time to stop lying, when I feel like it

There’s a funny short film on You Tube called “The Hipster Olympics.” Someone took the famous “Upper Class Twit of the Year” sketch by Monty Python and gave it a hipster makeover. The field of hipsters competing for top prize have to be text messaged in order to get them racing. They have to use an ATM to make sure their parents’ rent check cleared in time. They have to take pictures of themselves with digital cameras to update their myspace profiles. They have to quietly judge a regular human being based on dress and choice of music. Lastly, they do not finish the race, because finishing first wouldn’t be hipster. An argument ensues when someone claims that silver is the new gold. They try to outdo each other with comments like, “Bronze is the new silver,” “ninjas are the new bronze,” “hobos are the new ninjas,” “unicorns are the new hobos.” Too true.

That’s what’s so funny. It’s too true. I see more and more of myself in this short film every day. I sport a red hoody when it’s chilly outside. One of the contestants wears a red hoody, and he runs the racecourse with his hands in his pockets, his back perfectly erect. I’ve been known to do this on occasion. I attended and had an absolute blast at a friend’s Fourth of July hobo party. I make ninja jokes with my friends on a regular basis. I can no longer deny it. I am a hipster.

There is an event in the hipster olympics where they have to scour their respective vinyl collections for the record which most deserves banishment based on selling-out. One contestant chooses Of Montreal, another one chooses Deerhoof in a pre-emptive strike before they sell-out, another chooses the Beatles (the announcer says, “Yeah, screw them!”), and the last chooses Bruce Willis’s The Return of Bruno in the day’s first and only sarcastic selection.

This always makes me wonder why on Earth anyone would ever have Bruce Willis’s The Return of Bruno in their vinyl collection. But, wait. Why am I complaining about someone else’s vinyl collection? Why do I have a vinyl collection by which I judge other people’s vinyl collections? Why did I search the For Free box at Plan 9 last week for anything worth taking home for free? Why did I zero in on The Innocent Age by Dan Fogelberg and take it home with me in an ironic statement? I can’t lie to myself or anyone else for any longer. I am a hipster. Let me shout my pride with a mighty yawp to be heard in every corner of the internet!

But I’ll do it later. Right now I have to bust out the digital camera. Myspace profiles require some new flair.