The Complete Rules of Playing Guys
(Originally published in the Boston Phoenix)
Definition: A “guy” (a/k/a “action figure”) is a hand-holdable, plastic replica of a real or theoretical being derived from appearances in movies, comics, or on television.


1) Take Newton’s second law and throw it out the window. The rate of change of one guy is really equal to how powerful the guy hitting him is. (Power = how mean/ strong a guy looks multiplied by any things sent away for or extra weapons he has.)


2) The typical interaction between guys consists of taking one guy in one hand, another guy in the other hand. Something was said, maybe about the merits of free-trade, and the first guy bashes into the other, a “prbrhhrppchhhh” is uttered and the injured party is flung backwards as far as your arm can extend. That settles that.



3) In guy world, everyone can fly. Everyone. If your guy comes with a jet pack, he can fly even better. Or maybe not fly, maybe more like you can choose when gravity affects your guy, and how much. So many fights are like walking on the moon, which is convenient, because my guy has had to defend it three times this morning.


4) The arm of that couch is a cliff. Please take your jacket off my cliff.


5) Good guys vs. bad guys: I shouldn’t even have to explain this: moral ambiguity is a grown-up construct. I know he’s bad because he’s wearing darker clothes. And listen to his voice – it’s hoarse!


6) Don’t ever call this playing with dolls.


7) When hit hard enough, anything can explode. Didn’t know that pile of papers on the coffee table had explosives in it? It didn’t.


8) Anyone can interact with anyone. Why shouldn’t Bebop from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles be able to hold court with a G. I. Joe? Yes, this would all be a beautiful demonstration of the ability of children to overlook differences if, in the end, every play session didn’t involve these people from different backgrounds leg dropping each other.


9) Humming? Did you just call the sound of my turbo boosters “humming”? This brings us to sound effects: we have them. Lots of them. Ok, four of them. But they are an integral part of maintaining the authenticity of mid-air clashes between dinosaurs and Transformers. Punch = a quick “Ppfpgshhhh.” That’s universal. Ask any little boy what a punch sounds like. That’s it. Laser = a high pitch “pshewwwwww psshewwwww.” Falling = a long “ahhhhhhhhhhh” that fades away at the end and implies everyone’s last words are “ahhhhhhhh.” On hitting the ground, a guy may or may not explode, a sound that comes from both vibrations in the back of the mouth and having heard very few actual explosions. Dialogue is sparse. This is guys, not a psychological novel.


10) Seriously, never call this playing with dolls. Okay, it’s ostensibly playing with scaled-down characters. But playing guys is an activity, nay, a rite of passage, through which we develop spatial skills such as how a flame-thrower would work while you’re flying. (Answer: it can also become a jet.) And while structurally the term “playing guys” is similar to “playing house,” the latter is a game of mimicry. Let’s bake and vacuum like we see Mommy and Daddy doing. Playing guys is one of fantasy, of building a world that is not just better and cooler than our own, but one that is the actual manifestation of a set of physical laws and heroic values that we feel deeply, even at age six, is the way things should be. Let’s do 17 flips in the air like Mommy and Daddy have never done but for some reason this is how I play. In fact, this is why we like action movies: they are a life-size dramatization of playing guys. That actor jumping that house on the dirt bike and the 20-minute fight scene are not ridiculous insofar as they are merely a director playing guys, a game come true. So the “action” that precedes both “movies” and “figures” is this specific type of action, an unrealistic fulfillment of a latent schema in which physical laws bend to accommodate a massaging of the ego by way of stretching what an individual is capable of, a world enchanted by the hyper-masculine. In this sense the term “playing guys” rings with second meaning: a paraphrasing might lead to, “amusing oneself with action figures,” but “playing guys” also suggests, in a sad way, “acting like men.”



11) A guy’s fort is his castle. I say this because I’m wondering why you continue to move the cushions back to where they “belong.”


12) Number of lives every guy has: one million. Except sometimes if you’re a low-ranking bad guy I encounter on my way to the head bad guy. Then you get one. Or you are particularly susceptible to getting knocked out by one punch and placed into this ambiguous not-quite-dead state that excuses my six-year-old mind from having to contemplate the finality of death.


13) While most guys come with movable legs, it would be absurd to manipulate each leg individually for every step they take. So we’ve devised this sort of two-legged hop motion. I know, it’s not very realistic…