The Most Important Restaurant (Fight) of the Summer
The Most Important Restaurant (Fight) of the Summer
Also: Rationality, GWAR, my godmother, Joseph Campbell, Jews, the moon, hot wings, media conglomerates, existential threats, lovers quarrels, and so, so much more. It's another Summer Friday.
It’s Friday, July 19th, 2024.
It’s the ninth Summer Friday of the year, six to go until Labor Day.
“Heroes” (the Big Ben Beat cover) is on the radio.
In theaters this weekend, attempting to quell Despicable Me 4’s box office dominance is Twisters, a Glen Powell movie somehow not about the board game (but also, somehow, not original IP either). Also, the very well-regarded Irish horror film Oddity, and an indie drama, Widow Cliquot, about the family behind Veuve Clicquot.
It’s another great weekend for sports! In Formula 1, the 39th running of the Hungarian Grand Prix will be raced in Mogyoród, Hungary on Sunday (at the definitively named Hungaroring). In Major League Baseball, the New York Yankees will host their rival Tampa Bay Rays all three days this weekend. Finally, in basketball, the WNBA’s All-Star Weekend braves the heat in Phoenix, Arizona.
Finally, around the world today, the weather: New York: 85/70, sunny • Santa Barbara: 74/61, partly cloudy • Lake Como: 90/67, partly cloudy • Marbella: 97/72, sunny • Copenhagen: 75/58, sun—
—ha, shit, sorry, I know: Where have you been? To which I’d ask: Where’s anyone, man? And you — in this meta-enabled theoretical tête-à-tête — knowing and wise, would answer: FOSTERTALK Presents: Summer Fridays was on its own all-star break, touring the world, talking to its sunniest-dispositioned denizens, trying to figure out the inner-workings of their souls, asking the tough questions like: Who made those sunglasses? What’s your sunscreen? and of course, Il conto, per favore?
But really: Wedding in Greece, then fucked off to Italy. Got sunburned, ate too much, drank too much, spent too much, posted too much, scraped up a rented Skoda Kodiaq, had a blast. What insanely dumb fortune, to be able to write that! Please don’t take seriously anyone who doesn’t signal some kind of awareness around the absurdity of talking about taking vacation around the world (let alone simply doing it). While we’re here, please also take not seriously the serial vacation apologist, they who couch and caveat the supposedly guilt-laden thrills they know we covet, whinging with self-recrimination about privilege. In the words of my wise and noble godmother Shigata Ichikuchi1, “There is no meaning of life, there is simply the rapture of being alive.”2 Basically: Don’t apologize, don’t be a dick about it, and mostly, don’t take it for granted. Them be the rules.3
Anyway! Like I said: We’re back. In this issue, adventure, excitement, impassioned fights of romance, dance music, and so, so much hot, hot stuff — basically, the usual. Shall we?
The Most Important New Rationality Paradigm of the Summer
“One reoccurring decision I’ve struggled with for 3+ years is how to live,” is a line from the first paragraph of a recent post on the all-too-rarely-published newsletter of one Mary Childs, co-host of NPR’s Planet Money, and broadly regarded by the most intelligent and talented people in media as one of the most intelligent, talented people in media. Also, much like GWAR, she’s lovely and from Richmond, Virginia.4
But what if she weren’t lovely? Being lovely is a choice. But is it the right choice? Is the expenditure of energy of being lovely worth it for Mary, or for you? Maybe. Or maybe not? Mary published an interview about new paradigms in decision-making and rationality, as it pertains to everything from romantic choices to hair styles to parenting. She did this after she set out to create a mathematical model for decision-making5, a search which was promptly thrown into chaos as soon as she sat down with Ruth Chang, a chair and professor of Jurisprudence at Oxford, and Chang promptly told her that her brain was broken.
