Friday, September 17, 2010

"Career Options" (big wad of connections)

I've been reading (slowly, occasionally) Killing Monsters: Why children NEED fantasy, super-heroes, and make-believe violence, by Gerard Jones. I had talked to Marty about it, and to Holly, but hadn't written anything.

Day before yesterday I found a cool, recent blogpost by Hema Bharadwaj called "About Violent Games. Last night I put it on my Video Games: Applications to Other Pursuits page. My favorite part is this:
There is a cd we have with Jerry Seinfeld stand-up shows on it. We listen to it often while driving around the maniacal roads of India.... puts up in a good mood :-) So in one of the clips he says "When men are growing up, reading about Batman, Spider-Man, Superman, these aren't just kid fantasies. These are career options." That one really cracks me up... cause both Raghu and Ravi nod their heads whenever they listen to him say it :-)
This morning I was reading An Actor and a Gentleman, an autobiography, and Lou Gossett, writing about his childhood said, "During those days, I was living a Walter Mitty fantasy life, dreaming that I could be the Green Hornet or Captain Marvel or anyone I wanted."

Raghu as Perseus
(found in Asterix comics)

(links to Hema's blog)



While I'm in line at the post office, which is several times a week, I'm reading Vermeer's Hat: The seventeenth century and the dawn of the global world, by Timothy Brook. It's all about connections. Killing Monsters is my book to read in the kitchen. The Louis Gossett Jr. autobiography has been mostly in the bedroom.

1 comment:

Karen said...

Just yesterday Taipan finished making a video that was inspired by video game playing. He's demonstrating the various death actions that he has when he battles. Video games have led to a lot of cool things for us.