Hipster Terrorist

An earnest, baby-faced hipster reading A Tale of Two Cities, just asked me to do him “a solid” and watch his stuff. He’s been gone for 10 minutes. Do you think there’s a bomb in that knapsack?

What would a hipster bomb look like? An explosion of fixed gear bikes, unflattering haircuts and size 0 jeans that will blast us all to Williamsburg?

(Related: why are they called hipsters when none of them have hips?)

I looked up “do me a solid” because I’m a part-time nerd. According to the Urban Dictionary, it comes from Seinfeld, which is so not at all a hipster source, but Juno picked it up and voila, hipster lingo.

“Juno” has caused a new wave of youngins to say this who have never used the term before seeing the movie, which has caused people who have used it prior to stop using it immediately. Take the term you fake ass scenesters.

I got called out last night at dinner for only liking things as long as no one else knows about them. For instance, I introduced everyone I know to Eddie Izzard and Flight of the Conchords based on obscure shows I saw before they caught on in the U.S. Now, I keep tabs on them like that high school boyfriend you wish well with his over-tanned wife and four kids, but I refuse to scramble for tickets to sold-out shows. They know I loved them first. We both know it. I won’t stoop.

Partly, I blow them off now because I’m too cool for school. I admit it. But as we chatted about my too-cool-for-school-ness, we agreed that, for a lot of those groups and comics, it’s not just that they got popular, it’s that their work is not as good now that they’re on a corporate, money-making schedule. First album = a lifetime of material honed down to the best punchlines. Second album/TV show = a year or two of material they’ve had to crank out between talk shows and premieres and appointments with their personal fingernail consultant.

It’s the common arc of success. Friends takes off, quirky humor falls by the way side and everyone yogas up and gets incongruously sleek for a group of downtowners. The baby boomers start out righteous and angry and turn into the greedy, self-serving cokeheads of the ’80s when they get money and responsibility.

It’s not a good model, but all of us who are struggling artists really wouldn’t mind crossing that gift basket divide and getting the ego-buffing and fashion-enhancing rewards. Also, who has the kind of time to work up 18 years worth of material before producing our next big chunk of work? No one, that’s who.

So what to do?

I have a plan. I’m going to hoard my most brilliant material for my sophomore outing. I’ll get rich and famous on my second-rate work and then WHAM! I’ll deliver a kick ass second act that will make everyone wonder how I cooked up all that amazing work while it looked like I was basking on private islands, staying at wildly pricey hotels and winning things.

Don’t tell anyone, OK? Just go with it.