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 February 25, 1998 In this issue: |
 Meet The Lemurs A Clean, Well-Darkened Place Fair is Fare Check Your Headspace All That's Hole-y |
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Welcome to Department Lemur, your home away from home. In these spacious
digs, our international team of swanky gearheads, angry young artists,
amateur banjo players and assorted fuzzy-freakies crank out the Vegas
Deluxe website 24/7, sometimes breaking to watch a John Woo film. I'm here
for at least six hours out of that week, six-and-a-half if Bryan The
General Manager cracks the whip. Now, before we get too deep into the jungle here, I feel obligated to tell you that I'm not involved with any of the actual web work. To be more precise, I don't do any work at all. I wear nice vintage shirts and maintain a Van Dyke, which enables me to look like the average content developer without knowing the first thing about being one. But it's not important what I do; what matters is that we're going on a little excursion, you and I.
Every week, The Passenger -- that's me, baby -- will spoon-feed you pop culture (part of every nutritious breakfast, just like Pop Tarts!) until it dribbles onto your ergonomic keyboard. If you have a taste for the current cinema, the cult of personality, popular music, convoluted literature, bare ribaldry or Sid & Marty Krofft that cannot be sated by Mr. Showbiz or the eccentric goobers at Wired, you've come to the right place. If you don't, well, there's always the Microsoft Network and all the oppressive fun and excitement the overlords have to offer. I strongly advise you to choose life. |
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GOIN' SOUTHBOUND
Dark City is the latest film from Australian director Alex Proyas, the unsung hero behind The Crow. Its official site is so Freudian, I almost felt violated by exploring it. Sure, the site sports an intuitive (read: confusing) navigation scheme and a few pointless Shockwave games, but the atmosphere is undeniably cool, Hughes Hall's funky Gregorian disco inspires deep-hip action and the QuickTime trailer will rock your narrow world. That flashing Copperplate gibberish on the main page induces yawning, but I suppose there's nothing better to stress the trendy cyperpunk attribute of a product. Dark City is a nice place to visit, especially if you don't want to live there. And even if the movie turns out a stinker, at least it will stink in the crypto-gothic manner that those clove-smoking chumps at the coffeehouse just adore. |
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YESTERDAY'S TOMORROW TODAY
"It's a great big beautiful tomorrow, shining at the end of every day." So claimed Richard and Robert B. Sherman's theme to General Electric's "Carousel Of Progress," one of the most popular attractions at the 1964-1965 World's Fair in Queens, New York -- the original dark city. The imaginative World's Fair Official Guide site behaves as if tomorrow never died, presenting information and graphics from the official fair guide book in the present tense. Reading about the exposition in this context adds a chilling edge to the promotional text, like this excerpt previewing General Motors' "Futurama" ride: "Visiting the jungle, spectators see a machine that fells towering trees with searing laser light. A road builder, scaled to appear five stories high and longer than three football fields, follows the timber-cutter. It levels and grades, leaving a divided, multilane superhighway in its path." Yikes. A discreetly placed links page will yield more information about the beginning of the end for Western Civilization. |
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THIS NEXT POEM IS CALLED "DOWNLOAD NOW"
Under normal circumstances, I wouldn't touch anything bearing the legend "Beatnik" with a ten-foot goatee. However, when the Beatnik in question is an innovative new piece of music software created by pop-synth whiz kid Thomas Dolby … well, then it's time to adjust your beret, slip on your girlfriend's clamdiggers and get blinded by science. Headspace is home to Beatnik; In essence, Beatnik is MIDI with plummeting cleavage. It proffers a deeper, richer sound than MIDI, at sizes so dinky that files load and play almost instantaneously. A free Beatnik plugin is available, one which will allow you to sample the joys of the "Beatnik MoodMaker," the musical equivalent of a mood ring: hit the button and the MoodMaker will throw together a random style of music and sound environment. (Try "Loungy-Sixties" and "7th Storey Traffic" for a tasty treat.) And pay special attention to the music and artists in the Beatnik Gallery, particularly the smart and sexy worldbeat sounds of Lindsay Tomasic. Solid. |
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YOU SHOULDA SEEN THE ANGELS AT THE OTHER END A pinhole camera is simple, but as the Pinhole Gallery beautifully illustrates, the photographs it produces are not. This handsome site tells you everything you ever wanted to know about pinhole photography -- how to make one, what exposures to use, the history of the medium and, best of all, a gallery filled with stunning, otherworldly images. I can't really do the photography justice in this space, but I can tell you that Charles LoVerme's QuickTime VR pinhole is probably the best use of the plugin I've ever seen. I recommend that you mix this one with the Beatnik MoodMaker for the full-on, check-yer-head, where-is-your-NEA-now effect. Now that wasn't too bad, was it? It's good to be here, though I could use some beverage service. If you see the steward, can you send him back here with some Zombies? You're a lifesaver. See you next Wednesday, kids!
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