7. A simulation of city life in 2009
I.
In Arctic Monkeysâ track Sculptures of Anything Goes, Alex Turner sings: âThe simulation cartridge for City Life â09 is pretty tricky to come byâ.
What is he talking about? City Life is a game. A city-builder like SimCity and City Skylines. The game was released in 2006 for Windows, but was later also released on the Nintendo DS: in 2008 in Europe and a year later in the United Kingdom. That City Life â09 cartridge?
You donât hear much about this game. But itâs not exactly difficult to get hold of either. On Amazon, youâd pay around 12 euros for a second-hand copy. On another online shop, I saw a new one for 50 euros. Is Turner being sarcastic?
Or does he mean something else? In the video for Body Paint at 1:50, you can see a cartridge (not for the Nintendo DS) featuring City Life 9. I read a nice interpretation on Reddit. Turner is said to be referring quite literally to his life in 2009. The Arctic Monkeys brand at the time: speed, popularity and thrashing away on guitars. Does Turner now see that life in hindsight as a simulation â of something he wasnât?
The calmer compositions on The Car prove that the storm has died down somewhat. Perhaps the singer has finally found his feet and means that in the line that follows: âVillage coffee mornings with not long since retired spies. Now thatâs my idea of a good time.â That sounds more than logical.
---II.
Did you know that Marge Simpsonâs head always has to fit into her hairstyle twice? That Pantone 116 C is the exact right colour for Simpson characters? And that the pupil-to-eye ratio is always 7:1?
I really enjoyed this video about the rules that The Simpsons animators have to follow.
---PS.
A few great music tips. The new album by The National: First Two Pages of Frankenstein. And a new EP from Beach House: Become.
A small team of Spelunky 2 fans is working on a mod that turns the game into a Metroidvania. Thereâs a demo of Wrath of Kali and a trailer. This could be really good.
---Iâm playing Ghostwire Tokyo on the PS5. In the game, you briefly see a billboard for the company âLorem Ipsumâ and I keep wondering: is that a joke by the developers or did they forget to replace it?
It doesnât seem easy being a teenager on social media. De Volkskrant has a great article about teenagers trying to live up to the beauty ideal, as advertised on TikTok. âI donât want my classmates to see me as some kind of over-the-top gremlin, but as someone who looks after themselves with a normal face.â
The total chaos surrounding the blue tick on Twitter isnât over yet. Elon Musk took blue ticks away from people who didnât want to pay, then gave free blue ticks to celebrities who want to get rid of them, and even people from the afterlife seem to be taking out a subscription. I wrote about the drama on NU.nl.
I forged a knife. In the fire, with a hammer and an anvil. The whole shebang. This is how it turned out. Or as my mum (whose grandad was a blacksmith and had thought beforehand that I might have it in my genes) said: âIt looks like itâs been dug up from the gardenâ. Took three hoursâ work!
