Stir-crazy, pt. 2

Happy Easter. A strange Easter. A cartoon in my Facebook feed shows Jesus emerging from the tomb, peering out from behind the stone; a police officer threatens to ticket Him lest He spread disease. (By this point, Jesus surely is immune; but who’s to say His R0 must be zero?)

We turn, increasingly, to the Internet, and it responds with some generosity. On YouTube, we watch sermons, and FIFATV makes available classic matches. Spotify now permits the streaming of these calming albums:

• Mylo, Destroy Rock & Roll;
• Ulrich Schnauss, Far Away Trains Passing By.

(Tonight, Samuel sleeps to Marvin Gaye and the bird and the bee.)

Old churchgoing ladies have mailed cards and money to us without our asking. Other people have brought food. One brought a bag of apples – which we seldom eat; Karin sauced them. Another person lent a rake for yard work. In the back yard, where I’ve yet to even set foot, twigs accumulate from the trees, and the grass grows after rainstorms. Then the weather cools again.

Hipsters

What I miss from Xanga are the xangazons: the thumbnail pictures of movies, books, and music. Like this one:

[not a thumbnail picture]

Currently:

the bird and the bee

The Bird and the Bee

“Fucking Boyfriend”

Or like this one:

Currently:

Interpreting the Masters, Volume 1: A Tribute to Daryl Hall and John Oates

The Bird and the Bee

“Private Eyes”

Before you pounce:

Listening to hipster music doesn’t make me a hipster. I enjoy reading certain Japanese novels, but that doesn’t make me Japanese (not even in spirit). An outsider can wallow in foreign ditches.

One time, Sabby and I went to Chicago and the female Sabby pointed at some youths and was like, look at those hipsters, hee hee, and we giggled at them. And then she said, John-Paul, you’re a natural hipster. And I was like, that’s impossible; being a hipster requires too much artifice; naturalness precludes it. (That is, hipsters can’t be genuinely cool.)

And she was like, well, I have in mind your sweaters. I said, you mean the sweaters that I bought at Old Navy, that super-hip store. Hee hee, she giggled, no, I mean your hideous, old, second-hand sweaters, the ones hipsters would like. Oh, I said, you mean the sweaters I’ve been using regularly since the 1990s (it isn’t my fault that it took so long for fashion to catch up). Hee hee, she giggled (all red in the face).

If somebody wants to make an entire album of Hall and Oates tributes, I can enjoy those songs. It’s difficult even for hipsters to ruin that music, despite its having been recalled into fashionableness.

The “Boyfriend” song just sounds pretty.