FERRY HALIM, MASTER OF WHIMSY

The world of computer games, and, consequently, of computer game players, can get very harsh. Despite the endless possibilities of faster processor and more graphic glories and completely surrounding sound, most of our games are given over, as we are, to violence. Not that violence can't be fun. Not that there's anything wrong with violent games. Just that there are far too few respites. Ferry Halim is one of the few. A true respite.

Ferry Hallim demonstrates that all it takes to make something as interesting to play with as violence is a little applied whimsy.

Whimsy. Hallim is a master of it. His games are true diversions, invitations to worlds that simply don't take themselves very seriously. He is the creator of light-hearted games that are bouyant enough to lighten-up even the dark of desire and the heavy of heart - at least for a few minutes. Like the game Summer Walk, where you make three bird-like things hop into the good floating things, to the tune of the pleasant guitar. Or A Cupid's Day where you, as Cupid, shoot arrows into clouds.

O, and while you're there, don't forget to sign Ferry's guest book.

Whimsy. What a powerful concept.

FLUXX

What's the most simple game you know?

Tag? S'easy! Pass the Parcel? Child's play! Pin the tail on the donkey? I could do it blindfolded! Cricket? (hang on, how did that get in there? shurely shome mishtake?) Certainly not!

I'm sure we could all come up with a list of a few games that were SO straightforward to play, that it would be easier to buy a bit of authentic moonrock from an alien whose just landed in your back garden, than come up with a less complex game. But I think I have it.

What could be more easy than having a pile of cards and one simple rule: TAKE A CARD, PLAY A CARD?

Well, that's the starting point of Looney Labs' amazing FLUXX.

The game starts with you having 3 cards in your hand. Then you take one from the top of the remaining pile, and play a card.

"Wow! Sounds like a heapload of fun!" you cry sarcastically. As well you might, were that all there was to it. But that's where the game starts to take on a life of its own. You see the pack contains cards that have a whole host of new rules that take precedence over any pre-existing rules. Reread that sentence again so you get the full impact of what it says.

So you might play a card that says pick up FOUR cards, so now the next person takes FOUR cards and plays ONE - jeepers, your hand's gonna be fuller than a very full full thing soon. Next, another player adds another new rule. Oooh 'eck, it's HAND LIMIT OF ZERO - you gotta get rid of all those cards you've been hoarding from picking up 4 a turn! It looks like you worried unnecessarily about growing a bigger pair of hands. Next card played is RULES RESET - great, we're back to where we started. And so it goes.

Although it may not seem like it, there is a point to the game and that is to meet whatever GOAL is in play at the time - GOALs, of course, can change as the rules do!

So soon, what was a simple card game with but one rule becomes the most mind-numbing cerebral challenge you've taken on since that fiendish Sudoku in the Times on Saturday! And the game is therefore never the same twice?

I have something to add at this stage, and this is a TRUE story. A group of pupils and I won an all-expenses paid trip from the UK to GENCON in Milwaukee (to me it will always be home of "The Safe House" - surely the best eatery and drinkery in the world! and a SPIRITUAL WEIGHTLIFTER of the future). Whilst at GENCON, someone I did not know came up to me (I repeat, I swear this is true) and said "I'll buy you that game" pointing at FLUXX. I was taken aback at this offer from a stranger, but being a Scot at heart, I wasn't going to look a gift horse in the mouth. He went on, "and if you don't like it, I'll give YOU, MY money back!" And so he bought it for me, adding before he departed, "I just wanted to do that to somebody - to introduce them to that wonderful game".

And do you know something? Since then I have done the same thing TWICE to complete strangers. It's a wonderful feeling to do something as unpredictably generous as that.

So having said all that, WHY is FLUXX a SPIRITUAL WEIGHTLIFTER? Well I think it gives great hope to us all that something of such perceived simplicity can grow and develop into a complex and enjoyable challenge. There' s a message in there for us all I think.

JOSH RITTER

"Now my work is done,

I feel I'm owed some joy,

Oh Imogen and Abelard,

I'm your homeward boy".

So begins "Bright Smile", the first track of one of the most incredible CDs I have ever had the privilege of listening to, or, for that matter, owning.

Josh Ritter is the singer-songwriter responsible for the majestic beauty that is "Hello Starling" and it's the sort of CD that gives you that warm feeling all over. As you hear each of his songs and as its melody works its way into your brain, you feel like your life has just been enriched.

His songs are of a timeless quality - the sort that I for one thought that only Bob Dylan could write. Close your eyes and listen to "You don't make it easy babe", and it could easily be The Master at work.

I thought I'd seen every conceivable way to say how much a woman means to you, but this opening line "All the other girls are the stars, you are the northern lights" is exquisite. A beautiful, beautiful expression of love that in one fell swoop knocks the poety of Robert Burns, or wordplay of Shakespeare, into a cocked hat.

