Daily Batman and Liberated Negative Space o’ the Day: Hipster Batmans with bonus friendly advice

Little known fact: Batman’s favorite band is The Postal Service because he feels like Neutral Milk Hotel is getting too mainstream.

via the sfist.

To say that there are no hipsters in Portland is like saying there were no hippies in San Francisco, no punks in New York. The problem with hipsters is their lack of purpose and ideas. They are not the angry young men and women of counter-culture past, they are leaches of culture. Being a hipster is the opposite of a movement; it’s a crawl toward death. Like an unconscious addict, of course no one admits to being one.

Jake Rose


(“Letters to the Editor.” Portland Mercury. January 8, 2009.)

Mr. Rose refers to the Mercury’s assertion that

First off, there is no such thing as a hipster. It’s a lazy stereotype. Blaming hipsters for ruining your favorite bar, your favorite band, and your favorite city is akin to blaming Santa Claus for ruining Christmas. Secondly, stop complaining, it makes you seem more out of touch than you really are.

(“Not Invited Back.” Portland Mercury. December 25, 2008.)

via sfeyes on the flickr.

I used to read it all the time, but hipsters have totally ruined the Mercury. Nyuck, nyuck.

For myself, I would rather be “out of touch” than wear a hanky turned like I have just robbed a train and jeans that cut off the circulation to my thighs and lovely ass. Also it has not quite been long enough since their initial time of ironic popularity to once more sport a trucker hat as a sneering referential fashion nod to an original sneering referential fashion nod. Only Judah Friedlander on 30 Rock gets a pass. And when a musician that I like begins to find wider success, I am happy for that individual, not full of embittered proclamations that he or she has “sold out.” Hipsters: it is okay to like something without it being ironic or edgy. Don’t front like you don’t like Jamba Juice and family reunions — you don’t have to make out like they are kitschy or retro to explain that you enjoy them, because it is okay to like Jamba Juice and family reunions and put the period right there.

“Robin Hoodie” via laughing squid.

Also, I know you love you some Pabst Blue Ribbon but I need to say that once, my husband and I bought an actual 12-pack in bottles of PBR, and when we unloaded them in to the fridge we noticed that despite being sealed each bottle was filled to a different level. Some sat at varying levels up the neck, one was only filled directly to the neck, and the weirdest one was literally all the way to the bottlecap. How is that even possible? Don’t machines in a factory do the bottling, and, if so, why would each be filled differently? Is the machine that poorly operated, or is it that old or sunk that deeply in to disrepair? What the what? There is probably lead shavings and rat shit and who else knows what all in Pabst if there is that bizzarely low level of quality control. Please do consider it and think about making Natty Ice or Keystone the new trendy and appropriately cheesey cheap beer? Probably safer bets.

P.S.: Cute hipster boys? Please eat a sandwich cause from behind I thought you were a woman, and I’m not sleeping with someone who could slip down the shower drain.


To be triple-dog clear: the hipster Batman graffiti photos are taken in San Francisco, California. The hipster debate comes from an independent weekly newspaper in Portland, Oregon.

Sharon Tate Month, Day 7: Smoke follows beauty

“You must remember I was shy and bashful when I reached Hollywood. My parents were very strict with me. I didn’t smoke or anything. I only had just enough money to get by and I hitchhiked a ride on a truck to the office of an agent whose name I had.”

“That very first day he sent me to the cigarette comercial job. A girl showed me how it should be done, you know taking a deep, deep breath and look ecstatic.”

“I tried to do as she said,” Miss Tate explained, “but the first breath filled my lungs with smoke and I landed on the floor. That ended my career in cigarette commercials.”

(“Sharon Tate Leaves You Breathless.” Robert Musel. Stars and Stripes Magazine. January 1, 1967.)

Special thanks to the SensationalSharonTate blog, you can read the full article here. I love how matter-of-factly self-effacing Sharon Tate comes off in interviews — a sense of humor about oneself is such a good quality.

Goethe Month: the Eternal Feminine, or, “Heaven is a hell of a party.”

Alles Vergängliche ist nur ein Gleichnis;
Das Ewig-Weibliche zieht uns hinan.

All that is perishable is but an allegory;
The Eternal Feminine draws us on.

(Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust, Act 5, “Heaven.” Final lines of the play.)

I interpret that to mean this: The things of men’s making that fade and grow dusty and entropically fall into disuse and destroy themselves in time are not to be worried over in their passing because they were never intended as anything but pictures to make us understand the continually Creative beyond that awaits, endlessly pouring out life, when we follow our dead objects to the grave.

Photograph by Michael Demeo.

I have contemplated it for about thirty seconds and I think I really dig this dynamic vision of Heaven suggested in the final lines of Faust. It is more exotic and vibrant than the tired old “flights of angels/peaceful rest” saw, yes? Like you are expecting to alight on some pastel cloud and hear harp-arrangments of soothing Bach chorales while you kick back with a lemonade, and instead someone shoves crazily-bubbling champagne at you, a tall fancy neverending flute for each hand, and the invisible stereo plays only ODE TO JOY, the good part, OVER AND OVER, forever and instead of the pastel cloud you are instantly transported to the front row of an endless big bang!, watching the universe eternally fling fire and stars at itself! for all time.

