"The close-up. It’s an overlooked great invention of the 20th century. The fact that you can stare into someone’s eyes without being self-conscious is a great gift to all of us. It’s why I love cinema."
- Director Darren Aronofsky on What I Love About Movies
Bash in my brain, and make me scream with pain Then kick me once again And say we’ll never part I know too well, I’m underneath your spell So darling if you smell something burning it’s my heart
I never get tired of reposting this. Every quote you see above are actual texts from the Bible itself. These are just a few examples of the gruesome stuff your pastor never tells you about.
"Well, we’re working in Albuquerque, New Mexico and just outside to this place that we’re working, this kind of a warehouse place, is a payphone. Now, first, who sees a payphone anymore? And there’s a single payphone right on the sidewalk and I thought it was a prop and so did he. He went over and it’s like this is real. So, he tweeted that he was going to be at this payphone for the next ten minutes. Call him. And he got call after call. He got a call from Australia, The Philippines, England, Boise, Iaho. He got a call from everywhere. As soon as he hung up, boom, another call. And he would answer it in his costumary character: "Yo, bitch!" And I’m walking past and he’s waving me over and I come and he said "Talk to them, talk to them!" and I got on I said "This is Walter White. You’re taking my associate away from his duties. I’m gonna come over to pay you a visit unless you hang up right now." They’re screaming, they’re screaming. They can’t believe it. But he’s done that several times."
It’s time for a confession. Whenever I see the rolling hills of Hobbiton at the beginning of The Fellowship of the Ring and Bilbo talks about how hobbits appreciate a simple life, I get teary-eyed. The scene has that affect on me partially because I’m still touched by how that corner of Peter Jackson’s adaptation of the Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit is what I always imagined as I read the books, but mostly because it’s just beautiful. The Shire is lush and quiet, and that’s appealing to me. Happily, we can all get a taste of the tranquil Middle-earth setting because Hobbiton is a tourist attraction.
The set of Hobbiton in New Zealand was completely rebuilt for The Hobbit trilogy, and it’s now permanent. You can a take a guided tour and stop in for a drink at The Green Dragon Inn. No, seriously. The inn is a replica of the one seen in the films and offers both beverage and food. They will probably not allow you to dance on the tables like Merry and Pippin, but you can pretend.
If you need any more convincing that a visit to Hobbiton would be a memorable experience, look at photos from Redditor Ascarea’s recent trip in December. Even though there were a few tour groups visiting the set at the same time, Ascarea was able to grab several shots without people. She was skeptical that the location might be a tourist trap but was pleasantly surprised by the size of Hobbiton and believes the price of admission ($75 per adult) is worth it.
Take a break, look through the gallery, and be swept away to Middle-earth for a few minutes:
Be sure to drool over even more photos of The Shire at Imgur and then head to Hobbiton Tours to plan your vacation.
Have you been to Hobbiton? Tell us all about it in the comments, and make sure you catch The Hillywood Show’s Lord of the Rings / Frozen parody for more hobbit-y goodness.
As we all celebrate the end of 2014, with pretty much everyone agreeing that it was a terrifying nightmare of death and destruction, there’s at least this miniscule scrap of joy: The Best News Bloopers of 2014. Watch a glorious 15 minutes of fuck-ups, featuring newscaster Freudian slips, earthquakes, dildos, accidents, and countless maniacs bombing the cameras in strange costumes. (One oversight: the video unfortunately doesn’t include the BBC reporter accidentally getting high in front of a pile of burning drugs.) It’s not much, but it might force you to emit a single, weak chuckle through your tears.
Creator of the NOLA Hip-Hop and Bounce Archive Holly Hobbs. Photo by Jason Saul
From Louis Armstrong to James Booker,
New Orleans is known for celebrating its musical legends with much more gusto
after those legends have moved away or died. We won't likely change the airport
to "Soulja Slim International" for another 100 years, and other New
Orleans rappers probably won't even get their due after death—or they weren't
going to, until the
NOLA Hip-Hop and Bounce Archive debuted last month.
