“Telephone”, the new 9:30 minute uber music video by Beyoncé & Lady Gaga.

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PAX East, the East Coast version of the PAX gaming conference takes place March 26-28 in Boston featuring our friends MC Frontalot, Jonathan Coulton & Paul and Storm.

PAX East is a three-day game festival for tabletop, videogame, and PC gamers. We call it a festival because in addition to dedicated tournaments and freeplay areas we’ve got nerdcore concerts, panel discussions, and an exhibitor hall filled with booths displaying the latest from top game publishers and developers. Even with all this amazing content the best part of PAX East is hanging out with other people who know their shit when it comes to games.

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The Na’vi People of Hometree Wisconsin playing Chatroulette.

via Hesling & Erwin

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Twestival Global 2010 is taking place around the world on Thursday, March 25th to raise awareness and funds for Concern Worldwide, an organization that helps brings education to the world’s poorest children.

On Thursday 25 March 2010, people in hundreds of cities around the world will come together offline to rally around the important cause of Education by hosting local events to have fun and create awareness. Twestival (or Twitter Festival) uses social media for social good. All of the local events are organized 100% by volunteers and 100% of all ticket sales and donations go direct to projects.

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“Fuck Shit Stack” the latest music video by the amazing Reggie Watts, directed by Duncan Skiles & Ben Dickinson of Waverly Films.

via Doc Pop

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Photo Gallery: SXSW Interactive 2010

photos by Scott Beale

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The completely bizarre music video for “I Feel Better” by Hot Chip directed by Peter Serafinowicz, from their new album “One Life Stand”.

via John Hodgman

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photo by Chad Batka

Musician Alex Chilton has died at age 59 in New Orleans. He was scheduled to perform with his band Big Star this Saturday at SXSW Music.

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by Grafisches Büro

via Buzz Andersen

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“Tuff Taco” a new animated short featuring artwork by Ferris Plock and animation by Jim Dirschberger (Eighty Four Films).

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Facebook Abuse by Man In The Box

via Chip Beale

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“Stylo” the latest music video by Gorillaz, featuring a chase scene with Bruce Willis, from their new album “Plastic Beach”.

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photo by unknown

via Urlesque

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Lee Hardcastle created a 60 second stop-motion animated version of The Evil Dead.

via Drawn!

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Philadelphia based design studio The Heads of State have created a beautiful travel poster series: “From Sea To Shining Sea”

via swissmiss

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It’s no secret that San Francisco’s South of Market district has changed a lot in the last 20 years, but it’s easy to forget just how dramatic those changes have been.

Not all that long ago, SoMa synonymous with seediness and squalor — so much so that the area was used as the backdrop for a movie scene that defined mainstream anxieties about out-of-control crime during the early 1980s.

Remember Clint Eastwood’s “Go ahead, make my day” bit from the 1983 Dirty Harry film Sudden Impact? It was the standout scene in the movie, and the line became one of the decade’s pop-culture touchstones — so much so that it was embraced by then-President Ronald Reagan:

“I have my veto pen drawn and ready for any tax increase that Congress might even think of sending up. And I have only one thing to say to the tax increasers. Go ahead–make my day.”
–Ronald Reagan, to the American Business Conference (1985)

As it happens, the building used to film the famous “make my day” scene still exists, although the neighborhood around it has changed almost beyond recognition. The scene itself was shot at 701 Third Street, at the corner Townsend, in a building that was originally constructed to be a Doggie Diner. By 1983 it had become a one-off burger joint called Tiger’s. (In the film it’s called the Acorn Cafe.) Later it became Burger Island, and today it’s a utterly forgettable McDonald’s franchise.

More interesting, however, are the scenes outside the windows of the building. In Sudden Impact, the lot across the street is dusty and vacant, heightening the sense of post-urban blight.

But there’s a reason that lot was empty, of course. Originally it was home to a magnificent Southern Pacific train station that was torn down in the mid-1970s, just a few years before the film was shot:

And now, in a perfect metaphor for SoMa’s transformation, that empty lot is now home to a Border’s Bookstore and coffee bar:

So there you have it. The location that was once a perfect embodiment of lawlessness and urban decay is now a perfectly civilized place to take the family or browse the books while you sip coffee.

Here’s the original Sudden Impact scene it’s entirety. Enjoy the spectacle, then say it to yourself: “Go ahead… make my latte!”

photos: S&P depot via San Francisco Public Library

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Something that makes a great film into legend is when time reveals layers of entertaining stories behind the filmmaking, which is one of the reason Quentin Tarantino’s film Inglorious Basterds has legs. Contributing to Batserds’ growing aura of cult status is the above DVD special feature comprised of Italian clapboard operator Geraldine Brezca who does hilarious, foul-mouthed, and wonderfully sharp scene calls just before clapping for “action.”

Typically when a scene number is called the clapboard operator will follow the English alphabet, and each film set will have their own variation such as using names in alphabetic order, or the International Radio Operator Alphabet (Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, etc.). Not Brezca, “the Clapper Loader and Tarantino’s Camera Angel.” She’s been working with Tarantino over the course of several films and has her own style — which as you’ll see, tends to either shock or compel the actors, or both. After the second viewing, we think there is a method to her madness, even if you think that shouting “Dario Argento” or “Scene 34 Blowjob!” at actors seems random.

via The Establishing Shot

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photo by Nick Bilton

Nick Bilton and David Gallagher recently did a New York Times interview with 17 year-old Chatroulette founder Andrey Ternovskiy who recently traveled to New York City and has plans to go to San Francisco soon. He’s visiting from Russia to meet with investors and programmers to talk about the future direction of the project.

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Canon is working on setting up it’s own .canon top-level domain name. If approved by ICANN, this could lead to a whole new approach to domain names.

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Here’s a multi-camera video of Leo Laporte doing a live video stream on Twit.tv while crowd surfing during Diggnation at the The Bigg Digg Shindigg at Stubbs BBQ in Austin last Saturday at SXSW. In doing so he set the world record for Longest Live Streaming Crowd Surf in one minute, 2.75 seconds as recorded by URDB.

Here’s another video of Leo crowd surfing shot by Jeremy Johnstone.

via Gina Trapani

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