Taking The Tri-State Down The Rabbit Hole
Author James Frey Talks About His Latest Project
ENDGAME is the interactive project led by international bestselling author James Frey who is the creator of the ENDGAME novels. Together with Google’s Niantic Labs and Twentieth Century Fox, ENDGAME will be a real-world mobile adventure game, creating a unified, immersive world that moves seamlessly from books to games to movies, with an accompanying real-world, multimillion-dollar treasure hunt to bring people in even closer. In the ENDGAME book is an interactive puzzle comprised of clues that will lead to the location of a hidden key. The first eligible reader to solve the puzzle for the first book and find the key will win $500,000 dollars’ worth of gold.
Aluminum Crotch Cool
Men’s boxers promise to block ‘harmful’ cellphone rays
Manhattan-based Belly Armor is selling RadiaShield boxer briefs designed to shield against the radiation emitted by cellphones and other mobile devices. Photo: Belly Armor
You wanna know what comes between you and your Calvins? Radiation!
Belly Armor — which claims its products protect pregnant women from harmful rays emitted by laptops and other gadgets — is pitching a product to men concerned about the effects of cellphone radiation on their fertility.
The Manhattan company branched into the menswear department this month with RadiaShield boxer briefs, which promise “to protect men’s reproductive organs and maintain fertility health.”
The high-tech skivvies, which go on sale Thursday, come with a thin layer of aluminum-like silver in the crotch area to shield little swimmers, the company claims on its site.
Bath
Girl With A Pearl Banksy
Banksy Parodies Girl With a Pearl Earring in New Painting
Recent reports of the artist’s arrest are a hoax
The famous and elusive street artist Banksy has parodied Johannes Vermeer’s famous Girl with a Pearl Earring in a new painting in the English city of Bristol. The artist posted a picture of the work, reportedly titled Girl with a Pierced Eardrum, to his website.
The painting, photographed from different angles on the site, features an outdoor alarm box as the woman’s earring, the BBC reports. Banksy previously graced Bristol with the painting Mobile Lovers earlier this year.
Support PAINTED NAILS
Help Save These Dogs, Please.
from Adrienne S.
San Simon, AZ rescue relief effort
By Nadine | October 11, 2014 | Comments (2)
On 9/28 I visited a man and his wife who have spent the past several years picking up stray dogs and dogs needing homes. This man is a disabled veteran who does not receive enough income to support the situation he has now found himself in. He is unable to afford proper vet care, (spaying/neutering, vaccinations or general medical) or food. Because of this, and despite his efforts to keep them separated by chaining them, they have been breeding and increasing in numbers. After speaking to this man, I’ve come to realize this is a situation of him not being able to turn his back on dogs that have been dumped at the local truck stop or stray. He is more than willing to let the dogs go to a BETTER situation.
He had 51 dogs of which I removed 10 that day and 9 more have since also gone to rescue. Boxer Luv Rescue, Cruz’s Crusaders and AZ Care have taken in dogs but I believe they said there are still 22 outside on chains and most he is willing to part with. There are also 8 (possibly more) inside the house. He has tried to create shaded areas for all of them and they appear to be healthy aside from one with a growth under his left ear who is in need of vet care. I did not enter the home but many of the ones indoors have never been outside or have not been outdoors in many years.
I DESPERATELY need help from rescue groups given the severity of this situation. Please PM me on Facebook “A Voice For Arizona Shelter Dogs” if you are able to help these dogs. Thank you
What do you get when you cross two writers, Google, and three MIT Ph.D graduates?
James Frey’s ‘Endgame: The Calling’ Puzzle And 6 Experimental YA Novels That Twist How We Think of Books
What do you get when you cross two writers, Google, and three MIT Ph.D graduates? A YA book that is about to start a real-life treasure hunt. James Frey, in conjunction with his co-author Nils Johnson-Shelton, created Endgame: The Calling (HarperCollins) as an armchair treasure hunt, a novel that would include secret codes and clues to the location of — wait for it — a key that will unlock a bulletproof glass case filled with $500,000 worth of gold coins.
I’ll pause while you run to go buy the book.
OK, now that your Goonies-style treasure mapping supplies are in stock, there’s more. It’s not going to be easy. Those three MIT Ph.Ds? They are the ones that designed the puzzle and hid the key, so I hope your math skills are top-notch. And Google Niantic built the accompanying mobile game. This is no nonsense.
And, yes, I have read the book, but no, I am not already halfway around the world digging in abandoned wells, because my copy did not have the final puzzle. No hints. No spoilers. It’s up to you.
