Kickstarter - The Indie Cred Test (Presented by Chunklet Magazine) →
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I’ve contributed to this book. Please help. There’s only so many Atlanta jokes to go around
August 2010
50 posts
Hipster Hitler » Archive » Ironic Invasion →
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I thought I was past this kind of stuff. Apparently not.
They Walked In Line
Warsaw - The Walked in Line
If anyone says Joy Division is overrated, I will fight you (not really, but in principle).
“A lot of money is spent on publicly-funded theater workshops where highly educated theater practitioners sit around wondering how to engage with ordinary working people in an audience how to break the fourth wall, how to take theater into unusual spaces…and all those things are what the worst hack comic does every night.”
—Stewart Lee, on WTF With Marc Maron
Bloomington – I Think I’m Gonna Like It Here →
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Bloomington’s music-minded seem to be echoing my thoughts
Out of the many good omens that have come out of my most recent-move, this graffito is both the most satisfying and the only…
The Bike Plan - Day 0
At 1200 hours Sunday, I acquired a clunker of a bike for $75 off craigslist. It is in surprisingly good condition given the price, so much so that I don’t even need to take it for a tuneup. The main point of this bike is to take the beating that my now-able-but-poorly-refined-skills bike riding gives it, meaning it will have to hang on until I can bike in a straight line, navigate effectively, not get guff from motorists. Alas, I currently lack a bike lock or a bike rack, meaning it will have to stay in my apartment until I acquire such things (meaning dragged to the third floor via relatively manageable stairs).
Even got to practice a little bit, which I wasn’t planning on doing today, but it’s Sunday, so fewer people are around (at least in the first go; second got to evening, so people were returning home in cars, looking at me fall, Flintstone it, and veer with as much relative politeness as I can imagine. The women who I pass I imagine this being the start of a romantic comedy, which helps get past the awkwardness. Much like in my bike lessons for grown-ups class in New York, my instructor helped me loosen my grip on the handlebars by asking “do you have a girlfriend?” No, but I get the point. Grip dealt with accordingly. I’m glad I’m no longer a child.
First time I’m just wearing my helmet, not ideal; hands get a little ripped from lack of gloves, and helmet gets kinda funky from lack of headband. Second time around, have all that, but staying straight seems strangely more difficult. After about 20 minutes of this, I realize I knocked the seat to the right last time out. Adjusting accordingly makes it a lot easier.
The driveways in my apartment complex are perfect for practice except that their kinda hilly; I have 21 gears on my bike, and the system is somewhat tricky, which makes quick decisions while fearing crashing into cars somewhat difficult.
By the end of day 0, I can bike in a straight line downhill without fearing crashing into the side of a car, and braking effectively. I consider this ahead of schedule, and call it a day. Realize it is 8:30 and still light outside. I’m on the western end of a time zone after living on the eastern ends of them most of my life, be it NYC, Boston or Chicago. This is nice.
“I am willing you should call this the Age of Frivolity, as you do, and would not object if you had named it the Age of Folly, Vice, Frenzy, Brutality, Daemons, Bonaparte, Tom Paine, or the Age of the Burning Brand from the Bottomless Pit, or anything but the Age of Reason.”
—
John Adams
From: The Age Of Paine - The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan
Wisconsin man is accused of neglecting 178 cats →
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One way to get the internet interested in local news…
tag me with a spoon: "NPR rock" →
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Best example of this in action I’ve seen: a 2008 show at NYU with a lineup of Apache Beat, Marnie Stern, A Place To Bury Strangers, Ra Ra Riot. As soon as APTBS played one note, all the Ra Ra Riot fans left the room until the band was finished. It was like clockwork.
I’ve seen the same clockwork within a single Yo La Tengo set at more than one show, depending on when Ira Kaplan touched the distortion pedal.
That’s fine, and even smart as a take on music generally. But the problem with “NPR rock” isn’t that it’s less angry or noisy, it’s that — like all NPR cultural entertainment — it breeds complacency (specifically, smug affluent liberal complacency - like Palin jokes you might hear on “Wait Wait,” or Garrison Keiller, Ira Glass, etc.), just like their “news under glass” programs that are all framed with perky B.J. Liederman theme music and half-recognizable instrumental interstitials between the stories.
