hipster

7 Ways I Know I’m Married To A Californian

November 5, 2013 — 13 Comments

My husband was born and raised in California. I know, puke. He went to college in California. He works in California’s biggest industry. Except for a couple of family vacations and bro-rific Vegas trips (double puke), he’s hardly been anywhere else.

On a daily basis, I am reminded just how much of a Californian he is. From his superior sense of self, all the way down to the way he talks. So at the risk of eliciting anonymous comments from his family and friends about how my husband needs to ditch me because I clearly don’t love him (which couldn’t be any further from the truth), allow me to share with you the seven most damning ways I know this…

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1. My Husband Is Too Cool For Everything

Cute family photos while we’re out to eat? They deserve a smirk. Expressing condolences to a loved one that recently got divorced or experienced a death in the family? Pft, I don’t want to deal with that shit. You need me to help out around the house by watering the plants? Err, umm… I guess I can, but you know I’ve got a lot on my plate, what with the last season of Breaking Bad being added to Netflix and apps to update on my smartphone. There’s a new Oxygen Bar in town, did you hear? Oxygen bar? Oh… I was going to Oxygen Bars way before they were cool. You don’t even know…

On all sides of life, my husband, as well as many of the other California natives I know, carries himself with a sense of superiority, a sense of trying way too hard to be cool. It’s why we are known for our tofu-grilling hipsters, and our milk and cereal bars down in Venice.

You just wouldn’t understand.

2. My Husband Uses The Word “Like” At Least Five Times a Sentence

That’s an understatement. Sometimes I can’t even understand what my husband is talking about because he uses the term “like” so frequently.

I used to think it was that he was nervous, or awkward. Or that he just didn’t know what the fuck he was talking about, so instead decided to riddle his sentences with nonsensical words so that no one caught on. (God knows I ramble when I’m wielding bullshit.)

Then I realized it happens more frequently when he’s been at the office and a lot of people have been there. Because they, like many in the film industry, are native Californians who love their Valley Girl Speak.

Like, oh my God, whatever…

3. My Husband Wears a Sweater and Flip Flops When It’s Cold Out

There are two ways that Californians dress in the winter: warm clothes with flip flops, or skank shorts with Uggs.

My husband wears flip flops frequently when it’s cold out. Then when it’s about 110 degrees, he’ll wear some heavy socks with tennis shoes and shorts. It’s quite the dress code he’s got going on, much like the rest of this state of weirdos that cannot tolerate anything less than 40 degrees.

Unless, of course, they are going to the mountains to ski in the artificial snow. Then they are truly embracing the cold. Because Californians are hardcore like that.

4. My Husband Thinks His Shit Don’t Stink

Have you ever heard the saying “oh, he thinks his shit don’t stink”? It’s poor English, to say the least, but it applies to Californians everywhere. Though different than the saying (which means he thinks he can do no wrong), I mean it literally. My husband literally thinks his shit don’t stink.

What I mean to say is that they (Californians) are unapologetic about their bowel movements. The most popular book in every Urban Outfitters around here is “What Does Your Poop Say About You.” My husband, as with many people I know from this area, may as well drop his drawers and take a shit right in front of me, continuing on about his business as though it’s standard protocol – that is how unrelentingly unapologetic he is about his ass and everything that comes out of it.

But everyone does it! It’s natural! Sure, that’s great. Everyone picks their nose too, but that doesn’t mean they do it in front of others and write books about what the colors, shapes, and sizes of their boogers mean about them.

5. My Husband Has Little To No Knowledge Of Mike Ditka

If you are from anywhere but the Los Angeles area or the planet Mars, you understand the importance of professional football and Mike Ditka.

I’m pretty sure my husband knows of Mike Ditka, but he certainly doesn’t understand the seriousness and infallibility – the essence, if you will – of Ditka the former Bears coach.

When we were watching Silverlining Playbook, my husband had his first encounter with tailgating outside of an NFL football game. I use the term “encounter” very loosely (I mean it was just on the television screen, and we were sitting in the living room), but I think the word is appropriate because of the shock and horror on my husband’s face as he saw how intense football as a sport can be to fans.

That’s what happens when you went to a school without a football team, and live in a city where the closest thing to football is that the Cowboys practice for two weeks in the field outside the local Residence Inn every summer. Big whoop to that noise.

6. His Job Is In ‘The Industry’ and His Entire Life Revolves Around It

Does anyone outside of California even know what ‘The Industry’ is? I mean there are a lot of industries that do a lot more important shit than the one Californians refer to it as – medical industry, government industry, computer industry…

In California, it’s movies.

Out here, it is not uncommon to know someone that works in The Industry. Sometimes that means that the person waits tables at the local Denny’s by day, and tries out for bit extra parts on weekends. In the case of my husband, it’s actually working for a company that does film-type stuff.

And as with the majority of film industry people, or even just generally Californians engrained in the work-is-life culture, the job eats up my husband’s entire life. If things are slow at work, my husband is slow at home. If things are busy at work, it’s an excuse to shirk off other responsibilities. At parties, we talk about his job. In bed, we answer calls at all hours.

7. My Husband Likes His Hint Of Asiago Cheese

When I was growing up in the Midwest, if people had a party they threw some hot dogs on the grill, some potato chips in a bowl, some mostacholli in the oven, and then called it good. And it was good – nothing needed to be special. Nothing needed a side of cream sauce or a hint of asiago cheese. Shit didn’t need to be smothered in whatever the hipster flavor of the month was. And no one put out little placards that gave the entire description of what was in the food.

