Tuesday, November 02, 2010

How many hipsters does it take to change a light bulb?

According to Wikipedia:

Hipster is a slang term that first appeared in the 1940s, and was revived in the 1990s and 2000s often to describe types of young, recently settled urban middle class adults and older teenagers with interests in non-mainstream fashion and culture, particularly alternative music, indie rock, independent film, magazines, and websites.

These days, Hipsterism has gone mainstream. Urban Outfitters is like a training ground for "all things hipster"...the vinyl, the Obama t-shirts during the last election (hipsters are into "progressive politics"), the flannel and thrift-looking stuff... You can even now be a Hipster Christian.

Another typical characteristic of a hipster is that they are employed in music, art, or fashion. In other words, all of our friends. And we all went to a hipster-lovin' concert last week:



(I posted to another video with the same song here, but I liked this live version to capture the animal animation on stage.)

Jonsi is the lead singer of an Icelandic band called Sigur Ros. I think that if Bill and Ted were to form Wyld Stallyns today (ie the music at the core of the future's Utopian society), it would be Jonsi / Sigur Ros. It's such a strange concert to go to because (besides the fact that EVERYONE is wearing skinny jeans and v-neck tees while taking pictures with their iPhones using the hipstomatic app) everyone stands silently, just holding their breath and experiencing the music. It's that amazing. I'd been to Sigur Ros several years ago and have been waiting for them to come back to Houston so that Jay could experience the awesome-ness for himself. Jay actually has Jonsi on vinyl, so consider him hipster.

[Sidenote: Unlike Sigur Ros, Jonsi does some upbeat stuff. Take for instance this song, in which he actually sings in English and to which he jumped around in an Indian headdress at the concert.]

And in regards to how many hipsters it takes to change a light bulb--it's a really obscure number. You've probably never heard of it. (that cracks me up every time!)

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