by Crazy Ivan
Just got finished with our engagement at North Shore Middle School and since I know that several of the students there are also avid readers of this blog (shout out to Momo and Shamrock!), I figured I'd give a quick recap.
We've been doing gym classes for several years now and they are consistently the most fun assignments we do in Myachi. But this one was unique; it was the first time we ever did the same school two years in a row.
It was a bit different. Most of the students already knew the game and had some sick skill. Even most of the 6th graders who were new to the school were familiar with Myachi, as it was big in all the elementary schools they were coming from. I actually felt bad for the sprinkling of kids who were seeing the game for the first time today. They were learning Cold Fusion and Under the Leg while others were learning Double Wolverines and Flying Clippers.
Today's crew consisted of Kid, Animal, Monk and myself, but we were only able to teach half the student body today. Tomorrow we'll be back to teach the rest of them and I'm looking forward to it. I'll be fresh off of watching the first football game of the season (and hopefully watching my fantasy TE racking up some points), but more than that I'm back in the swing of things. It was a little weird going back into a school after almost 4 months of hiatus. But by 3rd period today I was back in the groove and went into auto-pilot.
There's one more reason I'm stoked about it. I met a really cool kid at the school who, in addition to being a Myachi prodigy, also professed a love for juggling. He wasn't in our class today, but he'll be there tomorrow... and he promised to bring his juggling pins.
Sorry I didn't update the blog earlier and sorry the trick of the day is running so late, but sometimes the duties of a Myachi Master stack up. Luckily we jugglers are used to doing half a dozen things at the same time.
Thursday, September 8, 2011
Wednesday, September 7, 2011
You Should Take This Quiz
by Crazy Ivan
Actually getting the Wednesday quiz up on Wednesday because life just isn't fun unless you're doing something different from time to time. Enjoy:
Actually getting the Wednesday quiz up on Wednesday because life just isn't fun unless you're doing something different from time to time. Enjoy:
Candy at Myachi HQ
by Crazy Ivan
It makes perfect sense. There are kids at Myachi HQ. There should be candy there as well.
We got to talking about that the other day. Surely our customers would appreciate an enormous selection of brightly colored sugar when they walk through the door, right? Surely we could make a profit if we loaded up on enough junk food to give a hippo diabetes and then sell it to all the Myachi maniacs who frequent this establishment, right?
Well, there's only one way to find out and that's to buy a bunch of candy. And yeah, we did that:
It makes perfect sense. There are kids at Myachi HQ. There should be candy there as well.
We got to talking about that the other day. Surely our customers would appreciate an enormous selection of brightly colored sugar when they walk through the door, right? Surely we could make a profit if we loaded up on enough junk food to give a hippo diabetes and then sell it to all the Myachi maniacs who frequent this establishment, right?
Well, there's only one way to find out and that's to buy a bunch of candy. And yeah, we did that:
 |
| Pictured above: A ruined appetite |
There's actually some kind of healthy stuff, too, but for some reason blogger.com wants to orient the picture sideways when I try to insert it, so you'll just have to settle for less than half of our now massive candy collection.
I'm sure that our customers will appreciate it, but now I've suddenly been trusted around an almost unlimited supply of candy. This will not end well for me...
Going Back to School
by Crazy Ivan
Well, it's only fair. Nearly everyone who reads this blog had to go back to school in the last couple of weeks so there's no reason why I should be exempt. We just got the official word yesterday but it looks like Kid, Monk, Animal and I will spend the next couple of days doing my absolute favorite assignment in Myachidom: Gym class.
When I was in school I wasn't a big fan of gym. I loved to play dodge ball and I was pretty stoked when we did anything basketball related, but most of the days it would just be running track or learning about nutrition or something like that. I can say that in 12 years of gym classes, I never got to anything as fun as spending a whole day playing Myachi.
But that's what the lucky students at North Shore Middle School can look forward to on Thursday and Friday. We're taking over the gym and planting the Myachi flag smack in the middle of it. We'll spend the day teaching tricks, having contests, giving away prizes and showing off. On the whole, that's even more fun than dodge ball.
