Fran Magazine: Best of 2024 Extravaganza
The best of the best of 2024 lists, from the friends & family of Fran Magazine
📝 Thanks for reading Fran Magazine, a biweekly blog by Fran Hoepfner (me). Big changes are coming to the magazine in 2025! More on that in the new year. Your subscriptions help me feel normal and happy. Feel free to follow me on Instagram or Letterboxd. 📝
Goodbye to 2024
Let’s face it, 2024 sucked — but it did not suck as much as 2023. Or maybe it sucked more. There’s no way to know. To close out the year, I’ve once again gathered Fran Magazine’s beloved friends and family to get a sense of what made their 2024s special and not miserable, and yup, I’m hearing this correctly, their lists blew me out of the water. We have songs and books and film and television, sure, but we also have games and vanity license plates and restaurants and quotes and multiple mentions of the Dodgers World Series and the Challengers OST. I’m so grateful to all who sent me lists, and to all who read and comment on and enjoy Fran Magazine. Happy New Year!
🚨THIS POST IS TOO LONG FOR EMAIL 📧 PLEASE CLICK THE BUTTON ON THE TOP RIGHT THAT SAYS “READ IN APP” FOR MAXIMUM LIST ENJOYMENT 📋
BDM
Best items for my dumb brain: Until I got extremely sick and malnourished a couple years ago, I never really needed to take notes. But now my memory is shit! So I'm trying to take more notes by hand now. My friend Dan told me to get a fountain pen to make writing by hand easier, so I got the Muji aluminum body fountain pen. It works great. It does indeed make it easier to write. I will also shout out Mildliners (highlighters that aren't too obnoxious; right now I'm using "mild violet") and Kuru Toga mechanical pencils (not a discovery new to this year but nevertheless a superior mechanical pencil experience).
Best item for working out: Tabio's "Reflexology Cotton Toe Crew Socks" have a nice grippy bottom. I prefer them to shoes. I thought I would haaaaaate toe socks because I hate flip flops, but actually, they're great.
Best black hole down which I was more than happy to pour money: Perfume (in general).
Best album: Tortured Poets Department… sorry to the haters and the losers.
Best movie: Red Rooms.
Best new-to-me writer (living): Margot Livesey… I am confident that Fran Magazine readers would enjoy The Road from Belhaven!
Best new-to-me writer (dead): Robert Aickman (amazing lunatic).
Finally… best Fran Magazine: Fran Magazine!!!!!
Ben B.
Top Deaths of 2024
Hello it's Ben, occasional co-op partner from the Elden Ring updates section of Sunday Dispatch. Death in Elden Ring, as in life, is fated. But not all deaths are equal. I will now share the most wretched and sublime ways Fran and I have died this year.
Falling off a cliff: Canonical experience, always funny. This death is sublime.
To a random weak guy we beat a hundred times: Often, tragically, with many runes in hand. This is a wretched death.
Run over by giant sentient silver ball: ... what? That's sublime.
In the same instant as the boss: LEGEND FELLED and yet YOU DIED. Sublime and wretched of course.
Slain in open combat by invader: Despite the honorable nature of this death, it means I have failed in my duty as sworn ally. Wretched.
Blown up in surprise elevator fire bombing by invader: The drama! The showmanship! The razzle dazzle! Sublime.
Ben Empey
I’m an obsessive person so my list is my top ten fixations of 2024, in roughly chronological order of when each illness took hold:
Barbra Streisand: Started the audiobook of her memoir on Thanksgiving 2023 and in January 2024 I watched so many of her movies. If she’d ever learned how to surrender to a role, she might have been better than Meryl Streep, but she didn’t, so she’s not.
Cillian Murphy: This also started in 2023, not when I saw Oppenheimer, but several months after I saw it, when I saw a clip of an interview where he was mean to the journalist. I was like, this is what I want out of a movie star, and a man.
Christopher Nolan: Watching all of Cillian’s filmography led me to declaring in 2024 that Inception is “brilliant, actually—” I thought it was boring when it came out and this was only the second time I’d seen it. Watching all of Nolans with Cillian got me in the mood to do a full Nolan rewatch, and I rediscovered that I do like him.
Josh O’Connor: Like every other straight woman and gay man of child-bearing age, I saw Challengers in April 2024 and came out of it needing to fuck Josh O’Connor in ways you cannot imagine. I have 28 images saved in the Josh folder on my laptop, and countless more on my phone.
Guys I’m in the War TikTok: I believe I was the person whose algorithm showed them this TikTok, which I shared to all of my friends and we all continue to quote to this day. “I’m in the war” has so easily folded into my daily vernacular when I’m having a frustrating day that I don’t know what I said before in such situations.
Lew Wasserman: I’ve actually been fixated on Lew Wasserman since I was 20 and learned he was the most powerful man in the history of the entertainment business. But this year I read The Last Mogul and bombarded my friends with texts for months (I kept putting it down and reading something else; it’s long and dense) like “Lew Wasserman has had Marilyn Monroe killed” and “Lew Wasserman has decided to make Ronald Reagan a powerful political figure.”
Demi Moore: I’ve always loved Demi Moore and after seeing The Substance, I watched a lot of blind spots, and rewatched my favorites. One of the all time great criers in the American cinema and a truly bizarre woman (complimentary).
Roman Polanski: Okay, listen. As we learned this winter in Nicole Kidman’s Babygirl, you can’t deny what your body needs. I watched Bitter Moon this summer for the first time and was totally blown away. I also watched for the first time Frantic and Death and the Maiden this year (the former is fantastic) and rewatched The Pianist and The Ghost Writer. I’m sorry but some of our worst men are also some of our greatest artists.
“American Teenager” and “Sun Bleached Flies” by Ethel Cain: Ethel Cain’s debut album Preacher’s Daughter was released in 2022, and I’d listened to it a couple times but suddenly this summer and fall these two tracks in particular locked in, due initially to a TikTok of some gay guy dancing to a fan mashup of “Sun Bleached Flies” and “Dancing on My Own.” But the original is, for my money, the best song of the 2020s so far, all due respect to Lana.
Drew Starkey: Just this past week, I have accepted that my obsession with Drew, which started at Venice but became untenable when I realized he has the exact same face as an ex of mine from over a decade ago, is greater than my obsession with Cillian and Josh. 48 images saved. I’m watching the Netflix teen soap Outer Banks for the two minutes of screen time an episode he gets. I watch the rest on 1.5x while doing other things, and then when I hear Drew’s voice, I rush over to my laptop and put it back on normal speed and watch Drew for 30 seconds. And then he’s gone again, existing once again, only in my memory…
Blythe Roberson
Conclave. This is probably not the best movie I saw all year (that was maybe Janet Planet, or my first-time watch of After Hours) but it is the Oscar season movie I cannot stop thinking and talking and screenshotting memes about. More movies should be fun! I’m so glad I (raised Catholic) wrote and directed Conclave.
The gravestone necklace Kevin Morby gave Waxahatchee after they got in a fight. Sometime during the press tour for Tigers Blood (great album), Katie Crutchfield mentioned this necklace, a headstone engraved with THIS TOO SHALL PASS. I’d long been thinking about getting a memento mori tattoo but after learning about this necklace I was like “Huh maybe instead of tattooing myself to remember I will die I will just spend $400 to remember I will die.” Here’s hoping I ever have $400!
Manning Fireworks. Listening to M.J. Lenderman makes me feel like I am a cool boy (Harris Mayersohn).
Purses from the collection of Robert Gottlieb. 2024 was the year of The Power Broker as any national publication will tell you, and yes, I read along with the 99 Percent Invisible Podcast, and yes, it changed my life. But my sexy secret that I have been telling everyone about is that over the summer, my mom and I bid on some of the hundreds of lucite purses once owned by Robert Gottlieb, the editor of The Power Broker — you may remember the purses from the documentary Turn Every Page. I love carrying them and feeling a connection to a great work of literature and to the idea of being a silly freak.
The secret vegan sandwich at Bordo in Marfa, Texas. Best meal of the year was between this and the hunted bear meat lasagna I ate in Yaak, Montana. The duality of man!
An overnight canoe trip on the Rio Grande. Perhaps the most effervescent time I had Outside this year was a two-day canoe trip with friends on the Rio in March. We saw turtles and fish and javelinas, we swam, we camped, we cooked in a disco, we climbed up a cliff in Mexico and jumped back into the cold river. I felt so lucky to be alive and to know my very generous and adventurous and beautiful friends.
