Are you a Hipster, Artster, Douchebag or Poser?

Sitting in Starbucks this evening, I was having an intellectual-type conversation with a good friend of mine. A frequenter of Silverlake clubs, she postulated that she might be miscatagorized as a hipster.

But there's a fine difference. Hipsterdom is a societal identifier rather than a cultural identifier. What do I mean by that?

I personally love being identified as a New York Jew. I was born and raised in New York and I'm Jewish. It's as simple as that. That's a cultural identifier. It's my honest and true culture; it's who I am.

Now, that sleeve-tattooed, parent-supported, John Lennon glasses-wearing, ironic facial haired hobbledehoy is not honest and true. He is wearing the uniform of a societal identity. He's the person who MOVES to New York from Ohio thinking "this is what I must dress like to look like a New Yorker"; when all the actual New Yorkers are just...New Yorkers wearing whatever it is they wear.

There's something inherently false about these layabouts. They dress and act a certain way because they think they have to dress and act a certain way to fit in to their society.

This doesn't stop at Hipsterdom. Take a Douchebag (all props to hotchickswithdouchebags.com):
You've got the pouty lips, bright orange out-of-the-box spray tan and the greased, spiky hair that reminds one of a certain lovable hedgehog from our collective youths.

But surely these gentlefolk were born in suburban New Jersey to affable, wealthy proctologist-types.

So what would make them want to dress like John Gotti's retarded, mayo-drinking half step cousin? They actually want to be douchebags. They want people to look at them and say "gee, that kinda-sorta looks like someone who watched an episode of the Sopranos once". They dress like that, find other brain-dead non-entities and go to parties where they take pictures with women who are paid for their ablity to stand within 5 feet of them for more than 10 seconds.

They are not who they are, they dress like who they want to be.

Douchebags and Hipsters (and douchebag hipsters) are not the end of the road; they are the beginning.
Posers: I dealt with this sort a lot in middle school; I thought I was all awesome spending the entire summer of 1993 getting into Guns N' Roses; everyone had been into them for years, so now I would finally fit in; finally be accepted!

But what happened? Everyone spent that summer trading in their bandannas and tight jeans for baggy pants, White Sox hats, and blue flannel coats with three buttons buttoned.

These people self-identify with people who wouldn't be caught dead in the same vacuous backcountry strip mall as them. "Oh, I'm from Indiana. WEST SIDE, BITCHES!" No, "MID-WEST BITCHES!". Wait, it's not cool to say that? You can't self-identify with...yourself? So you need to create an identity that's not yours...to self identify with?

This is the crux of the biscuit. People hate who they are or where they're from so they need to create a new brand. "Oh, daddy fucking yells at me in Ohio, so now I'm Silverlake tattooed synth pop player!"

"Daddy can't yell at me anymore, because I'm not me anymore!"

Last one! The Wes Anderson Artster (I'll copyright that fucker):

Uncomfortably tight blazer and thick glasses along with rockstar haircut? Do lots of coke and into the writings of Sarte and the films of Fellini? You're an Artster, fucker.

Is that who you are or do you just enjoy having people see you on the street; identifying you as "an artist of some type"?...well, here's news for you; it gets REALLY FUCKING HARD after film school. You might think you're hot shit, but when your 12 minute, $75,000 epic parable about the "modern condition" plays three film festivals, you're going to have to actually get a job. Save the blazer for when you're sweeping up at Insomnia, the 24-hour hot cookie store.

So if you're looking into the mirror, having an existential moment, thinking "maybe I'm just a [hipster] [douchebag] [poser] [artster]", ask yourself one question; "am I me?". If your answer is YES, than you're just a dude who's trying to live his life.

Goodbye Cruel World

Rachel Slotberg came out of her depression just in time to get depressed again.

This time it was different, however. She was usually just morbidly depressed, but now she was in a macabre-like gloom. The cloud over her head was a darker gray; her poetry began to use phrases like "unending punishment of being alive in a Godless, pain-filled universe" instead of the usual "me sad!".

She hadn't gotten out of bed for three weeks and her boyfriend, Steven Eydie, was beginning to grow concerned. She hadn't been happy since March 12th, 2008, which, coincidentally, was the day after their first date. Come to think of it, she was pretty miserable on their first date too, but who could tell? She was too busy vomiting naked on the floor of his bathroom.

