TresSugar

Wise Guide: on having more fun

DearSugar — Thu, 01 Mar 2007 08:01:00 -0800

Indulge, but refine. -- Lawrence Durrell

We talk a lot here about all kinds of personal refinement, but how about indulgence? Where in your life could you be doing a bit more indulging?! In what ways could you be having more fun?!

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Do Tell: How Do You Play Games to Keep Relationships Alive?

TresSugar — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 11:00:00 -0700

Last night, our long, Upper East Side-less Summer came to a welcomed end when Gossip Girl's third season premiered. (Check out BuzzSugar for their favorite WTF moments.) While it lacked the melodrama I've come to love and expect, I was happy to see Blair and Chuck haven't let monogamy interfere with their Shakespearean scheming.

This year, instead of playing each other, they're on the same team, fooling unsuspecting girls into Chuck's arms so that scorned woman Blair can storm in and unleash her faux rage. When the girls run out, Blair and Chuck make out. It's beautiful, really.

The game is an aphrodisiac for Blair at first, who says a relationship's three-month mark is not a milestone but a gravestone, until sage Serena - the one who spent her Summer seeking her father's attention by posing for tabloids - gives Blair advice: make sure you're doing it to keep your interest and not out of fear of losing his. Not bad, S!

While games we play may not be so elaborate and evil - though we welcome your stories if they are! - staging fights in public, pretending you're meeting your significant other for the first time, or even straight-up role play are all viable ways to play games. Do you play games to keep relationships alive? And, if so, has it ever gone wrong?

Source: CW

Play Battle of the Books - For a Chance to Win $1,000!

TresSugar — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 00:00:22 -0800

In TrèsSugar's Battle of the Books faceoff, we've pitted some of the most influential books against each other. Pick which one you'd rather read, and we'll find out what's top shelf.

Finding titles to add to your holiday reading list not incentive enough? We'll be giving away a $1,000 grand prize each month - you must be logged in, and you'll be entered once every time you play. (Check out the official rules here.) What are you waiting for? Get choosy.

Girl Crush du Jour: Alison Brie

TresSugar — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 14:00:12 -0800

Adorable. No word better sums up actress Alison Brie. And while I am sure the 26-year-old would prefer a more sophisticated adjective, she does play Trudy Campbell on Mad Men and ain't nothin' more sophisticated than that. Combine that with her success as the strung-out community college student on NBC's Community, and how I could not be crushing?

Other than radiating ebullience in real life, Alison, who says she's rarely recognized on the street, seems nothing like either character. She grew up with hippie parents in South Pasadena, CA, where she still lives and showed up to a Pasadena Weekly interview in a "Die Yuppie Scum" t-shirt.

But Alison's not as innocent as she or her characters look. She told Pasadena Weekly: "I don’t know why people see me . . . like I’m all prim and proper, when I couldn’t be more different. People think I come off that way, but I’m not.”

She's right. In this 2007 skit, she dishes it right back to the Internet's most infamous yogi, The Underminer, when he asks her to be in his variety show that's like "Curb Your Enthusiasm meets You Can't Do That on Television." Namaste! Watch it below.

Players: Singles Trade in Speed Dating For PlayDates

TresSugar — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 14:30:00 -0700

If you've chanced upon a bar with board games, you'll know they can turn an otherwise mediocre night into a fun one. PlayDates, which at first sounds cringey, knows this: it allows singles to gather and play old-school games like Scrabble, checkers, and chess.

Events are held once a month (to keep it novel) and, at $10 per event, PlayDates is affordable. If I see any drawback (OK, I see a few) it's that it aims to please everyone: singles ages 25-55 are targeted, and it offends no one by ensuring the music is not too loud or trendy and the lights aren't too dim. When I read that staff members wear shirts that read "Wanna Play?" to "nudge onlookers into the fray," I thought, this is verging into traumatic-high-school-dance territory. Oy.

But who am I to judge? People love it! It's grown from small gatherings in Atlanta to a national organization that holds events in nearly 30 US cities. The biggest one yet topped out at 750 people this February in Nashville, TN.

Would you make a PlayDate, or would you rather meet people the old-fashioned way - on the Internet?

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Laptops & Role Playing: Is Technology the Answer to Poverty?

CitizenSugar — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 08:00:39 -0700

Though Dungeons and Dragons has weirdly wormed its way into the campaign, technology is popping up worldwide as not an escape from the drudgery of every day, but as an escape from poverty. Laptops and role-playing games are a double click of cure.

