What an absolute disgrace...

 ..that just came out of the oval office.

Just to make it clear where I stand, now more so than ever!

The Rainbow Bar and Grill..

 So, I haven't been playing to much Sims 3 lately, to be honest.. but a couple of days ago I downloaded a Las Vegas world from the exchange - a world which I wouldn't really recommend downloading, mostly because all it's lots are somehow 'submerged' in water, which makes building on them a little trickier than necessary if you want basements or to use the 'constrainfloorelevation cheat' for some more imaginitive builds... which sort of brings me to.. one of my latest builds which I want to showcase...

..the Sims 3 version of the one and only, the legendary Rainbow Bar and Grill.. ;)

One of the things I'm most proud of here, or perhaps the thing I'm most content with is the sign, which is a custom content made by me. The reason for being happy about this one is because I think I have finally cracked the code of making an object self illuminate like it should at night (only the parts I want to illuminate) and not illuminate during daytime. Before it was either an all or nothing... either the object wouldn't illuminate at all regardless of whether it was night or day.. or it would constantly illuminate and the entire object would be completely lit up.. which looks ridiculous, so... finally. ;)

 

 

 

Anyway, let's take a peak inside.. this is the entrance area, the front door is the black opening to the right in the picture.. the sim I'm controlling just walked inside. If you know about the Rainbow Bar and Grill you will probably know about its significance for rock and roll history, hence all the band posters and such.. of course, this Sims 3 build, though heavily inspired by the original, is not an accurate copy. That just couldn't be done for a few reasons, so I have taken some liberties here and there. ;)

This is the sim that walked inside. It's a sim I downloaded from the exchange and you may recognize her as Taylor Momsen from the band 'The Pretty Reckless'. She's hungry, so I hope she has enough sense to find a bar and order a meal. ;) The entrance is behind her and to the right. From here she has two choices of where to go. She can go forward into what looks like a restaurant area, or she can turn back and go to our left to find a place to order..

She makes the right choice of course, and turns around to head for the bar which should be on her left handside somewhere. The restaurant area also has a fire place to create an atmosphere and warm the guests.

 Yep, looks like she found it. Oh, look, it has an aquarium. ;)

Being a good girl and reading the menu before ordering.. "Hmm, I wonder what's todays speciality..."

..and I guess it was a surprise stew of a rather poor quality, Even though this place got some pretty good reviews on tripadvisor.... I suppose coming here is more about the atmosphere of the place for rock and roll fans more than the actual food. ;) I made no changes to her appearance except toning down the eyeshadow a tiny bit actually, because I thought it came on a little to strong.

Then after her meal I hope that she will serve as a guide of sorts to walk around on her own to explore the rest of the building, but instead she walks outside to discuss baking with this guy that works at the nearby Nellis Air Force base.. since this is Las Vegas after all, even though the real life Rainbow Bar and Grill is located in Los Angeles.. I don't really care. ;) Also, the military sim is another one I downloaded off the exchange.. I didn't make a single sim for this save, it seems I enjoy building more than creating sims. Most of the time spent on this save has been on building... sims are only necessary to use the buildings. :P

Then she goes back inside to dance, though I'm sure there's more to this place to be discovered.. that guy in the background seems to be coming from somewhere, maybe she should check it out? For the record, I have no idea who he is.. he bears the hallmark of being an auto generated sim... even though creating sims probably isn't my forte, I would never create a sim with that combination of skin tone and hair colour... ugh, why does the story progression 'always' seem to find a way to just pick some really annoying combination (and why does it 'always' give all male bartenders the same annoying univirsity life beanie... I hate that beanie... the bartender shown earlier, I had to edit him, because of course he got that hat too.. I hate it...)

Anyway...  since she doesn't want to do anything but stand there and dance now, I guide her to check out where the dude was coming from..

It looks like a stairway leading to somewhere.. I don't know if Led Zeppelin used to hang out here, but I've heard stories of Axl Rose tumbling down these stairs on a late night, maybe even on more than one occasion, but.. what happens in Vegas and so on. :P

On top of the staircase is a narrow dark hallway leading to some blue light.. this section is a part where I have taken some liberties from the original.. is she goes forward and a little bit to the right, she will find another passage that leads to the bathrooms. To find the rest of the upstairs, she would want to make a left turn to find..

