Mama Lives

The Birth of a New Men's Magazine

Hi everyone. Today, after months of preparation, my team and I launched our online men’s magazine. It’s called MAMA. First six articles and videos are now live:

A man tells the tale of the worst Jewish Mother in Law of all time.

Do you know what I've done for this family? Do you know what I DO for this family?" This is the opening salvo. It escalates from there. "Fix yourself, Samantha. Fix yourself." Then: "You're a fucking bitch." Then: "You're disgusting. You are an ungrateful, disgusting person." “Fix yourself." Then worse. The kind of things you cannot take back and that Tracy has no intention of taking back because taking things back requires the belief that you've said something wrong, and Tracy has never believed she has said anything wrong in her life. "I should have never paid for that wedding." "You trapped that man into marrying you." “FIX YOURSELF Samantha.” "You're nothing without this family. NOTHING." “Fix yourself.” Every sentence lands on my wife like a physical thing, and I can hear Sammy sobbing, and the sobbing doesn't slow Tracy down. It accelerates her. My wife's pain is fuel.

We sent Worst Boyfriend Ever to a LA speed dating event molly

Plus an eerie warning: “your stepping into the space acts as confirmation that you consent to this level of touch. there will be more opportunities to consent throughout the night. if any of the above doesn’t feel aligned to where you are right now - DM me.” Consent consent consent consent. Like stepping into an experimental rehab program for previously-raped women and over-domesticated men. I’m 27 and foolishly expected to meet some woman younger than myself. All I hear is that these speed-dating type events are overwhelmingly female and hurting for guys. So I thought there must be some age-appropriate pussy in store tonight. Nope. Forty bodies and not a soul younger than mine. Event-runner Laura mogged every other woman there. Huge fucking tits. Tight red shirt tucked into farm girl jeans. She was in her 30s but so was every other girl. Which makes sense, I guess. You’re nearing the end of your fertility window, you need a mate, you’re finally ready to get SERIOUS, INTENTIONAL about dating, you’ve got a girlboss 9-5 and two dogs and a Tesla but there’s this dick-shaped hole you just can’t replace. A wretched old hag in all-black asked what brought me here and I puked out something half-authentic: “Because I felt like with my last girlfriend we were just playing house, and I’m looking for something different.” She softened her expression, relating to the idea of “playing house” in her twenties herself.

Denzel Rust visits a weed event and finds a violent result.

I turn around. Sure enough it’s the guy with the tits. He’s in a physical altercation with a black lady in an electric wheelchair.

“You a whole ass dude!” She screams, “Nobody wanna see those fake fuckin titties n*gga!”

He yells back at her for being transphobic, which causes her to pull out a metal chain and start swinging. He taunts her by getting just close enough for her to strike, then moving away at the last second. She manages to swing the chain and hold a joint at the same time with the same hand.

“You gon come around here and put yo tits in my muthafuckin face!” She screams, chain sailing through the air, while her son or boyfriend tries to restrain her by taking her hand off the electric wheelchair’s joystick. Tits guy flees the scene after one swing comes a little too close to his bandana-clad head.

A husband in a happy marriage talks about the reality of physical altercations.

Years ago, we had a heated argument. Who the hell knows what it was about, but I caught my betrothed with an acidic verbal rejoinder that short-circuited her. She physically attacked me, clawing at my face, so I hip-tossed her in the carpet, got wrist control, and held her there until the adrenaline slowed. After a tense moment, the situation cooled. Physical altercations are now off the table. Our marriage has never been stronger. I am officially “happily married.”

Jesse Larkins discusses the backlash against the ultimate Hollywood longhouse role: the Intimacy Coordinator.

Famously Mikey Madison, who won the Best Actress Oscar for her work in Anora (which also won the Best Picture category), rejected an IC on set, citing the comfort she had established with her collaborators. Unlike Meade, Madison had a perfect understanding of the expectations required of her and was more than willing to put herself to the task. “My character is a sex worker and I had seen Sean Baker’s films and know his dedication to authenticity. I was ready for it.” There’s a reason why Baker’s films feel like like a relic–because they’re made the old way.

But notable legacy actresses and outspoken champions of #MeToo, instrumental proponents for the invention of the IC, have increasingly rejected ICs on set presence as a hindrance to the creative process. Both Gwyneth Paltrow (Marty Supreme) and Jennifer Lawrence (Die My Love) rejected IC’s outright or asked them to take a step back on set for micromanaging; trying to actively implement hyper choreographed sexuality to prevent titillation.

And last but certainly not least, Mattp969 does perhaps the truest gonzo of all gonzo history, a depiction of his own experiences being circumcised at 31 years old.

Like most circumcision adventures, my journey started on a bridge overlooking the freeway in Encino, on shrooms. I orbited Judaism for years, living in the San Fernando Valley for eight, in a relationship with a Jewish woman for seven. When we talked about marriage and children, it was clear our children would be raised Jewish, but that my own conversion was encouraged but optional.

Since MAMA is a magazine built for the present, each video will have a full audio recording available, as well as shortform video, like this:

The thesis for MAMA is pretty simple. Men’s magazines don’t exist anymore because they’ve become women’s magazines. Men react to this via escapism: let us RETVRN to a prior era of men’s media or let’s EXIT to a new future that doesn’t actually exist.

Over my own 15 year media career, which began as a culture writer for VICE and LA Weekly, I’ve seen every attempt at authentically capturing the male perspective either fail or be subverted as soon as success arrived. With MAMA, this will never happen.

We’re not here to insult anyone. We’re not here to be mean and nasty. We love life, we love women, and we love our fellow man. We are here to truthfully, beautifully, and hilariously describe the male perspective today, without compromise and in all its semi-charmed and semi-cursed glory.

Please enjoy and subscribe. We’ll be publishing a lot of stuff.