The Boys Consider "Art-Sports" / Plus, KU Baseball Hits the "Big Time" / And a New Edition of Look Who's Twittering Now!

Yesterday's New York Times alerted the boys to an alarming new trend: the rise of new "sports" which combine performance art elements with competition. "Circle rules football" for instance, is described as "a freeform sport" that is "30 percent soccer, 20 percent rugby, the rest pure Dada," created by a NY actor as part of an experimental theater project but now having spread to at least eight cities around the world.

Other "art-sports" discussed in the piece include “1 v 1,” an alternate-universe form of one-on-one basketball involving a paddle-wheel and ice tongs" and "bag tag, a relay where competitors change into costumes — polar bear, bag lady — as they race to scoop detritus like milk cartons or old stuffed animals into color-coordinated trash bins."

And then there's "whiffle hurling," which "constitutes art because its smirky costumes (ruffled collars, Indian dhotis) and team names (St. Brendan’s Reformatory for Incorrigible Self-Knowing) subvert the conventions of sportsdom."

What do the boys think?


Chip: "Just because you're a pale-skinned hipster who got picked last for baseball games in eighth-grade doesn't mean you have to 'subvert the conventions of sportsdom' and ruin things for the rest of us."

Richard: "I will not be at all surprised when I show up expecting to see a kickball game at Hobbs Field this summer and instead find local author King Tosser and local kickball star Reverend H. dressed as polar bears and engaged in a game of 'bag tag.'"

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Speaking of unecessary sports, KU's baseball team ended their season with two major home victories (and capacity crowds) over 11th-ranked K-State. They will enter the Big 12 Tournament as a fifth-seed, their highest ever. LJ-World sports columnist Tom Keegan says in today's paper: "[Coach] Price calls everyone “Big Time.” It’s time to call Price’s baseball program the same."

Richard attended yesterday's game. Does he agree?

Richard: "When I took my seat at packed Hoglund yesterday, I thought to myself, This popularity is just a fluke, a bunch of bandwagon fans of the sort that packed the Fieldhouse for the women's basketball tournament. But when I saw White Owl appear in the third inning to rally the fans with a bizarre chant about rain, or maybe rainbows, I knew that we'd indeed hit the big time."

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Each Monday we feature a new local Twitterer, and this week is Free State Brewery. Their Twitters sound about as drunken as you'd imagine:

"full at the bar open outside cask ad astra still on tap"

Follow the Twitter feed at: www.twitter.com/freestatebrews