Aggressive Piglet Superstar

Aggressive Piglet (Agresszív Kismalac) is the hero of many Hungarian jokes. Aggressive Piglet is also a personality type: unable to admit whe he's wrong, bullying everyone around him, and completely oblivious to subtle hints - or, rather, hints of any kind.
Sounds familiar yet?
Yes? No? "What the heck?"

Well, fortunately for the rest of the world, many Aggressive Piglet jokes translate into English without a hitch. And because no one has been doing the global favor and injecting Aggressive Piglet into mainstream culture, I decided it was time Piglet made the jump onto the big stage.

Telling a Piglet joke is easy. Start telling it as any other joke, then randomly scream at people in your rudest voice. For some reason I have not quite figured out yet, the vast majority thinks it is funny to tell them that way.

WARNING!
Aggressive Piglet, no matter how cute and cuddly the name would lead you to believe, is not politically correct, not child friendly, and sometimes just all-around rude.
YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!!!

Here we go.

Piglet is sitting on a tree. Rabbit walks by.
"Piglet, what are you doing?!"
"I'm eating cherries!"
"But... Piglet, that's a pine tree!"
"SHUT UP! I BROUGHT SOME!!!"

Piglet is riding a bike. He turns a corner, runs into a wall, falls over. Rabbit runs up to him.
"Oh my god!!! Piglet are you all right?!"
"SHUT UP! THIS IS HOW I PARK!!!"

Pretty blonde walks down the street with a piglet in her arms. She meets a friend. Friend cheerfully: "Oh my god it's so cuuuute!!! Where did you get it?"
Piglet: "SHUT UP! I BOUGHT HER!!!"

Aggressive Piglet and sparrow are sitting on the tram. It's winter, bitter cold. Sparrow chirps up:
"Piglet, could you please close the window? It's cold outside!"
Piglet mutters something, stands, closes the window. A few minutes later he yells at Sparrow:
"SO IS IT WARMER OUTSIDE NOW?!"

Pigler marches into a restaurant and plops down by a table. Waiter walks up to him, very politely: "I'm sorry, but this table is reserved."
"SO BRING ME ANOTHER ONE!!!"

Piglet walks into a train station.
"I want a round trip ticket!"
"Sure. Where?"
"THERE AND BACK, DAMMIT!"

Piglet's last words: "WHO THE F*** IS THAT STUPID GUY PICKING BERRIES IN A FUR COAT?!"

Piglet is driving a truck, and gets stuck under a bridge. The police shows up, the officer walks over to the truck.
"Hi there Piglet, are you stuck?"
"NO DAMMIT I'M TRANSPORTING A BRIDGE!!!"

Piglet walks into a bus station.
"I want a ticket!"
"Where to?"
"NONE OF YOUR DAMN BUSINESS!"

Piglet travels on a bus. Old lady shows up. Piglet:
"Would you like to sit down?"
"Yes, please!"
"WELL, YOU CAN'T!"

Piglet shows up at the doctor's office.
"I got kicked by a camel!"
"Where did it kick you?"
"WHERE DO YOU THINK?! IN THE F*** DESERT!"

Piglet to the doctor:
"I think I have anger issues."
"What makes you think so?"
"TOO MANY QUESTIONS!!!"

Piglet walks down the street.
"F*** people, f*** cars, f*** streets, f*** lights, f**** city, I wish they would go up in a puff of smoke!... F**** SMOKE!!!"

Piglet is failing an exam. Finally the teacher decides to be nice:
"Fine, I'll let you pass with a D."
"I'M NOT GOING ANYWHERE!!!"

Piglet runs a red light, gets pulled over by the police. Officer:
"Piglet, that will cost you 200 dollars."
"I'M NOT BUYIN' ANYTHING!!!"

Piglet falls into a pit. Rabbit shows up.
"Wait Piglet, I'll get you a ladder!"
"I'M NOT WAITING!!!"

Piglet catches the golden fish.
"Piglet, if you let me back in the river, I'll make one wish come true!"
"DIE!"

Piglet is cooking a golden fish by the river. Rabbit shows up.
"Oh my god, Piglet! That fish could have fulfilled three wishes!"
"HE DID!"

Piglet meets a nun and headbutts her.
"BATMAN, YOU'RE WEAK!!!"

