Currently viewing the tag: "hipsters"

Kind of a Nazi attitude*

By On November 19, 2010 · In As I Am Now

Nothing like a Friday night spent elbows deep in the guts of awkward HTML and stupid CSS. It’s okay, though, because I have a bottle of Domaine de la Chanteleuserie Cabernet Franc from Vine and I’m not afraid to drink it. (Nor am I afraid to admit I’ve already consumed most of it already.)

This has been a week of music. First off, did you know there is nothing you can’t find on the Internet? IT’S TRUE. For example, I found two albums by Cakekitchen that I only ever had on tape. (Side note: I remember, in Savannah, my friend Dan and me wandering around a Media Play looking for music. Him: Isn’t this the record you were looking for? Me: No, that’s Cake. I’m looking for Cakekitchen. Him: Wait, is that different from Sea and Cake? Me: I have that already. Him: Oh for Christ’s sake. Get me the fuck out of here.)(I’m sure there are real record stores in Savannah now.) Picture Henry Rollins right now being all like IS THAT A FUCKING RECORDER? FUUUUUUUUUUUUUU!

Second, my office mate and I both love Streets of Fire pretty much more than anyone else in the world (aside from these folks, I suppose). I mentioned once that I dressed up as Ellen Aim for Halloween one year. He one-upped me by saying that he tried, unsuccessfully, to find a pair of the rubber/garbage bag S&M-style waders that Willem Dafoe wears. (For Halloween — or so he says.) He even went into various bondage boutiques in the West Village asking for them. No one knew what he was talking about, except for this one dude who was like, “Oh, from Streets of Fire? No, we don’t have them. But that would be awesome.” (Me: How is it you didn’t switch teams right there? Him: It’s the only time I’ve ever questioned my sexuality. Me: Imagine how lonely he is. No one likes Streets of Fire.) So we downloaded the soundtrack and have fist-pumped from our desk chairs for the past few days.

Third, there’s a subsection of Metafilter devoted to music. There’s this guy named bgm who goes by chococat and he produces the most beautiful songs.** Some are covers, some are originals. Part Elliott Smith, part Stephin Merritt, part Lee Hazelwood, part Jens Lekman…and a lot of originality. I like it a lot to listen to.

Another thing: There are two security shifts in my office building. The daytime guard, Robert, is a 50-something guy who makes incredibly inappropriate jokes. On paper, it seems odd that he still has a job, but in person, he’s just not the type of person you could bring yourself to dislike. And while the jokes he tells are horrible, they’re also so outdated that they’re almost nonsequitur. (His primary source material is the Truly Tasteless series, so there are lots of jokes about women’s libbers and Ed Meese.) It’s only on rare occasion that he crosses the line. (Him: Did you work out this morning? Me: No, I had a doctor’s appointment. Him: Trouble with your lady parts?) The nighttime guard is a nondescript guy, probably approaching 50. He seems to like reading the bible and listening to a small radio. One night I came down into the lobby, though, and he was listening to Midnight Oil’s “Beds Are Burning.” I figured this is what they play on classic rock stations now. Then a few days later I came down and he was listening to “Radiation Vibe” by Fountains of Wayne (What.) which I thought was an unusual song to hear on the radio. And then the other night he was listening to the Lemonheads cover of “Mrs. Robinson.” So now I can’t tell: is there some special radio station that I don’t know about that he just happens to be accidentally listening to, or is this his jam? (Why do I care? I don’t know.)

Oh, yeah, and I downloaded Nicky Minaj’s new record. It’s not bad. I still think she’s an asshole.

The Cakekitchen, Silence of the Sirens

Streets of Fire soundtrack, Tonight Is What It Means to Be Young

*This has nothing to do with anything other than the fact that Roger Ailes is a fucking jerk.
**It doesn’t really matter where you start, but this and this are two of my favorites.

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Greetings from the cement slab

By On November 15, 2010 · In Adipocere

Last night Maud (with Max reluctantly in tow) came over to watch Sarah Palin’s Alaska, a show so insipid that a link to its TLC website would be as useless as tits on a boar. You don’t care about this show and you don’t need to learn anything more about it than you already know. As the opening credits rolled, N joked that we should make up a drinking game but frankly, that would’ve resulted at least one of us being airlifted to a hospital for acute alcohol poisoning. A preferable game would’ve been Russian roulette. Losing outcome: You have to watch the rest of Sarah Palin’s Alaska.

Anyhow, more on that some other time.

I started the rest of this post so long ago that it’s about Henry Rollins and his stupid tirade at the Cakeshop here in NYC. This stopped being relevant a week ago, but oh well. I’m fucking lazy.

If you don’t feel like watching it, the great Nitsuh Abebe has written a play-by-play of it.

Maybe some folks in the punk scene are bored with him that way. Random kids at this particular venue, though, are not likely to care. They are not as annoyed by their elders as punks like Rollins used to be. And to most of them, he is just a guy who was in a legendary punk band (Black Flag), was painted red on MTV when they were kids (Liar), and likes to talk a lot. He is no more in the way than, say, Betty White is in the way of younger actresses. The only person in this room freaking out about Henry Rollins’s cred is Henry Rollins.