We actually did the same thing at the same school last year so this year we'll have the added benefit of many of the students already knowing some tricks and having some skills. There will be 6th graders that were in elementary school last year along with plenty of students that moved into the area or transferred schools since last year, but I'd expect that the majority of the people we meet this week will already know the game and at least know a few basic tricks. This will allow us to crank things up a bit and teach some much tougher stuff than we did last year. It also opens new doors when it comes to contests as well.
Schools are always the most fun venues for Myachi. You've got a captive audience so unlike FAO Shwarz or Dollywood there aren't any roller coasters or giant pianos competing with us for attention. What's more is that we're dealing with people who are fresh out of Algebra class and about to head to Geography so they're always eager to have as much fun as humanly possible.
I'll give a recap tomorrow or Friday once the whole thing wraps up, but I thought I should warn our loyal readers that the blog won't be updated tomorrow afternoon (I'll try to get something up in the morning though) as I'll be in the middle of teaching a class at that time. The Trick of the Day video will also be coming in a bit later than usual, but probably no later than yesterday's.
Well, it's only fair. Nearly everyone who reads this blog had to go back to school in the last couple of weeks so there's no reason why I should be exempt. We just got the official word yesterday but it looks like Kid, Monk, Animal and I will spend the next couple of days doing my absolute favorite assignment in Myachidom: Gym class.
When I was in school I wasn't a big fan of gym. I loved to play dodge ball and I was pretty stoked when we did anything basketball related, but most of the days it would just be running track or learning about nutrition or something like that. I can say that in 12 years of gym classes, I never got to anything as fun as spending a whole day playing Myachi.
But that's what the lucky students at North Shore Middle School can look forward to on Thursday and Friday. We're taking over the gym and planting the Myachi flag smack in the middle of it. We'll spend the day teaching tricks, having contests, giving away prizes and showing off. On the whole, that's even more fun than dodge ball.
We actually did the same thing at the same school last year so this year we'll have the added benefit of many of the students already knowing some tricks and having some skills. There will be 6th graders that were in elementary school last year along with plenty of students that moved into the area or transferred schools since last year, but I'd expect that the majority of the people we meet this week will already know the game and at least know a few basic tricks. This will allow us to crank things up a bit and teach some much tougher stuff than we did last year. It also opens new doors when it comes to contests as well.
Schools are always the most fun venues for Myachi. You've got a captive audience so unlike FAO Shwarz or Dollywood there aren't any roller coasters or giant pianos competing with us for attention. What's more is that we're dealing with people who are fresh out of Algebra class and about to head to Geography so they're always eager to have as much fun as humanly possible.
I'll give a recap tomorrow or Friday once the whole thing wraps up, but I thought I should warn our loyal readers that the blog won't be updated tomorrow afternoon (I'll try to get something up in the morning though) as I'll be in the middle of teaching a class at that time. The Trick of the Day video will also be coming in a bit later than usual, but probably no later than yesterday's.
Whoops!
by Crazy Ivan
I Started doing the trick of the day back in December, but at that point I was just linking videos that Myachi had already uploaded. We already had a few dozen moves so I figured I'd mix them in with some of the maniac-submitted videos and we'd be able to put together a new trick every day.
That didn't last long, of course, so before long I had to start recording new videos. That began on January 12th of this year so I've been at it 5 times a week for 238 days. That's a total of nearly 170 moves altogether.
I'd love to say that this has been an error free streak, but I'd be lying if I did. There have been (to my knowledge) 4 errors thus far, the most recent of which was yesterday:
After a single error in 8 months I manage better than one per week! I can only imagine how chaotic this whole thing is going to get if I let this slide continue. I'll wind up posting tricks backwards or something before it's all over.
So here's the deal: I'm going to redouble my efforts here and turn over a new Trick of the Day leaf. No more errors from here on out. I've got a super busy week this week so I probably won't be able to enact this right away, but I'm going to fix the four errors listed above. I'm going to refilm the Samurai video, add another one fingered trick and refilm the Grasshopper and call it by the correct name. Too late to do anything about the Melon Stall video, but since I repeated a trick I suppose I owe everyone another move this week anyway. I hope to have this all done by week's end but with a big school event coming up Thursday and Friday I may have to wait until the middle of next week.
