The Clock Without a Face transcends any preconceived notion of what genre is. It’s a hefty, pentagonal hunk of text and image, but it’s also a puzzle/treasure hunt. The storyline is simple. The great detective Roy Dodge teams up with his assistant, Gus Twintig, to solve the mystery of 12 missing emerald-studded numbers from an ancient clock. But here’s where things get interesting: the numbers, designed and hand-crafted by Anna Sheffield, can really be found buried in twelve holes across the country (“an extra bonus for especially energetic or greedy readers”). We interviewed one of the book’s three co-authors, Eli Horowitz, who is also an editor at McSweeney’s, to find out how they came up with this crazy idea.

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Today at Flavorpill, we had our rebuttal rebutted. We were surprised to hear that Duncan Sheik’s next musical adventure will be an an American Psycho adaptation — although Spring Awakening was dark in its own right. We watched a man get carted around Manhattan by strangers. We realized just how far Sandra Bullock has come since she broke onto the Hollywood scene with Speed. We thought over which friend we could hook up with Kentucky and made a mental note never to get fresh with Florida. We felt uncomfortable after reading that senior citizens are sexting. Isn’t that bad for cardiac health? We wanted to frolic in a pile of leaves after seeing this natural color wheel. We studied the facial analysis of J.D. Salinger’s mysterious portrait. We too doubted that the voice-over-chick-from-Gossip-Girl would be a qualified curator at the Guggenheim. Or single, for that matter. Lastly, we wished we had our own Duckie, but were consoled when we realized we could just wear him instead.

God bless the good people of McSweeney’s. Andy Bryan’s Excerpts from A Life at C: The Biography of Captain Horatio Magellan Crunch by Jean LaFoote, The Barefoot Pirate is the funniest thing we’ve read in a while; and unless you grew up in one of those weird homes that banned sugar cereal, we’re sure you’ll identify with this passage from Chapter 11, Crunch’s Milk Goes Sour, as much as we did:

Environmental groups had a heyday when it was revealed that the Royal Oats Navy had been covering up the staggering casualties to sea organisms from Cap’n Crunch constantly lavishing his cereal on various ocean animals. Then there were the protests holding Crunch accountable for the myriad international child labor laws he ignored over four decades. The most damaging allegations personally to Crunch — the metaphorical sea salt in the wound — were the charges brought up by the medical community, citing two generations of grotesque palate disabilities from the severe lacerations that often accompanied the consumption of his cereal.

Our gums are bleeding just thinking about it. Watch one of the vintage commercials featuring Captain Horatio Magellan Crunch — a character created by noted animator Jay Ward — after the jump.

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Forget all this talk about the death of print media for a moment. Tomorrow a newspaper is born in San Francisco. Issue 33 of McSweeney’s Quarterly will be a one-time-only, old-fashioned broadsheet — the San Francisco Panorama. Its pages will measure 22 by 15 inches. Here’s what this beautiful beast will cover: “It’ll have news (actual news, tied to the day it comes out) and sports and arts coverage, and comics (sixteen pages of glorious, full-color comics, from Chris Ware and Dan Clowes and Art Spiegelman and many others besides) and a magazine and a weekend guide, and will basically be an attempt to demonstrate all the great things print journalism can (still) do, with as much first-rate writing and reportage and design (and posters and games and on-location Antarctic travelogues) as we can get in there. Expect journalism from Andrew Sean Greer, fiction from George Saunders and Roddy Doyle, dispatches from Afghanistan, and much, much more.”

Exciting and ambitious for an 11-year-old literary journal, right? That’s why we sat down with Oscar Villalon, McSweeney’s publisher, to get the back story on the project.

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1. Angered by the fact that Gwen Stefani’s avatar can sing in a male voice, among other things, No Doubt is taking legal action against the creators of Band Hero. [via NME]
2. Zach Galifianakis has entered negotiations to voice the Humpty Dumpty character in Puss in Boots, the Shrek spin-off. [via THR]
3. Tom Waits is now on Twitter. [via TwentyFourBit]
4. It has been confirmed that Slumdog director Danny Boyle’s next movie will be about Aron Raltson, the mountain climber who amputated his own arm with a knife. [via Variety]
5. Could a movie starring eye candy like Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp be anything but a box office smash? [via Variety]

Bonus link: Get a sneak peek at McSweeney’s newspaper issue.

iTunes’ App Store is probably the only place on Earth right now where Dan Brown is not number one. Although The Lost Symbol sold enough copies for every man, woman, and child in Chicago in its first week alone, the Da Vinci Code author’s iPhone app is currently lagging at #18 in the Books section. The number one spot instead belongs to a new app by McSweeney’s. It promises new work by Spike Jonze, Chris Ware, and Jonathan Ames — which was enough to get us to stop fiddling with I Am T-Pain for a minute and check it out. Here’s what we thought. Read More »

Sarah Schmelling turned a short but brilliant McSweeney’s article called “Hamlet (Facebook News Feed Edition)” into her new book, Ophelia Joined the Group Maidens Who Don’t Float. From a full news feed play-by-play of Shakespeare’s War of the Roses to a game of Scrabulous between Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, the book reads like a funnier version of CliffsNotes, updated for the Facebook generation. After the jump, we’ve excerpted our favorite LOL bits, including Juliet’s profile, Miss Havisham’s favorite TV shows, and the news feeds of Jay Gatsby and Humbert Humbert. Now if you’ll excuse us, we are totally friend requesting Holden Caulfield. Read More »

Keeping up with the Jobses is a struggle for the publishing industry, this we know. This fall, three new releases coming to a bookstore near you are sounding a battle cry for the antiquarian hardcover book. The twist? Their cover designs are imprinted directly on the board binding the book, meaning no fussy dust jacket and heightened tactile pleasure. (Tactile not currently available in the iPhone apps store.) Read More »

Dateline: Bryant Park. Five writers sit perched on elevated chairs like a royal court of literati. As introductory details are read off it becomes clear what a disparate group is assembled. Joe Hagan is a non-fiction writer who likes to pursue talented, unheard-of musicians; James Hannaham wrote a book about a black Christian gay man who tried to “get rid of” his homosexuality; Jessica Anthony merges two worlds usually not mentioned in the same breath — Hungary and Virginia — with humor and lightness; Brandon Stosuy is a heavy metal music writer and blogger at Stereogum; and Arthur Phillips is a novelist with four books under his belt. What could possibly bring these people together? McSweeney’s, of course. Read More »

Books: David Foster Wallace’s 2005 Kenyon Commencement Address [via NYT]
Dance/Opera:  Tune in for Bach, get sports scores? [via The Awl]
Design: Great battles in architecture [via Guardian]
Film: Why Kevin Smith’s Superman movie went bye bye [via Boing Boing]
Music: An NYU alum we’ll claim — Nyle, “Let the Beat Build” [via Gawker]
Television: FOX to air Lie to Me instead of Obama’s speech [via Variety]
Theatre: 9 to 5 sweeps the Drama Desk noms [via HR]
Visual Arts: Renzo Piano’s new Art Institute wing a big “f you” to the economy [via Chicago Tribune]
Web: Internet-Age Writing Syllabus and Course Overview [via McSweeney's]