Steve McQueen’s installation at Dia:Beacon. Literally cried just listening to droning and watching purple lights really slowly become green lights or whatever the fuck.
Northern Exposure. I’ve long wanted to watch this show after viewing one episode as homework in my college class “American Jews and the Television Age.” HOWEVER it has never been on streaming because the streaming rights were owned by a soap company (I’m not fact checking this). I guess the soap company was acquired by Jeff Bezos because Northern Exposure is finally streaming on Prime and: it’s great.
Santino Fontana reading Katherine Damm’s story "The Happiest Day of Your Life" at the Best American Short Stories 2024 show at Symphony Space. This story is so funny, Santino Fontana is so funny, I love to be surrounded by a room full of old people losing their shit laughing at a story my friend wrote :)
When the bodega guy said “Don’t take this the wrong way, but physically, you’re top five girls on this street.” I just told him I had been crying all day over a guy, and this was so sweet and also such a qualified compliment that it circled back around to being amazing. Here’s to a happy and healthy 2025 of being the 4th or 5th hottest girl on my block.
Brad Efford
Top 10 movie theater experiences of 2024:
Speed Racer at Museum of the Moving Image
Twisters 4DX at Regal Times Square where the two little kids in front of me kept throwing up their hands like they were on a roller coaster
Texas Chain Saw Massacre 50th anniversary re-release in the MoMA basement where people kept screaming at the scary parts
Challengers score in Dolby twice in four days
Coraline 3D remaster at the cursed Times Square AMC that feels like a haunted house
Interstellar at Lincoln Square IMAX on 5 mg
Koyaanisqatsi big and loud at the Paris
The Matrix at Regal Union Square when I ran inside to get out of the rain and realized a Matrix 25th anniversary showing had just started and tickets were for some reason only eight dollars
Rosemary's Baby first time watch at Film Forum
Kinds of Kindness at Nitehawk right after finding out someone tried to shoot Donald Trump in the head, weird vibes made weirder
Brendan Boyle
Top 10 things that will appear as an unexplained cutaway in the Adam Curtis movie about 2024
Bad Bunny and the Rock presenting an Oscar to Jonathan Glazer
Tony Hinchcliffe killing at the Tom Brady roast followed immediately by him dying at the Trump rally
Cam
The ten top random performances (non-derogatory) of 2024 that I can’t stop thinking about
Adam Scott as Ben Parker in Madame Web
Jonathan Hyde as Leslie Woodrow in The Brutalist
Danielle Deadwyler as Brenda in I Saw The TV Glow / Elena Cole in Carry On
Drew Droege as John Dumé in Queer
M. Night Shyamalan as Lady Raven’s Uncle in Trap
River L. Ramirez as the Bank Of America Rep in Problemista
Maria Dizzia as Kathy in My Old Ass
Kieran Shipka as Addy in Twisters / Carrie Ann Camera in Longlegs / Jamie in Sweethearts / Jodie in The Last Showgirl / Gryla in Red One
Cedric Yarbrough as Marcus in Juror #2
TIE: Chloe Fineman as Clodia Pulcher in Megalopolis & Lou Roy-Lecollinet as Melodie in La Chimera
Caroline Golum
Total Solar Eclipse, April 2024: Shot the final scene of my film during the moving image event of the season! We showed up to Plum Beach with a skeleton crew, a cross made of insulation foam, and a dream.
Pilates, September 2024: I fucked up my back hauling records on my bike and in a moment of desperation signed up for pilates classes at my local studio. I’ve been going ever since, it’s the only exercise I look forward to.
Mono No Aware Rear Projection Class, October 2024: This was a special two-session class from the folks at Mono No Aware, who offer community classes in analog filmmaking and processing. I shot the rear projection plates on my phone and filmed a little scene in a Greenpoint theater space a few weeks later. I want to add rear projection to every film I make now!
Caroline Symons
top ten pools of 2024 ***RANKED***
pool at the open house in Los Feliz: $4.5 mil dollar listing with a view of Netflix corporate where I found a dead mouse. Didn’t make an offer.
pool at Occidental College: Everyone acts like it’s so easy to go work out here but I have not been able to figure it out. Pool looks nice from the track. So funny when Southern California colleges have outdoor pools like they’re movie producers.
Ketchum-Downtown YMCA pool: There’s too much foot traffic given where this is positioned in the gym for me to feel at ease, but this YMCA is really nice and also next to the Bonaventure Hotel (cool).
pool at the Capri Inn: Like everything in Ojai, great ambiance. Saw a red tail hawk swooping overhead while I was swimming. Nice, but spent most of my time by the fire pit, so not in a good place to evaluate the pool.
Yosemite Swimming Pool: Had biting ants but mentioned up at no.6 because of the absolutely insane deep end. You can see it from up here look —
Mary Lynn's pool: This is my mom’s friend’s pool back in Maryland. When I went over there with my mom (this year), Mary Lynn told my mom that she had heard some interesting information and believed that the CIA was behind the JFK assassination. That’s why this pool is on the list. Also the pool has a basketball hoop that I can dunk on.
pool at Dylan's parents' house: This had a view and the thing where the hot tub is partitioned out of the main pool. So it’s like the hot tub is dropped in the pool. Like a jager bomb. Do you know what I mean? Always liked that. Slip around like a seal at Sea World going from hot tub into the pool seamless transition.
Glassell Park Pool: Most frequented pool this year. Amazing hang, going to the pool. Great way to integrate friend groups. This spot is absolutely scorching in the summer, which actually is kind of glam if you can get a lounge chair, which usually isn't that hard. Had a lot of fun here, cracked a lot of jokes. Lots of space to putter around in the water.
Pacific Ocean: Went to Hawaii for the first time this year.
Ashland, VA backyard pool and goat farm on swimply: Did this the day after my friend’s wedding. Just hanging out in someone’s backyard that’s so big it doesn’t have a fence and it does have a John Deere gator. Inground vinyl and jammed full of floaties. Really fun day.
Clare
The memory and video evidence of Austin Butler doing a double take and waving at me
TSA PreCheck
Patrick Zweig
When I walked by Austin Butler on 7th St
Ice cream for adults (butter & salt, bell pepper, pine)
The song “He Went to Jared” by HARDY feat. Morgan Wallen
Austin Butler saying "bye" to me
Fat shaming Brady Corbet
The intersex Pope
Dayna!
Top 10 Best Times to Wake Up, Ranked from Worst to Best:
12pm
11am
10am
9:30am
9am
7:30am
8am
5am
6:30am
7am
Debi
10 life-affirming experiences:
Fountain sprite with an umeboshi in it (LA)
Potatoes with Buttermilk by Raghavan Iyer: I bought this book in 2011 and still regularly dig up a recipe in desperation that uses exactly the random groceries I have left in my house and proceed to eat it every week for the rest of the year
George Russell–Max Verstappen beef: the pure uncut rush of multimillionaire professional athletes calling each other a bully and a two-faced bitch in front of god and their mothers over sporting regulations
“1” by bby: sold my friend on this album by saying it sounds like they boy bandified Los Campesinos (complimentary)
UpNote: I’ve been emotionally unmoored for like 2 years since Evernote kneecapped their free version but now I can become normal in 2025
Kokopelli’s Cave (Farmington, NM): important to take the opportunity to stay in a Flintstones ass house cut into the side of a cliff whenever you can!
Thursday night prime time network television: my calming weekly ritual of the last 10 minutes of Wheel of Fortune (do not skip) into 9-1-1 into Doctor Odyssey
Chicken caesar salad
Getting stung all over your body by tiny invisible jellyfish with your closest friends on an ill-fated snorkel excursion (La Paz, Baja California Sur) and then waking up 7 days later (November 6) with a delayed skin reaction: genuinely thrilling for both me and the urgent care doctor who got to cosplay as House
Elias ZX
Favorite performances by background actors in 2024 films:
‘Cindy’ in Between The Temples
Members of the Male Encampment in Free Time
‘Susan’ in Kinds of Kindness
New Year’s Show audience in The Substance
The old men who bid on Vesta Sweetwater’s virginity in Megalopolis
Honorable Mention: Goths in the school hallway of I Saw The TV Glow and Goths in the bar of A Different Man
Emma Kearney
Inglese Italianato? È un diavolo incarnato! 10 things I loved this year that Cecil Vyse, Lucy Honeychurch’s jilted fiancé from E.M Forster’s A Room with a View, would enjoy:
Taking in-person Italian classes: Highly recommend looking for whichever language you took in high school at a cultural center and jumping in! I would not enjoy taking an Italian class with Vyse, but he’d have a good time and probably correct my pronunciation.
