I can’t think of a better place for You Don’t Know Jack other than maybe an online-enabled mobile client. The cleverly written trivia game is still fun after over a decade.
Joshua Topolsky interviews Damon Lindelof:
There’s some interesting stuff here for Lost fans in this hour-long interview straight from one of the the show’s showrunners. This is the first I’ve seen of Lindelof talking candidly at length about some of the issues that people had with Lost and the finale. Don’t expect any mindblowing revelations, but at least there is some confirmation as to what was “real” and wasn’t.
via The Verge.
Reading through this guide made me wish every company had Valve’s dedication to both succeeding as a company and providing the best possible professional environment for their employees. Not everyone will be comfortable in a “flat” organization structure, but for those that are, oh boy, sure sounds like a great job, eh?
via The Verge.
Donald Mustard, Chair Creative Director talking to Douglass C. Perry for Kotaku:
“This is part of the great social experiment,” said Mustard. “We live now in an asynchronous world. Here’s an example. My wife and I love to play Scrabble, but with our kids and schedules, we don’t have enough to play together. So we play it, turn-based, on our phones.”
I’ve been having a ton of fun with “Infinity Blade 2’s” ClashMob. It gives me everything I want from a mobile game – bite-sized action, great graphics, tangible rewards, and reasons to check back every so often on my own schedule. Basically imagine “Tiny Tower” except you actually play a game and get rewards. The cherry on top is that you feel like you are a part of something more epic by taking on a boss with a billion hit points alongside people across the world.
Like real life, though, it’s kind of deflating when you contribute a lot to a seemingly doable task and find out that your teammates couldn’t do the same. While I think the mode could definitely use some tweaking, Chair is really onto something here in creating a truly great unique mobile gaming experience that combines the best of all worlds – skill, graphics, time commitment, and rewards.
via Kotaku – It Takes A Global Effort To Drain New Infinity Blade II Boss’ Billion Health Points.
Jon Favreau, JJ Abrams, and Giancarlo Esposito (Gus Fring from “Breaking Bad”) involved in a new show about a apocalyptic post-electronics world? Sign me up!
The trailer actually looks pretty good. Maybe this will be the Great Sci-Fi Show on network TV we’ve all been searching for in the post-Lost era.
Update: Jon Favreau reveals more about his involvement in “Revolution” to The Hollywood Reporter
Adam Kivel for Consequence of Sound:
That said, the whole album sounds like an anomaly. This isn’t the kind of music that garners a lot of radio-play the way it did ten years ago. It’s not the type of music that gets the indie kids going, either. The appeal then, lies largely for Garbage fans (who have been salivating over this new release for a long while), those that haven’t left the ’90s behind, those for whom grungy arena pop is the genre that never dies.
I had the same thoughts when I listened to the new Garbage album. It’s not a disappointing album, nor does it blow me away. It’s just kinda… ok.
via Album Review: Garbage – Not Your Kind of People « Consequence of Sound.
Not bad for a 65 year old.
Both videos are from his 4/26/2012 show at the LA Sports Arena. Overall, I was really impressed by the breadth of music that The Boss and The E Street Band played. Songs touched upon almost every genre including soul, folk, rock, rap, and big band. It’s a shame Bruce didn’t convince the band to do some dubstep songs, though I imagine the older crowd would have found it in poor taste.
Tom Morello was a guest on three songs, content with playing in the background until he was featured front and center for an amazing rendition of “The Ghost of Tom Joad.” It ranked among my top 5 live guest appearances, musically speaking. More raw and impassioned than Bruce’s album cut, yet not as abrasive as the Rage Against the Machine cover, the performance created a version of song that stood above the sum of its parts.
The following video is a clip of “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out,” which closed the encore set. It includes a great tribute to Clarence Clemons.
From The Beat:
It gets downright messy. Marvel’s new offices have only one restroom for each gender. In a company of hundreds of people. The post-lunch hour piddle line is said to be especially long and people actually stagger their lunches so as not to wait in it. There’s a human resources staff of one for the whole company. Review copies? You’ve got to be kidding. Editors have to purchase copies of the books they worked on.
God, that’s depressing to read. It’s just sad to see a place called the “House of Ideas” to be such morale deflating misery factory. Makes one wonder how many great ideas are being stifled by penny pinching.
Warren Ellis had a great tweet about this last week given the success of “The Avengers” movie:
Hell, the AVENGERS movie has made so much money that Disney might even let Marvel Comics buy a second toilet for their offices.
— Warren Ellis (@warrenellis) May 6, 2012
via Marvel layoffs: The cheapskate is coming from inside the House of Ideas! | The Beat.