Brett Martin
LightNews LightNews
banner
brettmartin.bsky.social
Brett Martin
@brettmartin.bsky.social
1.7K followers 220 following 1.1K posts
GQ Correspondent, plus NYT Mag, NatGeo, Vanity Fair, Bon Appetit, Garden & Gun, This American Life, et. al. Author of Difficult Men: Behind the Scenes of a Creative Revolution. Three James Beard awards. https://linktr.ee/brettsy

http://www.brettmartin.org
Posts Replies Media Videos
Pinned
brettmartin.bsky.social
Brett Martin @brettmartin.bsky.social · Oct 2
I went to Disneyland to track the long, strange history of Disney and New Orleans—and how each has taught the other how to be.

gardenandgun.com/feature/the-...
The Curious and Twisty Love Story Between New Orleans and Disney
The fascinating, decades-long dalliance between the Crescent City and the Disney version of it, starring a cartoon princess, Creole chefs, mechanical tiki birds, and the world’s most meticulously rese...
gardenandgun.com
Reposted by Brett Martin
nicmiller.bsky.social
This Holy Water made me feel sad and angry.
November 12, 2025 at 2:15 PM
brettmartin.bsky.social
Peter Brady voice.
November 11, 2025 at 4:31 PM
brettmartin.bsky.social
God, Pluribus just feels so refreshingly *assured.*
November 11, 2025 at 1:56 AM
brettmartin.bsky.social
My experience is that midwesterners have more PTSD surrounding "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" (the song, not the event) than others. Maybe the event, too.
November 10, 2025 at 5:30 PM
Reposted by Brett Martin
brettmartin.bsky.social
Bill Watterson with the rare, all but sacrilegious, take on MAD Magazine.
I don't look back on the magazine with any real affection. You know, it's great when you're eleven. But if it had been a better magazine, a little deeper, you could reread it at age fifteen or twenty and get more out of it. But you can't-it's just humor for eleven-year-olds. And they're willing to lose their audience at age fifteen, because there's a new crop of eleven-year-olds every year. They don't need to reach any higher, and that just seems lazy to me. Mad's irreverence seemed revolutionary at the time, but now I think it was mostly cynical—a snotty-kid attitude-not really based on any moral outrage. They ridiculed things not because they truly objected to them, but because those things were popular, and they wanted to ride that wave. So this magazine that I thought was wild and rebellious at age eleven now just seems sort of easy and dumb. We should probably edit that out. (laughter) JR: Growing up, Mad didn't resonate with me the way it did with some of my peers, but I don't think I was their primary audience. Not that it was entirely a gender thing, but I knew more guys who read it. BW: Right, I think it was sort of a boys' club. There are plenty of cartoonists who get dewy-eyed thinking about Mad all these years later, but I'm not one of them. There was a period in the '50s when it was energetic, but by the time I was reading it in the mid-60s, it was very formulaic. Even as a kid, I was puzzled by the fact that, after a movie satire by Mort Drucker, they'd have a TV satire by a Mort Drucker imitator. They turned Drucker into a house style for caricature! That sort of thing galls me now, but even as a kid, it seemed odd and vaguely disappointing.
November 9, 2025 at 9:27 PM
Reposted by Brett Martin
brettmartin.bsky.social
Hey, it's my two hundred cents on Thanksgiving Poboys. gardenandgun.com/articles/tur...
Turkey Po’boys: The New Orleans Thanksgiving Tradition You Need to Try
The festive sandwiches are a citywide phenomenon
gardenandgun.com
November 9, 2025 at 5:52 PM
Reposted by Brett Martin
timcarman.bsky.social
I've known Elazar for a couple of years now. He's an exceptional human being and a wonderful food critic. You're in good hands, D.C. www.washingtonpost.com/food/2025/11...
Column | Meet The Washington Post’s new food critic
Elazar Sontag is The Post’s next food critic — and he won’t be anonymous.
www.washingtonpost.com
November 10, 2025 at 3:16 PM
Reposted by Brett Martin
chriscooperwcu.bsky.social
Charlotte Magazine announced it was closing its doors this week

