EDOC Laundry is a company that tells a story through its clothing. This forms an Alternate Reality Game, much like you might find from 4orty 2wo Entertainment, which created the Beast (on which I did a bit of work). Sound strange? Not if you realize (as you would from this interview on ARGN.com) that the mind behind EDOC is none other than Dawne Weisman. (Dawne’s husband is Jordan Weisman of 4orty 2wo, WizKids, and FASA fame.)

It’s a wild idea, to form a story-driven game through clothing, and Dawne’s been working hard at it for a couple years–including a lot of development time before the line launched in March of this year. I’m looking forward to seeing how it all plays out.

Update: ARGN has a new article about the EDOC, posted just days ago.

Monte Cook posted a knock-out mash-up of Dungeons & Dragons and Snakes on a Plane. Sadly, I’m just the right kind of geek to find this hilarious. Imagine my pain when I discovered that one of my publishers had the rights to the film’s novelization–but had already gotten in the manuscript from another author. Still, best of luck to Black Flame and Christa Faust with it!

Ken Hite’s latest “Out of the Box” column is up at GamingReport.com. “Out of the Box” is always on my must-read list, but this time around Ken knocks it out of the park. His cogitations upon the future of RPG publishers shine with the kind of clarity that makes you wonder why you never saw that great big ball of fire hanging there in the sky before.

As ICv2.com reports, Ridley Scott is taking another run at Blade Runner. Blade Runner was the first R-rated movie I ever saw, and it branded my imagination with its plot, characters, and imagery. I can’t wait to see the new cut and eventually pick up the DVD set with all four cuts of the film.

This ranks right up there with the news that George Lucas plans to release the original editions of the original Star Wars trilogy on DVD this fall. My inner kid is bouncing off the inside of my skull.

Mark Preuschl lives here in my hometown of Beloit, Wisconsin, and he takes some fantastic photographs of the place. He does a great job of capturing the beauty of the place, something it’s all too easy to take for granted in the rush of daily life. I especially like his shots of the refurbished Beloit Corp building as seen from the back of the Beloit Inn, the Old Water Tower, and just about everything in his 2006 Beloit Area Calendar.

I just finished reading Jonny Magic and the Card Shark Kids by David Kushner. It’s the story of how Jon Finkel, a Magic: The Gathering player, went from high-school nerd to world champion, joined a casino blackjack card-counting team, and then decided to take on the World Series of Poker too. It’s a fascinating study of a generation of gamer geeks that I could well have been a part of were I 10 years younger.

I’d long known about the top players on Magic‘s Pro Circuit, and I’d heard stories about how some of them were now winning poker tournaments, but the book goes over it all in loving detail. It’s really a coming-of-age story for Jon, one that many gamers can probably identify with. As gaming becomes more and more mainstream and mass market, it’s wonderful to have a record about those who were there at that cusp and see how they helped define the culture that’s arisen around gaming of all kinds. The fact that I know some of the people named in the book, like Peter Adkison and Richard Garfield, added that much more life to the story.