Choose an Identity

I just noticed that when you leave a comment on a blogger post you are instructed to "choose an identity." This says far too much about the age we are living in. 

Topic: Miley Cyrus. Discuss amongst yourselves. 

"christian hipsters"

Yet another reason to love the blogosphere: It makes it easier to discover convenient labels for yourself!

I found "Christian hipster" through my friend Danielle, who directed me to this blog with the words, "I feel seen through." The original entry is from a blog called "The Search," named for a passage from Walker Percy's The Moviegoer:

The search is what anyone would undertake if he were not sunk in the everydayness of his own life…. To become aware of the possibility of the search is to be onto something. Not to be onto something is to be in despair.

Considering I spent a good part of last weekend checking out lit crit on Walker Percy from the library, this guy's got me pretty well pegged.

According to The Search's Brett McCracken, among the things Christian hipsters like are:
-music, movies, and books -- Christian or not
-Flannery O'Connor, Walker Percy, N.T. Wright (totes heard him speak at Emory last year!!!1), C.S. Lewis, Soren Kierkegaard, Chuck Klosterman, David Sedaris
-breaking taboos
-getting tattoos
-carrying flasks
-smoking clove cigarettes
-bands

Among things they don't like are:
-megachurches
-alter calls
-Pat Robertson, James Dobson, Jerry Falwell, Mel Gibson & The Passion
-contemporary Christian music
-"beach evangelism" (I have no idea either)
-pastors who talk too much about politics or youth pastors who talk too much about Braveheart (Yes! What is it with youth pastors and Mel Gibson/torture porn? (yeah I said it))

However, having spent the past several years in "Reformed" Presbyterian churches (I don't think I've heard a single sermon in my adult life that didn't quote Tolkien or Lewis), this discovery isn't as eerie or exciting as it would have been when I was 18 and attending an evangelical Episcopal school during the week and my parents' Baptist church on Sundays.

Brett also missed the one huge, glaring mark of the Christian hipster: Sufjan Stevens.

Additionally, they/we like to sing new takes on old hymns, usually in a folksy style (at least here in the South) with instruments like the guitar, mandolin, and bongos, always with a grassroots community approach, using the talents of people within the congregation rather than setting up a CD player with "Songs of Worship" or hiring an organ player like ye churches of olde.

We are socially conscious, attend urban churches with a mission to love the city and help the poor, care for the environment, and enjoy a diversity of friendships.

But the main thing that McCracken misses in his analysis is that, beyond being mere cultural preferences or, worse, snob factors that allow us to feel superior to the "evangelical types," these likes and dislikes are actually founded in scripture (what we hipster Christ-followers call the Bible), and are the result of living the Christian life with integrity!

Over and over again in the gospels, Jesus rebuked people (Pharisees) who thought that God favored them (Matthew 15) and overturned religious taboos (like healing on the sabbath (Mark 3), eating with unclean hands (Matthew 15:1), and uncircumcision -- actually that one was mostly his follower Paul: Galatians 5:6).

Despite what Dobson's Focus on the Family might have me believe, I, along with the apostle Paul (who wrote, like, almost all of the New Testament) "know, and am persuaded by the Lord Jesus, that there is nothing unclean of itself" (Romans 14:14). The artistic creations of man echo the glorious act of creation performed by God in Genesis 1. And God didn't make crap.

Jesus hung out with sinners (the disciple Matthew was a tax collector). He healed the sick and gave food to the poor. He reached out to outsiders, including Samaritans, whom the religious people "did not associate with" (John 4). He demonstrated and preached a radical respect for people groups who were oppressed and devalued at the time, including foreigners and women.

Finally, nowhere in the Bible does it say that the purpose for Christians on Earth is to avoid bad stuff (and certainly music with swear words, dancing and tobacco products aren't the baddest) so they can get into heaven when they die. Rather, Jesus said that his purpose on earth was to tell about the "kingdom of God" (Luke 4:43) he promised to establish on this earth at the end of time, and told his followers to pray, "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven" (Luke 11:2). This "new earth" is described further in Revelation 21 as when God will descend down to earth on a throne to live with his people, take away all sadness and pain, and "make everything new."

God didn't create the earth so that he could trash it in the end. All of Jesus's good works and healing in the gospels foreshadowed the ultimate healing that he said would come at the end of time. He instructed his followers to continue his works and healing on this earth in preparation for its restoration.

So the concept of Christians who reject the xenophobia, sexism, and hypocrisy of the Christian Right is nothing new. Jesus started all that... sooooo two thousand years ago.

[And here's where'd I place my MS Paint rendering of the Jesus Hipster, if only I didn't think it might be a little bit blasphemous.]

"tights are not pants"

Anybody know if this website is pre- or post-Blair's comment on Gossip Girl a few months ago?

