Hipsters killed Kennedy

Oh my God I am so so so fucking sick of people talking about HIPSTERS and who is and isn't a HIPSTER and what HIPSTERS do and what they drink and how much they suck and blah blah blah CHRIST ALMIGHTY PEOPLE THIS SHIT WAS TIRED IN 2002 so you can imagine how played it is now.

We. Get. It.

So hipsters are douchey conformists who think they're oh-so-cool but are actually brain-dead pack-followers who have ruined music and bicycling and everything. Whatever.

You'd think that would be the end of it there. But no. No, it's much worse, we come to learn.

"[T]he hipster represents the end of Western civilization."

This little dollop of overheated trope comes courtesy of an over-the-top article in Adbusters called Hipster: The Dead End of Western Civilization that I can't figure out if it's satirical or not. It's like "Reefer Madness" for Hipsters. Behold:

Lovers of apathy and irony, hipsters are connected through a global network of blogs and shops that push forth a global vision of fashion-informed aesthetics. Loosely associated with some form of creative output, they attend art parties, take lo-fi pictures with analog cameras, ride their bikes to night clubs and sweat it up at nouveau disco-coke parties. The hipster tends to religiously blog about their daily exploits, usually while leafing through generation-defining magazines like Vice, Another Magazine and Wallpaper. This cursory and stylized lifestyle has made the hipster almost universally loathed.

Not only that! They also cook and eat babies!!!! RUN IN TERROR FROM THE HIPSTER!!!

Look, if it's anything, "hipster" is a convenient catch-all term to describe people who either (1) dress differently than you, or (2) you don't like. Saying that hipsters are the death of Western Civilization is like saying that irony is the death of the English language. I don't know what's going on over there at Adbusters, but people need to fucking chill out and get some perspective.

Sigh. Happy Friday, everyone! Hope you have some big plans for the weekend. Me? I'm just going to my usual nouveau disco-coke party.

[DISCLAIMER: If, in fact, this article was meant to be satirical, my deep apologies and boy do I look stupid.]

[DISCLAIMER TWO: This article was originally published in July 2008. But same diff.]

The first 6 results Google suggests when you type in the word "did"

Did you know
Did the groundhog see his shadow
Did rihanna give chris brown herpes
Did you wrong lyrics
Did you know video
Did rihanna give chris brown aids

Not sure what this says about our society, but it's sort of worrisome.

Brief thoughts on the first episode of Top Chef Vegas

- So, so glad the girl with the stretched-out earlobes is gone. I was praying for her to get kicked off. There's just no way I could look at that shit all season.

Incidentally, what happens when you decide you don't want stretched-out earlobes any more? Do you take the things out and then just have long earlobes that dangle down to your shoulders and have huge holes in them? Or do you automatically have to go to a plastic surgeon and have that shit cleaned up?

- Jen is kinda cute, used to be the sous chef at Le Bernardin, and likes to drink. CALL ME.

- So the sexist guy is going to be the asshole of this season, right?

- Where's Wolfgang Puck been all this time? He was a great guest judge.

- Kevin, who won the elimination challenge, looks like he should be in My Morning Jacket.

Lyric Deconstruction: ".... Baby One More Time"

Britney Spears, 1998

Oh baby, baby
Oh baby, baby
Oh baby, baby

Oh baby, baby indeed. Britney Spears was 16 years old when this song was released, which makes the coquette-in-high-school video both alluring and creepy. Although, I guess it should be pointed out, the age of consent in a whole lot of states is 16.

The song was written by Max Martin, who also wrote a bunch of songs for the Backstreet Boys and wrote “Since U Been Gone,” which is, regardless of how you feel about Kelly Clarkson, a pure pop gem. Max Martin is kind of a pop genius.

How was I supposed to know
That something wasn't right here
Oh baby baby
I shouldn't have let you go
And now you're out of sight, yeah

Wait a minute. If Britney didn’t know that something wasn’t right, why did she let him (at least, I’m assuming it’s a “him;” if it’s a “her,” the mind reels) go? You typically don’t let anyone go unless you know full well that something’s wrong.

