steamwhistler

Your response to the infamous FAGS video

Link? To either his response and/or the original video?

Hi, mainly just posting to say I'm a fan of your reviews and agree with you 90% of the time.

Here's a question if you feel like tackling it:

What do you think about the people out there who are looking to assign big important roles to video games? From the tired "building hand-eye coordination" arguments, to Steven Johnson's assertion that they make children smarter, to Jane McGonigal-types who want to employ MMO-inspired reward systems in real life, people have a lot of high hopes for games.

Do you have any thoughts on these sorts of social/cultural roles that people argue for? (Or arguments of your own, of course.)

I had an acting professor whose main specialty was mime and dance. In his class we learned a lot about mentally segregating each moveable part of your body, and being able to consciously manipulate them.

One time our class went to...are you ready for this? A donkey sanctuary that was out in the country a few miles from the university. (That's a shelter for unwanted/orphaned/sick donkeys.) We spent some time observing their movements, body language, the way they held themselves, etc. Then later on in the classroom we had to reenact the sanctuary, not involving any costumes or braying, or even necessarily being on all fours, but just recreating their physical...tone, if you will. There was an audience, of course.

Anyway yeah, fun times in that liberal arts degree. I am unemployed now. My question for YOU, CornflakeJustice, is what specific exercises did/do you do to become an awesome mime?

EDIT: Cool fact: About 20 minutes after posting this, I got a phone call offering me a job. Nifty, huh?

You're probably long gone now, but in case you're still reading, I just wanted to thank you for Everything Bad. It was a recommended read by the professor of one of the most transformative courses I took during undergrad. I loved that book because it was one of the first times I'd encountered an intelligent adult speaking favourably about video games, not to mention making such a bold claim pretty convincingly. Anyway, that was a springboard for my discovery of lots of other authors with interesting things to say about games and other media. I gave my copy of Everything Bad to an old girlfriend when immigration laws forced a national boundary between us, because it was one of my most treasured possessions. I think she sold it to a used book shop for about $5--which I was upset about at the time, but hopefully someone else picked it up cheap and was inspired like I was. Thanks again.

And here's a question mark so my comment doesn't get auto-deleted?