🎮 Full of tricks

Streamer-approved workspace wins, a stuntman turned director, and much more.

Mornin’. Anyone been keeping tabs on Pharrell Williams lately?

For the last few months, the songwriter behind “Hollaback Girl” and “I'm a Slave 4 U” (look it up) has been artistic-directing at Louis Vuitton. Busy bee that he is, Williams and his hive have already emerged with some honey in the form of a swaggy new menswear collection.

It’s hardly Williams’ first creative pursuit in Paris—after all, this is the guy who worked with Daft Punk on “Get Lucky” a decade ago—but it’s yet another milestone in the polymath’s continual reinvention. (Someone grab us some of that camo.)

We promise we won’t tell LV they hired a Trekkie, though.

—Andrew Nusca, Eric Alt, Marques Edge

Buffed/Nerfed

What’s up and down in the world rn.

Buffed: CNN. Whatever becomes the fate of the five passengers on the tragically lost Titanic submersible—as of press time the Coast Guard hasn’t located it and there’s 40 hours of air left—we haven’t been glued to our televisions this much since Election Day.

Nerfed: NYC real estate value. Zombies? The Big Apple? We may have seen this film before, but we don’t care. We’re all over AMC’s new The Walking Dead: Dead City like the undead on the…uh, living.

Buffed: Onstage ‘gender’ reveals. Harry Styles did it. Beyoncé threw in. It seems only a matter of time before it’s T. Swift’s turn. The most pertinent question for the world’s top touring artists is…boy or girl? (Pro tip: It’s not that simple.)

Nerfed: Celebrating good times (come on). An exuberant contestant on The Price Is Right was so thrilled with winning a trip to Hawaii that he dislocated his shoulder during the celebration, preventing him from spinning the show’s famous wheel. And here it comes!

Buffed: American football. And no, not the gridiron kind. We’re a bit late, but cheers to the U.S. Men’s National Team for winning their second straight CONCACAF Nations League title on Sunday. If you don’t know what any of that means, ask the nearest person who’s wearing acetate glasses and drinking an IPA. —AN

Field Upgrades: How to level up your workspace like a streamer

Picks to level up your life.

Photo courtesy of Samantha Tyler

Is your workspace working for you?

(You sure about that?)

Many of us spend so many hours sitting at a desk staring into a screen for a living, and yet spend mere minutes thinking about how to improve the very environment we work in.

Who would know better than streamers who spend literal hours broadcasting their lives on the internet?

Contributing writer Aron Grast asked some streamers about the small but impactful ways they improved their workspaces, from lighting to ergonomics to wires. (Oh yes, we’re going there.) For them, it’s a matter of surviving hour six in the chair. For you, it’s about coming out of that marathon team meeting as fresh as you went in.

Here’s what they had to say.

Speed Run: Sam Hargrave loves to drag Chris Hemsworth through hell

Two-minute talks with today’s movers and shakers.

Illustration by Aleksandar Savić for Activision Blizzard King

If you want to avoid CGI fatigue and deliver visceral, neck-snapping action, you simply need a stuntperson behind the camera.

To follow up his unexpected quarantine-era Netflix smash hit Extraction, director and former stuntman Sam Hargrave knew he had to create one “holy crap” action sequence after another…and he couldn’t have been happier doing just that.

Executive editor Eric Alt sat down with Hargrave to talk about his earliest stunt memories, the bag of tricks stuntpeople carry with them from movie to movie, and why it’s so much fun making Thor suffer for our amusement.

Check it out.

Wayback Wednesday

Back when the internet was still in its infancy, before superheroes routinely broke the fourth wall, and before Adult Swim existed, there was Freakazoid! 

This forgotten little cult gem is like a time capsule of the mid-1990s.

Check out its quaint depiction of “cyberspace” as some physical dimension capable of bestowing super powers, written by people who had maybe heard of Prodigy once in passing.

Or how the hero’s origin story was a parody of the actual Pentium FDIV bug that led to defective processors being recalled in 1994. (In this version, an obese cat accidentally enters a “secret key sequence” that makes the hero’s computer go haywire.)

And, of course, revel in its extremely dated but charming pop culture references (the main character attends Harry Connick Jr. High School) and a sense of humor that pinballs wildly from the juvenile (one of his villains is named Professor Heiney) to the slyly satirical (Freakazoid briefly has a sidekick called Expendable Lad). 

Created by Bruce Timm (who wanted it to be a straightforward superhero show like his Batman: The Animated Series) and Steven Spielberg (who wanted it to be a goofy chaotic free-for-all like his Animaniacs) Freakazoid! was just…different. In every way.

If you used to watch it, you’re welcome for the blast from the past. And if you’ve never heard of it, you’re welcome for the rabbit hole you’re about to go down. —EA

Shameless plug

Stock up on Wumpa fruit, friends: Crash Team Rumble is finally out.

The 4v4 online multiplayer game tasks each team with collecting the most Wumpa fruit while preventing the opposition from depositing fruit at their own Wumpa Bank. (Defense wins championships, after all.)

It’s colorful, it’s zany, and it’s everything you’d expect from the world of Crash Bandicoot.

It’s available on PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series S|X. Get it here.

Wormhole

Click the following image and…well, we don’t want to ruin the surprise.

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