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| Hipster Diary -- Archive 11 |
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Archive Archive 16 |
Diaries: kurt vonnegut: r.i.p. worst boss ever best purchase ever ogunquit, me bummer movies We have lost a truly amazing American thinker--a man who could make social commentary both hysterical and utterly heartbreaking. He was an original voice who, despite his advanced age, drew in eager college kids and young adults easier than an all-you-can-drink kegger or a night of free Spinal Tap. Aside from reading just about everything the man wrote, I, along with my classmates, had the honor and privilege of having Mr. Vonnegut be our commencement speaker. Sure, we could have had a head of state or some weird administrator from The Red Cross, but instead we had an old guy from Indianapolis who happened to be the best, and most insightful commencement speech writer of all time. The man was even cool enough to hang out the night before graduation at a family drinking and eating event at the University. He probably wanted to rethink accepting that invite after a friend of mine, while following him up the steps to the bathroom, uttered, "Hey, I loved you in Back to School!" Vonnegut turned, gave us a sly smile and continued walking.  Here, in its entirety, is the speech he gave that day: There are three things that I very much want to say to the Class of 1994 in this brief hail and farewell. They are things which haven¡t been said enough to you freshly minted graduates nor to your parents or guardians, nor to me, nor to your teachers. I will say these in the body of my speech, I¡m just setting you up for this. First, I will say thank you. Second, I will say I am truly sorry - now that is the striking novelty among the three. We live in a time when nobody ever seems to apologize for anything; they just weep and raise hell on the Oprah Winfrey Show. The third thing I want to say to you at some point - probably close to the end - is, "We love you." Now if I fail to say any of those three things in the body of this great speech, hold up your hands, and I will remedy the deficiency. And I'm going to ask you to hold up your hands this early in the proceedings for another reason. I first declare to you that the most wonderful thing, the most valuable thing you can get from an education is this - the memory of one person who could really teach, whose lessons made life and yourselves much more interesting and full of possibilities than you had previously supposed possible. I ask this of everyone here, including all of us up here on the platform - How many of us, how many of you, had such a teacher? Kindergarten counts. Please hold up your hands. Hurry. You may want to remember the name of that great teacher. I thank you for being educated. There, I've thanked you now; that way I don¡t have to speak to a bunch of nincompoops. For you freshly minted college graduates, this is a puberty ceremony long overdue. We, whose principal achievement is that we are older than you, have to acknowledge at last that you are grown-ups, too. there are old poops possibly among us on this very day who will say that you are not grown-ups until you have somehow survived, as they have, some famous calamity - The Great Depression, World War II, Vietnam, whatever. Storytellers are responsible for this destructive, not to say suicidal, myth. Again and again in stories, after some terrible mess, the character is able to say at last, "Today, I am a woman; today I am a man. The end." When I got home from World War II, my Uncle Dan clapped me on the back, and he said, "You¡re a man now." So I killed him. Not really, but I certainly felt like doing it. Now you young twerps want a new name for your generation? Probably not, you just want jobs, right? Well, the media do us all such tremendous favors when they call you Generation X, right? Two clicks from the very end of the alphabet. I hereby declare you Generation A, as much at the beginning of a series of astonishing triumphs and failures as Adam and Eve were so long ago. I apologize. I said I would apologize; I apologize now. I apologize because of the terrible mess the planet is in. But it has always been a mess. There have never been any "Good Old Days," there have just been days. And as I say to my grandchildren, "Don¡t look at me. I just got here myself." So you know what I¡m going to do? I declare everybody here a member of Generation A. Tomorrow is another day for all of us. Having said that, I have made us, for a few hours at least, what most of us do not have and what we need so desperately - I have made us an extended family, one for all and all for one. A husband, a wife and some kids is not a family; it¡s a terribly vulnerable survival unit. Now those of you who get married or are married, when you fight with your spouse, what each of you will be saying to the other one actually is, "You¡re not enough people. You're only one person. I should have hundreds of people around." I met a man and a wife in Nigeria - Ibos. They just had a new baby. They had a thousand relatives there in southern Nigeria, and they were going to take that baby around and visit all the other relatives. We should all have families like that. Now, you take Dan and Marilyn Quayle, who imagine themselves as a brave, clean-cut little couple. They are surrounded by an enormous extended family, what we should all have - I mean judges, senators, newspaper editors, lawyers, bankers. They are not alone. And one reason they are so comfortable is that they are members of extended families, and I would really, over the long run, hope America would find some way to provide all of our citizens with extended families - a large group of people they could call on for help. Now, I¡ve made us an extended family. Does our family have a flag? Well, you bet. It¡s a big orange rectangle. Orange is