dreambrazil tours

hey! just a quick note. we just heard that DreamBrazil Tours was accepted as a member of Embratur - The Brazilian Tourist Board. visual mercenary group would like to congratulate darryl e-smythe on getting accepted. plus, we really love the site. we programmed and animated the entire site based on designs from scott meola and gina lee of simplissimus. now we’re just waiting for the opportunity to take up darryl’s offer of getting the extra-special deal (wink, wink) if we ever get our @$$3$ in gear and get to bahia for some serious eco-fun.

but speaking of simplissimus, scott is also the designer for the james beard foundation’s web site (which we also program and do the multimedia for). but we’ll chat about that later. we should also mention that scott did the sound design for the final vote spot. unfortunately, i haven’t downloaded the final mixdown from craven films. i really should, it sounds great!

i love ny

huh? yes you read right: $17,000,000 - that’s seventeen million dollars. for what? to re-design milton glaser’s world famous i love ny logo. who? saatchi&saatchi.

well first the question is why? this is an iconic symbol known worldwide. i understand that the idea is that ny (not only nyc) is a year round great place. but silhouettes of a butterfly, a squirrel and some snow does not warrant the price tag - especially from tax dollars in a slow economy. basically, WTF?

and personally i think the visual mercenary group or our friends at 4corners could have come up with much better design. but hey, we still ♥ ny.

asteroids video game circa 1980

well what do you know…after all these years there are still some records that are left unbroken. today, with the advent of new technologies and research, it seems every season a new record gets broken. we run faster cause we have better sneakers (even golden and untied and we can still win 1st place in the olympics), we swim faster (go sharkskin), and hit harder (polycarbonate nanotube bats, anyone?). at some point you just gotta say: when is it only about skillz anymore?

hell, i bought a newfangled tennis racket this past summer and even though i hadn’t played in 25 years (no kidding), i was pretty good. and let me tell you: i sucked 25 years ago anyway, with my 1970’s heavy wooden racket that weighed like 4 pounds. did i just get better…poof, like that? you can argue that individuals hone balance, dexterity, hand/eye coordination and everything else over years to make us ourselves perpetually better, but still…

well one record that hasn’t been broken over the years is the highest score in the old school bitmap game of asteroids. that four button game (don’t forget - and don’t use - hyperspace) has the all-time highest scoring game. it’s pretty amazing that such a record has lasted so long and that it’s like over 41,000,000 points -  and believe me i know how difficult that is. i used to play it when my eyes didn’t water over at about 3 minutes into the game

the reason i know that my eyes start burning at about 10,000 points is because when i get an urge to play asteroids  - or any other 80’s arcade games - i haul my ass to williamsburg, the hipster capital of the east coast, and go to barcade where our friend scott beard has the coolest bar with the best specialty brews. let me tell ya…nothing better than getting buzzed on 9%ers and playing ms. pacman. go asteroids!