the self-hating hipster

Swept Away: Dust Ashes, and Dirt in Contemporary Art and Design

submitted by Vanessa

About a month ago I saw a Time Out New York listing for a show at the Museum of Arts and Design (MAD) called Swept Away: Dust, Ashes, and Dirt in Contemporary Art and Design (on view February 7- August 12, 2012), which immediately intrigued me. I’ve always been a sucker for sculpture, probably due to my brief excursions into ceramic, glass, and stone as artistic mediums in my teens and early twenties, and combined with my interest in the artistic use of “alternative” and reclaimed materials (Garbage sculpture? Statue of Ulysses S. Grant made entirely of human hair? Elephant dung replica of ancient Rome? I’m all about it. Continue reading →

Tags: Alexandre Orion, Beauty in All Things: Japanese Art and Design, clay, Columbus Circle, dirt, dryer lint, dust, Flora, Glassress New York: New Art from the Venice Bienniale, Hanging Around: Necklaces from the MAD Collection, Jim Dingilian, Julia Parker, MAD, Museum of Arts and Design, Ossário, Phoebe Cummings, Ritual Accumulations, smoke, Swept Away, Unspoken Conclusion (Footbridge), Whitney Biennial

Indie Canon Inductee: The Magnetic Fields

21 Mar

The Magnetic Fields was founded by Stephin Merritt in Boston in 1990 where he and bandmate/high school friend, Claudia Gonson, were living at the time (check out the adorable photo-booth still of the two above).

I might as well get this out of the way right now…Stephin Merritt is getting inducted into the Indie Canon for being the songwriter, lead vocalist, producer and mutli-instrumentalist behind The Magnetic Fields as well as Continue reading →

Tags: (Crazy For You) But Not That Crazy, 100000 Fireflies, 69 Love Songs, A Chicken With its Head Cut Off, Absolutely Cuckoo, Aging Spinsters, All My Little Words, All You Ever Do is Walk Away, bobdoes, Born On A Train, Busby Berkely Dreams, Candy, Claudia Gonson, Daniel Handler, Dean Wareham, Desert Island, Distant Plastic Trees, distortion, Epitaph For My Heart, Fear of Trains, Frank Zappa, Future Bible Heroes, gay synth, Heaven in a Black Leather Jacket, hipster, hipster girls, Holiday, i, I Can't Touch You Anymore, I Don't Believe in the Sun, I Don't Want to Get Over You, In the City in the Rain, Indie Canon, It's a Crime, Jeremy, Joanna Newsom, John Woo, Lemony Snicket, Let's Pretend We're Bunny Rabbits, Lonely Highway, Long-Forgotten Fairytale, Lou Barlow, Love at the Bottom of the Sea, Love is Like Jazz, Mac McCaughan, Meaningless, Merge Records, Nico, Papa Was a Rodeo, Phil Spector, Promises of Eternity, Realism, Robert Scott, Sam Davol, San Diego Zoo, Series of Unfortunate Events, Shirley Simms, Stephin Merritt, Strange Powers, Suddenly There is a Tidal Wave, Susan Anway, Swinging London, synth pop, The 6ths, The Book of Love, The Charm of the Highway Strip, The Death of Ferdinand de Saussure, The Gothic Archies, The Luckiest Guy on the Lower East Side, The Magnetic Fields, The Night You Can't Remember, The Saddest Story Ever Told, The Wayward Bus, Town Hall NYC, triple album, Two Characters in Search of a Country Song, Very Funny, Wasps' Nests, When My Boy Walks Down the Street, When You Were My Baby, Yeah Oh Yeah!

I Don’t Like St. Patrick’s Day

16 Mar

I am an Irish American. My name is Eamonn, and this is no exaggeration, every week of my adult life I have to correct someone on the pronunciation of my name (or I just ignore the mispronunciation). As we approach March 17^th I have come to the conclusion that I don’t actually like St. Patrick’s Day.

Don’t get me wrong. I like to get wasted just as much as the next guy (actually, I’m and old man (26) and I can’t handle getting wasted anymore), but I feel like St. Patrick’s Day is completely devoid of Irish culture. It’s just a bunch of drunk people. A bunch of drunk people that don’t know who Oscar Wylde, James Joyce or Continue reading →

Tags: Irish, James Joyce, Oscar Wylde, St. Patrick's Day, Thin Lizzy

Comments 2 Comments
Categories Humor, Slices of Life
Author meaghere

How to Feel About Albert Pujols After You Forgot He Burned St. Louis

13 Mar

This off season, Albert Pujols became one of the biggest free agent players to hit an open market since Lebron James. It came down to his desire to be one of the highest paid players in the game, and his loyalty to the only organization he ever knew. In the end, he and his family felt slighted over what they felt was a sub par offer from St. Louis, and chose to sign a 10-year, $254 million dollar contract to join the Los Angeles Angels. Albert switched leagues and joined the AL, where you figure he’ll play a significant role as a DH somewhere down the line. Consider it a wise move for a player with mild concerns over his actual age, nevermind that he followed the money.

