I believe Garrison Keillor to be in this camp of people. This may be why certain of my friends refer to him as The Insufferable One.
garrison keillor can smile. i have seen him...and his work is supposed to be funny, even if you dont find it particularly so (i find him worth the occasional chuckle, at most, and this seems to be what he is aiming for). and he would never wear an ironic t-shirt 3 sizes too small...
i am talking about, oh...let me think...well
they arent particularly well known, usually. when i interned in chicago, i worked w/a lot of these guys. at one point, they had a party, and i went w/dione.
the building where they lived was, in itself, depressing...i felt like the walls were going to start oozing mucous, just out of boredom. i think they chose it b/c its drabness was fashionable, although it could have just been the neighborhood.these people will live crammed horizontally in a spikee filled closet to be able to say they live in a 'hip' neighborhood, and its stupid anyway, becase cities are horrible, vomitous places to live. its bad enough to live near one. i live 40 miles from one. thats too close for me.
anyway, we went to this place, and they played that type of 1920s music where they sang throigh a megaphone. the played these records all night. i dont think anyone there actually liked that kind of music much, but it was what was hot in wicker park ( a hip chicago neighborhood) that afternoon, although, by the time the party was over, i think the music was no longer hip...and of course, it was played on a record player. i think they were 78s. how 'retro' ! they dint have speakers...or actually, they probably did, but they also had one of those megaphones attached to the needle. the guy who was throwing (more accurately, the guy who was gently tossing the party underhand, or maybe even just dropping the party on the ground and possible nudging it wth his foot) probably had more worthless crap in his apartmenrt that he probably fopund in a fashionable wicker park boutique, where they find stuff in the 2nd hand stores and buy it bfroe anyone else gets a chance, and then put it on a mannequin, where it looks ridiculous, but, because ts there, allthe hipster robot clones HAVE to hav it, and will pay several years worth of salary to have it. within an hour or two, the thin g immediately goes 'out of style' and becoms not only worthless, but being see with it becomes a symbol of lack of 'hip' in the hipster community. the thing, bought earlier that afternoong for $15000, brandished in plain view on the way home, then deemed uncool, is taken back to the goodwill/slav. army where it was found a few days before. it is rebought by the boutiquwe owner, and in a couple months, it happens again...sold for probably 30000 this time, and probably to the same guy.
being a hipster, you might askm why doesnt the guy just find his own stuff and make his own style?
he's a hipster. he has no emotion, nor any real mind of his own. to suggest he start his own style or wear what he wants, and not what has been drcreed by the hipster cognoscenti, would get him kicked out of the hipster club. they would revoke his buddy holly glasses. there are a number of things that could also get you ejected from the hipster club.
displaying any emotion, of any kind, at any moment in time, would do it.
enjoying something would do it.
professing to appreciate any piece of pop culture for its quality, or its sentimentality, is cause for immediate rejection. likewise, hipsters must submissively shower appreciation on any piece of work created in oposition, esp if it displays an absolute lack of technical skill. case in point - the work of lesbian pixelvision 'artist', sadie bennett. or the music of post punk band pavement, esp the less melodic, more screechy lo-fi stuff.
its also okay to appreciate mainstream work, but only if its done as an ironic statement of a more extreme worldview. to claim, for example, that carnosaur is better than jurrassic park. or to find some marxist reading in 'stop or my mom will shoot'. for something so bad that it is eschewed my mainstream society...showgirls, for instance. anything, basically that can give the impression that those 'apes' who make up the mainstrem are too thick to appreciate what only the hipster can see. its all about a ruse, really. they are smart, but not that smart, as the truly intelligent dont seem to join their ranks that often...if youre smart, you like to have fun, see...and they like to think they are above something like fun , which is why, getting back to that party, there was none to be had...
they ate cheese, (which was the first and only time i believe some of them had ever eaten)and drank wine, which was the first time i had seen any of them consume anything aside from coffee. their normal food, i think,must have been cigarettes. normally, they had these obscenely large bathtub sized vats they would pour coffee into, and then leave sitting around, usually near some priceless, rare piece of equipment. they could have bathed in the mug, and if they took a sip and a half in 10 hours of work, i would be shocked. some of them could not drink the venezuelan spastic beans or whatever they were using and brought their own, stronger brfand of coffee. they paid upwards of $16 a cup for this stuff, whoch was capable of putting normal people into a coma simply by smelling it. it is my beliefe that many of this lot were actually dead and were in fact keept alive by stimuulants, caffeine and nicotine. i believe this was true of another woman i worked with in cincinnati. i believe this because i worked with her for nearly 3 years, and in that time she never took a break, other than to go outside and smoke, whoch she did about every 3 1/2minutes...but she never took a break for lunch. i neever ssaw her eat anything, inckluding cake on the occasiuonal birthday or office celebration but she constantly sucked back cans of coke. she never gained weight, her skin was, seriously, green. i b elieve, based on these facts, that she was dead. the skin really was a sickly shade, indicating serious internal trouble, and i dont believe human lungs couold have supoporte that much smoke without coughing outy their entire lining .)
ANYWAY, and other than myselkf and dione, not a single person smiled the entire evening. i dont think anyone's facial expression changed at all, now that i think of it. we talked to them. some even to,d jokes, intentionally, but did not laugh or indicate a sense of humour whatsoever
see, at least garrison keillor can smile, and his humor, while too dry and, well, not funny for me most of the time, does work on some people.
there are probably a number iat that party who like his humour
i think a person who mkight fit that description is bob balaban. i think smiling, which he has been force to do at some parts of his life, is so difficult for him that, on those rare occasions when he does it, he lookks like he is in pain.
now, i dont think he is as pretentious as most of these people, and he is probably aware f this quality, and uses it to his advantage, particularly in humor...see his turn in lady in the water, when you get a chance...but most of these types...i cant imagine living a life like that, where you never do anything meaningful b/c it is all beneath you...what a living hell.
