Evan has committed horrible and unspeakable acts of food greed, and I have proof

Oh, I see what's going on Evan. You can't say it to my face, but you'll happily tell the internet your true feelings about last Saturday's pizza incident. Do you know who makes up the internet, Evan? Pedophiles. You are more comfortable with child molesters knowing your deepest emotions than you are with me.

But this post isn't to talk to Evan. No, I am a man of more honor and class than that. This post is simply to set the record straight with the public about who shares what in the house. Let's review some recent happenings, shall we?

1) David (me) receives a package of Channukah presents from his sister. Among these is a bag of premo chocolate, which I left in the kitchen for all to enjoy, having eaten two pieces myself. The rest disappeared into either thin air or my housemates. And then a certain housemate, let's call him Nave (hah! Your name backwards is NAVE! It's almost Knave, and almost Naive), complains to David about the chocolate wrappers left out on the kitchen table. Let me remind you - this is something that David gifted to his housemates, and one of them has the nerve to expect him to cleanup their ungrateful mess.

BROOKLYYYYYYYYYN - Yeah right, Mr. Hotlanta

2) A day later, Nave buys some candy from Weshop. When David and [name removed by request] ask for some of this, Nave refuses to share any. Further, Nave produces a wet horse whip, and leaves the house for his nightly crusade of small animal torture. You make me sick, Nave.

3) These could fill stadiums, but out of respect to what little dignity Nave still has, I shall stop now.

See, the point is, Nave, as I mentioned in the email (which you so artfully cutoff in the post), I don't mind sharing food with people. I just wish they'd ask me first. Yeah, I cooked one of your sausages the other night when we were watching Law & Order: CI. But I asked you first, did I not? And you said "yes." So next, time, just ask. Or is it easier to connive and brood?

Food Thievery

Okay, so my house is gonna hate me for posting this, but to do anything other than write about the private business of 63A Home, at this point, would be to sacrifice my journalistic integrity - which is important ;).

Recently, our house experienced an incident of food "theft" from the refrigerator. I put theft in quotes because, well you'll see in a moment . . .

Anyway, someone - he's asked to remain anonymous - took a slice of pizza from the refrigerator last weekend. Admittedly, it was a pretty good-sized slice of Illiano's buffalo chicken pizza (a good one if you haven't tried it before), but we were hungry, he was out of points, and let's face it, good food is hard to come by at this point in the semester. So he had a slice of pizza, saying, "I hope Dave isn't gonna be mad I ate some of his pizza." Boy was he wrong . . .


Dave sent us this email mere hours later:

Hi guys,

When I came home last night, I brought home 5 remaining
slices from a pizza I had ordered last night.
That was meant to last me for a couple days. I'm
completely out of points, and I've been
reducing to one meal a day most days. I've shared a lot
of food with the house, but I really wanted this
pizza just for myself. I just went to the
fridge, and there were 2 slices left.

Please, in the future, do not take food that
isn't yours without asking. It's a really shit
surprise. And, if it was you who took it, that
pizza was $21 for 8 slices, so if you want to be
responsible about it, give me $5 to
supplement it with something. I'm not
trying to squeez you out here, I'm
just looking at no food for tonight / tomorrow.

~David

What was that? I mean, I guess it sucks to open the fridge looking for something tasty, and find like, nothing there. But then again, something was still in there wasn't it? Aren't people starving in Iraq or whatever, like, right now? Is a slice of pizza really all that serious?

And that reminds me of another issue: the number of slices that went missing. Dave came home with 5 slices, he says, yet he says that he opened the box the next day and . . . BAM! Only two slices!
Now, unless something mystical is going on (ghosts? pizza elves?), basic arithmetic suggests that someone in the house must have eaten 3 of Dave's pizza slices. Who could have eaten all that pizza? I know I didn't have any, and Andres has been in the library a lot recently, and wasn't at the house much when the whole "pizza issue" came up a couple of days ago. And I was there when He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named ate a slice of the pizza pie; I saw it all happen, and it was only one slice! I asked him about it later, and he confirmed: that slice that I saw him eat was the only slice that he ate. The whole house is getting their inbox's flooded over one slice of pizza! (Dave, I'm sorry, but assuming everyone is telling the truth, you're either exaggerating or don't remember all the pizza you ate. You're not a bad person, but this email, I have to say, was just a little ridiculous. We still like you though, in a totally manly, distant and platonic way).

