Missing Post 1~Chap 4

The west coast has everything. There are beaches and mountains, deserts, wastelands and metropolises. People from the east coast wanting to reinvent themselves go to California. People from the west head to NYC, only to find out they had it made where they were. So why does the west serve as the perfect place for reinventing one's self?

Leland states that hip was born of displaced raged. The west coast is also raging. The San Andreas Fault could be seen as a geological sign of the hipster. Beneath California a different kind of angst is raging. The North American Plate and the Pacific plate are having a disagreement. The San Andreas Fault is a result of this disagreement. With all this rage down below the Earth's crust, there is just as much beauty on the top.

Perhaps hipsters are drawn to this site because it represents, in the simplest form, everything they stand for without knowing it. They feel the need to defy everyone and everything, including the planet itself. The hipster wants to be on the edge even in their sleep. So why wouldn't you build your life and your home on a fault line. Or it could be much simpler than that.

Hip needs an audience according to Leland. You cannot find an audience as diverse and lively as you can on the west coast. All kinds of people escape to L.A. and so it stands to reason, they would be more excepting of other escapees. Because no matter what people say, they all want to feel excepted in some form or another.

Hemingway's " The Killers",  was written to make you feel awkward. He succeeded. And being an odd duck myself, I liked every awkward line.  

I had a blast with this story simply because you have to fill in all the important parts yourself. It is the ultimate "choose your own ending" book. I am very easily distracted so being able to use his story to launch a million of my own was very entertaining. This tactic was extremely useful when applied to the question that was eating at me. Why is George protecting the cook, Sam? 

Once I chose acceptable answers to all the unanswered questions, (and stopped picturing Samuel L. Jackson and John Travolta arguing about what's for dinner) I was able to move on. I can't help but wonder if the relationship between the story and time is bigger than the clock on the wall. I might be reaching a bit here, but I believe the central theme of the story is time.

Hemingway's story happens only in the present. There are no flashbacks or glimpses into what may happen. If you are going by George's time, the story takes place in a little over 2 hours. And the usually punctual, Ole Anderson, was out of time, literally.  Everything leads to time but it is not the only thing going on. 

We were told to also examine how identity and knowledge play apart in this story, as well as time. As far as identity goes, time doesn't care what your name is, and apparently neither did Ernest. He told us exactly what we needed to know and no more. Which leads me to the topic of knowledge. All of the characters have secrets. But of all people, Max seems to be the only one to jar loose with some of his. 

We were privy only to the fact that someone sent Al and Max there to kill Ole Anderson. 

The only character that had most of the knowledge, if not all, was in a loosing battle with time. Mr. Anderson couldn't spend the rest of his life in his rented room. Sooner or later he was going to come out and time would claim him. Time is constant and the same for everyone. No matter the multiple identities we all carry or all the knowledge we could possibly obtain, time does not wait for anyone. It effects us all equally.

 

Hip in the Boonies

Before the invention of the Internet, it would have been nearly impossible to be hip in rural America. Anyone that held any potential for the hip lifestyle would have sought it out. You don't wait for hip to come to you. No, sir. You would reach out and grab hip unmentionables.

Hollywood has made millions of dollars reusing and recycling the same story idea over and over again. A young person feels alienated and smothered in their small town. The fall in love with the romanticized idea of the city and set out to follow their dreams. Maybe the big city suits them or maybe they fall flat on their face and decide all they need was back where they started. Either way something is lost and something is gained by this journey. One could argue that this romanticized idea is actually the search for hip. No matter how the search ended, there was a certain level of enlightenment that was achieved.

Leland hit directly on my point when he said, "As a form of enlightenment, hip flourishes during periods of technological or economic change." Our culture is currently experiencing one of these periods. Our economy, for lack of a better word, sucks. The younger generations, like generations before, are looking for their own way to deal with hardships. It is time for the young to reinvent themselves. However, they may not even need to leave the house to accomplish this.  In which case, can enlightenment even take place if you do not physically immerse yourself in the rich culture that is hip?

You do not need embark on a long, tiresome journey to enlightenment in search of big city dreams.  You simply need to plug in and instantly you are where you need to be. We live in an age where reinventing yourself means you change the look of your avatar. The Internet is encroaching on big city territory. All you have to do is Google "hip new styles", for instance, and you can get those things shipped right to your house, no matter where you live. The Internet is making a whore out of hip.