...another short stairway and a door lit up by a green and blue light coming from seemingly nothing.. maybe heaven is up here anyway.. :P

Nah.. it's just another bar. Who would have thought.. ;)

Well, it's not just that. Behind her is a ladder - which should have been another small staircase, but becase of the previously mentioned problem with lots being submerged in water and difficulty using the 'constrainfloorelevation' cheat, I couldn't make that floor the height it should have been and so it goes up much to high.. anyway that ladder leads up to another room, a once secret little lair of sorts where once upon a time vampires used to hang out behind closed doors..

It doesn't look like much is in there though. It's just a room doused in red light with some leather couches and a table... if walls could talk, it would probably have plenty of stories of what happened in that room behind closed doors.. allegedly..

One step down again from that bar is another of the main attractions of this place. The concert area... this one unlucky sim on the drums has for some reason frozen in her postion, so after taking a few pictures I give her a much needed reset to free her from unvoluntarily posing by the drum kit...

..after I had Taylor Momsen try the guitar to jam out some good heavy rock'n'roll tunes. ;)

 

Now that she has found a muscial instrument you know she's going to keep herself busy for an extended period of time, so I'll just go downstairs again to show you the restaurant/eating area.

 

This is what it looks like from above, facing the other direction.

 

Going back outside there is another area to the right of the entrance door. The placement of the Motörhead poster is not random..

It's a section with some tables and cheap plastic chairs that leads to..

..another bar area of course. Notice the slot machine in the corner. This is Lemmy's spot... not 100 % accurate to real life, but close enough. ;) Also, the door (yes, that's a door) to the right of the slot machine leads to 'the kitchen' (a room with sinks for cleaning up dishes) which also connects to the other bar seen on the first floor inside, as well as a staff entrance on the back of the building. Notice also the lack of bartender... this one is slacking, where is she?

Maybe she's in the kitchen relaxing, smoking a cigarette... here's the backside of the building with the staff entrance to the right, there's also a dumpster behind there for the sims that enjoy to get dirty in the search for gold...

Front side of the bar with the properly illuminated sign.

Taylor has gone downstairs to the first bar to spot the bartender not at work. I suppose that neither her or the working bartender is to impressed.. this one is drinking on the job and doesn't seem to care an ounce.. I should have expected as much.. She did that on her first shift already.. "You're the bartender and you've had more drinks than me!"

Back upstairs to watch the military guy practicing guitar.

Then it's closing time and everybody has to leave for the night. Good night and safe trip home. ;)

 

 

 

Back for the New Year

Things take time. I was planning to initially to have posted during christmas, but that was way to ambitious, as spending time with family took priority. Then it was a bit of a rough start for the new year with lots of interesting weather which meant that I got to spend some extra time with my family and missing a few days of work even...

This was the view from my kitchen window a few days ago..

Basically because of lots of snow and wind and stuff, the usual winter weather or maybe not.., my plane trips back got cancelled and I got rescheduled to travel a few days later, only to experience delays there as well for pretty much the exact same reason.. Long story short... 

 .............travelling during winter time sucks.

 Also, not to mention that for a lot of my time, I felt more like binge watching tv-shows on a streaming service rather than playing the Sims, but anyway.. I just posted the next chapter for my university sims yesterday.. so here it is..

Chapter 6.5 - May 2024 - Wolf Lake Whereabouts

In the previous chapter Inge had made a promise to Samantha that she would have a talk with the university administration to see if there was an opening for Samantha to switch dorms and leave the sorority behind - either that three of them, Samantha, Inge and Oliver Freddy could move to a different dorm, or if Inge could convince one of her dorm mates to simply switch places with Samantha. The first option would require that Oliver Freddy would accept parting ways with his little garden that he's built, the second one that Inge would find a dorm mate that would agree to switch places..

Inge didn't really want to ask Oliver Freddy to part ways with his garden, so she tried the second option first.. Since Samantha lived in a sorority, the person she asked had to be female, which meant that there weren't to many choices - the only girls living in their dorm were Liz Taylor and Ayana Yuki, and this particular morning Liz had already left to go to class.. it was only Ayana sitting there, putting the final touches on one of her many job applications... would Ayana agree to make the move?

This is where I would usually throw in a few more images to make a summary, but as much as I'd like to share stuff, I don't want to spoil it so.. but I think I may add that either way a little later Samantha has a place where she wants to take Inge and Oliver Freddy, probably a good fishing spot, but maybe the location can have some other uses too..

It's not even summer and school's out already?

 Hardly... but I got a new chapter about the Motorsen-Notesen in Sunset Valley.

The chapter turned out a little long again, so I divided into two parts. This is the link to the first part, the second part is linked to right at the end of this one. ;)

Chapter 18.6 - April 2024 - No class, no principles, no innocence..