"What's wrong?" He brought her favorite; a breakfast in bed of a ham and bacon omelette with a side of prosciutto. It was strange to him, because she didn't eat pork, but she asked for it everyday. Unbeknownst to him, she was playing a cruel existential game with her imaginary pig friend, Mr. Oinkers. It got brutal.

"I won't answer you unless you tell me three things wrong with my appearence." She frequently wouldn't answer a question unless insulted beforehand.

"Oh right, sorry; your breath smells like garlic and salty vagina, your face is slightly bigger than it should be and your taste in clothing is clichéd and hipstery".

"Thanks", a brief, crinkly smile played about her face. "There's nothing wrong; the question you should be asking is what's right? The answer is nothing. Except the first season of 'Flight Of The Conchords'...that shit is funny".

This was too much for him; her depression made him depressed, which in turn made her more depressed, which in turn made their kitten, Floppycakes commit suicide last month by drug overdose.

Turns out you can get really fucked up by sticking catnip up your ass; but Floppycakes was a veteran and knew how much was too much. Her suicide note simply read " ", which is nothing because she was a cat and couldn't write.

Anyway, things were getting a little too much for old Steven Eydie. He didn't sign up for this. In fact the contract that he signed when they started dating only stipulated "No Anal Sex" and something about owning his "chest hair in perpetuity".

He decided it was time to have a serious conversation with Rachel.

"Rachel, I'm sick of this! If I have to masturbate in the bathroom one more time to drown out the sounds of your violent sobbing, I think I'll go crazy!"

"If you could have sex with a tranny or a gay man, which would you choose?" it was obvious to him she wasn't listening.

"I suppose if the tranny was pretty...HEY, let's stay on topic here...we need to talk about what's going on."

"Listen, let's just be honest with each other; life is meaningless. We try and try and try to find a reason; a salient significance; but in the end, fate is fallacy. We are just little unimportant nothings waiting out our lives while distracting ourselves with trifles like work, friends and money".

This got Steven mad; "this is exactly the problem. Isn't life just what you make it; you have to find meaning yourself?"

"No, it's meaningless. Things don't matter".

"What proof do you have that there's no meaning to life?"

That's when Rachel opened up her laptop and showed Steven "Star-Ving" the new webseries written and starring former "Married...with Children" star David Faustino.

After 7 minutes and 45 seconds of watching it, both Steven and Rachel agreed that life had no meaning. They were found dead three days later; "Star-Ving" episode 2, featuring Gilbert Gottfried on infinite repeat.

Star-ving Ep 2 feat Gilbert Gottfried


Their suicide note read "Nietzsche was right: 'Glance into the world just as though time were gone: and everything crooked will become straight to you'; maybe web comedy will make sense to us now. Goodbye cruel world...

5 Strange Disorders

The world is a-buzz with news of Mariana Bridi, the Brazilian Miss World contestant who passed away this week basically from an advanced case of necrosis, which is essentially a syndrome in which your skin dies, leaving your insides...out. If you feel like googling it, don't; because you'll end up with images that will sear your retinas and cause you to drink bleach to cleanse the filth.

In any case, her necrosis was a result of a rare infection. There are a lot of rare disorders, and being the morbid type I decided to do a little reading up on some of the more interesting ones.

So, here they are:

1) Foreign Accent Syndrome - This one is really weird. Due to severe brain trauma, people begin to speak in a different accent (a British person will speak with a German accent, etc.). Not only that, but they will also use phrases that someone from that culture would use (you would begin to use the word "lift" instead of elevator if you spoke with an English accent).

People who suffer from this are unaware of how they speak. Apparently, there's a part of your brain that says "I will speak this way" and when you're around a foreigner, your brain says "I won't speak that way". And if someone puts on the band Foreigner, you just cry and cover your ears.

But, if that part of your brain is destroyed, you end up talking like you're from anywhere, at any time. There's about 50 people who have suffered from this in about 65 years.

Here's a video of someone afflicted:


2) Stendhal Syndrome - This one is really strange. Have you ever gone to a museum and seen a Van Gogh or Picasso and been overtaken, almost mesmerized by its' beauty? Me too.

Have you ever been so mesmerized that you develop a rapid heartbeat, dizziness, confusion and hallucinations? If you have, then you're a victim of the Stendhal Syndrome. Also, if you have, you probably need to get out more.

OK, art is beautiful, but seriously; take a deep breath and remember that life is more beautiful than any piece of art.

