Behind The Scenes Of The Release Party For Kill Pretty Issue 5

Our first editorial meeting is some time around 8:45pm in the middle of the release party for issue five. For some reason we’ve decided to put out a supplementary magazine on the same night as the issue we’ve been working on for the past year, but that’s fine. Why wouldn’t we shoot ourselves in the foot? To write, edit, and print a magazine in one night (less really, maybe four or five hours) we’ve taken on additional staff members, none of whom I’ve taken the time to learn their names. They all know me. They bring me 3,000 word articles on samurai being “lit AF” and 50 word reviews of the entire oeuvre of Jeff Koontz.

I stand in the middle of a giant papier-mâché head. There’s a blue light somewhere in its skull and I let it wash over me while I drink beer from a coffee mug, another day at the office. It would be nice to go to the office and just sit, maybe throw darts at the idea board or work on something for issue six. Instead there’s a deadline hanging over our head like an axe that’s on fire and also made of rats.

There are two new hires trying to coax an article out of a girl who’s written something on a slip of paper. They scream “Please!” as she wads up her article and slides it into a purse that looks like a miniature trash can. Maybe she’s cut out of the Kill Pretty staff after all. Nacho floats by four inches off the ground. I check to see if interns are carrying him on their little backs, but he’s just on a once in a lifetime cocktail of pills and shamanic well wishes. “Isn’t this great?” He asks as floats up to the DJ booth, away from the din of the party and the need for a magazine within the next hour and a half.

Someone hands me an article taste testing at Baskin Robbins and I go back to the safety of the paier-mâché head. The intern in charge of shredding money (a necessity in the world of print journalism) starts shredding the articles for issue 5.5. I make a mental note to throw the intern into meat room with Brian for 30 minutes. The new hires are melting down. Their anxiety compounds on one another, the editorial staff starts hacking away at the art team with machetes, and I think Karen spontaneously combusts. Or maybe it’s Deb. Does Karen even work here anymore?