Poshdeluxe

(YAY! my blog is fixed!!! thank you thank you matt, oh mighty techno guru pants!)

sunday offered me the chance to do a little experiment: which is better, kid play or adult play?

and NO i don’t mean that in any sort of *inappropriate* way. i actually mean– who plays better, kids or adults? is it easier to have fun when you’re a child, cos you’ve got lots of toys and a rampant imagination? or is it funner to be an adult, cos you can like, drive and drink martinis (not at the same time, obvs) and do yr own grocery shopping?

on sunday afternoon, i had a play date with jodi and her little girl, arden, which provided me with the opportunity to indulge in a LOT of little kid fun. it helps that jodi is pretty much the coolest mom i know, plus arden is, well, totally adorable.

our afternoon began with some art-making, which involved some animal stamps followed by a lot of embellishment with a permanent marker. here’s arden, hard at work on her masterpiece.

i have to admit, there’s something really satisfying about using stamps– esp. when the penguin comes out juuust right, with the ink all even and dark. if i could include some stamp usage at my job, i think things would be a lot more enjoyable. maybe i could add a few animal stamps to my collection, which at the moment includes “urgent” and “par avion.”

next we played this bingo game that arden has transformed into a sort of hop scotch routine. basically each bingo card is a store, and then you try to get the items that belong in that store. arden, being the creative spirit she is, likes to jump on to each card while jodi follows along with one of the cards, until they reach the right place.

i have to say, the creators of this game *totally* knew what they were doing. i mean, the toy store? the bakery? these are obviously the best places!!

guess which place SARAH would like to visit?

we took a chocolate milk break, which a lot of adults don’t do. this is definitely a bonus for kid play.

then arden pretended to eat some soup, which took the form of some plastic wrap, while lounging on her little couch. if i could achieve this position at work, i so would.

it’s definitely easier to lounge when you’re a kid, cos you can fit in more places.

after our snack break, it was time to JUMP ON THE BED!! YESSSSS!!!! ok, there is NO adult substitute for jumping on the bed, unless you count trampolines, but the only adults i know that have trampolines are josh baskins in “big” (fictional character) and henri (his has a huge hole in it). and when arden jumps on the bed, it’s a *major* production featuring a stuffed lion, jodi singing and “baby the giraffe” (yes, that’s her name) drumming. check it out:

if jodi hadn’t been there, i proooobably wouldn’t have resisted the urge to bounce on the mattress with arden (although the dress lift, not so much).

as if jumping on the bed wasn’t enough, we also went for a walk… to the playground! and see, usually, if you’re an adult, you’re not allowed to just hang out on the playground, cos people will think you’re pervy. but if you have a kid? no problem!

owen, arden’s dad, came along, cos he needed advice.

that’ll be five cents, please.

and then of course there was swinging! lots of swinging! and when you’re little, it feels like you’re going a lot higher, cos there’s more distance between the ground and yr feet. plus you can wear yr fancy dancing shoes.

the only problem is that, when yr feet don’t touch the ground, you need a little help. that can be quite frustrating, esp. when yr dad won’t push you high enough! hello?!!

as you can see, kid play pretty much ruled with arden and jodi. as evening approached, i wondered how it would stack up to my night of adult play at the sxsw interactive facebook party.

first of all, GUESS WHAT. the facebook party was held at PANGAEA, you know, that uber posh nightclub that took over the old alamo building!!! i was really really curious about how it would look, and uh, wow. totes surreal.

obviously the “f” lights aren’t usually up, but this is the main room of the club, which is where the actual theater used to be. i never knew that this building could look so… night-lifey. plus the bathrooms had *attendants.* POSH.DE.LUXE.

and while i don’t think i’ll ever frequent pangaea ($200 for a bottle of tito’s? just so i can have the pleasure of sitting at this small table? seriously?), it was pretty fun to be there for a free party. esp. cos check it out, they gave us laptops!

not to take home, unfortunately. but still!

and yes that is matt, who is in town for sxsw. MATT I AM SO GLAD YOU’RE BACK! with yr hip new space shoes!

so we had a laptop, and there was a screen behind us that showed whatever was on the laptop. of course you could only go to facebook sites (matt tried myspace, but surprise, the FB people had actually thought of that), but it was still really fun to play around with people’s pages and see them on the big screen behind us. i totally felt like we were at a hacker party, i.e. the totally rad club in “hackers”, sans rollerblades. i told this to matt, who then typed this on his iphone and took a picture of it. cos he is a nerd. i mean, hacker.

well, he *did* hack his iphone, so yeah. he’s obviously a hacker (nerd).

even though the computers weren’t nearly as cool as the bingo shop game i played with arden, i do have to say that the free drinks at the FB party were a *little* better than chocolate milk. but just a little. plus i got to stay out past my bedtime, and kids don’t always get to do that without permission.

and then there was more technology! first, we accidentally found this new plug-in for pictures that you guys should *totally* download. it’s called piclens, and i can’t really explain it, but it makes browsing yr photos extra EXTRA fun.

and THEN this guy came over and took our picture and told us that he was using some kind of wireless memory card (which he INVENTED) that instantly posts every picture online. then he proved it. look!!!!!!!

he took that picture like two minutes before matt took this one of me! that’s cray!

in comparing my two experiences, i discovered that kids and adults (well, at least me and my friends, who are maybe adults but not really “adults”) can both get a lot of enjoyment out of something simple, as long as they have a playful attitude. some might call this immaturity. example: we began heavily abusing our screen for our own entertainment, which meant finding pictures of ourselves on FB and then recreating them.

exhibit A: henri, recreating his famous “that’s r. kelly behind me!” photo

exhibit b: matt, recreating his famous, “don’t mess with my saturn missiles, fool” photo

by the end of the night, i realized that i play just as much as an adult as i did when i was a kid. but adults just have more technology, so instead of making stamp animals, we look at pictures of each other on the internet. or something. and we have real money instead of fake money, which, ok, is pretty much a letdown.

although i have to say, adults take their lounging just as seriously as kids.

i’m sorry matt, but i think arden does it with a little more panache.

maybe, in an ideal world, we could have both. like, this facebook party could still have its laptops and open bar, but it could ALSO have a giant trampoline and maybe a slide or two and some markers and paper.

although at the rate we’re going, soon FB will launch its new kid networking site and arden will totally make all kinds of new friends and constantly change her status from “meeting mr. cat” to “naptime!” to “drinking chocolate milk, holla!”

i guess i don’t really have a conclusion to this study, except to say that now i’m really in the mood to watch “big.”

LINKS

please someone with a dog buy one of these and take a picture for me. SO AWESOME.

have you guys seen the pics of the watchmen movie characters? ZOMG!