Phil's gift guide for esoteric boyfriends

Fran Magazine: Issue #131

Nov 20, 2024

📝 Thanks for reading Fran Magazine, a biweekly blog by Fran Hoepfner (me). The way this works is that Wednesday (regular) issues are free for all and Sunday (dispatch) and reread diary issues are for paid subscribers only. Consider subscribing or upgrading your subscription for access to more Fran Magazine, and feel free to follow me on Instagram or Letterboxd. 📝

Mug update

Fran Mugazines™️ will return to the shop in two weeks. Next week there will be a Google form you can fill out in order to indicate interest in a mug so hopefully I won’t run out this time. This is NOT the same as doing a pre-order. This is just filling out a Google survey, and me looking at the results and saying, “okay, interesting.” The Fran Mugazine does make a great gift for friends and loved ones… something to keep in mind. For other gift-buying needs this holiday season, or in general, Phil graciously volunteered to make a list for the Fran Magazine readership.

The Fran Magazine Esoteric Boyfriend Gift Guide (by Phil)

Is your boyfriend a little strange? Are his hobbies and interests extremely, even bafflingly, niche? Do you frequently roll over, bleary-eyed, at two in the morning to find that he’s awake and on his phone/laptop, reading a Wikipedia article (or worse, an obscure PDF) about something you’ve never heard of and have no context for?1 Does he sometimes put music on in the car that sounds like a bunch of weird, fucked up bullshit?

If you answered yes to any or all of these questions, you may have what is called an esoteric boyfriend — and he need not be your literal boyfriend. He could also be your esoteric husband, brother, coworker, or even an esoteric woman or nonbinary person. As an esoteric boyfriend myself, I know how difficult they are to shop for. Their heads are filled with lore, weird facts, and micro-obsessions. How could you even begin to know where to source a thoughtful gift for someone whose “Roman Empire” is not only the literal Roman Empire, but also something like Sethian Gnosticism or Curta Mechanical Calculators or Private Press Outsider Gospel-Funk Records from the 1970s? What do you buy the guy who knows everything, so long as it’s inconsequential and weird?

Luckily, Fran Magazine is here to help. This year you won’t have to fall back on the old reliable “functional gift” like a nice new card holder or kitchen gadget, nor will you have to straight-up ask “what do you want for Christmas?” because this year you have the Fran Magazine Esoteric Boyfriend Gift Guide.

Part One: Looking At Computer

A Subscription to By Art Is Made That Great Leviathan by Rob Ashlar on Substack ($100/yr at Substack)
Rob Ashlar is a Marxist academic whose work focuses near-exclusively on the history of militant jihadism in the 20th and 21st century. His work is well written, extremely granular, fascinating, and diverse. Over the last year he has published an in-depth, multipart biography of Al-Qaeda leader Abū Muṣʻab Zarqāwī, an in-depth, multi-part analysis of internal US Army documents pertaining to the Anbar Province Insurgency in Iraq, exhaustive library catalogs on Maoist Third Worldist studies, War Studies, and Jihadism studies, and more. The subscription is fairly expensive by Substack standards, but that only makes it a more thoughtful gift.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance ($30 at Steam)

the “learn to read” minigame in Kingdom Come: Deliverance

Kingdom Come: Deliverance is a historical open-world RPG set in the Kingdom of Bohemia in the early 15th century. The game has inspired cultish devotion for its punishing commitment to historical accuracy — as the low-born son of a blacksmith, you start the game unable to read or write, and will remain unable to do so unless you successfully petition a noble to teach you, and even then, you have to commit to the time it takes to learn in-game. The game has a fantastic choice-driven story, a steep learning curve and plenty of charming “eurojank,” a term that may mean nothing to you but is certainly in the lexicon of your esoteric boyfriend.

Out Of The Park Baseball 25 ($50 at Steam)
This is a video game where you play as the general manager of a baseball team. You don’t get to play any baseball, but you do get to trade players, negotiate with free agents, and deal with MLB rule changes and salary caps. It’s officially licensed by the MLB, which means all the big names and ball clubs are there! This is catnip for a certain strain of sports-and-numbers-oriented esoteric boyfriend.

Part Two: In Print

History Of The Great American Fortunes pts. I-III by Gustavus Myers ($15-$65 at Abebooks)
Gustavus Myers was a socialist journalist active in the United States around the turn of the century. In 1907, he published his masterpiece: History Of The Great American Fortunes. Across three volumes, Myers traces the histories of the Astors, the Vanderbilts, the Morgans and more. Popular wisdom holds that newer history books are better, and more accurate than older history books, but Myers’s books are unique in that, at the time of writing, much of the gory, granular details that make up these unsavory histories weren’t considered all that unsavory, granting a contemporary perspective that isn’t kneecapped by a century or more of the wealthiest people in America trying to cover their tracks. He’s a gifted writer and prone to the occasional editorializing, making for an engrossing, illuminating and often humorous read.

The Drone Chronicles: 2001—2016 by Rob van Leijsen ($40 at Artbooks)

This monumental work of archiving-as-artistic medium consists of two handsomely designed volumes.2 The first, is simply a catalog of every unmanned aerial vehicle produced between 2001 and 2016, from the $250 consumer model quadcopter to the $27,500,000 Reaper MQ-II Predator B designed by General Atomics under exclusive contract by the United States Military. The second, slimmer volume, is a collection of every print story involving drones from mainstream news outlets presented in order of publication date. When read chronologically, it makes for a fascinating and harrowing synecdoche of the history of contemporary armed conflict.

