Matt & Viviana Are Watching Baywatch in Hawaii
Matt and Viviana of THNK1994 fame are in the prettiest motel room I’ve ever seen in Hawaii. They’ve been watching a lot of Baywatch and making homemade chia pudding that glows like tiny ocean crustaceans. A few nights ago, they sent me a clip of the “Let the Games Begin” episode which features hard, tan bodies and Enya’s “The Celts” coming together for the sort of audiovisual experience we only dream about happening upon on a motel room TV.
Lately, they are creating zines, adding more stellar merchandise to their club, making TikToks, getting into the NFT game, and this is key, they are in Hawaii. Below, we talk about the Sheryl Crow Aquatic Center, their favorite Marshalls purchases, and a day in the life of THNK1994.
On Starby Starbs:
I was HOPING to kick things off by being like, “I tried the new Starbucks drink,” but when I ordered from the app I realized I couldn’t add the extra shots of chai in.
Viviana: Oh no, you can’t order it from the app.
Rookie move! I just got the matcha, but for sure this week, I’m going to go back. What are you guys getting from Starbs lately?
Viviana: My new drink is the Brown Sugar Shaken Espresso, you can get a Venti for 170 calories with oat milk.
Matt: I just get a cold brew. I want to get into the Refreshers, but the only thing that sucks about them is they don’t have the option to add a booster shot of caffeine. If you’re going to Starbucks and leaving with something that doesn’t have caffeine, I’m a little like I don’t know about that.
Viviana: And also, of course, the matcha with two pumps of chai that I found on TikTok, and it tastes like the moon.
A day in the life of Viviana and Matt:
Viviana: We wake up in side-by-side, twin-sized beds, much like Barb and Star. We go get some cold brew, then we look at our phones for about four hours. I’m now a day trader, so I’m trading stocks of course.
Matt: Then I try and figure out how I’m going to get a ride — or just physically get my body — to the shopping center where the LA Fitness and the Marshalls are. I go there, I hit the LA Fitness, I get a smoothie, then I check out Marshalls. I usually do the men’s clothing, then the men’s cologne section. Then, I’ll pick up on two items that I like, and I’ll look at them for probably two days before I buy them.
Viviana: Around about noon, I’ll clock out of the stocks and have my first meal of the day which is my homemade chia coconut pudding. I’ll absolutely be happy to send you the recipe to print. It’s about 200 calories, and it keeps me full all day.
We get another cold brew or an unsweetened iced tea with lemon, and then we get to work on our NFTs or zines or Merch Club and our summer events that we’re planning.
Matt: A lot of computer work, emailing, design stuff.
Viviana: Ethereum I had to learn how to do, scope out some new artists, see what the trends are, see what the trends will be. We have to tap into our psychic abilities to see what’s around the bend. We switch off posting on Instagram, and we have to post one to three times a day.
Matt: We also do TikToks when we can, but it’s very complicated and hard.
Viviana: It’s an emotional experience to be perceived like that, so we do it when we can. After we do that, we walk to the post office with the zines for the day to mail, because of course everybody is signed up for our Merch Club. It’s the hottest thing in town, and when you sign up, you get one of our spring art zines. We walk to the post office, and that’s right next to Starbucks, so we get a Starbucks and we sit in the park.
On TikTok’s Roz:
Matt: She is the only thing about TikTok that I like where she’s not posting old content or whatever, she’s just like, “Hey I’m at Ulta” or “Hey guys what’s up, here’s my drink that I drink,” and it’s Ocean Spray Cranberry or like mango vodka or whatever.
On Sheryl Crow’s Aquatic Center:
Matt: I was looking at pictures of pools, and then I was looking at pictures of famous people in pools, and then I found the Sheryl Crow Aquatic Center. I’ve only been to an aquatic center once in my life, but it was really fun. Hers is in Missouri, and she was involved with getting it made. I think she maybe found that there was a lack of aquatic centers in the town where she was from. I don’t know the details exactly, but she was definitely part of making it happen.
