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.

Giving the people what they want, 3rd edition — and a special shout-out to a lonely heart

Giving the people what they want: in which I glance over my blog stats, spot the trends in what brings you party people of the internet sliding on down to my place, and accordingly and with mutual thanks throw you some bone(r?)s.

Farewell and adieu to you fair Irish ladies.

First, a shocker. With mixed emotions I must report that the rack of Miss Megan Mullally is no longer the sheriff of Googlesearchy Town.* The first two editions (1, 2) of “Giving the people what they want” were dominated by amused-but-puzzled nods to the bafflingly large number of searches for the diminuitive Will and Grace star’s cleavage which lead droves of folks to my door. Megan held her own, beating out for many months running distant contenders such as “Drew Barrymore naked,” and “lesbian kiss,” which I would have thought any such phrases would easily eclipse “Megan Mullally’s breasts,” her “boobs,” her “topless” and variations therein and they never did. Until now.

*(By Googlesearchy Town I mean the searches that people enter in google to land on this journal — wordpress keeps track and ranks the most popular for me)

Top searching honors now rest in the tiny but mighty vintage hands of busty, bespectacled aspiring astrologer, the lovely and talented Fran Gerard — Playboy’s Miss March 1967, the self-help loving little looker whose cups runneth over.

The lovely and etc Ms. Gerard. For Science.

With 5,909 searches since her relatively recent appearance on the journal in March, Ms. Gerard beats out Megan at 2,503 since her inaugural boob-airing last September. Well-played, Ms. Gerard!

Sweet, lovely and talented heiress to generations of hot Italian culinary genius, Amber Campisi.

Rising Star Awards must go to three special up and comers. First, the talented family gal Amber Campisi (Miss February 2005); next, beautiful and tragic playmate and poet Marlene Morrow, aka Persephone (Miss April 1974) — whose gripping story has justly been getting attention from a number of outside sites linking in, enough so that her sister Landi was able to find this blog and send us an optimistic update on Marlene’s present condition about which I’m thrilled, check that post’s comments to get the latest — annnnnnnnd Yvonne Craig, BATGIRL!; all of whom are beginning to trend up the stats list with great and deserved speed. I look forward to what the next edition of “Giving the people what they want” will bring!

The very special Marlene Morrow/Marlene Pinckard/Persephone. Please, please read the account of how Paul Zollo found her with notebooks of poetry and an envelope holding her centerfold photo, living on the streets in L.A., and consider following the non-profit links which follow the write-up?

Finally: Quick note to the person who has found this blog by searching google three times in the space of the last two weeks — with “only assholes” in quotes so’s as to make maximal use of boolean exceptors — for the exact phrase “‘only assholes’ fall for me“: In case you ever come back a third time, I’d like to hope you hit this entry.

Vintage hottie Yvonne Craig has suited up!

First, you probably keep landing here because I frequently tag what I consider to be interesting graffiti with the words “only assholes write on walls” a la cult classic Rocky Horror. So I am sorry for the “only assholes” mix-up. But, more importantly, I am genuinely really sorry that you feel like only assholes fall for you and I wish I could make it better. I’m sorry that you’ve felt that way strongly enough to search the phrase three different times recently. I hope the next person you date is not an asshole. I hope that he or she is really nice to you — no, not just nice, because that is mealy-mouthed and hollow. That is a bullshit expression of my actual sentiment and is weak tea compared to the depth of my empathy, here. Okay:

I hope that that next person you date is genuinely amazing to you, like I pray that their very existence makes you believe in a loving God and you see the echo of your love for them in all the shapes of nature, and you don’t just love him or her but admire and value them, and that you curl your toes when you think of him or her even while driving and that they fill you with so much passion and love that you would kill tigers for them without a blink and you stay together until you die in each other’s arms after fantastic geriatric sex.

Scroll to bottom for caption.*

I hope that the grace of his or her presence in your life is like a lightning strike that inspires you forever after always to strive to be a better person, to laugh with surprise at an unexpected joke they make when you are having an argument, to give new ideas a thorough-think-through and peek behind closed doors; I hope in short that he or she deserves every drop of the deep well of love you were created to share and renews your faith in all the anonymous fellow upper primates all over our world with whom we must trek in our stewardship of this nutty mudhole in order to improve our karma and with every go ’round perfect our souls.

ByTim Weber and Sue Noble via environmental graffiti.

Good luck to you.