I believe, however, hip is a state of mind, not the latest fashions at Urban Outfitters. So you may be able to pretend that you are hip, but hip has a conjoined twin, enlightenment. You can't have one without the other. So here lies our problem.  In low populated areas you are less likely to meet a kindred spirit to bounce ideas off of in your pursuit for enlightenment. The urban areas hold all kinds of treasures and would introduce you to things and ideas that you would never have thought possible.

I would say that if you have access to knowledge and an outlet for you to make your voice heard, you would be able to obtain a certain kind of hipness. But without a hip posse to back you up, would you really be hip or just a forward thinker? In this day and age, no matter where you are on a map urbanization had a role in your upbringing. Even if it was just having been forced to read literature, which was born of urbanization in a way. The Internet is also a form of urbanization that you can't seem to avoid no matter where you are from.

2-7-11 post lost

Where would we be without the blues? The Kraft Corporation would have had to find a new slogan for starters. But would the entertainment industry be what it is today without the musical movement that helped shape America?

Some might argue that the musical movement I speak of happened in the 60's headlined by the J-byrds, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison, just to name a few. I don't believe the hippy movement would have been nearly as strong if the blues had never come to be. It's weird to think about what kind of music we would be listening to if Charley Patton and others never made it.

Furthermore, would the blues have ever been born if there was no slavery in the United States? Or would it have simply popped up on some other shore sung by a European version of Ida Cox or Fats Domino? The blues is all about embracing the bad things in life and searching for the tiniest of silver linings. Since bad things happen all the time, would the blues have prevailed if white men didn't feel the need to dominate over all people and cultures they didn't understand?

My blade of grass

This is what you shall do-

Understand that True individuality comes from the Individual ~ Don't sell yourself short~ Be Curious, question reality ~ Love that which you do not understand ~ Do not hold beliefs that are not your own

~ Do not let others use fear against you ~ Fear Nothing, especially Death, it comes for us all ~ Hate oppression, but not the oppressor, for they are oppressed themselves

~ Don't put baby in a corner ~ Be a weirdo ~ Find the humor in every aspect of life and cling to it in rough times ~ Turn pain and fear into art or good deeds, let life's negative details suppress you no longer

~ Know how to live outside of technology ~Sing and dance all the time, especially in moments that would be considered socially unacceptable ~ If life is an oyster than share your pearl ~ Put forth more energy and time into the improvement of your inner self than you do on your outward appearance

~ Be your own seamstress or tailor ~ Put more faith into the world around you, all the plants animals and elements, than you do into technology ~ Strive to use the full potential of your brain ~ Do something kind for another living thing without reason or self gratification ~ Arm yourself with Love, Knowledge, Pen and Paper ~ Don't hate the player, hate the game

~ Wear smile lines like a badge of honor ~ Do not inject food poisoning into your face, age gracefully ~ Vow not to become a walking billboard for a company who's fat cat CEO is investing your hard earned money into offshore accounts to avoid giving back to the people that have given them so much ~ "Damn the Man, save the empire"

Lost in Translation

   Language can be a funny thing. Who decides that a dog should be called a "dog" or who assigns gender to certain names but decides others are unisex? Language has gotten me into some trouble in the past, but has also gotten me out of some tight spots.

  I will be the first to admit that I take certain liberties with the English language, but don't we all? I grew up in household where making up your own words was encouraged and still is for that matter. My grandmother remains the uncontested champ. She uses terms of endearment like bouzzledbub or her little love tottle. If you were sitting in on a family meal, you might find yourself needing to console an urban translation dictionary. Unfortunately no published work would help you there. Instead you might expect Alfred Hitchcock and Rod Sterling to show up under the guise of making a new series. But is a family full of word-maker-uppers really that uncommon?

  The answer is no, however, we could be called a "special case". These liberties of language are most common when a small child is added to the family. Pick a family, any family. I bet they each have a different name for a pacifier or for titles given to other family members. Gigi, Great Bet, Grammy Bea, and G'Mae all refer to the same person, my great-grandmother, but each phrase came from a different house hold.