One Laptop Per Child, a program designed to bring technology and opportunity to kids in developing nations has completely fulfilled that mission in the tiny South Pacific island of Niue. Every single kid, 100 percent of them, now has access to the Internet on the inexpensive, rugged, waterproof (and pretty cute!) laptops. Though Niue is a developing nation, they've been ahead of the technology curve - in 2003 they were the first territory to offer free wireless to all residents.

Once you've mastered the web, can gaming be a golden ticket? Oh yes. To find out how, read more.

Almost half a million people in developing nations make their living playing online games like World of Warcraft, earning virtual goods, and the selling them to other players for decidedly unvirtual money. It's called gold-farming and its growing despite the industry's efforts to crack down. Based in China for the most part, the business garners $500 million, though the true size is hard to estimate.

Gamers gold-farm by offering services like "power-leveling" where one can pay a gamer to take one's character to a higher level faster, outsourcing one's hobbies, as it were. The game's service size is comparable to India's outsourcing industry, though relatively few know the former exists. Why do people pay to have someone else play a game for them? Says one researcher, "When you get people with more money than time and time than money the two will find a way to meet." Paying someone to play World of Warcraft for you!? Whatever next.

That said, has technology become the new Esperanto, a language the whole world speaks? Is access to it the antidote to poverty and crucial to survival?

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Flashback: Awesome Sony PlayStation2 Commercial

GiggleSugar — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 12:00:00 -0700

This "Golfers Versus Pornstars" commercial was listed by one fanboy as one of the worst Sony PlayStation commercials ever. (It was for the PS2.) If by worst they mean best, I concur. As a David Lynch PlayStation2 ad argues, "Different Place. Different Rules."

East vs. West: Berlin Wall Divided Two Attitudes Toward Nudity

TresSugar — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 08:00:49 -0800

When the Berlin Wall fell 20 years ago last week, East and West Germany had to integrate two very different cultures. Freedom may have spread quickly through the East, but nudity - the East's favorite and perhaps only freedom - never caught on in the West.

Freikörperkultur (FKK), or liberal body culture, was really the only way to rebel in the East, where the most quotidian details of people's lives were observed by the Stasi, East Germany's secret police. Though the East German government forbid FKK at first, many government officials were into walking around nude, so they protested with the argument that "doing FKK" did not mean you weren't a good communist. Good point - don't they put kids in school uniforms to level the playing field? What's more egalitarian than wearing nothing!

Yet on the west side of the wall, the attitude toward nudity was more on par with America and its don't-even-discuss-it-in-public ethos. A West German interviewed a former East German for Vice magazine to find out what's so great about wearing nothing. Check out some of the highlights after the jump.

Do You Believe in Playing Hard to Get?

DearSugar — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 08:00:00 -0700

When it comes to dating, there is some truth to the statement "We want what we can't have, " but I've never been much into playing games. I don't appreciate it when guys take a week to call me back after a great first date, so I wouldn't avoid calling a guy if I really wanted.

I'm not saying I act like an eager beaver and call the hour after we say goodbye - but I don't see anything wrong with letting someone know you are interested. I guess I don't see the point in wasting a bunch of time playing a guessing game. If a guy's into me, I want him to tell me, and vice versa. Regardless if you wear your heart on your sleeve, there is still room for a lot of excitement in getting to know each other and finding out the ins and outs of each other.

What do you think. Are you into the dating game? Does it add to the excitement? Do you think it makes you more desirable to guys if you act a little bit aloof, or do you think it's a major turn-off? If you like a guy, do you tell him, or do you wait for him to tell you? Do you believe in playing hard to get or are you more into being straightforward?

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Product of the Day: Play-Doh Cologne

GiggleSugar — Thu, 30 Nov 2006 07:02:00 -0800

What immediately comes to mind when you think of Play-Doh? Surely, not the noise of popping open a fresh can of it, or the colorful look of it, or the manufactured taste of it (wait...what do you mean it's not edible?), or the gooey feel of it, but the overwhelming fragrance that accompanied it. You know the smell well. It was a crafty, chemical smell that was the odd byproduct of mixing together three simple ingredients: water, salt, and flour.

In celebration of Play-Doh's 50th anniversary, a limited edition cologne has been developed "for highly-creative people, who seek a whimsical scent reminiscent of their childhood." In other words, this scent is for all of us "adults" who are proud kids at heart and want to kick our immaturity into high gear by smelling like kids at play. Whew! Good luck with that.

So, for those who refuse to grow up: spray-and-go with Play Doh!...And thanks KrissyThePirate for sending this our way!