Hipster FAQ

Much has been written on this blog, and every other one on the interweb, about hipsters. You'd think that there would be nothing left to talk about. But no. The notion of "The Hipster" is an ever changing, mutating and growing phenomenon that often latches itself onto stair-wells and ceilings, dripping caustic ooze onto unsuspecting passer-by, like The Blob (not the original Blob, but the remake with Kevin Dillon).  So with that said, I offer the definitive (for now) Hipster FAQ.

Oh my GOD! The Hipsters are coming, and they haven't had brunch yet!

Q: What is the difference between a Hipster and a Freak?

A: Good question. Because there actually is one, but it is sometimes hard to spot. Hipsters are people who try to be different in a way that is just like everyone else in their gentrified neighborhood. Freaks are people who are different because they are different...and usually can't afford to live in gentrified neighborhoods, for that matter. Let me put it this way: if you like wearing and doing stuff that will get your exposed butt kicked out of all but our country's least respectable Applebee's* because no one liked you in high school--you are a freak. But if you just want people to think that no one liked you in high school, welcome to Hipster City, population: you. To make it even easier: if you look like Bootsy Collins, you are a freak. If you look like Jeff Goldblum, you are a hipster. If you look like Nicki Minaj or Lady Gaga, you are a freak. If you look like Lisa Loeb or Lisa Bonet...you are a hipster.

More like this?

Or more like this?

Q: Oh god! I think I might have accidentally engaged in a conversation with a Hipster. What do I do? 

A: Okay, calm down. It might not actually be a hipster. You might just be talking to a barista. Look at his or her hand. Is it holding your coffee? Just take it and back away...slowly. If not, touch your ears. Are they bleeding because The Possible Hipster won't shut up about composting toilets, all the places he's seen a real Banksy and how The Food Network keeps ruining all his favorite eateries and drinkeries? You are talking to a hipster. Don't panic.  That's the worst thing you could do. Panic is like offal ice cream to them...they love it. Just yell the word bacon three times, confess that you've always really liked The Shins, but now you think they've sold out, and scream, "I really want to try that raw diet, but I love bacon too much!" Then  run, don't walk, to the nearest coffee shop that doesn't brew by the cup. A hipster will never follow you there.

The natural enemy of the hipster.

Q: This is embarrassing. I think I might be a hipster. Am I?

A: Relax. So what? So you've been to a few Modest Mouse shows--it doesn't mean you're a hipster. It means you have bad taste in music. The very fact that you are embarrassed makes me suspect that you are not a Hipster. I know it sounds strange, but Hipsters are actually proud of their Hipster status. (Especially after Bon Iver won the Grammy and gave the whole movement the one thing they love to pretend they don't want: mainstream cred.) If you're still worried, here are a few questions to ask yourself. Do you look like a member of The Specials? If yes, you are either a hipster, or you are in that band The Specials and should probably be getting ready for your reunion tour. Oh, and this is definitive Do you drink PBR? Then you are a hipster.

A message to you, hipster.

Q: I drink PBR, but I am not a hipster.

A: That is not a question, but the answer is yes, yes you are.

Q: No, I'm not.

A: Again, not a question, but yes, you are. To paraphrase Louis Gosset Jr. in An Officer and a Gentleman, "The only people who drink PBR are hipsters and people living on a deserted island who have no other choice, and I don't see a coconut bra** on your sun-burnt boobs (or moobs), so you must be a hipster."

Is that a Pabst Blue Ribbon you're drinking, recruit?

*You of course would never, ever want to go inside that Applebee's. It's filled with freaks and hipsters.

** My apologies to deserted-island dwellers who do not wear coconut bras, but are reading this blog on a coconut-based laptop.

War on Feminism: Lost. Stop. Send reinforcements. Stop. And Betty White. Stop.

Face it, ladies. There has been a war waged on feminism since long before Newt Gingrich suggested that you couldn't (or was it shouldn't) change a tampon in a foxhole. It was completely lost on July 22, 2010 when a judge in St Louis said that if you are drunk and have stupid friends, you can legally slip and fall into a nationally advertised soft-core porn video and you don't even have to sign the consent form. Yeah, I think we always knew that the fatal blow to feminism would be dealt by those scum slurpers over at Girls Gone Wild, but who knew a judge and jury would assist them?  


