People are talking, talking about weekend magazines... It turns out we’re not the only ones who are unhealthily obsessed with writing about FM. We found (conveniently) 15 mentions of FM in other publications and have flouted copyright law, Crimson plagiarism standards and our own moral sensibilities to bring them to you: right here, right now. As always, anything for our readers.
1. From a Goldman Sachs recruiting cover letter: Fifteen Minutes exemplifies all the qualities I hope to bring to your institution—dedication, wit, a love of the craft and, above all, a subtle mix of both overt arrogance and unabashed obsequiousness.
2. From a blues song: I went down to the Crimson, but my magazine was gone. I went down to the Crimson, but my magazine was gone. Oh it made me so blue babe, I wonder what went wrong.
3. From a Judy Blume novel (publisher pending): I opened up this student magazine. There was one page with party pictures or something, lots of girls and guys half-naked dancing close and kissing. I felt a queer feeling and reached down between my legs.
4. From Sue Grafton’s FM is for Fifteen Murders: It was a dark rainy night as I entered the courtyard of Lowell House, a dormitory by the Charles River. I was looking for a girl. I found her—sprawled across some sort of magazine printed on newsprint. She was dead. Dead. And judging by the way the blood was creeping across the pages of the (most amusing) broadsheet, her fifteen minutes had run out very recently indeed.
5. From The Harvard Crimson: In a startling move, Dean of the Faculty William C. Kirby announced today the formation of an exploratory committee to discuss the use and misuse of the word “booty” in tenure proceedings. Sources close to University Hall said yesterday that the decision was spurred by an article in a popular student publication.
6. From The Independent: Hey, did you hear that Matthew W. Mahan ’05 went to Dean Gross’ office and beat his ass with a copy of FM? That’s totally what this kid in Thayer told me. Also, Matt Mahan is so cool.
7. From Jimmy Buffet’s upcoming release: My spare-ribs, a cold one, FM and my wife. / Now you know that’s all this boy needs in his life.
8. A Helene Cixous essay: In the ticking “minute hand” of the clock that gives the magazine its title, a striking phallic symbol is clearly discernible. Fifteen minutes, after all, is a magazine that explores the interrelations between the two so-called genders at college-age. It highlights both the old-fashion sexual subjugation of young women who “slut it up” on the weekends to the delight of their male counterparts—as well as these same women’s newfound post-feminist sexual liberation.
9. From a great work of modernist fiction: once upon a time and a very good time it was he was reading this magazine a student magazine he didn’t understand were they trying to be humorous he didn’t like humor it wasn’t introspective enough his father’s voice told him that he remembered he remembered.
10. From William Shakespeare: If FM be the food of resume-building, write on/Give me excess of it, that surfeiting/my insane ability to spew witticisms may sicken, and so die.
11. A posthumous release by the Notorious B.I.G.: It was all a dream. I used to read fifteen minutes magazine. Crazy rich white Harvard guys up in a limousine.
12. Letter from Dean Gross: Dear Students, It has come to our recent attention that you don’t think we care about you. This news is taken with the utmost professional sincerity here in University Hall, and we would like to most assuredly refute these assertions. We do care. We even read Gadfly. Booyah.
13. From a newly-discovered Jane Austen novel: It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man of good fortune must be in want of a final club membership, about which all the members of his community, particularly the journalists, are very ambivalent indeed.
14. From a bootleg Bob Dylan song: Mollie’s in the Canteen writin’ up a magazine/I’m out on plympton usin’ the word pimpin’/A man in a trenchcoat says he wants to be scoped/better cover the fire alarm, if you want to smoke dope.
15. From an FM Article (look, I know we said 15 other sources, but this is the vanity issue): It seems like everyone at Harvard works really hard on their extracurriculars. But for the staff of Fifteen Minutes, it’s a real labor of love.
