Quillstress » Fun

John Rives, Performance Poet

quillstress — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 03:05:37 +0000

I put up a Youtube video by an artist named Taylor Mali a few posts ago. I enjoy his spoken word performances immensely, but I think Rives is now my favorite. There are quite a few of his Youtube and TEDTalk videos I would highly recommend but I’m going to post “The Boy Who Could Levitate” here for your consideration. In an interview for the Sundance Channel he once said “I’m up there for a lot of reasons, soul bearing being one of them, but I’m a performer, I’ll lie to you.” I’ve found that one difficult to get young poets to think about, but it’s easier for them to understand when I’ve used his “Op-talk” performance to start them thinking. How do you tell the truth by creating fiction? He also talks about it being “that collision of Homer and Homer Simpson that turns me on.” Mmm, an English Teacher’s fantasy. lol A great statement to discuss with students as well. Anyway, hope you not only enjoy this link but go and find the others I’ve noted at the bottom of this post. He’s truly amazing, but I will warn you to screen anything for use with students as he does work venues where he uses language not appropriate to school.

Op-Talk

Is 4am the New Midnight

If I Controlled the Internet

Sign Language

Emoticons

Gorgeous

Dramatic Renewal of Purpose, Part I

quillstress — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 18:43:42 +0000

Well, this year was one of the first in memory where I didn’t want to go to school one morning..and it was only the third day of school. Why is long, complicated, multi-faceted, and was helped along by the fact that I’ve been breathing at about 50% capacity for most of the summer and I’m just exhausted. I came home and decided I needed a “dramatic renewal of purpose” as Berkeley Breathed once put it in his Bloom County comic strip. So, since I don’t have any video from the Regan era, I turned to YouTube….and Taylor Mali on What a Teacher Makes. I share it here in case you’re wondering why you didn’t go to flip burgers at McDee’s instead of going through those big double doors.

More fun for crazy people…and Xenobiologists.

quillstress — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 22:01:25 +0000

A little widget showing off the organisms I’ve created in the Spore Creature Creator demo version. You can get the demo for free, the full creature creator for $9.99, and the game for a lot more…but not for 17 more days. This is the one my gamer friends AND my nephews are looking forward to in the near future. It is oodles of fun, highly open-ended for creativity…and still manages to be a bit of a biology lesson. Physics applies and, if you build a bad conformation into it, the creature will manifest this in “play” mode.