Zambos Attack

gregrutter: Perfectly normal. Perfectly healthy. it’s a...

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 11:16:17 -0500

Perfectly normal. Perfectly healthy.

it’s a character from venture bros.

So I launched this videogame magazine project on Kickstarter a...

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 01:12:03 -0500

So I launched this videogame magazine project on Kickstarter a while ago and it’s turned out so well. For some reason, I never brought it to Tumblr, but now seemed as a good a time as any. Here’s our pitch statement:

“Gamers don’t read.”
You’ve probably thought that. Or read it maybe. Or overheard it. Well, if not, then we’re telling this to you now. What we hear is that people who “play games” are too immature, too uneducated, and too short-attentioned to focus on anything other than the killing, robbing, and leveling up. Feelings? Reflection? Discourse? No, thank you.

We can do better.

There is a single question that we are fixated upon — “What does it mean to play games?” We want to be what early Rolling Stone was to rock n’ roll or Wired was to tech. We want to look like the Fader and walk like the Believer. We’re talking about the long format read on the creative minds behind AAA and indie game titles sided by the personal essays about what games mean as part of our daily little lives. There are intersections between the games and everything else that are only beginning to be explored. The minds of the videogame world are woefully faceless and we should change that.

Enter Kill Screen.

Here’s what we’re proposing — a smart approach to a beloved medium led by folks who’ve written for the New Yorker, GQ, the Daily Show, Christian Science Monitor, LA Times, the Colbert Report, the Onion, Paste, alongside some lovely photos and even a poster or two! We promise to keep explosions to a bare minimum and limit fawning praise for Modern Warfare 2 to a giggle.

But here’s the good news! Kill Screen is already done. (See the potential cover and sample pages here .)

Thanks to Anthony Smyrski, our creative director extraordinaire (who designs Next American City, Megawords and Swindle as well), we have a completed project in need of publishing. Basically, we owe everyone backrubs.

Your donations will help us print the first run, effectively known as ISSUE ZERO, and hopefully Kickstart a long term project for us. Have you seen Swallow Magazine? No? Well, Kill Screen will look a lot like that. (Except we promise less food and more doodles.) It will be oversized and hopefully hardcover. It’s already been priced out and we’re working with a publisher overseas. We will print as many copies as there are donations.

Much love,
KILL SCREEN

PS. The name comes from this clip.
PPS. If you want to write for us, drop us a line!

(via bullshit)

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 16:49:34 -0400

(via bullshit)

ronworkman: deanminifie: (via natashavc)

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 17:50:27 -0400

ronworkman:

deanminifie: (via natashavc)

Matthew Weiner lays it out.

Mon, 19 Oct 2009 17:03:45 -0400

“Texaco used to pay for the Metropolitan Opera to exist. Armstrong Tile used to pay for Jacques Cousteau. Sponsorship. If American Express said that they wanted to take care of Mad Men, not put any ads in it, and say, “American Express presents Mad Men,” and even have Don Draper throw the card around once in a while, that incredible purple card, the one Eisenhower had — that is the past of advertising, not the future of advertising.

As a content provider, I look at the networks and say their desire to reach this mass audience to preserve their advertising dollars is half the reason why their content slid. It’s insane. It’s insane to guess what people want. It’s a joke. If you have no personal opinions, you should not be involved in the content business. You’ve got big businesses and they’ve got lots of money at stake and they have stockholders, and I understand why things move the way they move.

When I look at digital, the dark side of it for me is the physicality that’s being presented alongside the Internet. I think about that movie The Matrix, and about these bodies that are human batteries that support computers. I met this guy who was creating software where you could watch Mad Men and you could chat with your friend while you’re watching it, and things would pop up, and facts would pop up, and I said, ‘You’re a human battery. Turn the fucking thing off! You’re not allowed to watch the show anymore. You’re missing the idea of sitting in a dark place and having an experience. Are you just like sitting with your phone and you’re kissing your girlfriend and saying, “‘I’m kissing my girlfriend! This is so great, we’re having sex!’” EXPERIENCE THINGS!”

—transcript from New Yorker festival talk.

ronworkman: 9gag:Rocket Science

Wed, 07 Oct 2009 14:59:33 -0400

ronworkman:

9gag:Rocket Science

ronworkman: 9gag:In Disguise Note from Ron: I want this so...

Wed, 07 Oct 2009 14:59:10 -0400

ronworkman:

9gag:In Disguise

Note from Ron: I want this so bad.

kayfabe: rand0mflora: From Cracked’s If Video Games Were...

