the most beautiful bit of psychedelia: Ralph Steadman's Alice

[selinker]

What: Illustrator Ralph Steadman's acid-trippy version of Lewis Carroll's classics Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, first published in 1967 by Dennis Dobson of London, then alongside The Hunting of the Snark as The Complete Alice in the definitive 1986 Jonathan Cape version.

Comments

the most beautiful day in Wizards of the Coast's history

[selinker]

It was February, 1996, and Wizards of the Coast was glum. A devastating series of year-end layoffs had given the world's most creative hobby game company no sense of forward momentum. It was my team's job to fix that.

In the last half of the month, cryptic emails from a new employee named "Alice Liddell" appeared in every folder, commenting inanely on the issues therein. Many people reacted with scorn, but a few smart cookies looked up the name on this strange new thing called the "internet." Yet no one knew where Ms. Liddell was.

So for February 29th, a day that shouldn't even exist in a rational calendar, we plunged Wizards into Wonderland. Everyone came in to find playing cards on their desks, and Mark Rosewater running through the halls in a white rabbit costume shouting "I'm late! I'm late!" Then in every corner of the building, strange stopovers appeared. The Red Queen (kijjohnson) conducted flamingo croquet with a lobster quadrille; the Dormouse (the-monkey-king) ran a rather unfair game of Train Chess; the Caterpillar (Brian Campbell) lounged in his

Re: the most beautiful day in Wizards of the Coast's history

[kijjohnson]

I was mad, you were mad. We were all mad.

Re: the most beautiful day in Wizards of the Coast's history

[selinker]

You must be mad, or you wouldn't have come here.

Re: the most beautiful day in Wizards of the Coast's history

[rubrick]

That's... that's awesome. A damn sight more effective than the traditional Awkward Morale-building Bowling Outing, I should think.

[rubrick]

I just watched that Petty video for the first time in decades. One detail that struck me: how much trouble he had finding the brim of his hat.

[selinker]

Fun fact: That song was co-written by Dave Stewart of the Eurythmics, who appears in the video as the sitar-playing Caterpillar.

[rubrick]

I hadn't known that. That makes oodles of sense. The song is such an outlier in Tom Petty's repertoire.

[selinker]

If the internet is to be believed, the title was based on Stewart watching Stevie Nicks kick newly-ex-boyfriend Don Henley out of her cocaine-infused party. The Alice theme was based on Stewart waking up and finding Nicks trying on Victorian clothing, which would inspire anyone to dream of Wonderland.

[rikchik]

These are pretty wonderful. My top honor would probably go to the "Only a Northern Song" section of Yellow Submarine, especially the bit with the Beatles orbiting the cube.

[selinker]

I have only one comment for that: "I've got a hole in me pocket."

[dougo]

Good list, to which I'll add Pink Floyd's "See Emily Play", the film Fantastic Planet, and various Homer Simpson trip-out sequences (no good videos online from what I can tell, sigh).

[selinker]

Sadly, I'm a post-Syd Barrett guy.

I have meant to watch Fantastic Planet for years. Maybe now.

[dougo]

Yeah, I mostly prefer post-Syd stuff myself, but that song seems the most quintessentially '60s psychedelic.

[selinker]

When they told me about that feature, I dubbed it, "Just $4.99... with $14,995.01 in DLC."

Thanks for the compliments, Monty! I still haven't had time to go through all the levels. When we were making the game, they'd say things like "And then the white rabbit does... well, we're pretty sure he does something." So I can't wait to find out what those something were.

Mike