So, when sexist stuff happens, I'm not surprised. I'm pissed, but not surprised. When asked by the NY Times why there aren't more female comedians on The David Letterman show, Letterman booker, Eddie Brill, said, “There are a lot less female comics who are authentic. I see a lot of female comics who, to please an audience, will act like men.” Hilarious. Even funnier is in the comments section of the Mirth Magazine article about it , Eddie, in trying to defend himself by calling comedian Amy Schumer "that comedian's girlfriend." Ha ha ha! He can't even stop being a sexist dick to explain that he isn't a sexist dick. His apology is even funnier...but not funny enough to quote here. 


Nope, instead I think I'll just say Happy Birthday to a woman who is a thousand times funnier that Eddie Brill could ever be. Proof:

And now a word from our sponsor...

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Hey Kids!

Did your parents give you a lollipop infected with Chicken Pox and other stuff (possibly Hep C, definitely Cooties)? Are you in a never-ending hell of calamine lotion and oatmeal baths? Do you have thousands of itchy red bumps covering your entire body, even your tushie and wing wing, but you parents have the nerve to tell you not to scratch?! Did you spike a fever so high, it melted part of your brain, and now you've changed your dream school from Harvard to "something with air-conditioning or air-conditioning repair"? Well get back at them South Park style with the new, improved

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Oh, and no, don't feel bad. Did you know that the CDC says that between 100 and 150 people die as a result of Chicken Pox every year? Not a big risk, but your dumbass parents happily took it just so they could look cool at their All-Natural Holistic Mommy Group. Oh, you didn't think they did it for you, did you? You're covered head to toe in calamine lotion, bits of oatmeal and scabs. You look like pink Swamp Thing. Come on, get real kid!

*Actual toothbrushes probably do not come from an adorable old-timey prostitute like the one pictured. In reality, they most likely brushed the nubs in this gal's nob hole:

Eight Parenting Styles More Annoying Than Attachment Parenting

Is this you?

Oh yeah. Ha ha ha! Yuk it up. Everyone loves to make fun of attachment parents since Maggie Gyllenhaal's brilliantly succinct one-sentence anti-stroller rant in Away We Go, but the truth is that all parents (myself included) are annoying. Deal with it, breeders. All of us fall into at least one of the following parenting styles, and they're all annoying.

Helicopter Parents

Yes. I know the fire is hot.

Everyone calls them Helicopter Parents, but I call them Navi Parents after that little fairy in the video game, Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, who follows Link around everywhere he goes and says, "hey listen!". I hear you people at the playground all the time saying, "Hey listen! That slide is wet!" or "Hey listen! I need you to put on a sweater!" or "Hey Listen! Don't play in the sand. It's dirty" and I want to say, "Hey listen! The kid is going down a freaking slide, it's not like she's fighting Ganon. Back off a little." Your exact opposite is....

Predator Parents

No one expects Predator Mom!

No one knows whose kid that is until you suddenly emerge from the foliage just as the little bugger is about to fall off the monkey bars. I know this style is annoying because I am a Predator Mom, and I've startled a few nannies in my time by emerging from the dark corners of the playground. Sorry, unsuspecting nannies! Similar to this style is....

Mick from Rocky Parents

A little Bactine will take care of that. 

So what you fell off your bike and opened up a gash from your eyebrow to your elbow. So what you just got pushed off a baby swing by a two-year old on steroids...GET BACK IN THERE, ROCK! Your exact opposite is....

Kid in a Bubble Parents

You know who you are. You don't let the kid leave the house unless wrapped in bubble wrap--preferably spf 100 non-toxic, carcinogen-free plastic. Although I have morphed into a Mick mom, I must admit that before the age of 12 months, I was a Kid in a Bubble parent. Here is a shot of my 11 month going on a walk for the first time with someone who was not me or my husband: her grandpas. 