Propaganda and Holy Writ of The Process Church of the Final Judgement ($25 at The Ajna Offensive)

The Process Church of the Final Judgement was a postmodernist occult order/plain old cult, based in England and active in the 1960s and early 70s. Founded as an offshoot of Dianetics, and loosely based around notions of Theosophy and Satanism, the jury is still out on whether or not The Process Church was a CIA-backed network of high society devil worshippers, or just a bunch of over-educated hippies having a laugh. Throughout their brief but storied existence, The Process Church sporadically published a magazine that featured beautiful, ahead of its time layout and design, and writing from, among others, Genesis P-Orrige and Charles Manson. This volume collects three issues (SEX, FEAR, and DEATH) of the magazine, preserving the radical and psychedelic artwork and layouts that accompanied the text in the original editions. This is an esoteric boyfriend slam dunk.

Part Three: To Watch And Listen

Longmont Potion Castle (Prices Vary at Noisetent)

Longmont Potion Castle is the nom-de-guerre of an anonymous prank call artist who has been making some of the funniest audio content that exists anywhere for over twenty years. Combining a singularly surreal and combative sense of humor with things like echo, reverb and pitch delay pedals on his voice, LPC has crafted a universe all his own, full of dense lore (he’s been prank calling some people for decades at this point) and inside jokes. His work is available on CD, USB or as a digital download. If your esoteric boyfriend likes the works of Tim Robinson or Eric Andre, he will LOVE Longmont Potion Castle.

Magic, Myth and Mutilation: The Microbudget Cinema of Michael J. Murphy ($83 at Powerhouse Films)
This lovingly compiled box set collects the entire filmography of British no-budget outsider filmmaker Michael J. Murphy, who made an astonishing twenty-six feature films over fifty years, entirely on his own, without any sort of studio backing whatsoever. This would be quite the achievement for someone who only made mumblecore-y humanist dramas heavy on improv, but Murphy’s films are mostly moody thrillers, high fantasy adventures and historical epics, largely eschewing the sordid blood-and-boobs exploitation content of other prolific no-budget filmmakers in favor of heady themes and bizarre, dare I say esoteric plots, and what’s more? Many of the films are quite good if you can look past the wooden acting and paper maché production design.

Distance Between Us by Don Bradshaw-Leather ($30 at Infinite Fog Bandcamp)

This forgotten, not-quite-private press musical oddity from the mid-70s has long been a holy grail of esoteric boyfriend record collectors. The macabre cover art,3 forlorn and deeply spooky music, and lack of available information on the artist has led to a cult following over the years. Not quite classical music, not quite rock-and-roll, and not quite jazz, but something between all three, with a strange, creepy character all its own, the album features 20+ minute tracks full of rumbling primitive percussion and haunting strings and piano, weird and wailing vocals, all awash in doomy reverb. Copies would pop up occasionally online, accompanied by price tags north of a thousand dollars, but recently a German bootleg label has done an unofficial 2xLP repress that looks and sounds fantastic, making it available with the original layout intact for collectors and esoteric boyfriends everywhere.

Part Four: Wearables

Obscure Military Surplus (Prices vary from extremely cheap to extremely expensive)
In the last year, the world of secondhand Military Surplus has exploded as the next frontier of vintage clothing, but there’s still a lot of cool stuff that lies just off the beaten path of Vietnam era fatigue shirts and RAF dress trousers. The esoteric boyfriend doesn’t care all that much about the fashionable qualities of these garments, so much as the unquantifiable je ne sais quoi that comes with something like an Unissued Greek Air Force Track Suit or British Armed Forces PT Trainers made by Magnum or a three pack of Deadstock Swedish Army Rib Knit Undershirts from the 90s. All three of those links make for great places to browse for your esoteric boyfriend.

Repetto Zizi shoes ($460 at Repetto)

Repetto? You might ask yourself. Is that really esoteric? Also don’t they only make women’s shoes? And the answers to those questions are, respectively, yes and no. Repetto makes “dance shoes,” and while most of them only come in women’s sizes, the Zizi, named for ballerina Zizi Jeanmaire and (more importantly) the exclusive shoe choice of beloved esoteric boyfriend role model Serge Gainsbourg, are still made in Men’s sizes. These are extremely cool, not available (in men’s sizes) anywhere in the United States, and crafted with outstanding quality. They are stylish, a little slutty, and will make him the envy of other, less esoteric boyfriends who only get clothes recommended to them by podcasts, Substacks, and Derek Guy twitter threads. Serge wore them in white, so you should get them in white too.

Bobby Beausoleil ‘Freedom’ Shirt Replica ($20 at The Ajna Offensive)

Bobby Beausoleil is a musician, visual artist, convicted murderer, and Manson family associate who is, despite all of that, best known for his incredible soundtrack to Kenneth Anger’s film Lucifer Rising. There is a picture of him recording the soundtrack (while in prison) with his “Freedom Orchestra,” wearing this cool shirt, and it’s now available as a painstakingly recreated replica from Ajna Offensive. Easy esoteric bf gift.

Part Five: Objects

Curta Type II Mechanical Calculator, vintage ($1,500 at eBay)

We’ll leave it at this.

If your esoteric boyfriend already has all these items (cool guy), or has esoteric interests that don’t quite overlap with anything on offer here, I will be in the comments over the next two days to give counsel and other gift ideas.

Fran note: this happens probably 3-4 times a week.

Fran note: we actually found this book when we were in Helsinki last year. Speaking as someone who does not “care” about “drones,” it is actually really cool to flip through…

Fran note: this looks like the WOODSMEN from TWIN PEAKS THE RETURN -person who is watching Twin Peaks: The Return