Houses generally only have one refrigerator, which is fine if you live by yourself, yet when a single-person home becomes two or more, when your house becomes our house, when, in short, you have roommates, you have to share some of the stuff that ends up in the refrigerator. No one really complains about sharing condiments, spices, onions - that sort of thing, but when it comes to leftovers, prepackaged food, and stuff we'd consider "expensive", people get territorial. Pizza, you have to admit, is kind of expensive. But then, it's pizza. Everyone likes pizza; everyone shares pizza. The so-called "personal pan" pizza is a perversion of pizza's true nature: a pie that everyone can take a part of. Leave something like that in the refrigerator and it's bound to get taken up by someone. You wouldn't leave a pile of gold outside of a department store, and not expect people to take it. Leave a fresh pizza pie around hungry people, and unless you write "Hands Off Man!" on top of the box (in which case people will think you're a greedy son-of-a-donkey, but leave the pie alone), then there's a good chance that someone else is gonna eat it.
And also, Dave, not to be too blunt here, but when was the last time you really bought something that was for the whole house? Most of your food is prepackaged or takeout, so people hardly ever touch it. The only thing I can think of right now is the lemonade you bought last week, which you left upstairs so it could get cool in the snow, then brought downstairs once it was almost gone. I'll admit that I broke the rule of thumb by drinking the last of the lemonade, but then again I was halfway done pouring when I noticed that there was only enough left for my glass. And the only thing worse than someone taking all your stuff, is when they leave only the last dregs of the container so they can say that they did not drink the whole thing.
Still, I felt kind of bad, and was planning on going to Weshop later to buy more juice. These plans changed, however, when I told you that I drank the last of the lemonade. Now, I know you're out of points, and probably bought that lemonade with cash, yet before I was able to tell you that I still had some points, and would buy some more juice later, you said, "So, you're gonna buy the next container of lemonade huh?" What?!? Now, if I was in the habit of drinking your juice, then that would be one thing. But I buy juice for the house all the time, and I always share it with you and the rest of the house. This was definitely the first time you had ever bought juice for the house. I don't feel obligated to buy more just because I drank the last pulpy recesses of the container. (I mentioned this, in part, to Dave, and he responded saying, "I ate your sausage yesterday, and you had my lemonade. Okay" Wait a second! I gave you that sausage because you asked for it. It wasn't a trade - though if it was, juice doesn't seem to hold up all that well to meat. Also, what about all that other lemonade that you drank, that I gave without expecting anything back. And what about those $4.00 fries that I gave you practically untouched because you wanted them so much?! Not that anybody's counting!). I'm sure you have contributed to the house in ways I cannot think of right now, but as far as all this food you've allegedly shared with the house, the only thing I can think of right now is that juice and those Splenda packets you bought at the beginning of the year. I'll probably buy some more juice, though it won't be with the same feelings of altruism and good, holiday cheer.


Yet, I digress. After finishing the email (I didn't read it until Sunday), I was planning on writing Dave to tell him that I had made a whole bunch of Marinara-and-sausage sauce, and that he was welcome to have some since I was having trouble finishing it. I completely forgot about this, however, after surfing through Andres and Taul's* responses. Andres wrote this:

First, someone takes a tube of toothpaste. Now, someone
has taken more than half of David's food. The bathroom and
kitchen are the main common spaces of the house and a
re susceptible to theft.

It is now a pattern of theft, I've noticed. The question
that remains is who the thief is.


