Here's something you might be interested in.
Ask a Hipster — Advice you didn't know you needed
Big Screen — Movie commentary
Blurt — Music's inside track
Booze News — San Diego spirits
Classical Music — Immortal beauty
Classifieds — Free and easy
Cover Stories — Front-page features
Drinks All Around — Bartenders' drink recipes
Excerpts — Literary and spiritual excerpts
Feast! — Food & drink reviews
Feature Stories — Local news & stories
Fishing Report — What’s getting hooked from ship and shore
From the Archives — Spotlight on the past
Golden Dreams — Talk of the town
The Gonzo Report — Making the musical scene, or at least reporting from it
Letters — Our inbox
Movies@Home — Local movie buffs share favorites
Movie Reviews — Our critics' picks and pans
Musician Interviews — Up close with local artists
Neighborhood News from Stringers — Hyperlocal news
News Ticker — News & politics
Obermeyer — San Diego politics illustrated
Outdoors — Weekly changes in flora and fauna
Overheard in San Diego — Eavesdropping illustrated
Poetry — The old and the new
Reader Travel — Travel section built by travelers
Reading — The hunt for intellectuals
Roam-O-Rama — SoCal's best hiking/biking trails
San Diego Beer — Inside San Diego suds
SD on the QT — Almost factual news
Sheep and Goats — Places of worship
Special Issues — The best of
Street Style — San Diego streets have style
Surf Diego — Real stories from those braving the waves
Theater — On stage in San Diego this week
Tin Fork — Silver spoon alternative
Under the Radar — Matt Potter's undercover work
Unforgettable — Long-ago San Diego
Unreal Estate — San Diego's priciest pads
Your Week — Daily event picks
A penchant for all things random
What? Why? How?
Scarpelli: random but handsome
Dear Hipster:
I was chilling at a brewery with a couple friends the other night, and I inadvertently eavesdropped on a couple hipsters who were drunkenly bellowing behind me about some shenanigans one of them had gotten up to during the week. I didn’t actually pick up on the details of the story, but that’s not what’s important. I’m more concerned with the storytellee’s reaction to the storyteller. First, he laughed hard enough to risk a hernia, and then he belted out something along the lines of “Dude, that’s so random! I love it!” I don’t get it. Since when is mere randomness enough to justify loving something? If something is “random,” to me, that means it’s inexplicable, or meaningless. I wouldn’t think it’s an unequivocally good thing, but, then again, maybe I’m too out of it to know what’s cool. Enlighten me, what’s so great about random?
— Richard
Unexplained meditations on 1980s TV and movie stars, written in the present tense.
Hipsters sure do love random stuff. Just the other day, I ran across a series of the most random craigslist posts I’ve ever seen. I don’t even know exactly what I was doing reading through the craigslist rants and raves section Maybe I hadn’t run into enough appallingly casual racism that day? Seriously, I don’t know. Anyways, nestled there between anti-semitic conspiracy theories and paeans to broken hearts I found a series of completely unprompted and unexplained meditations on 1980s TV and movie stars, written in the present tense, as if Three’s Company and One Day at a Time were still on the air.
“Whose [sic] your favorite teen idol: Glenn Scarpelli or Ralph Macchio?” one post asked.
“It’s hard for me to choose, these two kids are both so full of talent and good looks! Whose [sic] your favorite?” it answered.
Wait. What? Why? How? Well, actually, it’s pretty easy to post on craigslist, so “how” isn’t really at issue here. But, still, I loved it so much I took screenshots of every post.
CBS really does need to get its act together and dream up a spin-off for Loretta Swit.
Maybe it’s just some r/HailCorporate shill trying to sell DVDs of old CBS sitcoms, but I like to think it’s some random hipster kook having random hipster fun for no damn reason whatsoever. Really, it’s the present tense that gets me. Like, somehow CBS really does need to get its act together and dream up a spin-off for Loretta Swit before she takes that M*A*S*H fame and runs away from the network.
