit in front of it. (I really miss going to museums even though most of them symbolize white looting...but anyway ....)

To start: write the alphabet vertically on the left side of your paper. Set a timer for 15 minutes or however long you want to play.  Ideally, pick a time and double it or add 10 minutes to the initial time, long enough so that your mind starts to wander. The point is to look at the image longer than you think you can.
When the timer starts, look at the image and write down things you see that start with every letter of the alphabet. 

The objective: 
You want to find things and write down items that seem obvious that everyone else might see.

Point system: If you want to do this as a meditative activity, you don't need to keep score.  But since everything is a competition in our house these days, after the timer goes off, take turns and report what everyone wrote down.  You get one point for every item that others also wrote down.  For example, if for the letter "A" you wrote down "Afro" and 3 other people also wrote down "Afro", you all get 4 points.  The object is to try to be in unison, not to be unique and cleaver. The goal is empathetic looking.
Everyone keeps their own score and is played on the honor system.

What was fascinating about looking for things that started with tricky letters was that several people saw things that were not there.  For example, for the letter T, three or four people saw a Turtle, which does not exist in the painting.  All four said the green hat on the boy who is popping his head into the frame on the left side was a turtle.  Or you really had to look at the picture's narrative to understand what was going on.  Both Philip and I said "Itch" for the letter I- what the boy on the left was doing.  


ABC SEARCH WITH  C.R.T. LENS












RAT Edit

Players: 2+
The Gear: pencil and paper
The set up: find one to two sentence quotes made by Racist Asshole Trump (RAT) and print them out.
I've fount this site a good source.  I know it's really hard to even read this stuff but if you pretend it's just a screen writing editing exercise, you will be able to stomach it.
Write out nouns on different pieces of paper and mix it up.

To start:  hand out one quote to each person playing and have them pick a few nouns from the metaphor pile.
The objective: to rewrite RATs words into a cohesive eloquent sentence that could have been spoken by someone educated and presidential.

Playing for points:
This is a non competitive game.  
However, you can vote on who has the most eloquent rewrite for points. You can also go back to this website and do a word search, for any words you used that RAT has not.  For every word you've used that RAT hasn't, you get 10 points.

for example the nouns: weather, fishing, fruit and skateboarding 
the snippet from the RATs Speech:   




The new sentence would read:  
We filled up a stadium like a mass of clouds before a storm.  The stadium was packed like sardines in a can.  And I saw the competitors soft like rotting fruit in the hot sun.  This is a movement resembling a skatepark after a shipment of new board hit the asphalt.

Notes: 
You may not use any personal pronouns "I", or "me"
If there are any quotes within the quote, it must be rewritten as statements not dialogue.
You may change the noun into verbs or adverbs when creating your metaphors

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