And finally, the all-time classic:

Piglet needs a lawnmower. He decides to go over to Hedgehog and borrow his. On the way over to Hedgehog's, he starts thinking:
"I'll just stop by and ask him to lend me the lawnmower. Hedgehod is such a nice guy, I'm sure he'll agree. I mean, he is usually nice. Most of the time. He has usually been nice to me. Except once. I don't think he really likes me. He gives me those looks. I think he thinks I'm not good enough. I bet he doesn't trust me with his lawnmower. He will be all like 'Piglet, you are goin to break it'. I think he hates my guts. What a jerk. And that lawnmower is ancient, so what's the big deal? Just because he's always thought I was stupid, that's no reason to refuse me!"
Piglet finally gets to Hedgehog's, knocks on the door. Hedgehog opens is.
"Oh hey Piglet, what can I do for you?"
"F*** YOUR LAWNMOWER, HEDGEHOG!!!"

(The picture has been linked from this website. Check it out, it's cool!)

Stories in the Ark – Storytelling Festival in Ann Arbor, MI

One sentence: I shared a greenroom with Maynard Moose.
I am still a little starstruck.

Being invited to the Ark as a featured teller was a real honor, and I had been looking forward to traveling to Ann Arbor. I have to say right away that it was an extremely well organized event. It was also their twenty-fifth storytelling festival, so they probably had time to work on the details. They really treated us like royalty.
I flew in Friday afternoon and was invited for dinner to Judy Schmidt’s. We sat together in her beautiful home decorated with hand-made quilts; they even had another guest, Sándor, who was all too happy to talk with me in Hungarian. We spent long hours talking together about Hungary and Hungarian culture; we also talked about history, music, languages, and anything else that came to our mind. Then, when I was about ready to fall asleep, I was taken to Beverly’s, who was going to be my host for the weekend.
Saturday morning we went to Willy Claflin’s workshop at the local library; the workshop was about character voices, and we had great fun coming up with different emotions, personalities, and different voices for all of them. We also had huge bags of puppets to play around with, and we got to meet some of Willy’s own entourage, among them Maynard, whom I have been hearing about for more than four years, but somehow I never managed to catch him on stage (I even have some of his CDs). It was a great workshop! And we got cookies in the end.
Saturday evening was the big concert for the festival – four tellers, three hours straight, and the house was full! We all gathered in the green room of the Ark, with its walls covered from floor to ceiling with signatures, drawings and messages from the various artists who have performed here in the past decade. Whenever I was not doing something, I kept reading the walls.
As for the concert: Barbara, our emcee, did a wonderful job, both with introducing us and with looking after us backstage, making sure we were all set and we had everything we needed to be happy little storytellers. Lyn opened up the concert with an amazing part-historical, part-family story; I was listening from backstage, waiting for my turn, but even her voice alone was delightful to listen to, even with such a serious story.
I was up next, and I had a full hour for Hungarian stories. I decided I was going to do a show of Pályuk Anna tales – I can’t get enough of her stories, and I have been practicing them at the University School, so I thought it was time to introduce them to grown-up audiences. I told four stories: The boy who walked on the clouds, The Dream of the Fairy Queen (that one I have not told in English before, but I greatly enjoyed it now), The Dancing Princesses (Anna’s version is full of little details that I love), and Where have all the fairies gone? (which Anna used to tell in first person, and so did I). The hour was over before I noticed, and it was time for intermission.
(By the way, the greatest thing about the Ark? The audience has popcorn. I felt like a movie star!)

In the second half, Allison opened with song and story. I can see why she was so successful at the Moth; her personal stories were exquisitely crafted and hilarious at the same time. She also has a beautiful singing voice; before we left, she caught me in the hallway, and sang me a Hungarian song. What a surprise!
Willy Claflin, of course, was the hero of the evening. He had us laugh until we cried; he brought out Maynard, and a squeaky lobster, and a short tribute to Gamble Rodgers, and songs. Time flew and none of us noticed; bass started booming under out feet from the ground floor, but nobody cared. Everyone agreed it was a great evening.