Show me, how you want it to be
Tell me baby
'Cause I need to know now what we've got

It’s impossible to sing “show me how you want it to be” without it sounding sort of like “show me how you want to do me.” I know because we used to cover this song in my old band and people fucking loved it. I bet the “want it to be”/”want to do me” thing isn’t accidental.

[CHORUS:]
My loneliness is killing me
I must confess, I still believe
When I'm not with you I lose my mind
Give me a sign
Hit me baby one more time

Here we come to the most troubling part of the song. WTF, exactly, does “Hit me baby one more time” mean? I see three possible meanings:

1. Literal: Actually, physically hit me. If this is the correct meaning, this song is very fucking disturbing.

2. Semi-slang: Like, “hit me up,” get in touch with me. A colloquialism I kinda hate but at least makes some kind of sense in the song. But was “hit me up” in common use in 1998, and especially in Sweden, where Max Martin was writing these charmingly ESL lyrics?

3. The Full Vegas: She’s got a hard 15, and the dealer’s showing an 8. “Hit me.” Unlikely. But now that I look at it, you could analyze the whole song as a paean to blackjack. “I shouldn’t have let you go” – shouldn’t have stuck on that pair of 8’s. I should have split. STUPID STUPID STUPID. Again, though, this interpretation seems unlikely.

CONCLUSION: Who the fuck knows? All of the possibilities are weird, in one way or another.

[I do note that, according to Wiki, "The song was originally titled 'Hit Me Baby One More Time,' but it was revised to '...Baby One More Time' since Jive Records executives were concerned that the song would condone domestic violence."]

Oh baby, baby
The reason I breathe is you
Boy you got me blinded
Oh baby, baby
There's nothing that I wouldn't do
That's not the way I planned it

Well, at the risk of belaboring the obvious, if it’s not the way you planned it, you shouldn’t have let him go. Just saying.

Show me, how you want it to be
Tell me baby
'Cause I need to know now what we've got

[Repeat CHORUS]

Oh baby, baby
Oh baby, baby
Ah, yeah, yeah
Oh baby, baby
How was I supposed to know
Oh pretty baby
I shouldn't have let you go
I must confess, that my loneliness
Is killing me now
Don't you know I still believe
That you will be here
And give me a sign
Hit me baby one more time

I guess now these lyrics seem especially poignant in the wake of Britney’s very public crackup, what with the head shaving and the Jason Alexander - no not that Jason Alexander - marrying and all that. I don’t know if it’s her loneliness that’s killing her, but something is. I don’t think being followed around 24/7 by a pack of photographers can be any good for anyone.

[Repeat CHORUS]

I must confess that my loneliness
Is killing me now
Don't you know I still believe
That you will be here
And give me a sign
Hit me baby one more time

Some things are just as bad as you were told. Like professional wrestling, or the Bubble Lounge

Difficult as this must be to believe, I actually found myself in the famous-for-its-douchebag-quotient Bubble Lounge on Saturday night, for a friend's girlfriend's birthday thing. It's maybe not as bad as I thought it would be, crowdwise, but I wasn't there that long.

2 or 3 significant problems, though:

1. It's fucking expensive. The Sister wanted a glass of champagne and I asked the very affable bartender about it and he made a suggestion and then gave me a sample! Nice, right? So I asked him how much it is per glass and he said "$18" and I said "Show me something more in the $10 range" and he said "We have an entry-level prosecco for $11" and I said The Sister would like entry level just fine.

2. There was nowhere to sit. All the seats at the bar were taken and you can't sit at any of the tables unless you guarantee $30 a head for everyone in your party. Oh, fuck you.

3. I don't know what they have going on downstairs but it looked like a prom. Obvs it wasn't a prom, but it was a bunch of very young-looking overdressed chicks. Wait, that sounds pretty good. I'm not describing it right or something.

So we vacated that place and walked down the street to The Kells, another place I would normally never go (Yelp sample: This is a great place if you want to drink Budlights out of insulated aluminum bottles, meet some 19 year olds from Sacramento and dance to Montell Jordan) but we saw a few open tables in the front and more than anything we just wanted to sit down. Boy oh boy is that place full of assholes (General rule: If you're wearing a visor backwards and upside down, you're probably an asshole. Fuck, if you're wearing a visor, period, you're probably an asshole) but we had a place to sit and it was fine becuse we pretty much stayed out of the fray, as it were.