3 of my favorite writers penned must-read obituaries for the magazine that was. All are nominally about the institution, but they're really about people, about creativity & about how the former gave space for the latter to thrive
(1/5)
November 10, 2025 at 1:37 AM
brettmartin.bsky.social
Bill Watterson with the rare, all but sacrilegious, take on MAD Magazine.
I don't look back on the magazine with any real affection. You know, it's great when you're eleven. But if it had been a better magazine, a little deeper, you could reread it at age fifteen or twenty and get more out of it. But you can't-it's just humor for eleven-year-olds. And they're willing to lose their audience at age fifteen, because there's a new crop of eleven-year-olds every year. They don't need to reach any higher, and that just seems lazy to me. Mad's irreverence seemed revolutionary at the time, but now I think it was mostly cynical—a snotty-kid attitude-not really based on any moral outrage. They ridiculed things not because they truly objected to them, but because those things were popular, and they wanted to ride that wave. So this magazine that I thought was wild and rebellious at age eleven now just seems sort of easy and dumb. We should probably edit that out. (laughter) JR: Growing up, Mad didn't resonate with me the way it did with some of my peers, but I don't think I was their primary audience. Not that it was entirely a gender thing, but I knew more guys who read it. BW: Right, I think it was sort of a boys' club. There are plenty of cartoonists who get dewy-eyed thinking about Mad all these years later, but I'm not one of them. There was a period in the '50s when it was energetic, but by the time I was reading it in the mid-60s, it was very formulaic. Even as a kid, I was puzzled by the fact that, after a movie satire by Mort Drucker, they'd have a TV satire by a Mort Drucker imitator. They turned Drucker into a house style for caricature! That sort of thing galls me now, but even as a kid, it seemed odd and vaguely disappointing.
November 9, 2025 at 9:27 PM
brettmartin.bsky.social
I need the Saints to be good again so I have a time to grocery shop on Sundays.
November 9, 2025 at 6:23 PM
brettmartin.bsky.social
Hey, it's my two hundred cents on Thanksgiving Poboys. gardenandgun.com/articles/tur...
Turkey Po’boys: The New Orleans Thanksgiving Tradition You Need to Try
The festive sandwiches are a citywide phenomenon
gardenandgun.com
November 9, 2025 at 5:52 PM
brettmartin.bsky.social
I said this recently, but cities should fight to get magazines the way they do sports teams, and for the same reason: to put themselves on the nation's psychic map.
bradfordpearson.bsky.social Bradford Pearson @bradfordpearson.bsky.social · 6d
Oh man this is a gut punch. I know I'm biased but city magazines are the lifeblood of local journalism, a glossy monthly chronicle of the good and the bad, the present and the future of your city. I'll miss Charlotte Mag.
BREAKING: Charlotte magazine is shutting down
Magazine is Charlotte's 'longest-standing and most-trusted lifestyle media brand'
charlotteledger.substack.com
November 7, 2025 at 6:37 PM
brettmartin.bsky.social
Came upon this strange gathering in a clearing at the CVS.
Five short Santas (?) in various hooded costumes, gathered in a circle in an aisle of a drugstore.
November 6, 2025 at 4:34 PM
brettmartin.bsky.social
An epic American story, told beautifully. Read especially if you've ever thought Dr John was some kind of novelty act.
lrb.co.uk London Review of Books @lrb.co.uk · 7d
‘For Battiste, it seems that fitting a white, faux-psychedelic mask over his Black experimentalism gave him a rare freedom.’

Francis Gooding on Dr John’s ‘Gris-Gris’, a ‘musico-magical palimpsest of New Orleans history’.

www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Francis Gooding · Hoodoo Man: Dr John and ‘Gris-Gris’
Beyond or beneath the theatrics there is a disconcerting sense that something much more serious is going on, that all...
www.lrb.co.uk
November 6, 2025 at 2:52 PM
brettmartin.bsky.social
I can hear the dot matrix printer spitting this out.
onestpress.onestnetwork.com Olga Nesterova @onestpress.onestnetwork.com · 8d
New sign outside the Oval Office..
November 5, 2025 at 3:57 PM
Reposted by Brett Martin
brettmartin.bsky.social
A streaming comes across the sky. www.worldofreel.com/blog/2025/11...
‘One Battle After Another’ Hits VOD in November 20 — 4K UHD and Blu-ray January 20 — World of Reel
As for the box-office receipts: Variety recently claimed Warner Bros. stands to lose $100+.  But it might have been worth it just for those 11 Oscar noms alone, and it’s quite possible the fi...
www.worldofreel.com
November 4, 2025 at 6:19 PM
brettmartin.bsky.social
Friends, when I tell you that the Jefferson Parish East Bank Regional Library ukulele club’s Holiday Hoedown will be ready for immediate transfer to sitcom….
November 5, 2025 at 12:56 AM
brettmartin.bsky.social
Pace John Mulaney, it’s nice of them to put ukulele holders in every public restroom.
Baby changing table holding a ukulele in case.
November 5, 2025 at 12:40 AM
brettmartin.bsky.social
A streaming comes across the sky. www.worldofreel.com/blog/2025/11...
‘One Battle After Another’ Hits VOD in November 20 — 4K UHD and Blu-ray January 20 — World of Reel
As for the box-office receipts: Variety recently claimed Warner Bros. stands to lose $100+.  But it might have been worth it just for those 11 Oscar noms alone, and it’s quite possible the fi...
www.worldofreel.com
November 4, 2025 at 6:19 PM
brettmartin.bsky.social
Is there such thing as pouring one IN for somebody?
November 4, 2025 at 2:42 PM
brettmartin.bsky.social
Trying to get to an “Actually, Cheney was the name of the scientist” joke….
November 4, 2025 at 2:11 PM
Reposted by Brett Martin
martajewson.bsky.social
In New Orleans, it’s just Tuesday.
November 4, 2025 at 1:31 PM
brettmartin.bsky.social
Tidy little murder mystery.
Anonymous Ballroom Donors Face Scrutiny, and More
November 4, 2025 at 1:00 PM
brettmartin.bsky.social
But LOURVE would have been brilliant.
perryodontal.bsky.social Perry Areolar @perryodontal.bsky.social · 10d
the password to the louvre surveillance server was "louvre"

www.thesocialpost.it/2025/11/02/f...
according to the liberation newspaper, documents dating back to a 2014 inspection by the French National Agency for the Security of Computer Systems reported a staggering detail: "the password of the louvre's video surveillance server was simply " louvre. "
November 3, 2025 at 7:06 PM
brettmartin.bsky.social
Remember that all lists are capricious, incoherent, subjective, and designed to enrage you. Except mine.
November 3, 2025 at 5:23 PM