A few weeks ago we were out to eat and got ready to order our food. When it came to my husband’s turn, he ordered “the roasted peach and braised quinoa salad with tofu dill mustard dressing … yes, I’ll have a hint of asiago.” I couldn’t even control myself and said (probably louder than I should have): “are you fucking kidding me?” Order a goddamned garden salad with ranch and move on with your life!

The waitress looked at me from behind her attitude glasses, snubbed her head in the air and asked through her nose if that was all. Then she sauntered off to turn in our order and stand by the bar, texting on her iPhone in her Cheap Trick t-shirt (as if she even knows who Cheap Trick is).

Some of these are vaguely reminiscent of knowing I’m married to a man (especially the stuff about the bowels); but in California, it’s so much harsher. It’s more noticeable. Are you married to a Californian? Maybe you’re married to a Californian and you aren’t even there…

Are Hipsters Really Just Hillbillies in Vintage?

September 30, 2011 — 7 Comments

Everyone’s talking about the hipsters.  Just this week, The Oatmeal released a web comic comparing Hammer Pants and Hipster Pants (and I have to say, Oats:  truer words were never spoken).  But the comparisons and the discussions are nothing new.  Cracked.com has a compilation page of charts and detailed analysis of the hipsters, which the site calls “people who prove that they do not care about social standards by adhering…” in unrealistic levels to, well … social standards.  Even Time magazine has weighed in.  In an article on the hipster’s propensity to parody, Time said that “…everything about them is exactingly constructed to give off the vibe that they just don’t care.”  So it would seem that we just cannot stop talking about those tight pant-wearing, Pabst beer-drinking, vintage-loving wannabes.  Why is that?

Wannabes is what they truly are.  Hipsters are the post-poser subculture of people that want so badly to be cool and misunderstood that they conform (in their “ironic” nonconformity) to a state of absolute self-importance so that their coolness is protected by a thick layer of smug.  Did you understand anything I just said?  Let me say it a little clearer:  hipsters are nothing but a bunch of smug, arrogant assholes.  And they are that way on purpose.

Today at the AAA office, I saw a fine looking young gentleman clad in tight, purple pants and a t-shirt that said “Hipster for Life.”  While I am certain that the travel agent/insurance carrier would have been happy to provide the gentleman with insurance for his hot pink, tandem bicycle, what he really seemed to be there for was to strike up conversations with every other person waiting for help about his superior knowledge of music.  As I listened to the man talk, though (as he scratched his faux-retro mustache and I resisted the urge to punch him in the gut), I realized that hipsters are really nothing more than hillbillies!  In this moment of clarity (at the dingy AAA office, waiting for my map of San Diego County), this truth became so evident to me that I wonder how we all did not see this before.

Let’s compare the two:

Both hipsters and hillbillies have unreasonably ugly facial hair.  The faux-70s thin ‘stache is among the most popular.

We have that God awful fad (that still seems to be lingering) of people drawing or putting fake mustaches on their faces; they even have mustache parties.  What the hell is the point? – is what I have to ask, but that is another blog altogether.  In a comparison between hipster facial hair and hillbilly facial hair, you see that the two are absolutely identical.  Each prides itself on being unkempt.  Each is mocking some former style that they believe deserves some weird sort of respect.  And, inevitably, each looks disgusting.

Both hipsters and hillbillies drink the shittiest beer known to mankind.  In particular, that PBR piss water.

With the number of options for cheap, and yet quality, beer out there, it is astonishing to me that people still drink Coors Light, Miller High Life, and PBR.  Pabst Blue Ribbon is the worst.  Why do they do it you ask?  Well here is another thing the hipsters and the hillbillies have in common:  they like to be cheap, even when they don’t have to.  I see no reason for it though, particularly when a case of Heineken is only about $2 more than a case of the piss water hipster hillbillies drink.

Both hipsters and hillbillies are smug ass mother fuckers.

Here is where I draw the real correlation between hipsters and hillbillies.  The true sign of a hipster is one who thinks he is better than everyone else around him because of his personal choices to not conform (in such a way that is completely conformist).  He thinks his music is the best (it’s not), his clothing is the most fashionable (it’s ugly as hell), and his ideas on life and the world are so much more transcendent than anyone around him (very likely he is a dumb shit).  Hillbillies are the same, exact way.  Where hipsters look down on others for eating meat, hillbillies look down on others who don’t eat meat.  (I can’t even remember how many times I have been to my redneck family gatherings and been scoffed at for saying I don’t eat red meat – a choice for personal health and not involving any meats other than red.)  Hipsters think their taste in music is far superior to everyone else – something Cracked.com and Time emphatically pointed out; just as hillbillies refuse to acknowledge the existence of anything but country (or if they do acknowledge, it is followed with disdain).  The absolute arrogance of hipsters and hillbillies is so paralleled that their every move in life is preemptively defended with a vague and somewhat narcissistic rant about how they are removed from the world in ways most people could never even understand.

So the only possible conclusion is that hipsters are nothing more than neo-hillbillies:  all the same attitudes with slightly different details.  This, I fear, is just more proof that The Hipster Apocalypse is upon us.