The San Francisco Pacifics played against the Fremont Aces in Golden Gate Park last Saturday in an old-school vintage showdown.
Tape Op magazine does a feature on the process of making music with Sufjan Stevens. (Click on the scanned image to see the next page—it’s a ghetto webpage, I know.) I wouldn’t have guessed it, but he utilizes a much simpler range of equipment to produce his albums. He creates music with a meticulousness that matches the intricacies of his songs.
Recorded with an MS57? I think that her voice on that record sounds so amazing!
She was about five inches from the microphone and we didn’t use a pop filter. So when she hit it – PFT! – I would have to go into Pro Tools and quickly drop the thing. I did that all manually. Once in a while you can still hear a punch. I didn’t know about pop filters. I didn’t know you weren’t supposed to use SM57′s for your voice. I do it all the time, but everyone’s telling me, “no, it’s for the snare drum…”
The way he goes about explaining his lack of expertise in the technical aspects of music production makes me love his songs so much more.
This video was shot using a RED camera system with in-camera effects. The high-resolution version here is even more magnificent.
Via Motionographer.
Sweetheart Sorrow is a fiction piece written by David Hoon Kim, for the New Yorker in 2006, about a Danish student and his hikkomori girlfriend.
“Can I ask you something?” I said.
“Sure.”
“Is there a disorder where someone locks, um, himself in his room?”
“Hikikomori. Modern-day hermit syndrome.” Philippe’s face lit up. “Most live with their parents, who leave food by the door. In some rare cases, it can get ugly, but they usually live quietly in their rooms and only come out after dark.” He winked. “That is, if they come out at all.”
My body felt hot all over, the way it did at the onset of a fever.
This sort of reminds me of Norwegian Wood.
Thrillarena features a bunch of photographic goodness on motordromes of yesteryear. Cookie Ayers doing no-handed wall rides look so badass.
The NY Times also wrote a piece on Samantha Morgan, one of the few remaining female motordrome riders in the United States.
As she continues her maverick pursuit, Ms. Morgan worries it may be the end of an era for women in the dromes. There were as many as 30 in the dromes’ heyday, she said, but now there are no young people coming up to take her place. She knows only one other female rider, Ms. Donmoyer, who rides for the Hell Riders and is known as Sandra D.
She passed away in April of 2008 due to complications from prior injuries while riding the wall of death.
Comic Sans is a font that has permeated, in the worst way possible, into restaurant menus, flyers, and anything else you can think of. Vincent Connare is responsible for creating the font while working for Microsoft in the 90′s. WSJ looks into the ill will of Comic Sans.
“We’ve been using that font for years,” says Peter Phyo, a manager at O’Neals’ restaurant across the street from Lincoln Center in Manhattan. “That is just the procedure. I wouldn’t know the exact reasoning. It also looks nice on the menu.” Mr. Phyo says he hasn’t had any complaints.
This is somewhat akin to Papyrus, which is quite popular among storefront signs and awnings.
Thanks, @canice.
An article by the Washington Post from 2007 that looks into the world of blitz chess and street hustling. It follows Tom Murphy, a well-known chess player that roams Dupont Circle, and his experiences with hustling for dollars to the ups and downs of competing in tournaments to increase his rank in United States Chess Federation.
As endgame approached, Murphy had 18 minutes on his clock. His opponent had two. Murphy had steadily disassembled the boy’s defenses. The game ended with the boy madly shuttling his king toward a corner, while Murphy’s queen closed in on checkmate. The effect was like watching someone seeking shelter on a barren battlefield under machine-gun fire.
The pace in which blitz chess is played is astounding. One has to fully grasp chess theory and strategy to be able to effectively play at that speed. The possibilities from such a small range of spaces and pieces means he’s ten, fifteen, maybe twenty steps ahead of the current situation.
“The first four moves can lead to seventy thousand different positions,” George Steiner wrote in the New Yorker in 1972. “The number of possible ways of playing the first ten moves on each side is such that if every man, woman, and child on the earth played without respite it would require more than two hundred and seventeen billion years to go through them all.” The possible ways of playing an entire game is a much vaster number, 10120, a number considerably larger than the number of electrons in the known universe (1079), according to chess historian David Shenk.
NY Times features SeekingArrangements.com, a dating site for older men, sugar daddies, to find younger women in exchange for money and gifts.
It’s only in the last century that money has been traded — albeit indirectly — for sexual attention from “respectable” unmarried women. In the early 1900s, courtship shifted from girls’ porches or parlors to a commercial venture: a date. Etiquette manuals of the time were explicit — boys were to pay for meals, entertainment and transportation, and in return, girls were to provide well-groomed company, rapt attention and at least a certain amount of physical affection. His money bought not only companionship but also her indebtedness.
Moving Image Source devotes a five-part video feature on the influences of Wes Anderson.
Survive the Apocalypse is a blog to better prepare you when the world ends.
If society fell apart this afternoon I’d be willing to bet you’d die. You’ve spent your life learning how to ‘cut and paste’ or how to master E. Honda’s Hundred Handslap in Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo, but when the world comes crashing down and you’re hungry, you’ll be eating crunchy Ramen noodles and wondering how your own pee tastes.
Lets face it. You’d die.
Via MetaFilter.
A short film created by Dutch student Tim Smit, using only 3DS Max, After Effects, and 150 euros. Cleverly appended to this amazing video is an ARG. Someone’s followed the trail of crumbs and come up with clues and hints. What’s in the box?
Swine flu propaganda (1976)