Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Damn It Feels Good To Be A Hipster

Spent all weekend at the FolkFest with Bastet. I suppose I should talk about the music, but what really stood out for me was the fact that FolkFest security all wore red shirts.

If you're a Star Trek geek (or any kind of geek at all) I don't have to explain this further. If you aren't...well, that's why I left you a link.

This led to a discussion about Red Shirts. I think it would be a funny in-joke if one of these unnamed, unmourned, silent characters standing awkwardly in the background actually survived every episode. Everybody would be tuning in constantly to see when he met his demise...which would occur in the series finale, just when everybody thought he was finally safe.

Bastet and I also talked about hipsters. Apparently--and I had no idea--being a hipster is a BAD thing. Apparently it's an epithet roughly on par with "douchebag" or "Celine Dion Fan." Darn it. I thought being a hipster was cool. I WANTED to be a hipster.

Instead, according to Bastet, I am a "nerd." I thought that was bad, but she insists that being a nerd is trendy and cool, and I don't think she was just saying that to make me feel better.

The funny thing is, I'm not much of a nerd either. I have nerd friends, and most of them regard me as kind of a faux-nerd. I can usually fool the masses by mentioning X-Men, Buffy, or Lord of the Rings in a blog post, but once I start to get grilled about the finer points of anime or gaming, I am instantly revealed to be a nerd poseur.

Sigh. I guess I'm a man without a label. Doomed to walk alone, like the guy in the lyrics of Whitesnake's "Here I Go Again. (*)" The nice thing about being labelled 'Pretty Decent' is you always know where you stand.

In other Bastet news, she wrote some really nice things about me on her blog. My first reaction was to be charmed and embarassed. My second thought was to print it out and send it to every woman that's ever rejected me with certain parts emphasized with a colored highlighter pen.

In other news, I have recently updated a blog I'm embarrassed to publicly admit I'm writing. It's called Robot Therapist and combines two of my favorite subjects, counselling and giant transforming robots. Anyone not intimately familiar with the 1980s Transformers(the Michael Bay movies won't help you here, my pretties)--will understand a word of it.

Maybe I'm a nerd after all.

(*) Maybe my label is 80s metalhead throwback. Except that I constantly mis-hear the "going down the only road I've ever known" as "Going down the only road on Lebanon" so that's out too. Like a gypsy, I was born to walk alone I guess. Though I though Gypsies travelled in caravans as opposed to being solitary vagabonds like Conan or the guy from Kung Fu or the Littlest Hobo.

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