Music highlighted on NPR may be intelligent and good, but it’s 100% intended as a throwaway cultural accessory for suburbanites in Volvos driving their kids to soccer practice who still want to feel like they know what’s “current” and that they’ve heard something their friends haven’t. Their sweet spot is: a little edgy, a little unusual or indie-fresh, a little obscure or “alternative,” hopefully some smart lyrics, but with harmony and hook, non-distracting, and totally serviceable as background music. As a result, it never has the slightest cultural impact.
Now we’re getting somewhere! That’s why I’m so interested in music that ostensibly addresses concerns of smart, serene people (our inability to effect change in a world where “they own the information/ They can bend it all they want”; how we’re always stumbling over what we want to say; how people ought to be free to get stoned or whatever; how it’s actually the responsibility of men not to be dicks to the women in their lives; how women’s bodies are not mere objects for men’s pleasure or something to be ashamed of but rather something they should feel free to enjoy; the importance of questioning authority; the value of expressing ourselves even when we’re afraid we might get hurt) without serving as a form of lifestyle-accessory one-ups-man-ship or limiting itself to an audience on one side of the political aisle. But people are probably tired of me harping on this around here by now? Not sure why I keep bringing this up in bits and pieces— should just buckle down and give people something meatier to argue with at this point, but argh.
EDIT: I thought it was interesting that a teetotaling carnival ticket-booth worker from Tennessee I met at the Iowa State Fair blamed the firing of a clown who apparently made racial or otherwise offensive jokes on, his word, “snobbish” people. Snobbery, or the perception of snobbery, is the bane of both progressive ideology and the underground. This guy was nice and folks like him might even be convinced to agree with us if we didn’t always need to feel like we were ideologically and culturally better than him. (I guess that’s one of my problems with the new Arcade Fire album [oh hai, Hardcorefornerds]: It disparages some people who sneer, but it’s still sneering at them, without any trace of self-awareness that it is doing so [and I know I’m definitely not immune to this syndrome]. Still: Wouldn’t it be nice to have a sneer-free zone?)
Play
Whitney Cummings - Princess Complex: Here are the jokes from the Comedy Central Roast of David Hasselhoff... →
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Here are the jokes from the Comedy Central Roast of David Hasselhoff that didn’t make broadcast that I did on Howard Stern this morning.
Seth mcfarlane. You’ve officially done the impossible. You’re a multi millionaire, you’ve created successful shows, you can help my career, yet I still…
56 Translations Songs: Pulp, "Common People" →
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She came from Greece, she had a thirst for knowledge
She studied sculpture at Saint Martin’s College
That’s where I caught her eye
She told me that her dad was loaded
I said, “In that case I’ll have a rum and Coca-Cola”
She said fine, and in 30 seconds’ time she said
I want to live like common…
“Maybe we can do something together. Me, You and Raekwon”
—Kanye West to Justin Bieber. (via maura)
Oh Boy, I’m In Print! Talking About Marnie Stern, Marissa Pasternoster, Cathy Santonies in Venus Zine →
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Say this for Navin Johnson, he made his print debut on page 73. On page 79 of the Fall Issue of Venus Zine, you’ll fine a piece by me, the first thing…
“Well, I think this could be modeled akin to visual contrast. A similar population that is close enough to serve as a magnet for insecurities. This will create artificial contrast. Certainly interesting, but not really new ground. It probably fits established in/out group frameworks well. The experiment I have in mind would be one where New York subjects shock others in a Milgram style fashion. I predict that they would maximally punish those we tell them to hail from New Jersey, as they ultimately see them as prawn-like non-human creatures of sorts. Any social psychologists reading here? ;) The economic implications are very real. I wonder what the rent in Hoboken would be, if it was acceptable for New Yorkers to live there. I bet I couldn’t afford it…”
—Pascal Wallisch, Ph.D. in Psychology, University of Chicago, current NYU post-doc, on the Hoboken vs. Brooklyn debate.
Towards A Precise Definition Of “Hipster” →
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ATTN: MUSIC BLOGOSPHERE. The next time someone mentions that the term “hipster” is meaningless, doesn’t exist, is a social construct, etc., etc, please refer them to this blog post….
