Why Parks & Recreation is Very Hipster

In my constant search for the most hipster-centric things in existence, I come across many hipster bands, television shows, stores, websites, and the like. However, today I would like to bring to your attention my recent and unexpected love, NBC's Parks and Recreation.

While certainly not the most hipster program on television (Portlandia, anyone?), Parks and Recreation shows its true colours when you look a little beyond the initial facade of being "a more original but less funny version of NBC's The Office."

Firstly, there's the premise. Okay, so it's a little like The Office (or maybe a LOT like The Office). What we have here is a mockumentary (check) taking place in a small town (check) in one of the most obscure and overlooked sectors of government (sort of check?). I think it's a significant one-up and a goodly amount more hipster than The Office, but you can be the judge.

Secondly, there's the cast. No Steve Carell leading the charge here. Who have we got instead? Amy Poehler. Before Parks and Rec, her biggest role (outside of SNL) was opposite Tina Fey in Baby Mama. When the show was beginning, the biggest name in the cast was Rob Lowe, who joins the cast at the end of the second season. Are you kidding me? Rob Lowe? And he's not even funny in the show... Because he's Rob Lowe.

Thirdly, there's Nick Offerman as Ron Swanson - likely the most hipster part of the show in a number of ways. He's a strong-willed government-hating libertarian who works as the head of a small sector of municipal government. How much more ironic (and ironically appropriate) can you get? I could say more, but I'll leave the Ron Swanson comments at that.

Fourthly, there's the opening credits. Who ordered indie music with a side of reed instruments? And where did all of those wildlife stills come from? If it weren't so stylish, I would think it was Canadian.

In conclusion, if you're looking for something to watch that will satisfy your hipster cravings (and you're either bored or sick of Portlandia), I would highly recommend Parks and Recreation. It may not be the best, funniest, smartest, most clever or most original show on television, but it does have Nick Offerman, and more irony than you could shake a remote at.

The Wonders of Wool

In many ways, autumn is the season of the hipster. Wearing scarves becomes more appropriate, and piling on the layers no longer suffocates you in the summer heat.

Unfortunately, it seems to be part of the hipster mantra to be as impractically dressed as possible at any given moment. I don't know whether this is intentional or simply a byproduct of fashion, but I feel it is my duty as an experienced meta-hipster to help the rest of the hipster world improve their quality of life - without making it look that way, of course.

What I bring to the table today is wool.

Wool socks are one of the best investments a hipster (or anyone, for that matter) can make for the winter. Put away those argyle dress socks or cotton ankle socks and slip into a pair of warm, dry wool ones. So much more comfortable when it's cold outside. Plus: dat red stripe. Am I right? Pick them up at the nearest Mark's Work Wearhouse, or at your favourite online store that nobody's ever heard of.

And while we're not too far from the topic of scarves - those come in wool too. And they're pretty great. So fold up those thin, decorative cotton (or - I shudder to think - acrylic blend) scarves, and get a real one. I'm sure your grandmother would even knit one for you.

For the extra-adventurous, there are wool shirts. This one's from Monitaly, but there are a lot of really great vintage ones as well, from brands like Pendleton or Viyella. Check out the vintage stores and thrift shops in your area - there are a lot of these floating around.

So, now you've been educated and have no excuse to wear impractical things this winter. Hope to see a lot of wool out there.

Finding Good Things on Etsy

Etsy isn't exactly new (nor is it particularly hipster-centric anymore - it's practically mainstream for goodness sake). However, it is still a spectacular repository of hipster things, and most items are fairly limited in quantity (being handmade or vintage), so I believe there is still hope for the hipster to find what he or she needs.

The thing about Etsy is that, as it becomes more and more mainstream, it is becoming diluted with things you (the hipster) and I have no interest in. Plus they sell furniture and other stuff that you and I both know is prohibitively expensive to ship.

So how do you find good things without spending hours and hours sorting through pages and pages of appalling mediocrity? Try this. Looking for a bag? Instead of searching "bag," search for "Capybara." As of today, your search would return 77 results - which is totally manageable - and you would find this awesome bag (except if you live in or frequently travel to Winnipeg, please don't by this exact bag, because I already did, and both of us having it would just be awkward and I would have to throw mine away).

Feeling more adventurous? Search "deer antler" and you'll find 7,985 items, all fashioned out of or in the shape of - you guessed it - deer antlers. You'll find this hair fork on the first page (and this one is fair game - however, you'll probably want to tell people you found the antler at the thrift store or in the forest or something and thought of using it as a hair fork on your own - much more respectable).

The key to finding great things on Etsy is NOT searching for what you want - i.e. a bag or a shirt or what have you. It's searching for something seemingly unrelated that you know you like, like a capybara or deer antlers - because what self-loathing hipster doesn't love South American rodents and ironic big game trophies - and then searching through those results until you find it in the format you're looking for.