A O O

Theft? Ouch, that hurts. The only possible culprits in our house of four were Taul and I, and honestly, I don't think I was suspected at all in this "pattern of theft". Andres was already upset with Taul for reasons I probably shouldn't go into on the internet; he had already confronted him about the toothpaste. What if the toothpaste was stolen? What if a thief (or a toothpaste elf) was in our mist, lusting after our material possessions with greedy eyes. For a moment, the world seemed all topsy-turvy, toothpaste and pizza going missing from right under our noses. For one illogical moment, it all seemed possible. Then I remembered that I had already seen someone (okay, it was Taul) eating a slice of pizza, that Dave likely exaggerated the number of slices that were taken, and that I had already suggested that the toothpaste was probably misplaced, though nobody seemed to be listening. . .

Taul's response to Andres was really good, witty even, in a generic way. I'm pretty sure he wouldn't want me to mention it on the web, unfortunately. Suffice it to say that Taul's last email to Andres began and ended in a one word conjunction: "you're"(Andres had misspelled the word in his previous email). Andres, for once, became the underdog and got totally shot down. Even Dave was like, "Yeah dude, we straightened that out already."

Taul, of course, took the pizza slice, but what happened to the toothpaste? Well, as I said before, I was always inclined to think that someone had misplaced it. People don't just go around stealing toothpaste do they? Especially not in your own house. Some careless arse had picked it up and just forgotten what he did with.
That thoughtless housemate, it turns out, was me. I have my own toothpaste that I keep in my room, and I usually take it in the bathroom, then bring it back out. My toothpaste is the same brand that's in the bathroom, however, and for some reason I took their toothpaste, put it in my room, forgot about it, and found it days later after it had resurfaced from the dark and forgotten depths behind my dresser.
So all in all, I was at the bottom of the toothpaste mystery. Me, myself, and I were the culprit. Who woulda thought eh? But in any case, problem solved. . .

Or is it????



P.S.- The last line is an inside joke, among other things. 63A Home, you know what I'm talkin' bout.

P.P.S.- That marinara sauce is still in the fridge. And it's not bad, I swear! Email me if you get hungry over finals week. We'll have a pasta party.



*Not his real name

Listen to Me, Read Me (not about hipsters)

Unfortunately, this post will not contain a scholarly treatise on US hipster culture. It's entirely self-promoting, but this is a blog for all of us, and Evan says I should post more, so here we go.

I'll be on the radio tomorrow, doing a special show not at my normal time slot. Here are the details:

DJ Crater Minimix
WESU (88.1 FM Middletown, www.wesufm.org online stream)
9 - 10 PM Eastern (6 - 7 PM Pacific)

The show will feature an hour-long mix of some of my all-time favorite minimal techno / microhouse tracks. In addition, I'll be throwing a couple of new originals in the mix - so listen closely and see if you can hear a quality difference. If you want to call in and get a shout out, the studio line is 860-685-7700.

Normally, my show isn't mixed, due to the fact that I play a wide variety of different styles of electronic and experimental music, and not all of them have beats. So I'm taking this opportunity to really narrow my focus for one show.

In other self-promoting news, I also write for a online magazine of mostly electronic / experimental music, The Milk Factory. Here's a link to my most recent review, of the new EP by Warp recording artist Clark: click it! If you click on my name toward the top, you'll go to a page with links to all of my reviews. You should also check out the interviews and features at The Milk Factory. The most recent interview is with precious Icelandic dreamers Múm. Plus, how awesome is that graphic design? I think it's a pretty beautiful site.

Here's a photo of me DJing the Communist Party at Russian house a month ago:



~David

Hipster Haters

Did anybody read that wespeak “A hipster by any other name”? I usually try to stay out of the hipster-hater dialogue going on around campus, but this last wespeak was so ridiculous that I’ve been spurred into action via the written word.

First of all, I’ve never met anybody who’s openly and non-ironically admitted to being a hipster. Still, they get an unbelievable amount of press time, and people are always talking about how annoying they are. Even if it’s not necessarily an essential identity, like say, African-American, there’s definitely a demographic trend going on.