Here's a clip of a no doubt hilarious movie that was made about someone with the Syndrome:



3) Argyria - OK, you're sitting on your portch, sipping some scotch, and you say to yourself; "you know what would be a good chaser? Some liquefied silver. Yum!" Then you wake up a few months later looking like this guy:
Yeah, that's right, your skin turns blue because you love the taste of that delicious alloy. Here's a lesson for ya; don't drink silver, no matter how tasty it is.

4) Morgellons - A sort of, but not really (yet) disease where patients believe that there are bugs (or parasites) crawling underneath their skin. Little fibers start to appear underneath your skin (sometimes coming up through your skin) and you get really achy.

No one has quite figured out what's going on (this is a rather recent phenomena) but scientists are divided between "this is a bunch of hooey" and "there's something spooky going on".

Here's an interview with the chief CDC person in charge of researching Morgellons:


5) Congenital insensitivity to pain with anhidrosis - This disorder makes you unable to feel heat, cold and pain. The anhidrosis part means you can't sweat. Obviously very dangerous, because pain can save you from getting really badly hurt.

I just wish they had a disorder where you couldn't feel exhausting emotional pain. Sign me up.

The True Story Behind The Earliest Known Photograph

From the diary of Nicéphore Niépce, 1825:

I love my horse, Monsieur Putain de Camion. He reminds me of my first wife, except his penis is larger.

We have a transcendent connection. When I look into his eyes, I see my own weary existential soul; an inquisitive being looking for a singular, unquestionable truth. When he looks into mine, he urinates uncontrollably.

Why is it that horses understand me, but humans don't? Why don't my constant complaining and violent mood swings endear me to people? I wish there was some sort of book that could condense my thoughts into a single page. Then people would understand me better. Of course, my face would have to be in that book.

How would one get a face into a book?

I know, I'll mix silver and chalk, expose it to the light and see what happens! I'll call it "photography" because anything with the suffix -graphy sounds really impressive. Typography (the art of writing with a lot of mistakes) is where I learned that.

And if I could get my face into this book, it shouldn't just be a picture of me. That's boring! It would have to be something exciting like me from a really high angle, so I look much thinner than I am, or something that makes me look cool, like a picture of me with an attractive woman I've met three times.

But how would people know that I'm popular in this book of face? I would have to show myself with friends. YES, "friends"! That way people who might look at my book would think that I'm cool enough to spend time with, and not an inveterate masturbator who is slowly dying inside.

But wait; I don't have any friends (except for Pierre the 'touched Belgian' who thinks I'm a Schnauzer in my mid-30s named Flopsy). I guess I'll have to take a picture with the next best thing; my horsey. At least he doesn't mind my gentle sobbing and awkward strokings. I must remember to wear my finest tri-cornered hat (or wearable Hamantashen, as I like to call it).

Then once I've put together this book of face, I must spend time decorating it with make-believe games like "throw a snowball with a hobo pirate" and then jot non-sensical notes in the margins like "just got home, now time to drink #mayo with @disappointment".

Boy, I can't wait! I'm sure my picture invention will be looked at as an artistic method to record events, not a vain way for losers to present themselves as more attractive/popular than they really are.

Underground photographs of Mr. Niépce's grave were taken in 2006. He was found to be lying on his stomach after rolling over.

Crackerbox Palace

Picture it: Cold winter night in New York City. It's 5:06AM, quickly approaching 5:07AM.

You're lonely, it's cold and the swill beer you drank 3 hours ago has rushed all your blood down to your pant region. Now all you can think about is the stomach ache from your drunken falafel misadventure and 'where's my local handjob massage parlor?'.

Oh, and you're a student at NYU.

So; what's the best way to find a "handjob massage parlor New York"?

Google it, kind sir, google it!

And guess what you find? My website. Yes, my website, where 95% of the views come from people googling "handjob massage parlor". I guess if you're looking for a handjob, a website called "crying while masturbating" might appeal to you because that's what led you to looking for a handjob in the first place.

Anyway, someone at NYU just found my site via that search on google. Sure, I had some dry spells at NYU, but the only thing I was googling at 5:06AM was "how to strangle your hipster roommate with his own ironic mustache".

What do you google at 5:07AM? Old camp friends? Naked Vagina? "Why has my life has become a string of meaningless conversations that attempt to distract me from the fact that I will inevitably die and leave behind only shame and disappointment?".

Ex-girlfriends? Ex-boyfriends? Ex-transsexuals you met at the bar that one time? Ex-lax?

Me? I just google myself. It's better than finding a massage parlor to do it for me.

Hobbledehoy

This just might be the shortest post I've ever posted.

Another stage of my creative bankruptcy? Perhaps.