...Hopefully I won't have screwed up again by then.
I Started doing the trick of the day back in December, but at that point I was just linking videos that Myachi had already uploaded. We already had a few dozen moves so I figured I'd mix them in with some of the maniac-submitted videos and we'd be able to put together a new trick every day.
That didn't last long, of course, so before long I had to start recording new videos. That began on January 12th of this year so I've been at it 5 times a week for 238 days. That's a total of nearly 170 moves altogether.
I'd love to say that this has been an error free streak, but I'd be lying if I did. There have been (to my knowledge) 4 errors thus far, the most recent of which was yesterday:
- The Samurai: I never even mentioned this, but after I recorded the Samurai video I looked back and saw that I'd messed the trick up. My brain had fuzzed out or something and I did (essentially) a Drop of Death from a Cradle. The Samurai is supposed to grind down from a Mantis. I've got a video up showing a completely different move.
- The Missing Trick: On the week I first returned from Tennessee we were doing one-fingered tricks. With all the driving, unpacking and catching up, I completely missed a day. I promised to make up for it over the weekend but I didn't have my camera. By the time I did it was too late to get the trick up in the same week so it never went up.
- The Grasshopper: Just spaced on the name on this one. There's a move similar to the Grasshopper called the "Flying Guppy" and when I did the trick I misidentified it. I said it wrong on the video, I titled it wrong and even loaded it into You-Tube wrong. Went back and changed what I could, but it will still serve to confuse anyone watching it.
- The Melon Stall: This was yesterday's trick. When I was putting together the update on the Tricktionary I noticed that I still didn't have a video for this basic move, which was why I did upper body stalls this week. I put up the Melon Stall video yesterday just to be reminded that I actually have already put up a video for that move a few months ago. I filmed a rerun.
After a single error in 8 months I manage better than one per week! I can only imagine how chaotic this whole thing is going to get if I let this slide continue. I'll wind up posting tricks backwards or something before it's all over.
So here's the deal: I'm going to redouble my efforts here and turn over a new Trick of the Day leaf. No more errors from here on out. I've got a super busy week this week so I probably won't be able to enact this right away, but I'm going to fix the four errors listed above. I'm going to refilm the Samurai video, add another one fingered trick and refilm the Grasshopper and call it by the correct name. Too late to do anything about the Melon Stall video, but since I repeated a trick I suppose I owe everyone another move this week anyway. I hope to have this all done by week's end but with a big school event coming up Thursday and Friday I may have to wait until the middle of next week.
...Hopefully I won't have screwed up again by then.
Tuesday, September 6, 2011
Tournament Prize Announcement
by Crazy Ivan
I haven't talked about it yet on this blog, but I'm willing to bet many/most of you have already heard that we've got a big tournament coming up this week. Any Myachi fans that are in the NYC area are strongly encouraged to come out to the Funky Monkey (in Greenvale, LI) and test their skills at Myachi Golf, Big Air, Long Toss and Freestyle. How strongly encouraged? How about this strongly encouraged:
Yeah, that's right. That means exactly what you think it does. The overall champion at this tournament will be walking away with the most valuable Myachi ever offered as a prize in any contest in the history of Myachi. The Clear.
This one will be coming from Myachi Man's personal collection and he's in the proccess of driving it up right now. I'd like to think that he's got a caravan of unmarked SWAT trucks around him, a helicopter flying overhead and Batman patiently observing from a remote location, but in reality he probably just has it in a box in his trunk.
For those of you who aren't familiar with exactly how rare this thing is, it has a trade value of 305 (for comparison, that's about 61 times as valuable as a common). There are only 30 in circulation in the world, it was made over 12 years ago and I once turned down an offer to buy my Clear for $2000. Seriously.
Anyway, if you were on the fence about coming to the tournament, get off the fence and come to the tournament. Sorry to all the people who are too far away (no way to Skype in on a Big Air contest), but for those of you who are close enough, you owe it to the people who aren't to show up and win this Myachi for them.
