A Tool to Deceive and Slaughter, Caleb Larsen
Parting Shot: Sky High — ANIMAL
Dubai’s 2717-foot tall Burj Khalifa was rigged with explosives to celebrate it’s opening today as the world’s tallest skyscraper.
I was one of the “twenty-somethings” that was just started their career at the Journal when the sale went down and I had always wondered who would tell this story well. (I’m still waiting for Sarah Ellison’s book!) I was at that meeting when Murdoch first showed up and had to stand on the paper boxes. At the time, I thought, “This is so ridiculous. I hope someday people outside this office know what’s happening right now.”
One thing that didn’t appear though was the conflicted financial situations that a lot of older Journal people found themselves in. Although they may have been concerned about the sale, many of them had been purchasing stock over the years at a cheaper price through this Dow Jones employee program (I can’t remember the name). They were now in the same situation as the Bancrofts (the Dow Jones family owners) and Rich Zannino (the former Dow Jones CEO). The sale was going to change the company, but it would also make them a lot of money individually. The price doubled just at the hint of Murdoch buying the paper, so although some older folks gnash and moan at what later transpired, they didn’t walk away empty-handed. I remember two of my editors, the morning the news broke on CNBC, discussing what their journalistic obligations were in terms of selling their stock, regardless of whether the deal went down or not.
I really need to do a “69 Best Hard-ish Pop-Rock Songs Of The Hard Rock Era” list, although I fear that when I do my purpose in life will be fulfilled, and I will vaporize into dust.
(This would be top five for sure, btw.)
New York §§130. 25, 130. 30, and 130. 35: Third-degree rape for anyone age 21 or older to have sexual intercourse with someone under age 17
PHEW. Glad someone in the Winger camp fact-checked the lyrics. Also, DUDE PLAYS THE BASS.
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!
“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.
I write stories for a living. I also started a videogame magazine called Kill Screen