Matthew Donovan
Aug 23, 2023 BY
@matthew🌐
This is a type of cultural commentary that often resonates with me Emily Segal who started K-hole trends and helped to start Deluge Books with one of my favorite authors hannah baer (trans girl suicide museum). The best tweet that captured it was "Honey a new Nemesis Global Report Dropped" my friend Adina Glickstein. You will be sure to leave thinking about how they have connected the dots for seemingly unrelated cultural and sociological currents.
Aug 23, 2023
🧑🤝🧑
'Forever' and 'Heavy Traffic' are two standout lit magazines from New York City, each helmed by dear friends of mine. Their readings have admittedly triggered neuroses that at times makes me feel like I'm at a NASCAR event. They have really made me love writing, going to bookstores, and readings again. Truly heartwarming. However, I take issue with Interview Magazine's article simultaneous release that appeared to pit these two magazines against each other based on their "editorial standards". The notion of comparing them simply based on their editorial standards is NOT sexist enough. I mean who can argue with the fact that these two publications have distinct aesthetic identities based on the fact that they are run by opposite sexes and should be judged on this fact alone!
Aug 23, 2023
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Since I'm not actuality as naive as I sounded for the Gardner Museum recommendation. I stand by the fact that art more and more as I get older feels nothing more than secure asset for wealthy people to launder their money in. Jeff Koon's to me feels like the purest realization of this mix of banality, cringe, and decadence neoliberal pop art as someone who went to art school but made their money working as a financial broker on Wall Street. His success comes in selling one of the highest priced pieces at an art auction. He likely observed some market and artistic realism early on observing the overlapping and opposing values of his mom, an interior decorator and his dad a furniture dealer.
Aug 23, 2023
✉️
I had some weird obsession with Mad Magazines when I was a kid. Looking at the older editions was some fun hobby I had to try to sift through the previous decades of culture. However, no one ever cared about this weird niche obsession for obvious reasons in my junior high years and earlier. When I came across Letters From a Nut during this time in my life, I finally had found a book that could share this comical joy. In this book a man who is very much the forebearer of the concept from Palmer Trolls, creating elaborate scenarios in the book with detail and complexity that make the letters as if they have to be real. Later in my life, I had discovered how to be serious and finally had transmuted my Sorrows of Young Whether melancholy to the power of solitude and creating an inner life through enjoying alone time.
Aug 23, 2023
☕
Sey, which uses the same sign as Compass reality, is where unsurprisingly adult crust punks are gentrifying among every slice of the city, and maybe this is why they were granted the award for best coffee in the nation. I met one of the owners years ago and always appreciated how hardcore they were. I love people who take things to extreme. For coffee people, you will know my version of this is when I visited their cafe and I bought my second Gesha coffee which is so pretentious you discovered like I did working a low wage job in a speciality cafe. Everything about Sey was refreshingly simple and impeccably designed. But what really set the tone of the place was the fact that they banned computers in the café. I mean, who needs screens when you've got the aroma of freshly brewed coffee and a quirky atmosphere to soak in? If you sit there long enough you can smell them even roasting the beans in the back.
Aug 23, 2023
☁️
Not the cult but the divisive cinematic "Heaven's Gate," 1980 film, the testament to Hollywood's changing tides and the unpredictable oscillations of critical opinion. A product of the "auteur" era's unchecked creative freedom with a 219-minute runtime, and an initial onslaught of vehement criticism embodied a directorial excess, effectively sounding the death knell for this period of Hollywood's history. Despite the film's early infamy, it later found an unexpected redemption in Criterion Collection, affirming its artistic value against the tide of its earlier reception. This paradoxical journey from cinematic pariah to treasure paints a compelling narrative of artistic resilience and the capricious currents of industry and critical reception (like for real it's hard for most people to finish).
Aug 23, 2023
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Think Facebook is just for boomers to spread fake news? Think again. Returning to Facebook could get you free from Amazon. If this sounds sus you are right. You will get daily messages from fake profiles offering to refund you via PayPal for writing a review. Sure, it's a grey area, and you might end up with a flagged Amazon account so you can't do reviews anymore, but you could also score a free $500 street bike and some more retail therapy addiction time. Not for the faint of heart or those who avoid Craigslist, but at least you know for sure now NOT to trust Amazon reviews!
Aug 23, 2023
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I really hate art. Why do I keep on talking about it? Anyways, this place is cool. You should come and hang sometime. I really enjoyed the Harris Rosenblum show there last year.
Aug 23, 2023
🐝
Birds and bees this.... and birds don't exist that... We get it people (used to have sex) but stopped because of whatever reason... I blame glyphosate. Either way, we need to bring sex back and I have a strategy that could match the unusual complexity of modern dating. Nothing screams 'ready for a dark triad,water sign, otherkin, polyamorous, horny, afters (party) crisis.' quite like dousing yourself in bee cologne, I think?
Aug 23, 2023
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Ah, 'Perfectly Imperfect', and other projects that curate, gather, connect, or map out various cultural endeavors, are meaningful resources in this overwhelming era of information. Now, I may be the only one dumb enough to praise them in their own newsletter, even if it's just to the model, but hear me out: You—yes, you—should give it a try too. Do community and culture or whatever, let the culture, not the clout, be your compass, and who knows? You could be a part of something that makes the world a smidgen less vile, a tad less melancholic. Admittedly, I'm not sure how you should do it because it should tailored to your interests, start small, and cherish wherever it is. as or if it grows You may even make a few folks few special or more sane in the process but in focusing on community project you are likely to be the one most transformed by it. I'm still pretty cynical about this stuff, only half belief what I just wrote, but I wrote it nonetheless.
Aug 23, 2023
🖼️
I wholeheartedly recommend Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum as the ultimate destination for anyone seeking to reignite that nostalgic, naive feeling of being a teenager who first felt inspired by the beauty art. It's a feeling I often hear Dean Kissick describing but for me is almost impossible. You can imagine this wealthy aesthete traveling the world to be known for her taste and one of the worlds biggest art heist (by police officers?)--marked by 13 empty frames still up in the museum.
Aug 23, 2023
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I'm not apologizing for making a list within a list. Somehow this is the imagined side of the internet I occupy shared with people like Dana Dawud, Barrett Avner, Joshua Citarella, Angel Emoji, Shumon Basar, Will Sennett, Dean Kissick, Ben Ditto, Girlgod, Petra Cortright, Pool Honeys, Dagsen, Benjamin Bratton, Spiral Jette, Poorspigga, Adina, Emily, and hannah (mentioned above), NPCC, Jack Halberstam, postpostpost, wonderful cringe, Prada Horse Shoe, Charlie Baker, Marianne Williamson, Manifest Destiny Children, Michelle Lhooq, Corporate Kafka, Alex Tyson, Henry Williams, Rachellcells, Devon Young, Jak Ritger, Iceberg Anthro, Tey Meadow, Olive Kimoto, Taylor Scarabelli, Günseli, K-Allando Mcdowell, Megan Nolan, Taylor, Paige Emery, Caroline Busta, Serge, Brad, and my podmates Neoliberalhell and Anti-art. These are the people that I steal all my ideas from!
Aug 23, 2023