The best L.A. films of the past quarter-century
The L.A. Times offers their list of the 25 films from the past quarter-century best capturing the essence of Los Angeles.
I was most surprised by this little nugget, from the blurb for Speed (#17):
One out of every 31 Americans lives in Los Angeles County.
I’m fine with Jackie Browne at the third spot (instead of Pulp Fiction) but I would have put Boyz N the Hood (#4) higher on the list, perhaps at the top. While LA Confidential is merely a brilliant homage, Boyz N the Hood stands as an achievement to which homages are made. And not just in film: Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas is Boyz N the Hood stripped of all social conscience.
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The pleasure of the fleeting year
According to a Google Search, installment 1
According to a Google search, to what person, story, or occurrence is each year in my lifetime most linked? The following is a list the top hits for Google searches done for each year from 1979 to 2008. I have two rules: the first is that I will not count links to websites that just contain a list of things that happened that year; the second, that I will count websites for people, stories, or occurrences that may not even have happened during the year in question.
2008 — US Presidential election
2007 — The 23rd International Conference on Data Engineering, in Istanbul
2006 — Where the Hell is Matt?
2005 — The UN Human Development Report
2002 — The Novel Prize in Chemistry
2000 — US Presidential election
1998 — The Nobel Prize in Physics
1995 — US Department of Health & Human Services’ 1995 press releases
1993 — The Nobel Prize in Physics
1992 — The US Presidential election
1991 — The Nobel Prize in Medicine
1989 — The Nobel Prize in Economics
1988 — The 1988 US Presidential debates between George Bush and Michael Dukakis
1987 — The Nobel Prize in Physics
1986 — The Nobel Prize in Economics
1985 — Bowling For Soup’s 1985
1984 — George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four
1983 — US Code: Title 42, 1983. Civil action for deprivation of rights.
1982 — Entrez Gene: EIF4G2 eukaryotic translation initiation factor 4 gamma, 2 [Homo sapiens] GeneID: 1982
1981 — The Nobel Prize in Economics
1980 — 1980 games, “old online video and arcade games for free.”
1979 — The Smashing Pumpkins’ 1979
Solzhenitsyn’s Harvard Address wins for 1978, by the way.
Some pictures, a map, and a list.
1. Where has collected the best urban photography among recent Ffffound! finds.
2. I love advocacy group Global Voices’ map of online censorship (and anti-censorship) efforts around the world. Be sure to check out their gallery of national blockpages.
3. Deputy Dog has given us his choices for top 5 ‘deserted city’ scenes in film. I’ve always been awed by that empty London scene from 28 Days Later.
Some pictures, a map, and a list.
1. Some pictures: Brisbane’s brightly painted traffic signal boxes.
2. A map: The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops hosts a well-done interactive map of poverty within the United States.
3. A list: the most expensive cities for expatriate employees. New York has fallen to 15th, London climbs to second, and Moscow holds fast atop the board.
I’m sure Dem Boom Dip Shropshire Boyz has already been taken
Stepney Posse
L.or.D
Brixton Yard Manz
Superstar Gang
These are some names of gangs in London; there are many more at The Generic Glob’s partial list of London gang names (which first appeared in The Evening Standard). I’m guessing that part of the fun of starting a criminal organization is the naming of it, but most of these names are uninspiring; almost none are scary and nearly all are overly-descriptive.
What would you name your gang?
Where Americans get arrested when they’re abroad.
Where, outside his or her home country and Iraq, is an American likely to get into the most trouble? Tijuana tops the list.