Turns out heaven is a hell of a party and all your friends are there and your dead pets are live again and in their prime waiting to play whenever you like only they don’t shed anymore and your family all get along great and you can finally tell all the people you liked in your life but never told about your true feelings for fear you’d look like an idiot that you always liked them so much and they are all great with that and like you back and no one is bothered about sharing. And you are holding a sparkler. On a rearing t-rex.

“Fuck, yeah, Heaven!”

William Blake Month: Alas! the Female Martyr

For a Tear is an Intellectual thing;
And a Sigh is the Sword of an Angel King
And the bitter groan of a Martyr’s woe
Is an Arrow from the Almighty’s Bow.

(William Blake, excerpt from “To the Deists,” in Jerusalem: The Emanation of The Giant Albion.)

Alas! the Female Martyr
Is She also the Divine Image?

(William Blake, For the Sexes: The Gates of Paradise.)

Daily Batman: The Courage of the Deed

via

If human beings had genuine courage, they’d wear their costumes every day of the year, not just on Halloween.

— Doug Coupland

Langston Hughes Month: Quiet Girl

I would liken you
To a night without stars
Were it not for your eyes.
I would liken you
To a sleep without dreams
Were it not for your songs.

–Langston Hughes, “Quiet Girl”

Daily Batman: Poisonville’s Dinah Brand, of Red Harvest, edition

Excellent photographs are titled “Batwoman” and come from maanuuu on the deviantart. Words, by pulp king and detective fiction master Dashiell Hammett, come from Red Harvest, the only published, novel-length account of one of the Continental Op’s cases.

Hammett, Dashiell. Red Harvest. New York: Knopf, 1929. Print. (30).

The widely-imitated plot of the book — in which an initially disinterested outsider is called in to help settle accounts in a small town beset with the strife of several disparate groups in a power-struggle for control of the town’s assets, then manipulatively turns the groups upon one another while attempting to remain detached himself — has inspired, among other works, the films Blood Simple, Yojimbo, Last Man Standing, and A Fistful of Dollars.

via Mark Sutcliffe books.

My life will only be complete when the Coen brothers just plain make this movie, with a screenplay adapted directly from the book by, say, James Ellroy. Please. You guys, I will gladly help you with whatever — ad copywriting, finances, and even craft table shit. Make my dreams come true, Coen brothers.

I think every geek has a secret list of ultimate-collaborative-fantasy movies that have never been but ought be made. This one is mine.

Per mi amico: Cappy 2nd ed.

Or is it the third? Either way. Breaking news: Some guys are just plain ol’ rock stars and you cannot keep a good pimp down!

All photos are Christian Bale by Ellen Von Unwerth, Interview magazine, February 2001.

I had a wonderful time with the Cappy while he was here yesterday and today. I think it will be impossible for me to be in a bad mood for quite a while. Tomorrow I am lunching with Miss D, finally, and I think I should see the Fountainhead soon; he called today but I was busy with my best boy — of all things we were looking at vintage CandyLand boxes online to try to pick out our versions from childhood, because we played kidlet — and spanked her ass like bosses!– but were chagrined by the changes time has wrought in the character designs. The Cappy in particular was very disappointed in the revamp of Queen Frostina.

It’s funny: I always forget how ridiculously and simply wonderful it is to just hang out and jabber for hours with the Cappy on end. He really is a brother from another mother. The time truly flies.

Also, this morning while we were driving around a few memory lanes, I called bullshit on a red light after already having sat at it for at least a full minute; I just up and went. Halfway across the incredibly busy intersection I had this horrible adrenaline-charged panic that surged through me shrieking, “Shit! What the fuck am I doing?!” but fortunately I hit the accelerator and hightailed it the rest of the way out of there, to the accompaniment of multiple horns honking — but no one even had to brake, the timing was completely surreal. Thank god. All we can surmise is that, focused on our conversation and lulled by the fact I’d been driving around over an hour, I saw it was briefly clear and atavistically bolted. I do have a well documented lack of patience, so it’s possible!

Between catching up with Miss D tomorrow and trying to rid my computer of a frumious bandersnatch that’s been redirecting me from search results to adware (total folklore), I will probably only be spottily updating the journal. Until then! Salute — I’m off to bed!

Just another Monocle Monday

It’s Monocle Monday, because why not? Monocles: they are a Thing.

Robert Downey, Jr., check out his debut studio album.

Jeremy Irons has opinions about the Seven Deadly Sins.

Conrad Veidt was once Cesare — he came, he saw, he conquered Expressionist film.

Of course, it is not always so black and white in this world…

Madwoman and fashionista to the stars, Pat Field is often not much my style, but I must always commend distinctiveness.

Happy Monocle Monday!

Unlikely G: Tilda Swinton

I said goddamn, if Tilda Swinton is not rolling hard as all fly heck in this picture. Bitches better recognize; haters to the left!