Hipstercrite Life

A Letter to the Man Who Should Not Read My Blog, But Does Anyways

I wondered if you even existed when I would see a couple on the street.

At the rate I was going, it didn’t seem like I would come to meet you.

You were an elusive figure.

Someone I was left to writing about. A stranger I was to meet on a subway in a big city and discuss metropolitan topics with such as David Byrne and top hats. You were the fictional love interest to my semi-autobiographical, slightly solitary female protagonist. Existing only in words on the paper. But one day you materialized, in the form of a sandy-colored cowboy, and instead of meeting on a subway, we met at an eastside watering hole.

We talked about David Byrne and top hats.

In our relatively small gestation period, I have come to feel that I’ve known you forever. Maybe it’s because you were a character I constructed, or maybe it’s because you and I are reassuringly similar. That the traits I’ve grown to understand about myself over the past 28 years are akin to the ones you share. When you randomly (more…)

July 12, 2011 by
Film, Hipstercrite Life

The Los Angeles You Will Come to Know

It’s easy to love Los Angeles. It’s sunny and warm and exciting and big.

What is hard, is loving the Hollywood you experienced. It’s so much more enjoyable to revel in the Hollywood from movies, books, and media. The Hollywood you thought you were going into when you first decided to move to Los Angeles. The industry you thought you were going to conquer, or at the very least, never give up on.

Having worked in the film business off and on in Austin and my boyfriend being a local director and film professor, I meet a steady stream of people who are en route to Los Angeles. When you’ve experienced LA for yourself, and you’re talking to a young person who has limited concept of what the film industry in LA is actually like, it’s hard not to give your two cents. It’s hard not to sound jaded, regardless if your time there was good or bad. I can separate the joyous moments from the terrible that I experienced in LA and I can sum up that ultimately my time there was worthwhile. That still (more…)

July 11, 2011 by
Music, Pop Culture

I Like Billy Joel. There, I Said It. I SAID IT! Are You Happy, Now?

I often find myself apologizing for liking Billy Joel.
Or I won’t even admit that I like him at all.
I’ll turn my back on Billy and jump in with the teasing about his songs being too loungy, too gauge your ears in with the closest sharp object. I’ll make fun of his over-elation of using gratuitous sound effects and his transparent storytelling tactics. Cast in a dark shadow of shame, I’ll sit there making fun of this musician I love more than broccoli but less than corn chowder soup. Lifting up away from my body, I look down at this insecure girl, afraid to confidentially say to the world, “Billy Joel is good. Billy Joel is great.”

Well, I’m tired of that girl. I kicked her off the scooter somewhere on Pretentious Ave. and am reclaiming the child that used to write the lyrics to ‘Captain Jack’ in marker on her vanity mirror and cry.

Out of the light rock FM closet I’m here to confirm a couple of statements:
 -I love Billy Joel.
-I think Billy Joel’s music is as treasureful as (more…)

July 8, 2011 by
Hipstercrite Life

Canadians Are Better Than Americans

Well, I’m spending my last hour in Vancouver trying to finish up this blog post I started on Sunday. It’s been a good trip. Full of bear encounters, bald eagle encounters, and running away from raccoon encounters. I just took two Xanax because of my recently acquired fear of flying and I’m not exactly sure what I’m writing. Listen, whatever you do, don’t read Wikipedia’s list of famous plane crashes. That shit stays with you for years….

Nothing says 4th of July spirit than comparing our great country to the slightly better country just north of us.
For the past seven days I’ve been traveling through the Canadian Rockies and British Columbia and have reconfirmed what I thought back in junior high when I wanted to move to Toronto because the Kids in the Hall lived there- Canada is the shit. It’s an incredible country full of nice people, pristine nature, and clean cities. Here are some observations I made while gallivanting through the Great White North.

1.) The Calgary airport (more…)

July 6, 2011 by
Hipstercrite Life

Tap Into the Rockies

Hello.
I am traveling to the Canadian Rockies AS WE SPEAK!!!!
I’m not sure if they have the internet up there. I know that they have moose. I really wish they were called meese.
I have no idea if I will be able to blog. Maybe the moose can help me with this. I’m not sure.
Also in this time, a wonderful graphic designer will be transforming my blog into a magical land.

I hope you all have an excellent week.

