Cream Really Does Rise To The Top

Hot on the heels of being declared an icon to the bearded and befuddled crowd by the New York Times (see excerpt below), Blackoutman steamrolled the competition at a Rockstar Games party last night. Their yet to be unveiled new Table Tennis game incorporates all of the dazzle of Ping Pong but without ever having to chase that pesky little ball around the garage. Interactive finger-fighters had been roped in from all over the Tri-State area, but VICE's Blackoutman was unfazed by this influx of overzealous game-boys announcing disdainfully, "It is only pushing buttons," before dismantling all comers from a standing position that could be considered nothing short of taunting.

Rockstar's latest brilliant stab into the deteriorating attention span of American youth was in perfect synch with Blackoutman's own ADD. And I am certain these gaming industrialists hope the rest of the world will embrace this gentle Pong game without seeing it as the carrot luring unsuspecting youngsters to the stick that is the rest of their catalog.

Anyway, Blackoutman totally dominated the scene, loosing the tourney final in a tightly-contested match, and then only to the Creator of the game, much to the crowd's disappointment. So now, in addition to his rightful place atop the Ulysses S. Grant fan club, cliquish consortiums of console-jockeys citywide idolize him. In essence, he's a Rock Star.

March 23, 2006
Paul Bunyan, Modern-Day Sex Symbol
By ERIC WILSON
LAST December John Martin sat in on a focus group for a trend-forecasting company at which young professionals were asked about their grooming habits. Mr. Martin found he had nothing useful to contribute. His shaving regimen involves the use of a razor about as frequently as the seasons change.

"Everyone else was chiming in about the products they use," said Mr. Martin, the advertising director for Vice, a lad magazine based in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. "I was totally mystified. I blanked."

Mr. Martin's idea of a style symbol, seriously, is Ulysses S. Grant, whose beard he came to admire after watching the 2003 Civil War-era drama "Cold Mountain." Two years ago, when he began experimenting with different beard styles, which he described as ranging from neat to burly to unkempt, his facial hair was an expression of individuality in a tide of metrosexual conformity. Now 10 of his 15 co-workers at Vice wear full, bushy beards. In that, they vie with the pro-facial-hair contingent of an editorial rival, Spin, where a rash of new beards has broken out.

"It's a sign of the times," Mr. Martin said. "People are into beards right now." At hipster hangouts and within fashion circles, the bearded revolution that began with raffishly trimmed whiskers a year or more ago has evolved into full-fledged Benjamin Harrisons. At New York Fashion Week last month at least a half-dozen designers turned up with furry faces.

No survey ever conducted about women's attitudes toward beards, even those not underwritten by the Gillette Company, has indicated that more than 2 or 3 percent of women would describe a full beard as sexy. ("I hang out with those girls who are in that 2 or 3 percent," Mr. Martin, of Vice, said.)