The story within Endgame: The Calling follows 12 teenagers who are all fighting to save their line of the human race in a game against each other. They’re solving riddles, as well, and the one who finds the key will survive. The other 11 and the rest of their heritage lines will be extinct. So, yes, their stakes are higher than yours are.
The teenagers’ story is a page-turner in itself, so just make sure you don’t pass by those clues too quickly.
Frey isn’t the first writer to test the bounds of what readers consider a novel. In the adult world, we have loads of experimental fiction from people like Shaun Tan, Italo Calvino, Ali Smith, and others. In YA, it may be more rare, but these six authors are stepping up to the plate with some novel (I had to) takes on creating books.
Birdman
Is it a bird, is it a plane? No – it’s a mystery man flying past an Airbus full of passengers as it flew over Macclesfield at 3,500ft
By Thomas Burrows for MailOnline
The man whizzed within 100 metres of the plane over Macclesfield and left pilots baffled (stock image)
Pilots on a holiday jet were left stunned when a ‘flying man’ whizzed past their aircraft at 3,500 feet.
The mystery man flew within 100 metres of the plane and left the pilots baffled as to how he was moving through the air, as neither could see a canopy suspending him.
There was also no sign of him on the radar and further checks failed to reveal any paragliders, parachutists or balloonists in the area at the time.
He appeared from nowhere as the Airbus 320 passed Macclesfield while it was coming in to land at Manchester Airport and has been dubbed the ‘Superman of Macclesfield’.
The Airprox Board, which looks in to near misses, said: ‘They first sighted the object a few hundred metres in the 11 o’clock position 200 to 300ft above.
‘It passed down the left-hand side of the aircraft at 100 to 200m.
‘The crew only saw it fleetingly, there was no time to take avoiding action and they based their assumptions on it being a person under a canopy. But neither can remember seeing a canopy.’
Endgame Gold
Strip Scribbles: $500K in gold at Caesars for James Frey’s ‘Endgame’; Eric Trump; Burlesque Festival
By Robin Leach (contact)
CNN
A $500,000 gold coin display will be unveiled at Caesars Palace on Friday by international bestselling author James Frey. His new book “Endgame” is more than an adventure tale in an engrossing, high-stakes and apocalyptic trilogy.
It features an interactive puzzle comprised of clues that will lead to the location of a hidden key. The first reader who solves “Endgame: The Calling” and then finds the key can unlock the $500,000 and win the haul. The second book will have a $1 million prize and the third and final book even larger.
The gold will remain on display at the resort until the prize is won. “Endgame” follows the storylines of 12 characters as catastrophic events lead them on a global quest in search of three ancient keys that will save their own bloodlines and the world.
Twentieth Century Fox already has the movie option, and Google is creating a reality game. The puzzles will be solved using technology and social media. The gold haul will be kept in a secure case under security guard.
The First 21st Century Book
Is the first 21st Century book here?
International bestselling author James Frey was in San Diego on October 15 to promote his new project, “Endgame: The Calling.” For this interview, Frey said that what he’s trying to accomplish in this new project is to marry technology with traditional storytelling to create “the first 21st Century book.”
“First and foremost,” said Frey, “Endgame is a book that tells a story like any other book. Hopefully, people will read it and love it and get excited by it. The book has a puzzle written into it and readers can just read the book and love the book or they can choose to engage the puzzle and try to solve it. The first person to solve the puzzle will receive a key that opens a case at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas with $500,000 of gold in it.”
Frey said this project was inspired by “Masquerade,” which was written by Kit Williams. Frey read “Masquerade” when he was ten-years-old and, like many others, holds fond memories of that experience. He said, “It was a book that I loved that I thought was awesome and that somehow became more than a book to me. It made me go back and read it over and over again. It got me excited about it, and it was fun and cool and weird and thrilling.”
It’s A Myth That Kids Don’t Read Anymore
Print Alive and Kicking at Book Fair Feting Digital
A worker sorts copies of James Frey’s book ‘Endgame’ at the Oetinger trade fair booth at the Frankfurt Book Fair, on Oct. 7, 2014. Photographer: Arne Dedert/picture-alliance/dpa via AP Photo
The book of the future could be crowdfunded, self-published or tied to a video game — you might even have voted on a key plot twist. Still, there’s a good chance you’ll be able to read it on paper.
At this year’s Frankfurt Book Fair, the publishing world’s largest gathering, an industry that has been upended by digitalization and the rise of Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN:US) went in search of new business models. As reading habits change and e-books take center stage, the appetite for good storytelling is stronger than ever.