I was just reading something and came across this word, and I've firmly decided that I would like to use it in a conversation in the near future. I present it to you, dear reader, as: The Coolest Word I've Newly Come Across In 2009.

Hobbledehoy:
–noun
an awkward, ungainly youth.

I'm not the sort of layabout hobbledehoy you'd expect to find drinking a PBR at Barcade.

Use it wisely, my dear friends.

Top 5 Reasons I'm Incapible of Finishing That Script (you know the one)

1) Because it's so good, it doesn't need to be "finished" or in "acceptable shape to show someone".
2) Because I'm a Misunderstood Genius who won't be fully appreciated until my death. Better kill myself fast!
3) Because I'm too busy with...that thing that I was doing.
4) Because I'm all set for a Career Of Massive Disappointment And Unmitigated Failure. Why screw with fate?
5) Because I don't have to worry about Anything! Barack'll fix it!

The 9 Stages of Drunkness, as told by Facebook Pictures

STAGE 1: "Hey, I'm at a bar with friends. This will be fun. Maybe I'll get a drink"







STAGE 2: "Well, I've got that drink now, now it's time for small talk and posed pictures!"







STAGE 3: "Oh hey, more people came! I'll have to up my drinking to tolerate their company!"




STAGE 4: "Now I must sit to concentrate on drinking. Let this beer represent my happiness; transient, but immediately invigorating. I'm completely oblivious that those around me are sad and bitter!"




STAGE 5: " 'Pointing at nothing' stage; My favorite! Am I pointing at you or the last vestige of my dignity running out the door? Either way, it's pure excitement! Let me buy drinks for people even though I barely know them/they have more money than me!"







STAGE 6: "Oh boy, 'contemplation stage': should I keep drinking to kill the pain, or kill the pain with drinks? It's a Catch-22 of personality flaws!"




STAGE 7: "Boy, I love the 'slouching and shoegazing' stage; I can't look at you in the eye: but I'm telling you my innermost secrets and desires! Boy, I'll certainly be neurotic that I revealed too much in the morning!"





STAGE 8: "Now let's touch each other weirdly/give man-ssages while making hilarious faces! Let's talk about how we never see each other and get names to add to our Facebook."






*FINAL* STAGE 9: "Let all heterosexual men unite in highly effeminate bonding and uncomfortable closeness. No worries, it will be forgotten by morn!"


FINAL NOTE: I love everyone in these photographs, and putting them up is to merely illustrate my own feelings about drinking and getting drunk.

Sneak Peek at Obama's Inaugural Address

As over 2 million rabid fans descend on Washington, DC this weekend to hear Barack Obama, we here at Crying While Masturbating are lucky enough to have gotten hold of the full text of his address.

Below is the first five minutes:

"My Fellow Americans, this is our time. A time for peace and unity; a time where we show the profound strength of the American people; a time to define change not just as a slogan or a bumper sticker, but as a tangible call to arms. America; this is your time; this is our time, a time when we are called to a unique and singular duty: to make our great country great again. A time when we restore the greatness of the three simple words: 'I am American'.

America; can we do this? (pause for crowd: "Yes We Can")

Yes we can.

America; can we be great again? (pause for crowd: "Yes We Can")

Yes we can.

America; can we rid this country of the filth that has stained it for years? (pause for crowd: "Yes We Can")

Yes we can.

America; can we detain all Jews in work camps and strip even their children of basic human rights? (pause for crowd: "Yes We Can")

Yes we can.

America; will we brutally and illegally quell the decent of all those who oppose us? (pause for crowd: "Yes We Can")

Yes we can.

(pause briefly as police disperse into crowd and forcibly remove all Jews, homosexuals, gypsies, and all those who oppose).

Yes we can!"

A controversial move, for sure, but Obama is pragmatic; he knows that his rabid base will say "yes we can" if asked a question filled with soaring rhetoric.

As a Jewish Obama supporter that spent time canvassing for him, giving money to his cause, and generally holding his name sacred for the past 18 months, I'm definitely there. Now, the soaring rhetoric will be nice, but can we actually accomplish something? This country is currently lying next to last night's Mexican in the filthiest rest-stop bog on the north east corridor and it needs more than a youtube, "I feel your pain" president.

It needs someone who can Fix It.

You're such a cut up

Back in college, for about a minute and a half, I was really in to the literary "cut-up" method, practiced by such authors as William S Burroughs.