Wed, 16 Sep 2009 16:16:40 -0400

kayfabe:

rand0mflora:

From Cracked’s If Video Games Were Realistic Photoshop contest.

ericmortensen: Sierra Nevada and Dogfish Head, two of my...

Thu, 10 Sep 2009 10:34:58 -0400

ericmortensen:

Sierra Nevada and Dogfish Head, two of my favorite breweries, are collaborating on two beers together.

Must try!

brokedownpalace: Pithy. such a mess. also they keep money in an...

Fri, 28 Aug 2009 10:50:03 -0400

brokedownpalace:

Pithy.

such a mess. also they keep money in an industrial tin.

stryker: This is the shit that you had to put up with as a kid...

Wed, 19 Aug 2009 19:30:37 -0400

stryker:

This is the shit that you had to put up with as a kid when your parents wouldn’t buy cable.

MATHMAN-MATHMAN-MATHMAN-MATHMAN-MATHMAN-MATHMAN

so frustrating.

dpstyles: Everyone’s got their knickers in a twist over this...

Wed, 19 Aug 2009 17:09:19 -0400

dpstyles:

Everyone’s got their knickers in a twist over this MIT “Personas” project, but I’m not that into it. This graph is a mashup of the 10 other “Dennis Crowleys” on Google and I want to just see mine. Wah!:
Make one: personas.media.mit.edu/personasWeb

More info: personas.media.mit.edu/

My favorite part? Finding this quote as it scanned the web on info on me:

“Dennis Crowley is the worst kind of dot-com tool.”

www.fimoculous.com/archive/post-5615.cfm

Ha!

sorry adam smiths. you’re pretty much screwed.

(via tofuttibreak)

Mon, 17 Aug 2009 15:58:42 -0400

(via tofuttibreak)

ronworkman: lickystickypickyme: You had to see it coming.

Fri, 31 Jul 2009 16:18:44 -0400

ronworkman:

lickystickypickyme:

You had to see it coming.

(via courage-wolf)

Wed, 29 Jul 2009 08:36:31 -0400

(via courage-wolf)

ronworkman: mary1in: infothesis: Balance Your Media Diet - Eat...

Tue, 21 Jul 2009 15:37:34 -0400

ronworkman:

mary1in:

infothesis: Balance Your Media Diet - Eat your media - Gizmodo

sigh — this came from wired. someone should give some credit.

Journalism is not given much respect. Journalists themselves,...

Wed, 15 Jul 2009 18:34:03 -0400

Journalism is not given much respect. Journalists themselves, particularly in my generation, didn’t take their jobs very seriously. I take it very seriously. This is a craft. This is an art form. I’m writing stories, just like fiction writers, only I use real names. If you chopped my books into single chapters, each one could be a stand-alone short story. You could take the chapter about McCandlish Phillips in The Kingdom and the Power, Garibaldi in Unto the Sons, and Harold Rubin in Thy Neighbor’s Wife, and they would work together as a short-story collection.

Nonfiction writers are second-class citizens, the Ellis Island of literature. We just can’t quite get in. And yes, it pisses me off.

Interview with the Paris Review | Gay Talese

spiegelman: (via @seanbonner)

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 21:31:53 -0400

spiegelman:

(via @seanbonner)

Hype Machine: On Chart Integrity

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 10:36:22 -0400

Hype Machine: On Chart Integrity:

And you think that Kid Legit would at least try to play it straight.

catbird:

perpetua:

The Hype Machine calls out several musicians for attempting to game the system and inflate their standings in their charts. It’s sad — you’d think that artists like Flapsandwich, Mustard Pimp, Richie Jamz, and fragglerock would have more pride and integrity.

ericmortensen: whitneymcn: I remember reading his obit the...

Fri, 19 Jun 2009 15:49:28 -0400

ericmortensen:

whitneymcn:

I remember reading his obit the first time around: I was the NYU graduate journalism program and we were actually discussing obituaries at the time.

Sadly, while Adam Purple was out and about all over my neighborhood when I was growing up, I don’t think I ever saw Moondog.

machinetext:

Moondog, aka the Viking of 6th Ave, is a street character from New York’s past. Often seen on the streets of New York dressed in his home-made clothes, viking helmet, and carrying a spear - a colorful character but no mere crackpot. He was also a prolific avant-garde composer (he was blind and composed in braille) with 18 albums to his name. The Band named an album after him, Janis Joplin covered one of his songs, he collaborated with Steve Reich and Philip Glass, who wrote, “We formed a music group, Moondog, Steve Reich, Jon Gibson and myself. For a time, we had weekly sessions playing Moondog’s compositions. We took his work very seriously and understood and appreciated it.” His obit in the times is fascinating. [photo by Walter Karling]