  Some of us, striving to be different, take the same liberties when naming our children. You need only to go as far as the grocery store magazine rack to find horrible examples of this. The top dogs of the entertainment industry are naming their children things like Apple, Sunday, Bow-Ty, Moon Unit and Diva Muffin. Keep in mind, that's only the tip of the tragically-named iceberg.

  That being said, a couple years ago I got a black female puppy. She was the laziest puppy I had ever laid eyes on but had more personality than most humans. After she tried to serenade us with what sounded like singing, I suggested we name her Billie, after the jazz icon. Joe, my boyfriend, after a five hour marathon of Dead Wood, decided Billie was a perfect name for our little cow-girl dog. However, his inspiration was not a famous jazz singer but an equally famous "wild" cowboy.

  Like most names, it morphed into nicknames and was shortened. People have a hard time understanding way I would name a girl dog Bill. Who decides it is okay to name a human boy Kelly but it is not alright to name a female dog Bill?

  And then there are the infamous "lost in translation" moments that make you feel awkward, like Bill Murray taking a shower in a stall that is half his size. If any of you have ever had the pleasure of talking to someone that speaks English from a different country, I am sure you have run into this problem. A family friend's son was visiting from Australia and I was suppose to take him around Boise and show him the sights. This was a short trip considering both of us were only 17 and it was only 50 degrees out. In one of our conversations over the evening we were discussing "getting pissed". I used this phrase a lot to declare anger. He used this phrase too, but I realized too late that his definition was completely different.

  He told me that he rarely got pissed, but when he did he got REALLY pissed. Thinking we were talking about anger, I decided to share that I used to have a tiny road rage problem (being only 5'1", I chalked it up to the Napoleon syndrome). And so I said, "Oh you don't get pissed? Ever?! Geez. I don't know how you do it. I get pissed in my car all the time!"

  There is now an Australian running around that thinks at the age of 17, I would get in my car, drive around and get trashed. Well, that's just fabulous. It took 2 years of watching BBC America to realize my faux pas and by that time it was too late to save any face I might have still had. Let this serve as a lesson for all: name your dog whatever the hell you want (but perhaps take more care when naming another human) and beware of misrepresenting yourself as a careless, alcoholic operating heavy machinery.

What is a Hipster

  Hipster, like any word in any given language, was created by someone. A hipster is not born but made. Hipster is what I would call a "polar word". A polar word would be any word that might confuse and frighten you if you were learning English as a second language.These words came to be, thanks to the regular use of slang far and wide. These words have two or more definitions and those definitions are the exact opposite of each other. Think of the Earth's magnetic poles. They are exactly opposite of each other but if you agree with the polar shift hypothesis, they could inhabit each others' space. There are many polar words floating around out there but since our time is limited, here are only a few examples: wicked (evil; awesome), gnarly (gross; radical), pissed (angry; drunk).
  For me hipster could be considered to be another example of these "polar words". However, hipster falls into a rather large gray area, being that there isn't one black and white definition of the word. You could think of it as floating around in word purgatory. It is not a "bad" word nor is it "good". So it is destined to roam the earth without a definition or a purpose until an English class decides to discuss the word in detail, only to discard it as soon as the semester is over.
  There has always been some form of the hipster throughout history. It uses different disguises and never stays in the same place for long. You could say that "hipster" is in the eye of the beholder. And this beholder thinks that all these hip trends that we are seeing everywhere were originally born of comedy. Someone saw a lumberjack and said, "That guy's outfit is really funny. Could you imagine if we all walked around looking like that?"  And we did exactly that. What was once simply making fun of one very small subculture, has become the new in thing. You cannot escape red flannel print and the furry Russian style hats with flaps haunt you wherever you go.

  Which brings me back to my "Polar Trends hypothesis". What once was hideous will eventually become bitchin. Keep in mind this is only one example how hip has morphed from something lame to something wicked cool. Images of trucker hats, wife-beaters, men in eye-liner, and girls wearing combat boots with a mini-skirt, should be flashing in your head right about now. But have no fear. Just as fate has a fickle finger, so does the hipster. These fashions will soon be dead, only to be replaced with some new monstrosity. Let's just hope these never become hip again. If they do...someone please put me out of my misery! The world can be an ugly place (thanks skinny jeans) without having  to see grown men prancing about in these little numbers.