It's strange to think that songs like these can have been written by the offspring of 2 neuroscientists from Moscow. Of course the Moscow in question is in the US state of Idaho, but his parents were quite clearly of a scientific bent. They made such an impression on him he fully intended pursuing a career in medicine.

That was the plan, but with his debut recording, itself with the nostalgic and emotive title "Golden Age of Radio", he immediately established himself as a very special talent.

Josh can make even the most melancholic of ideas seem vibrant and effervescent, describing the disappearance of snow with "birds beneath my window dustying their wings upon the lawn" paints a wonderfully vivid picture of exactly that!

Likewise in "Burning Man" he describes a man in a chaotic downward spiral of his own making - yet the song is so uplifting and, well... positive. You can sense that here is a man "burning at both ends" who in accepting the consequences of his own failings, refuses to let those keep him down. He'll be back, but he wants to do it on his own terms. He doesn't want to drag other well-meaning people down with him. We, as listeners, can learn from this, and it the sort of song that echoes through your head long after you have heard it.

Josh Ritter will be a star of that I have no doubt, but for now he is certainly a SPIRITUAL WEIGHTLIFTER.

THE BIG BUS

Some of us have favourite toys, some of us have special blankets. You know what I'm talking about? Yes, exactly! COMFORT OBJECTS. Well, it is perhaps unusual to think of my next choice for SPIRITUAL WEIGHTLIFTER, in this category, but there you go, if nothing else I'm unpredictable.

The Big Bus (but not this Big Bus, by the way) is my 10-year old son's Comfort Blanket.

"Why so?" I hear you cry, "How on earth can a wee boy have a movie as his comfort blanket?" Well, as you might guess, I'm going to tell you.

It all started one cold November evening about 5 years ago, in deepest, darkest, Rickmansworth. Euan was feeling a bit down, and his mum was out for the night. I promised to cook him his favourite food at the time (in the way that kids have that same-food-every-night thing, until they sicken of it and move onto something else for a month or two). His 'food-of-the-moment' was pizza, and little did I know I was about make (probably) the most catastrophic decision of my parenting life. I overcooked the pizza! So much so did I overcook it, that when Euan, with his already dickie tummy, ate it, it stayed inside him for all of about 10 mins before he threw it all up over his bedclothes. [The reason this was the "most catastrophic decision of my parenting life" was that to this day Euan still will not touch pizza - my incompetence at merely heating through a frozen product has made my son pizza-scarred for life!]

"Now what the h-Ecclefechan has this got to do with The Big Bus?" I hear you cry. Well, Dear Reader, I'm about to tell you. When Euan came downstairs to tell (and, er... show) me he'd been sick, I happened to be watching my favouritist ever comedy film, THE BIG BUS. In the UK it is rarely shown on TV, but it happened to be on that particular night. And Euan loved it! The thought of an out-of-control, sabotaged, nuclear-powered bus hurtling through the heart of America seemed to immediately take his mind off his food-related mishap.

He was transfixed to the screen. A small smile initially appeared on his wee mouth, and soon this turned to chuckles and then guffaws of laughter - to the extent that he asked me to play it again (luckily, I had it on video) as soon as it finished.

And so was initiated one of those traditional family events and, despite its genesis, a wonderful father-son moment has developed between us - no one else in the family really 'gets' it - it's special to us. It's got to the point now, that whenever the wee man feels ill, he says to me "Dad, I think this calls for The Big Bus" and I instantly know what he means!

What more can be said about the quality of a film (by the way, Citizen Kane it ain't) to entertain, than its ability to make a 5 year old boy forget he's just projectile vomited all over his favourite Thomas the Tank Engine quilt cover? It predates 'Airplane' in terms of its gag-a-minute surreality and it predates 'Speed' for the bus-that-can't-slow-down-cos-it's-got-a-bomb-on-board-ishness.

The gags are great (well, *I* think they are, so there!), in this author's humble opinion, far outstripping any other comedy I have ever seen. Joseph Bologna and Stockard Channing head an all-star cast thundering from New York to Denver on a nuclear-powered bus, which is supposed to make the trip with no stops. The bus is a luxury vehicle, complete with, of all things, a piano bar, swimming pool, bowling alley and dining room.

For me the stand-out gag is this: an elderly lady, runaway from home, tells a doubting priest how happy she was that god put her in the seat next to him. The Father unexpectedly launches into a rant, "If it was god that put you here, why didn't he give you a fancy window seat like mine? I, Kudos, a doubter luxuriate in a window seat, while you, aging with age, get older yet in that disgrace of an aisle seat! Where is your god now old woman?!" The visibly shell-shocked senior citizen responds, "Jesus, I'm sorry I asked!"