Sunday afternoon we had a performance for family audiences, which in this case meant about 150 people, mostly kids (and even more popcorn). Allison, Willy and I had 20 minutes each, and we made good use of it too. Even though standing on a well-lit stage makes audience participation a lot more complicated, the kids were great. I told my Ragnar and Thora story (dragons are always a success), and they guessed all the right answers right away; I also told When elephants could fly, and they seemed to enjoy it a lot. They sang along with Allison, and participated in her Indian folktale, and of course, no one is loved more by the kids than Maynard (even though I also greatly enjoyed Gorf the frog’s version of Froggy-went-a’-courting, accompanied by a turquoise flyswatter).

We signed the walls; we exchanged cards; we talked and laughed before and after concerts in the green room. The great thing about storytellers is that they are such amazing, friendly people, even with someone like me who is just starting to experience the big stage. And the people of Ann Arbor really made us all feel right at home.

I returned from the Ark filled with experiences, ideas, and enthusiasm. This should keep me going for a very long time.

Changeling: the Dreaming

Changeling: the Dreaming (CtD) is the roleplay game of infinite creativity, and the importance of imagination in everyday life.

The game in a nutshell: you play a character who has the mortal body of a modern day human, and the immortal soul of a fairy tale creature (such as a Troll, a Satyr, a Sidhe, a Pooka, etc.) Mortals see you as just another guy on the street - but other Changelings like you see you for exactly what you are, butterfly wings, goat legs, magic swords and all. You desperately need Glamour ("the stuff dreams are made of") to survive in the boring mundane world - you need the company of people who hope, dream, create and imagine. You feed of their creativity, and that's what keeps you alive; if you have to live without that, you slowly fade away and forget what you really are. You can also cross over into the world of the Dreaming - the collective world of imagination. But if you spend too much time wandering the landscape of folktales and legends, you might forget that you are also human, and with that, you lose your sanity. All your life (many lives, actually, since immortal fae souls are always reborn in a new mortal body) you balance on the thin line between fantasy and reality, and if you do it well, you are able to heal both worlds, so close to each other and yet forever apart. You are something more than just mortal; you are strange, and unique, and many times downright weird; you see things nobody else can, and the only thing that can really hurt you is Banality, the power of boredom and lost hopes.

It really is a fascinating game. It resonates especially well with storytellers (who basically live the Changeling life to begin with) and gamers (who like knowing that strange can mean good things too). At first, it can be a bit hard to grasp, but once the game really starts, it is more fun than any other RPG I have ever played. The best thing about the "Storytelling system" is that it has a huge emphasis on creativity, to the point of giving up scores and dice altogether to create a better story together.

We played 4 sessions of Changeling, adding up to about 5 and a half hours of gaming time. We had to split the class into two groups of seven; both groups played the same story, but with different Game Masters, and different characters in each.
Without further ado, here are some highlights of our Changeling game:

Nockers
They are the tech masters of the Changeling world. Remember the Grimm tale about the elves who sneak into the shoemaker's shop at night and fix the shoes? We are talking about the same guys here, except evolved into the 21st century. They can create virtually anything, using Glamour and an appropriate pile of junk, and their special ability is that the more they swear while doing it, the better the result. No Nocker creation is flawless - there is always something wrong with them in the end. Artists know what I'm talking about.

Our two groups had 3 Nockers: two guys and a lady. They supplied machines, weapons and ideas all through the adventure. One of them turned a TARDIS they found into a DeLorean (still bigger on the inside) by a collective swearing marathon; one built a portal gun from a six-barrelled gun (and he had to spin it every time and hope that he would get the right barrel at first try). Two of them together built a mechanical rooster (for hunting down a basilisk) from the collective contents of the group's pockets: duct tape, a student ID, a credit card, two bazooka shells, half a dozen fairy arrows, 1 dollar's worth of change, and Santa's hat. The lady remodeled Robocop into a motorbike. McGyver's got nothin' on these guys.

Trolls
They are big, they are strong, they are blue, and they are the noble knights of the fairy world. We had two of them, one in each group: an ex-cop with a bazooka and a greatsword, and a bartender with a baseball bat and a sawed-off shotgun. They had simple yet effective solutions to every obstacle that stood in the group's way. The ex-cop would yell "It's science time!!!" and fire off a warning shot. With the bazooka.