a very good color and maybe the best one. It¡s full of vitamin C and cheerful associations, if one could forget the troubles in Ireland. Now this gathering is a work of art. The teacher whose name I mentioned when we all remembered good teachers asked me one time, "What is it artists do?" And I mumbled something. "They do two things," he said. "First, they admit they can't straighten out the whole universe. And then second, they make at least one little part of it exactly as it should be. A blob of clay, a square of canvas, a piece of paper, or whatever." We have all worked so hard and well to make these moments and this place exactly what it should be. As I have told you, I had a bad uncle named Dan, who said a male can¡t be a man unless he¡d gone to war. But I had a good uncle named Alex, who said, when life was most agreeable - and it could be just a pitcher of lemonade in the shade - he would say, "If this isn't nice, what is?" So I say that about what we have achieved here right now. If he hadn¡t said that so regularly, maybe five or six times a month, we might not have paused to notice how rewarding life can be sometimes. Perhaps my good uncle Alex will live on in some of you members of the Syracuse Class of 1994 if, in the future, you will pause to say out loud every so often, "If this isn¡t nice, what is?" Now, my time is up and I haven¡t even inspired you with heroic tales of the past - Teddy Roosevelt¡s cavalry charge up San Juan Hill, Desert Storm - nor given you visions of a glorious future - computer programs, interactive TV, the information superhighway, speed the day. I spent too much time celebrating this very moment and place - once the future we dreamed of so long ago. This is it. We¡re here. How the heck did we do it? A neighbor of mine, I hired him - he was a handyman - to build and "L" on my house where I could write. He did the whole damn thing - he built the foundation, and then the side walls and the roof. He did it all by himself. And when it was all done, he stood back and he aid, "How the hell did I ever do that?" How the hell did we ever do this? We did it! And if this isn¡t nice, what is? I got a letter from a sappy woman a while back - she knew I was sappy too, which is to say a lifelong Democrat. She was pregnant, and she wanted to know if I thought it was a mistake to bring a little baby into a world as troubled as this one is. And I replied, what made being alive almost worthwhile for me was the saints I met. They could be almost anywhere. By saints I meant people who behaved decently and honorably in societies which were so often obscene. Perhaps many of us here, regardless of our ages or power or wealth, can be saints for her child to meet. There was one thing I forgot to say, and I promised I would say, and that is, "We love you. We really do." It's nice to see that the blog juggernaut, Gawker, has finally vindicated twelve years of tall tales about the man who was nice enough to give me my first job in Manhattan, Mr. Scott Rudin, by naming him "New York's Worst Boss." 
The sad thing is that my stories of eighteen hour days, rapid weight-loss and oft-thrown projectiles are all true. Not only did I go from about 150lbs. to about 120lbs. in a matter of a few months (due to Rudin deeming our food "disgusting" and making us throw out anything we dared to have delivered the office) but was branded with the fun moniker "California surfer shithead" (despite never having surfed in my life). The stories are soooo endless that I don't have the stamina to write them all down here. Plus, I want to save them up for my book and make back some of the money I lost out on when that same boss cut my salary in half for no apparent reason--and without telling me. Eventually his first assistant gave me the explanation I was looking for: "There are a million dudes just like you who would work here for free [so just be glad you can get paid to be tortured, belittled, intimidated and essentially broken down and debased to the point where you are a mere shell of a human being.]" Top 5 random Rudin quotes
[not verbatim in most cases, but pretty close]: 1. "Why doesn't that bitch just fuckin' die already?!" - After slamming the phone down on his mother mid-call, and then tearing the phone cord from the wall 2. "This... is not a fuckin' granita" - After, in the days before the Internet, demanding a "granita," but refusing to tell me what that might be, and then throwing away my first two attempts. Finally, after running around for three hours in 95-degree weather, he was satisfied with my purchase, took one sip and threw it in the garbage and told me to "get the fuck back to work." To this day I dont even think he knew what a granita was. 3. "Your fat, old c-nt of client wouldn't even have a job if it weren't for me, so shut the fuck up" - Speaking to what I believe was Kathleen Turner's agent during her run in his B'way play, Indiscretions 4. "Someone needs to find out what kind of fuck would want to do this to me!" - After finding out, yet again, that someone had broken in and vandalized his CPW apartment that was in the midst of being renovated while he lived at the St. Regis. He had, of course, fired several contractors (who all had keyes) and workmen without paying them, so you do the math, Captain obvious... 