It’s about “going big” but really that’s just a facade for some really good stories. Just like any other This American Life. Make sure to tune in for the 1st act on early childhood development in impoverished communities.

Listen to it here.

First off, Ray LaMontagne. I can never say his name, it usually comes out like that one family from that Shakespeare guy’s play. At first, like with most music I like the most, I wasn’t completely into it. Although the opening song on the album was enough to coerce me into hitting the purchase button. For the first time in a long time, I’m really liking this guy’s lyrics, they’re straightforward and honest, as is his voice. And he’s got the tunes to wrap it all up. Definitely check it out. If anyone has any phonetically spelled pronunciations of his name, please leave them in the comments. I am an uncouth degenerate.

Also, I stumbled upon these guys via YouTube. Pomplamoose is a duo collaboration of what looks to be two musicians who post their music regularly on YouTube. Anyway, unlike with Ray, I was immediately hooked by their sound, and her voice.

You can check out more of their tunes at their You Tube channel. And I think you can buy their songs for a buck a piece at their mySpace page.

As an addendum, I should mention Jack Conte. He’s one half of Pomplamoose [grapefruit in French] and has equally awesome tunes on YouTube. Jack actually has an album on iTunes, so you can get his songs there. It includes two bonus pomplamoose tracks as well. Buy it all. Support awesome artists.

Here’s the full image with name’s changed to protect the identities of those involved. Completely unedited with the exception of the black boxes I added.

In case it’s hard to pick out in the sea of Elton John and Liberachian-type music my colleague enjoys, you can clearly see the Macbook on the bed by the nice lady in this smaller image. I should also mention that the bandana’ed man resembles a friend of mine who now lives in Colorado. He has a mac, so this doesn’t really surprise me. Even PCs love Mac.

Game designers are leaning more towards creating tools and environments for players to have agency over their destiny within a game rather than creating a rigid set of rules and gameplay. It’s a trend that’s lead me closer to some notions I’ve had about video games and [art in general] for awhile.

With the advent of Second Life, various virtual worlds, MMOs and now Spore, it seems like game designers just want to play God. Is it that surprising? In a way, throughout its history, art has attempted to imitate life, or at least its issues. Whether it was the fact that some hunters killed a few bovine grazers that day [cave paintings] or a statement in opposition of war through abstract poetry, art often attempts to have something to do with our lives representational of our issues. Kandinsky or Duchamp don’t seem to have anything to do with imitating life, but they in fact do. Their underlying philosophies in relation to the form of art were certainly within the realm of “life”. Duchamp’s “descending a staircase” has everything to do with the new-found invention of film, and he was responding to that through static imagery, among other things. Kandinksky responded to the picture plane as an image, and not some representational “trick-of-the-eye” portal to another place in time. They were artists for artists, dealing with the issues of art itself.

This has a lot to do with games. Traditional art, photography, literature and film all have their limits, which were met relatively quickly. But games, what’s the limit there? And really, when I write “games” that’s a misnomer, really this involves all interactive experience. Because personally, I don’t consider Second Life a game, nor do I think many of its users. But, frankly, I’m going to continue to use “games” since I don’t think it’ll hurt anyone’s feelings. So since these games are attempting to imitate life more and more, what will really stop them from completely imitating life? All around the world, we’re developing immersive realities, control systems and headsets to try and feed our every input into the game so that we may truly recreate the experience of “life”.

The most interesting games at the forefront of this effort use tools and environments like a blank canvas for players to inhabit. Much like the Christian God created the world for which all things to inhabit. Setting the rules and creating the arena, waiting to see what the folks on his new Earth would do. Well they screwed it up, but if this were actually true and some being did create the world we live in, then wouldn’t games be the ultimate form of art. Art not just imitating life… but creating it.

Maybe gives new meaning to the line:

God created man in his own image.

Genesis 1:27

Today out on the roads, I saw a woman driving with her left leg [not just foot] hanging out of her window. Just hanging there, her foot well past the rear-view mirror. It was most definitely her leg and not some beefy bio-shocked arm… outside of the car.

I should note this took place in America.