La Chimera, dir. Alice Rohrwacher: (My favorite movie of the year) Vyse would like the artifacts, but be embarrassed by the soiled linen suit.
Conclave, dir. Edward Berger: No character on earth would thrive more in a Conclave situation than Vyse. He would hate the concept of a Nespresso machine though.
Martin Eden, dir. Pietro Marcello: Vyse would project wildly different politics onto this movie than I did, but maybe Luca Marinelli’s face would awaken something in him.
Sargent and Fashion at Tate Britain: This exhibit contextualized a massive amount of Sargent’s work for a 21st-century audience with information that Edwardian Cecil Vyse could read immediately about the politics of clothes. I can imagine Vyse simultaneously mocking the aristocrats in costume and being jealous of their proximity to artistic genius.
How to Be Both by Ali Smith: This book might heal the part of Vyse that is a petulant teenager and get his chauvinist goat a little bit. Also one of the covers is a painting of St. Lucy.
Possession by AS Byatt: In A Room with a View, Vyse is linked to medieval art and Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Victorian of all Victorians. The romanticizing of medieval aesthetics done by Possession's fictional Victorian poets would charm him and the mystery element of the plot would make him feel smart.
The Leopard by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa: Vyse would pretend to “get” the Risorgimento politics here, erroneously thinking of himself more in line with Garibaldi’s proletariats than backward-looking Don Fabrizio. Still, he’d love lines like “A bit of a black cloud came over him as he saw again the tiny spot of coffee that had dared to interrupt his vast white waistcoat that afternoon."
One Burning Heart by Elizabeth Kingston: If Vyse wanted to learn a lesson about romantic relationships, this medieval-set romance novel (the best one I read published in 2024) would help him process the ways he projects his ideals onto his romantic partners, missing their living, breathing realities and passions.
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie dir. Ronald Neame: “Miss Jean Brodie did nothing wrong.” —Cecil Vyse
Estelle Tang
I really needed a new hobby this year and I hate crafts and sports. So, here are the cryptic crosswords I liked doing as a beginner, roughly in order of difficulty:
Guardian Quick cryptic: explicitly pedagogical; nb. expect UK spelling and usage, nbx2. I work at the Guardian
Square Pursuit Quiptic: US spelling and usage; they have versions that break down the clue type
Minute Cryptic: explicitly pedagogical but it's just one clue a day — volume is not really high enough if you want to get cracking with a puz
New Yorker cryptic: now defunct but decent archive, nice step up for beginners
Guardian Quiptic & Guardian Everyman: these have their own quirks, sometimes run a little on ~vibes~, and really vary in difficulty according to setter and edition but offer a meaty next-level challenge
Out of Left Field cryptics: not really for beginners but these are sweetie to do with others
The Stopgap: definitely not for beginners but I completed one, and Jo Livingstone sent me a drawing as a prize which was very nice
Fran Hoepfner (me)
Best new release: Caught by the Tides, Jia Zhangke
Best new-to-me old release: What A Way To Go!, J. Lee Thompson
The song of the summer: “Angel Of My Dreams,” JADE
The post of the year: “guys I’m in the war” TikTok
MVP of my mono era: Advil Ibuprofen Tablets, 200mg, Pain Reliever/Fever Reducer (NSAID) 100 Coated Tablets
Best food: TIE: Standard Balti House Lamb Madras in Shoreditch, London & Watani Sheeryakh in Ilford, London
Best concert: Vampire Weekend at Madison Square Garden
Best song that makes me feel like I’m at a concert and/or on mushrooms and/or in love: Whenever Phil (or Jim) play “Sky Diver” at Treasure Club
Best theater: Oh, Mary!, Cola Escola
Best fictional character that drove me insane: Patrick Zweig
Frank
Top 10 Things I Made This Year:
Praline Pumpkin Pie from Sally’s Baking Addiction. Every Sally’s recipe has a truly shocking amount of butter/sugar, but she will NEVER let you down.
Strawberry Shortcake from Sally’s Baking Addiction. Okay one more from Sally. I promise I’ll stop after this.
Chicken & Wild Rice Soup w/ Dill. Fran of FranMag put us on to Cafe Hailee and her husband Cafe Chuck last year and I couldn’t be more thankful. Cafe Hailee I WILL be buying your book when it drops this year.
Fish Al Pastor. One of the great pre-cancellation Bon Appetit recipes.
King Arthur Baking Pan Pizza Dough. If I’m smart enough to plan dinner one (1) day ahead, this is such a perfect dough recipe for Detroit style pizza. I am usually not that smart, but that’s why they sell dough at the store.
Seafood Gumbo. I don’t exactly use a recipe for this but the big New Orleans Guy tip I have is to be really really brave and cook your roux until it’s the color of dark chocolate. Every time I make this I have to call my mom three times and have a crashout about almost burning it, but it always turns out fine.
Sour Cream & Chive Rolls from Claire Saffitz. I’ve made these three Thanksgivings in a row and they’ve been a crowd-pleaser every time. Thank you Claire Saffitz!
Peking Duck & Pancakes from SeriousEats. The beer can chicken-style recipe is actually pretty easy. It’s really fun to get a big tallboy at the store, drink half, and stick a big ol’ duck on the other half.
Duck Udon Soup. And save the carcass for this soup!
My Mom’s Pineapple Upside Down Cake (DM for recipe). My mom always made this cake for my brother’s birthday (I always wanted a chocolate sheet cake), and with time I’m realizing it’s the best cake around. It’s topped with sticky pecan praline, pineapple rings, and cherries and I love it so much.
Frank Falisi
The best thing I did in 2024 was fall in love. Annoying to say, I know. But a good reminder that what makes a future not merely possible but pleasurable and necessarily transformed from our present mandates experiences beyond our individuality.
The second best thing I did was see Southside Johnny play the Stone Pony for the last time. We didn’t know it would be the last time. “Southside” Johnny Lyon is a staple of the Asbury Park music scene, has been since the mid-1970s. Just before Christmas, he abruptly announced his retirement from touring. Health issues were cited, unspecifically. Life is very long, and years end every year — neither of these things cancels out the other.
Southside Johnny never wrote an album like Nebraska or Tunnel of Love. He also never podcasted with a war criminal or mined his past for the Schuberts. With his vaunted, morphable Asbury Jukes, he sang songs about always coming back and never going home. Southside Johnny means: gravel, sweat, anonymity peeling into immense attraction, low hips like ellipses. Singing renews our body’s relationship to the air and each other and offers a voice beyond the confines of our individual self. And so we fall in love.
10 Southside Johnny Live Performances
“Got to Get You Off of My Mind” (The Bottom Line - 10/16/1976)
“Talk to Me” (The Capitol Theatre, Passaic - 12/31/1978)
“Until the Good is Gone” (The Stone Pony - 7/2/2011)
“Walk Away Renee” (The Capitol Theatre, Passaic - 9/25/1985)
“Walk Away” w/LaBamba’s Big Band (NBC Studios Burbank - 9/18/2008)
“It’s Been a Long Time” w/ Bruce and the E Street Band (Brendan Byrne Arena - 6/24/93)
“All the Way Home” (The Stone Pony - 9/26/1991)
“I Don’t Want to Go Home” w/ Bruce (The Cleveland Agora Club - 9/31/1978)
“Without Love” (BBC Theatre, Shepherd’s Bush - 11/22/1977)
“Hearts of Stone” (The Stone Pony - 8/31/2024)
Geoffrey Lapid
This year for my Fran Magazine Best of 2024 Poll, I've reviewed my highlights and screenshots from things I've read, and I've compiled some of my favorites. Unfortunately, I'm sort of embarrassed at how these quotes reveal how deeply I was going through it this year, but hopefully that sort of thing is fun for you.
“Crying alone in a museum without having a personal crisis is top notch and it didn't matter that I was alone: true vanity needs no witness.”
