There are many themed iterations of a specific famous real estate baron board game, but very few of them involve the horrors of the Lovecraftian mythos descending upon South Jersey and destroying the boardwalk. Behold The Doom That Came To Atlantic City, a satire by artist Lee Moyer, designer Keith Baker, and sculptor Paul Komoda (who worked on The Thing and Cabin in the Woods).

This fun-for-all-ages destruction of reality — which has been in the works for two decades — was “inspired by [Moyer's] love of the Cthulhu Mythos and disdain for a certain board game that shall not be named.”

Even though it bears a superficial resemblance to a certain Parker Brothers land grab, The Doom That Came To Atlantic City is more about destroying the dirty jewel of the Garden State using cultists and eldritch powers. As Baker explains in the rules rundown:

You begin with a happy community filled with houses, and then you and your friends arrive. Each of you is playing one of HP Lovecraft’s Great Old Ones, and your goal is to smash houses, open gates, and destroy the world. But you each want to destroy it in your own special way. As Cthulhu, you want to make sure that pesky Shub-Niggurath doesn’t sneak in and destroy it first!

The idea of Azathoth the Blind Idiot God trashing Park Place is pretty fantastic. If you’ve always hankered to combine Yog Sothoth and seaside fun in the sun, you can pitch in at their Kickstarter campaign.

[Via Coilhouse]

Source: io9. Hi-res images and video at link.

A self-portrait of Amy Winehouse that was made out of her own blood will be auctioned off by friend and former rumored lover Pete Doherty .

Multiple sources are reporting that the former lead singer of Libertines will sell the painting, a small piece entitled “Ladylike,” alongside items such as instruments, diaries and articles of clothing.

The auction will be held at the Cob Gallery in London on Friday, as part of an exhibition of Doherty’s blood-infused works called “On Blood: A Portrait of the Artist”.”

CONTINUED at CBS Las Vegas.

A public art controversy is blooming in San Diego thanks to a mysterious man who has turned 100 stop signs into flowers using yarn and wire.

Back in March, the computer programmer who only identifies himself as “Bryan” started a “yarn bombing” project in which he and a dozen others knitted and crocheted green stems and leaves onto 100 stop signs in his neighborhood.

“I went out at night and wrapped scarves that I had already knitted around the signposts and stitched them to the poles and added leaves that I made with yarn and wire,” Bryan told The Huffington Post. “At first, people ignored me, wanting to avoid that guy standing on a step-ladder near a stop sign, but as I got up to 50, 60 signs, people started to stick their heads out of their cars and tell me they loved what I was doing.”

But that love hasn’t bloomed in all corners. Recently, San Diego City official Bill Harris contacted Bryan through his website and told him to stop turning signs into trees.

“The City is forced to announce that the Stop Sign Flowers must come down. Even with the great community spirit this effort has generated, there are just too many restrictions to overcome,” Harris wrote in a letter that was excerpted in San Diego Citybeat. “City staff looked through state law and local policies trying to find some way of allowing the flowers to remain in place. Unfortunately, particularly with traffic control signs and including all other City assets, there is just no way to retain the works where they now are.”

Bryan has 10 days to remove them before city employees do so, and he is currently weighing his options.

“If I remove them, I can repurpose them, but if I leave them, it’s possible they just might stay,” Bryan said. “In January, 2011, I put up five as a test run and they are still there, so I’m hoping it was just the city doing their due diligence. But I’d like to think that if you were a busy city worker and had a whole day’s work ahead of you, removing this might be too much trouble.”

Although he is resigned to fate, others like San Diego City Councilwoman Lorie Zapf are trying to see if they can pull any strings to keep the yarn-coverings on the stop signs by gathering support via Twitter

Meanwhile, the artistic community is also rallying behind Bryan, a.k.a. “Knitter Guy,” according to San Diego arts and culture journalist Enrique Limon, who stitched together the first story on the stop sign flowers for San Diego Citybeat.