PhD student Holly Hobbs, who moved to New
Orleans from Missouri in 2008, began compiling the archive in 2012 in
conjunction with the Amistad Research Center as part of her still-in-progress
dissertation on the ways that artists have used music to reconstitute community
after Hurricane Katrina. "I knew I was going to be doing a lot of interviews... it seemed
silly to only have them in my dissertation and book," says Hobbs. "I have a
background in documentary film, so I started doing videotaped interviews."
Hobbs has so far collected 40 hour-long video
interviews with New Orleans rappers—from the big stars (Mannie Fresh, Mystikal), to the obscure but important artists (T.T. Tucker,
10th Ward
Buck), to the newer gay bounce legends like Katie Red and Nicky Da B. "I'm also
very passionate about kids being able to access this information," says Hobbs. "Kids may not read my book, but they will go online and watch interviews of people they look up to, learn something from them, and maybe even
write papers about them for school."
Hobbs also brought on a consultant, New Orleans
rapper
Truth Universal, who for many
years hosted the city's first weekly hip-hop open mic night, Grassroots. Truth
is also a member of positive rap advocacy groups like
Hip-Hop for Hope,
and is one of very few rap artists to regularly perform at the New Orleans Jazz
and Heritage Festival. A New Orleans native, Truth's music is densely lyrical and socially conscious in a way not often associated with New Orleans rap. Once Hobbs invited him onboard, Truth brought on another
consultant—rapper Nesby Phips.
The NOLA Hip-Hop and Bounce Archive's second component includes the 50-plus interviews and personal photos that
comprised the
"Where They At" exhibit of bounce
rap lore created by writer Alison Fensterstock and photographer Aubrey Edwards
for the Ogden Museum of Southern Art in 2010.
After over two years of gathering oral
histories, photographs, and funding (from the Jazz and Heritage Foundation,
Music Rising, the New Orleans Gulf South Center, and a successful Kickstarter campaign), the NOLA Hip-Hop Archive is now live at the Amistad
Research Center, the nation's oldest and largest independent archive
specializing in the histories of African Americans and other ethnic minorities.
Hobbs says that Amistad plans an eventual physical museum space for
the NOLA Hip-Hop Archive. For now, it only exists online and
within a computer at the Amistad Research Center, where visitors can
access the files.
I spoke to Holly Hobbs and Truth Universal about
the NOLA Hip-Hop and Bounce Archive and what it means for the past
and future of New Orleans rap.
VICE: Why does New Orleans hip-hop need an
archive?
Holly
Hobbs:
We are archiving a living tradition. We find that very
important. Looking back in history, nobody was archiving jazz or rock 'n' roll
when it was actually happening—they're creating archives for them now. So the NOLA Hip-Hop Archive is different in that way.
Would you say that local rap isn't given its
proper place in the pantheon of New Orleans music?
Every single artist I spoke to mentioned the
importance of treating rap as tradition in New Orleans. Post-Katrina, rap in
New Orleans has moved towards a more revered, traditional music canon—but it's
still an outlier. Rap and bounce artists are still marginalized in a number of
ways: low programming on local music festivals, trouble booking shows, and difficulty getting insurance for shows.
These are still issues within the
rap and bounce community. This project was a way to legitimize rap in the
public imagination in New Orleans and to show that there's no difference
between a rapper, a jazz musician, or a rhythm and blues artist from the 1950s.
It is all a logical continuum in the trajectory of New Orleans music.
Why is New Orleans rap sometimes not seen as
legitimate New Orleans music?
Rap is still marginal within the public
imagination in New Orleans because I think rap is still scary to a lot of
people. You've also got the conflation between hip-hop and violence in a very
violent city. And, in a city that is basically run by the tourism and
heritage/preservation complex, you have what is chosen to be the stand-in for
what is New Orleans traditional music, and what is not—and rap is
just
not.