There’s no possible way I can accurately sum up all the interview encompasses here, but my own (broken-brained) attempt goes something like: In the dominant paradigm of decision-making, like which romantic partner to pick, we try to measure one thing as better than the other, which is why we agonize over that decision. What Chang snaps off on Mary is that the right decision — inasmuch as there is one — is the one we can commit to the best, i.e. the most, so we have to be actively involved in our decision-making and decision-owning. Per Chang, editor’s notes via Mary (lol):
Think about haircuts. You and I, no offense, don’t seem to commit to our haircuts. [ed note: ….damn.] I just go in and say, make it easy to take care of. I just drift into a hairstyle. I can treat the options as if they were equally good. But a fashion model has to decide which haircut to go for, and he has to commit to one style as opposed to another, because that says something about who he is. Hard choices are not just about careers or places to live or whether to have families, but also about those small things that define us. They are the things that build us up, build our characters. That's who we are. You and I don't care how our hair looks [ed note: air-drying is not working out for me as well as i’d thought, helpful feedback!!], but we care about other things. And the good thing is: Caring is something we can — and have to — practice.
So there you go, folks. This summer: Commit to the bit.
There’s so much more, including how Mary almost married a guy named Bob. Can’t recommend enough.
The Hottest Media Story of the Summer
I know, a goddamn media item. Consider it penance for missing some issues.
Let’s talk Hot Ones! The show where (to quote John Oliver) Sean Evans gives himself CTE of the stomach while interviewing celebrities made to suffer at his hands via the Wings of Death, as Sean peppers them with intensely well-researched questions. Celebrities subjecting themselves to something just shy of Bush Doctrine-era torture in exchange for an iconic press appearance may feel obvious, but I dare you: Find a more artful, downright brilliant meta-commentary on the inanities of celebrity. Sofia Coppola could never.
It’s also funny, and wildly entertaining. And (nine years and a billion views later) it’s now allowed to compete for an Emmy alongside network late night talk shows, which some pronounced an existential death knell for late night television. A little much, much? But when Hot Ones didn’t get nominated this week in that category, people started calling it a snub. In its first year of eligibility! I have no doubt that Hot Ones will get its flowers eventually. Hell, just a few weeks ago, Sean and Hot Ones creator Chris Schoenberger did an event at the Paley Center, hosted by Seth Meyers, where I learned that Maya Rudolph has been on a fake version of Hot Ones three times (once on her show Loot, twice on SNL), but refuses to grace the actual show with her presence, telling Sean, basically, fuck no. Queen.
Meanwhile: A Bloomberg story ran a few weeks ago reporting that BuzzFeed was trying to offload First We Feast — the site that Hot Ones emerged from — and thus, also sell Hot Ones, to the tune of $70M, in order to finance their debt. Also, that they were having trouble doing it. This week, Alex Sujong Laughlin — a former BuzzFeed employee — writes for Defector: BuzzFeed Is The Reason It Can’t Sell Hot Ones. Her take:
[BuzzFeed is] trying to pay down its debt by [trying] to offload what is arguably its most valuable asset, Hot Ones, at a price that only makes sense if you expect exponential growth from it, too. BuzzFeed is the media company that cried wolf one too many times, and people aren’t buying it anymore—literally.
Look, I’m here for a blame Jonah Peretti take as much as anyone. And this take is by no means wrong, but it’s very, very distilled. The reality’s likely a liiiittle more complicated than “BuzzFeed’s out of figurative (and literal) credit.” What would I know? Fun facts: My two distinct connections to these guys.
1. First We Feast and Chris, the site’s founder, who was one of my key co-conspirators in the Complex office along with his brother, Nick (who I shared my office with). The three of our names were on the application for a James Beard Award in the site’s first year of eligibility, submitting such galaxy-brained brilliance as “all wine mostly tastes the same,” for which we then went on to win a James Beard Award (no, really). Chris would also occasionally show up at my desk, and say things like: So….800 words on how much you hate Friendsgiving? To which, I’d reply: “Uh, sure — also, what’s Friendsgiving?” Then this would happen. The best was: So, uh…Dry January?6
Connection No. 2: Complex News, the video operation at Complex. I was the founding executive producer on that team.7 My second full-time anchor hire was a Complex Sports writer we called in to help out with All-Star Game coverage in New Orleans that year, his first time on camera: Sean Evans. After a few weeks’ working with this Chicago guy, I was convinced he’d be on SportsCenter one day, and told him so. Apparently, I was thinking too small. It was only a matter of time before Chris and Sean, geniuses that they are, eventually linked up, which they did not long after I left, and Hot Ones was born.