5. "I never want to see that California surfer shithead ever again!" - To his first assistant on the phone after I shoved my pager in his face in the now demolished New York Coliseum building after being paged five times (and having to jump out of my cab every time to find a working pay phone) to the wrong number and then being screamed at for not calling him to report my progress uptown with the retarded Marvin's Room script. Bonus* "This place looks like a gaddamn meeting at The Advocate. I need to get a woman in here!" - After looking around his office at the four very young, male assistants sitting at their desks. I was actually replaced in that office after I left by a young woman, who lasted exactly one week in the position before storming out. Rudin was reported to then say, "Well, that fuckin' experiment is over." What with the current cold snap here in the Northeast, it's time to get the damn winter coat out of the closet. This is always the time of year that I ask myself why the hell I ever left Southern California. That was, until last year when I discovered the joy of the down jacket. With its lightweight goodness, amazing warmth and zillions of pockets for iPods and wallets and crap, I would be lost without it. In fact, next to my iPod, it's like the best purchase I've made in years. Here's some dude in goggles making my Helly Hansen Double Down jacket look way douchier than it is.  For some reason everyone to a person asked me if I was going to get Johnny cakes whilst up in Maine. I took me a second to realize that they were referring to the Vito love-fest on the Sopranos. That, by the way, was somewhere else in New England; so there! Mrs. Hipster's co-worker was nice enough to rent us his cool little cottage right near town. It made for great anniversary get away, and the weather couldn't have been better. We saw more antiques than any man has the right to see, and the weather gods gave us yet another perfect set of crisp, sunny days. Sometimes I feel blessed. Anyway, here's my usual list of all the places I ate and drank in Ogunquit. First Day: Maxwells Pub (dinner) Right down the street from the house war were renting, this is your typical pub with decent burgers and local beer on tap. I had a decent cheesesteak, and drank one too many. We spotted our first person of color at this joint, but he didn't really stick around. We only saw six more over the next three days. Second Day: Wild Blueberry Cafe (breakfast) "Cute" little place in a kind of bed and breakfast-type place. The service was a little spotty and odd, and we could hear a woman loudly complaining to the hostess/waitress/busboy about her food being cold and thusly inedible. While my food wasn't piping, they cooked my banana pancakes perfectly, and even took the time to embed them in the batter and give us a couple mini blueberry muffins that were like sweet little nuggets of goodness. Maine Diner (lunch) This place is clearly a local favorite. Every blue-hair within a thousand miles was standing in line with their T.G.I. Fridays beepers waiting to sink their wooden chompers into something fried. Inside it's your typical, poorly-lit diner with tons of New England charm. The menu has fish and shellfish battered and beaten in all shapes and sizes. I got the fried clam strips on a hot dog bun (which is just weird), but satisfied my once-a-year craving for greasy mollusks. They honestly didn't have a ton of taste, but it's about the experience, not the salty rubber bands, right? Five-O Shore Road (dinner) Yes, we're the assholes who made reservations for a Wednesday night in Maine--and at eight o'clock no less. We literally sat alone in a dining room as our poor server poured over the wine list with us. The wine we picked ended up being great, and my mussel appetizer with roasted garlic, thyme, Gorgonzola, and sweet cream was damn good. My salmon entree with chilled couscous timbale with tzatziki was also tasty. Too bad nobody was around to see my smiles. Third Day: McDonald's (breakfast) I know. I know. I really hate McDonalds breakfast, but we were hung over and on the move, and Mrs. Hipster digs that styrofoam Mcmuffin thing with the round slab of ground pig. Bull n' Claw (lunch) This place makes Sizzler seem like a dream come true. It was drab and sad and just plain ugly. Granted my burger wasn't too bad, but who can concentrate on food when you're busy trying to fight off the urge to slit your wrists. A total bummer. The Old Village Inn (dinner) Set in an old house with multiple rooms and plenty of charm, the idea is pretty nice--but what is nice in theory isn't always great in practice. I got a filet stuffed with a bunch of stinky cheese. The meat was very, um, wedding-like. Plus we sat at our table between the soup and the entree for at least a half hour without so much as a nod from our server. The best part of the meal was the coffee. Fourth Day: Some bakery (breakfast) We stopped at some little bakery joint on the way out of town to pick up muffins and coffee. I had a blueberry and Mrs. Hipster had some sort of pumpkin chocolate chip deal. They were pretty good. And thus ended our leaf-peeping adventure. These movies aren't so much sad as they are total bummers. I was thinking about this on the way to work the other day after seeing #10, The Constant Gardener. Watching these films just makes you want to beat yourself to death. I just threw in the first ten that came to mind. There are plenty more out there, but I think a nice film festival of these beauties would manage to sufficiently bum you out for at least a couple months. These movies aren't so much sad as they are total bummers. I was thinking about this on the way to work the other day after seeing #10, The Constant Gardener. Watching these films just makes you want to beat yourself to death. I just threw in the first ten that came to mind. There are plenty more out there, but I think a nice film festival of these beauties would manage to sufficiently bum you out for at least a couple months.
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| More on Mr. Hipster |
 Hipster Movie ReviewsEnjoy the rantings as Mr. Hipster proves he slept through his film criticism courses in college. |
 Hipster Book ReviewsThis much ignorance about literature can only lead to hurt feelings and a whole lot of nonsense. |
 MusicCheck out the albums that have left Mr. H with permanent hearing loss in his left ear, but a song in his heart |
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