Verlag Friedrich Oetinger GmbH, a children book’s publisher that sells the Hunger Games series in Germany, is a case in point. While investing heavily in digital products and even creating its own coding unit, managing director Till Weitendorf isn’t turning his back on print.
For the first time, she said, representatives from gaming companies such as Ubisoft Entertainment were present at the fair in search of partners. The trend is already taking off. “Endgame,” a book by American author James Frey, is being turned into an augmented-reality game by Google Inc. (GOOG:US)’s Niantic Labs.
As it publishes the German translation of “Endgame,” Oetinger is also trying to ease the passage from offline to online reading with Tigercreate, a platform to transform illustrated children books into animated, interactive e-books. The process used to require expensive programming for each new book and device, according to Weitendorf. Around 40 publishers have already signed up to use the platform, he says.
Meteor Strikes Downtown New York City. Earth’s Endgame is here.
YouTube NYC
YouTube Takes Manhattan
A few weeks ago, Zayna Aston, a communications executive at Google, met me at the company’s offices in Manhattan to show me around YouTube Space New York, the newest version of the production facilities the company has already opened in London, Los Angeles and Tokyo over the last two years.
The elevator in Chelsea Market that serves the YouTube office there was not ready to go to the production space one floor above, so we ended up at the freight elevator, which opened partway, closed and then left, before it took us to the studio.
“It’s a work in progress,” Ms. Aston said, smiling.
ENDGAME BOOK TOUR / MANILA – Can’t wait to see you, Philippines
James Frey Book Signing Event in Manila (National Bookstore)
James Frey Book Signing Event
#JamesFreyinPH to join the discussion.
When: February 1, 2015, 2 p.m.
Where: National Book Store, Glorietta 1
First Four Minutes of Walking Dead Season 5
It is not unusual for dwarfs to be hired as entertainers at hen and stag parties in Spain.
Dwarf stripper gets bride pregnant on her hen night
By Fiona Govan, Madrid
It is not unusual for dwarfs to be hired as entertainers at hen and stag parties in Spain Photo: Alamy
A Spanish woman has been forced to confess to cheating on her husband-to-be on her hen night with a dwarf stripper after she gave birth to a baby with dwarfism.
Her husband believed the baby was his and that it had been conceived during the honeymoon but his wife confessed to the infidelity after he repeatedly questioned doctors as to how the baby could have been born with dwarfism.
The woman has not been named, but according to local reports she felt compelled to tell her husband after questions were raised by friends who had accompanied her on the hen night, which took place at the beginning of the year.
Spanish website LasCincoDelDia, which broke the news, said: “Neither her closest female friends or her family knew she had sex with the midget stripper but once she had her son in her arms, she broke down and confessed what had happened.
“As you can imagine no-one that sleeps with a stripper at her hen night broadcasts it or at least they try to take their secret to the grave.
Kansas City Live
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OTHER COOL PRESS:
Best-selling author James Frey releases a groundbreaking interactive novel! – 10 News Tampa Bay
Solve puzzle in book to win $640,000 – AsiaOne News
Google takes you to the ‘Endgame’ of its augmented reality world – Engadget
James Frey and Google team up to fuse interactive teen novels with AR games – Teqarazzi
Exclusive Author Interview: James Frey – SciFi Chick
Hands Of Old
Cave Paintings in Indonesia May Be Among the Oldest Known
Hand outlines found on a cave wall in Indonesia are at least 39,900 years old, researchers said. Credit Kinez Riza
There is nothing like a blank stone surface to inspire a widely shared urge to make art.
A team of researchers reported in the journal Nature on Wednesday that paintings of hands and animals in seven limestone caves on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi may be as old as the earliest European cave art.
The oldest cave painting known until now is a 40,800-year-old red disk from El Castillo, in northern Spain.
Other archaeologists of human origins said the new findings were spectacular and, in at least one sense, unexpected. Sulawesi’s cave art, first described in the 1950s, had previously been dismissed as no more than 10,000 years old.
“Assuming that the dates are good,” Nicholas Conard, an archaeologist at the University of Tübingen in Germany, said in an email, “this is good news, and the only surprising thing is not that analogous finds would exist elsewhere, but rather that it has been so hard to find them” until now.
HUFF POST LIVE with James Frey
Write Win Publish Cool
Connecticut’s Full Fathom Five Digital Holding Fiction Contest
Written by Sally Allen
Connecticut-based e-books publisher Full Fathom Five Digital, founded by bestselling author James Frey, has announced a $10,000 fiction contest on its website.