Anyway: This is all to say that I’ve worked with both of them, and can speak with firsthand experience: Chris and Sean are singular talents. As are the rest of the team at First We Feast, like Justin Bolois, who produces a number of shows over there. Given how much they’re actually responsible for, in terms of sheer revenue upshot? If BuzzFeed can’t sell First We Feast, it’s not because the number is too high — it’s because they’ve mismanaged the relationship between the talent and the property.
To be clear: Nobody else could host Hot Ones. Nobody else could run Hot Ones or First We Feast. They need Sean and Chris. The only good partner for that property would be one willing to share ownership of it with them. I know nothing about the negotiations, and I don’t talk about that stuff with those guys, but I can tell you: They’re both smarter and work harder than the vast majority of the people in media, and therein does their success lie. They now hold that leverage in this deal. While the archives might net someone something, it’d be middling. The property is worth nothing in terms of growth potential without them. They obviously know it. BuzzFeed likely understands it. And potential buyers probably know it, too.
My great hope is that that they’re holding this process up, in search of the best deal. If the thing can’t sell, it’s not because BuzzFeed can’t cut one, but because they need to find the right partner, to give them the right growth opportunity, and the correct skin in the game. If it doesn’t sell, and BuzzFeed falls to people like Vivek, that might be because of corporate arrogance, and it would not be the first time Jonah Peretti bungled a massive media deal.
But corporate media — everyone from Conde to the Times and all the other private equity-held media companies in between — are all beginning to learn the hard way: The era of institutions holding leverage over singular media talents is beginning to ebb writ large. YouTube, Substack, TikTok, IG, Twitch, you name it. If they don’t find a way to make sweet their talent’s deals, they’ll be left with second- and third-rate ranks trying to keep up with the individual entities no longer needing corporate middlemen to make money from the same platforms they’re on (while the leftovers also aspire to nothing more than the ability to also break away). In other words: Ante up.
Party Etiquette
A few weeks ago, NYT Styles dropped a feature on party etiquette. People got mad about it! For the intelligent, thinking person, there’s only one good response to any of that, and I’m sharing it here, with you, right now, to dramatically improve the quality of your life, and it is:
Chief among your life’s regrets as you lay dying on your deathbed, I promise, will be any energy you spent getting giving a shit about a Styles story, no matter how right your take was. And I say this as someone who’s written a few.
A Short Exchange I Recently Had with a Currently Intensely Famous Person, at a Rooftop Party, Regarding the Occasionally Delicate Matter of Retrieving Your Belongings
“Excuse me, sorry, I’m just grabbing my bag here under your chair, yeah, that one right there.”
“Why are you apologizing?”
“What?”
“Why are you apologizing for—“
“For grabbing my bag?“
“Right, you don’t need to apologize, it’s your bag.”
“I mean: I don’t know, I’m reaching under you, I’m apologizing because it feels like the right thing to do.”
“But it’s your bag.”
“Right, sure. But: You’re seated, and you’re facing the opposite direction, having a conversation, so you can’t see me next to you, about to reach under your chair.”
“Ah.”
“So: If I don’t say something, that could go terribly wrong.”
“Fair.”
“Right?”
“Still, ’excuse me,’ I get, the apology, not so much.”
“Well, I was interrupting a conversation.”
“Hmm.”
“Yeah.”
“Well, for future reference—“
“No, absolutely: Next time I reach under you, I won’t apologize.”
“When you put it like that…”
“Yeah, uh, rephrase: Next time I grab my bag, and need to—“
“Right—“
“—‘excuse me,’ but absolutely no apology.”
“Perfect.”