“The cool thing about this is that Bryan isn’t trying to be cool or edgy, he’s just trying to do a project to beautify his neighborhood,” Limon said. “I think removing them is detrimental to a city that is not exactly on the cutting edge of public art.”

Bryan would like the stop sign flowers to stay, but realizes that he may not be able to stop their removal. Still, he’s happy that he has a great yarn to tell his kids.

“I have two daughters — 11 and 13 — and this has been inspirational to them,” he said.

Source: The Huffington Post. Video at link.

Adobe has released a free public beta of Photoshop CS6. It comes packed with all the features of the potential retail program which include improvements to the handy content-aware system, an expanded video editing tool, and more.

Adobe is touting a bunch of new features in this version, but the biggest changes come in its new content-aware tools that let you quickly move subjects around in a photo and its new interface. It also comes packed with new video editing tools that allow you to edit timelines and create simple Photoshop-based filters. A ton of new features are packed in here, including a handy new blur tool, better cropping, layer improvements, and more.

It’s not clear how long before the beta expires, but the catches seem pretty minimal. You have to create an Adobe ID in order to use the beta, but it’s free and you get unfettered access to Photoshop. If this is your first time digging into Photoshop, be sure to hit up our Night School guide to learn the basics. Have you given the new beta a whirl? Let us know what you think in the comments.

Adobe Photoshop CS6 Beta | Adobe Labs

Source: Lifehacker.

*Written by Rob Rimes.

George Lucas is the man that nearly every fucked up juvenile thirty-something fanboy loves to hate. Now I understand that people have the right to be critical of someone’s work when it is put out there for public consumption but to hate the man as vehemently as many people do, is just absurd. Many fans of ‘Star Wars’ and ‘Indiana Jones’ feel that somehow those franchises are theirs and that Mr. Lucas has gone out and ruined them. People truly feel that these massive franchises are their intellectual property and that they have some sort of ownership rights to them. Nothing is further than the truth. So when I read articles all over the Internet about how much of a greedy sick untalented hack George Lucas has become, it really pisses me off. Now don’t get your vaginas in a tizzy, I’m not here to defend the prequel trilogy or “Crystal Skull”, in fact, as a fan, I have serious issues with these films as well but unlike the consensus, I don’t allow my dislike of some minor things that are insignificant to my life as a whole push me over the edge to the point that I am out for this man’s blood. I certainly don’t harbor the opinion that somehow his later work has bastardized and ruined his earlier magic. Even with some of the questionable changes to the original ‘Star Wars’ trilogy, the films are pretty damn solid and to discount their greatness over Jar Jar Binks and wooden actors is asinine.

The original trilogy set the stage for what was to come in the future of movies. They were damn good films in every respect and they influenced nearly every person that has picked up a film camera since they came out. ‘Star Wars’ forever changed Hollywood, the art of film making and special effects. George Lucas, through his intuitive and crafty brilliance, upped the ante and forced film studios to catch up to his imagination and vision. The sad thing is that people often forget this when bashing a man that just wants to share his stories with the world. It’s quite obvious that George Lucas is a child at heart and he only wants to make us smile. However, there’s always an asshole in every group and unfortunately for Mr. Lucas, it seems as if the assholes outnumber the sane people in this instance.

I don’t really understand where this entitled attitude comes from with fans and I’m not just talking about ‘Star Wars’ fans, I’m talking about fans of any franchise really. These people who get so disenfranchised with something they once loved to the point that it makes them spit venom at the stories’ creators is childish and narrow-minded. If guys like Lucas didn’t create and deliver their masterpieces to you in the first place, you’d have nothing to base any of this on. To curse a man’s legacy and the man himself, who has given you decades of joy is pretty disgusting and just shows how sad and pathetic some of these pompous bitches are. Hell, I still remember people being in an uproar over the ‘Battlestar Galactica’ remake before they actually saw it. In the end, it was pretty close to being a science fiction masterpiece! Sometimes you have to spread your wings and fly and that’s what Lucas did. When series are rebooted, remade or continued on, it can go really well or really bad – that’s the risk involved but the person who owns the rights to the property has the freedom to do what they want with it.