Please note: There is a stocked diaper bag, a blanket and a wind screen on the stroller on what appears to be beautiful day. Also, I somehow felt that she needed both of them--like just one would surely screw things up. Also, right after I took this picture, I instructed both of these seemingly grown men on how to cross the street. I'm not proud of it.

Tiger Parents

If you fail, I will claw your furry little ass.

If your kid has soccer practice on Mondays, violin lessons on Wednesdays and hates soccer and the violin...you are a Tiger Parent. Deal with it. Your exact opposite is....

Hippie Parents

Sure they're having fun. But none of these purple flower children are going to Harvard.

They've never gone to a real school, or worn socks, or eaten refined sugar or met a puppet that wasn't homemade or arty. And vaccinations? Forget about it. Is this the right way to raise kids? Who knows, but one thing for sure: all these kids are going to grow up absolutely hating carob. And then there are...

Bad Seed Parents

I have the prettiest mother. Everyone thinks so. Huh? What dead handyman?

Oh no! Not your precious little darling. Sure he just roundhouse-kicked a toddler off the merry-go-round, but you're sure that that baby provoked your perfect little angel. Your child will probably end up murdering someone with a pair of tap shoes. Deal with it. Your exact opposite is....

Parent Dearests

How many times do I have to tell you! No Hello Kitty dresses in the toilet!

If someone else's kid kicks yours off the merry-go-round, you wonder what your little bastard did to deserve it. You somehow find a way to blame all your problems on the fact that your kid can't stop putting her Hello Kitty dresses on wire hangers. You should just chill and be glad she doesn't toss them on the floor, or in the toilet, or out the window.

What's your style? If you're like me, you're a little bit of all eight, which is good because, when it comes to parenting, if you're not annoying somebody, you're not doing it right. Deal with it, non-breeders.

Ophiuchus July Horoscope

Hey Zombie Slayers,

Whew. July is going to be one crazy month. The moon is moving voraciously into Uranus so, needless to say, money will be a bit tight. To save cash, you will stop spending money on expensive salon treatments. Your hair will frizz and your mustache will grow back. Hipsters will throw improvised gangish signs at you and ask you if Spoon is still touring. Tourists will stop you on the street to take pictures with you because they think you are 70s folk singer, Jim Croce. 

At this point you will lose it and start yelling that Jim Croce has been dead for years and don't you stupid tourists know anything? The hipsters start yelling "Yo Crotch-ey" at you. Then they take the dimes out of their penny loafers (because quarters would be too ironic and pennies wouldn't be ironic enough, like duh) and start throwing them at your eyes and neck. The tourists hold up real money and ask you to sing Operator (That's Not the Way it Feels). You do a quick count and see that there's just enough folding cash for a blow-out and a lip wax—tip too if you can turn in those dimes.

You decide to go for it. One of the hipsters offers to back you up on guitar and sing harmonies on the chorus because he was totally in a so-ironic-it-is-not-ironic Jim Croce cover band for about a week. You give it your all, but the tourists keep interrupting you to ask where they can find a good place to buy cheap t-shirts. Then the hipsters keep asking stupid questions because they were all born in the 80s, even your guitar player. You have to stop every few lines and say stuff like, “an operator is a lady who worked for the phone company” and “yes, it was always a lady” and “the phone company is too hard to explain” and “a match-book is something we used before iPhones to write numbers on with this thing called a pen” and “a pen is too hard to explain” and “I don’t know who Ray is and yes he is a total punk ass” and “see there used to be this thing called a phone booth and phone calls cost one dime” and “dimes are those round things that you tried to blind me with earlier” .

Somehow, even though this is an improbable future situation dictated by a bunch of stars that look like Bruce Campbell, the whole thing was impossibly caught on tape (with your comments edited out for time and profanity). Enjoy:

                                                                             

Your lucky numbers are 5, 7 and bored face emoticon.

Happy Father's Day, You Big Softies.

Yesterday, my five-year old spent part of the afternoon in Clock Town, a fictional village in Nintendo's classic game Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask. She mostly just ran around and hit stuff with her sword: doors, trees, villagers. It made me realize two things. One, I should have taken her to the playground. Two, I made the right decision in naming her Zelda.  We had been nervous about the name, as it outed us as the giant video-game dorks that we really are (and is there really anything wrong with being outed as who you are?), but it soon proved to be a crowd pleaser. Immediately, really. When we first took her to the NICU, her nurse was waiting for us, excited to meet her first Zelda.

