This is your fault, Beatnik!

With all the hipster-hate and hipster-debate that I've been witnessing lately, I thought it was time for me to weigh in on the hipster craze...and throw in a The Iron Giant reference just for good measure.

First of all, I think it's only fair to mention that I had a huge problem with the hipster crowd at my school last year, so I was just a teeny bit biased concerning my opinion of hipsters. I thought they were arrogant, careless, and hypocritical. I couldn't stand the sight of anyone who wore skinny jeans and fake glasses. And I continued this well into my senior year.

But over spring break, I was on a college-touring road trip with my dad and we began to discuss hipsters. I told my dad the joke about the hipster in the music store (more on that later), we shared a few giggles over my Interlochen hipster stories, and he asked me for a better definition of "hipster." I gave him the lowdown, and at the end he teasingly said, "So basically, you're a hipster."

To say that I was taken off-guard would be an understatement of King Kong-esque proportions. "Whaaaat?" was my immediate response.

"Yeah...you know, you don't really care what people think. You're uninhibited."

Whoa, whoa, whoa...time out, dad. Hipsters are stupid, remember? We laugh at them. We make jokes about their condescension and derision. We think they need to get over themselves. Right? Weren't we just talking about that?

I should mention that, during this particular drive, we were on the Pennsylvania Turnpike (more on that later, too), we had gotten up at six-thirty AM (on a SATURDAY, for Pete's sake!) and neither one of us was exactly ready to compete in a beauty pageant. You could tell we'd been on the road all day. We were both wearing our "comfy jeans," a.k.a. the kind of jeans you ONLY wear when you're going to be sitting down for a long period of time, and flannel shirts that made us look like extras from Little House on the Prarie. I'd braided my hair, just to keep from having to deal with it, and then covered up my "bad hair day" with my Red Jumpsuit Apparatus hat.

Oh, yes. The Hat. I wish I could post a picture of this thing. Actually, I wish I could give the thing its own blog post. It's that epic. The Hat, for anyone who has never seen it, is a green army-style hat with "Red Jumpsuit Apparatus" stamped on it in yellow and orange, at a cock-eyed angle to the brim (as in, off-center instead of directly over the brim) so no matter how you wear the thing, it's always off-center. Either the brim is off-center or the logo is off-center. As a good friend of mine once said of The Hat, "it's a paradox."

(Yes, in case you're wondering, this is relevant to the story. I'm getting there.)

So, after Dad called me a hipster, we began arguing over whether or not I was indeed a hipster. "You wear that hat," Dad said at one point, gesturing to The Hat. "You'd have to be a hipster to wear that hat."

Of course I had to get defensive: "What's that supposed to mean? There's nothing wrong with The Hat!"

Cue sideways look, while Dad said, very seriously, "Exactly."

Ohh, boy.

We continued tossing the idea back and forth. Dad's position was that anyone who simply doesn't care what others think of them can be called a hipster. Mine was that you had to fit the "hipster profile," that is, the skinny jeans/fake glasses/too indie for your own good/"if it's mainstream it isn't worthwhile" profile that I was used to dealing with at art school. Dad got increasingly frustrated with me as he tried to explain, over and over, that the entire point of hipsterism (I don't even know if that's a real word...but according to my spellcheck it is, so I'm leaving it) is that you don't have to fit a profile.

In other words, to be a hipster, you have to be totally comfortable with who you are. You have to be able to say "Go to hell!" to anyone who tells you that who you are is unacceptable. You have to be able to listen to the music you want to listen to, without caring if someone doesn't think that Miley Cyrus/Justin Bieber/Aly & AJ/[insert guilty pleasure band here] is "cool." You have to be able to do what you love, whether it's filmmaking or drawing or writing or singing or acting, without letting anyone get in your way.

In other words...be a beatnik.

Which is, if I'm not mistaken, what I've been calling myself all along.

*cue crickets*

While I don't want to call myself (or anyone I admire) a hipster, the truth is, that's exactly what we are. A true hipster is not the flannel-sporting, indie-crazed dead horse that society seems to feel the need to keep beating. A true hipster is someone who is not afraid to say "Screw it!" and be whoever, whatever they want to be.

A beatnik. A hippie. A hipster. Call it what you want, but don't make fun of it. That "hipster" you've been turning up your nose at just might turn out to be the next Bruce Springsteen or Lady GaGa (choose whichever fits your musical tastes; they both fit). If nothing else, learn from my mistake: Don't scorn the hipsters; you might just turn out to be one.