Eshu
We had four of them, and they were nothing alike. Eshu are the spirits of storytelling, constantly traveling, constantly looking for adventure; our team included a chick fashionista, an Arabian warrior, an Indian diplomat with a British accent, and a traveling magician from East Tennessee. They were out for the stories, and lead their teams across the world of the Dreaming that only storytellers can really navigate without getting lost forever. They also had very neat ideas, like building the portal gun out of a Nocker weapon and a legitimate fae spell, or killing the basilisk with a rooster's crow (the good thing about playing with storytellers and Harry Potter fans: you don't have to explain what you are talking about).

Cantrips
Spells in Changeling are called cantrips. Basically, the player has to come up with an idea for a ritual that makes the magic happen. It can be classic spellcasting, like drawing runes and magic circles - or it can be something completely different, like standing around a snow castle, unraveling a sweater, and singing a song from Spongebob while holding hands. The better the ritual, the more dice they get for rolling for success, and the more likely the spell will actually succeed. Returning to the portal gun example, the ritual included our British Eshu running around the gaming table at breakneck speed, screaming "speedy thing goes in - speedy thing goes out!!!"
(Yes, I know it all sounds ridiculous. News flash: it sounds like a bunch of people playing a game and having fun together. We need a lot more noise like that in the mundane world...)

All in all, the adventure was tons of fun. Everyone was creative, enthusiastic, and engaged; there was a lot of laughing, a lot of applauding each other, a lot of excitement, a lot of dice, and a lot of "hell yeah!!!" moments along the way. We all soaked in a bunch of Glamour. It should last us for a while.

Dungeons and Dragons

For those of you who have been wondering: yes, the Roleplaying Class (also known as Creative Interactive Storytelling) has officially started!

I cannot begin to tell you how much fun it is. No, really, I can't. I walked into the classroom the first day of the semester, and it was filled with people I knew I was going to love. We just had to say the word "roleplaying" and the class filled up in no time - we even had a waiting list! We ended up with 14 people, including me (in a weird place between being a student and an instructor - officially, Dr. Sobol is the teacher, and I am the Game Master of the course).

It took us one look to count the Doctor Who T-shirts in the room; it took us 10 minutes to get to the first arrow-to-the-knee joke. We had dice ready in our backpacks, and rulebooks, and sonic screwdrivers; we spoke a language that left everyone else slightly baffled, but we understood each other just fine. I felt right at home; it has been a while since I last ran a tabletop RPG, but I felt like I finally found my people. Five minutes, and we were laughing together. And we had not even started playing yet.

That was for the next class. Seven of the fourteen came with D&D characters ready, and we jumped right in the deep end, into the world of dungeons, dragons, and critical hits. I made up a short campaign that would last three sessions (about four hours altogether). Every beginner in the class became an "apprentice" next to one of the experiences gamers for the first class; two days later, they took over the characters, and kept playing.
It was, all in all, an amazing experience. I had no clue how I was going to run a game with 13 people in it in such a short time; also, it was an issue of trust, and playing with strangers is always more of a challenge than playing with friends. Add to that the fact that I had never actually played D&D before - in Hungary, we play M.A.G.U.S., which is pretty close to D&D, but still not the same. But whatever doubts I had and however nervous I was, the moment I said the opening words to the story, I knew I was going to be fine.

Because I am playing with great people, that's why! The group was well rounded in its own way (for those of you who speak D&Dese: all Neutral and Chaotic with the occasional Good), and included a bunch of fun characters: an elf sorcerer and his (occasionally fluorescent) cat familiar, Mr. Squiggles, who totally stole the show and got his own backstory; a dwarf rogue with two pistols and a Sean Connery accent, excellently played; the only two humans in seven, a fighter named Ironfist and his bard companion, Trevor, who quarrelled like an old married couple; the only girl in the group, a rogue half-elf who liked all things shiny; an elf druid generally labeled as "the hippie", the healer and the brains behind the whole operation in his own quiet way; and another half-elf rogue, pretending to be a noble.
Take this team of misfits, lock them up in an inn and a snowstorm over a mountain pass, toss a Shadow Wight at them, sit back, watch the show. For those of you who don't borrow Dragonlance monsters on a daily basis: Shadow Wight is a nasty little thing made of shadows that sucks on the Charisma of people while making them see their own darker self and scaring them into a catatonic state; and the best part is, its victims forget about the attack as soon as it happens, and if he drains a human, only leaving the empty clothes behind, everyone else will forget they ever existed. Kind of makes investigation hard, if there is no one missing...