Ms. Spier – who wrote the wespeak – was well intended, perhaps, in trying to understand, demystify, and malign the ways of the hipster, but by continuing this ceaseless dialogue about how stupid it is to be a hipster, she’s just feeding the flames of hipster hype and the corporate commodification of “cool”. With so many other more important things going on in the world – not to mention New York City – the fact that Time Out New York devotes a whole article to “hipsters” is ridiculous. Hipster baiting, in my opinion, is worse than being a hipster because it encourages this dialogue that’s ultimately trite and self-aggrandizing, contributing to a lot of complaining about hipsters when we could all be talking about other things.

So, that being said, what is a hipster? I don’t claim to be an expert, but I kind of lived with hipsters – or at least people who identify with that “scene” – in Brooklyn the past two summers (and I’m a film major, not that that signifies anything . . .) so I guess I can give you my general observations. As a starting point, hipsters in America – along with the rest of the English speaking world I guess – define themselves against the perceived mainstream corporate commercial culture, along with its commodities and values. A whole lot of people identify that way, however; hipsters distinguish themselves from the general angst-ridden suburban teenager by identifying with an intellectual/artistic aesthetic, and by staying abreast on current (though hopefully little-known) bands, artists, films, and literary works. Hipsters don’t like to think of themselves as consumers, but by definition they take in cultural capital. If you do have to buy anything, it’s best if that money doesn’t go into the hands of The Gap or some other corporate mega-monster. Thrift stores are unquestionably awesome, overpriced “vintage” stores less so. Second-hand-but-not-cheap-looking is really hard to find however, so Diesel Jeans are definitely okay, as are the occasional shirts or whatever from American Apparel. Huge conglomerates, in general, are suspicious since untold numbers of people were killed, maimed, or paid like 5 cents a day to make those clothes; somehow IKEA and Macintosh computers are exempt (every hipster-pad I’ve ever been to in New York features a big apple computer somewhere in the house. That said, this necessary conformity is usually offset by the lack of a functioning television set. No one watches TV anymore, apparently, since the media is totally corporate and mainstream and TV shows with national appeal don’t appeal to more sophisticated tastes . . . Last May I visited some people I had lived with in 2006, and commented, “Wow, you guys got a TV. It looks nice!” Shameful guilt instantly crossed their faces, and Kadria went into a really long story about how one of her former clients gave it to her, and that they still definitely didn’t have cable or watch sports or anything: The TV’s just for movies and stuff. I secretly thought ‘Yeah, they both just turned 30 didn’t they? The world outside of Brooklyn-cool is seeping in, and they’re becoming more like those once city-dwelling suburban couples in Westchester . . .').