Things I did not know before Spring Break:

• How to avoid truck-driving disasters on a busy highway
• The reasons why a zombie apocalypse is scientifically impossible
• How easily a person can fall asleep with Joan Jett blaring in a small, fast-moving car
• How sore a person's backside can get on a drive from Michigan to Maryland
• The exact capacity of an eighteen-year-old girl's stomach (Answer: A whole freaking lot of food)
• What the Pennsylvania Turnpike looks like during the day
• The Pennsylvania Turnpike has its own website
• There is a place where the internet is slower than Interlochen Arts Academy, and it is called the Best Western in Westminster, MD
• An eight-pound dog has absolutely no problem attacking a forty-pound dog with no provocation
• You literally cannot listen to "Bat Out of Hell" too many times
• A family can eat dinner in a craptacular restaurant with terrible service and average food, and still have an amazing time
• There is such a thing as a peanut butter and bacon sandwich, and it is freaking delicious
• Rain can turn into snow and turn the roads into a mess before the hapless driver even knows what hit him
• Not all sororities are evil
• It is entirely possible to trip over a flat, unobtrusive crack in a sidewalk (with my coordination, you'd think I'd have learned this before...but I didn't)
• The Iron Giant is the most heartbreakingly beautiful animated feature ever made

Yes...it really is.

I had heard amazing things about The Iron Giant, but I'd never actually bothered to see it. I figured I would watch it when I had the chance. Whatever. It's just a movie, right?

Oh, no no no no no. It is not "just a movie." It is the most incredible animated film I have ever seen. And yes, that does include anything Pixar has released.

I will not spoil The Iron Giant by giving away plot points, or even describing the plot beyond telling you, in case you didn't already know, that the movie is about (duh) a giant iron robot that crashes to Earth and befriends a young boy. That is all you need to know before you see this film. Well, that and the fact that it's the first traditionally-animated film to have a computer-animated title character. (I didn't even know that until after I watched the movie. But it's a cool little bit of trivia.)

Anyone who has seen me watch a movie knows that it is extremely easy to make me cry: Put on any film with a remotely touching or sad scene, and you're gold. Well, then, you can imagine me at the end of The Iron Giant, if you've seen the film. And if you haven't...well...give me some credit here; I'm not the only one who has teared up at the end of this movie.

The Iron Giant is more than just amazing. It is breathtaking, heartbreaking, tearjerking, and absolutely stunning. If you've seen it, you've fallen in love...and if you haven't seen it, YOU SHOULD. NOW.

And now, moving on to the Pennsylvania Turnpike.

This is what happened when I went on a college trip with my dad (the same day we had the hipster revelation). In a nutshell, I got up at six-thirty following a nightmare about a zombie invasion (don't even ask), found out that I got rejected from Middlebury College (which was not really a shock, to be honest), ate a shit-pile of eggs (sounds appetizing, doesn't it?) and then got on the road at nine-thirty. We hauled ass down the Pennsylvania Turnpike, which for anyone who doesn't know is basically the fifth ring of hell for drivers. At least this time we were going through the day, as opposed to at night.

Imagine this: Narrow lanes, sharp curves, idiots who don't know how to drive...all capped off by a lovely double-dose of road construction. Huge eighteen-wheel trucks seem to reproduce and randomly pop out of nowhere. (This is what inspired the how-to-avoid-truck-driver-disasters conversation mentioned earlier.) The tollbooths seem to be out for blood ("We are going to charge you thirty freaking dollars for the privilege of driving on our f@#$ed-up road! HAHA!")--and to get your thirty dollars' worth of unholy terror, whoever is in charge of the turnpike releases additional trucks for additional aggravation. And on top of all of that, people seem to think that this is the proper way to drive on this monstrosity: 1) Speed like a maniac, 2) slow down rapidly when you realize speeding like a maniac is a bad idea, 3) repeat steps #1 and #2.

Now imagine six hours of that.

In the words of my father, holy shit.

And to make it even more hilarious, the turnpike has its own website. I haven't looked it up--I don't want to look it up. It's funnier to think of what might be on it. "Here is how to keep your sanity on the PA Turnpike: Don't go on the damn thing in the first place!" "Fair warning, we will charge you half your net worth to drive on our messed-up road!" "A little hint--never come down this road at night, unless you are looking to scare the living hell out of yourself!"

I have never driven the PA Turnpike, nor do I ever want to; I have only ever seen my parents drive it. However, seeing as I will probably be going to college in Maryland, and to get to Maryland from Michigan you have to take the PA Turnpike...well...let's just say you might hear about some of those adventures on this blog next year.

No stolen dialogue tonight; the net is about to shut off and I don't have time to look for my notebooks. Instead, here is, as I promised, the hipster-in-the-music-store joke, courtesy of Go Cry Emo Kid:

(A customer walks over to the first aisle of a CD store and taps each and every last CD case with his finger while saying either 'mainstream' or 'sell-out.' He proceeds to do this with every single CD in the store, which takes him about 25 minutes. He then walks up to the counter.)

Customer: What a bunch of mainstreamers you guys are! Dont' you have anything more obscure?

Salesman: We do have a pretty large indie section, which you seem to have skimmed over.

Customer: You call those indie? I've heard of every single one of them. They're all sell-outs.

Salesman: So, what is it that you're looking for?

Customer: How the hell should I know? If I've already heard of it, I wouldn't buy it.

(In case you're wondering: 1) No, I have never done this, 2) No, I never WILL do this, and 3) No, I do not know anyone who has actually done this...although I do know a few people who I think WOULD probably do it, but I can't prove they've actually done it.)

(In case you're wondering about the color: I put it in purple because black text is sooo mainstream. ;) just kidding!)