The method is really quite interesting, at least to me (that's not saying much; I think NPR is interesting); you write perfectly good prose, then randomly cut and paste words and phrases around until you get something you like.

Since Burroughs and his contemporaries used typewriters, they were literally cutting and pasting words on a piece of paper; ransom note style.

Sometimes you end up with words that paint a beautiful abstract painting, and sometimes you get an indecipherable mess; but it's generally interesting. A sometimes frustrating read (SEE: "Naked Lunch"), but interesting nonetheless.

Anyway, I mention this because I was going through some old files on my computer and remembered that I used to write, then cut-up, hiakus when I was trying to get myself into the mindset of writing a script.

Here are some I put together; I preferred a more random way of cutting; without much thought put into which lines I placed where; Too much thought and you lose the spontaneity of it. For this, I would close my eyes, pick a line, then without looking, paste it. The only thing I tried to keep a mind on was the haiku structure.

ORIGINALS:

quiet confusion
for some it clogs up the mind
for me, clarity

time like ticking clocks
words are wordless afterthoughts
circling above

smile like curves of lips
expressionless desire
until teeth are chipped

closing eyes rolled tight
desire fades into the night
silhouetted spite.


CUT UPS:

for me, clarity
words are wordless afterthoughts
smile like curves of lips

until teeth are chipped
expressionless desire
quiet confusion

circling above
desire fades into the night
time like ticking clocks

closing eyes rolled tight
for some it clears up the mind
silhouetted spite.


Kinda interesting. Something I might want to return to one day. It's a very web2.0 thing to do. I wonder if there's an iPhone app for it? Maybe a youtube plug in to cut-up different vloggers' videos.

Now we're talking masterpieces of Western culture.

Buh?

If you're anything like me (hopefully not, because per Darwin's 'only the strong survive' theory of evolution; my incompetent, neurosis-ridden DNA should be a sparse rarity), then you say to yourself 'what is that strange itch in my pants area'?

After 8 hours of uncontrollable sobbing and 7 hours of sobbing uncontrollably, you indubitably turn your attention to the watching of online stuff.

Then, after viewing the crud-like crapfilled putrid nonsense, you turn it off. You wonder: "I've been steadily employed making web content for 3 years now and I've yet to figure out why people watch most of this stuff. Show me someone who watches vlogs and I'll show you an inveterate pervert who jerks off to fully clothed semi-attractive women talking into a webcam*."

Look at the most-viewed videos on youtube today; aside from several videos from the vacuous-fest also known as the "Golden Globes" (gee, nothing like an awards show for narcissistic multi-millionaires! let's give them more stuff), we've got really, really terrible videos of girls looking into cameras, "unproduced" vlogs from celebrities or politicians (they just "grabbed a camera and shot themselves being real"), sporting event clips and one "celebrity comedian" sketch.

Now, far be it from me to judge other content, because I know mine is mostly crap, but wasn't there a time when online content was richer, more varied? When creativity ran free? When people pushed the limits of what they could do in a little 360X240 box? When there were imaginative, interactive videos that took full advantage of a boundless, exciting new media?

Oh, there wasn't a time like that? My bad.

Someone please explain to me why this video was almost five million views? PLEASE!


late night addition:
In a further "buh?" moment, I give you this quote from a cnet article I was just reading.

"Most_uniQue" said he used Crackulous, "one-tap" cracking software developed by Hackulous, to crack the app. After cracking 35 apps, he is retiring, he told Bossert in their surprisingly friendly e-mail exchange.

I mean, just the mere fact that this sentence is in a news report makes me want to vomit from my eyes while clumsily shaving my chest hair with a rusty slice of glass.


*Of course the kind people who watch Upright Citizen's Brigade sketches, Zappos commercials, Thrive webspots, Twitter Music Videos, FrisbeesandFlipflops, and whatever else I've worked on in the last 8 months are totally exempt.

Spoke Of A Wheel Whirled

I'm 28 and most people older than me have said:

"I wish I was 28 again. It's all downhill from there".

Which leaves me 356 days before my life inexorably spirals into some sort of Kafkaesque abyss.

I'm unsatisfied and everyone I know is unsatisfied.

We set unrealistic goals for ourselves because our generation is both blindly hedonistic and brain-numblingly lazy; and the only way to actually fulfill all you set out to accomplish is to fight the urge to settle with the mundane; fight the rot that sets in when you find a groove.

We settle for 50% because 50% and complacent is easier that 100% and painful.

