Tuesday, October 21, 2008

The Hipster Dude's Guide To Dating (Or Not).

We know. You might seem like a chill dude on the exterior, all rockin' out to Pink Floyd --and rhapsodizing, repeatedly and at length to any one and everyone within a five mile radius of your King County Metro busline stop--about your latest awesome kiteboarding exploits and that new Kurt Cobain memorial built by some old geezer in Aberdeen.

But we know it can be an uphill slog, maintaining that attitude of vacuous enthusiasm for esoteric watersports in the face of a censorious, non-hipster public.

Like, dude, we feel ya. Totally.

We here at Ennui Publishing House (recent purveyors of the highly erudite textbook, "My Translation of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason is More Rigorously Footnoted Than Yours," by Professor P.J. de Sloghard) realize that sometimes, it's hard to live in Hipster Land, what with the ever present pressure to be au courant with the latest in Hendrix biographical research while at the same time maintaining your Most Orcas Sighted While Kiteboarding Record (zero!) amongst fellow stoner aficianados.

Furthermore, we know you're a busy hipster who's smart enough to realize that a dude has to have his priorities, especially in these tough economic times. You have Seattle indie band records to buy and old Subaru hatchbacks to run into the ground in search of new kiteboarding waters. Who has time to figure out women, or what to do with one who isn't trying to sell you pot, a top-of-the-line kiteboard or a vintage, restrung Stratocaster signed by Jimi himself?

Relax! (Oh wait. You already are, dude! We forgot! You're a hipster!) We here at Ennui are striving valiantly to fill that glaring gap in hipster how-to literature--and that's why we created this gratuitous guide to dating, expressly for you! (Ever-so-faint taste of mockery absolutely free!)

Enjoy, and remember the hipster's number one motto: no worries, it's all good.


Chapter One: The Dating Cycle of a Hipster.

Hipster Date #1: The Coffeehouse Crawl (Gift of Gab Method)


Level: Easy to Advanced

Prep time: Varies. Ranges from five minutes spent on Yelp(!) triangulating the closest place between your studio apartment in Fremont and her digs on Capitol Hill, to forever stuck in a penitential cycle of pretentious local hipster dives whose forebodingly tattooed baristas glare at you balefully and claim to be out of brew if you indicate you did not, in fact, bring your own mug created on your very own pottery wheel, fashioned while teaching women's correctional facility inmates lifeskills as part of your weekly slew of Seattle public volunteer work.

Advantages: It's only coffee. Which can be spilled conveniently to get you the fuck outta there, if your date starts talking about her Roth IRA options or how much she just loves Sarah Palin's updo and her politics and hopes you do, too (wink! wink!).

Hipster tip! If you choose a place that has a great bakery, you can not only drink overpriced coffee, but you can also eat overpriced tasty baked goods, which has the added advantage that it'll decrease the amount of time you need to make boring, pithy conversation that's not about Jimi, your Subaru, or your fascination with Orcas' totally amazing sonar capabilities.

Hipster tip! If you choose a place with a band, and it's live music night, you might not have to do much talking at all!

Disadvantages: See last half of notation under "prep time."

Seattle Hipster Dude's Mini-Guide To First Date Conversation Topic Do's and Dont's:

-Jimi Hendrix (but not Woodstock)
-Pink Floyd (but not Syd Barret)
-Kurt Cobain (but not Courtney Love)
-current, obscure Seattle indie rock bands (but not Pearl Jam)
-the STP ride (but not your slavish participation in the annual Turkey Trot)
-Subarus (but not how Dave Matthew's Subaru is the same color as yours)
-living in a t.v.-free household by choice (but not your resultant, pathetic codependence on internet social utilities like facebook and couchsurfing.com, for human interaction)
-taking the bus to work (but not riding the shuttle van from the parking lot)
-kiteboarding (but not how you looooove kiteboarding sooooo much that you wish you could have sex with kiteboarding, or something, dude.
)

Hipster Date #2: "Either/Or" (aka The Pseudo-Philosophy Excuse, or The Dawning Realization That "Damn, this dating shit is taking away serious kiteboarding time, dude!"
)

Level: Intermediate-Advanced.

Prep Time: Ranges from fairly minimal, to months of reading philosophy Cliffs Notes
depending on the circumstance, and who you're trying to bullshit.

Method: Requires, at minimum, binary decision making skills (eg, "Yes, I wanna nail this chic." or "No, I'd rather smoke weed/kiteboard.") May r
equire in-depth knowledge and high-level manipulation of pseudo-philosophical concepts, grammar and syntax beyond the 6th grade level, and a certain amount of guileless charm. Not recommended for beginners. Warning: may require an actual conversation with grown up sounding diction if the addressee in question buys into your crap.

Advantages: If you can remember the word "Kierkegaardian," you might even get away with standing up a chic on a second date.


Disadvantages: You probably won't remember the word Kierkegaardian, or mistake it for the word "kiteboarding" and piss her off, no matter what else you do or don't say.