My little team of 13 made a splendid job of the whole story: there was suspense, mystery, ingenuity, and an epic fight on top. And of course, we had to stop every once in a while to roll around on the floor in fits of laughter.
(My favorite moment came from the elf druid: "Shut up and let me concentrate, all of you. I am going to speak Dwarven. Here we go. Beer. Beer, beer, beer. Beer. Long, red moustache. Beer. Beer, beer. Really rough sex. Beer.")

The first three sessions of D&D were good for a number of things: for one, they allowed the group of random classmates to turn into a team that can work and have fun together; they needed to have the challenge to face to learn how to pay attention to each other, and how to solve anything I can throw their way by acting as a team instead of a bunch of lone wolves. And they did really well with that.

Then, of course, there was the storytelling aspect of it (it is still a storytelling class, after all). Once the adventure ended, we spent a whole class going over the story we created together. We sat in a row, and tossed an apple at each other; I told one part of the story of our glorious adventure, then tossed the apple to somebody else, who continued and ran with it, and so on and so forth. At first, everyone was a little shy from narrating the story instead of playing a character, even though they had to do it in the first person; just by calling it "storytelling performance" instead of roleplaying, everyone, even me, was out of their comfort zone. That is, up to the point when, in the middle of well-improvised inner monolgues, the bard took over, and yelled "Shit, Ironfist, I thought you said we have money!!!". And suddenly, something clicked; we finally realized at the same time that this was exactly the same as playing a character in the game. And from that point on, all through the rest of the story, "decent" turned into "awesome". All the people who are not professional storytellers or even storytelling students displayed a wide range of natural talent in recounting their own adventure, solely based on their roleplaying experiences and personal creativity.
Sky is the limit!

As the class goes on (we are going to start playing Changeling: the Dreaming this week, to sample another kind of roleplaying experience), I am having more and more fun. It only took the group a week to suggest playing outside class; we got together today for a Sunday afternoon gaming session, just for the heck of it (complete with pizza and a whole bunch of deliciously unhealthy food). I turned the Hangover into a D&D adventure, and the little team of gamers aced the whole thing! They took my half-cooked adventure idea, and turned it into epicness, complete with humor, self-sacrifice, CSI: Forgotten Realms style investigation, and a great fight scene in the end! As usual.
We played in the school cafeteria (a nice quiet place on a Sunday); people kept stopping to take a look at what we were doing. Some recognised the dice and the character sheets, some didn't; but I guess we were loud enough to make it pretty obvious that whatever we were doing, it was fun.

Because, people, playing games is important, now more than ever. Playing them with a group of great people instead of a computer screen is even better! And if said games happen to involve a lot of spontaneous storytelling and adventures that you will talk about for weeks to come, you really found one of the best ways to spend a Sunday afternoon.
I am not even going to mention getting university credit for the whole experience...

Grimm Year 2012

Guess what? Project Grimm is officially online!

Check out our brand new blog here:

Project Grimm

for videos of European storytellers performing Grimm tales in various languages!

Happy Grimm Year, everyone!

MOTH Story Slam - Creative Competitive Narcissism

After we bounced off the three-blocks-down queue waiting for the last Moth Slam in New York City in December, we smartened up and reserved tickets in advance for the first one in January. I only had two weeks to spend in New York, and I was not going to miss the Moth twice. We have heard and talked so much about it in class, I owed my inner storyteller to go when I had the chance.