Life is full of annoyingly distressing decisions; easy road and leg-stretching relaxation on the couch watching "Curb Your Enthusiasm", or difficult road and canceling cable because you can't afford it.

For example, last year I was offered a six figure job heading up production at a web start-up. I hemmed and hawed for about two weeks and eventually turned it down. I knew that the hours would have been prohibitive, stress high and personal satisfaction nil. I hemmed and hawed for so long because I knew that job could lead to other six figure jobs heading up production for other web sites; but that wasn't what I wanted to do.

In any case, I made the hard decision to turn down that job and, I think, in the end it was probably the right move. For all the stock options and personal power, I think the idea that I'd be doing something I really didn't want to be doing for a living is too much of a downer.

Of course, now that I have a little more free time than I would have, the real challenge is to sit down at my Mac and write. A friend told me recently that he has the following schedule:

7:30-9:30 Running
10-7 Work at Production Office
7:30-11:30 Write Scripts with Writing Partner

Now my schedule is a tad different:

11ish: wake up
sometime before 6pm: stare at my computer, pray to the flying speghetti monster that I can accomplish something
6pm-10pm: "socialize", which in this case, means "playing with my rabbit"
10pm-1pm: google "cute puppies" and "mudflaps", drink whiskey

But the hypothetical situation is set; I'm 28; obviously my last year that I could ever accomplish anything, it's a new year; so there's 11 and 1/2 whole months of saying "at least it's not 2010", and I'm relatively unencumbered with burdensome tasks.

So the time is right to actually accomplish something this year. Not "lose 10 pounds" accomplish, which, although nice, isn't really setting the bar high enough. Don't get me wrong, the gym is going to be a crowded mess for the next three weeks (before all the fatties go back to Häagen-Dazs), but I'm looking for something that's more self-satisfying then "looking good in my Facebook profile".

We're all too concerned about the little things (and this micro-celebrity youtube, facebook, vlog world certainly isn't helping)...

...sometimes it is good to take a step back and say to yourself; do I give a shit about what's going on at Facebook today? Do I really need to worry about work after I get home?

It's time for me and you to stop counting virtual friends and worrying about the guy at work who isn't responding to my emails. It's time for me and you to do something we're proud of.

That or download porn. Either way, it's better then having cable.

If you feel like writing a comment, virtual reader, please tell me what you plan to do this new year...

Genetic Engineering

"You've become to complacent with complacency," she mumbled.
"That makes no sense", I said. "I don't even understand what that sentence means".

I reached into the refrigerator to grab some clean underwear.

"I mean, complacent? How am I complacent?" After putting on the underwear, I walked slowly over to my couch, curled up in a ball, and began to count the days until my death.

"Remember when we were 22? Remember when we both wanted to be something?"
"Well, I'm something." This is where I scoop up an entire container of hummus with a piece of pita and eat it in two quick bites.
"Each day is a smaller percentage of our lives and therefore goes faster then the day before; which basically means that each day we live is the shortest day of our lives. We're spiraling towards death and not making the most of what we have...you know?"

I really have nothing to add to this sketch of a doodle of a draft. I guess it popped into my mind after having dinner with two old friends tonight. One, I've known for 15 years, the other for 10.

The one I've known for 15 is a talented singer/songwriter with one of the most angelically pleasant voices I've ever heard. Her talents first became apparent in the summer of 1995; when, dressed up as a riot grrl (baby doll dress, smeared lipstick, etc), she performed in a series of punkish grunge bands (including one featuring yours truly).

She moved on to go to NYU with me (complete with an application essay about Courtney Love!) and continued to sing and record wonderful stuff.

She had a band for about 7 years that never really made it and they recently broke up. She told both of us at dinner that she's given up on songwriting and "just doesn't have it". I don't believe it for a second, but sometimes our actual life gets in the way of what we think life should be.

The other girl was an English major in college and used to send me these pithy, adroit short stories with all the self-deprecating, nihilistic wit that I love. She wrote comedy with the blunt straight-forwardness of a dude, but the epigrammatic reflectiveness of a woman.

Each year on her birthday, I would buy her something that would encourage her to write (nice pens, leather bound journals, etc), and it was her dream to become a novelist.

Needless to say, she's writes for a magazine (and successful), but it's not what she wants to be doing. At dinner, she helplessly relayed her idle reveries of quitting her job; but she had no follow up. She didn't say "I want to quit to write" she said "I want to quit".

I suppose no one wants to work, but you shouldn't want to work for a reason, not just because working is soul suckingly vapid.

