The Racket tried the Zoo offices Friday, mainly to find out if the competition had yielded any entrants, but was met with an uptight, “We’re on deadline”. Zoo Weekly Australia founder Paul Merrill, though, told us to look on the bright side. “After weeks on a dilapidated boat, there are worse things than being offered a photo shoot,” he said.
Feeding Time (Flynn Murphy, The Racket)
Thanks Ciaran Le Cool
“Before my admission to the hospital, I had worked hard, even throughout the most chaotic phase of my breakdown, to maintain an outward appearance of normalcy. I carried this delusion with me well into the early part of my stay on the ward.
Somehow, I had reached the conclusion that maintaining an ordinary-looking Twitter feed would be a key survival strategy while in hospital.
It was only after I had updated my status with a wise crack about the nightly news that I could fall asleep, consoled by the knowledge that my acquaintances probably pictured me on a couch at home, sprawled in front of the news with a laptop, instead of curled beneath starchy sheets in a psychiatric institution.”
What I Did On My Summer Holidays (Darragh McCausland, The Racket)
The Racket is a monthly online ‘themed’ magazine put together by many of the people who put together Mongrel magazine.
Previously: Remember How Good Mongrel Was?
Mongrel?
Only one of the best magazines to ever come out of Ireland and which gallantly served discerning hipsters throughout the later stages of the Celtic Tiger years.
Dry your eyes.
Because the people who brought you Mongrel are now producing The Racket, a new online publication, based in London but with all the major Mongrel talent – Eoin Butler, Larry Ryan, Mark O’Connell and others – under one roof.
As editor Sam Bungey puts it:
“The Racket picks themes and works the hell out of them from every angle we can think of. The site aims to showcase writing, film, music and photography from around the world. Headquartered in London, The Racket’s aim is to bring together narrative journalism across all formats, with contributors who work in radio, TV and in print – we are considering everything an audio comment forum to a talk show … we’re inspired by new publishing ventures like The Atavist, Byliner and Once Magazine. If it sounds a little antiquated to be enthusing about the exciting new possibilities of internet publishing that’s possibly a fair cop, but we feel it still remains to be proven that a magazine style site with free, original journalism can sustain itself. We will be putting out new themes regularly – there are currently stories in the works in Saudi Arabia, South Korea and Co. Louth. Anyone with ideas should get in touch at info@theracket.co.uk We’ll be tweeting as @littleracket
