Hot (or Not) List 2024
HOT: Book reviewing in general. Nobody reads books but everyone’s reading reviews…Also books as raw material for discourse. -
NOT: Leslie Jamison. Jamison has always seemed a little bit not-self-aware for a memoirist. Her latest, Splinters, about her divorce, is pure self-justification. -
HOT: Baseball. A sport that is unapologetically boring and inaccessible, with 100 years of unwritten rules and esoteric traditions to keep normies out. -
NOT: Docuseries. There were already too many movie-length celebrity and true crime documentaries out there in the 1990s-2000s cable era that engaged in nostalgia-bait and/or violence-porn to waste hours of their viewers’ lives. Now with streaming, this Lays-potato chip-esque form of entertainment is stretched out over the course of numerous episodes to “teach” people things…except no one really learns anything or even enjoys it. -
HOT: Artists taking responsibility for creating their own Apollonian tragedies. -Kat Chamberlin
NOT: “Internet writing” that throws a tantrum upon drafting, offering sentences that appear to have been produced by a random number generator. If our human editors are impotent and distracted with culture and clout signaling, we need to ask what our superintelligent mommies want from us while editing. -
HOT: Frederic Malle. Famous for their masterpiece Portrait of a Lady, my signature scent for the cooler months has been Rose et Cuir, a smoky concoction of roses, cedar, and leather. Moving into spring, I’d recommend Rose Tonnerre, a magnificent cool rose soliflore (can you tell I adore rose perfumes?). Ask for Roberto in the Madison Ave. boutique, mention Martyr sent you, and you will be treated to Roberto’s impressive knowledge of olfactory delights. It IS terribly expensive, but you get what you pay for. And for those of us in our broke era, be sure to take advantage of their free samples. Afterwards, head over to the Conservatory Lake in Central Park at 72nd street, order an overpriced confection at Le Pain Quotidien, and admire the view. Take some time to stop and smell the roses. -Martyr
NOT: Numbing out over a 2-hour TikTok binge session. It’s confusing and tiring to procrastinate your real-life feelings and work by consuming someone else’s feelings and work, filtered and highlighted to optimize engagement. -
HOT: Numbing out over a hobby like paint-by-numbers, puzzles, or knitting. Sometimes your brain needs a break. -Bridget Ruffing
NOT: Pictures made by ambulance chasers capitalizing on others’ poor fortunes. -Kat Chamberlin