“We are searching for some of the best original fiction out there, and hosting a contest to find it,” the post reads.
Submissions must be written for Adult, New Adult, and/or Young Adult audiences and fall into one of the following genres: Horror, Romance, Science Fiction/Fantasy, or Mystery/Thriller.
In addition to the one Grand Prize award of $10,000, four finalists will receive a publishing deal. Non-finalists will also be eligible to receive a publishing contract.
The contest opened Oct. 1 and continues through Nov. 30 at 11:50 p.m. Eastern Standard Time.
For the full contest rules and guidelines, visit the Contest page at Full Fathom Five’s website.
OFFICIAL TRAILER: Endgame Is Coming
I’ve got believers / Believing me.
Top DJs out-earn some Hollywood stars
By ALISON MORRIS, Fox 5 Business Reporter
NEW YORK (MYFOXNY) – They spin music and they’re rolling in the dough to the tune of a quarter of a million dollars a night –sometimes even more. A new crop of celebrity DJs is making so much money they now have their own Forbes list.
Zack O’Malley Greenburg, a senior editor at Forbes who compiled the list, says all the money is coming from clubs and festivals where the DJs play in front of tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of people in a given weekend.
Calvin Harris topped the Electronic Cash Kings list for 2014, with a whopping $66 million, up from $46 million in 2013. Harris earned more this year than Jay-Z, Toby Keith, and every single actor in Hollywood except for Robert Downey Jr. O’Malley Greenburg says Harris made all that money writing songs, producing for stars like Rihanna, and playing club gigs in Las Vegas.
Former Parisian club manager David Guetta took the second spot with $30 million.
Dutch DJ Tiesto and Swedish DJ Avicii tied for third with $28 million each.
The only American in the top five is Steve Aoki, who made $23 million playing gigs and through endorsements with big brands like Scion.
ENDGAME is Coming. Murphy is Coming.
Solomon’s Skies
Ken Solomon Wants A Piece Of Your Sky
Artist Ken Solomon needs your help. Perhaps best known for highly detailed watercolor paintings based on Google image searches or aerial views, among other things, Solomon is crowdsourcing for what will eventually become a 24-hour video. His goal: “7,200 twenty-second videos of the sky, all filmed on the same day at the exact same time across the globe.” According to the project’s website, the final result will be an immersive piece that visitors can dip in and out of — sort of a sedate, weather-focused companion to “The Clock.”
“The idea is a video installation, projected on a ceiling,” Solomon writes. “It will start at 5AM in Hawaii. Dark sky, will ease to sunset in Alaska. To California, across the States, to Iceland, Europe, sun will be setting, to Eastern bloc, back to night sky in Asia and New Zealand/Australia. Ideally the video runs 24 hours to correspond with the time of the sky above.”
“Autumn has arrived in the quaint commuter town of Darien….”
James Frey: ‘There’s $500,000 prize to be won in my new novel’
Barbara McMahon
The latest book series by the Million Little Pieces author offers readers the chance to win half a million in gold
Autumn has arrived in the quaint commuter town of Darien, where the leaves are ablaze in a glory of gold before the cold weather sweeps in. This is the kind of quietly prosperous Connecticut town where masters of the universe kiss their picture-perfect families goodbye and commute to their Manhattan desks, a place where the well-ordered streets are lined with large mansions, complete with three car garages and expensively landscaped gardens. Both film versions of The Stepford Wives and the 2008 adaptation of Richard Yates’s novel Revolutionary Road, starring Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio, were filmed here.
Creeky The Clown Gone
‘It’ll be kind of hard to smile’: Friends mourn death of ‘Creeky the Clown’ at 98
Floyd V. Creekmore, better known as Creeky the Clown, died last weekend after decades of making people laugh and helping sick children feel better.
Creekmore, of Billings, was 98.
Skip E. Lowe Gone
Low-budget talk-show host Skip E. Lowe dies at 85
By JOHN ROGERS
LOS ANGELES (AP) — When an earnest but sometimes inept talk-show host took to public-access television in 1978 with a celebrity name-dropping show, it seemed incongruous that Skip E. Lowe would somehow outlast every other TV host from Johnny Carson to Jay Leno.
For one thing, his show aired on the kind of cable channels that carry school board meetings. For another, many of his guests were faded stars people weren’t sure were still alive.
Lowe filmed “Skip E. Lowe Looks at Hollywood” for 36 years, broadcasting it on cable TV outlets in Los Angeles, New York and San Francisco. He filmed the last one just two weeks ago.