Also random, of all the posts, only one got flagged for removal: the one about The Jeffersons. Racism? Who knows!? It makes no sense! It’s so random!
Anyways, you came for answers, not more randomness.
The hipster penchant for all things random is a natural and proper outgrowth of the hipster need to be super ironic (in the loosest sense of the word) all the time. For about 10 or 15 minutes in the infancy of hipster culture, ironic hipster stuff was only funny when done for a reason. For example, a hipster party host might offer his guests a glass “the finest Franzia money can buy,” which is funny because Franzia is barely wine, and even the most immature hipster kid knows it. However, the strict requirement for some kind of meaningful relationship between otherwise incongruous circumstances almost immediately vanished from hipsters’ collective sense of humor. In a kind of meta-ironic twist, incongruity itself, for whatever reason, became humorous.
Here's something you might be interested in.
A penchant for all things random
What? Why? How?
A penchant for all things random
What? Why? How?
Scarpelli: random but handsome
Dear Hipster:
I was chilling at a brewery with a couple friends the other night, and I inadvertently eavesdropped on a couple hipsters who were drunkenly bellowing behind me about some shenanigans one of them had gotten up to during the week. I didn’t actually pick up on the details of the story, but that’s not what’s important. I’m more concerned with the storytellee’s reaction to the storyteller. First, he laughed hard enough to risk a hernia, and then he belted out something along the lines of “Dude, that’s so random! I love it!” I don’t get it. Since when is mere randomness enough to justify loving something? If something is “random,” to me, that means it’s inexplicable, or meaningless. I wouldn’t think it’s an unequivocally good thing, but, then again, maybe I’m too out of it to know what’s cool. Enlighten me, what’s so great about random?
— Richard
Unexplained meditations on 1980s TV and movie stars, written in the present tense.
Hipsters sure do love random stuff. Just the other day, I ran across a series of the most random craigslist posts I’ve ever seen. I don’t even know exactly what I was doing reading through the craigslist rants and raves section Maybe I hadn’t run into enough appallingly casual racism that day? Seriously, I don’t know. Anyways, nestled there between anti-semitic conspiracy theories and paeans to broken hearts I found a series of completely unprompted and unexplained meditations on 1980s TV and movie stars, written in the present tense, as if Three’s Company and One Day at a Time were still on the air.
“Whose [sic] your favorite teen idol: Glenn Scarpelli or Ralph Macchio?” one post asked.
“It’s hard for me to choose, these two kids are both so full of talent and good looks! Whose [sic] your favorite?” it answered.
Wait. What? Why? How? Well, actually, it’s pretty easy to post on craigslist, so “how” isn’t really at issue here. But, still, I loved it so much I took screenshots of every post.
CBS really does need to get its act together and dream up a spin-off for Loretta Swit.
Maybe it’s just some r/HailCorporate shill trying to sell DVDs of old CBS sitcoms, but I like to think it’s some random hipster kook having random hipster fun for no damn reason whatsoever. Really, it’s the present tense that gets me. Like, somehow CBS really does need to get its act together and dream up a spin-off for Loretta Swit before she takes that M*A*S*H fame and runs away from the network.
Also random, of all the posts, only one got flagged for removal: the one about The Jeffersons. Racism? Who knows!? It makes no sense! It’s so random!
Anyways, you came for answers, not more randomness.
The hipster penchant for all things random is a natural and proper outgrowth of the hipster need to be super ironic (in the loosest sense of the word) all the time. For about 10 or 15 minutes in the infancy of hipster culture, ironic hipster stuff was only funny when done for a reason. For example, a hipster party host might offer his guests a glass “the finest Franzia money can buy,” which is funny because Franzia is barely wine, and even the most immature hipster kid knows it. However, the strict requirement for some kind of meaningful relationship between otherwise incongruous circumstances almost immediately vanished from hipsters’ collective sense of humor. In a kind of meta-ironic twist, incongruity itself, for whatever reason, became humorous.
Comments