Found a Job
Ann Arbor’s very own Found Magazine will be appearing on Letterman tonight.
With this kind of exposure, it finally seems fair to ask: Is it just us, or is Found a bit, well, overrated? Sure, it’s a neat idea with a great design. But the very premise - send in stuff that you find - leaves itself open to ersatz discoveries. At least with something like Gawker Stalker, the reader-generated celebrity-sighting feature of Gawker, corroborative evidence or lack thereof will compel them to acknowledge that, no, it wasn’t really Jonathan Safran Foer who was being nasty to that bagel-store employee. (It was just a fictional character who happened to be named “Jonathan Safran Foer”. But we digress.) But with Found, how do you know that that hilarious love letter was actually picked up off the ground by a swingset in Toledo? Maybe the person who sent it in just made it up. There’s really no way to know. Whether this does or should detract from one’s Found-reading experience is a topic that could fill books of literary criticism.
We never want to discourage independent arts and media, but you’d think that Found was the only interesting thing going on in Ann Arbor. (Oh, wait. It is.)
“We never want to discourage independent arts and media, but you’d think that Found was the only interesting thing going on in Ann Arbor. (Oh, wait. It is.)”
Classic
I think you are the 1st to have the collective balls to question the infallibility of Found publicly. Though I do not think this is a case of the Emperor having no content. At least it’s something to think about past the great packaging.
To spread the guilt: It should be noted that Crimewave USA and the Found Tour wrap up party are-in Ypsi.
posted by Leighton on April 27th, 2004 at 10:42 pmYES! Found has been overrated since issue one went into reprint. Now I must give Davy credit - he has created an incredible thing, and he is riding it to the bank. Not only has found become an enterprise, I can’t turn on the radio without hearing him, Davy himself has become a brand. Maybe he could be the e-bay-van-driving-pot-smoking-masscot for Ann Arbor?
posted by not-lost on April 27th, 2004 at 11:11 pmHey, always good to be the first to non-constructively criticize something.
I remember reading this blog about overheard conversations, and I liked that, but I just can’t get into Found. Why? I can’t really explain it that well. I guess I overhear funny conversations all the time, but I can’t ever remember finding a funny note, so I’m more willing to read the conversation blog without questioning the authenticity of everything.
posted by ann arbor is overrated on April 27th, 2004 at 11:14 pmI like FOUND magazine, but to me it’s not unlike visiting blogs–taking a voyeuristic peek into what other people are doing without the bother of actually interacting with them. There’s nothing ncessarily wrong with that, but I wonder about what it says about…oh, you know, the social fabric and all that.
posted by Laura on April 28th, 2004 at 12:03 amI think FOUND is pretty clever. Let me rephrase that. I think that about 40% of their material is clever. The rest is just either too “weird” or “precious” to be real. Some of the notes read, to me at least, as forgeries. There is something poignant, though, about all the old photos that people seem to find in the trash. When we have our pictures taken, I don’t think any of us ever imagine that those photos may very well end up in a dumpster some day.
posted by Boris on April 28th, 2004 at 12:55 amBeing a non-visual person (as you can tell from my site design) I mainly focused on the text. I should take a closer look at the pictures next time.
posted by ann arbor is overrated on April 28th, 2004 at 3:38 amthe magazine is a powerful comment on the state of art and literature today. Just for a second asume that a 75% of the material is actually found and not created. Then you can put together a magzine without having to pay people to create content, just throw anything in, and I’ve read a bit or two, it can be interesting stuff at time. Shit, we should start an all ad magazine, you let people pay less for having more text/high content ads.
posted by Just a Voice on April 28th, 2004 at 3:42 amFound is absolutely great, it still would be if Davy wasn’t from Ann Arbor. You and this Leighton fellow are both cynical and bitter beyond a reasonable degree. And please note Ypsi wouldn’t be 1/2 of what it is, which isn’t much to begin with, if it wasn’t right next to Ann Arbor. Think West Belleville.
posted by big rob on April 28th, 2004 at 11:00 amAttention Annaroubourites! Check it out. Prepare for an influx of East Lansing refugees looking to escape EL’s onerous noise laws.
http://www.statenews.com/op_article.phtml?pk=19703
posted by Eric on April 28th, 2004 at 1:26 pmI was friends with Peter, Davy’s little brother, through middle and high school, so I’ve been seeing what Davy’s been up to for a while. He’s a talented writer, but he’s also an expert at self-promotion, which is part of why I think Found has gone so far (though, if you ever find his Esquire peices, they were all pretty good).
posted by js on April 28th, 2004 at 1:29 pmMy girlfriend and I were talking about this last night, because Found was also on Dick Gordon’s The Connection (I didn’t get the Letterman memo), and one of the things that I don’t like about Found is that while there are always a couple of really compelling things in there, most of it always feels either faked or forced. There’s really very little in there that ever resonates with me, and I think that people who like it are the same ones who gravitate toward twee, homemade music, on the theory that it’s somehow more honest. Sometimes the banal is just the banal, and there’s no particular reason to read it. And unfortunately, I have too much stuff that I’d really like to read before I get to things that might be anecdotally amusing to the McSweeney’s set.
