Andrew J. Lederer

propensity for late night promenading. last night, i saw a couple and their two very young children leaving a park at around ten after eleven, which, you'll have to admit, is pretty late for such things

i was in williamsburg because i'd gone to see an open-air screening of "ladies and gentlemen, the fabulous stains" in the part of williamsburg (it may have been greenpoint) that's inhabited not by earnest chassidim but by ironic hipsters.

my friend says i'm a hipster, but a failed one because my enthusiasms are hipsterish but i don't wear the right clothes. he's a big believer in wearing the right "uniform" but i think it's to my credit that i'm a mixed bag of interests and aesthetics.

for instance, the irony thing can be taken too far for my taste.

there was one girl i saw after the screening, smoking a cigarette while ironically wearing a shirt that said, "don't smoke live." (okay. maybe she was wearing the shirt straightforwardly and ironically smoking.)

i got annoyed at the level of ignorant, self-destructive arrogance it took to wear a shirt that acknowledged the terminal prognosis of cigarette smoking while laughing it off as if if it were just more oppressive bullshit from humorless authorities who just don't get it.

i mean, smoke if you want to, but don't pretend it's a frivolous thing to do. (the girl gets a few "exoneration points" because she wasn't sure whether the shirt meant "don't smoke, live" -- there was no comma -- or "don't smoke live, implying, perhaps, that a band named "don't smoke" was performing somewhere.)

meanwhile, not ironically intended -- though it should have been -- was the awning outside the nearby "park luncheonette", which proudly said, "established 1931" even though they eliminated virtually every vintage detail and took something that was rare and wonderful and turned it into just another somewhat chi-chi restaurant -- it's no longer a luncheonette at all.

it only gets exoneration points if the same family that ran the place a few years ago, when it had a classic lunch counter and served egg creams and other delights, are still there, running the place as best they can. otherwise, it's just being run by a bunch of clueless fucks trying to get mileage out of the proud history of a place they willfully destroyed and they deserve no indulgence.

and neither does the friend (actually the same one who accuses me of being a hipster, as if that will bother me) who, seeing me talking to a girl, will say something like, "c'mon. there'll be plenty of pussy available after we get this done." or, "get your face out of the pussy. we got things to do."

i can't believe i have a friend who (non-ironically) talks that way. (he is, mostly, a good guy, so maybe he can have some indulgence points.)

honestly, it may be to my discredit in the world of "pulling", but i don't see women as "pussy". i'm (often) interested in what they have to say and i'm offended by the notion that they're merely female humanoid masturbation implements available for male pleasure.

wow. there i go being sincere again.

maybe i'm more chassid than hipster.