—from Gone Tomorrow by Gary Indiana. TRUE VANITY NEEDS NO WITNESS, RIP GARY INDIANA“For me... oh, you little boys! You babies, you little infant piglets, for me... there has not been one ugly woman in the whole of my life, that's my principle! Are you able to comprehend that? No, how could you? You still have milk, not blood, in your veins, you've not yet hatched from your shells! According to my book, it is possible to find in every woman something extremely - the devil take it - interesting, something you'll never find in any other - only you have to know where to look, that is the tricky part! It's a talent!”
—from The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky. I saved this one because it's very funny to think of Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov as some sort of Nev Schulman-esque feminist ally.“Talking nonsense is the sole privilege mankind possesses over the other organisms. It's by talking nonsense that one gets to the truth! I talk nonsense, therefore I'm human. Not one single truth has ever been arrived at without people first having talked a dozen reams of nonsense, even ten dozen reams of it, and that's an honourable thing in its own way; well, but we can't even talk nonsense with our own brains! […] We've got accustomed to making do with other people's intelligence -- we're soaked in it! It's true, isn't it? Isn't what I'm saying true?”
—from Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky. Razumikhin is just like me fr. RIP Dostoevsky you would have hated AI“All of this at the time just felt like life and nothing much more, just the unlucky shit that happens to people, because somebody has to be in the wrong place at the wrong time or there would be a lot less to talk about. Maybe.”
—from In The Jingle Jangle Jungle by Joel Gion. 2024 was the year I got deep into The Brian Jonestown Massacre thanks to attending a screening of the 20th Anniversary Cut of DIG! where Joel Gion was there to sell his book after.“The material universe, it would appear, has little absolute substance. It hardly exists. [...] Each species has its fiction, and that fiction is to all intents and purposes real; and the actual thin substance of the universe becomes more and more debatable, oneiric, hard to achieve, like the white figures that will not focus at the edge of vision.”
—from A Storm of Wings by M. John Harrison. I also got really into M. John Harrison's Viriconium novels this year. This passage is a particularly heady meditation on the nature of fiction and perception, exactly the sort of esoteric bullshit I want out of sci-fi garbage that is also about freaky intelligent bugs invading a city.“Once, at a gay bar, John and I were leaning on a jukebox, and he said, ‘I’d rather stand here exchanging limp remarks with you than go out and pick somebody up.’”
—from The Paris Review No. 249. This is from John Schuyler talking about his friendship with John Ashberry. I just think it's very sweet.“It was the human condition to stumble and fall, to get hurt and then heal and get up again to fight another day.And I hated it. At some point, I'd begun to despise the very capacity of my heart and body to heal themselves and move on.”
—from The Paris Review No. 249. This is a bit that I really liked from a short story by Fumio Yamamoto.“I have a dim half remembrance of long, anxious times of waiting and fearing, darkness in which there was not even the pain of hope to make present distress more poignant.”
—from Dracula by Bram Stoker. smh are you guys seeing a theme with these passages yet?“Come, we must see and act. Devils or no devils, or all the devils at once, it matters not. We must fight him all the same.”
—from Dracula by Bram Stoker. This also keeps with the cycle of depression/exhaustion/begrudging resilience that most of these passages are rocking, but more importantly this line just goes extremely hard, and that's more than reason enough to underline it.“[Brent Honeywell Jr.'s] role in these playoffs was ugly, though undeniably important: Throw the garbage-time innings so the high-leverage relievers didn't need to. That meant in Game 4, the only game of this Fall Classic that the Dodgers dropped, Honeywell set a record for the most pitches ever thrown in a single postseason inning (50) as the Yankees bludgeoned him for five runs.”
—from Jake Mintz's article on the Dodgers' 2024 World Series victory. If you thought I was going to get through this without figuring out a way to shoehorn in the fact that my beloved Los Angeles Dodgers won the World Series this year, you're fucking high. BRENT HONEYWELL JR. YOU WILL ALWAYS BE FAMOUS IN LOS ANGELES.
Haley
Top 10 Stuff I liked in no particular order:
The Twisters trailer: It’s a really good trailer and I loved seeing it every time I went to a movie for months on end. The anti-Argylle trailer if you will.
Stardew Valley: Logged [redacted] hours on this game which was new-to-me in 2024. I haven't gone completely insane, but let's just say I'm close.
Penguins: Penguins are a wonderful bird with whom I’ve been obsessed for almost two decades now. This year I got the chance to meet and greet penguins at the Bronx Zoo, as well as respectfully observe them at the Central Park Zoo and the Shedd Aquarium.
Embracing the art of the selfie: No girlboss or anything, but I set an intention to take more selfies this year and it’s been fun to look back on them all. Something I recommend if you’ve previously been averse to the practice as I was.
Challengers: A movie invented in a factory to drive me crazy. Match Point made my Spotify top 5.
Jellycats: Got put on to these wonderful stuffed animals this year and am now obsessed.
La Chimera: It’s a 2024 movie because I couldn’t see it until this year. One of those beautiful pictures that makes you rethink your life.
The killing of the United Healthcare CEO: No 2024 top ten list would be complete without it.
Watching Christopher Nolan movies at the AMC Lincoln Square IMAX: At almost an hour from my home door to door, getting up to this place is a trek (an odyssey one might say), but it’s worth it to see Nolan cook on a screen bigger than my apartment. This year we saw Tenet and Interstellar, can’t wait to see what's in store next…
Harris Mayersohn
10 Things I Threatened To Include On My Fran Mag Best of 2024 List Over The Course Of The Year
Whenever I came across something distinctly “2024,” my first thought this year was often “I should remember this for my end of year Fran Mag list.” Now that the time for listing has arrived, I find myself thinking about all the the various Internet curios, uncanny personal experiences and bizarre cultural moments from a mostly depressing year I joked about including here. Ranked from most concerning to most joyful.
Everything going on this Chris D’Elia clip from 0:44 - 0:57
Sarah Cooper’s 2019 Kamala blowjob tweet making the round again
Dead & Co. at the Sphere (the closest we’ll come to knowing how it felt to witness ‘Train Pulling Into A Station’ in 1896)
Obama daps up USA basketball team Key & Peele-style
Asking people which Oscar moment was crazier: Adele Dazeem or The Slap (the answer isn’t as simple as you think!!!
Fran Hoepfner-moderated Q+A for Rap World at BAM
Florida Panthers winning Stanley Cup for the first time in their 31-year history
James Odin Wade
Top 10 Things I Enjoyed in 2024
Chappell Roan. A friend of mine keeps singing, “H-O-T-D-O-G-T-O-G-O” and it makes me smile whenever I think of it.
The Elephant Man. A beautiful film that really moved me. I loved how the David Lynchiness was all still there, but deployed in more subtle ways.
The 2019 Les Miserables staged concert that I can’t stop listening to. It took me a long time to get into Les Miserables (I blame the movie) but now I’m Javert-pilled, I’m going Valjean mode, etc.
Makaya McCraven: In These Times. I don’t know anything about jazz, but I like drums, and this album makes me feel everything.
John Le Carré. I finally read a John Le Carré novel! It was The Little Drummer Girl and it rocked.
Dune 2 popcorn bucket. Everyone’s talked about the cursed Shai Hulud bucket, but I just think it’s the weirdest consumer object I’ve seen in ages. My son calls it “Monster Mouth” and feeds it Hot Wheels.
Halloween costumes. My family went as the MTA’s 1, 2, and 3 trains for Halloween. We worked really hard on them and they turned out great.
Lay’s Wasabi Octopus potato chips. I have fallen in love with many items at T&T Supermarket, but these bad boys are top tier.
The Chrysler Pacifica. I drove a minivan across the USA and I loved doing it.
The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro. Absolutely devastating novel about how being British sucks.
Kyle Amato
Kind of a bum movie year for me (but watch A Different Man!), so let’s leave that aside and focus on what matters: ten things I bought for my apartment to feel like I was moving forward with my life after a horrible breakup at the end of January:
Tomato kitchen timer from Wal-Mart: first new thing I bought after the incident. It’s so cute!
Off-white coffee table from Wayfair I built while rewatching Beetlejuice: shiny and classy!
Blue ottoman bench for my bedroom from Target: I keep all my big blankets inside!
