Video games are in an interesting place right now, on the cusp of becoming an interactive narrative art form that can accomplish virtually anything. Game are still just barely constricted by certain encumbrances such as points, leveling up, stages, bosses, and so on, but with every passing day each of those elements gets ever so slightly less necessary, and as processing power and screen quality steadily increase, the options for a distinctive story or emotional palette become correspondingly wider.

There have been elegaic, winsome, cryptic games for a while now, but a game like 9.03m packs an emotional wallop that no “improvements” on Candy Crush Saga or Fruit Ninja could ever achieve. The name 9.03m is a reference to the magnitude of the earthquake that occurred just off the Japanese coast on the 11th of March, 2011, triggering a horrendous tsunami that devastated an enormous swath of northeastern Japan. The Tōhoku tsunami took nearly 19,000 lives and caused an immeasurable degree of dislocation and property damage. It’s an unimaginably tragic event, and 9.03m attempts to grapple with its emotional toll.
 

 
Created by the Scottish gaming company Space Budgie, 9.03m is brief and (essentially) pitched as the easiest point-and-click game ever created—it’s somewhat reminiscent of the mid-1990s game Myst or 2012’s PS3 game Journey. it’s not intended to offer heart-palpitating gameplay in which anyone could ever lose him or herself in the heat of competition. It is purposefully game-as-remembrance; to concoct a truly challenging puzzle would be to miss the point utterly.

For 9.03m, Space Budgie ingeniously shifted the action to Baker Beach in San Francisco, where the moon has rendered the ethereal landscape a gorgeous blue hue as the iconic Golden Gate Bridge looms benignly in the distance. The task is to collect butterflies that are embedded in objects strewn on the beach, each bit of debris representing a single victim of the tsunami’s incomprehensible devastation. Each object is braced by a silhouette of a person, which dissipates into mist by the time you can interact with it. (The first item, a soccer ball, may be a reference to the soccer ball later found off of an Alaskan island that was traced back to a Japanese schoolboy.)

That last detail should provide a clue to the gut-wrenching emotional power that 9.03m can evoke. (The slowness of the game and the tinkly piano score may drive some users up the wall, but that’s okay.) The game costs $1.99 on Steam, and (once the company’s expenses are recouped) all of the proceeds go to Aid For Japan, a charity for children who lost their parents in the Tōhoku tsunami.
 

 
via RocketNews24

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Massive islands of floating debris from Japan’s tsunami heading across Pacific Ocean

The only feds I’ll ever love…
 
Listen people, you probably know me well enough by now to realize that I’m no austerity hawk! I’m as red (not to be confused with “red state,” I mean commie) as they come, and I say tax the rich like they deserve it (they do), and spend all their money on comprehensive social programs, beautiful, harmonious infrastructure, and an efficient, innovative public sector! I’m just saying that the Federal Bureau of Investigation is not the best example of a that ideal infrastructure, that’s all!

So when Paul Ryan’s latest baby, The Bipartisan Budget Act of 2013, promised not only to avoid $700 million in FBI budget cuts in 2014 (the FBI’s budget request for 2013 was $8.2 billion), but also, to increase FBI funding… well, I have to wonder what they’re spending it on. And before you say, “OMG, Amber! They’re spending it on super-secret important spy stuff they’re using to keep the free world safe from terrorism,” let’s take a little look at the public face of the FBI.

I’m not sure how much these FBI public service announcements cost, but I guarantee it is too damn much, so let’s play a little game! Let’s watch my top three picks from the FBI YouTube channel (all of which are made in conjunction with private industry), and we’ll let the readers of Dangerous Minds pick which one is the worst! The FBI is obviously Internet-savvy, so I’m sure they’ll appreciate the feedback and re-tool their YouTube presence accordingly!

So what will it be? The evils of counterfeit fashion (as if name-brand stuff isn’t made in sweatshops, too)? The evils of illegal downloading, which is just “not cool”? Or “cyber-bullying,” because apparently it’s cool if kids are harassed, as long as it’s not online? Cast your vote now!
 

 
Mayor Darryn Lyons, of Geelong in Australia, has declared his city’s Christmas tree to be the worst in the world and he ain’t too happy about it. “It’s an absolute disgrace,” Mayor Lyons said.