June 27, 2011 by
Fashion/Design

How To Stay Stylish in Clothing Melting Heat

While cataclysm of Waterworld-esque proportions keeps happening in other parts of the country, here in Austin, Texas we’ve been as bone dry as two teenagers humping after marching band practice. It’s also been a cool 104 degrees with a steady 90% humidity AT ALL TIMES. These two facts combined together make day-to-day living extremely difficult. Being from New York, my body can’t handle such zenith. Our bodies are predestined to be weak, capable of only handling such weather-related hardship as translucent skin and Eddie Bauer fashion. When my native New Yorker father visited me in Austin this weekend and ran across the molten blacktop barefooted, I saw his feet explode into an awesome ray of light while native Texans idly strolled by. I’m convinced that Texans are part of their own tribe, capable of withstanding extreme temperatures and skinning squirrels with their eyesight.

I am three years into living in Texas and I’m still sufficiently stunned when the summer approaches. I cry (more…)

June 23, 2011 by
Hipstercrite Life

Last Minute Father’s Day Gift Ideas for the Lazy Child

I’m not really sure what men like.

According to every Father’s Day gift guide out there they only like five things: tools, meat, TV remotes, wine, and iPhones. This sounds like the makings of a really big asshole right there. A Dad who enjoys spending more time a.) watching TV, b.) drinking c.) playing on his phone than spending time with you.

I didn’t grow up with a man in the house so when I date someone or visit a male friend’s house, I’m utterly fascinated by the things they own. After using the restroom, I’ll sometimes linger just to look at all the man oddities in their bathroom cupboards. Things like aftershave and nose hair trimmers are foreign objects to me. Sometimes I’ll play around with these things. Sometimes I’ll get caught and asked what the hell I’m doing. I then explain that my father abandoned me as a child and that they should leave me alone. The ol’ “abandoned by the father card” works every time.

Speaking of which….my Dad is visiting me tomorrow and I’m not (more…)

June 17, 2011 by
20-Something, Hipstercrite Life

The End of the Quarter-Life Crisis

your standard moody twenty two year-old self-portrait

Yesterday I turned 28.

Because of this, I’ve been finding myself hurling unwanted advice at young people lately.

When you’ve almost made it through your 20’s in one piece, you feel that you’re obligated to let younger people know that it will all be ok. That all the questioning and confusion and bad decision-making will get better.

That is assuming that everyone was an early twenty-something messbag like I was.

That they spent the better part of their 21st and 22nd year drinking alone in their West Hollywood apartment taking pictures of themselves drunk in the mirror and typing horribly structured journal entries that started with phrases like, “Why won’t someone hold me?!” or “The right side of my face feels numb, but I’m ok with that.”

That they would randomly break out into a cascade of tears at dinner with friends for no reason. Then excuse themselves from the table and disappear for three days.

That (more…)

June 13, 2011 by
Pop Culture

Is Infidelity the New Black?

When news broke in 2008 that John Edwards had been having extramartial fun times and subsequent child with Rielle Hunter, I was working for the anti-war organization CodePink in Venice Beach, California. I worked directly under one of the co-founders of the group, a hard-working and passionate activist who acted as Jerry Brown’s right-hand woman during his first term as governor of California. Like many Americans, having had the pants charmed off of me by Edwards’s Kennedy-esque looks, humble beginnings, adorable family, and ambitious political goals, I was crestfallen when word got out about his infidelity. After all that he and his wife Elizabeth had been through- losing a son, her cancer, his political career- how could he boink some Jay McInerney character and cheat on his sweet and supportive spouse of 30 years?

Due to her time in California politics, I assumed that my boss was privy to the inner thoughts of politicians. As we sat there watching the news of Edwards unfold on the (more…)

June 10, 2011 by
Austin, Pop Culture

Bobofication

source

I’m currently reading David Byrne’s Bicycle Diaries– a 30 year hodge-podge of his observations, diary entries, and blog posts about urbanization, gentrification and transportation taken from the perspective of a bicycle. Byrne often has a child-like approach to observing the world. Everything about us fascinates him. One can see this curiosity in his songs, “Once in a Lifetime“, “The Big Country“, “Neighborhood“, and “Strange Overtones“, or his 1986 cinematic love letter to Texas, True Stories. Though he’s by no means an expert on anything other than dancing like a mentally challenged person, I’ve always valued Byrne’s commentary. He looks for the deeper meaning behind the obvious and makes us think differently about how we view the mundane and the taken for granted.

In Bicycle Diaries, Byrne takes us on his adventures through major international cities such as Istanbul, Manila, Buenos Aires and American cities like San Francisco, New Orleans, and his current (more…)

June 9, 2011 by