We had told the nurse, as we tell everyone, that when we saw her tiny Betty-Boop chin, we just had to give her a 20s-style name. And for 20s-style names, we could only think of Daisy and Zelda. Being gamers we, of course, could never give our beautiful daughter the name Daisy. (It's hard to explain.) So we owned our dorkitude and gave her the name that connotes at once a beloved video game franchise and a flapper who died in the crazy house. With no regrets.

However, after learning that her cleft-palate and small chin and short tongue were all part of a birth *blergh* defect called Pierre Robin Sequence (pronounced Pee-air Roh-ban. It's French, bitches.), I was slightly bummed to know that her vintage look was not handed down from me, or even my husband, but was due to the fact that her embryonic self had gotten all comfy in the womb, with her chin tucked onto her chest and her tongue on the roof of her mouth. But only slightly. I had enough to worry about what with finding a cleft-palate bottle that would keep the baby fed and happy, not cause gas and could not be used as a formula squirt gun by said baby (as Meatloaf once eloquently, and possibly drunkenly, said, two out of three ain't bad).

And it seemed like as soon as she had graduated from formula to pizza, we had a whole other problem to worry about: speech. Since before she began to speak, she's had speech therapists. (She had more speech therapists than she had bottles, and she had a lot of bottles.) None of them, not even the cranio-facial team that managed to keep her fed and breathing (with the help of an oxygen tank that looked more like it belonged between Slim Picken's legs than next to the crib), had any idea why her speech  was so *blergh* BAD. And now we need to worry about how long into the grammar school experience kids will be pointing at her and saying, "She sounds like she speaks Japanese."

We're hoping before second grade (or the age when all our adorable little sweeties turn into tortuous little monsters), but at our last visit to the Cranio-Facial clinic (after yet another head X-Ray, that Zelda decided to color pink because she must have pink bones) our hopes were tempered when they told us that the problem would either be solved with therapy or surgery, but they didn't know which and we should "hang in there". And like the proverbial kitten in the tree, that's what we've been doing.

The next day I came home from pre-k drop off to find my husband weepy and emotional. Big, manly tears of masculinity, I'm sure. I immediately blamed Facebook. Rightly so. He informed me that he had been crying for ten minutes straight about this video:

Yep. Big manly tears. I even shed a couple myself. A stupid video game commercial, yes but one that shows that Robin's (pronounced Raw-bin, it's American byatches) little baby Zelda (and proof of his own dorkitude) has grown into a beautiful young woman and even more beautifully into her name.

"Well this will cheer you up," I said. "Zelda took the pictures of her cleft and her head X-Ray to pre-school today. She asked her new speech therapist to help her tell everyone about how she was born with a cleft palate and how she couldn't suck when she was a baby and how her tongue was on the roof of her mouth when she was in my tummy."

"She's owning it," He gasped. More manly tears.

This morning, for Father's Day, even though she can't really pronounce "daddy", Zelda will be making her daddy pancakes and showing him how to play her new game: Link to the Past. There might be more manly tears.

The Problem with Kitty Cat Heaven

When Snappy was a baby, I used to carry her around in a Baby Bjorn. She slept soundly, nestled between my boobs in a brazen, SIDS-defying face-down position. I took her everywhere. I even took her with me when I did my comedy walking tours--which had us trekking from Union Square to North Beach to Chinatown and back. She always returned home from those tours well-rested and with bright, red lip prints on her head from the old women who could not resist smooching the newborn who was helping to lead the tour.

Snappy and her kissable head.

Now the conventional mom-tip wisdom at the time would have me smacking the Clinique Parisian Red right off their presumptuous mouths lest they spread their deadly germs to my fragile baby.  Thankfully for them, and for the tour company I worked for, I chose to follow my own instincts instead of the “wisdom” of the tiposphere. This attitude served me well when, at seven months, Snappy started to treat the Bjorn like her own personal bouncy house, jumping like a grasshopper from the moment she got in to the moment I kicked her happy little butt out due to the massive strain she was putting on my upper back. The poor thing, life was just too exciting to experience sitting still.