I'll have more details about the contest later on in the week, so keep checking in. We're getting started at 12 noon so you probably want to get there early and make sure you're signed up and everything before we get going. There will be a bunch more prizes (including gift cards redeemable at Myachi HQ) and plenty of impromptu games of Fu and MYACH. Winners will be featured on the blog on Monday along with a full recap of the day's events.
If you have any questions about the tournament, feel free to direct them to my inbox: crazyivan@myachi.com
I haven't talked about it yet on this blog, but I'm willing to bet many/most of you have already heard that we've got a big tournament coming up this week. Any Myachi fans that are in the NYC area are strongly encouraged to come out to the Funky Monkey (in Greenvale, LI) and test their skills at Myachi Golf, Big Air, Long Toss and Freestyle. How strongly encouraged? How about this strongly encouraged:
Yeah, that's right. That means exactly what you think it does. The overall champion at this tournament will be walking away with the most valuable Myachi ever offered as a prize in any contest in the history of Myachi. The Clear.
This one will be coming from Myachi Man's personal collection and he's in the proccess of driving it up right now. I'd like to think that he's got a caravan of unmarked SWAT trucks around him, a helicopter flying overhead and Batman patiently observing from a remote location, but in reality he probably just has it in a box in his trunk.
For those of you who aren't familiar with exactly how rare this thing is, it has a trade value of 305 (for comparison, that's about 61 times as valuable as a common). There are only 30 in circulation in the world, it was made over 12 years ago and I once turned down an offer to buy my Clear for $2000. Seriously.
Anyway, if you were on the fence about coming to the tournament, get off the fence and come to the tournament. Sorry to all the people who are too far away (no way to Skype in on a Big Air contest), but for those of you who are close enough, you owe it to the people who aren't to show up and win this Myachi for them.
I'll have more details about the contest later on in the week, so keep checking in. We're getting started at 12 noon so you probably want to get there early and make sure you're signed up and everything before we get going. There will be a bunch more prizes (including gift cards redeemable at Myachi HQ) and plenty of impromptu games of Fu and MYACH. Winners will be featured on the blog on Monday along with a full recap of the day's events.
If you have any questions about the tournament, feel free to direct them to my inbox: crazyivan@myachi.com
Starting a Myachi Club
by Crazy Ivan
The signs over the highway on the way to HQ this morning were sure to remind us that school starts today here in Long Island. Judging from my completely unscientific sampling of Facebook friends, they're some of the last kids in the country going back to school so I'm guessing that most of our readers have been back for at least a few days now.
Going back to school has its pros and cons, of course. On the downside you've gotta get up early in the morning and stay up late doing homework. On the upside you have an awesome STWAKOJ opportunity (there's also some kind of education or something that they do). This is especially true for those of you that got into the game over the summer and will be introducing it to your extended network of friends for the first time, but it is also true for the more long term jammer as well. Sure, your friends might have seen the game before, but I'm sure you've learned a thing or two since then.
There are a lot of ways to spread the word at school. You can jam between classes, of course. You can bring your Myachi to practice for pretty much any sport. You can get a circle going outside after school lets out. But one of the most popular and most effective ways is to start a Myachi club in your school.
That's not the right idea for everyone, of course. If you're the only person in your school that is into the game it might be too early to start a club. You can't have a one person club, after all. But if you've got a group of friends that are into it already or if Myachi is already semi-known in your school, a weekly club can be a spectacular vehicle for expanding the reach of the Myachi empire.
Running a Myachi club is a lot of fun and it can be a really effective way of (a) getting people into the game and (b) keeping them in the game for a long time. It's extremely rewarding for the person who gets it all started, but it can also be a lot of work. If you want to do it right, you'll be taking on the huge responsibility of making sure that it is fun and fresh every week. Ask yourself if you'd have time to make it a club everyone would look forward to going to every week. Be honest with yourself about the amount of spare time you'll be able to devote to it. If it's an hour long club you'll have to set aside more than an hour a week to it. You'll need at least twice that much time to prepare for each week's meeting (assuming that you want your club to be awesome).
We'll talk a bit more later this week about what you can do to keep a Myachi club fun week after week, but before we get into details about that, let's tackle the important topic. You've thought it over and decided that you've got plenty of time on your hands, plenty of eager members-to-be and plenty of ideas for your weekly meetings. But how do you get things started?
