Unusual Local Workouts

I thought I’d alert you to this article I wrote for Your Boulder last month, lovely lurkers, as it pertains to movement arts. Excerpt below, and find the rest at YourBoulder.com.

Ready to get out and try something new? Boulder’s a fit place — but there might be something beyond Crossfit that you haven’t tried.

Of course those of us who live in Boulder engage in all manner of hiking, biking, and/or yoga to keep ourselves the fittest city in the country. But those activities are pretty typical for a Boulderite’s workout. There are many more (strange and unusual) exercise options in our little city, some unique to our area, so why not try one out? Who knows, you might discover a new long-term practice.

Me doing aerial dance stuff on the climbing wall at Metro with my Stage Combat students. Talk about a bunch of odd workouts all at once!

Teaching and Learning with Technology

The latest event in my world is my presentation at the Teaching and Learning with Technology symposium over at Metro, tomorrow. My presentation will be in the afternoon, and is titled, “Expanding Possibilities: Blogging and Vlogging; Turning Students into Online Journalists.” I’m gonna cover blogging and videos as assignment alternatives–well, here, just read the abstract:

Assigning blog posts and/or videos instead of short papers as reading responses give students a venue to open their scholarship into the global classroom. This presentation will show how blogging and vlogging stimulate student writing while encouraging students to synthesize readings effectively, retain information, present themselves as commenters and writers, and express themselves via technology.

In honor of this, here’s a video assignment sample from my 9:30am Comp Class at Front Range. It’s from their Grammar Lesson assignments. They chose to do The History of Punctuation.

A Brief History of Punctuation. from Henna Taylor on Vimeo.

Random Not-Really-Movement Pic

Remember the Paul and Storm Brigade of Minions? I had a flashback to that and sifted through and found mine. They named me the Double Notecard LolMinion. I wonder when they’ll next Talk About Some Stuff For Five to Ten Minutes (on average), and I wonder when we minions shall be called upon to rise up…

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I Hear of Sherlock Everywhere

Well this is a treat, lovely lurkers: I had the great honor to appear on well-known Sherlockian podcast I Hear of Sherlock Everywhere, as a contestant for their quiz segment called “Mental Exaltation.” I appeared because I was drawn randomly from all correct answers to a Sherlockian trivia question, which is pretty cool by itself. “Mental Exaltation” consisted of three Sherlockian trivia questions, and the prize was a copy of Bonnie MacBird’s book Art in the Blood. Listen to see if I win!

Every link rings true

Look, lovely lurkers, I know I very recently made a brilliant and comprehensive Link List post, but I’ll tell ya: I feel the need to post this one for you too, and I’ll tell you why (my reasons are twofold): 

1) I was inspired by my Creativity and Innovation class last night. They had three reading assignments from the past couple weeks under their belts, and I sat them down at the beginning of class and said, “Hey, let’s talk about our readings.” What ensued was a fricking hour and a half of good discussion, of all the readings and then some. I mean…seriously. No blank stares, no “I didn’t do it,” just rich conversation. And they also made connections between the readings and previous ones, and with their current assignment. It’s just…really. I throw readings at you and you a) synthesize, and b) engage in stimulating conversation? Wow. That’s college. Or should be, anyway.   

2) I was digging through some archives from the stage combat course at Metro which hasn’t run for the past couple years and rediscovered many excellent resources besides (ahem) my book, which were very worth a re-read. Since so many of you lovely lurkers are new followers, too, you won’t have gotten these from me before. 

So. 

Without further ado: these are all required readings for my stage combat students. Since I have none right now, you all are them. Yer welcome.

Ne’er the Twain: an excellent scholarly musing about the martial and theatrical arts dichotomy.

David Bordwell compares Bond vs. Chan, showing what constitutes a good fight scene in cinema.

Striking Distance is actually a recent article from American Theatre magazine, which deconstructs different flavors of direct and indirect violence onstage.

5 Ways to Fight Like Mamet Writes. The title says it all, methinks.

Oh, and bonus points if you know from where I took the title of this post.

(The below meme was posted by a Metro student on the class blog.)

  

A Fight Recreation

If only there was a MSU stage combat club still: I’d ask which one you guys want to recreate ourselves. Below see the recreation of a fight scene from 300. It’s neato that they kept all their behind the scenes stuff visible–i.e. pads, mats, etc. I agree with the commenter that says this makes it more interesting, and actually I’d aver that it makes their fight look more interesting than the over-produced one from the movie. Thanks, i09, for posting the comparison.

The More You Holmes

I don’t do these enough anymore since I started writing for Sherlock’s Home, eh lovely lurkers? I’ll have to remedy that from now on.   ~Jenn

———————-

From: ep. 1.3

Line: SHERLOCK: I’m lost without by blogger.

Reference: in “A Scandal in Bohemia,” Holmes says to Watson something nearly verbatim: “I am lost without my Boswell.”  Since most contemporary audiences wouldn’t understand the Boswell reference, no doubt Mofftiss contemporized the phrase to make Sherlock’s sentiment accessible. What does Holmes mean when he calls Watson his “Boswell?” James Boswell was the biographer of writer Samuel Johnson. Boswell is widely touted as being the first biographer–i.e. the first writer to write a biography. Holmes is constantly calling Watson his biographer, and so the moniker Boswell fits, as well as being quite a high compliment, coming from Holmes.

  

Links That Are Link-esque

Here’s another linky list, lovely lurkers (oo, alliteration!), for your brain food happiness.   ~Jenn

Two articles re: William Gibson / Neuromancer supplied to me by Friend Harold, as I am now reading its sequel at his request. A Global Neuromancer and this one from Wired magazine.

This podcast ep done by  Friend Jason M. during which he and I hash out the “Genre Wars.” Many more linkish

This meme is about logical fallacies, which is one of the things I taught my Comp students about recently.

links on the podcast’s page, too–all stuff we discuss during the ep. It’s not a new one, but I had recently re-shared it to my other social media, so.

Friend Ian’s new book is out soon, and I wrote him a Foreward. I was a beta reader for this one, and I highly enjoyed it. It’s called The Lion and the Five Deadly Serpents.

I will be helping Friend Corbin out with his latest film (coordinating stunts, natch). Here’s his film production site, and the insane 48-hr-competition short called “Spinners” for which I also supplied the fight scenes.

Did you hear the big news about Patrick Rothfuss’ brilliant not-quite-completed trilogy?

Have you followed the other websites/blogs to which I contribute my writings? There are three: Your Boulder, Nerds in Babeland, and Sherlock’s Home. All three are worth following, not just for my work alone.