No one owns ‘Star Wars’ but George Lucas. For anyone to claim that they have some sort of right over the man’s blood, sweat and tears is ridiculous. He owns the franchise, he owns the characters within it and he can tell any tale that he wants to tell. The fact of the matter is, people have a choice. They don’t have to watch the new material if it isn’t up to their standard and fails to meet their expectations. These little jitterbugs act as if there is some sort of magical gun to their head and that they are forced to soak up every bit of ‘Star Wars’ that is released. Well people, you don’t have to do a damn thing! You can opt out and never look back.

The problem is that so many people put so much of themselves into this fantasy world that they lose a sense of their own reality and when things don’t go the way that they want, the fantasy starts to remind these sad people living vicariously through the fiction that real life is moving along without them. Nostalgia is a motherfucker and it only seems to exist strongly in those who are unsatisfied with what’s really going on around them. To have intense hatred for George Lucas or any great storyteller because their work becomes less than what it once was is pathetic. To invest that much emotion into complete fantasy is retarded. Yes, I wrote “retarded”.. call the sensitivity police!

Kids today, and by kids I mean middle-aged nerds, just don’t seem to respect property rights. Of course, if someone thought that they could infringe upon or add their unlimited hysterical two cents to everything one of these hypocritical fanboys did, they’d have a serious fucking shit fit. Hell, they probably wouldn’t come out of their mom’s basement for several months while losing themselves in an endless one-person ‘Skyrim’ marathon where the only way they’ll even eat is if their mother slides a plate of cold cuts and cheese puffs under the door.

The reason I feel the need to write this rant is because I’ve come across several articles lately that have stated that the fans of these franchises have invested so much of themselves into them that they truly believe they now have some sort of stake or ownership in the property. Yes, the property that they have never contributed anything to creatively other than writing their own shitty unofficial and non-profit fan fictions and role-playing scenarios dictated amongst their equally entitled geek pals. You people have no claim to anything and to think you do makes you look like socialist pussies who are convinced that the whole world and everyone in it owes them something just because they are breathing. Fuck you people. If you don’t like something, move on. Hell, stop crying into your tauntaun sleeping bags and go create something yourself. If you think you know more about storytelling, science fiction and fantasy than George Lucas then go out and fucking prove it! If you don’t, then you’re nothing more than a whiney talentless hack yourself and I’d tell you to go get a girlfriend or boyfriend but the only people that would have you won’t leave their basements either. Create something for once in your life and stop trying to destroy someone who just wants to share their imagination with you. You people are the parasite sponges of the world that rape and pillage the ideas of those greater than you because you’re weak and can’t make something bigger than yourself that people will passionately care about. It’s time to grow up and stop acting like ungrateful cunts.

The truth is, George Lucas has contributed more to this world than any of you probably ever will. Besides, you’re the ones “torturing” yourselves with weekly doses of ‘Clone Wars’ not Mr. Lucas. Guess what idiots, YOU DON’T HAVE TO WATCH IT! Accept it and move on with your sad pathetic lives.

He may be gone, but his boundless imagination and talent yet remains – Ralph McQuarrie, concept designer behind EMPIRE STRIKES BACK and RETURN OF THE JEDI (amongst so many other things) passed away yesterday at the age of 82.

McQuarrie is the ultimate example of someone who you may know without realizing it, as he was the artist who George Lucas turned to when studios could not manage to understand the vision he had for STAR WARS. McQuarrie was able, with vibrant artistry, to not only create that which Lucas was imagining but evenimprove upon it.  ”When words could not convey my ideas,” said Lucas, ”I could always point to one of Ralph’s fabulous illustrations and say, ‘do it like this.’”  The look of Darth Vader, R2D2, C-3PO, Chewbacca, Bespin, and so many classic moments from the STAR WARS saga? All McQuarrie.  And it was not just to STAR WARS that McQuarrie applied the entire breadth of his incredible skill – his work can be seen in a wide variety of projects that range from RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK to ET to JURASSIC PARK to the original television series of BATTLESTAR GALACTICA.  He even shared an Academy Award win for Best Visual Effects for the movie COCOON.

