Category Archives: Game

Family reunions and “batchi ball”

Nationality: American
Age: 18
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA; Indiana
Performance Date: 4/29/15
Primary Language: English

The informant was discussing several things her family does for family reunions, so I asked her to elaborate on the details.

“We do family reunions, and one of the traditions is we wear really horrible t-shirts that have our family crest on top. And they’re usually like a super garish yellow and they’re super ugly, and the back of it says, ‘memories build traditions,’ and during the reunions we usually play horseshoes and batchi and my grandpa makes ice cream… We used to hold them down by my grandparents’ house, and they live in southern Indiana on the Ohio river, and there was always a tree down, and so my grandpa would take slices of the tree, like he’d take cross sections of branches, and he’d write ‘[family last name] reunion whatever year,’ and then he’d write like a quote from the reunion, like something that happened and then he’d lacquer it and drill a hole on the top and he’d give it to everyone for Christmas.

We play batchi ball… batchi ball is like a giant rectangular area, locked off by a string, and then you toss a ball around and then you have a really little ball, and the goal is to get the little ball as close to the bigger ball as possible. It’s kind of hard to describe without showing. It’s like an Italian game, I think… it can be made of different materials. Ours is made of a kind of… I think it’s like a metal ball and it’s covered in plastic, and they’re about the size of two fists, and you.. there’s… like four different sets of colors and two teams will… choose a color and you can have up to four teams, I think. And then, um, you basically take turns… OH, no no, this is how it works: you toss this little white ball in the middle of the thing and you can toss it either really close or really far, and whenever you toss it you want to toss it to the furthest corner, because then the goal of the rest of the game is to toss the larger balls and get them as close to the small ball as possible… but if they go out of bounds, then it doesn’t count. So, if you put it in the side corner, then no one’s gonna be able to reach it. Because the heavier balls are heavier and hard to toss”

Family traditions, especially family reunions, are quite common. But as illustrated above by my informant, some families go to great extent to make sure those reunions are a big deal and memorable. Games seem to be a common theme of family reunions, but making t-shirts is probably less heard of.

The catch phrase game in improv theatre

Nationality: American
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA; Austin, TX
Performance Date: 4/29/15
Primary Language: English

The following informant is a performer for an improv troupe at USC called Second Nature. She told me about this game they play in order to warm up when I asked her how they get ready for performances.

“There’s this game that’s been played for generations in Second Nature, where everyone has their own catchphrase, and so you go around in a circle and like I have six catchphrases and you have six catchphrases, and the way that the game is, is that I pass my catchphrase to you, so like one of my catch phrases is ‘what a DUMP!’ and one of yours might be like ‘or when are we?’ I don’t know, so they just pass like that and it’s just something that’s weird and so everyone keeps their catchphrases and its kind of passed on, like the funny catch phrases are always well-remembered… whenever you come on to the troupe, its like your duty is to learn, to come up with six catchphrases and they can be anything that you want and we play as we warm up, so like every rehearsal we warm up for 15 or 30 minutes, before and then before shows we warm up 15-30 minutes and then I’d say almost always play that game before hand. It’s always the same catch phrases for yourself. There are no written down rules, we just pass it along to each other and really good catch phrases from generations stick around ”

The above game is similar to the type of games Second Nature plays during shows, and it’s easy to see why they use it as a warmup. Different troupes have different strategies and techniques, but Second Nature’s inherited method appears to be the catch phrase game. It’s quite possible that the nature of the game itself has been transformed through the many generations, as improv is, after all, a theatrical art that is constantly changing; every performance is unique and ephemeral because of the inherent nature of improv, which is short for “improvisation.”

Tres Elefantes- Spain-South America

Nationality: Spanish
Age: 20
Occupation: student
Primary Language: Spanish
Language: English and French

The following are lyrics to a never ending song that i learned as a child and to my surprise so did kids in Panama, Peru and Spain. The following was recorded from my friend from Spain Ana Mula Diaz. The only difference between the song that I remember and the one she tells us is the word she uses for balancing. which speaks of a slight choice of words difference between Mexico and Spain but the meaning is the same.