Apparently the tree set the city back $30,000 (£16,500, US$27,000). AND the starfish decorations. Don’t get Mayor Lyons started on the starfish decorations.
 

 
Via Arbroath

 
The Guardian has suggested an alternative version of the “selfie” called the “shefie.” In other words a portrait of the books and personal items displayed on people’s shelves—a literary shelf life, you might say. It’s just another in the seemingly endless list of self-obsessed, narcissistic images brought about smart technology—who’d a thunk sharing this stuff on social media was what the Internet was invented for?

The Guardian are currently accepting pictures and videos of people’s shelf lives, so if you have nothing better to do, and want to impress your pals by submitting a pic of all those heavy-weight literary tomes you’ve bought but never read, or you’ve just redecorated and have some simply gorgeous furniture to die for…then hop over to The Guardian for details of where to send your portrait or video. Meanwhile, here’s what others have been posting.
 

 

 
More shelf life, after the jump…
 

 
On March 26, 1976, the great Muhammad Ali spent a half-hour in the company of George Herman, Peter Bonaventre, and Fred Graham on CBS’ Face the Nation—the starkest takeaway may be how much has changed.

In our hyper-partisan times, you wouldn’t necessarily expect a prominent African-American athlete to aspire to be a “black Henry Kissinger” or to single out a Republican administration—referring to Ford—as the only one that he has really liked (“I like President Ford and his administration”), all the while disavowing any expertise in political matters.

It’s an astonishing thing to watch Ali’s stoic face as he listens to Fred Graham idiotically inquire, “Is there ever gonna be another ‘Great White Hope,’ a white heavyweight that’s gonna come in and whip all of you black heavyweights?” Interestingly, Ali largely accepts the premise of the question, discussing the great white boxers of the past and agreeing that there aren’t very many around. Of course, to our 2013 ears, the whole idea of pining for a white hero to come along seems reprehensible and also oddly aggressive in freely owning up to the psychological need of white people to have a white champ. The whole thing seems more than a little silly today.
 

 
They discuss Ali’s upcoming bout with legendary sumo wrestler Antonio Inoki in June of the same year in Tokyo. That was a very interesting fight—after truly massive hype, it was something of a fizzle, ending in a frustrating 3-3 draw, and Ali suffered some serious leg injuries during the fight, which some have seen as a precursor to modern mixed martial arts. (Ali may have had the last laugh, however: Inoki announced in 2012 that he had converted to Islam 22 years earlier.)

Speaking of injuries, in light of Ali’s struggle with Parkinson’s, it’s heartbreaking to hear him describe a series of jaw fractures, some nerve problems, and a “busted eardrum” that have resulted from his fighting career. In addition, completely unaware that his boxing would eventually lead to Parkinson’s, Ali warns youngsters not to go into boxing in stark terms (even while claiming that baseball is more dangerous): “I think boxing is dangerous. Any man been hit in the head—the brain’s a delicate thing, I think it should be well protected. ... I would advise nobody to box. If they get hit too much, ... it’s too dangerous.”

Amusingly, Ali admits that he’d kinda like to have back that Olympic gold medal he threw into the river way back when.

Towards the end of the program, Ali furnishes a rather ringing endorsement of the United States of America: “I’ll say this: We have a lot of moral problems in America, but America’s the greatest country in the world. I been throughout the world. The best schooling system, the best education system, the medical system, the highways, the cars, the airplanes, the television shows, and this is why—but morally, we need to be uplifted” before going on to praise Wallace D. Muhammad, the son of Elijah Muhammad who disbanded the original Nation of Islam of his father and moved the church into a much more mainstream direction (it sure is interesting to hear Ali disavow all that “white devil” stuff…...).
 

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
I am the Greatest: Muhammad Ali sings
Check out Muhammad Ali’s Broadway chops as he performs a number from a Black Power musical, 1969

 
The Occupy movement may be dead, or it may not, but irony will never, ever die. In a spectacularly brazen display of co-optation, the corporate retail behemoth Walmart—inarguably one of the entities most responsible for the unflaggingly aggressive ongoing campaign to throw the American Working Class into serfdom—is selling panoramic photos of the Ur-Occupy encampment at Manhattan’s Zucotti Park, via its online marketplace. The retailer of the prints is listed as The Poster Corp, and their publisher is named as Lieberman’s—that’s their watermark faintly visible on the images reproduced below.
 