They both seemed miserably content and I can understand. It's a new year, and while Christmas is all about helping others (or should be), this time of year is about being selfish and setting personal goals which you will never keep (and never have the right to believe you will actually keep).

You wonder where the year went and you wonder why you didn't accomplish all you set out to accomplish when it started.

So, you set the same goals you set every year, fall woefully short; rinse, repeat.

My goal this year is to set unattainable goals and give up on them after the third week in January. At least that's a goal I can accomplish.

Here's a great song for the new year. Listen and enjoy...

Music Playlist at MixPod.com

That's Not My Name

I sat in a damp, uncompromisingly loud room filled with late 20's-ish hipsters. I felt disconnected, anxious and judgmental.

Why do people try so hard to look like they aren't trying so hard? Why do people wear a uniform to announce what social stratum they are in? Why must we identify in groups rather than as individuals?

Why was everyone in the room wearing the same pair of glasses I was?

Maybe, to an outsider I was the faux uber-cool wannabe. Maybe it's not the identity, but the identifier? People who judge create groups of judged so they can scorn them.

Maybe hipsters aren't vacuous layabouts sucking their parents money dry while contributing nothing to society; maybe they're just misunderstood, thoughtful creatures who happen to have the same pair of glasses that I have.

I almost convince myself that, but then I see people who look like this:
Far be it from me to judge someone. I am generally regarded as a social pariah by social pariahs, and my hygiene has been colorfully referred to as "rampantly disgusting" by many a-hot bit of totty. That said, in the next few paragraphs, I'll be judging people.

A Hipster (correct me if I'm wrong) is supposed to be some shoe-gazing pensive artist-type with a penchants for wincing; so since when did they become bullies?

I can give you a few bizarre examples of Hipster Hate (or, as I creatively refer to it, HH). I guess I don't know the secret hipster handshake, because I have been a victim of it more than once.

INT. PPOT SMOKE INFESTED BEDROOM AT A PARTY - NIGHT

MATT walks in and sees:

FEMALE HIPSTER (26), angular haircut, ridiculous amounts of beads around neck, clanky multicolored bracelets around arm.
MALE HIPSTER (28), tall, sickly skinny, ironically worn button down shirt and tie and off-green, not-exactly-tribal "band" tattoo around arm.

Matt: Oh, hey, just a' gettin my coat.
Female: Do you have coke?
Matt: Coat...coat.
Male: But do you have any coke?
Matt: No, I'm getting my coat.
Female: Is it a black one?
Male: Yeah, you seem like you'd wear black.

They laugh inanely.

Matt: Actually, it's sort of navy blueish.

Matt grabs his coat and begins to put it on.

Male: That's black, dude. "Mr. Black".
Female: Mr. Fucking Black!
Matt: OK, you two have a great night!
Male: If you see any coke, send it here!
Female: Coke!

They laugh hysterically.

Wow! The Coke/Coat pun sure had legs! I'm surprised George S Kaufman didn't include it in any of his Marx Brothers scripts. It's a shame that that hilarious verbal gem has been going unused for thousands of years when it could have been splitting sides from China to the Carolinas. The SHAME!

Here's my next example. It's exemplary.

INT. SILVERLAKE BAR - NIGHT.

MATT sips on a Blue Moon while humming along with "That's Not My Name" by the Ting Tings, which is playing on the jukebox.

A pale, slightly overweight Black-haired HIPSTER GIRL (24), looks at him, suspiciously. She's wearing a garishly striped sweater, and a neon scarf wrapped around her neck, even though it's 90 degrees out.

Hipster: Do you like the Ting Tings?
Matt: They're OK.
Hipster: What's your favorite Ting Tings song?
Matt: I guess "That's Not My Name", but I don't really know any other of their...
Hipster: "That's Not My Name"? Seriously? That's so commercial. Are you only into singles or something?
Matt: No, I just don't know any of their other songs...
Hipster: Oh whatever, I bet your favorite Radiohead song is "Creep" or something poserish like that.
Matt: I don't even like Radiohead all that much.

She rolls her eyes and walks away.

I guess I didn't pass the Hipster "Smell Test", which, based on my educated guess, is a rancid mixture of PBR, vegenaise and narcissism.

