A Real Scorcher Out There (FML)
Salutations from Sublime Prosaic; Announcing FML
Sublime Prosaic, sometimes written as [Sublime | Prosaic] for reasons I cannot explain, is about many things. Chief among them are menswear, gardening, leisure sport (but only obnoxious/fringe ones), design, history and philosophy. It is, as a rule, never about work, as this is the thing in my life that gets to be about something else.
This week it’s going to be a little bit about my work.
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I. FML
Last month, when things were looking pretty not good in Los Angeles, I wrote a jeremiad against the reality television industry, which has come to define and explain our present era, but has also paid a lot of bills for me and my clients. The thesis, which I’ve been happy to see reflected in better writing and thinking by real cultural commentators, is that our politics and very governance now run like a reality television show. It’s lazy to call what we are seeing the emergence of true Idiocracy, but not wrong either. In my article, I had some very critical words for Mark Burnett and the people who have made money with him (you don’t have The Apprentice without advertisers wanting to sell you toothpaste), but ultimately I had to place the blame on the collective/reflective us, as the market can never be wrong. It turns out we want motion pictures the length of a TikTok video and for long form (or, you know, basic) literacy to be the refuge of the eccentric. The algorithm is just us, etc. Again, see better thinkers on the subject.
I shared the draft article with family and friends and the reactions/discussions were good. Here’s a preview of it:
I ultimately decided not to publish the piece for two reasons. One, I resent the degree to which politics has eaten my world (how can I write about gardening and menswear when sexless devils in Washington D.C. have decided my most vulnerable neighbors are enemy combatants?). Two, it started to read like a resignation letter from my own industry. I had accidentally written the non-scripted entertainment lawyer’s own version of Don Draper’s ‘Why I’m Quitting Tobacco’:
My petty act of rebellion, “Let Them Eat (Marble) Cake Federalism” was ultimately not for this world, but it has still allowed me to create something unexpected and new. A series of very improbable events in July then caused me to put Sublime Prosaic on the back burner (so you’ll just have to wait for my review of Horatio Greenough’s nude George Washington statue for next year, 4th of July, 2026, so mark your calendars).
The train of thought started in my unpublished article has ultimately landed me here. I have started my very own entertainment law firm: Faussett Media Law (or FML, if you prefer, I know I do).
Here’s the website. It took me seven minutes to make on SquareSpace (which I ran with because Google uses its monopoly to reserve a domain for you through that service when you sign up for G Suite tools like Gmail). I love it because it looks like the opposite of what a consultant would tell you a lawyer’s website should look like. I’d wager a lawyer’s website is supposed to look reputable, inspire trust, etc./whatever. None of that stopped Morrison Forrester (a reputable, AmLaw 100 firm) from rebranding itself as MoFo back in 2010.
We’re here for the sun.
I’m ultimately not quitting the non-scripted business (I’ve been doing it since 2013 and will continue to do work for creators in that space), I’m just widening the scope of my practice to make room for representing clients working in other mediums (film, publishing, other media now known or hereafter developed, etc.).
So that’s FML. Thanks for reading and don’t hesitate to reach out.
II. Internet Bycatch
Given my publication lag, I’ve had more time to bottom-trawl the ocean for internet content. That includes this very distressing clip from Ocean featuring David Attenborough. Track is “Hidden Beneath the Waves” by Steven Price—harrowing stuff.
Permanent Style produced an orange-blue madras cloth years ago so you could bring the fabric to your tailor and have a shirt made. They’ve brought it back (and are sold out of it again, as expected).
Alessandro Squarzi’s Foretela has brought its excellent eye to the canvas deck shoe, The Redondo.
One of my favorite alcohol Substacks, Everyday Drinking, has a great perspective on choosing quality and the self’s authenticity over the noise of the market: The Wine Drinker as Flâneur.
All my wine knowledge has come from the seat of my pants, traveling and tasting where I could afford—and too often where I could not. This is not to say that I don’t have a memory library of thousands of wines, along with in-depth travel to many wine regions, and visits with many winemakers, in my head. But it’s been a wildcat education, unstructured and self-taught. Within the world of wine, I am a merely a flâneur.
Exciting new developments in timekeeping. A quantum clock has given us a new standard for seconds.
My young son needed shoes for school. He likes Formula 1 (Mrs. Sub Pro’s fault, I didn’t do this), so I’m putting him in Speedcats (originally developed as a burn proof shoe for drivers).
Still image from CATchUp, a magazine for Puma Employees. I’ve always loved them (and could never quite pull them off myself). Here’s a nice bit of self-mythologizing and corporate history about the shoe from Puma.
America’s semiquincentennial is upon us. It will be the last milestone anniversary the country will have so we should enjoy it. Here’s the website for the anniversary. And here’s a partial list of the anniversary’s sponsors, which is better than any satire we could conjure up.
Documentarian extraodinaire Ken Burns also has a series about the American Revolution due out in November (6 parts, 12 hours). I hope he reminds us that a goddamn 2/3s of the country didn’t bother with the revolution (1/3 loyalist/Tory, 1/3 neutral, and 1/3
patriotshopeful tax/tariff dodgers).A great two hour talk on the recent-ish history of Iran by Dr. Roy Cassagranda. I like the lecturer—he’s that kind of professor I couldn’t help but love back in my university days; one who has uneven/awkward humor, but whose head clearly contains a lifetime of learning (as evidenced by the quality and quantity of his tangents). He’s also a professor at a community college, which surprised me—he’s clearly leveraged his ability to make complex topics accessible into YouTube success if he’s showing up in my algorithm.