Happy hunting (pun intended).

The Birth of Hipstery

Hello, and welcome to Hipstery, the amalgamation and rebirth of "Jacob Defends Hipsters" and "What Jacob Does" as a single blog about hipster things.

In the past, I have ironically blogged in defense of hipsters, and have also blogged sincerely about my love for certain hipster things. However, I will no longer subject you, reader, to any such confusion or contradiction. From here on in you may assume that every post is simultaneously ironic and sincere, although not in an Orwellian "doublethink" manner - rather, the voice of this blog is intended to be cheekily ironic simply in its existence, but sincere in its content and enthusiasm.

The reader can expect to see spotlights on superbly hipster products and websites, commentary on hipster culture and hipsters in society, and the occasional life advice for hipsters.

Since hipsters don't use exclamation marks in any non-ironic capacity, suffice it to say that I'm excited to be bringing my every hipster whim to life in this blog for the benefit of you, the reader, and to a lesser degree you, the skimmer, and to an even lesser although not entirely nonexistent degree, you, the guy rolling his scroll wheel up and down and deciding whether or not the length of the posts on this blog are prohibitive to your attention span.

The Flame

Last week, us CreComm students had an assignment to create a short video without words. I got myself an awesome actor (big thanks to Kenton Dyck for being so darn cool) and put my mind to developing a concept and aesthetic. Here's what I came up with:

I'm going to leave it up to you to interpret the story and the message, but I will say that shooting and editing was a really interesting experience, and I'm really proud of what I came up with.

That being said, I did fight long and hard with After Effects to try to stabilize my footage. It did get kind of shaky - it was cold outside, and I was free-handing it the entire time. However, after many useless hours and several entirely futile stints in the edit suites, I was left with beautifully smooth, professional-grade footage, completely garbled and mixed up by Premier Pro. So here I am, left with shaky footage.

I hope you enjoy the video nonetheless, and I'm hoping I can get that After Effects / Premier Pro synchronization worked out for the next project.

Poems, Poems

This week we began a poetry unit in one of our classes, and it reminded me of the passion I once had for writing it. So I went to my collection of writings and pulled out a few poems which I hadn't read for some time.

In light of my plans to create a YouTube channel dedicated to poetry reading, I thought this was especially appropriate timing, and decided to revise a few of the poems I had written.

Below are two such poems.


Murder

with a loud voice
     it speaks
and though it has no tongue
it’s wordless cries
     take up arms
breaking the spokes of
     fortune’s wheel
threatening nature
leaving speechless
     the bold winds of time
and halting the
     ebb and flow
     they would bring
          if it weren’t
               for

murder.

The Fog


Our ships depart,
sail the bay
and they leave us behind
as we watch;
we watch them fade away.

You say this is no place to talk,
So I grab my coat and we go for a walk;
Speaking in circles, you lead me on
and I'm a boy
just following his dog;
we come to no conclusion
and lose each other 
slowly
in the fog.

Calm
does not combat the miasma,
does not disperse the cloud
but rather lends unease

Despite all of this I would
ask you to continue
on your path, with me
I feel as nothing more than
a bewitched accomplice;
industrial
but we lend no smog;
we feel no resolution
as we lose each other
slowly
in the fog.

Breaking an Addiction

Some time ago, while I was working as a pizza delivery guy, I tried to give up caffeine. Within 48 hours, I had a raging migraine, couldn't focus on anything, and felt like throwing up. It was all I could do to keep from curling up on the floor in the fetal position and rocking back and forth until the darkness came.

Let's back this story up and get a bit of context.

When I was a young child, my grandmother thought it was just the cutest thing that when she would spoon-feed me black coffee, I would drink it. Apparently I liked it. So, whenever she would see me - which was pretty regularly when she babysat me as a child - she would sit me on her lap and spoon feed me coffee.

It didn't take long before I was begging for sips of my father's coffee, and I became a coffee drinker of my own accord before I can remember, ordering it at restaurants and having it at home whenever I could. For the last several years, coffee has been my primary source of fluid intake - often it is the only thing I drink all day. Why would you drink water when you could have coffee?

You might be thinking at this point, "How is this man still alive? Shouldn't he have died of dehydration?" Well, perhaps that's a lesson for another time on how popular science has failed us. But it is also something that I have wondered on occasion.

So about a year ago, while I was delivering pizza for a living, I thought I would try to give it up. I figured that my caffeine addiction was probably not healthy, and I might benefit from trying to break it. The experience left me, as outlined above, broken and helpless.

And now I'm trying again!

I gave up my (hopefully former) lifeblood nearly 48 hours ago, and have so far suffered only mild headaches and lack of concentration. We'll see how the next 24 hours go. Stay tuned for a possible post in which I type random numbers and letters because I can do no more than bash my aching head against the keyboard in agony.