How Archivists Helped Video Game Designers Recreate the City’s Dark Side for ‘L.A. Noire’
Earlier this week, video game enthusiasts and fans of L.A. history cheered the release of Rockstar Games’ L.A. Noire, a police procedural game noted for its faithful reproduction of Los Angeles circa 1947. To recreate a city now hidden beneath 64 years of redevelopment projects and transformed by age and expansion, production designers with the game’s developer, Team Bondi, consulted several Los Angeles area archives.
Thom Yorke, February 25, 2010 at The Cambridge Corn Exchange
The video I posted of Thom Yorke singing Give Up The Ghost is from a solo concert he did to benefit The Green Party February 25, 2010 at The Cambridge Corn Exchange. I think something special happened that night. Here is the playlist.
The Clock
from the comments
I just have to comment on that speaker on the wall there–the kind with the fabric grill in it that looks like the front of those fucking ancient “furniture” TVs. I always think of dust pouring out of them with the sound. That’s why they have to put the flowers up on a pedestal that looks like “and a special thanks to Griffith Brothers’ Funeral Home for the lovely floral Ah-dornment brought to this Sunday Service.”
e.g., cognitive dissonance
What happens to a doomsday cult when the world doesn’t end?
When Prophecy Fails has become a landmark in the history of psychology, but few realize that many other studies have looked at the same question: What happens to a small but dedicated group of people who wait in vain for the end of the world? Ironically, Festinger’s own prediction—that a failed apocalypse leads to a redoubling of recruitment efforts—turned out to be false: Not one of these follow-ups found evidence to support his claim. The real story turns out to be far more complex.
What Festinger failed to understand is that prophecies, per se, almost never fail. They are instead component parts of a complex and interwoven belief system which tends to be very resilient to challenge from outsiders. While the rest of us might focus on the accuracy of an isolated claim as a test of a group’s legitimacy, those who are part of that group—and already accept its whole theology—may not be troubled by what seems to them like a minor mismatch. A few people might abandon the group, typically the newest or least-committed adherents, but the vast majority experience little cognitive dissonance and so make only minor adjustments to their beliefs. They carry on, often feeling more spiritually enriched as a result.
but why does he laugh?
I suspect it isn’t malicious, but it is a curiosity.
Traveling Wilburys – Congratulations
If it weren’t for my pops, I never would have appreciated the Traveling Wilburys or The Who as much as I do.
tweet of the day
Gayngs – Last Prom on Earth
In honor of the rapture, one of my favourite songs of the past year:
Stick around for the last two minutes. More about Gayngs here.
Motel. U.S. Route 54, Texhoma, OK 73949
I thought I was in Texas, part of the town is and I wanted to be so I have given it the Texas tag as well. I hope y’all forgive me.
AA Bondy – Rapture, Sweet Rapture
I’ve been singing this all day.
looks like there’s a sale at Wire & Twine
And if you are in Cincinnati tomorrow.
Radiohead, Give Up The Ghost
I find myself listening to the last half of the album almost exclusively.
Here’s a live version of Give Up The Ghost:
Ask a law librarian
Caller: “I wanna know how my son can get outta a marriage. Somebody tole me annulment.”
Librarian [robotically]: “I will read to you from the Texas Family Code section 6.001. There are seven grounds for annulment. One: underage. Two: under influence of alcohol or narcotics. Three: impotency. Four: fraud, duress, or force. Five: mental incapacity. Six: concealed divorce. Seven: marriage less than 72 hours after issuance of license.”
Caller: “They were married for 3 months.”
Librarian: “And?”
Caller: “The time.”
Librarian: “What about it?”
Caller: “The last one. Number seven.”
Librarian: “Is three months less than 72 hours?”
Caller: “What about the age thing?”
Librarian: “Number one: underage.”
Caller: “What about concealed age?”
Librarian: “No, thas six: concealed divorce.”
Caller: “What about concealed age?”
Librarian: “Naw, naw, yer confusin’ two differnt thangs. One is underage; six is concealed divorce.”
Caller: “What does underage mean?”
Librarian: “Under eighteen.”
Caller: “No, she was over eighteen. Way over. She concealed her age.”
Librarian: “So.”
Caller: [in a scandalous tone]: “She was a lot older.”
Librarian: “Bein’ older ain’t one of the categories.”
from the comments
I’m now picturing the rumble and split of the earth’s crust making its way around the planet like a spray tan circling an alcoholic’s belly.
from the comments
Idea for a Nicholas Sparks Novel:
A man falls in love with a woman who lives in a cottage in a Thomas Kinkade painting.
They can’t be together because one of them is in a painting.
The man finds Kinkade and convinces him to paint him into the painting.
Kinkade won’t do it.
The man almost meets Kinkade’s assistant in the shop; she is the girl in the painting.
The end.
Can(nes) of Worms
Lars von Trier made a monkey of himself this past week and no lie. Yeah yeah sure sure, he was indulging in low-key Scandihoovian humor. It just wasn’t funny. “Where’s my rubber chicken?”