Now that the dust has settled, and uh, new dust is kicking around Continue reading →

Tags: agency, albert, Anaheim, Angels, baseball, cardinals, free, Los Angeles, MLB, pujols, st louis

Comments 1 Comment
Categories Baseball, Sports/Hobbies
Author Andy Marshall

Mouse on Mars – Parastrophics

12 Mar

The Düsseldorf based avant-garde, post-techno duo of Jan St. Werner and Andi Toma have been releasing music under the moniker Mouse on Mars for nigh two decades. 2012’s Parastrophics proves that Mouse on Mars, after six years of collective inactivity (there were a number of musical/production side projects in between), are sharp and still relevant.

Since 1994’s Vulvaland, Mouse on Mars has been an electronic chameleon of sorts. MoM collaborated with The Fall’s Mark E. Smith in 2007 as Von Südenfed which calls to mind John Peel’s famous description of The Fall: “They are always different, they are always the same.” The same could be said for Mouse on Mars whose latest album, Parastrophics, shows that St. Werner and Toma are Continue reading →

Tags: Andi Toma, Baku Hipster, Can, Chordblocker Cinnamon Toasted, Cologne, Cricket, Daft Punk, Düsseldorf, electronic, Eliot, facebook, hipster, house, IDM, Jan St. Werner, Kraftwerk, Krautrock, Mark E. Smith, Metrotopy, MoM, Mouse on Mars, Neu!, Parastrophics, Polaroyced, review, Seaqz, techno, The Fall, They Know Your Name, Vulvaland, Wienuss

Tim and Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie: Make that Money

10 Mar

Tim and Eric sure can make a great television show. It started with the peculiarly animated Tom Goes To The Mayor, and carried over to their later venture, Tim and Eric Awesome Show Great Job! They certainly could fill a 15-20 minute block of time with wacky loops and awkward conversation. There was no shortage of celebrity cameos either. I was a big fan of Awesome Show for the majority of its run. I even saw their live show, which was the second sold out show of the night when they played the Wilbur Theater in Boston. They opened that particular show with a song about diarrhea. Actually, it was about fifteen minutes long, and consisted of them simply repeating the world “diarrhea” over and over again. Since I bought my tickets late, on a whim, the seats were towards the back. I overheard a conversation between two ushers at the Wilbur, which went something like this:

Continue reading →

Tags: Billion, Dollar, Eric Wareheim, heresmychippy, james quall, Movie, self referential meta humor, shrim, Tim Heidecker

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Categories Movie Reviews, Movies, Uncategorized
Author Andy Marshall

The Magnetic Fields – Love at the Bottom of the Sea

9 Mar

I had been waiting for The Magnetic Fields to return to their sound on 1999’s 3-volume 69 Love Songs and with Love at the Bottom of the Sea thirteen years later they do just that…it’s just not nearly as good. After 69 Love Songs, The Magnetic Fields released i (which I liked to an extent), Distortion (which I was indifferent to and saw them just after the release of at NYC’s Town Hall venue) and Realism (which I didn’t like). i, Distortion and Realism departed from the synth-heavy pop of The Magnetic Fields’ pre-i works with Continue reading →

Tags: 69 Love Songs, Andrew in Drag, California Girls, distortion, Epitaph For My Heart, Goin' Back to the Country, hipster, Human League, i, Infatuation (With Your Gyration), Let's Pretend We're Bunny Rabbits, Love at the Bottom of the Sea, Quick!, Realism, review, Shirley Simms, Stephin Merritt, synth, The Charm of the Highway, The Magnetic Fields, Town Hall, Weird Al Yankovic, Yeah Oh Yeah!, Your Girlfriend's Face

Comments 3 Comments
Categories Album Reviews
Author the self-hating hipster

Southern Tier Oat

7 Mar

American Double/Imperial Stout

Rating: A-

Poured from bottle to pint glass.

Opaque, dark chocolate (near black) in color with a thin, khaki head that Continue reading →

Tags: American Double, beer, Brown's Brewery, hipster, Imperial Series, Imperial Stout, Oat, oatmeal stout, Raisinettes, review, Southern Tier

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Categories Beer
Author the self-hating hipster

Steve Aoki and Datsik at Northern Lights (2/29/2012)

6 Mar

First off, let me say that Northern Lights is and has always been a lackluster venue. When I was first seeing concerts there almost ten years ago, it was claustrophobic and the acoustics were shitty. Years later, the venue bought out the neighboring property, broke down a wall and now has twice the original square footage if not more. The acoustics are still usually shitty.

Secondly, midweek concerts drive me absolutely insane. It would be one thing if I lived in an actual metropolis, like say, New York City. Doors open at 9 on a Wednesday night in a satellite suburb of the God-knows-why capital of New York with three acts scheduled? I’m not happy that I’m a nine-to-fiver already; late, mid-week concerts are like a sack-tap from a chain mail glove.

Finally…February 29th. That wonderful day afforded to us only once every four years brought garbage weather. When I was leaving Albany Continue reading →

Tags: Brian Urlacher, Cassius, Clifton Park, clubby, Datsik, DJ Prophet, Feeling For You, hipster, indoor sunglasses, Korobeiniki, live show, Nirvana, Northern Lights, Ozma, PBR, Pink Floyd, rihanna, Steve Aoki, Tetris, Wonderland, Wu Tang