Life-Sized Angry Birds: A Video Game Comes to Life!!

Has anyone ever played Angry Birds? Rhetorical question, right? lol. But, have you ever tried Life-Sized Angry Birds?? Its a ton of fun, just like the digital counterpart, and I'd like to thank Morgan and Lucy at the Community Library Network at Post Falls for suggesting it =D

What you'll need:

• Slinghot 
• Plush Angry Birds
• Cardboard Boxes, Oatmeal Containers, etc.
• Optional: Green balloons with painted pig faces

The slingshot that we used was a three-person water balloon launcher. The larger slingshot was perfect for the plush angry birds that we had found.

The library goes through a lot of cardboard boxes as we send and receive books and such, so we just grabbed a few that we had and set them back up. We also found random things like oatmeal containers, and my boss's husband used to work at a Styrofoam plant, and he gave us some of the leftover pieces.

I divided our participants into two teams. One team would build a structure, the other team would knock it down, and then we would switch. Words of the wise; give the team building the structure a set time limit, and possibly have a minute to two-minute game that the other team can play while they wait (or maybe have some questions like, "what have you been reading this summer?").

A big part of the Angry Birds game is obviously the points, but I couldn't figure out a legit way to make that happen in real life. But, if you do, let me know. While we didn't have points, the kids had a great time building things up and knocking them down.

Honest Trailers: (Not) The Only Website Keeping Movies Honest

So you know those blog posts about HISHE (How It Should Have Ended) and The Editing Room?? Those sites that makes fun of movies in such a way that we admit that our favorite movies have problems but we still don't get mad at the people making fun of them?? Well, I have another one for you:

Its called Honest Trailers, its put together by a YouTube team called Screen Junkies and its tagline is "Watch as your favorite horrible movies get reviewed, spoofed, and made fun of right before your very eyes."

The two that I watched were Star Trek and Independence Day (and now The Amazing Spider-Man as witnessed by my including it above), and all three were pretty hilarious. Now, we all know whats wrong with our favorite movies (which is why all three spoof sites have the same movies on them) but its still funny to admit it as you watch these trailers =D

Check em out!!

P.S. The only reason I chose Star Trek, Independence Day, and The Amazing Spider-Man to include in this post is because I really, really enjoy the movies, not because I actually dislike them. Just so we're clear.  

Basketball Fun and Games

So I was originally going to do this post during the NCAA Final Four, and when that didn't happen I was going to do it during The NBA Finals, and when that didn't happen, I've decided to do it for Hoopfest.

Ball Toss

A basketball event wouldn't be a basketball event without a ball toss, and given the fun we had at our Football event, we definitely included it. This time, instead of knocking stuff off of a table, we were trying to land the balls inside of buckets. This wasn't as easy as it looked as the balls kept bouncing out.

Bouncing Polymer Balls

So I stole this Bouncing Polymer Balls recipe from About.com, and if we would have had more time to complete it, it probably would have worked. But, I wasn't as familiar with the recipe, so some of our bouncy balls came out more like sticky slime...but it was totally worth it. Basically you add borax dissolved in water to a glue and cornstarch mixture and knead it like crazy.

Bracket of Awesomeness

So I also borrowed this idea, this time from Air 1's Brant Hansen. Basically you create a bracket like most basketball tournaments, but instead of two basketball teams, you are pitting two awesome things against each other. Have your participants randomly populate your bracket with things that they think are awesome, and then vote as to which one moves onto the next round. Keep going until you have the awesomeness champion.

Super Bowl Fun and Games

It might be a little late for Super Bowl party ideas (or ridiculously early lol), but these activities were a lot of fun, and might work for some other things too.

I "Heart" books

You know those fans that write messages like, "Kaepernick is the best" or "I 'heart' Flacco?" Well I thought it would be cool if we did the same thing with books =D

Paper Football

Some of my friends will be really bored at a restaurant or something, and inevitably, out comes the paper football. Did you know that there is actually a fun (albeit simple) game that goes along with it?

Target Practice

What's better than throwing a bunch of plastic balls at oatmeal containers, paper towel rolls, and cups? Not much apparently hehe. This was one of our favorite activities actually.

