London, Sleeping, Edward Sharpe and Glee

Blah Blah Blah this post is going to contain absolutely nothing of substance, I just feel like I should write because it's May 14th and that means I'm going to London today but I'll be there tomorrow, which is still really confusing but whatever, I'm not gonna try and figure out exactly how many hours I'm losing or anything like that, I just really don't care.

I got home on Wednesday- now it's Monday, so I've had very little time to rest and recuperate from my first year of college, which was, purely, exhausting. Not even because the work was all that hard (it wasn't. Or maybe it was but I just didn't do any of it. That sounds about right.) I'm such a lazy drip and all I want to do is sleep all the time and usually my bed has no problem lulling me back into the oblivion of napping and even when I wake up, all I can think about is going back to sleep. It's a fantasy really, it's all I daydream about. Napping, napping, napping, sleeping, sleep. I understand now what Dooce was talking about in her blog, one of the earlier posts from back when she started it in 2001...holy mother at the time I was eight I think- yeah I was eight, and I had no idea how much what she was writing at the time would resonate with me someday, eleven years later:
http://dooce.com/archives/daily/10_04_2001.html

The first time I read that, I was like woah Dooce I feel ya, but I had no idea really at the time what she was talking about. The desire for sleep that I used to feel, back in high school, was just the normal sleepiness of a teenager. Teenagers like sleeping,we need a lot of it, we've got major hormone action and we've got a crap load of course work and man we are just under a whole lot of stress all of the time. Now college students, famously, we're not supposed to sleep, and I don't get as much as I would like- that certainly is true- but the problem is I can't function on that little sleep like other kids can. Because of the drugs. Drugs make the sleep deprivation I used to feel now seem like just a yawn, a mild, vague feeling of tiredness. The sleepiness I feel now can only be described by the post I linked to above. It is all-consuming, incapacitating, entirely demanding. I cannot help but give into its demands, no matter my location- be it the subway, church, or in the middle of class. The sleep monster must be satiated.

So that has me a little worried for London, just because me and the sleep monster are still really grappling, we aren't getting along too well, I don't know how to resist him, and that could pose a real problem in London, where I'm expected to do all this vigorous course work and crap. But I'm not gonna worry about it anymore cause where's the point in that?

Meanwhile I went to an Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros concert Saturday. It would've been rad except our seats were super far away, which made it hard to get into the full feel of things, and the guy next to us was high as a kite and smelled it. He asked me what I liked most about Edward Sharpe- I fumbled a bit for an answer but told him they didn't have a song I didn't like, I liked the energy I'd seen on their youtube videos and they were just fun. In return, he told me they changed the way he thought about things. I said like what. He said...movement...like movement through space. I wanted to suggest that perhaps it was the pot that was changing the way he thought about movement through space but then he got engaged in a conversation with his Asian girlfriend, who was also high. Krista and I spent the rest of the concert imitating their dance movies- high hipster, as seems a fitting name for him- was doing a very energetic, weird jerky thing, kind of like he was a marionette and the puppeteer was off his meds- and Asian girlfriend was doing a swaying, dreamy, eyes-closed sort of thing, like she was having a spiritual experience. All in all, they made for a very entertaining night, until high hipster got a mysterious text and had to go, failing to return for the rest of the show. After that the only entertainment (besides the band obviously) was a bunch of drunk friends, maybe in their late twenties or early thirties, all behaving in a thoroughly obnoxious manner not at all appropriate for their age which reminded me why drinking alcohol in public is a bad idea if you want to maintain any semblance of dignity of your person at all. There were several females in the party, none of them overly-attractive, all shouting at each other and hugging at regular intervals and talking through the majority of the performances. Krista aptly described them as a group that would have been much better suited to a Kenny Chesney concert- it was true. They were trying to be cool and indie but everything about them screamed the opposite. Major secondhand embarrassment. They watched a video of a cat chasing a fish on an iPad nine times. Nine. Times. People. I mean I guess it's kinda funny but oh wait IT'S NOT THAT FUNNY. I could give them the benefit of the doubt and say alcohol played a role but to be fair they had barely started drinking at that point, so I'm pretty sure they were just idiots even while sober. The Asian chick left after a while (she needed wider, more open space in which to sway in) but her and high hipster's backpack was still in the seat and one of the two guys in the drunk group, Douchebag McGee as I fondly refer to him, stole a joint from her backpack and smoked it. If Douchebag McGee was an obnoxious drunk, he was even worse while stoned. He proceeded to dance provocatively, (lots of pelvic thrusting), feel up his girlfriend, and shout. Just general shouting. He also stole a poster from me in a manner which I expect he thought was sly, but much to his chagrin, I stole it back when he wasn't looking. He was not happy.
Overall very fun night. It was topped off by a drunk girl, slender with a cheetah-patterned bra which was entirely visible through the gaps in her slashed and tattered t-shirt that was falling off her skinny shoulders (Fashion statement people) stumbling and clutching onto a hot boyfriend who yelled gleefully "my girlfriend's drunk!" The next I saw of them, the girl was lying down on the sidewalk outside of the Orpheum theater with her boyfriend on top of her, engaged in some passionate kissing/slobbering. I might've been disgusted, but the couple was attractive and the girl had lots of badass tattoos so I was alright with it. Also, I've never seen anyone literally lay down in the streets of Boston and get it on before, so that was kind of cool. A new high of debauchery/patheticness.
So yup. Good times in the city. Boston, you're my home!