 
Occupy has generated plenty of irony before, visible from wherever you stand with respect to its objectives. There was a deep and regrettable irony in the proliferation among Occupiers of those Guy Fawkes masks from the film version of V For Vendetta—products manufactured in Asian sweatshops under license from the Warner Bros. corporation. There was an altogether more vicious irony in the senselessly brutal police response to the movement—somehow Tea Partiers who showed up to protests openly brandishing loaded firearms and calling for the President’s death weren’t enough of a potential risk to public safety for police to bat an eyelash, but peaceable demonstrators camping out in public space to call attention to economic injustice needed to be subjected to repeated violent invasions by militarized cops? But does Walmart—the company that recently drew fire for running a canned food drive to benefit its own impoverished workers—profiting from the sale of images from this genuinely populist anti-corporate uprising not take the prize?

Not ironically at all, but quite fittingly, Occupy itself recently released a t-shirt to benefit Black Friday strikers. Wouldn’t it be something if they got a piece of the posters being sold via Walmart and used that money to help organize retail workers? The very idea is surely pure fantasy—it’s so doubtful that Occupy is getting any of that poster action that it hardly even seems worth asking.

“The Revolution Will Not Be Privatized” may, alas, have been a premature slogan.
 

 

 
Obviously, Van Morrison’s Moondance is one of the very greatest albums of the classic rock era. The long-player’s beatific meditation on the mind-blowing beauty of nature, spirituality and love makes it something that people have a very personal relationship with, and associate with a time, or a place, or both, in their lives when they were first exposed to the album. (The first time I heard Moondance was floating down a creek on an inflated inner tube in West Virginia as the sun was rising. I had dropped a bunch of blotter acid with some teenage friends and one of them had a battery-powered jam box with “It Stoned Me” queued up and timed for just the right golden moment to come through the trees before hitting play and giving us exactly the sort of epiphany (“Oh the water, oh the water…”) Morrison wanted his listeners to have. We’d been playing stuff like Nina Hagen, Killing Joke and PiL all night, so this was an immediate show stopper for our post-punk primed ears. It was an… auspicious introduction to his music and I’ve been a Van Morrison fan ever since.)

It’s useful to consider Moondance as a perfect work of art. It’s unassailable. In the classic rock canon. Beyond anyone’s opinion. One for the ages. And as I was saying above, you can project a lot onto it emotionally (like you can with, say, Blood on the Tracks), so it’s very dear to a lot of people’s hearts. I think of Moondance like Leaves of Grass, except that Walt Whitman went about refining his transcendental masterpiece, literally, for four decades (up to the time he was on his deathbed) while Morrison laid his down in a matter of days when he was just 24 years old and left it to be mixed by someone else.

I’ve read that Van Morrison was pissed off to find that Warner Brothers Records were planning to release a box set of a newly remastered Moondance with outtakes from the 1970 sessions (including a 5.1 HD DTS surround mix of the album on Blu-ray) and had denounced it on his website before removing the post. Morrison apparently feels that he’s given the world a great work of art and he’d like to keep its integrity intact. Who could blame him?

He needn’t have worried. My own Moondance “phase” happened decades ago. I’ve always loved it, but admittedly I hadn’t played the album for well over a decade. When I got this box set—and it’s fantastic when this happens, when you have a new entry point reviving interest in something you used to listen to a lot—I couldn’t stop playing it. I played it on repeat for for days on end (to the point of divorce threats!) The 5.1 mix, done by one of the recordings original engineers, Elliot Scheiner, is simply magnificent and to hear this music envelope you and swirl around you is a sort of musical paradise for audiophile rock snob like yours truly. It was almost like hearing Moondance for the first time. Every fan of this album should hear it this way.