Hey, Belleville gave the world Techno (don’t know if that’s good or bad, but it’s something).
Without Ypsi, Ann Arbor would have dirty toilets, unstocked shelves, and helpless trust-fund hippies starving due to lack of food service workers. “Think 28 Days Later” with Birkenstocks and no contagion.
Yes, prmotion will get you prettyu far with the Twee group looking for sincerity in all the wrong places. The only sincere music is hairmetal!
posted by Leighton on April 28th, 2004 at 1:36 pmNews flash: everything popular is overrated
It’s true. And yet, paradoxically, it’s everyone’s goal to get popular and thus be overrated themselves. And as soon as someone or something other than us gets there, jealousy or schadenfraude or something similar sets in, and we feel compelled to take them down a notch. And so all these people who couldn’t be bothered to criticize Found Magazine when it was simply another local zine are coming out of the woodwork now that they have national attention. How predictable! If Found Magazine is just 25% genuine, it still beats you guys by a factor of… oh, ten or so. But that’s just an educated guess.
posted by is on April 28th, 2004 at 2:27 pmIt’s not envy, it’s just that there’s no point in criticizing something no one’s heard of. I’ve been waiting patiently for them to get this popular for years just so I could make this one post on my blog. Oh, yes.
posted by ann arbor is overrated on April 28th, 2004 at 2:50 pmI think the items in Found that are faked but no one will ever know are wonderful, and the ones that you can’t help but suspect are faked but really were found are great, too.
posted by Anonymous on April 28th, 2004 at 5:21 pm“Dude, there’s this band that no one has heard of or cares about …that sucks really hard. I know you needs to know this, so I’m taking bandwith and your time to point out that the Fuzzy Armadillos are not cool.”
Crimewave USA is huge (on an indie scale) nationally, and it does not suck. Neither does Found really. But it probably takes more balls now to point out that it has more flaws than most of the star struck may realize.
posted by Leighton on April 28th, 2004 at 6:02 pmLeighton,
Ever see the movie Freak Talks?
The band in it (playing to two people in a bar in Syracuse, NY) is named
“The Tortillas You Ordered”. Now *they* sucked.
But, wow, what a great name.
posted by todd on April 28th, 2004 at 6:53 pmHell yeah, that name is awesome!
When my upstairs neighbor in NYC moved into his apartment he found 3 polaroids of the previous tenant *ahem* manhandling himself. He gave them to me and I’ve been carrying them around ever since. Is that something Found would publish?
posted by Alex on April 28th, 2004 at 7:42 pmI just want to know is going to tell me when ann arbor is overrated is overrated?
posted by Steven on April 28th, 2004 at 10:36 pmI like and pretty much agree with js’s comment regarding things anecdotally amusing to the McSweeney’s set, and FOUND is in that category. However, touching on what others said about the images, on the back cover of the latest issue there’s a photomontage of what can be called “photos damaged in rage”–people’s faces burned out, heads cut out of group portraits–that I found to be gruesomely powerful, not unlike the “Readers Write” section in the woefully underrated Sun magazine.
posted by Laura on April 29th, 2004 at 12:14 amI’m so proud of you all for having the courage and determination to speak your mind! Just watch out for the star struck lynch mob…
posted by is on April 29th, 2004 at 12:00 pmLynch Mob is a band that really really sucks. But unless you liked Dokken, it’s an unknown overrating.
Ironically, Davy mentioned on Letterman that he gets a lot of self-photographed privates sent to Found. Found is not Overrated by Letterman, and that’s cool.
posted by Leighton on April 29th, 2004 at 4:46 pmFound is sort of like the reality show of the magazine world. No professionals involved on the talent side, so it’s pure profit. People tune in/pick it up solely for their own voyeristic pleasure. And just as it speaks volumes that Americans like watching girls eat bugs, it speaks volumes that Ann Arborites like reading other people’s litter.
Oh, and… in Soviet Russia, tortilla orders YOU!
posted by Dan on April 29th, 2004 at 7:12 pmAwww c’mon, I love Dokken!
posted by Alex on April 29th, 2004 at 8:01 pmannarborisoverrated is oversleeping
posted by ilya on May 1st, 2004 at 2:41 pmwhy are people spelling “Ann Arbor” with a “u?” it’s embarrassing.
posted by j on May 2nd, 2004 at 6:24 amGo into the archives and you can find a reference to the Ann Arbour thing. It’s so Ann Arbor!
posted by Anonymous on May 2nd, 2004 at 6:14 pm