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Fran Magazine: Issue #125

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Fran Mag in the news

Last week, Phil was gracious enough to take the reins while I got out from under the pile of writing I’d agreed to do and write about Mayor of New York City’s Eric Adams’ son’s rap career. That night, Eric Adams was indicted! I won’t go so far as to say something like “Fran Magazine made this happen,” but… well, you do the math.

Fran Mugazine is here

After literal years of promising Fran Magazine-related merchandise, I’m thrilled to report: the Fran Magazine mug is here.

Some details about the mug:

• it is 10 ounces

• it is dishwasher safe

• I assume it is microwave safe but I will test that this week

• I will be charging $20 + shipping for the mug

  • Though if you live in the greater NYC area, you’re welcome to arrange pickup

  • The funds will cover cost of production + cost of design hours + cost of packaging labor. My loose version of this math has me making about $2 each mug, the rest of which just covers cost of work behind it. I know $20 is more than most mugs cost, obviously, but this will be the most special mug you own until you buy another bit of novelty Substackware.

• The mug will go on sale next week. Fran Magazine shop link TK, as we say¹

This first run will be super limited, mostly because I’ve never done something like this before and don’t want to run into the kind of thing where suddenly I have a living room full of mugs with my name on it and no one who wants them. If we run out (I hope we do??), there will be more mugs. Maybe not til December though.

Popsicle recommendation

Last week, we had dinner around Clio’s neighborhood and decided to forego restaurant dessert in favor of grabbing ice cream and popsicles at the grocery store. While some of us sorted through various “indie” pint flavors, a few pals grabbed a box of Melona popsicles in the original honeydew flavor, which I’d seen before but never had. They are delicious: perfect size, perfect texture, perfect flavor. When we half-watched the Hunger Games prequel on Monday night, Phil said his Hunger Games name would be “Melona Popsicle.”

Should Phil and I watch Lost?

I watched Lost when it aired and loved every second of it. I haven’t revisited the show in full since that initial airing. When I first moved to Brooklyn, Tristan and Claire were watching from the beginning, so I watched/texted through episodes, finding the show both more charming and a bigger mess than I remembered. During the odd hours between work ending and navigating dinner last night, Phil wondered aloud if we should start the show. He’s only seen clips. I’m convinced it would drive him completely insane, but maybe not. I’d long recommended The Leftovers as a show to watch — fewer episodes, crazier stuff, Margaret Qualley…. Carrie Coon… — but that went nowhere. On the phone, my brother said, “Just rewatch the first season and stop there.”

Matt and Mara, Kazik Radwanski

On Mark Asch’s recommendation, I took myself to IFC on Wednesday morning to catch one of that day’s showings of Kazik Radwanski’s Matt and Mara starring Matt Johnson (from Blackberry, and other films) and Deragh Campbell (from Anne at 13,000 Ft., and other films) as longtime friends and titular characters Matt and Mara who are writers and friends and ???. Matt is a semi-successful author; Mara is a creative writing teacher who has put off her writing to get married, have a baby, work a job, etc. The film is a perfect combination of “about grad school” and “I’m always mad at my one friend” — my two favorite microniche genres of self-invention (probably). Are Matt and Mara friends? Kind of. Do they hate each other? Kind of. Do they have unresolved sexual tension? Something like that, born out of the gray area in the first two questions.

I came out of the movie feeling one of my favorite feelings: an exact 50/50 split between “I hope that happens to me” and “I hope that never happens to me.”

For all that I am fascinated by “the campus novel” and “the campus text” as a grounds for creative exploration, as well as stuff that is friends with weird vibes, having a weird psycho-sexual relationship with someone who is an active peer or writer hasn’t really ever been a big part of my life. My undergrad experience was not marked by any romantic or sexual relationships within the English department, or with any creative writers of note. My grad school experience was even less eventful: I spent the first year in the throes of a breakup, swearing off almost all dating and sex.² My second year, I dabbled in a few burgeoning relationships, all of which fizzled out by the time the pandemic rolled around. The real-life writer and one of my longtime Twitter (and maybe even Tumblr) oomfs Emma Healey stars in the movie as a friend of Mara’s, who warns the title character that academic conferences are full of weird writers who just wanna hook up with each other. “The lights turn on, and everyone’s still a poet,” she jokes.³

Part of what felt remarkable about the film was that it made me feel nostalgic for a feeling I’ve not really experienced — something I can only really describe as “when the vibe is insane.” That’s not to say, like, insane in the way that Megalopolis is insane (which, by the way, it isn’t at all), but more insane in a truly unpredictable interpersonal manner, where all possibilities are entirely feasible and none of them are right or wrong.

When I was much, much younger, I used to fantasize that people that I loved from afar from my then-present would grow up and realize at some point that they missed their shot. This is, to be clear, an extremely immature ideal built on insecure self-delusion, but hey, we were all seventeen once. What feels both remarkable — and also entirely predictable — is that this has basically⁴ never happened. It’s the type of self-affirming reverie that drives self-actualization, maybe, that motivates that a person will understand them through the sheer process of aging and not through actual betterment. It’s this type of self-obsession that fuels Matt and Mara, which I loved and highly recommend seeing.

A recipe

Ignoring the narration which is so………… don’t get me started… this is one of the best recipes I’ve cooked in a while — a Moroccan fish stew with squash and red pepper. And olives! “Hot olive” — underrated?

lahbco

A post shared by @lahbco

And last but not least: war

Fran Magazine is anti-war, in the Middle East and beyond, especially when said war and violence is aided and abetted by the United States government who takes the tax money paid by my hard-working email job friends and puts it towards nonsense like bombs and missiles and other climate-dissolving machinations rather than bridges and roads and teachers and healthcare. I had a friend who was in Beirut up until the Israeli violence in Lebanon escalated too dramatically, who managed to get out of the city about a day before the US started recommending people buy their own flights in lieu of evacuation. But I also shouldn’t have to “have a friend” somewhere in order to give a shit that this is happening with the full support of an ostensibly liberal government. I have been profoundly pissed off and depressed about this for the past few weeks in a way that’s made it very difficult to enjoy the world of art and culture in a way that is otherwise often necessary for me to have a job in the first place.

1. TK being journalist/blogger speak for “to come” or “tbd”

2. I went on one date — two, maybe, depending on who you ask — with one person from my graduate program, neither in my year nor my cohort, that all but affirmed we had no chemistry with one another. Now we’re just pals.

3. I’m paraphrasing, but this is the gist.

4. Text me.