“Great. And now, I’m leaving. Bye guys, by–”
“Where are you going? What’s cooler than this?”
“Nothing cool, I’ve gotta go home and do some work. That’s what’s in the bag.”
“Hate it when that happens.”
“Same. Also, I’m Foster.”
“Sabrina.”
“Of course. Nice meeting you.”
“Same. Good luck with the bag.”
“Appreciate it.”
ENDSCENE.
Restaurants
Ricocheting around a certain avenue of Downtown New York City Internet this week? Footage of two women engaging in fisticuffs at Lucien! Which — for the blessedly uninitiated — is one of those New York City restaurants where people will repeatedly tell you the food is “besides the point.” I will tell you that the food ranges from “fine” to “a misdemeanor crime in France, probably,” that it’s basically a cafeteria for the people who incorrectly believe they invented Dimes Square, and that it’s best characterized by the minor media event of Julia Fox celebrating a birthday with Kanye West there, which was subsequently treated like the moon landing for people who owe two months’ back rent on an empty gallery space (likely being spent, incidentally, on a bill at Lucien).
But: As I was writing this, the footage of the fight was pulled off Instagram. SAD! That was likely because by the fourth time I saw it, it was in Emily Sundberg’s newsletter, where she noted: “Convinced this fight at Lucien was performance art. Summer in the city rocks.” She’s certainly right about the second part! As for the first: If only.
In the footage, the young woman in center frame having her hair pulled — perhaps, by a friend? — was attempting to assail someone else to the right of the frame. The entire clip is just, like, fifteen seconds of that. I asked a Lucien regular to explain what was happening in it for me. The answer:
“That was over [redacted], an artist who always hangs out at Lucien. Apparently, that was his girlfriend, getting mad at some other girl who used to sleep with him. It was not staged, it was very real, but it was also two women fighting over a skater bro artist dude.”
Say what you will, and not that I’d encourage fisticuffs anywhere, but: New York’s dinner theater scene has, in fact, been lacking lately. As for the artist: He’s had a gallery show and shot some magazine features. ‘Know that narrows it down to about half a million New Yorkers, but that’s all you’ll get, as I was warned that by simply repeating said artist’s name, I’d be inadvertently contributing to the sexufinancial plague on New York City’s straight women known as The inflationary dickonomics of the skater bro artist dude8, which — much like the actual economy — is an ongoing problem currently compounded by high interest rates (see: SUMMER, BRAT). Related: You all need more Jesus in your lives.
Another Short Exchange I Recently Had with a Currently Intensely Famous Person, at a Rooftop Party, Regarding the Occasionally Delicate Matter of How to Leave a Party
“Hey!”
“I swear to god, I—”
“You said you were leaving, like, an HOUR AGO.”
“I was!”
“So what’re you—”
“I wasn’t lying, I—”
“I didn’t think you were.”
“Well, I wasn’t.”
[A pause.] “Hmm.”
“Okay, so: You know that thing, when you’re leaving a party, and you keep trying to leave—”
“And you get caught in a conversation every time you say goodbye to someone?”
“Well, yeah, that—”
“Hate it when that happens.”
“Right! Which is why I’ve stopped saying goodbye at parties when I actually need to leave, and I just kind of, you know—” [Motions with upper-body towards exit]
“Yeah, sure. That’s how to—
“—actually leave a party.”
“—actually leave a party, right.”
“Right! Not what happened, though. I wasn’t saying goodbye, I was actually leaving.”
“But?”
“I was on my way out the door, and ran into my friend Liz, who just showed up literally right as I was leaving. Haven’t seen her in forever! We live a thirty minute walk from one another, haven’t seen each other in a year, classic New York thing. Didn’t expect to see her here, she’s the best. So I ended up hanging out with her for the last, I don’t know…”
“…hour?”
“Right. But.”
“But?”
“It was one of those great run-ins that make it worth staying at a party you’re trying to leave, even if it did make me look like someone who lied to you about having to leave a party to go home and do work. Which I didn’t.”