I don't know what's going on down on the lower end of Columbus these days, but it looked like prom at The Kells too. Where are all these 19-year-old girls coming from? And how did they all get fake ID's?

Now I know why I never went to either of those places even when I lived in North Beach. The End.

Oh, P.S. Signs You're Getting Old: Our plans for this Friday night include renting a Rug Doctor. SLOW YOUR ROLL, COMMANDER PARTY!!!! WHOOOOOOOOO!!!!!

Improbable things you might find on a rooftop in the Tenderloin

1. Michael Douglas

2. An Airstream trailer

When I saw this post over at Curbed, my heart went all a-flutter.

WTF Moment of the Day
Friday, August 14, 2009, by Sally Kuchar

Does anyone know what's going on here? A plugged-in commenter writes: If you thought a single family home in tenderloin was weird, there's also a streamliner chilling on a roof down there:

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2501/3755744517_be41f980bc_b.jpg

-----------------------------------------

Crazy, right? We learned from the comments that this bizarre spectacle is to be found in the 100 block of Turk in the Tenderloin. Well, as it happens, I work in the TL, so I tried to calm my breathing and then walked right on over there. Guess what? It's real, and it's spectacular.

BTW, people tend to stare at you if you're a reasonably well-dressed white guy taking pictures in the 100 block of Turk. Also, there are a lot of people drinking airplane bottles of liquor in the 100 block of Turk.

How did Airstream get up there? It obviously took a lot of effort. WTF is going on here?

The BART strike is stupid and is going to suck. Also, where do I sign up to be BART management?

So! We're going to have a BART strike! Oh yay.

[For those of you not from around here, BART is a shiny silver people mover that goes all around the Yay Area and even to places I've heard about but never visited, like something called "El Cerrito del Norte." I use it to get to work every day and sometimes to go to Stephen and Jessica's house in Berkeley. Lots of people need it to get from their houses in the East Bay to their jobs in SF.]

From what I can tell, public sentiment is pretty strongly against the union; check out the comments here. And why not? The contract the employees turned down would "freeze wages for four years but provide bonuses in three of those years, change work rules to give bosses more say in employees' job duties, reduce the need for overtime, and require employees to pay more for premium health care."

You can imagine how the employees turning this down goes over with someone who, like me, just took a pay cut, or someone who lost their job entirely. BRIGHT SIDE: If you're unemployed, you won't have to figure out another way to get to work!

So yes, I think it's a mistake and obviously a public relations disaster for the union and is only going to lower people's already-low opinion of unions these days.

But just to be a contrarian, remember this story from a few weeks ago?

As BART careens towards a possible strike, a KTVU Channel 2 News investigation has found the transit district’s management has spent millions of dollars on trips around the world and the nation and lavish meals at extravagant restaurants.

One expert told KTVU that the system's tracking of those expenses is the equivalent of throwing receipts in a cigar box.

I want to be BART management! Check out what they get:

- A $2,700 tab at Gallagher’s Steak House on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, one of the most expensive steakhouses in the nation. The meal was for 10 BART managers – at $270 a meal – and had no itemized receipt, a violation of BART’s official policy.

- A $751.40 bill for some BART employees, directors – and director’s wives – at a Georgetown restaurant dubbed the “power spot of the year.” The Café Milano bill included wine and even cognac, again against BART’s official policy.

- A $699.51 bill at the University Club, also on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. The men’s only organization is akin to San Francisco’s Pacific Union Club, except it is exclusively for invited graduates of Yale University. The meal was said to be a “thank you” to employees of the New York City subway, who gave BART managers a “tour.” Again, no itemized receipt was provided, although as with all the other expenses, BART reimbursed the tab with taxpayer and fare gate money.

So, yeah, I completely agree that the union should have accepted the contract and that most BART employees get a sweet deal and are fools to look a gift horse in the mouth. Just saying that management doesn't look to be exactly blame-free for the BART deficit either.

Moral of the story: everyone sucks. But we knew that.