P3 Obtained
Thanks to the enormous generosity of a longtime DQ reader, I'll have a PS3 soon. It makes me very, very happy that people still read DQ after so many years.
If You Happen to Have a PS3 Ultra Slim Laying Around Gathering Dust
Particularly if it's a model 4000 (particularly a 4301C or 4303C), I'd very much like to purchase it from you.
Why? I must decline to answer for secret reasons (along with E.B. White).
Oh, all right. Here's why:
That's right. I'm getting the band back together.
The Deceit of Accoustics
We went to see Widowspeak at the Music Hall of Williamsburg in Brooklyn last night.
Widowspeak is one of the bands I most listen to when I write because the lead singer's voice puts me into flow state almost automatically. They just released a new album and I was eager to see them. They're also a Brooklyn-based band (I think), so they'd be playing in their hometown.
The Music Hall of Williamsburg is a beloved venue that opened twenty-five years ago (and is closing later this year. It's small (650 capacity) and it has excellent sight lines, as you can see here:
In short, everything was in place for a memorable night of music.
There was only one problem: it sounded like shit.
Actually, I exaggerate: it sounded worse than shit. It was nightmarishly bad, with the drums and lead guitar pushed so far forward that you could barely hear the lead singer (the main attraction). Plus, the sound was muddy as well. I know all these songs by heart and couldn't make out a single word she sang.
After we listened for about forty-five minutes and it was already nearing ten, I told C we should go downstairs, go to the bathroom, and go home. It was getting late (for us, and it was 45+ minutes home), we were both tired, and while I was glad to see the band live, it had been a disappointment.
We went down three flights of stairs to the bottom level of the venue. There's a bar down there with bathrooms adjoining.
I stood by the bar in amazement because coming out of the speakers in the bar was the perfect sound mix of what was happening onstage, incredibly balanced and absolutely crystal clear. A masterpiece. C noticed it right away and said it sounded like a totally different band. Somehow, in the bar, they finally sounded like themselves.
There was a live video feed playing on two different screens in the bar area, so we actually sat down and listened to two perfect songs, thinking all along how ridiculous it was to pay money for a show to have to sit in the bar for the best sound mix.
I thought all along that the person in charge of their sound had just screwed up when they initially balanced the mix, but now I have no idea what went wrong. It wasn't a particularly modern venue and I wouldn't be surprised if the acoustics were terrible. So the mix going through the board (which may have been fed through speakers directly to the bar) might have been perfect, but once it went out into the venue, it was ruined.
I have more respect than ever for the people working the sound board now.
Forbidden Solitaire
Well, this is something.
Ostensibly, it's a solitaire game, except it's combined with the greatest framing I've ever seen for a game of this type. Combine a Windows 3.0 desktop with news videos and documents from the 1980s with a first-person dungeon from the Interplay Stonekeep era (1995, roughly).
It's a big ask, but the game pulls it off perfectly. Absolutely excellent game design.
Oh, and great writing, too.
I don't know how long the game lasts (I'm 2+ hours in), but it's a real triumph of creativity.
You can see the trailer here on Steam (and purchase it, if you'd like. It's $12.79 on sale right now): Forbidden Solitaire.
UPDATE: I'm going to give a small, additional bit of information I should have disclosed originally. The game's central conceit is that you've somehow obtained a rare copy of a game from roughly the 1990s that was originally banned, and you've started playing it. Everything flows from there.
AND ONE MORE: It's campy. Gloriously campy, and the humor is terrific.
We Are All Cape Verde
Cape Verde was my team going into the World Cup because it's the home of Cesária Évora, one of my all-time favorite singers.
It's a collection of ten islands with a total population of around 500,000.
Eli 24.10 called me about forty-five minutes ago, telling me turn on the TV immediately.
Why? Because Cape Verde and Spain were tied 0-0 in the 80th minute at the World Cup.
I ran downstairs and got to see the last 10 minutes and stoppage time. It was glorious.
Cape Verde wins 0-0. There's no other way to write it.
Friday Links!
This is a magnificently written, heartbreaking story: The Paperboy’s Secret.
Perhaps linked to the scam center story I posted a few weeks ago: WOW: My Visit To Laos’ Creepy, Lawless “Golden Triangle Special Economic Zone”.
This is horrifying and demands to be read, as well as winning a prize for journalism in Europe (the "accept cookies" dialogue box is in Dutch, but click through and the article is in English): What the wounds are telling us: Doctors in Gaza observed a disturbing pattern: children with a single gunshot wound to the head or chest, a sign that they had been deliberately targeted. This emerges from research by de Volkskrant, which spoke with the doctors who are among the last international eyewitnesses.
Another fantastic piece of reporting from Pro Publica, this one about a raw milk farm and the inevitable disasters: The Milkman.
A riveting and heartbreaking story: My mother was forced to give me up for adoption. But when we finally met decades later, it was far from a fairytale ending.
This is remarkable: Some ancient microbes frozen with Ötzi the Iceman are still growing.