But for the Cannes festival’s board of directors to issue the equivalent of a restraining order? C’mon, people. You just opened a can of wriggly worms.
Thomas Kinkade™. Painter of Light™.
Painter of paint. Painter of the Las Vegas of the Disaffected Employees of Walmart. Painter of the Little Blemish toward the Anal End of Your Taint. Painter of the Sickness unto Death. Painter of the things that would most deeply, really fulfill you. Painter of the Twilight of the Idols. Painter of Twilight slash fiction. Painter of the Arrow of Time in the Quantum Universe. Painter of Ontogeny Recapitulating Phylogeny. Painter of Irreversible Trends in Mesoamerican Psychic Anthropology. Painter of Alternative Valuation Methods for Swaptions. Painter of Butts. Painter of the line of dirt that is always left in front of the dust pan when you sweep the floor. Painter of Midges. Painter of ennui. Painter of Post-Nasal Drip. Painter of things we can’t believe are not butter. Painter of that clicking sound you sometimes get at the back of your throat. Painter of the House on the Rock. Painter of paintings displayed at the House on the Rock. Painter of Little Pants. Painter of canvas. Painter of Silent but Deadly. Painter of Bristol Scale rated paintings. Painter of Hoarder-Style Knickknacks and Electrified Taxidermied Cats. Painter of WJIF. Painter of Jesus Enters You. Painter of grapefruit. Painter of Thank You. Painter of Michael’s poorly worded comments. Painter of confusing anagrams. Painter of 600 pounds of men. Painter of CVS Brand Products. Painter of of. Painter of maple-sage. Painter of spew. Painter of the definition of the word is. Painter of Hemingway reading one of Sparky’s novels, shitting in it, and slamming it shut. Painter of a woman that’s a little plump Scotch girl. Painter of the girl from Ipanema. Painter of Mrs. Miller. Painter of the Exploding Plastic Inevitable.
an art theory
As modeled by a list, from strongest to weakest argument, of why a particular work of art is bad:
a. I don’t get it.
b. It doesn’t do what it wants to do well.
c. It’s morally wrong.
d. I don’t get it.
Revisions, additions?
words I wish I wrote
James Richardson from Interglacial:
First I have to learn to love myself, always make me writhe. I’m the last person I want to hear I love you from, the last I want to say it to. The part of myself I like is the part that works, like a good tool. The part of myself I love is the part that loves you.
from the spam
Ever do much thinking about Utopia?
Image Out of Context
(via)
The spirit of Hunter Thompson lives.
Y’all may have read this by now, but if you haven’t, here ’tis: Ali Arikan’s Slant review of Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, titled “A Fountain of Maggots.”
Not scabrous in the over-the-top vein of the Doctor, but shot through and through with a saevo indignatio that Thompson (and Jonathan Swift) would have found simpatico.
I scarcely know what quotation to pull, so how about this?
I used to ridicule people who got worked up about a film (“It’s only a movie, Ingrid,” etc.), and think the grand scheme of life is much more important than two and a bit hours lost in the pursuit of entertainment. But, recently, I have started to change my mind. Everything matters. Every moment counts. Your actions can affect the very being of someone halfway across the world: the butterfly effect and all that stuff. So, to pigeonhole this film into the “yet another piece of shit from the summer” category is a disservice to the human race. I realize I am pseudo-intellectualising this to the nth degree, but it’s true, nonetheless. I saw the first Pirates of the Caribbean film during a particularly bleak period of my life in Balham, South London. It made me happy and joyful and proud to be a member of our species. Smiles all around. So, if we can celebrate fluff when it’s handled well, if we can champion it, if we can, fuck it, beatify it, then it’s our duty to ourselves (and in fact the filmmakers), to call it out when it fails. When my fellow brethren are watching the new Terrence Malick or the new Lynne Ramsay, I have to actually pay for this shit, and then pull my punches, and go through the motions, and be content? Well, fuck that. Fuck that with fucking bells on.
Although this connect-the-dots U.F.O. thesis is only a hasty-sounding addendum to an otherwise straightforward investigative book about aviation and military history, it makes an indelible impression
Ms. Jacobsen, a national security reporter and contributing editor to The Los Angeles Times Magazine, happened to be at a 2007 family dinner with her husband’s uncle’s wife’s sister’s 88-year-old husband, the physicist Edward Lovick, when Mr. Lovick leaned over and said, “Have I got a good story for you.”
From a New York Times book review of Area 51, An Uncensored History of America’s Top Secret Military Base by Annie Jacobsen.
In case you are inclined not to click the link because of an assumption about her thesis, believe me, never in a million years.
Consolidation in the baking aisle
To look at these tins of baking powder, one might imagine three very different brands. Indeed, their designs reference three distinct origin stories and each has its regional loyalists. Their contents, however, are all manufactured in an aging Terre Haute, Indiana, factory owned by Hulman & Co.
George Takei vs. Tennessee’s “Don’t Say Gay” Bill
“That is sooo Takei.”
(Thanks to Mr. Ledgerwood for this.)
