Hipster Baby 101

My friend Wess and his wife Emily had a baby girl about a month ago. With the craziness of Christmas, the end of a quarter, the start of a new one, and incessant paper writing it took me awhile to put these gifts together. But she's a baby and doesn't know that the gifts are late so I felt alight to be about a month late.

Before she was born I took it upon myself to be her self proposed hipster life coach. I desire to help guide her in the ways of being a baby hipster. The swoopy bangs are still growing in so until that time comes I thought I would help her with fashion consciousness as well as musical taste.

The gift idea came when I realized that the Wilco store sold baby clothes. Since I am now the hipster life coach I knew that the baby needed right off the bat a little onesie with the Wilco logo on it. I also know that she really enjoys In Rainbows from Radiohead. The girl needs to represent from the crib so I decided that you can't really buy Radiohead onesies I would make some. The picture above has four different designs. They are all really fun and unique and best of all organic. My favorite one might be the one that says "My Dino Can Eat Your Dino." I hope she likes dinosaurs as much as I do.

No baby can go without great music. A few days after her birth I was asked to compile some songs for LL to introduce her into hopefully a lifetime love of great music. After going through my music and just dropping them into a playlist, I realized that I had a lot of songs and it needed to be in a couple of parts. These are some of my favorite songs from throughout the years. Here is the track listing:

Baby Hipster ABC's...Part One
1. No Ones gonna love you... Band of Horses
2. To Be Alone with You... Sufjan Stevens
3. Wonderwall... Ryan Adams
4. Pillars... Sunny Day Real Estate
5. The Luckiest... Ben Folds
6. The Orchids... Califone
7. The Trapeze Swinger... Iron and Wine
8. Impossible Germany... Wilco
9. Pretty Dress... Rosie Thomas
10. God Only Knows... The Beach Boys
11. Anthems for a Seventeen Year-Old Girl... Broken Social Scene
12.The Lakes of Canada... Innocence Mission
13. Matinee... Damien Jurado
14. First Day of My Life... Bright Eyes
15. True Love Waits... Radiohead
16. Only In Dreams... Weezer
17. Do You Realize?... The Flaming Lips

A Hipsters Guide to Being a Baby: Part Two
1. Chicago... Sufjan Stevens
2. Heavy Metal Drummer... Wilco
3. I Feel it All... Feist
4. Isn't She Lovely... Stevie Wonder
5. Staring At the Sun... TV on the Radio
6. Arcarsenal... At the Drive-In
7. Search and Destroy.. Iggy and the Stooges
8. Lousy Reputation... We Are Scientist
9. Night On Fire... VHS or Beta
10. Glass Danse... The Faint
11. Helicopter... Bloc Party
12. Damnit... Blink 182
13. Ain't No Trip to Cleveland... Brandston
14. Lord Leopard... Caribou
15. Stronger... Kanye West
16. Pattern Recognition... Sonic Youth
17. Paint It Black... The Rolling Stones
18. That Right Ain't Shit... The Books
19. King of Carrot Flowers Part ... Neutral Milk Hotel
20. Where It's At... Beck
21. If You Leave... Orchestral Maneuvers in the Dark

So this is the beginning of the baby hipster movement. I can't say it will catch on but at least LL will be one cool baby!! Wait she already is. I can't wait until she is old enough where I can take her on little trips to the record store or hipster clothes shopping!

When worlds collide.

This weekend was an interesting musical endeavor. My friend Adam (pictured below) was in town touring with his band Remembrance, metal in nature and lyrically focused on a Christ like life. The band was playing at Cornerstone California, which is the newest off shot of Cornerstone festival that started in Illinois. I had interesting emotions coming and being at this show. I hold many healthy growth experiences to my treks to Cornerstone and hold them fondly in my memory. I was happy that these guys could play at something that has given a lot of hardcore and metal bands a platform to play and get their careers started.One of my favies is Maylene and the Sons of Disaster. They threw a whole box of t-shirts to the crowd. They made me laugh with their funny antics and pride seemed far from their attitude on stage. Musically I was excited to go back a few years and be around metal and hardcore, something I have not been around since I moved to Pasadena. I loved being around the music, I even got a couple of albums to play, usually when I paint, or being creative.

Going to this festival was not cheap and the atmosphere is always interesting when you mix one part Christian subculture, one part hardcore, and one part consumerism. I think what you get is a mess of people attempting and striving to be like Jesus but not knowing how to do it when we have an old religion mixing with a new way of seeking and experiencing spirituality and Christianity. The fest was $40, parking another $5. Water was something that was expensive, and merch was two rows in a large tent selling everything from art, to hoodies with Jesus is my Savior/Music is my Life, and pamphlets to give money to help kids in Africa. To participate in the festival is just to be a passive observer or throwing down in the mosh pit. There was a guy playing some sort of music infusing rock with jam beats, he commented about how uncool he felt often times for playing music that had Christian undertones and what it meant to follow whole heartedly to follow that Christ guy.

The next day I found myself attending another Festival, this time it was Swerve Fest that celebrated film, music, and action sports. It was an interesting concept and took place over the weekend at an art park in Los Feliz (those who are not familiar with the area, it is a small creative town north of downtown LA) It was very interesting to contrast the two fests as this one offered creativity and was FREE. It was free to attend the shows, though you had to pay a small fee to see the films. Parking was FREE, it is NEVER free in this town and especially when it is a chance for someone to get money. The food was not free but Fuel TV was giving away a lot of prizes for participating in silly games or recycling your trash. The prizes were not high fives or candy but passes to movies or even an XBox. Kids could design their own skate deck, Ready Made magazine was offering a subscription to their magazine for $5.