Reading chair and ottoman from Craigslist: both blue, like the bench! You WISH you had my bedroom reading nook...
Coffee bean grinder from Target: I don’t know how I lived without it. I grind beans for my pour-over every day now.
Green corduroy couch from Wayfair: first couch I've ever had that hasn't come from a basement or the trash!
Open backed bookcase, also from Wayfair: less imposing than my old one, makes the living room feel bigger! More space for plants too!
Spice rack from Craigslist: Drilled into my kitchen wall! It’s so cute even if half the spices are ‘expired’ and just for show!
Laptop tray from IKEA: Makes it a lot easier to watch TV and do busy work. I’m using it while watching the Beckham doc right now!
Little ceramic bowls from Target: All-purpose, usually filled with flaky salt. Useful and stylish!
I just need a little circle rug for my office to tie it all together: let me know if you find one I could have!
Laura (Fran’s Mom)
What brought me joy in 2024 (and I didn't have a great year):
Winning tickets to Jeff Lynne's Over & Out Tour
Finally seeing WWE Friday Night SmackDown in an arena (been trying since March 2020) and finishing the year with the WWE Holiday Tour
Big screen showings of Valley Girl, Ghostbusters, and The Terminator
Being a member of the Art Institute of Chicago (I saw The Great Wave!), the Botanic Garden and Brookfield Zoo
Discovering Christopher Royal jewelry
Dave & Buster's opening a two-story location 10 minutes from my home
Returning as an ESL Tutor, in person, after 4 1/2 years (adult education in a local school district)
Slow Horses and Shrinking
Saturday Morning Flashback on WXRT
Having two Boston Terriers again, even if the puppy is a POCKET MONSTER
Lily Puckett
top dead french author I read: Mavis Gallant
top nonfiction: Keeping the Faith by Brenda Wineapple
top fiction: not a good year for this
top son: MJ Lenderman
top daughter: unclear
top member of the defense team in the Scopes Monkey Trial in by Keeping the Faith by Brenda Wineapple: Arthur Hays
Marian Bull
best experience, general: having a gummy inside the grand canyon five days in a row and happily feeling like a little speck in the great geological time-map
best experience, musical: listening to brat at full volume windows open bombing down highway 1 in Louie's dad's brand new jeep (thank u tim)
best experience, literary: reading Jamaica Kincaid's novels in sequence
best nonfiction book read: Mourid Barghouti's I Saw Ramallah
best dinner party entree: clams with chorizo and white beans from the Rancho Gordo Cookbook
best restaurant entree: rabbit pie at stissing house shared with my beautiful radiant mother Kathleen McNiff Bull
best thing that drove me insane: painting my walls this color
best line dance learned: MILES ON IT :)
best fancy NA beverage: NON1 SALTED RASPBERRY AND CHAMOMILE
best social media art: ariél's Britney erasure poems
Matt Erspamer
Top 10 things - 2024
Meeting Thelma Schoonmaker: It happened after a screening of A Matter of Life & Death in Seattle. We talked about editing the quaalude scene in The Wolf of Wall Street.
The Center for Great Apes: The name says it all! A reason to stay on Instagram, a reason to stay alive!
Cheese boards: A hack: Look for a deformed, discounted small shard section in the Nice Cheese Area of your local grocer. Pick 3 small yet distinct cheeses; you don’t always need to buy full size, full price chunks for a small gathering.
The taco stand near my apartment: I’m not naming it because I don’t need everyone knowing where I live… but a few times a month it saves me, in every way that a person can be saved.
Seeing great, long films in the theater: I love being swept up! This year in Seattle-area theaters, I saw Andrei Rublev, A Brighter Summer Day, Yi Yi, Rocco and His Brothers, Killers of the Flower Moon, and…
Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World (Dir. Radu Jude): My favorite new release of the year. As funny as it is angry.
Diamond Jubilee by Cindy Lee: My favorite new album of the year. A familiar yet entirely unique dispatch from a haunted alternate dimension.
Baby heels: A baby, in heels!
Jiminy Glick guest hosting Jimmy Kimmel Live: A jaw-dropping stretch of brilliantly chaotic comedic energy as only Jiminy can provide! The interviews with Melissa McCarthy and Nick Kroll are especially worth your time.
Michael Mann Facts
Daring Wings: In my journey to lower my cholesterol while still eating the foods I love, these were a revelation. Get the plain breaded plant chicken wings and toss them in your buffalo sauce of choice.
Sticky Toffee Pudding - The Plough, East Sheen: I think this was the best thing I ate in London, where much of the food is not very good (everyone there loves Five Guys, which, sure, but c’mon).
French Onion Sandwich and Fries - Houseman: Houseman is my favorite restaurant in New York City, but I did not have its french onion sandwich until this year. It is exactly what you’d expect, which is to say comforting and delicious. Served with perfectly crispy and salty Houseman fries.
Coconut Chicken Thailandese - Thai Diner: There is nothing better, to me, than a large, thin slab of meat that is crispily, crunchily coated and fried golden brown. Like chicken parm and coconut shrimp had a baby.
Cod Karaage - Maneki: More succulent than regular, chicken karaage, and perfect for when your girlfriend does not eat meat (and you’re trying to eat less meat, too).
Meaty Boy - K.O. Burger: I’ve mostly given up burgers—my favorite food—but this is the best burger I had this year, and probably the best “smashburger” in New York City. The name is ridiculous but do you really want your burger to be dignified?
Strawberry Honey Balsamic with Black Pepper - Salt & Straw: After hearing the name for years, I finally got to experience Salt & Straw when it opened a location on the Upper West Side. Surprisingly, my favorite flavor was the strawberry honey balsamic, which tasted exactly how I have always wanted strawberry ice cream to taste.
Whitefish Salad Everything Bagel - Apollo Bagels: There was much to do about Apollo Bagels finally opening this year. Usually when there is a line down the block for something, I figure it can’t be that good. But Apollo is, and this sandwich is the best thing there: whitefish salad, pickled peppers, mustard, and cucumber.
Focaccia and Lobster Linguine - Foul Witch: Foul Witch was one of the best restaurants I went to this year, and though it’s high-concept (what if Italian food was scary…?), its simplest offerings were the most pleasing. It has the best bread and butter in the city, and pasta reminiscent of Joe Beef’s famous spaghetti.
Calabria’s Portnoy Crunchy Thin - Calabria Pizza: I went here on a whim because the restaurant seemed indebted to Dave Portnoy, and I thought that was funny. There is a Barstool Sports flag inside the restaurant, a poster of Dave on the window, and a pizza named after him on the menu. But when it comes to pizza, a broken clock is right twice a day.
Miranda
Top Ten Things I Learned this Year
La Quintas get nicer the further West you go. The one in St. George, Utah is a particularly lovely place to celebrate your [redacted] birthday while waiting for the air conditioning in your 2005 Civic to get fixed so you can continue your CA to MA cross country drive with your dog and your best friend. The sign says no food by the pool but no one bothers you while you eat your take out. The air conditioning doesn’t end up getting fixed and the engine overheats and you break down in the middle of night in the middle of nowhere, but that’s another story.
The stuff people kept telling me might help? It helps! Getting up early helps. Stretching helps. Leaving my house helps. A run helps. Getting up early and stretching and leaving my house to go for a run really fucking helps.
Hill work makes you faster. When I started running again this summer, the natural three-mile out and back was straight up a pretty significant hill. I think it was that plus some pretty gnarly emotional issues I attempted without success to avoid by replacing emotional pain with physical pain that allowed me to (yes I’m bragging) knock about 8 minutes off my half marathon time.
Don’t shove a banana into a tote bag already overstuffed with hardcover books. Okay okay jeez I get it you only gotta tell me [sully one book with banana goo] once!
Actually remaining silent in a custodial interrogation by police will likely not be construed as an invocation of your right to remain silent. Three hours of almost complete silence? Not an unambiguous invocation. (Berghuis v. Thompkins)
Time! Is! Passing! All the cliches about time really hit this year. How life is short and also long. The importance of being, forgive me, in the moment. That one Michael Mann line.
The Fly by Jing Sichuan Chili Crisp *is* gluten free. It’s not labeled gluten free but someone on Reddit emailed and I haven’t had any celiac flare ups despite putting this on most meals for the past four months.