“Totally get it. Also, again, I believe you.”
“Thank god.”
“Right?”
“Right. Now: I’m actually leaving this time.”
“Actually? I’m kiddi—”
“Actually, no, I know. Pleasure meeting you.”
“Foster, I’m glad we cleared that up.”
“Truly.”
ENDSCENE.
Ha, okay, we hit the PINK BAR OF DEATH/”POST TOO LONG FOR EMAIL” warning, like, halfway through this, so unfortunately you’re going to have to wait until next week to learn about THE HOTTEST PARTY IN NEW YORK, which I survived, and THE HOTTEST CLUB IN NEW YORK (which is the Jamie xx residency — if you’re going to any night, holler, I might be there). If you can’t tell, this was very much a back-in-the-saddle issue, as I unload my vacation brain. As ever, you’re too kind for reading any of this, and if you have any ideas, well: You know what to do.
Anyway: Commit to the bit, and get outside — it’s beautiful out there, much like you.
As ever, -f.
Not actually my godmother, just the funniest goddamn drag name I’ve ever heard. These are the things I go on Google binges looking for when I’m trying not to write this newsletter, or be, like, anything even remotely resembling a productive member of society. Also, Jews traditionally don’t have godparents. But: I did have a godfather, Mel Exber, a former bookie who helped build Las Vegas, and taught me a phrase I quoted in my rollicking report for GQ about last year’s inaugural Las Vegas Grand Prix. It was one of two phrases of Mel’s I quoted. The second didn’t make the cut. It was: Kid, that’s the fuckin’ you get for the fuckin’ you got. The context in which he said it? Another newsletter, for another time.
Shocker, I know, but Shigata Ichikuchi did not, in fact, deliver me this pearl of wisdom. It’s paraphrased from something Joseph Campbell said to Bill Moyers somewhere in the first 30 pages of The Power of Myth. Speaking of The Jews! Did you know, Joseph Campbell: An absolutely insane anti-semite! One time he said we should put all the Jews on the moon!
Wild. But also: As a prestige-era HBO comedy? Would watch.
Besides, of course, the other two.
Also, like GWAR*, Mary Childs is a big fan of murdering people. See: “Morally questionable, economically efficient,” her segment on ASSISTED DEATH, which she called “PERFECTLY FINE,” lol.
[*GWAR also recently covered “I’m Just Ken,” which follows their legendary Tiny Desk Concert performance from last year. If you want to go a layer deeper, this TEDx talk by the current frontman of GWAR about regional identity and Richmond, Virginia: Kind of wild. I’m not even, like, a GWAR fan, but I’m very much here for the GWARAISSANCE.]
This may sound familiar to fans of John Green, who wrote a book, the highly-decorated and deeply wonderful An Abundance of Katherines, around a teenage prodigy’s desire to impart mathematics on his love life, and worked with a University of Chicago mathematician to come up with the formula for it.
Such is the sad state of the Internet that the FWF archive is in disrepair, likely to never be fixed, and thus, sentences like “in this respect, Dry January and Butt-Chugging are philosophically related acts” won’t be etched in stone for a length just short of eternity. It’s also, honestly, probably very fortunate. My idiotic contributions aside, FWF had some truly incredible food writing on there, especially a series called The 10 Dishes That Made My Career, where a chef would run down all the dishes they cooked, or ate as a child, and how it shaped their work. Like Hot Ones, it was brilliant, felt mystifyingly obvious, and also, was a Chris invention.
Re: Complex News: I built it alongside an absolute mack truck of a producer named Cornell Brown, our phenomenal director, Sean Stout, and our first anchor, the indomitable Brandon “Jinx” Jenkins. Brandon was our first anchor. Sean was our second. [Sporty & Rich founder] Emily Oberg was our third. [Beats1 DJ] Hanuman Welch was our fourth. It was, truly, a murderer’s row.
Related, one of the greatest Cut headlines of all time, via Jessica Roy: “Unlike Your Ex, This Bulldog Could Actually Land a Kickflip.” Legendary.