Monica is just a regular mother who wants the best for her kids, to go to school, get good grades and maybe one day, oh I don't know, become scientists or something...

..but what do the kids want? Well, that's up to them, isn't it? Or is it up to mom and dad to pull those strings? And what happens if a string is repeatedly pulled to hard to many times?

Well, of course mom and dad knows better than to do that, of course.. but some times those strings need a little pulling anyway...

...don't they? ;)

New university update and a theme song

Yeah, so I have just made this theme song for the town (using Suno AI). This song does not relate much to students and their stories, not at all actually, but its more about the sometimes dark and dramatic history of this town by the lake.. from way before there was even a university there...
    There is a deep divide that has plagued this town since the first human set foot there, and then another one emerged a little later when the town was again (re)discovered in the 16th century.. and thus began the darkest chapter in this towns history..
    The university wasn't founded until the mid 19th century and is relatively young in comparison.. and the students are even younger...

 Chapter 6.4 – April 2024 – The Art of Unnecessary Drama

 Les quick summary:

It started off peacefully with Oliver Freddy getting up before sunrise to tend to his plants now that spring was here fully. It looked like it could be a nice day, with sun shining and birds chirping, but.. that was wrong, because it quickly started raining.. don't think this town has seen such a rainy spring since.. well, atleast since before Oliver Freddy and Inge came into town. ;)

So it turned out to be a good day for spending time indoors.. Oliver Freddy had gone to the grocery store though to buy a few more seeds to plant, but alas it turned out that some of them required a skill level he didn't yet posess.. so he went to the library to read up a little more on gardening..

Inge wanted to continue her painting of the parking lot, but as it was raining.. painting outside didn't seem like a good option, so her time was better spent finishing a few more chapters on her drama/romance novel..

A little later Inge got a party invitation from Samantha.. she was told she was hosting another pool party.. and to put on her swim wear and meet her at the Grotto.. why hold a pool party at the Grotto? How strange..

Oliver Freddy received a phone call from his aunt Monica, being curious about how his studies went and if he had made any progress on his research on plants... either way, he was pretty much guaranteed a job at the Landgraab Research Facility after his graduation.. Monica would make sure of that. ;)

At the bowling alley Samantha was busy playing a game of bowling that she just had to win, yet she wasn't playing against anyone...but it appeared to be a game of deadly importance...

Inge became a little concerned for Samantha, when she later turned to Inge and changed into her swim wear.. She was acting a little bit out of the ordinary, why insist on throwing a pool party at the bowling alley and not at their dorm? Well, she eventually got the explanation... Samantha had been in a pretty bad fight with her dorm mate Hannah Germanotta, who was usually pretty unbearable to share the same roof with, but this time she had said the most horrible thing that had left Samantha feeling really bad...

Inge didn't want to see her friend like this, so she offered a couple of possible solutions, but it would require a discussion with the university administration and most likely also a discussion with Oliver Freddy..

..would he be willing to part ways with his garden outside their dorm, now that it was just about to turn into something?

A fairytale of Bridgeport (Repost from ye olde forum)

 Yeah, this is just a repost of a post I made at the old sims forum about a year ago, meant as a tribute to the late Shane McGowan. Of course, in my naivety I suppose, I had thought that the post would stay in its orignal form a little longer than it did, hence I sort of didn't post it on my blog, and as such all that remains of it now is just a skeleton... so, for that reason, I post it again now:

Also, the original post didn't feature a link to the song, due to its controversial lyrics, and because I was actually unaware that a clean verison of it existed. Honestly, I feel like I should have know, but I didn't... So this post will link to the clean version. You can of course also choose to listen to the original by finding it on Youtube or Spotify if you wish.

Music:: The Pogues - A fairytale of New York (Clean Version)

Quite possibly my favourite christmas song of all time...

Got on a lucky one
Came in eighteen to one
I've got a feeling
This year's for me and you
So happy Christmas
I love you baby
I can see a better time
When all our dreams come true

They've got cars big as bars
They've got rivers of gold
But the wind goes right through you
It's no place for the old
When you first took my hand
On a cold Christmas Eve
You promised me
Broadway was waiting for me

 

The boys of the NYPD choir
Were singing Galway Bay
And the bells were ringing out
For Christmas day

Rest in peace Shane MacGowan you dirty old punk!
The Bushweeds salute you - you've been a great inspiration for this band, more than you will ever know. ;)

And Kirsty MacColl, too. Thank you for the music..

~~~~