Worth pointing out that WEA did right by Moondance on a technical level—unlike with many label’s 5.1 releases, they went with the far superior HD DTS option on a Blu-ray disc instead of a regular DVD with lossy surround. (As someone who is genuinely motivated to actually spend money on physical releases of 5.1 products, the Blu-ray vs. DVD issue is how I weigh if I am going to plunk down the cash or not. The difference is profound, making the Moondance Deluxe Edition a good value for the money, whereas I’d rate The Band’s new Live at the Academy Of Music 1971 box—with just a lossy DVD—as a “pass.”)

Below, Van Morrison & The Caledonia Soul Orchestra perform “Moondance” live at the Rainbow Theatre in London, 1973:
 

 
Today marks the third December 17th since the world lost Don “Captain Beefheart” Van Vliet, and it’s an anniversary that’s becoming something of a holiday for me. This is going to sound corny as all hell, and I’ll unabashedly cop to that, but the loss of an artist that contributed so much to how so many people understand not just popular music but the process of - and possibilities inherent in - artmaking itself seems a fit occasion for reflection. More than any other identifiably “rock” artist, Beefheart completely blew the lid off of my understanding of music’s construction, and his influence is manifest in punk and post-punk spanning decades from Pere Ubu to The Monorchid, in arty outliers like The Dog Faced Hermans and Stump, and most forwardly in U.S. Maple, the Magic Band fans that transcendeth all knowing. Tom Waits made and continues to make decades of great art by corralling and taming Beefheart’s signature New-Orleans-Blues-band-falling-down-a-flight-of-stairs sound and channeling it into a timeless hybrid of lowlife beat poetry and cocktail soaked after-hours decadence. The man has much great work to take credit for, and that’s before even considering his paintings.

One key thing I’ve always adored about Beefheart’s fandom is how hidden it is. Not that his fans are closeted or anything suchlike - it’s just that his enthusiasts come from a broad swath of types. There’s no fashion lexicon that comes with Beefheart the way it does with hippie, punk or metal; there’s no quick way to identify your tribe from across a room, so when you do find them, it can be in delightfully unexpected places. I’ve met a cop who collects Beefheart bootlegs. I once even served as a hired gun guitar player in a children’s band helmed by a pair of seemingly straight-arrow family men whose Beefheart obsessions (and collections) utterly dwarfed mine. Though he is a quintessential cult artist, his reach is surely deeper into this world than we commonly reckon.

Captain Beefheart effectively died in 1982, when Van Vliet gave up music and retired the persona. Van Vliet died on December 17, 2010, aged 69, after many years of struggle with Multiple Sclerosis. This excellent documentary, hosted by none other than the BBC’s legendary John Peel, does the man’s life far more justice than I can in a blog post.
 

 
Here’s the Captain and the classic Magic Band lineup in 1972, from an amazing German TV broadcast that constitutes some of the best footage available from that period.
 

 
More Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band, after the jump…

 
Damn my terrible timing! Yesterday marked the 25th anniversary of the passing of Sylvester; queer icon, incredible vocalist and Disco Diva extraordinaire. Well, I may be 24 hours late, but I couldn’t let another day pass without posting something in tribute here on DM.

And what a doozy of a clip! Yes, it’s Sylvester at the Castro Street Dog Fair in 1984, receiving the “celebrity pet” award on behalf of his pup, Princess Terry, from former Catwoman Lee Meriwether, all under the watchful gaze of a leather-vested cowboy. Yep. It really doesn’t get any more camp than this.

R.I.P. Queen Sylvester, you will forever be missed!
 

 
Major H/T to Matthew Hill!

 
Just in time for the holidays, a recipe for “Krakatoa Surprise,” a disgusting delicacy created by none other than Lemmy. The recipe comes from the book Mosh Potatoes: Recipes, Anecdotes, and Mayhem from the Heavyweights of Heavy Metal.

Krakatoa Surprise

¼ pound flour
½ pound chocolate syrup
¼ pound refried beans
½ pound curry powder
1 bottle strawberry syrup
¼ bottle brandy

Mix flour, syrup, beans and curry powder into a model of Krakatoa Island. Pour strawberry syrup over it to simulate lava. Pour brandy over all. Strike a match. Eat while still burning.

Below, an image of Lemmy’s Krakatoa Surprise via BaraMetal:

 
With thanks to Cherry Bombed!