So, is hipster identity a lot clearer now? Is it really? IS IT?!?! LOL, but really, since “hipster” isn’t an internal identity, it’s pretty difficult to make clear-cut boundaries. I tend to think of them as being 18-30ish, but then some high school kids have already shed their sappy emo roots and gone “cool”, and I’ve totally seen some 35-45 year old hipster-dads at the McCarren Park Pool, maintaining an air of nonchalance with children precariously set on their backs. Jaded, disinterested hipster moms walking unusually calm babies are the Williamsburg norm. They’re usually from upper-middle class to upper-class backgrounds – especially in New York it seems – though some hipsters come from more dusty roots. They usually went to either art school, one of the politically left liberal arts schools, or NYU, though they might be self-educated. Without a doubt, however, they have to be interested in non-mainstream cultural commodities, and have a lot of knowledge on classic, kitsch, and contemporary independent film as well as underground/indie music. Our generation really isn’t all that well read, though most hipsters will at least be familiar with basic classic literary/philosophical works, along with anything that’s about rejecting social norms or that’s written in a post-modern style. Knowing a little bit about contemporary plastic and performance artists is pretty important too, especially in New York. Irony is also really important. Unquestionable actually. Perhaps this is because the ultimate irony is in the ludicrous idea of trying to live in a major metropolitan city, not work or participate in consumer culture at all, be a total non-conformist yet also try and be cooler than all your friends. I think the reasons run deeper than that, however, you’ll have to figure that out for yourself. But anyway, since there aren’t any clear-cut definitions, I tend to think of the whole “thing” as an inner-and-outer circle, with the unquestionable “hipsters” in the center, and people who seem to be hipsters and definitely associate with that scene, even if they don’t fit the bill 100% (i.e. they’re not 100% obnoxious to be around, lol) in the outer circle. Outside of that would be people who aren’t “hip” but for one reason or another associate with these people from time to time. Maybe they too listen to indie music, or live in one of the hipster neighborhoods. This is the domain of the hipster hater, who perhaps, secretly envies the hipster because of his or her own personal lack of hipness, simultaneously resenting the pretension espoused by those that truly are hipsters. This area, I believe, is where most of the journalist who write/obsess about these kids are, including that Christian Lorentzen guy, who’s decided to make a career out of hipster baiting (among other things, like art/music criticism). This isn't necessarily a bad place to be. A lot of Wesleyan students – I daresay the majority – seem to be around this area, if they’re not hipsters themselves. Still, if you’re a Wes Republican, hang out at DKE more than once or twice a month, think popping your collar is the best thing since khaki shorts, or are one of those white kids who self-identifies with a word that starts with “W” and ends with “igger”, then you’re in another time zone. Other than the “hip-hop heads” who might run into hipsters if The Coup or Daft Punk are playing, these guys aren’t interested in “Hipsters”. It’s only people that associate with hipsters, and have some sort of inferiority complex, that are obsessed with them. Get over it guys. If you’re a real activist, actually trying to make a difference, then you’ve got a leg up over hipsters who are jaded and obsessed with nightlife. But if you shop at the Gap, Wal-Mart, and Urban Outfitters, feel guilty about it, then obsessively hipster bait hipsters for their pretension, then chill out, because even if their only motivation is to look cool, those hipster kids are just a little bit more down with the revolution than you are (even if they are really self-absorbed and pretentious about the whole thing).

Senior Ball: A Thursday Well Spent?

So, I decided to give in to peer pressure and go to the Senior Ball. Apparently, the dress for the night was semi-formal, so half the class showed up in little black dresses, suits and tie, or slacks and a jacket, and the rest of us just came in our street clothes (I was definitely in the latter group, though I wore a belt. That counts for something right?).

All in all, it was good, sober fun. Really sober, because other than the people that snuck flasks into Fayerweather, there was absolutely no alcohol. That said, the committee organizing the event got some of the music majors to do music, which was pretty good once five or six people told them that the ironic songs from the 70s weren’t really doing it for the audience. Fayerweather didn’t really fill up until after 11:00, once everybody who pre-gamed showed up (too bad for them, they missed “The Electric Slide” . . .). Most of the class was there towards the end of the night. I left around 11:30 to finish some reading for Friday (lame, I know), but apparently everyone started making out like, right after I left.

The whole thing kind of reminded me of a pretty good high school dance, except without the crazy after party where everyone who was cool in high school went to someone’s house and got wasted. Yeah, I definitely would have rather gone to Cocktails. Can somebody work on finding the douches who left all their pot on the school-bus floor, then pummeled the bus driver?

According to Evan, I need to do a real post here before he can write another one. So, I'll do a little weekend recap.

Friday night I DJ'd my friend Renee's birthday party. Here's a photo of me going at it:
Yup.

Saturday night, Evan and I watched a few episodes of Flavor of Love before leaving for a party featuring a male stripper. The strip show was over by the time we got there.

Tonight Saul and I made latkes, to celebrate the upcoming Channukah holiday. We introduced them to Evan. Evan wants to get a Christmas tree, and perhaps some tinsel decorations for the house. I say go for it, but Saul is frightened of Christmas, so we'll see where that one lands.