This was recently posted on McQuarrie’s website: “It is with the deepest sadness that we announce the passing of Ralph McQuarrie. People say you should never meet your heroes. Ralph was the exception to that rule. We were all fans of his amazing art long before we were blessed with his friendship. But once you got to know Ralph it was impossible not to become a fan of Ralph the man…His influence on design will be felt forever. There’s no doubt in our hearts that centuries from now amazing spaceships will soar, future cities will rise and someone somewhere will say, ‘that looks like something Ralph McQuarrie painted.’”

And they’d be right.

You can find McQuarrie’s website, along with further information about him and a great deal more of his beautiful art, right here.

Source: JoBlo.

Black and White Silent Picture “The Artist” Wins Best Picture at the 2012 Oscars.

Here’s the rest of the results.

BEST PICTURE
THE ARTIST
THE DESCENDANTS
THE HELP
THE TREE OF LIFE
HUGO
MIDNIGHT IN PARIS
MONEYBALL
WAR HORSE
EXTREMELY LOUD AND INCREDIBLY CLOSE

BEST ACTOR
George Clooney, THE DESCENDANTS
Brad Pitt, MONEYBALL
Jean Dujardin, THE ARTIST 
Damien Bachir, A BETTER LIFE
Gary Oldman, TINKER, TAILOR, SOLDIER, SPY

BEST ACTRESS
Glenn Close, ALBERT NOBBS
Viola Davis, THE HELP
Rooney Mara, THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO
Meryl Streep, THE IRON LADY 
Michelle Williams, MY WEEK WITH MARILYN

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
Kenneth Branagh, MY WEEK WITH MARILYN
Nick Nolte, WARRIOR
Jonah Hill, MONEYBALL
Max von Sydow, EXTREMELY LOUD AND INCREDIBLY CLOSE
Christopher Plummer, BEGINNERS

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Berenice Bejo, THE ARTIST
Melissa McCarthy, BRIDESMAIDS
Janet McTeer, ALBERT NOBBS
Octavia Spencer, THE HELP 
Jessica Chastain, THE HELP

BEST ANIMATED FILM
RANGO
CHICO AND RITA
A CAT IN PARIS
KUNG FU PANDA 2
PUSS IN BOOTS

BEST DIRECTOR
Michel Hazanavicius, THE ARTIST
Alexander Payne, THE DESCENDANTS
Martin Scorsese, HUGO
Woody Allen, MIDNIGHT IN PARIS
Terrence Malick, THE TREE OF LIFE

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
Nat Faxon, Alexander Payne and Jim Rash, THE DESCENDANTS 
Aaron Sorkin and Steven Zaillian, MONEYBALL
John Logan, HUGO
George Clooney and Grant Heslov, IDES OF MARCH
Bridget O’Connor and Peter Straughan, TINKER, TAILOR, SOLDIER, SPY

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
Woody Allen, MIDNIGHT IN PARIS 
Michel Hazanavicius, THE ARTIST
Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumulo, BRIDESMAIDS
JC Chandor, MARGIN CALL
Asghar Farhadi, A SEPARATION

BEST ART DIRECTION
THE ARTIST
HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS, PART 2
HUGO
MIDNIGHT IN PARIS
WAR HORSE

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY
THE ARTIST
THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO
HUGO 
THE TREE OF LIFE
WAR HORSE

BEST COSTUME DESIGN
ANONYMOUS
THE ARTIST 
HUGO
JANE EYRE
W.E.

BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE
HELL AND BACK AGAIN
IF A TREE FALLS
PARADISE LOST 3: PURGATORY
PINA
UNDEFEATED

BEST DOCUMENTARY SHORT
“The Barber of Brimingham”
“God is the Bigger Elvis”
“Saving Face” 
“The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom”
“Incident in New Baghdad”

BEST EDITING
THE ARTIST
THE DESCENDANTS
THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO
HUGO
MONEYBALL

BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM
BULLHEAD
FOOTNOTE
IN DARKNESS
A SEPARATION 
MONSIEUR LAZHAR

BEST MAKEUP
ALBERT NOBBS
HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS, PART 2
THE IRON LADY

BEST ORIGINAL SCORE
THE ADVENTURES OF TINTIN
THE ARTIST 
HUGO
TINKER, TAILOR, SOLDIER, SPY
WAR HORSE

BEST ORIGINAL SONG
“Man or Muppet,” THE MUPPETS 
“Real in Rio,” RIO

BEST ANIMATED SHORT
“Dimanche/Sunday”
“The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore” 
“La Luna”
“A Morning Stroll”
“Wild Life”

BEST LIVE-ACTION SHORT
“Pentecost”
“Raju”
“The Shore” 
“Time Freak”
“Tuba Atlantic”

BEST SOUND EDITING
DRIVE
THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO
HUGO
TRANSFORMERS: DARK OF THE MOON
WAR HORSE

BEST SOUND MIXING
THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO
HUGO 
MONEYBALL
TRANSFORMERS: DARK OF THE MOON
WAR HORSE

BEST VISUAL EFFECTS
HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS, PART 2
HUGO
REAL STEEL
RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES
TRANSFORMERS: DARK OF THE MOON

Adele, who captured the world’s heart with an album about a broken romance, emerged as the top winner at Sunday’s Grammy Awards, winning six trophies including the prestigious trifecta of record, song and album of the year.

The singer, who also made a triumphant comeback from vocal cord surgery on the Grammy stage, sobbed as she won the night’s final award, album of the year, for “21.” It was last year’s top-selling album with more than six million copies sold and remains lodged at the No. 1 spot on this year’s charts.

Her victories tied her with Beyonce as the most wins by a woman in one evening.

“Mom, gold is good!” Adele shouted as she took the album of the year trophy.

The celebration of Adele, a big-voiced, soulful singer, came on a night where the Grammys marked the loss of one of music’s great female voices – and one of its most prized talents overall. Whitney Houston died the night before the Grammys, casting a shadow over music’s biggest night.

But while her death lent a somber overtone to the evening’s show, it did not overwhelm it, perhaps best proved by the show’s closing number, a rollicking jam session featuring Paul McCartney, Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty, and Dave Grohl among others.

The night’s other big winners were Grohl’s Foo Fighters, who won five Grammys. They noted that they made their album “Wasting Light” in a garage.

“To me this award means a lot because it shows that the human element of making music is what’s most important. Singing into a microphone, learning to play an instrument and learning to do your craft, that’s the most important thing for people to do,” Grohl said as the band accepted their best rock performance trophy for “Walk.”"It’s not about being perfect. It’s not about sounding absolutely correct. It’s not about what goes on in a computer. It’s about what goes on in here (your heart) and what goes on here (your head). … Long live rock ‘n’ roll!”

Among the evening’s performances was a dance-heavy number by Chris Brown, and performances by McCartney and Springsteen, who kicked off the show by performing his new song “We Take Care of Our Own,” a rousing song that references the troubles of the nation.

But the evening’s most moving moment came as Jennifer Hudson – who has called Houston an inspiration and one of her biggest idols – emerged to sing one of Houston’s signature songs, “I Will Always Love You.” Dressed in black, with only the accompaniment of a piano, Hudson appeared to fight back tears as she sang the song, ending with the line, “Whitney, we will always love you.”

CONTINUED at My Way.

*Written by M. Hines.

Rob has been after me for some time to write something reasonable to post on The Swash.  I’ve never really had anything to say, but prompted by the primary in my home state today and recent conversations with good friends, I thought I would share a couple short thoughts. (Not necessarily reasonable, and in no particular order.)