I was sent this by Seema (who was referred to the site by freshman BSL worker Monroe, and so on in an endless trail of degrees of communication), and according to her somebody plastered "tights are not pants" flyers all over the spiral staircase in the DUC. And by somebody, I mean my hero.

Really, guys, that trend is so 2007.

if you stand like this, it means angst

More Angela Chase for sale, this time at Urban Outfitters.

She likes her coffee black, with 4 or 5 sugars.

NC Public Radio: Teenagers & Popularity

Mean Girls, The Breakfast Club, Heathers... and monkeys!

Hey, wandering-soulster boys: That's not love you're experiencing; it's vanity!

I don't make catty remarks about your newest waif of an infatuation because I'm jealous. I do it because she sucks.

What a relief that someone's put a name to that obnoxious, vapid female trope of film and (worse) reality: Finally the adorable smiling girl dancing barefoot in the rain is being publicly called out for what she really is -- a sham, not a muse.

One unfortunate side effect of this cultural revelation should be the inevitable influx of faux-manic pixie dream girls who miss the point and stupidly idolize the MPDG. ("Natalie Portman presents her new signature clothing line, Change Your Life! Scarves, ballet flats, and sundresses: Now you, too, can be a manic pixie dream girl!")

The other unfortunate side-effect? MPDG nemeses -- "sharp, mean, opinionated, decidedly lacking in mystery" -- i.e., the Jezebels of the world, will no longer politely hide our seething resentment and guiltily apologize for an occasional bitter outburst. Rather, our dislike now justified, we are doomed to complete the transformation to 100% Hillary and never realize that, although the rational hetero man will eventually see his pixie for what she really is and settle down with a real woman, we could learn a little something from MPDGs about laying down the ironic defenses, kicking off the power pumps, and extending some kindness. As a self-proclaimed wandering soulster commented on Sadie's blog (above), "It's good to have someone listen to your crap for that long."

Check it out:
Sadie's "Amazing" Girl (MPDGs were, tragically, muses for a number of my favorite male artists. You'd think Shakespeare would at least know better... I never understood what Hamlet saw in Ophelia.)
The A.V. Club's inventory of Manic Pixie Dream Girls
Cameron Crowe, the Joe Simpson of MPDGs
that most pernicious irksome moppet ("That song will change your life." Actually, Zach Braff, it's just the effing Shins.)
the latest incarnation of MPDG

NEXT: Now that we've successfully corralled Kirsten Dunst and Natalie Portman, let's get to work on typing the eerily familiar Aaron Rose, i.e., the manipulative asshole in sensitive clothing.

DJ AV Club: E'erbody's Favorite Party

I AM WAY MORE ADDICTED TO THIS THAN I EXPECTED!

GOTTA GET BACK TO DANCING!

Angela Chase for Target

It was only a matter of time.






Surely Mossimo is not at the forefront of trends. Was Marc Jacobs doing this last year and I just missed it?

My prediction for 2009: "Crimson Red" is the year's hottest shade, and boxer shorts come attached over leggings.

If you're searching for something more relevant than Michael Cera's latest film...

You should check out the comic blog Assaulted Peanut, by Hilary Gridley, a friend of some friends.* I have read the whole thing twice, and feel obligated to recommend it to all of you as a great way to waste time on the clock, and even a great way to spend time in general.

Unfortunately for the universe Hilary hasn't updated recently, due, she informed me, to a lack of that infamous motivator, procrastination.

Hopefully for us she will soon fall dreadfully behind in her studies. And hopefully for me she will not happen upon this post and become totally creeped out by my adoration for her. If you're reading this, Hilary, just remember the last time I saw you you were wearing leather pants and a homemade PETA shirt, and probably James had vomited on you.

*My friend Andrew guest draws one of the entries, and in another my friend James appears in illustrated form as the bearded roommate.

Stepdad's First Text Message!

The birthing cries went like this:

DON: This is a test text. Let me know if you got it.
ME: Got it!
DON: Cool, now we can text. OMG! This is LOL funny

Parents these days are really growing up too fast.

Selling Not Just Leggings but Coked-Out Way of Life

Has anybody noticed, and been disturbed by, the recent influx of American Apparel web ads? There was a period of a few weeks where almost every site I visited, including work-related sites and my local (totally square) newspaper's website, would load and, surprise! There hung a skanky American Apparel banner ad at the top of the page.

According to some I'm the last to notice.

However, now when I visit those sames sites to find hard evidence for my claim, there are no AA ads to be found. Was their strategy to stage a kind of temporary blitzkrieg attack, followed by a period of latency as the under 22 crowd takes a hiatus from Internet surfing and returns to higher education?

Has anyone had a similar experience this summer of observing the mainstreamification of American Apparel, watching it seep into the nooks and crannies of suburban America and follow innocent citizens into the workplace, or am I the only one who's been feeling violated, perplexed and slightly terrified for the past three months? Is there any place left that remains sacred? Also, what would Mad Men say about this?

[Incidentally I came across this awesome Onion article.]