Witness Rollins’ sad display of insecurity. And his weird grope-y and chauvinistic behavior. And the ultimate reflexive irony of a tattooed, posturing millionaire accusing a woman (whoops, I mean “chick”) of being a tattooed trust-fund hipster. I don’t doubt that the woman who shouted “Get in the van!” was doing it to goad him. (Had I been there, I’d have been tempted to shout something stupid at him too. But it would probably be either “Hey guys, the lead singer from the Misfits is here!” or “Look, it’s the 6th lead singer of Black Flag!”) But fucking RISE ABOVE, Henry. Don’t take the bait. Don’t use your companion as some sort of Integrity Shield. And for fuck’s sake, keep your hands off of women you barely know. (To me, the most uncomfortable moments in that video are when Rollins grabs onto Neshat like she was about to float off into space and I swear, her shoulders visibly stiffen. Or maybe that’s transference, because mine are stiffening right now as I type this.)

Remember this, Henry. We won’t be calling your integrity into question because you’re “old” and “in the way.” We will be calling you out for Johnny Mnemonic. For The Gap. FOR YOUR FAMOUS GRAMMY-WINNING SPOKEN WORD ALBUM.

Full disclosure: I am already on the record as considering Rollins a turgid, parochial moron.* I’ve always disliked him. Say what you will about Jello Biafra, but he hangs out with terminally ill kids (and not in the Tim Yohannon way, if you get what I’m saying**) and has never bragged about his FAMOUS BOOKS. I’m on Team Jello.

*Weirdly enough, the most brutal critique of that essay was almost totally focused on my hatred of Henry Rollins and why it was so wrong of me and I’m an idiot and Rollins is a god and I will bet you $5 that the shitbag who wrote it beats off on the regular to that Rollins Cakeshop video. (You see what I did there?)
**Nothing like some micro-scene slandering of a dead guy, right?

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All of my hobbies are addictions*

By On November 5, 2010 · In As I Am Now

I have a lot of flaws. Here’s today’s flaw:

You all know my musical tastes in general. Like, I like scratchy recordings of long-dead guys playing rotted-out guitars with only five strings and a broken neck or some beyond-esoteric British band that recorded an EP that was released on the same day they died in a tragic fiery wreck on their way to play a show in Wigan or something.

And if you do know me you also know that I have a ridiculous aversion to anything deemed hip or popular by, for example, Vice or Pitchfork. (I don’t think this makes me cool; I would classify it as another one of my flaws but am not sure you can consider “being an asshole” a simple flaw.) I can’t control it. When you see those people with Tourette’s Syndrome talk about their tics on the Discovery Channel they often describe them as being almost impossible to ignore, like an itch. And so when aforementioned publications are all excited about some band, I’m like, That band sucks and if you like them you suck too and I hope terrorists bomb their next show RAAAAAAAAAAAH!

So now I must shame-facedly admit that I downloaded the Salem album (off Mediafire, for free, if that makes it any better) and it is so completely anathema to me. I’m sorry. I like Salem.**

Tom*** says that there’s less than zero justification for this unless I’m dating a 15-year-old.

*True story: I said this to someone at a cocktail party, about five minutes after I’d met him, in response to, “So, what are your interests?” I don’t actually remember saying it, but he wrote it down and showed it to me at the next cocktail party I saw him at. I considered hiring him to be my factotum but I don’t really traffic much in witticisms anymore.
**Butt magazine interview. NSFW. I’m not linking to MySpace.
***Who is willing to forgive (and also relentlessly mock) my flaws. Let the record reflect, however, that he likes American Music Club.

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Signifyin’ hipster

By On October 14, 2010 · In Adipocere

I wasn’t actually going to post about this brain trust examination of the “Sociological Investigation of the Hipster.”* Because really, who cares? I mean, I care enough to off-handedly dismiss it and all its nonacademic panelists as a covey of dipshits-qua-dipshits. But it’s impossible for me to pick out the comments or conclusions I take issue with most because I hate them all equally. After I read this article, there was almost not enough hate left in my heart for me to continue with my workaday hate. Also, my friend Tom put it better than I could:

Is it just me, or is this entire panel a waste of time/energy/thought on par with taking a cat to visit Santa or giving 18 year-olds the right to vote? How can hipsters be “the latest youth movement in the tradition of greasers, rappers, mods, hippies, punks” if no one would ever claim to be one? It’s something you call someone else, not something you purport to be. Unless you’re being ironic, in which case you probably ARE a hipster, but then you’re trapped in an asshole infinite regress, so the point is moot.

Thank you, Tom. I can now go back to hating all the things I usually hate. And McInnes and Lin can go back to merely being two of those things instead of being the situational Bob Grant and Chance of hipsterdom.

APPLAUSE.

Cranial Abuse, Blinded By Hate**

*What, no “Hipster-qua-Hipster”? Who vetoed that?
**Sidenote that runs longer than the post itself: This was an Albany (well, technically Troy-Core) band from the late 80s that later became Stigmata (who we referred to as “Stinkmetal,” because they did stink, and were way too metal for our tastes, but listening to this track now, it’s not 100 percent awful). “Troy-Core” was our shibboleth, but in fact was a term embraced wholeheartedly by its adherents, who enjoyed “absolutely abysmal speed-metal influenced hardcore with sloppy slow drumming and vocals that scream ‘thug’” and moshed with cretinous glee whenever fucking Leeway came to town. Come to think of it, I believe Troy-Core had its own special, especially violent version of moshpit behavior. God I hate hardcore. Why did I go to so many shows? Oh that’s right — there was nothing else to do.

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