So if you know a pizza-phobic, seek out The Big Bus, it very well may serve you the way it has wee Euan! Forget antibiotics, The Big Bus should be available on prescription!

ZE FRANK

Ze Frank is perhaps one of the most prolifically playful presences on the web.

There are so many examples of his work that he is sharing, virtually for free, that it is difficult to select any as truly exemplary. Let's begin with this rather straightforward collection of virtual matchstick puzzles. Why? Because it's what you'd expect from a collection of virtual matchstick puzzles: clear, challenging, easy to use, fun to solve. Not particularly playful, but respectful of play and the needs of players. Now let's try just one more game-like experience. It's a Memory Game. All right, it's Concentration. But notice how each image is animated? Now it's truly a virtual game, not just translating a card game into the electronic medium, but transforming it.

Now take a look at Ze's Animated Snowflake. Not a game at all, but a unique bit of interactive delight. Technologically sophisticated. Easy to understand. Lovely to behold.

And here's one more, well, maybe two more examples of yet another gift of Ze's playfulness. It's called "Blow." It's an invitation. People are asked to send in a picture of themselves, blowing. Ze adds their picture to a growing blowing collage. It's, well, silly. It's also an invitation to fun and sharing and community. And here's one more: My Cat Annie. It's a statement, is what it is, of the further reaches of Ze's playfulness. And, for those of us who wonder whether this world can be made more fun, it's a reason for hope.

DAVE GORMAN

What sort of person or thing do I consider to be a SPIRITUAL WEIGHTLIFTER?

Well for me, it's something or someone who makes you feel, well, em, er... good. If listening, reading, tasting, smelling or whatever to them helps makes you feel like your troubles are a million miles away, then for me, they qualify!

My first SPIRITUAL WEIGHTLIFTER is British comedian, author, television presenter and many other things besides, DAVE GORMAN .

Reading or listening to his work (examples here, here and here) is just, well...uplifting. It just is! His projects and work, are so, well... downright weird, but at the same time so flipping wonderful, that one can't help but laugh at the very premise and concept, never mind the outcome.

Dave specialises in taking the most bizarre of notions, such as finding as many people as he can with the same name as himself! The thing is though, Dave doesn't so these things because there is particular artistic merit in the project, nor because it is going to change the world. He does so, simply because his mate challenged him to do it in a pub (look out for his mate being a SPIRITUAL WEIGHTLIFTER of the future)!

So, he sets out to find 10 Googlewhacks in a row, or 50 people called Dave Gorman, just 'cos his pal challenged him that it couldn't be done. How many of us have faced a challenge like that from a friend? Most of us, I'd guess. "Bet you can't balance a bottle of milk on your chin", "bet you couldn't climb Ben Nevis clad only in your underpants" etc etc - I've certainly been posed those challenges and others besides. But I never had the nerve or guts to actually try to meet any of those challenges. [Although I do know a man who's sellotaped bacon to famous landmarks around the world! But that person's story is best left for another day.]

As you read or listen to his work, you may find coincidences too convenient or notions too far-fetched - "can that really have happened?", you'll undoubtedly say - but that's the fun, six degrees of separation, as first stated by Frigyes Karinthy works if you try it, and somehow, so do Dave's tales. Your thoughts about the incredible convenience of the ending (that you should have seen coming) to one of his books, or the sheer unbelievability that he could have such a stupid thing are soon replaced (and I mean very soon) with the intensity of you willing him on. "Good for you Dave! Well done you! " you are bound to shout - well I know I did!

Dave's stageshow has met with accolades and the DVD of the show always used to be the first thing I'd turn to whenever I felt down. But, having unfortunately loaned it to a friend, I miss not having it to hand these days. [By the way, I say 'unfortunately' not because I regret giving it to a friend - I did so 'cos a felt their spirits could do with being lifted - but because they never returned it. However I know that their life is richer for having it to hand when they need it, so that's alright by me.]

So arise DAVE GORMAN, Drew's SPIRITUAL WEIGHTLIFTER No. 1.

Spiritual Weightlifters

There are certain people - therapists, clergy, artists, friends, your spouse or children - who are exceptionally good at making you feel, well, lighter. Not necessarily enlightened or anything deep or high like that. But lighter. They know how to make light of dark things that happen to you. They take that certain load off your mind or heart or whatever is weighing you down.

It's a skill, is what it is. It's sometimes performed with humor. Sometimes with simple companionship. Sometimes with even simpler listening. And it often requires great emotional strength. Because we get so heavy. Because, when someone really helps, they have to share the weight.

These people are what we are calling "spiritual weightlifters." And this weblog is a small gift that we are devoting to them and what they do.