Doing things? Good. Dinner with friends? Good. Movies alone? Good. Thursday morning museum? Good. Holiday party at the home of person you never knew well and haven’t seen in four years? I was shocked too, but: GOOD!
I don’t want to be the focus of my own life. Known this for a while. The revelation this year was that self-hatred is just as ego driven as self-indulgence.
Tortillas should be toasted on a gas burner. I only lit myself on fire once!
Morgan Leigh Davies
Due to various maladies, I am more or less home-bound, which makes reflecting on a given year kind of difficult: what was I doing a year ago? Lying in bed. Where was I when I got important news or read a great book or laughed at a stupid meme? Probably, lying in bed. It gets hard to remember individual moments when the days all run together and when your leisure activities are limited to, uh, for instance, reading hundreds of books and nothing else. But I have endeavored to pick out some highlights even so:
Receiving daily photos of (one of) my best friend’s new baby, who lives in Australia and already looks cooler in sunglasses than I ever have, or will.
Escaping my apartment for one single night to see my hometown boy (Sudbury represent) Jeremy Strong in An Enemy of the People.
Sitting on the screen porch of my favorite high school English teacher’s house, talking about books and Al Pacino once visiting my high school and Albanian revenge codes.
Going to the graduation of the high school student I mentored for three years.
Finally reading David Copperfield, which despite my constant reading was so long that it took me over a month to finish and reminded me of how satisfied I felt when completing a big tome as a teenager.
Watching all of Shogun, remembering the joy of a weekly serialized drama, but especially 1.9 “Crimson Sky.”
Experiencing the whole Glen Powell situation.
Crying at the end of Julio Torres’s film Problemista.
Observing my small, female cat decide to start attacking my much larger, male cat every night, displacing him from his spot next to me on the bed, sometimes sending him literally running out of the room, while she sits down in his spot and starts washing herself.
Surviving another year.
Nicholas Russell
Moving to New York then back to Vegas made it abundantly clear that vanity plates are far more prevalent in the western part of the country than the east. Why that is I leave to the cultural phrenology of your choosing. These are some of the strangest and funniest Haley and I saw this year, with the caveat that nothing will ever, ever beat the middle-aged man we passed holding a tiny dog in his lap driving a car with a license plate that read "TEXTING" four years ago.
Phil
Singles I Bought in 2024:
Ben Richardson - Sky Diver (1979, Numero Uno / RCA)
Pablo Moses - Dubbin’ Is A Must (1979, White Label)
Commandant Carlos - The Charm Of Love (1979, Private Press)
Elle Nadja - Elle Nadja (1985, Private Press)
K.I.D. - It's Hot / Hupendi Muziki Wangu (You Don't Like My Music?!?!) (1981, SAM Records)
Rico - Ska Wars (1977, Island Records)
Greg Henderson - Dreamin’ (1982, SAM Records)
******* - Another Brick In The Wall / ***** (1980, ***********)
I'm gatekeeping this one it's too much of a weapon, IYKYKGrupo Swing - Chica Liberal / Bosque Solitario (1982, Private Press)
Fairuz - Sena An Sena / Habibi (1962, Parlophone)
Sam Bodrojan
“Angel Of My Dreams” - JADE
Owning A Bike
Miss Macintosh, My Darling - Marguerite Young
The 2001 High Speed Driving RPG Racing Lagoon For The Sony Playstation
Caught By The Tides, Jia Zhangke
Books About Movies: Directed by Yasujiro Ozu, Hasumi / Devotional Cinema, Dorsky / My Cinema, Duras / Telling Stories, Roemer
Quitting Smoking So I Could Start Running Again
O-Cedar Easywring Mop
Losing Over 100 Hours Playing Slay The Spire On Transit
Dinner At Boonie's In Chicago
Sonia Saraiya
Anora. Mikey Madison in Anora.
Problemista. Tilda Swinton as cave troll in Problemista.
Baz Luhrmann being interviewed about his marriage by that TikToker.
Beautiful World, Where Are You? by Sally Rooney.
Chappell Roan // Roan of Arc
Charli XCX’s brat esp feat. Lorde - “girl, so confusing”
Conclave. Five stars
Cowboy Carter! You all can relax, she made it for me.
France… I know! but those olympiques were all “the French have done it again”
The History of Japan (includes plot of Shogun). “It’s time for 🎵world 🎵war 🎵2”
Spencer Williams
Top Ten Crushing Humiliations (or maybe moments of iconery) of 2024
Kind of enjoyed Emilia Pérez and going to the gym.
Listened to Katy Perry's new album 143 front to back on the way to a wedding I wasn't invited to.
My flop book came out and everyone clapped.
“Ran” the turkey trot for the fourth year in a row
Didn't better myself. In fact, became worse. On a related note, took beginner swimming lessons but not driving lessons.
Went to Six Flags with three teenagers and none of them wanted to go on any roller coasters so I had to go on them by myself while the teens watched TikToks on the benches below.
Became a regular at a coffee shop (baristas know my name, order, trauma, etc)
Continued to be in a PhD program despite having an at-times-too-robust social life
Continued being unable to pronounce the "l" in the word "wolves"
They/Them'd by my transgender healthcare specialist on the same day my therapist decided to wear color contacts to our zoom session.
2025 is my year for sure. <3
Steve (Fran’s Dad)
2024 was the first full year of my retirement. Many people have asked me what I do to fill up all of my free time. Here’s a list of my new activities in 2024.
Exercise. My daily workouts at the gym have gone from 1 hour to 2-3 hours and now include swimming. Gets me out of the house and great for me physically and psychologically.
Donate Platelets. Donating platelets (critical for cancer patients) can be done much more often than donating blood. It takes about 2-3 hours/donation – perfect time to watch a Netflix movie.
Deliver for Meals on Wheels. I deliver meals to the elderly and home-bound in my neighborhood.
Volunteer at the Chicago Botanic Garden. I specialize in “Butterflies and Blooms” in the summer and in taking pictures of guests during special events in the spring and fall.
Go to the Symphony. Inspired by Fran, I subscribe to the Chicago Symphony and have learned so much about classical music.
Visit the Art Institute. The Art Institute is across the street from Symphony Center, so I go here before my concerts. Laura and I also go on Sunday mornings and try to find something we have never seen before.
Go to Lunch. During my career, I had many friends and colleagues who I never had to time to see while working. Now, we get together for leisurely, often adventurous, 1:1 lunches.
Learn Something New. I joined OLLI at Northwestern University in Evanston. OLLI stands for Osher Lifelong Learning Institute. Great way to learn and share your own knowledge about a wide range to subjects. In 2024, I studied time travel fiction, wordless picture books, ancient Rome, and foreign films. In 2025, art and Amor Towles stories are on the docket.
Write a Memoir. Thanks to Fran, I subscribe to Storyworth and write a weekly story about me and my life based on one of her thoughtful prompts. After a year, the stories will be compiled into a book for me to leave to her.
Support a Charity. Laura and I did a lot of research in 2024 to find a charity we love and that we can engage with throughout the year. Our alma mater, Loyola University Chicago, has a new, innovative school called Arrupe College that serves talented, diverse students from across Chicago who are seeking an affordable college option. It is the perfect choice for us and our community.
Sydney Jin Choi
Top 6 most memorable (for better or worse) flights I took this year:
JFK-ORD: I attended a friend's art show the night before this flight and had a few glasses of wine. I arrived home around 2am, half finished with packing, and a bit drunk. My flight was at 7am. I slept for about 2 hours, arrived at the airport delirious and nauseous, was assigned a middle seat, and the man next to me fought me for the arm rests.
SFO-JFK: I had a window seat in the very back of the plane. As I walked up to my row, I realized I was sitting next to a couple with an 8 month old baby who did not need its own seat. Mostly, I did not interact with the family, except for when the baby threw his plastic flashing light toy at me while I slept. The baby spent a good 5 minutes kicking me, lying sideways in his mother's arms. Both I and the mother pretended it was not happening. This was a more pleasant experience than being hung over. Baby was cute.
JFK-SFO: Friend and I took a flight together but were not seated together. She was trying to make it back in time to attend a work meeting without taking time off or alerting her coworkers that she was taking a flight. The flight was delayed over an hour. She sent me panicked texts from 2 rows behind. I giggled uncontrollably for 5 minutes straight then fell asleep.
