McSweeney's + Aspen = The Thing

The Thing is not your garden-variety periodical. Putting a spin on the idea of text messaging, the Thing is by turns a window shade, a baseball cap, a set of coasters and a hunk of rubber. That last issue puts the lie to those glossy fall fashion magazines that could double as doorstops. It is a doorstop.

Bay Area co-editors Will Rogan and Jonn Herschend, a pair of established visual artists, have concocted nothing less than an honest-to-goodness quarterly magazine, albeit an unorthodox one, with the mission of marrying text to household objects. "It's about giving words a different vehicle," Rogan said.

Like all magazine subscribers, the constituency for the Thing never knows the exact contents of a given issue until it arrives.... —LAT