*Long caption to second to last shot: The dish ran away with the spoon but what can you do? They have opened a comic book store in the City and on rare nights off they like to order dim sum and watch TVLand; the comic shop is honestly not doing so well, their apartment is super-tiny, the bride’s mom won’t take their calls, their used car’s a/c is on the fritz, and they have never been happier.

Movie Moment: “Inspiration Station,” Blade Runner and influenced detritus edition

Thinking about Daryl Hannah got me thinking about how I keep seeing stuff here and there in the last few years — yes, years, a) the older I get the faster the time goes, and b) that is how long it takes me to accept a pattern and my feelings about it — that reminds me of Blade Runner.

Pris in all her glory. Screencap from the movie via Napalm Jelly on the livejournal.

In case you are like me and consider super-famous-intellectual things that everyone recommends a pretentious, potentially boring burden to actually go look up (nothing raises my hackles like being told by someone I scarcely know that I “should” read or watch something: fuck you, my time is my own) and pursue viewing on your own, I will fill you in a tiny bit, cause this is one that I’m pleased to report I found for me was actually worth chasing down. The 1982 science-fiction/detective noir film is directed by Ridley Scott, and in it the excellent Daryl Hannah debuts in her first screen role as Pris, the acrobatically gifted/full-set-of-clothes-on-both-boobs-and-bajango-challenged Pleasure Replicant (happens to sexbots all the time — the poor girls got no clue how to simultaneously cover the upstairs and the downstairs).

Pris and another Pleasure Replicant. Workin’ it.

Sean Young is also featured in the film. You may remember her as that hot crazy chick who tried way too hard to get Tim Burton to let her play Catwoman in Batman Returns (psh, what kind of silly vintage-loving brunette gets obsessed by Catwoman; what a madcap and unheard of nutball). Now she is on reality tv shows, one was for being a country and western star and I think the other was to cope with her “alcoholism” or some shit — she seemed like fun to me when she was chugging that wine on the first show so whatever. Miss Young, who can scootch on down to my place any ol’ time for Funyuns, chardonnay, and old Julie Newmar episodes of Batman, plays the lead character’s love interest, Rachael in Blade Runner.

Screencap from the movie via Napalm Jelly on the livejournal.

Anyway, turns out the wheels of what I’d been seeing and the echoes I found in them of Blade Runner, which I haven’t seen in many years, may have been turning too slowly for me to notice until recently, but I was subconsciously smart enough to right-click and save a few of the things I saw. For examples:

Supermodel, “it” girl, and Panda Eraser’s second most-fave platinum blonde Agyness Deyn in Stockholm, Sweden, September 21, 2008.

Screencap from game via Julia Segal on the tumblr, around six or eight months ago.

The only “lovely” for now — she knows what she has to do to be billed as “talented” too — Miz Kat Dennings, rather clearly done up like Rachael the Replicant.

“Blast Off” by Peter Christian. Pleasure Replicant styling influence, I think.

… and one more of Kat Dennings from that same photoshoot cause ever since the Cappy brought her to my attention, she is up and coming on my list (don’t pretend like you don’t have a list).

Via No Smoking in the Skull Cave.

I’m not going to tell you that you “should” see Blade Runner. I will only say that I resisted, mainly because I was being stubborn and prejudiced, and when I finally gave in it turned out to be freaking sweet. I’d love for that to happen to someone else, because it’s a good feeling and it opened up my mind to not being such a reverse-discriminatory bitch about people’s “hipster” recommendations of popular esoteric things: turns out sometimes a thing has cool cult popularity because it deserves it, and I don’t need to disdain its countercultural cache. It’s okay to be on the bandwagon from time to time, even the small ones that scarcely anyone knows about and you suspect will be snobby. It’s a convoluted lesson, really, now that I look at it … sorry.

Daily Batman: Yes, we get it

This is such a lame jokey reference, and yet I laugh each time.

Bruce: Where will you go? The circus must be halfway to Metropolis by now.
— Batman Forever (1995).

My daughter watched me do this one, and she said, “Strange words that you typed.”

“Strange? They’re not strange, what do you mea — oh, because they’re in a language you can’t read?”

She looked at me like I was Grimace from Ronald McDonaldland and said slowly, “Yes. Because of that.”

“That’s a programming language. It’s called HTML.”

“What does that mean?”

“‘Hypertext markup language.’ It tells the internet what to do.”

“You tell the internet what to do?”

“Yes, I am the boss of the internet.”

She digested this for a moment then shook her head. “No. No, you wouldn’t be.”

Sick burn.