But still, we've seen a lot of progress; bounce is
really starting to be in the midst of entering some kind of folk revival. The
older bounce artists are now considered OK. They're not "scary" like they were before. Everything is moving toward a more accepting public
view, but we're not there yet.
Truth
Universal:
A lot of people don't choose to include hip-hop because of the image attached.
If you don't know that there's other hip-hop out there, then you assume it's going
to be a lot of sex and violence, and you don't really want to attach that to
your "Come to New Orleans!" campaign.
Looking at the archive, I couldn't help but
notice an overriding theme of
death. From the gangsta lyrics
to the number of local rap artists who've been killed by gun violence.
Hobbs: New Orleans has lost so
many musicians over the years. It's a continual threat that people have to deal
with here. Every artist in the archive talks about losing someone and the
effect that has on their art and their community.
Between violence and Katrina, some people have
lost whole blocks of neighbors. We have detailed stories of Magnolia Shorty,
Tim Smooth, Soulja Slim, and other seminal figures in rap and bounce who
have been lost to violence or Katrina. We lost Nicky Da B this year at the age
of 24 to natural causes. He's a great example of someone no one expected to
lose so soon.
Truth Universal: There's also positivity
in this music, but I guess you want to view it as negativity. A lot of second
line music and jazz is about having a good time. If you want to ask, "Why'd
they have to kill him?" It's poverty. That's the reality of it.
Hobbs interviewing Sissy Nobby. Photo by Colin Meneghini
Truth, what did you and Nesby Phips bring to
this project?
Mainlyspreading the word and
getting more people interested through social media, in hopes that people use the
archive as a resource. I also suggested artists for the project who I consider
valuable monuments to building the scene. I suggested T.T. Tucker—though they
would have gotten to Tucker anyway—the Psycho Ward folks, Maxmillion, DJ
Chicken, and Bass Heavy. I also brought in Phips, of course.
How do local rap artists respond to the idea of
an archive?
Truth Universal: My hip-hop folks ask, "Why support this?" A lot
of times, when we are asked to be part of documentary-type projects, the exploitation
thing comes up. A lot of people don't want to really want to touch it because
they feel like it's going be an "exotic animal on display" thing, or some type
of money is going be generated at their expense and they're not going to get
any of it.
One of the first things I tell people about this is that this
will help. In the long run, it will help us be included in the discussion.
Like, WWOZ community radio doesn't play hip-hop like they should. It's not
included in the list of genres that are considered New Orleans music. But the
archive helps us get booked at JazzFest, and get more gigs outside of here, and
get more booking agents.
Hobbs: I knew a lot of the
artists previously; I write a lot about music and social movements and I did a
lot of programming work when I first moved to New Orleans. A lot of the artists
were familiar with me, and I think I would have had a harder time had I not
been. T.T. Tucker, who recorded the
seminal bounce record "Where Dey At?" with DJ
Irv,
was the last person I interviewed. He didn't know anything about the project and
he was reticent. He wanted to know what it was all about, and why, and where it
was going be. We had a really long talk about it, and in the end he gave a
great interview.
Do you think the NOLA Hip-Hop and
Bounce Archive will strike the cultural blow it's meant to?
Truth
Universal:
We'll have to wait and see, but I feel like it's been received well thus far. I
think it will definitely help in the discussion. Nothing else exists like this—nothing
that, for lack of a better word, legitimizes hip-hop by including it in the
discussion of traditional New Orleans music.
the article is super depressing, the video is mediocre, but the comment someone left of "Candy flipping is like going back to kindergarten. Everything is bright and new, there are friends everywhere, and the rest of the world just doesn't exist." made my day.
Here's a cute video that I hope turns into an entire series: imagining what's inside a kid's, well, imagination. The video starts off with the toddler waving a stick as he runs around (as kids tend to do) and then transforms into a level of Super Mario Bros. Being a kid is awesome. We just see the stick, they see another world.