The first MOTH Slam of 2012 was titled "Rebound" - my friend Kata and I braced ourselves for a healthy dosage of breakup stories. And the cold. Having tickets suddenly felt like an extremely good idea the moment we spotted the long line of people waiting to get in - and the much shorter line for smart (paranoid?) people like us.
The venue was a nice bar called Southpaw in Brooklyn; by the time everyone filed in, it turned out to be able to house about 300 people, and some of them even had a place to sit. The best part? The whole audience seemed to be the exact age group that is almost impossible to lure into a storytelling event under normal circumstances: young people between 18 and 35(ish). Everyone was loud, cheerful, excited and very, very hip (in fact, the whole setting looked like a hipster bomb had just exploded in it, which is probably not all that surprising in Brooklyn). Everyone got drinks, settled down, and many even dropped their names into the bag, including yours truly, who did not buy a ticket to the event to not get a chance to tell.
Finally, the host of the evening showed up on stage; veteran MOTH-fans probably know him by his name, which we did not manage to catch, so we cheerfully nicknamed him Hagrid, and decided after 5 minutes flat that he was the best part of the show. Loud, sarcastic, wicked, and a lot of fun, he carried the whole thing successfully through the evening, being a jerk equally to everyone when he needed to be and being nice when we were not looking.
The slam works pretty much how slams usually work: you put your name in the hat (bag), ten names are drawn, and you have five mintues to dazzle the audience with a 5-minute true(ish) personal story connected to the theme. Three goups of judges were hiding in plain sight in the audience with big scoring tablets to reward you points for the experience. They had funny names.
It soon turned out that we were right about the theme: it did bring in an awful lot of breakup anecdotes, as well as a few stories abour dodgeball, go figure. It was abundantly clear after the first two tellers that we were dealing with professional slammers here: the stories were well told, hilariously funny, unique in their own way. The audience cheered and applauded whenever there was a pause (and not just because Hagrid bellowed instructions to them to go "batshit crazy", please). Also there was no filter on whatever one wanted to talk about; we were all grown-ups there, and far, far away from the delicacy of the fairy tale world (insert air bunnies there).
When the third slip of paper was drawn from the bag and Hagrid's face grew long with alarm and confusion, I was already half out of my seat. When it comes to reading names out loud, "What the f***" usually translates to "Csenge Zalka"
And I was right.

Slamming stories is a lot of fun. Especially to an audience like that. 300 people well into their first drink, instructed to go batshit crazy; a reflector in my face (I could do without that, but oh well) and no clue what I want to talk about. Yup. Personal stories have never been my forte, since I have only started telling them a few months ago, and I have performed a total of 3. Rebound was not an easy topic either; I did not want to talk about breakups (nothing funny there), and had very little else to talk about. But I was on stage, and it was already fun before I opened my mouth.
I ended up talking about how you sometimes need to spend time away from home if you really want to appreciate your own culture. It was kind of a rebound for me: when I get fed up with stupid things and stupid people that are probably the same everywhere in the world, I go abroad, and from there I only see what's cool about Hungary. So I told people a few little anecdotes about how people react when I say I am Hungarian; and then ended up talking about how the kids I tell stories to showed me they are cool and exotic from their point of view. It was over before I relaized what was happening, and I was ushered off the stage, with more clapping and cheering.
I got the lowest scores of the evening (6.8, 8.0, 7.6), but it didn't really matter; the point was standing on stage and being part of the MOTH experience, and mainly having the guts to do it. Now the only thing that was left was to sit back and enjoy the rest of the evening.

Hagrid labeled story slams with the award-winning expression "creative competitive narcissism". Truer words have never been spoken. All the stories were fun, and the overall atmosphere of the event made us forget about time, and the cold outside. We enjoyed tales about boyfriends, breakups and booty calls; traumas from elementary school (who doesn't have those) and kickball. Our favorite (as far as Kata and I are concerned) was a guy called Bernie, who told us an adorable story about trying to sound smarter than his ex-girlfriends new guy. He almost won the slam, and we cheered our throats raw at the end. He was the best of the evening. The worst (apart from me with my scores, heh) was a woman who told us about her time as a teacher in Europe; somehow it just sounded... wrong. Her story came down to "European people are weird and they do things all wrong... everything is about Christmas with them, can you believe it?! And at Christmas, they sing songs about Jesus. How depressing. And they said bad things about Russians, which upset me, because I am Russian, my great-great-grandparents came from the Ukraine. I am proud that I am an American." Maybe she was doing it for purpose, but no one was entirely sure about it. Or maybe Europeans are just too sensitive about that stuff. Still, we had a great time quoting her as we walked home.

All in all, the whole Slam was an absolute success; at least now we know why people talk about the MOTH all the time. And why they stand in lines in the bitter New-York-in-January weather, and catch a cold and go back to Tennessee with a head full of snot. (Oh, maybe that's just me)
This was the very first event of the 13th MOTH year. Here is to hoping there will be many, many more, and that we will get to go to a whole bunch of them!

