BloggieBlog Post

As my coworker Cody points out, it is indeed a bloggieblog world out there.  It's full of tons of ramblings that are usually completely worthless to anyone's point of view but our own.  But I love this world.  And you should know that Cody is one of three or four hipsters that I like, mostly because she's agreed to dress up like a Tanooki Suit Mario.

You have dysentery.

If you loved playing the old Apple IIgs in school with games like Number Munchers and Oregon Trail you have to check this site out.

If you didn't love those games, you suck.

The Week In TV...

I watched a lot of TV this week.  Between the final episodes of Battlestar, the season premiers of Big Love, Flight of the Conchords and Lost, the Innauguation and the shows I already watch like Top Chef I have had little time to spare doing important stuff like working or going to class.  Let's recap, shall we?

In BSG, Earth turns out to be a nuclear wasteland and everyone is totally bummed.  Especially D.  Answers better come quickly because they're still revealing new questions.  Like what's Starbuck's deal - is she dead or another ancient Cylon or some third option I don't even know about but is really cool?  Is that really the final Cylon?  I hate that character.  When's Gaeta going to be cool again?  I used to like him so much but now he's a sweaty one-legged bitch.

Big Love gave us some glimpses at what's going on with Roman and seeing Albie get his ass beat is always a pleasure.  All I could think about the whole episode was that Bill Paxton looks really old this year.

Flight of the Conchords started out strong with a nice Greg Proops cameo and the fall of the Crazy Dogs.  Brit's hand-woven pants were classic.

Leah needs to get her ass off Top Chef.  Radhika blew it so I wasn't sorry to see her go but we really need to keep weeding out these crappy chefs from this season faster.  My ever-changing final four prediction is Fabio, Stephan, Jeff and Jamie.  Carla can only do desserts, Leah is a hack and Hosea is probably interchangable with Jeff but I think Jeff is better in quickfires and it'll give him an advantage.

And oh boy, Lost... I love that they're jumping through time.  I think, though, that I am going to be totally bored with the goings on in L.A. thanks to how intrigued I am with the island antics.  This time jumping is a great way to show us the origins of the Dharma Initiative, give us some insight into everyone first known as "The Hostiles" and then "The Others," and even might let us catch a glimpse of an early smoke monster.

Ever since Alex was killed I'm liking Ben more and more, and I really like how Locke's journey  could position him to be the next Ben.  I feel like Richard is a more open Jacob-like island manifestation that is charged with choosing protectors for the island.  I think it's interesting that he gave Locke a compass, one of the items Locke chose as his own when Richard visited him as a child.

Tonight is the next Battlestar episode, which I will be DVRing.  More updates next week...

So Anxious...

Lost season 5 premiers to night and there are still so many questions to answer!  It looks like this is the season where everyone tries to get back to the island to save everyone.  Is Locke really dead?  Does Jin find his way back to our time?  How much ass can Sayid kick?!  Only time will tell!  I'll be rewatching the last half of the last season to formulate some pre-premiere theories this afternoon.

One More Music Site

If you haven't checked out Daytrotter, you must. The basics is that this guy gets some serious indie artists to do live studio shows that he can post for free on the interblogs. That's cool in itself, but his archives include Merz, Okkervil River, Ben Kweller, Bishop Allen, Minus the Bear, Tokyo Police Club and Yeasayer. The sheer multitude of kickass music on his site is sick.

Daytrotter - http://www.daytrotter.com

Hipster Fail

I made a big decision today. I reject hipsters. My budding hatred for them seems to be fueled more and more every day and I feel like sooner or later I'm going to snap.

My new job is at a restaurant in NE Minneapolis. It is, unfortunately, very hipster to the core. Not so much the clientèle, although the neighborhood it's in makes an encounter with at least five hipsters a night inevitable, but the whole organization from the top down is devastatingly hipster. From the ownership to the management to the rank and file employee, I'm surrounded by hipsters. This has been what's pushed me over the edge in recent days.