Sample hipster ready-made excuses:

Do say: "Like, I had this Kierkegaardian moment of Either/Or, you know? And I decided I had to like, go with my "leap of faith" that you'd have a "leap of faith" and understand my need to kiteboard for like, five days straight. "


Don't say: "So, like, I'm reading this book written by this guy who's last name sounds a lot like "Kiteboarding." Well, it starts with a K, any way, and it's called "Repetition"? And I thought that's what it was telling me to do: go kiteboarding, again. Hey, man, what can I say? This philosophy stuff is deep.
"

Hipster Date #3: The Would-Be Hippie-Dippie Hook Up (aka Granola Crunch Method, or "Dude, I guess I need to at least pretend I did more than talk about going somewhere with this chic if I wanna get past second base.")

Level: Intermediate to Advanced

Prep Time: Minutes to weeks, depending on the excuse needed
, current level of THC in the bloodstream, and how hipster-hot the girl in question is.

Method: Start talking about nature. Add the words "Thoreau" and "transcendental" in there, somewhere, after claiming to have been some outdoorsy-type local place that sounds plausible for you to have visited via the metro busline (even if you were, in fact, smoking a joint in a friend's damp, mildewy basement pad while listening, in a very unhipster fashion, to Alanis Morrissette's "My Humps" cover.)

Intimate you would have loved it if she had been there, and you should both definitely go to this magically awesome, super cool lake/slough/mountain/shoreline sometime(!) Smile and look her directly in the eye as you say this, but be deliberately vague about when "sometime" actually might be. Be sure to gently remind this chic, if she starts whining about how you never spend any time with her, that duuuuuude, you're a hipster, not a soulless automaton ruled by the ruthlessly artificial and ultimately meaningless modern concepts of timeliness and social convention!

Hipster tip! Try not to talk about the drugs you did while "hiking" or "rock climbing" at said location, even though you're dying to mention Syd Barret's unfortunate relationship with LSD for the fifth time today
.

Advantages: If you can pull it off, you might get off the hook about standing your date up to go kiteboarding, and get laid.


Disadvantages: If you fuck it up, well, can go back to listening to Hendrix and kiteboarding in peace. Oh wait. We forgot. To you, that wouldn't be a disadvantage.

Examples Of How To Use Your Words To Fake The Illusion You're Gonna Take This Chic Out Somewhere! Soon! Really!:

Do Say: "Oh, dude, sorry I missed "Dances with Knives: Interpretative Dance Recital By Former Psych Trauma Patients" at the Langston Hughes Performing Arts Center. But, like, check this out, man! I was out on Mount Si doing a wheat germ fast and reading Thoreau and thinking about transcendental stuff. The mountains out there are amazing! We should go some time!"


Don't Say: "Oh dude, sorry
I missed going to that sold out performance of Common and Erykah Baydhu at Fremont Abbey, the one you worked overtime to afford and stuff. But dude! Check this out! Me and a buddy were chillin' in his basement, trying to see if that bumper crop of 'shrooms grew or not in his mom's vermicompost. You wanna trip? It's some awesome shit, man!"

Hipster Date #4: Sheer Avoidance of Any and All Reality (or, The Wake and Bake Break-up)

Level: Easy

Prep Time: Varies, depending on amt of weed required, method of consumption, i.e. joint vs. bowl, etc.


Method: Self-explanatory
.

Advantages: Wake and bake, man. Does not require verbal communication.
Plus, you should have already had lots of practice with the skill-set necessary to pull it off.

Disadvantages: You may accidentally set fire to your recent copy of "Kiteboarding Today" if you fall back asleep before you're done with your last joint.

canto

Every time I am feeling fucked over, I get this line from Dante's Inferno in my head. Don't ask me what Canto, because I don't remember, but you know, when Dante's cruisin' around hell with Virgil and all, and he meets this Italian military strategist, the once excommunicated Guido da Montefeltro?

And Montefeltro, who's probably not having such a great time in Hell after all these years, laments, "Promise great things, promise, but do not pay." (Referring to the advice he gave to Pope Boniface in dealing with the Colonna family who had contested his power; Montefeltro advised Boniface to grant them amnesty in return for their surrender, and then reneg on the promise once they had left their fortress. And, also maybe he's pissed, because the Pope promised him absolution, and St. Francis even came to collect his ass after his death, but some Black Cherub from Hell--and here I have an incongruous, anachronistic image of Jimi Hendrix, with a smokin' Strat strapped across his front--came to claim him on a superior, a priori claim. So, that's about how much money'll buy you, people, in case you're wondering in advance how much money you should spend on buying yourself out of Hell.)


Any way, I read Dante's Inferno the summer before 9th grade (no, it wasn't required reading. I was a weirdo back then, too). And that line struck me so much, I wrote it down, and memorized it. And from basically that time on, whenever any body fucks with me--or I fuck them over--I think, "Promise great things, promise, but do not pay."

I'm not sure who else goes around quoting Dante when they're pissed off, but, that's about where I am right now. That, and wondering how many limited edition Stratocasters you'd have to part with to stay outta hell.