JFK-BUF (Fran was also there): This flight is less than an hour in the air. They did offer complimentary beverages, but the flight attendants started the cart a tiny bit too late, and just tossed cans at us in the last 10 minutes before descent and said, “DON'T OPEN THEM.” Landing was smooth in the way that I didn't realize we had landed. Was nice.
SFO-JFK: Also the window seat of the last row of this flight. Guy next to me asked what I was reading. I was reading To 2040 by Jorie Graham. He said it seemed hard to read poetry on a plane. I said it was okay and asked if he ever read poetry. He said he did when he was in college getting his English degree. I asked if he did any writing. He said sometimes he wrote short stories. I suggested he get an MFA.
SFO-LAX: My first Spirit flight. $35.99. Not so bad mostly because this flight is so short. The person over the intercom said something like “If you listened to our safety presentation, thank you for your time. If you didn’t, GOOD LUCK.” I did not appreciate this. Lady a few rows up rubbed her bare foot on the seat in front of her a lot. Didn't appreciate that either.
Note on flying: You can ask for more than 1 of the snack options offered on a JetBlue flight. The everything bagel pretzels are bitter for some reason and bad. The graham crackers have a sort of sandy quality, but the flavor is okay? Pop chips are normal.
Tessa Strain
Freddie Freeman’s walk-off grand slam in Game 1 of the World Series: Simply the most beautiful baseball moment of my lifetime.
Finally finishing HBO’s Rome: It took 17 years and 3 separate boyfriends illegally downloading it for me, but we finally got there. Just in time for the collapse of our own republic!
Swann’s Way: As a fetishist of nostalgia, sentences with approximately one zillion subordinate clauses, and fancy little treats, it was only a matter of time before I found my way to Proust.
“Chains of Love” by Erasure: Song of the summer!!
The Hollywood DMV: Is the fact that I always have a good time at the DMV proof of a corrupt soul that finds its level in grotesque bureaucratic environs or of a radiant inner goodness that manages to transcend them? Either way, there’s a red carpet leading to the spot where you get your picture taken, what more can I say.
The Challengers OST: Turns out you can really put up numbers at the gym when you’re thinking about Patrick Zweig. Not safe for driving though.
The alligator lizards in my front yard: Kind of what the pool ducks were to Tony Soprano.
The painting Man in Armor Holding a Pike by Jan van Biljert: He looks so sassy!
Passing Christopher Nolan and Emma Thomas on the trail hiking up to the Hollywood sign as I was hiking back down: I can only assume they were going up to say thank you... to Hollywood itself… for the Oscars… lmao…
The way Martin Donavan says “the laaaaaaamps” in Inherent Vice, a movie I have seen three zillion times
Tristan Kiel & Claire Cohen
Over the past few months, I've made this bean with bacon soup recipe approximately ten times. It's a wonderful cold weather dish from my childhood that marries the best aspects of peasant food (simple, honest ingredients) with luxury (delicious, complex flavor). Simple as 👍.
Over the course of the year I made many alterations, both major and minor, often to the chagrin of my partner Claire, who would often ask “are you sure this is the way you usually make it?” while I was gathering ingredients. “Yes (lie), we go through this every time (truth), and you always like it (truth).”
The following are the four best variations/changes I made to the standard bean with bacon soup recipe in 2024:
Kidney Beans: Bean with bacon soup recipes (BWBSR) tend to favor white beans, usually kidney or great northerns. In a tight spot I was forced to make do with red kidney beans. This resulted in a sweeter flavor, which Claire really loved.
Cheddar Cheese: This step has become a must for us. Mixing in a shredded block of Cabot Seriously Sharp White Vermont Cheddar (whichever cheese you buy it needs to have at least two of those adjectives in the name) not only adds an additional depth of flavor but enhances and thickens the soup.
Beer: As with the previous, this addition was inspired by a relatively recent dalliance/fascination with Beer Cheese Soup, a delightfully named dish that combines A Bunch Of Good Shit. We tried a few options, from IPAs (waste) to Guinness (too strange of a flavor) to good old fashioned Modelo (just right). I use the beer to deglaze the pan after the veggies have had a chance to cook in with the bacon fat and I find it gives the broth a bit more depth than when using stock only.
Immersion Blending: Let it be known that 2024 was the year I really started blending. I absolutely adore the velvety feel that comes from immersion blending in the beans, veggies, etc. into the soup. This is also a great way to hide veggies or other ingredients that your child or soon-to-be 30 year old partner might find too yucky to eat whole.
Veronica Fitzpatrick
Top 10 little luxuries:
Heathered cashmere sheets
Switching to glass nail file
Tilda Swinton big-upping “art, friendship, and nature” at press conference for The Room Next Door
Unofficial podcaster convention at Jumbo’s Clown Room
Kolsvart Swedish candy fish
Freebies from the bartender at Capital Grille
Trolling eBay for samples of Matière Première Extrait editions
Two frozen gin and tonics at Leon’s, Charleston
Blowing through Newport traffic on a rental scooter
Moving a TV into the bedroom and falling asleep to Lord of the Rings Extendeds under LED string lights all winter long
Vikram “The Vee-dog” Murthi
Ten Movies I Had To Review For IndieWire (Chronological Order)
Bob Marley: One Love: Notable for actors speaking in thick unsubtitled Jamaican patois, which would have limited its distribution ten years ago. Otherwise, silly and pointless.
Much Ado About Dying: Disquieting, amateurish doc portrait of an elderly queer hoarder. Can't remember much about it other than feeling like it shouldn't exist.
Steve! (Martin): A Documentary in 2 Pieces: Fun first half that captures why Martin's '70s (unique, genuinely heady and deconstructive, blah blah blah) stand-up persona had a short shelf life (it was also kinda annoying).
Back to Black: Genuinely offensive, and also plays like a weird alibi for anyone targeted in the 2015 doc (mainly her fame-hungry dad), but it's funny when Winehouse's dirtbag boyfriend puts crack in a diamond ring box.
Force of Nature: The Dry 2: Australia is none of my business, but this Eric Bana-led procedural was solid if only for how well it depicts the dangerous stupidity of corporate wilderness retreats.
Tuesday: Death-as-CGI-macaw raps along to Ice Cube's "Good Day" and it's sort of wild to watch Julia Louis-Dreyfus browbeat her terminally ill daughter for constantly reminding her that she's dying. The rest is quite bad.
Hacking Hate: The Internet (or at the very least YouTube) was probably a mistake.
The Beast Within: Kit Harrington is a werewolf domestic abuser in a movie that felt fake as I was watching it.
Unstoppable: Bland “inspiring” sports flick whose best scene involves J.Lo learning about predatory mortgage lending practices.
Without Blood: Angelina Jolie directed her version of “My Dinner With Andre” except it's about abstract, fictional war crimes instead of experimental theater. May it never receive distribution.
Walter Ancarrow
This Year’s Highest Step Counts According to My Phone and What I Did to Get There
40,584 (Feb 10): Oculus to Brooklyn Museum, Palestine march, meet up with Isa, Isa’s search for bubble tea, Isa’s needing to be at BAM at 6pm, downtown BK to LES to Harold Square, late night stroll to Lincoln Park; happy to have broken my record or that he was beside me part of the way
35,890 (Nov 1): Leave costume party at 2am, nearest station closed and next one, transfer in Manhattan, more closures, seven-hour nap, Williamsburg to and fro why not. Idea for epitaph: I went as myself and at my own pace
31,801 (Oct 27): FiDi to Bedstuy for garage sale via Brooklyn Bridge (mistake); The Word Is Change, Dear Friend, Unnameable, Manhattan Bridge interlude, Aeon, Codex, Mast, East Village B (under Right Wing Bourgeois Politics: The Audacity of Hope, Living History, Why We’re Polarized), Bonnie Slotnick, PATH at 33rd, where I always get a seat but bought nothing to read
29,309 (May 21): Geitawi, Gemmayze, Hamra, Raouche. OUR SPACE IS
DESTROYEDRESTORED BUT WE ARE NOT; BEFORE I DIE I WANT LEBANON TO have learned from the past; For Girls Only Rooms & Studio; HAPPY DEPENDENCE DAY 22-11-1943 (al-Freudian slip); LA TERRE EST BLEUE COMME UNE ORANGE; GAZA IS A CEMETERY OF INVADERS; FUCK ISRAEL; MISS U HBB28,300 (Dec 26): All my reflections say I look great! Christopher Street to Harold Square but at Harold Square decide not enough people have looked at me so Harold Square to WTC, Codex has hardback Horse Crazy, on Leonard I pass the funhouse mirror mini Bean and give it dysmorphia
24,191 (July 14): No recollection of this walk or how I could go on for so long in such heat
23,687 (Sept 20): Achrafieh to wherever and back and forth and so on but it’s a few days after the pager attack, a mile away Dahiya is being bombed, walking not best idea but unbearable to stay inside, headphones not completely blocking out sirens, Eliot recites “We shall not cease from exploration / And the end of all our exploring / Will be to arrive where we started / And know the place for the first time”; I wonder if the airport will close
Weston Leo Richey
Ten People (I Don’t Know) Who Defined My Year, Mostly Through What They Made
Samuel R. Delany: The provocative Delany — the first prominent black and openly gay science fiction writer as well as a cultural critic and critical theorist to boot — continues to be one of my biggest influences in my academic work (I’m finally dissertating this year!). I spent the past several months writing my introduction which features his brilliant, sad, weird short story “Aye, and Gomorrah…”.