Happy New Year, everyone! :)

Dragonspotting

This might have been the most fun I have ever had in a museum.

Today I took the effort to crawl out of bed early, and show up at the Met for opening. I have been there three years ago and spent 8 hours in awe; I went back again this Monday to see the Storytelling in Japanese art exhibition (excellent exhibition! And great publication too!). But going back for a few hours just made me realize I have not seen nearly enough of the museum's collections; I decided it deserved another day - six, eight hours maybe. And, because this was the first time my friend Kata was not coming with me, I made up a little game to make it more interesting.

It's called dragonspotting.

The difference between dragonspotting and dragonhunting is, as you can probably guess, that in the former the dragon itself is not harmed. Which is just as good, because no one wants to get kicked out of the Met for smashing five hundred years old Chinese porcelaine.

The game is simple: you only need a camera (and possibly a museum map)

The mission: find as many dragons as you can, and document them.

The rules: there are only two.
1. If it is called a dragon, it is a dragon. Even if it does not look like a dragon. Even if it looks like the love child of a rabbit and a spoon.

2. If it looks like a dragon, it is a dragon, unless specified otherwise. "Zoomorphic symbols" are fair game.

I ended up spending 6 and a half hours in the Met. I covered most of the collections, except for photography (not many chances there) and modern art (gotta leave something for next time; also, it was horribly crowded).

The results:
I have documented 126 artifacts with dragons on them. Because many of those artifacts have multiple dragons, I would estimate the dragon population of the Metropolitan around 200 or more. That is a decent number for any museum.

The good things about dragonspotting?

1. It is a lot of fun. Every new dragon you find bring a sense of achievement. And there is ample space for leveling up. Ha-ha.

2. It keep you focused. One thing about the Met: you get lost and confused very easily, and there is an overload of information one needs to process. Going through the collections with a specific purpose makes you look at everything, but filters out the objects you are looking for.

3. I quickly developed a sixth sense for spotting dragons and dragon-like shapes. You'd be surprised.

4. It teaches you a lot about different cultures. I expected a stray dragon or two in the Ancient Near East, but I was surprised by the numbers. There was a decent number of them in the Medieval section, but not as many as I expected. I had to use an educated guess to seek them out at Greeks and Romans - where the is Jason, there shall be a dragon (it was quite a skinny one though). The Asian Art gallery was no surprise - dragons great and small, blue, read, green and yellow, prancing around on every possible surface. But no matter where I went, I could always find at least one of the critters, if I looked hard enough. Sometimes only the label told me it was one; other times I was certain, but the label only said "bronze object" or something of the sort. In those cases, I used my authority as a storyteller to declare them dragons.

Until you start looking for them, you never realize how many dragons lurk around in an art museum. The Metropolitan Museum is overrun by them. Japanese dragons, Greek dragons, French dragons, Italian dragons, Central Asian dragons, Chinese dragons, Korean dragons, Persian dragons, Scythian dragons, English dragons. Dragons on banners, on arrowheads, on swords, on plates, cups, bowls, vases, bottles, carpets, hangings, boxes, chests, tapestries, axes, rings, bracelets, belts, armors, helmets, gemmae, sigils, walls, ceilings, spoons, roofs, tiles, flags, shields, illuminated pages. Crouching dragons, hidden dragons, coiling dragons, stretching dragons, biting dragons, roaring dragons, dragons spitting fire; sleeping dragons, eating dragons, playing dragons, marching dragons, flying dragons, swimming dragons, and dragons hopelessly tangled. Dragons on samurai blades, dragons on Buddhist temples, dragons on the banner of King Uther Pendragon; dragons embriodered onto cloaks, perching on helmets, disguised as handles on a vase or a pitcher, hiding in the Chinese zodiac, under and over saints and gods, decorating all kinds of deadly weaponry and fragile pottery, and of course, dragons galore in the gift shop.

Here. Be. Dragons.
(Sorry, I had to.)

Of course, every once in a while you run into some other fantastic monster that is distinctly not a dragon, but you add them to the collection anyway.
But that will be the topic of another post.

Happy dragonspotting, everyone!
...
Oh. Right. Pictures.