Part A.

It’s hard to decide where to start when the premise of a later subject may be defining what it means to be pro-life by illustrating the severity of our military action in order to set the stage for redefining what it means to be pro-life.

But what the hell, here we go.

“Why are we fighting terrorism? What are the motives here? Who struck first?”

Lately, in the back room, this very argument has been growing. It is growing amongst those who do not know the history of the Middle East region and are not being taught the inconvenient facts by our leadership.

It is understandable as to why this subject wouldn’t be discussed. A brief glance through the pages of history reveal mass involvement from the West in the establishment of what we know of the Middle East today. For example, most are not aware that the modern state of Israel is less then a century old. Even less known is that the roots of the country lie in a backhanded treaty made between the British and French to provision a space for the Jewish people in their process of “re-arranging” the Middle East colonies. This act set the stage for the later violent overthrow of the Arab population living in the area and the creation of what we now know as Israel and Palestine both in border and conflict.

In 1977, the first Islamic Terrorist attack against the US occurred in what was called the Hanafi Siege, a curious event that ironically seemed to consist of Islamic Extremists targeting ultimately other Islamic Extremists. The interesting element here is that popular cause for the Siege is attributed to the their leaders secondary request, which was to have a film titled Mohammad, Messenger of God destroyed as they perceived it to be sacrilegious.

One of the next most notable attacks occurred in 1993 when a small group managed to detonate a truck bomb at the base of the World Trade Center. This attack, which was largely unsuccessful, was planned by Ramzi Yousef. The following can be read in the Wikipedia article regarding Yousef’s motivations:

According to the journalist Steve Coll, Yousef mailed letters to various New York newspapers just before the attack, in which he claimed he belonged to ‘Liberation Army, Fifth Battalion’.[8] These letters made three demands: an end to all US aid to Israel, an end to US diplomatic relations with Israel, and a demand for a pledge by the United States to end interference “with any of the Middle East countries’ interior affairs.” He stated that the attack on the World Trade Center would be merely the first of such attacks if his demands were not met. In his letters Yousef admitted that the World Trade Center bombing was an act of terrorism, but this was justified because “the terrorism that Israel practices (which America supports) must be faced with a similar one.”

Interesting. So, perhaps there is a shred of logical motivation that extremist groups would have for attacking Western Groups. So, what is our motivation?

“They hit us first.” Did they?

Who has been putting their hands in the Middle East and stirring the pot for decades now? Is it possible that the western action of creating and promoting the state of Israel could be likened to China invading Alaska, giving it to the Canadians sending our people to Idaho and saying, “Hey, us and our friends got your back… Forever”. Is it really that unreasonable to say that an action like that might be cause to promote irritation with our way of doing business? Is this not what we’ve been doing for the last sixty years?

I’m not trying to make any definitive statements here, just some things to think about.

It is estimated that our war in Iraq has caused the deaths of some 150,000 Iraqi Civilians since it started…

It is estimated the Nazi’s killed between 160,000 and 180,000 German Jews during the Holocaust.

Part B.

Pro-Life – the term that has become defined-as and synonymous with “advocating full legal protection of embryos and fetuses (especially opposing the legalization of induced abortions).”

I once heard a pastor respond when asked if a politicians stance on abortion was reason enough to vote for them, his response was this, “being pro-life does not simply mean that we protect the unborn, it must also must mean that we protect the living”.

Choosing who should live and who should die on any grounds passes a judgment that only a higher being has the right to make, and effectively assigns a value to a person’s life no different than if they were slaves.

I hope that when put this simply to others; it is as profound as it was to me.

Currently there is a majority percentage of the GOP field that is running on both pro-life and pro-war agendas.

I do not see a way for these to co-exist.

References

Almost everything here is referenced from Wikipedia. If you have a problem, comment with the conflicting facts, and we’ll chat about it. If you don’t have conflicting facts, Fuck Off.

Original Story here.