For a final word, let me pass along a friendly reader email that I got the other day:

I actually found you because I went on google and typed in

"why do young hipsters sleep on mattresses without bedframes?"


and yours was the first result to pop up. Brilliant : ) I posed this question after going home w/ a young hipster on NYE, and thinking to myself, being that his mother pays for his apartment off of 14th street in Manhattan, he should have proper furniture. No. Mattress on the floor like all the past boyfriends. WTF!?! Whhhhyyyyy??? Is it a familiarity thing? Is it because that's what they are used too? Or is it a health thing, I heard the Japanese sleep on the floor on bamboo mats.

However, I don't REALLY think that's the reason. It's a weird phenomenon. I guess you are right, it gives them hipster cred. Add to bat, he had the audacity to make out with me with those CRAZY glasses on...until I pointed it out to him. The nerve, lure me in w/ the crazy glasses, but that's enough : )

KUDOS MY FRIEND,
BB

Well, BB, keep at it and stop making out with guys in crazy hipster glasses; it's a bad habit, because you might end up with someone like me, and that will only and in tears or extreme boredom. Or both.

Big Naked Germans

Well, I wrote this in 2001, so don't expect much artistic-merit wise, but it's still a good story. I believe I wrote it for a verbal presentation in a class, so it was written to be read out loud.

Well, I’m a racist. No, not against Blacks or Mexicans, I have too much guilt for that. There is one group of people who really piss me off, and I can safely say I hate just about every single last fucking one of them: Germans. Even worse, vacationing Germans. Allow me to elaborate:

OK, so I went to England two years ago on this spring break trip with three friends at college. We, being poor and retarded, decided to save our money and invest in a 12 person room at a hostel.

Now, there isn’t anything inherently wrong with this, they were co-ed, so the chance of foreign sex was high. I mean, there isn’t really anything better then having sex with someone who doesn’t speak English, because I don’t have to say things like “that’s never happened before”, “I swear I had a condom on when we started” or “those are just big pimples” but that’s besides the point.

For the first few nights, everything was going pretty well, we saw the best that London had to offer: Photos at Big Ben, Service at Westminster Abbey, Deep Sobbing at the Doctor Who Store. And we slept relatively well with our 8 strangers/roommates...

But then: The German National Rowing Team came (I'm serious). It was like a flash: bam! One night we came back and they basically squatted the entire 12 bed room: they stole two of my friends' beds, who were now forced to sleep on the floor.

We tried to talk to the management, but the only guy there was Swedish, and really, what was he going to do, make cheese, go skiing? No, obviously, he remained neutral and refused to confront the ever-approaching German attack. I was lucky enough to lay a large bag on my bed, so they couldn’t take my space. But they were getting closer.

Anyways, it had been a long day and we had to get up at 6 to catch a plane back to the USA. Now, despite a checkered past between my people and theirs, I was willing to give them a shot. I was wrong. The moment I lay in bed and put on my headphones I heard a faint feminine cry:

“oh, shvitza, shvitza!!!”

I looked over to my friend's bunk bed and what should I see but a large-breasted German woman bouncing up and down moaning sweet shvitza’s in one of the rowing team member’s ears. And I do mean member. She was definitely having a go at it, bouncing powerfully off his hips while he was like a robot or a Kraftwork song (I do the robot)

I am German Sex Manbot.

I looked down to observe my roommate, who was lying on the bottom bunk, only to see him tearing and shaking much like an abused puppy. I knew I had to say something. My people had held back in the past and looked what happened to them. I was envisioning being tattooed, beaten and forced to listen to techno while separated from my children.

No, I had to stand up for myself and my people. So I made a loud COUGHING sound. Yes, a cough; the universal sign of "stop you bastards, I can hear you". No language barrier could prevent this message coming through.

Well I was wrong. It just got louder.

"Shvitza! Shvitza!"

Ever rapidly!

"Shvitza! Shvitza!"

"I am German Techno Robot"

"Yes Yes!!!!"

All the while, I’m coughing louder and louder until I was choking on my own phlegm. But to no avail, for when I heard the German man say: “aveedazen” I knew it was over.

Then silence, with the exception of the quiet whimpering of my roommate. The woman jumped up out of bed, boobs and all, did a victory lap around the room and tossed a used condom into something that looked like a waste paper bag, but was actually my grandfather’s bag which contained my clothes for the next day.

As I awoke an hour later, a ballpark frank sized German shlong was in my face. Apparently Germans aren’t modest, which I kind of all ready knew, and one of them was changing in front of me. Despite humiliation and the dirtying of my clothes and heritage, I still had piece of mind, and pride, for when they went to breakfast, I peed in one of their suit cases.

That’s why I hate Germans.

it's all true! except me enacting any sort of revenge. I'm a wimp!