I grew up right next to here: Corpus Christi’s Water Crisis Sparks a Fight With Its Neighbors.
Animals keep getting smarter as we think of smarter ways to study them: Bonobos enjoy pretend tea parties and chimps think rationally: why apes are more like us than we ever thought.
From John S., a fantastic story: Scientists make sourdough bread using yeast found in 5,000-year-old mummy.
From Wally, and "real horror" certainly describes this country right now: These Fantasy and Sci-Fi Novels Are Full of Real Horrors.
Common Ground
I talked to someone in the locker room before swimming today.
He tends to be dressing after his workout just as I get to the locker room, and we're often only a few lockers away from each other, so we chat a bit.
The thing about this guy is he looks great. At seventy-fix! Super fit. And I've learned over the weeks that he works out two hours a day M-W-F and an hour T-T.
I told him how much I respected his routine, because I struggled with motivation, even though I always showed up. "It's not hard for me," he said, "because I made working out a religion."
"It is for me, too," I said, "except it's the Inquisition."
The Sleepers
The exhibit that made the most lasting impression on me last week at the MOMA was Sophie Calle's
The Sleepers.
Here's a description from the MOMA's
page for the exhbit:
Sophie Calle probes the boundaries between public and private life. In 1979 she began following people around Paris to give structure to her days. For The Sleepers, one of her earliest projects combining image and text, she shifted this practice of surveillance from the street to her bedroom. Over eight days, Calle invited 29 people—friends, acquaintances, and strangers—to sleep in her bed in consecutive eight-hour shifts, keeping it continuously occupied. When someone failed to arrive, Calle hired a bedsitter or filled the spot herself. She photographed the sleepers at regular intervals, took notes on their gestures and habits, and served meals and changed sheets. “I have an attraction, not to know somebody’s life,” she remarked, “but to know details, for example, which way he sleeps, on which side of the bed.”
It's an oddball, creative idea, and her execution was creative as well. She took roughly five photos of each person, usually while they were sleeping, and along with the photos was a bit of typewritten text about what they said and did while they were there.
It doesn't sound like anything special, but with three sleepers a day over eight days, and four to six pictures of each person, she wound up with enough photos to ring three walls of a long room. The cumulative effect become more and more pronounced as I went along the walls, studying the images and text.
This was my favorite one, and it was the last one in the exhibit:
The text read (in part):
Then I accompany Daniel D. to the door. I thank him for coming. He answers: "In the end all these people disgust you profoundly. Thanks for having been able to stand us."
A Progress Update
The book formerly titled This Doesn't Feel Like The Future which now (temporarily) has no name is moving along.
I finished the rewrite of part three on Sunday.
The second section is essentially finished, or almost there, so that leaves the first section, where there are multiple issues I need to fix. I think I can complete the changes by early August, though.
That would leave about four months for refinement and polishing, and then a couple of weeks for formatting, etc.
The end of the year publishing date is a possibility again.
A Carnival
There was a carnival in Astoria last weekend.
I have many fond memories of carnivals as a kid, of walking about half a mile to an empty field near my school every year and stepping into a magical world.
I had a neighbor on my street who worked for much of his life in a carnival (his wife, too). He taught me how to speak carny, a language used by the workers to talk amongst themselves without customers knowing what they were saying.
For a kid living in a town with just over 7,000 people, it was fantastic.
This carnival was not that.
It still had all the same elements (they haven't changed that much over the years), but the space was far too small, and there were twice as many people as the space could actually support. It was chaos, generally, and not fun at all.
Still, though, just walking around and seeing the rides and the food trailers, it brought back so many special memories.
One thing has changed over the years, though: the prices.
Check this out as an example:
That's the basketball game, the bog-standard one where they use smaller rims and it's almost impossible to make a shot. You might need to click on the image to enlarge it to see the prices, but to have a chance at a jersey, it was $10 a shot.
You could also try to win a crappy stuffed animal and it was "only" $10 for three balls, but I didn't see many people going for that. Almost everyone wanted a jersey.
Here was the incredible thing: I saw multiple people pay $10 for one shot and not even reach the basket. Far short, in some cases. Grown-ups! Always men, too. What a disconnect between the illusion of athletic skill and reality.
MOMA!
We went to the MOMA today and I am fried beyond belief, for some reason. Here are some random pictures from today with very little explanation.
First, the city itself, with a view I've never noticed before today:
The choice of background color is remarkable in this next work. In person, it makes the image almost three dimensional when you're viewing from the right distance:
This is an absolutely stunning photograph:
This painting was magnificently dark, but it also had many different shades of darkness:
This was, according to the artist, some kind of cathedral to birds or air or something. Unfortunately, that's not what I saw. I saw the repressive totality of the authoritarian state (potato, potahto).
Conundrum
I like salmon, but C doesn't seem nearly as keen.
"I was going to pick up some salmon, but I don't think you like it as much as I do," I said.
"I do like it," she said.
I've only seen you eat it at Hamido," I said. "Never at home."
"I like salmon," she said. "I just don't like it undercooked or overcooked, which are the only two ways I prepare it."