The atmosphere was calm, people sitting and calmly listening to music about riding bicycles and seeing life through rose colored glasses. There were people picnicking and enjoying their Sunday afternoon on a hill over looking the city. Devotchka played a beautiful set. If you are not familiar with them watch Little Miss Sunshine. There music was the main soundtrack to the film. I loved it because it seemed so beautiful and so simple, yet for a four-piece there was a lot going on. I also was told that Jesus Saved (St. Vincent has a t-shirt that says St. Vincent says JESUS SAVES and in tiny letters and I Pay) and that I was told threw another T-shirt that we need to Stop Genocide.

What are the differences between the two. Sometimes I wonder if the pictures in the Highlights magazines I read as a kid is a good indicator of this test. What is the same and what is different in these two pictures? I was given an assignment in class last week that asked us to compare a Psalm with an Egyptian Hymn to the Sun God. There were a lot of similarities. Where were people being served and loved, whose gifts were being highlighted, whose talents were being rewarded. I don't know about you but the edge to create and helping to provide a space to create is something I lean more towards. I don't think there is a limit or a boundary to love and there certainly can't be when it comes to art.

freedom.

I have been reading all day. The last couple of hours I have been reformulating some thoughts I have had for some time ago and they were shoved or shelved for a later day. I am in the midst of understanding some thoughts in Job that are taking to me some new places in my thinking but over all reaffirming what is happening in my mind and thoughts.

It is time we move from our many traditions.

This being said I know that now i need to defend it. I need to stand firm behind my overwhelming thought. This can no longer be a statement that we mention but really stand behind this and begin to move. Our traditions are weighing us down. We are hurting ourselves more than we are helping the church.

I am using the church because it is the last institution that is usually the one to move.

i use the church because it is archaic.

we can no longer go backwards. We can not stand with the feet of our forefathers. We can't because it destroys us, rather than to help us. We can't stand there with our feet in the ground saying that the traditions help us. Do they? Really, do they?

Our movement needs to be forward rather than back. I am sick of being in churches that do things without questioning anything. I am tired of emerging churches that look like they value art but they steal from the culture, add a few Jesus' or Christ's and call it spiritual. The culture is already spiritual. We have lost that in the church.

The church feels like a clubhouse where only members can come. It was like that Berstein's Bears book that I always read where the cover had Brother bear in a tree house where there was a sign that said NO GIRLS ALLOWED. Now we can let girls in but they have to play by there rules. I am bored by these rules. I don't want to play by them so I will go some place else. I will go where it is better. I will go where people are accepting of me. Because these places exist. They exist because the church failed. I am bored by it making me feel bad, unloved, unreceptive to grace.

I don't want to make a new denomination. I don't want to make a new building. I want to make something that is a safe place. There is some places that need rules there are others that need to be explored. We need to take our blinders off. We need to be bold and we need to be allowed to change.

We need to stand up for freedom, and originiality, we need to be bold and free. We can't stand there and take it. We are better than that. so we why do we allow ourselves to hurt and humilate? Why are we running after power and influence? Why do we think that I (we) are the only ones in the world that God is using. Wake up. Realize that we are not. It's time to move on. We are allowed to. God grants us freedom? Did we forget this? Did we forget that God gave it to someone else as well? That is community. That is what we are made to do.....

the death of modernism

I am attempting to get through The Death of Modernism by the cultural theorist Raymond Wiliams as I sit on my big chair trying to avoid the annoying loud children as they play in plastic pools to try to stay cool on this hot day. Instead of hearing their yells and screams I have attempted to drown these kids out by listening to Miles Davis and drinking a cold Bass ale. I never thought I would get to this point where I would become a person who would listen to Miles and read theory. It seems so over the top, smart.....

I know that I have a lot more to go to become an intellectual but from a picture-esque view it would look like today that I am already there. Sometimes it just seems pathetic but I know this is right where I need to be. I can never go back....I can never go back and not understand something that just a few years ago I thought was just to complex. Don't get me wrong I enjoy that I can understand Williams (though not all of it).

I guess this is what happens when you are a year away from finishing grad school....

Oh Oprah...

My thoughts on Oprah and her town hall meeting...

As many know I am actively engaging in dialogue about hip hop at Fuller. I am intrigued with the dialogue because the questions that are being asked are interesting but are they asking the right questions? I feel they are hitting on the right topics; misogyny, racism, oppression, systemic pain. Those are the right issues but the questions are leading to open ends, unanswered pain, and everyone is trying to be heard.

The answer to some is just to get rid of the hip hop in general. Just let it go....well that's not the right answer.
It's not a fair assumption to have it happen. What can we do with the systemic problems as well as the media cultures pushes the structure of what is happening in this space. When will we wake up and rub the sleep out of our eyes? When will we see what is REALLY happening rather than what we want to see?

Sometimes I want something to be a certain way so I will turn and twist things to make it say what i want it to say. Throughout the dialogue this is what's happening with the O. Some of these words are being twisted and turned to be something that she wants it to be.

One thing that I am impressed with is the ability to use the art to say something. That even with hip hop being only about 27 years old it makes an incredible impact within a global economy. How could the gospel spread like Hip Hop? How can love and truth be spread? How do we stop the hate? How do we help look outside of materialism and see our worth not just in our goods but how we learn, how we love, and how we care?