Food

I figured that a Super Bowl party wouldn't be complete without the food, so we bought some chips and some pop, and all together, we had a great time!

The Editing Room: Like HISHE in a Written Format

So while I was finding some images for The Amazing Spider-Man movie showing this Saturday (6-8:30pm if you want to come lol), I stumbled across a website that is pretty hilarious. Its called The Editing Room, and it basically abridges the scripts of popular movies. But, it doesn't only abridge them; it abridging them in ways that pokes fun at all the idiosyncrasies, errors, cliches, and plot holes that show up in the movie, and is therefore quiet hilarious.

Thinking about it, this website kind of reminds me of HISHE (How It Should Have Ended) in a written format. We all love movies, and even when a movie has a lot of problems, we still love it. HISHE and The Editing Room play on our love for movies while still admitting that they have problems.

While these problems are typically pronounced, we don't like to admit they have problems because we love the movies anyways. But, HISHE and The Editing Room turn these problems into hilarious videos and scripts, and so we forgive their blatant poking at our favorite movies lol.

While both websites are hilarious, I have a word of caution about The Editing Room. HISHE videos are typically devoid of language or sexual references. The Editing Room on the other hand seems to adapt their script to the movie it is based on. So, if the movie had language and sex in it, The Editing Room script has language and sex in it (and sometimes the abridged scripts has some language even when the movie doesn't). 

Let me know what you think =D

Darth Vader and Son: What if Vader raised Luke? LOL!

Darth Vader and Son by Jeffrey Brown

Why did I read it?

I popped into work today, my second day after a two-week vacation, and my boss was checking in some new books. I recognized some of the artwork from some posts on Pinterest, and I couldn't resist reading it.

What happened?

Anybody remember Star Wars? Everybody right! =D

Well, instead of Darth Vader being reunited with his long lost son and having some problems, imagine Darth Vader raising Luke Skywalker instead.

Now, imagine that this is actually in a comic strip format and its actually for laughs instead of a serious story.

You would be imagining Darth Vader and Son, and you would be laughing a part of your body clean off!

What did I like or not like?

This collection of strips isn't very long, but it is so worth it! The author did an excellent job taking all of the quintessential lines from Star Wars, and working them into a comic situation between Darth Vader and a four-year-old Luke Skywalker.

As an example to whet your appetite, this is one of the ones I really liked:

Darth Vader is looking over the shoulder of his young son, and demands, "Luke, why aren't you ready for school? I'm here to put you back on schedule. Perhaps I can find new ways to motivate you."

Obviously it's so much better with the illustrations, but that gives you a taste of this witty collection of awesomeness :)

Wingsuits: Because It Is Cool

So a couple weeks ago, I was brainstorming cool things, and wingsuits came to mind. I thought that I might share something about them on Twitter or Facebook. Then, I was chatting with some friends about jumping off of rocks, and other reckless things to do, and wingsuits came up again. Then I was thinking about some cool website to share today, and wingsuits seemed like fun :)

If you aren't familiar with them, wingsuits are "a special jumpsuit, used in extreme sports like a parachute, which adds surface area to the wearer's body to create lift," according to The Clean Dictionary (something I heard about from Netted by the Webbys which I will most likely be doing a post on soon). Anways, these things are better seen than described, so here is a video of Jeb Corliss pretty much flying.

HISHE: You Can't Watch Only One

So a large part of Techno Tuesdays is to let you know about great resouces at your library, and online. But, another part is just to show off some cool websites. One such website is HISHE (How It Should Have Ended), and if you haven't heard about it, you are in for a treat.

There tagline is "sometimes movies don't finish the way we'd like." So, to rectify the situation, Daniel Baxter, Tommy Watson, and Tina Alexander do a monthly animation parody of a popular movie.

Now, two things about these parodies. First, they are hillarious! This group of creators are extremely talented and funny. Secondly, these videos are addicting! You know how some chips are marketed with "You can't eat only one?" I think that applies to these videos as well.

To give you a taste, I've attached a HISHE video. This one is called Super Cafe: Super Social Network, and it paradoies the characters of Batman and Superman. Enjoy!

What was I doing this morning?

Can't resist a little ridiculousness every once in a while :)

Zombie Storytime