The actual procedure for starting a club will be different at every school, of course. In my experience, the best person to talk to about finding out those procedures is the school's secretary. They always seem to be accessible and know where to point you if nothing else. Sure, the principle will know as well, but they're usually scarcer than the secretary.
Most schools will require that a teacher or coach "sponsor" the team in some way. They'll have to be at the weekly meetings or, at the very least, have to put their seal of approval on the idea of the club. For some people this is the hardest step in getting the club going, but the easy way out is to just start teaching your teachers how to play the game. If you teach 5 or 6 of them, odds are pretty good that at least one of them is going to fall in love with it. In fact, I'm willing to bet you already know which teacher at your school would be most likely to love it. A good rule of thumb here is that when in doubt, try the gym teachers.
So the things that you'll (probably) need to get started are:
Obviously, the next logical question is "How do you make your club fun?" but to tackle that one I'll need a whole new blog post. Keep an eye out later this week...
The signs over the highway on the way to HQ this morning were sure to remind us that school starts today here in Long Island. Judging from my completely unscientific sampling of Facebook friends, they're some of the last kids in the country going back to school so I'm guessing that most of our readers have been back for at least a few days now.
Going back to school has its pros and cons, of course. On the downside you've gotta get up early in the morning and stay up late doing homework. On the upside you have an awesome STWAKOJ opportunity (there's also some kind of education or something that they do). This is especially true for those of you that got into the game over the summer and will be introducing it to your extended network of friends for the first time, but it is also true for the more long term jammer as well. Sure, your friends might have seen the game before, but I'm sure you've learned a thing or two since then.
There are a lot of ways to spread the word at school. You can jam between classes, of course. You can bring your Myachi to practice for pretty much any sport. You can get a circle going outside after school lets out. But one of the most popular and most effective ways is to start a Myachi club in your school.
That's not the right idea for everyone, of course. If you're the only person in your school that is into the game it might be too early to start a club. You can't have a one person club, after all. But if you've got a group of friends that are into it already or if Myachi is already semi-known in your school, a weekly club can be a spectacular vehicle for expanding the reach of the Myachi empire.
Running a Myachi club is a lot of fun and it can be a really effective way of (a) getting people into the game and (b) keeping them in the game for a long time. It's extremely rewarding for the person who gets it all started, but it can also be a lot of work. If you want to do it right, you'll be taking on the huge responsibility of making sure that it is fun and fresh every week. Ask yourself if you'd have time to make it a club everyone would look forward to going to every week. Be honest with yourself about the amount of spare time you'll be able to devote to it. If it's an hour long club you'll have to set aside more than an hour a week to it. You'll need at least twice that much time to prepare for each week's meeting (assuming that you want your club to be awesome).
We'll talk a bit more later this week about what you can do to keep a Myachi club fun week after week, but before we get into details about that, let's tackle the important topic. You've thought it over and decided that you've got plenty of time on your hands, plenty of eager members-to-be and plenty of ideas for your weekly meetings. But how do you get things started?
The actual procedure for starting a club will be different at every school, of course. In my experience, the best person to talk to about finding out those procedures is the school's secretary. They always seem to be accessible and know where to point you if nothing else. Sure, the principle will know as well, but they're usually scarcer than the secretary.
Most schools will require that a teacher or coach "sponsor" the team in some way. They'll have to be at the weekly meetings or, at the very least, have to put their seal of approval on the idea of the club. For some people this is the hardest step in getting the club going, but the easy way out is to just start teaching your teachers how to play the game. If you teach 5 or 6 of them, odds are pretty good that at least one of them is going to fall in love with it. In fact, I'm willing to bet you already know which teacher at your school would be most likely to love it. A good rule of thumb here is that when in doubt, try the gym teachers.
So the things that you'll (probably) need to get started are:
- A few friends that want to join the club
- A teacher or coach's support for the club
- The school's specific procedures for starting an after school club.
Obviously, the next logical question is "How do you make your club fun?" but to tackle that one I'll need a whole new blog post. Keep an eye out later this week...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)