“He loved show business, and the fact that the show was public access, that didn’t bother him at all. He was on television,” his agent, Alan Eichler, told The Associated Press on Thursday.
The result: Lowe assembled a cult following of fans in the cities where his show aired, including some of the entertainers he couldn’t get on camera.
Martin Short acknowledged he based his unctuous, often bumbling Jiminy Glick character partly on Lowe, and Harry Shearer profiled Lowe for a 1998 New York Times Magazine story headlined, “Ineptness Has Its Virtues.”
‘I want to make everybody who hates me give up.’
James Frey Hasn’t Given Up on Writing
A decade after his controversial memoir, the author blends fiction and reality in a new way
“I want to prove them all wrong,” says James Frey, author of the contentious 2003 book “A Million Little Pieces,” and, more recently, creator of the best-selling series of young-adult science-fiction books “The Lorien Legacies.” “I want to make everybody who hates me give up.”
It has been a remarkable 10 years for Mr. Frey, who came under fire for fabricating parts of “A Million Little Pieces,” initially billed as his memoir. After he admitted that some of the details were fictional, he was excoriated on Oprah Winfrey’s couch, he lost a book contract and his agent left him. “I was toxic,” he says. “I was radioactive.”
But he didn’t give up writing. For his latest project, Mr. Frey, 45, blends fiction and reality in a different way. On Oct. 7 he will release “Endgame,” a novel that will simultaneously launch with a YouTube channel, 50 social-media accounts and a real-life puzzle. (A videogame will come soon after.) The first reader to solve the puzzle in the story gets $500,000 in gold coins, provided by Mr. Frey himself.
It’s the latest major release from his media and entertainment company, Full Fathom Five, which operates, Mr. Frey says, much like an artist’s studio. Just as the artists Takashi Murakami or Jeff Koons develop concepts and have assistants help carry them out, Mr. Frey comes up with most of the books’ ideas and hires others to write the final product. When the story sells to a publishing house, he splits the proceeds. For example, he came up with the plot for the company’s first book, “I Am Number Four,” hired a writer for the text and then published it under the pseudonym Pittacus Lore. It went on to become a No. 1 best-seller, and the film adaptation grossed $150 million world-wide.
Mr. Frey is working with about 25 authors, all of whom are paid anywhere from $5,000 to $50,000 per book, along with a percentage of any profits. (The percentage varies by contract.)
Full Fathom Five has sold about 60 books to publishers, and has released about 30. Mr. Frey smiles when he thinks of those who have doubted him along the way. After the release of his novel “Bright Shiny Morning” in 2008, he says that a critic “just ripped me to shreds, but then he said he might as well be firing paintballs at Godzilla, meaning I was Godzilla.” Mr. Frey remembers thinking, “That’s what I should try to do to everybody—make them feel like they’re firing paintballs at Godzilla.”
“A book can be more than what’s on the page.”
Book Buzz: James Frey’s ‘Endgame’ has a golden prize
Readers of the new ‘Endgame’ series from James Frey will have a chance to find a golden treasure. (But not this one, which is from the the SS Central America.) (Photo: Donn Pearlman, AP)
The treasure hunters of the world may want to dust off their tools.
James Frey’s new new novel Endgame: The Calling features an interactive puzzle which, when solved, has a $500,000 prize at the end. The puzzle will lead readers to a key, and that key will unlock $500,000 worth of gold on display at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas.
It’s the first in a planned trilogy penned by Frey and Nils Johnson-Shelton, which follows 12 characters on a quest for three ancient keys that will save “not only their bloodlines but the world.” The subsequent two books in the trilogy will also have interactive puzzles with much larger payouts: $1 million and $1.5 million, respectively.
“The mega puzzle included in the first book deploys technology and social media in a way that brings people beyond their borders,” Frey said in a news release. “A book can be more than what’s on the page. It can take you out into the real world; it can take you out into the digital world. The stakes are not only high for the characters in Endgame, they are high for the readers who try to solve the puzzle too.”
“F†ck It – I Quit.”
Alaska TV Reporter Quits on Air: ‘F**k It, I Quit’
By Chris Ariens
Charlo Greene, a reporter at CBS affiliate KTVA in Anchorage quit her job on air last night, telling viewers, “Fuck it. I quit.”
Greene was reporting on the Alaska Cannabis Club. Following the story, during a live tag, she revealed she is the owner of the medical marijuana business and was going to be leaving TV news so she could devote her time to pushing for marijuana legalization in Alaska.