ST. THOMAS, USVI

Even hipsters have to take beach vacations every once in a while. As far as hip goes, though, St. Thomas is pretty much the most un-hip vacation one can take (beside a cruise, that is). It was hard to be excited about getting away from the New York winter when the haters over at weather.com were telling us to expect rain the whole weekend. Terrific. Of course knowing that forecasting the weather is about as accurate as predicting Oprah Winfrey's weight on any given day, I held out hope that we would get five days of brilliant sunshine and blue skies.

Good call! This was the view from our balcony at the Marriott Frenchman's Reef during one of our many trackmeet moments during the weekend, when we were sent sprinting from the beach in a hail of very aggresive rain. And then, as tropical weather is want to do, the sun came out to burn me to a crisp.

There's honestly not much to do on this little island other than sit in the sun waiting for skin cancer to set in. Watching the pukies from the cruise ships come and use the beach I'm paying hundreds if dollars a day to use is somewhat unnerving, and hearing them order their kids to "grab daddy a beer" made me want to drown them in the clear blue, bathwater temperature sea.

I swear to you, we did nothing but sit and eat and then eat again. We ate the first night at a place called Mim's Seaside Bistro. It rained on us while we ate all-you-can-eat shrimp. The second night we were off to a nice joint called Hervé where I ate a really good bouillabaisse and got drunk on red wine. The third night brought Craig and Sally's, which was cozy and good, but like all the restaurants on St. Thomas was incredibly overpriced. The prices actually rivaled some of the best places in Manhattan, and there were folks wearing shorts and Hawaiian shirts.

People asked us if we snorkeled. Nope. Did you go to St. John? Nope. Did you go to the downtown area and buy some shit that will sit in your closet until you have your kids sell it for ten cents at a garage sale in Montclair some day? Definitely not. We figured the iguanas had it right--just sit in the sun and chill.

MR. HIPSTER GOES DOMESTIC

It's true, in another life Mr. Hipster was an interior decorator. Most people were sports stars or pharaohs or Joan of Arc, but I put up drapes and decoupaged children's dressers. Don't ask how I know this, I just do.

So, much to my delight our great friend Wendy hooked us up with free tickets to the New York City Home Design Show through her job at HomePorfolio.com.

Over the decades since I was resurrected in the body of a somewhat sloppy, tussle-haired Christ-Killer, I have unlearned all the style and sophistication that came along with my past-life vocation. Nowadays my idea of chic is a bowling ball blue, low-slung vintage pleather chair and an enamel-top dining room table from the 30s that saw three generations of angry, mallet-wielding Italian children from Bensonhurst.

My de-education, as it seems, started at a young age. Growing up in a household filled with tortuous mission furniture and aptly named plein air paintings, I soon grew bored or unbearably uncomfortable with anything resembling dÌcor. When offered the chance to ditch my failing antique oak furniture, I went straight for the most modern, Scandinavian schlock I could find. This was pre-Ikea mind you, so my choice was cutting edge, if not foolhardy and ultimately short-sighted. Within months the dresser drawer bottoms gave out and the slats in my bed shifted, sending me rolling in sleepy circles to the plastic-wrapped trundle bed below. Now every tasteless slob and broke-ass college student in the universe owns a little bit of my frustration in the form of an Ikea bookcase, shaky dresser or disposable TV stand. In my adult years I actually placed a hex on Ikea and had to stop Mrs. Hipster from lighting a broken dresser aflame in their Elizabeth, NJ parking lot. We've since boycotted that disaster, but that's a story for another time.

So we went to this show with nothing but high hopes and the genuine belief that something we saw would jumpstart the taste gene that had lain dormant, hidden under many nights of nacho dip, cocktail weenies and reality television, since our childhoods of shag carpet and crystal pyramids. After one trip around pier 94, I felt unchanged. That celluloid radio sitting on my dresser at home still seemed cool to me. The one cool display at the show, the Houses at Sagaponac, almost made me want to move to Long Island, but then I remembered that is was Long Island, and seeing as my taste was apparently already stuntedÙ One more pass brought about no change. The Mrs. saw a nice blanket from Hue, but it cost more than Bush's war on terrorism.

So we left, pleased in the fact that the only person who can dictate your style is you. Know it. Own it.

Apparently I'm a gun-toting wife-beater. So says the state of Missouri in this court docket.

Okay obviously this is a different Michael Fayne, but I got to thinking about this whole "Googling" phenomenon the other day when a couple nice women I used to go to elementary school with wrote to my whole class about the reunion they had out in LA. Yes, I went to a school that actually had a reunion for our elementary school class. I won't mention what year reunion it was, but suffice it to say that in the number of years since I graduated, there's been a whole generation of children born that is almost old enough to drink.

Anyway, I don't usually do the whole Googling thing, as I think it's more of a background check for dating than anything else, but imagine if one of my old classmates got curious about what the hell I was up to these days. Apparently I've moved to Missouri and am busy buying firearms and pounding on my spouse. Whew, I got off with five years probation. Oops, I violated my court order and got tossed in jail. What a mess!

It's not this guy's fault that he shares my name, but did he have to besmirch it by coming up in a Google search, while I barely register a squeak? It's probably not something he thought about while cracking his wife's skull with a baton, or whatever he did, but, man, please, there could be some potential employer out there who Googles me, comes across this document and decides to pass on karmic value alone. I can't believe I'm jealous of a convict!

No, I'm not twelve. No, I'm not interminably geeky. I'm merely a red-blooded American male who loves to shoot the shit out of aliens. Granted, I'm about two years behind my ilk in purchasing and playing Halo, but somebody was nice enough to buy me an Xbox for Christmas, and I've been driving around in that little jeep-like vehicle and cheering on the wholesale slaughter of other life forms ever since.

I'd forgotten just how much fun video games can be since abandoning my Playstation several years ago to both time constraints and console obsolescence. I tried the PC gaming thing for a little while, but had a hard time keeping up with all the hardware requirements with their video and audio cards, RAM, ROM,  processors and other such pap. Plus, I tried the online thing a few times and just got my ass beat by some pre-teen with his mom's credit card, a T-1 line and Trapper Keeper full of cheat codes. When some kid can make his character invisible and ends up beating you from behind with a crowbar while you ineffectually fire your machine gun into a pile of rocks, you know it's time to give up to the kiddies and admit you would rather spend your time trying to get laid.

In any case, being a registered Conscientious Objector doesn't stop me from firing digital bullets in a world created by our friends over at Microsoft, and bucking and dodging on my couch as though that same ammo is going to fly out of the monitor and riddle me with holes. It really is an odd feeling--the being afraid of fake shit flying at me, not the killing--that makes me think that maybe I'm more sensitive to the fake violence than the typical twelve year-old out there. Not to sound like an old jackass or anything, but it makes me think that this stuff must be desensitizing today's youth to the real violence that goes on every day in, say, Iraq, where our president has sent troops to get blown up by road side bombs and anti-aircraft fire. Maybe the gaming industry is in cahoots with the NRA and the military complex to make guns seem cool and joining the army "adventurous." Anyway, back to whacking E.T.'s.

I've been working on this little site for a few years now, and finally someone has come along to legitimize the late nights, the cramped fingers and the wasted hours of retina wrecking squinting. Yeah, there have been some sites that have linked to the damn thing, but they've mainly been friends or strangers with sites called things like Joey's House of Spam or Sproing: The Magic Bean. I have no doubt some of these sites are super high quality and very informational, and I thank them very much for including me in their thoughts, but I want to present the woman who alone has brought an instant air of legitimacy to Mr. Hipster:

Whitney Matheson

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