If I’d been a devotee of the Attachment School of parenting, I would’ve had to get on the message boards and ask everyone how to stop my baby from jumping in the Bjorn, and everyone would tell me that their baby never jumped in the Bjorn and was I sure I breastfed in public places enough? And then I would end up staying in the Family Bed until the kid was old enough to walk on a leash. But because I was a devotee only to my own instincts, I was able to quickly and confidently banish my little jumping bean from my bazooms and let her experience the world from the stroller. Sure, we got a wee bit of tude from the other Bjorn moms (which is my excuse for the snarky tone of this paragraph), but I solved our problem the best way I could in a way that made sense for my back and Snappy’s sense of adventure.

Still, parenting by the seat of your pants is not always easy. Recently, my nearly five-year old baby girl laid across my lap and looked up at me with big, fat tears in her sweet, blue eyes and said, “Do kids die, mom?” I was on my own. Although there were, I’m sure, volumes of clinically researched advice on how to talk to kids about death, none of these sage tomes could help me. I told her that yes, kids do die, but most of the time they didn’t because grown-ups worked so hard to keep them safe and healthy.

I would’ve immediately jumped up and run around the room, singing the Rocky Theme had she not followed up with a mournful “Am I going to die, mom?”

“Well…” Yeah? Well, Miss I-Don’t-Need-No-Parenting-Advice…well what?

“I don’t want to die, mom.”

Well there it was. She had just conjured up my own personal boogey man. She had uttered the fear that I had lived with since she was still breaking my back from the inside. The fear so painful and persistent that I would gladly give my right arm for a pill that could leave me with all my capacities intact, but would  stop my brain from worrying about the ever growing, Gorey-esque list of all the things in the world that could kill my baby: everything from aluminum poisoning to old-lady germs to zoo-animal attacks.

“Well of course you are not going to die. Death is for suckers, not you.”

(SFX.) 

Okay, I knew that was the wrong thing to say, but I also knew that this topic would be revisited at another time—hopefully when I was better prepared. And the next time I was. When my little crazy-cat-lady-in-training realized that the fact that some cats went to kitty cat heaven meant that all cats went to kitty cat heaven, even *sob* Ralph, her beloved big, fat fifteen-year-old tabby, I was ready. “I’ve got an idea, let’s take really good care of Ralph, so that he can be with us for a very, very long time.” I said, successfully getting the mournful wail down to a pensive whimper.

Not RALPH!

The next time, I was not prepared. It came out of nowhere. We were having our usual argument about who loves who more, when she suddenly started to cry. “Don’t die, mom. You can’t die!” I knew how she felt, I’d felt the same way, every time I was faced with how awesome it was to have a Snappy, I was immediately cold-cocked with how impossible life would be without her. I wanted to break down with her and cry about how painful it was to have something to lose, but I didn’t. Instead, I told her the same thing I needed to tell myself.

“Hey Snaps, I’ve got an idea. Let’s take care of each other so we can both be old ladies together. Won’t that be great? What shall we do when we’re old ladies? Shall we go on cruises and out for lunch? Shall we take a walking tour? I know! Let’s walk very slowly through intersections and drive people crazy. That’ll be fun.”

And that worked. Mostly. The other night, she handed me a kitten book she had when she was a baby and, with a glance at the Cat Heaven book she had bravely insisted on taking out of the library, said “let’s read a happy book tonight.”

Later, she came out of her room, sniffing back what was threatening to be a torrent of tears and told me, “we can’t be old together, mom.”

I looked at her and said, with conviction, “yes we can.”

“Ralph too?” She asked.

“Yes, Ralph, too.” I said with less conviction. “Now go back to bed.”

A girl and her beast.

She did, but I could tell that she didn’t believe that thing about “Ralph too”. Which was fine with me because I could tell she believed that thing about us being old together, which helped me to believe it. As long as we were stuck facing that stinky old boogeyman, it was kind of nice that we were facing him together.

Up yours, Boogeyman!