George Fox: This is the year I finally am becoming, formally, a Quaker. And I couldn’t have become a member of the Religious Society of Friends if Mr. Fox hadn’t arguably started this faith tradition almost four hundred years ago.
Conan Gray: One of my favorite music boys, so beautiful and talented and an ever-present fixture on my Instagram story. His album this year, Found Heaven, is joyous and brooding and playful and a rolicking good time.
Kazuo Ishiguro: Klara and the Sun and Never Let Me Go were my entree to Ishiguro this year. Melancholic and lonely, just like me.
Robert Kurvitz (and the development studio ZA/UM): Disco Elysium reignited my love of gaming and ludic storytelling. A depressingly playful detective story — and the source for the epigraph to my dissertation (at least right now).
Ottessa Moshfegh: Her latest novel, Lapvona, asks, What is the difference between what you love and what hurts you?, and answers, devastatingly and darkly, Nothing.
Dan Smith (and his band, Bastille): Bastille doesn’t get the respect it deserves, and their latest album, “&,” is one reason why I say this. A fun, thoughtful concept album that plays with persona and partnership alike.
Ezra Koenig (and his band, Vampire Weekend): I already wrote about their latest album, Only God Was Above Us, at length for this very magazine. You should check it out.
Jeff Vandermeer: Reading his novella The Strange Bird made me feel strange in all the best ways. No one else captures the weirdness of being a body quite like Vandermeer.
Hanya Yanagihara: Anyone who knows me knows that I find her novels a mixed bag. But To Paradise, which I read this year—bloated and tedious and strained, but oh-so-compelling—echoes to this day the way its characters echo with each other across their years, and A Little Life is never far behind in my memory, either.
Will Feinstein
ME (dir. Don Herzfeldt): Hertzfeldt continues to evolve (no dialogue; more narrative abstraction; the guys are a new shape) while maintaining all the miserable, funny stuff he does best and salvaging an abandoned collab with (maybe) Arcade Fire.
“The TikTok Rizz Party”: I got a lot of joy this year from the videos, and the subsequent deluge of sociological analysis and fancams, of the attendees at certain Staten Island sweet 16 now dubbed “The TikTok Rizz Party.” Dive into the lore to learn about Turkish Quandale Dingle, and check out the DJ company’s account to see what other songs kids eerily know all the words to.
Freddie Freeman’s Walk-off Grand Slam in Game 1 of the World Series: We went straight from André 3000’s new age flute concert to a German beer hall nearby, just in time to: A) watch Freeman (with a bad ankle!) cement the tone for the Dodgers’ dominant series with one swing in the bottom of the 10th, and B) cheer obnoxiously in the faces of dejected Yankee fans, who really thought they had this one.
Eggland (dir. Cole Kush, Brendan O'Hare, and Conner O'Malley): A real blessing — deeply sad and funny.
Benshi screening of A Page of Madness (dir. Teinosuke Kinugasa): I was lucky to catch a program during the “Art of the Benshi” tour, which keeps alive the early Japanese cinema practice of having skilled performers provide narration and music to accompany silent films. The highlight was this classic 1926 horror/art nightmare, where the benshi’s storytelling created a version of the film that can only be experienced live.
The Who’s Tommy Broadway revival: “Finally, a musical for boys,” I (very jokingly) remarked when it ended. I loved it and loved watching older people in the audience pump their fists in the air along to the finale. Now do Quadrophenia.
The Turnaround (dir. Ben Proudfoot and Kyle Thrash): This short, humanistic doc — about the fan-organized standing ovations that magically ended a dismal period for Phillies shortstop Trea Turner in 2023 — centers the humanity of the superfan who started the positivity campaign. The bottom-up approach to the inspirational sports story is unique and very moving!
Catatonic Youths’ TikTok Compilations: Challenge yourself to get through these recent supercuts of the worst people making music on TikTok, which really level up Catatonic Youths’ consistently good curation/editing to match that platform’s scary potency.
Big Group Outings to Novelty/Theme Restaurants: I had memorable 10+ person meals at the Rainforest Cafe and Red Lobster (food much better at the latter). More next year.
When the Boston Red Sox tweeted and deleted a highlight clip of (brief) first baseman, Dom Smith, with the caption, “Anyone who loves BDSM (Big Dom Smith Moments) is our friend without introduction.”
Wyatt Fair
BEST TRIPS TO THE CINEMA IN A POST-DIET COKE WORLD
I basically went Karen Mode this year and got really hyped on Diet Coke. Exact timeline is foggy, but I present the following correspondence from the end of July…
It’s safe to say that I’ve been “changed for the better” LMAO! They wouldn’t let us bring the Elphaba cocktail into the IMAX at Universal CityWalk, so I did sip on a DC.
STRAY DOGS/THE WAYWARD CLOUD: Can you really call yourself an LA-based slow cinema head if you didn’t catch the Tsai Ming-liang retrospective? Bleak movies, sweet guy. The cabbage sequence in Stray Dogs is unmatched!
IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE (REWATCH): Technically, this was a Diet RC. I blasted one at Brutalist too. Would Vox Lux have been good if I was high on Diet Coke?
THE SUBSTANCE: Margot Robbie please shoot The Sims movie like this thank you girl you’re beautiful girl
RATS!: Batshit comedy feature I saw at the New/Next Festival – Gregg Araki for the Blood Brothers generation! To be honest, I was probably drinking beer
TOKYO SONATA: Probably the best “new to me” of the whole year. Perfectly paced and totally gorgeous family drama, but not without those freaky Kurosawa touches. The dad looks for temp jobs at HelloWork. I knew all about that shit from Yakuza: Like a Dragon!
KRAVEN THE HUNTER: This dude was crazy as hell! Crawling around like a damn animal and drinking “ancient elixirs” for sport. I refilled my large Diet Coke in the middle, having two made my blood feel like oil
JANET PLANET: #1 film of 2024 – as a child of hippie parents, I too feared the ever-present horror of a shirtless man doing tai chi. I’ll be frank, I was likely drinking Coke Heavy both times that I saw in theaters, but some rules (or entire premises for your Fran Magazine Best of 2024 List) are meant to be broken.
Zach Low
Things that didn't suck in 2024 (in rough chronological order):
Quit smoking
The Past Is Still Alive, Hurray for the Riff Raff + live at Skully's Music Diner (w/ NNAMDÏ)
Heat at Doc Films
Watched several cuts of the feature I co-wrote
Janet Planet at Gene Siskel Film Center
The Angel of Indian Lake & I Was a Teenager Slasher, Stephen Graham Jones + in-person at Columbus Metropolitan Library (w/ my dad)
Got married
There's Always This Year, Hanif Abdurraqib + in-person at Logan Center for the Arts
Manning Fireworks, MJ Lenderman + live at Thalia Hall (w/ Ryan Davis & the Roadhouse Band)
Harm's Way, Ducks Ltd. + live at Thalia Hall (w/ Ratboys)
📬 That’s all, folks! What made your best-of list this year? Was it Patrick Zweig? Thanks as always for reading. I love you!!! 😚
fran your dad is my new hero
i want to be newly retired so bad