Viviana: Someone on Twitter found that it was on Sheryl Crow Drive. Somebody had been there and found that it was a salt water pool, which makes sense because Sheryl Crow’s also the one who’s like you only need one square of toilet paper when you poop. Very environmentally thoughtful. It would make sense that she would make a saltwater aquatic center. The one time we went to an aquatic center, we were visiting my sister in Portland and we went to one. Afterward, we went to Sweet Tomato which is a buffet that is all a big salad bar and soups. It’s like a mile long, you fill it up, and there are these cornbreads and different butters to put on it. It is the funnest place to eat in the world.
Matt: Somebody emailed us and said that at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino, they went to a Girls Just Wanna weekend with Sheryl Crow and Brandi Carlile, and then Sheryl Crow taught a yoga class. It gets crazier, Rita Wilson was there. Four weeks later, Rita Wilson got COVID.
On NFTs:
Viviana: It’s been emotional. We saw that Lindsay Lohan was making them, so we chose the platform she was using. It’s obviously, I feel, a scam, right? But one where people can potentially make money on. As all cryptocurrency is as far as I’m concerned. If there’s a big, rolling blackout, everything goes away is what I feel.
So we’re like, “OK, let’s do them,” and we picked out some fun things. I had a wallet already downloaded for cryptocurrencies, so I was like trying to figure out how to do it — I watched some YouTube videos — and at one point, I think almost spent $13,000. I freaked out and almost pressed the wrong button. I showed Matt and I was like, “Matt, is this telling me $13,000?” and then he freaked out too.
It was a lot of one step forward, put your phone away for two days because you get scared, two steps back, two steps forward. We are now in the NFT game.
Matt: We figured go big or go home, one of ours is the moon.
Viviana: You can also buy a picture of a store called “Who’s Karen?”
Matt: You can buy some cute dresses there.
Viviana: They have a thing in the window that says: “Security Cameras Are Watching You.”
On their zine that has everything — Olive Garden astrology, 50 Shades of Gray poetry, exquisite art:
Matt: We did a zine with Sarah Ramos, and it was all of her photos she had because she stalked celebrities for years and took pictures. She acts, but she’s also an artist who talks about all of her fandoms.
Viviana: She did the “Quarantscenes,” where when the lockdown started, she redid all these amazing, epic scenes and played all the characters.
Matt: We did [the zine] for her, and it was the first time we’d done that. It was really fun to make it, and we learned how to do it. We have all these artists that we’ve worked with whose art we wanted to feature. We built it around the art from these artists who are mentioned in there: Ton’yah, Molly, Laura and Natasha.
Then, we wanted to add fun stuff as well as the art. That’s where the poem by Marcia Gay Harden came from and the photos we randomly took. There’s one that’s a bunch of this energy drink Rip It, which is really powerful and they sell them at Dollar Trees. They have a flavor that’s military.
Viviana: It jazzes you up. Apparently they give it to soldiers for free when they’re out to jazz them up. Then, when they get home they’re addicted to it, so it’s kinda dark.
But we have a Merch Club, and we wanted to focus on showing new artists each month. When you sign up for the Merch Club, you get a copy of the zine. It’s seasonal, and you also support the artists. You also get the shirt that has their art on it — we’re always looking for new artists — and it’s just a fun way to celebrate no matter what. You have a zine, it’s fun getting things in the mail, you’re having a great time.
On what’s inspiring them lately:
Viviana: Roz!
Matt: Roz! Oh, and then this other girl on TikTok Harmony Sapphire.
Viviana: She’s good, she said she dated Prince and she sits in her car and kind of just talks. IKEA pudding, I get it every day at noon.
Matt: Whoever’s the buyer for Marshalls.
On their favorite Marshalls purchase:
Matt: Most practical, I got underwear which I really needed. Columbia brand. But I also got a Denim & Flower, which is a brand. I can’t find their website; you don’t see them online that much. Obviously very exclusive.
Viviana: We got some Halle Berry ankle weights. We thought about dropping them to the bottom of the pool and fishing them out as a new exercise game, but then we thought we might die. We also got an Oculus!