Hipsters: I get it. You bike everywhere. Great job. I recognize both the wellness and environmental benefits to riding that bike of yours everywhere. One of my oldest friends uses a bike as his primary transportation. I don't mind sharing the road with bicycles. I even have ridden to work occasionally myself in the past. But seriously. It's fucking winter now. Even if it is worth it to you to put on seventeen layers of clothes, a ridiculous mask/helmet combo and bike in the middle of a blizzard, just shut the fuck up about it. I don't care that you just rode an hour in the snow, or how "fun" it was to do it; as soon as you started the story about how you have two layers of long underwear on I tuned you out and wrote you off as an idiot with no regard for personal comfort. I can't trust people like that. Plus, I don't prattle on about how I drove to work and how warm it was in my car and how I got a sweet parking spot and how great it was, do I? No. Because that would be a fucking lame conversation to have.

And maybe it is that lack of trust that is the core of my new hipster hatred. The missing ingredient in the humanity of a hipster, the complete conscious rejection of any sort of mainstream sensibility, alienates me no matter how much else we have in common. I can't accept a worldview that places the hipster at the center and camoflages that selfishness by hiding behind unselfish words like "organic" and "fair-trade."

Here is a story that I think perfectly illustrates that selfishness. A group of seven or eight dirty young people came in to my bar around midnight. Looking like they just rolled out of bed at Catholic Charities, they all proceeded to ask for the cheapest variety of whatever their favorite drinks were and complained even then. Don't come in to a fine dining restaurant if you're going to complain about price. Minutes later, two of the hipsters at the bar started yelling at each other and one grabbed her bottle of beer and smashed it on the bar (after three or four whacks). They all ran out laughing. At most, this was annoying and made a good story the next day. When I told the story the next day to the largely hipster staff I found out that these people did that at no less than three bars that night and that they are honest to God hobos. Not real homeless hobos, just kids who train-jump. One is even a grad student at the U, which is like the total king hipster - going to school and still being able to live a life on the fucking rails or whatever. And fuck me for thinking that's totally bizarre. I found this out from a girl who exclaimed "Oh, I know those people, they're my friends. That was kind of an art piece."

Fuck you hipster. Smashing a bottle at my bar, spraying people with glass and then calling it art is retarded and disfunctional and illustrates not only the self-centered view these people have about themselves and their scene but the superiority complex they hold about it. The fact that this whole episode was played off as totally acceptable blows my mind, but not as much as the ensuing comments and general attitude that I was the wierd one for being upset about the whole thing.

I've decided to live my relatively normal, non-train-jumping life equally as loud and unapologetic as these people. Anytime I'm around these people I'm going to talk about shit like playing video games and going to a sports bar and all the shit I bought at Cub Foods instead of the co-op. I'll talk about my life growing up in the suburbs like it's the only way to live and tell every fraternity story I can think of just to piss these people off. Fuck them all.

Viva la Democracy!

I voted in The Current's top 89 albums of 2008! The list was a little bit limited to "indie radio" releases but I'm too intellectually lazy right now to write anything else in. Here's my votes - disagree if you dare! Or just go log on and vote your own damn selves.

Michael Franti & Spearhead | All Rebel Rockers British Sea Power | Do You Like Rock Music? Doomtree | Doomtree Blitzen Trapper | Furr Cloud Cult | Feel Good Ghosts (Tea-Partying Through Tornadoes) Eagles of Death Metal | Heart On Murs | Murs For President MGMT | Oracular Spectacular Delta Spirit | Ode To Sunshine Gnarls Barkley | The Odd Couple Kings Of Leon | Only By The Night Black Kids | Partie Traumatic Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin | Pershing Mates Of State | Re-Arrange Us The Roots | Rising Down Cecil Otter | Rebel Yellow The Hold Steady | Stay Positive Vampire Weekend | Vampire Weekend The Ting Tings | We Started Nothing Ben Folds | Way To Normal