Other than that, what have I been doing with myself in the brief time that I've been home? Television. Catching up on New Girl, and, I confess, Glee. I love Glee and I'm not ashamed people. Not only is it funny, sexy, lovably stupid, entertaining, and musical in a good way- but it has Darren Criss. And I really like Darren Criss. Really really really a lot. I am actually completely smitten with Darren Criss but that's another story.

I've been listening to a lot of Rihanna, Kaki King, Justin Timberlake, Glee covers, Santigold, The Beatles, Audioslave and Justin Bieber. Don't judge, his new CD is catchy.

I've also been catching up with friends, and home-brewed coffee, and sleep, and my dog, and ice cream from Dairy Twist, and stuff like that.

But all that pleasantness is over because I have to go to London and yes I say have to and yes I'm not exactly excited but hopefully it'll be kind of fun and not totally miserable...
I'll let you know.

Catch ya on the flipside my blogging friends.

Why Ayn Rand Was A Hipster

I am a music snob. Which is the nice way of saying I judge people (sometimes, I'm trying to get better) based on the music they listen to. It's also a nice way of saying that I have really high standards for the music I listen to. And nothing gets under my skin so much as when I discover some underground hidden gem of a band and then suddenly, a few weeks later, every little radio-feeder and her brother is jamming out to it in their car saying OMG OMG I love this song, it's just like sooo good.

That pisses me off.

That, to me, is like if you went down into a mine and you spent hours of your time just chipping away at the stone with your little pick. And you kept coming up with rock after rock after dusty, dirty rock. But then finally. Finally, you found a diamond. And you were so excited, you raced all the way back up into the daylight with your treasure, barely able to contain yourself, only to walk into the local jewlery store, the sweat and dirt of your labors still streaking your face, and find that they're just giving away diamonds. Just like yours. To every single person who walks in the door. Not cool.

Apparently, this makes me a hipster.

Which is cool. I mean, I honestly didn't even really fully understand what a hipster was until I came to college and all of a sudden all these people were telling me that that's what I was, just another hipster. Here I was my whole life thinking I was all original and individualistic, only to discover that there's actually a cliche for people who hate cliches. And that's all I am.

Awesome.

But in all seriousness, despite the fact that there seem to be many negative associations with hipsterism, I truly don't mind being categorized that way. Because it's kinda true. I kind of agree with a lot of what these hipster people seem to subscribe to. And they have cool style. And they listen to awesome music. They are fellow music snobs.

The funny thing is is that I didn't become hipster just to be hipster. I didn't even know what that was. I used to be the only other person I knew who thought this way, who went on these insane, annoying rants about creativity and individuality. So that's really just how I think, I'm not trying to subscribe to some trend or culture. Although it is kind of cool to finally feel like maybe there is a place I belong, even if it's a place that's really weird and the rest of the world seems to hate on.
Not that I'm labelling myself guys. Hipsters don't do that...

So anyway, I got to thinking about all this again yesterday, actually all due to the song "Home" by Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros. That has been one of my favorite songs for probably about a year now. I found out about Edward Sharpe from my friend and the first song I looked up was 40 Day Dream. And now I love them. Desert Song blows my mind every time I hear it. And Home is just lovely. It's just a lovely, happy song.

But it's also a song that, suddenly, mainstream culture seems to be aware of. People whose taste in music I don't respect, people who don't get a lot of exposure to different bands and who certainly don't go out and search for music themselves: these people know about Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros.

And I hate to admit it but it makes me crazy. I have a totally irrational reaction to that fact. I freak out. Like these people don't deserve to listen to Edward Sharpe, because they only know one song. and their medium of discovery was the radio.

So, let's evaluate. I found out about them through a friend's recommendation and then looked them up on Youtube. I don't have their whole album, and I have about three songs on my iPod. Does this mean I am more worthy of listening to and enjoying them?

No. When I think about it honestly, I don't think it does. In fact, I think all it makes me, is a hypocrite. There are plenty of bands I only own one song from; there are bands I own a handful of songs by but still claim them as a favorite on my facebook page. Is that any more authentic than the radio-feeders (my self-coined term) who just happened to catch a song on a popular radio station?

What is this selfish tendency inside myself to want to hide away my favorite things in life? This even extends beyond music. It still gets me worked up that it's "cool" to like The Office. If Parks and Recreation becomes trendy, I'm probably going to have a breakdown. Just today a friend and I were talking about Jane Austen and how the fact that I love her makes me just another cliche, girly, hormonal, chocolate-consuming English major. It makes me so mad, when other people love the things I love. When I discover something beautiful, real art, I want to keep it for myself and I don't want anyone else to be let in on the secret.

Remind you of someone? I know. When we read The Fountainhead in high school, it might not be a surprise that the character who resonated with me most was Dominique Francon.
And so it makes me wonder: Could Ayn Rand have been a hipster?

I'm not trying to make a literary analysis piece out of this. I don't intend to give you quotes from Rand's novels or support from her personal diaries to try and prove Ayn's identity as the original hipster. (Her clothes might pose a problem with the validity of that thesis...) I just think it's funny, when you think about it, to realize that this idea of superiority in orginality and creativity and all that snobbishness that accompanies that...it's nothing new.

Roark and Dominique did it first. And they probably did it better.