Informant Singing in a 1-2 1-2 1-2-2-3-4 rythym

Informant: Un Elefante se balanceaba sobre la tela de una arana.. y como veia que resistia fue a buscar otro elefante….. dos Elefantes se balanceaban sobre la tela de una arana y como veian que resistia fueron a buscar otro elefante..tres elefantes se balanceaban sobre la tela de una arana y como veian que resistia fueron a buscar otro elefante…

Translated

Informant: One Elephant was balancing over the thread of a spider and since he saw that it resisted he went to find another elephant…. Two elephants were balancing over the thread of a spider and since they saw that it resisted they went to look for another elephant… three elephants were balancing over the thread of a spider and since they saw that it resisted (held) they went to look for another elephant…4

 

The song never ends it keeps going on an eternity, I was shocked that the song is so old that kids in Spain sang it too. The meaning is very imaginative and it probably came as tok says from a creative genius child. we didn’t realize at the time that we sang it that it was so illogical for an elephant to balance himself over a spiderweb let alone 100 elephants. but this song was a part of our childhood and when we were really little the loser would be the one who couldn’t count that high or the one who wanted to stop singing.

The Pink Tutu

Nationality: American
Residence: McKinney, TX
Performance Date: 4/19/15
Primary Language: English

When his granddaughter Lauren was a little girl, she was the biggest tomboy in the family. She was entirely devoted to sports and bugs, and hated girly things, especially the color pink and the ballet lessons her mother tried in vain to make her take.

As a joke for her 12th birthday, he got her a pink tutu. Because the entire family, including other aunts and uncles and cousins, lived nearby, the whole family was there when Lauren opened her grandfather’s present. Naturally, everyone including Lauren was incredibly amused.

Lauren ended up regifting the tutu back to her grandfather that very Christmas (again, in front of the whole family), which kicked off a new family tradition. Each gift-giving holiday (Christmas, Easter, any family member’s birthday), the tutu passes to another family member. The gifter always attempts to regift the tutu in a creative fashion. Some have put it on stuffed animals, others opt for more of a surprise regifting by hiding it inside another present or wrapping it in a box specifically shaped for a different gift. It’s always a challenge for each subsequent recipient to figure out a new and funny way to regift the tutu.

The tradition has been going on in his family for a little over a decade now, and it’s well-known even to family members who live too far away to participate as frequently as the group who lives in North Texas. It’s a way to keep the family close to one another, even as grandchildren graduate and go off to college or even move out of the house to start their own lives in new cities. The family always looks forward to seeing who the next recipient of the tutu will be, as it has become a main event during family holidays and gatherings.

Pokemon’s Lavender Town Urban Legend

Nationality: Irish, American
Age: 24
Occupation: Student, Freelance Writer
Residence: Dallas, TX and Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: 4/10/15
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

Though it’s just an urban legend, the informant finds the legend of Pokemon’s Lavender Town to be entertaining due to its creepy nature. It’s one of the most well-known urban legends involving the Pokemon games.

The incident in question occurred after the release of the Japanese version of Pokemon Red and Green, when a number of Japanese children committed suicide. In the Pokemon videogames, there’s a location on the map called “Lavender Town.” It’s a real location in the game, and the player must travel to Lavender Town on his or her journey in order to beat the game. However, the music that plays in-game while the player is in Lavender Town is incredibly unsettling. Some versions of the story say that the programmers encrypted a code into the song that would cause the kids to commit suicide.

The urban legend has been proven false, but the story still persists. The informant thinks there are a couple reasons why. The first reason is that people genuinely like to be scared. “That’s why scary movies are popular, right? People love this stuff. It’s creepy. It’s supernatural,” she said. Another reason she cites is that the song that the legend is based on is actually a creepy song in real life. “It’s something about the tones used in the song. It makes you feel unhappy, gives you a sinking feeling when you listen to it.”

Other versions of the legend say that Lavender Town’s song is so sad because the town exists as a memorial to all the Pokemon that have ever died in the Pokemon universe.