This picture was taken by photographer James Synder. He says “This is a Cuban tree frog on a tree in my backyard in southern Florida. How and why he ate this light is a mystery. It should be noted that at the time I was taking this photo, I thought this frog was dead, having cooked himself from the inside. I’m happy to say I was wrong. After a few shots he adjusted his position. So after I was finished shooting him, I pulled the light out of his mouth and he was fine. Actually, I might be crazy but I don’t think he was very happy when I took his light away.”
Barely abused the 20 …It is necessary that this pen is parallel to the edge of the table, you have nothing exceeds, everything must be aligned. In short! It was all aside in us, but those who made the following pictures have much more than that. There is no doubt!
This woman totally seems like she has harnessed the power of a black hole and can suck up all the light and everything around her. But it's just a nice little camera trick showing swinging burning steel wool in reverse. The light flies to her as she twists and turn but in reality, it's just being flung away. Still nice though!
The only thing that comes between Justin Bieber and his Calvins is, apparently, Photoshop.
That a designer underwear empire would Photoshop its models to look more well-endowed isn't exactly a shock, but there's something about altering a photo of a celebrity who's shirtless most of the time anyway that feels even more shallow than usual.
Website BreatheHeavy.com released the allegedly unretouched photo from the Canadian pop star's recent photo shoot with Calvin Klein, citing "someone connected" to the shoot as the source of the photo. In addition to boosting what our mothers taught us to call the "underwear area," Calvin Klein also appears to have pumped up Bieber's pecs, biceps, triceps and derriere.
A source also described Bieber's on-shoot behavior in unflattering terms: "He was basically a douche. Read More
My girlfriend and I are Mothmeister. We create Wounderland – a weird and wonderful universe. We portray anonymous, ugly masked creatures as a reaction against the dominant exhibitionism of the selfie culture and beauty standards marketed by the mass media.
We are passionate taxidermy collectors. That’s why our lonesome characters are, most of the time, accompanied by mounted animals. We reincarnate these dead critters into fairy tale figures by dressing them up like the Victorian taxidermist Walter Potter did. Our surreal inspiration comes from our own imagination, dreams and nightmares.
This was the first design document I worked on while at Lucasfilm Games. It was just after Koronis Rift finished and I was really hoping I wouldn't get laid off. When I first joined Lucasfilm, I was a contractor, not an employee. I don't remember why that was, but I wanted to get hired on full time. I guess I figured I'd show how indispensable I was by helping to churn out game design gold like this.
This is probably one of the first appearances of "Chuck", who would go on to "Chuck the Plant" fame.
You'll also notice the abundance of TM's all over the doc. That joke never gets old. Right?
Many thanks to Aric Wilmunder for saving this document.
Plants and Animals
Photo credit:
Finding mates using electric signals. Derek Ramsey, CC BY
Most animals use touch, smell, hearing, taste and sight to identify and attract a mate (that goes for humans too). But some species have additional and unusual weapons in their sexual armoury – the ability to sense vibrations and electric signals which indicate that a similar creature is in the vicinity.
These wonderfully peculiar creatures are the work of Berkley, CA-based collage artist Kate McCann. McCann uses cuttings from vintage and antique books and magazines, ranging from medical textbooks to old issues of Vogue, to populate her Beetle Blossom Studio with delicate hybrid creatures made of bones, internal organs, parts of birds, animals, insects, shells, plants and even elements of period couture. They’re both grotesque and enchanting. McCann describes her creations as, “part science fiction and part fairy story, these collages are like scientific records of my discoveries.”
"As a child, I lived in a wonder world of faeries, witches, science fiction and botany. Not much has changed, the only difference being that I record all of my thoughts and stories in the form of intricately cut and pieced together collages. I like everything old and a little tired so I seek out images and photographs that are antique, vintage and forgotten. I transform these paper memories and records into other worldly creatures who are sometimes static like specimens and at other times are surviving in a unique habitat."
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Here are the areas to avoid during the Golden Globes this weekend. [ 
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