September 13, 2008

The Night Stalker

"Dear Blizzard...

...what it looks like...

...what it should look like."

Everyone remembers the hot, sexy summer of 2008, when the city of Irvine, California was terrorized by a mysterious serial vandal whose crime spree was inspired by the visual style of the computergame Diablo 3. This masked marauder defaced many street signs, libraries and mailboxes with gray, black and dark black paint, but focused his attacks mainly on the offices of Diablo developer Blizzard Entertainment.

The vigilante was only ever known by the moniker 'the Doctor of Desaturation' and patrolled the streets by night on a 12-speed BMX bicycle, armed with a tournament-regulation paintball gun (theorized by Irvine police to be his weapon of choice.) Local business owners would awake to find their storefronts marred by splashes of black paint. The doctor regularly attacked the Blizzard Entertainment parking lot, methodically dousing cars in paint thinner and then keying the doors to achieve a dirty, gritty look. He eventually incorporated a portable cassette deck into his act, from which he blasted a special lo-fi version of the Rolling Stones' 1966 hit 'Paint it Black', which he had re-recorded to four-track to shed the glossy production. He was never captured.

Returning home one September night to his gated community of one, Blizzard vice-president Rob Pardo parked next to his below-ground swimming pool/racetrack and noticed with some alarm the black brushstrokes marking his front door. "I'm sorry, honey," said Mr. Pardo, on the phone to his wife, "he found us."

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

That's hilarious.