Author: wdfyfe

Before WD called himself a writer, he worked at a number of different jobs from stacking lumber to interior design. He studied English at UBC and creative writing at ASU where one of his teachers, Rita Dove, taught him the importance of the tale. He has written for radio, magazines and newspapers, but never television. He’s published both fiction and nonfiction in Great Britain and the US. He reads French passably and speaks enough Spanish to get from A to B and find the toilet. He has interviewed John Cleese, Peter Ustinov, Margaret Drabble, Kenneth Branagh and enough other famous people to make him a hopeless name dropper. His not-so-secret passions are history and trivia, and he has never lost a game of Trivial Pursuit — although he did come 4th one drunken Quiz Night at the Uxbridge in Notting Hill. He lives on the Pacific Ocean, although, not close enough to see, so he spends his days looking at a computer screen. It’s a wonderful life and he has only one regret: he can’t type faster.

Why Are There Hipsters? — Part 1

hipsterI’m fascinated by Hipsters.  Like Flappers, Beatniks and the more recent BoBos, these folks are the cultural definition of our age.  If that brings a tear to your eye, you’re not alone.  However, the fact remains: ever since Sean Combs (Diddy Whoever?) and Kanye Kardashian turned “Straight Outta Compton” into “Sub-Urban Acceptable,” no other contemporary group packs the kind of street cred that Hipsters do.  They are the biggest sidewalk society we’ve seen since the Hippies stormed out of Haight-Ashbury to conquer the 60s.  So, when history judges us (and it will) Hipsters are going to be front and centre.  Not bad for a cultural subset that spends its days denies its own existence!

So what makes Hipsters more than just a bunch of pompous asses in plaid shirts?

I’ve done some massive research.  Last weekend, I laid in a load of Doritos™ and Pepsi™, smoothed my ass groove out of the sofa, and settled in to watch every Hipster movie I could get my mitts on.  (Serious social commentators have to take these kinds of risks.)  I watched everything from Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums and High Fidelity to Frank, Her and Inside Llewyn Davis.  By the time I was done, I had a junk-food food baby and was speaking in tongues.  However, after 48 eye-bleeding hours of intensive study, I did discover the roots of Hipsterism in these movies, the visual literature of their culture.

I was, like Custer meeting the Sioux, shocked and amazed.

First of all, despite the mythology, Hipster culture is not actually centred on incomprehensible Film Festival movies and Indie music.  These are just the vehicles that give Hipsters their style, and like every other social phenomenon in history, it’s the Hipster style that defines it.  Secondly — and this is where the bike helmet hits the pavement — unlike every other measurable trend in social history, the Hipster phenom is the first one driven by women.

And on Friday,  I’ll prove it.

JUST FUNNY STUFF

No matter how old I get, sometimes that inner adolescent just fights his way to the surface and I can’t help myself.

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pooh

smurf

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terror

bagpipe

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And finally, one of my favourites:

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Fall Fever

fallYip all you want about Spring Fever — Fall Fever is worse.  It plays mischief in your eyes with Van Gogh colours dancing in the trees to sad 60s songs.  It rustles crisp on shuffle footsteps that leave no evening echo.  Its dim light chilly is brittle on the breeze, and it speaks in long, muffled tones.  It wears knitted scarves and fat socks and smells like hot chocolate, steaming in the afternoon air.  It aches winter but touches your face with warm summer sun, like a treacherous lover teasing its escape.

As old as I am yet to get, I will never see September without back-to-school.  Stiff new paper; pens with all the parts; blunt pencils of virgin wood, waiting to be pointed; plastic instruments with purposes so academically secret they have never been revealed.  And books.  Heavy books.  Books that told me numbers were true and always acted responsibly.  Books that showed me that some things could be proven.  Books whose gone places and dead lives taught me immortality.  And books that lied — so cleverly, so carefully, so convincingly close to me that we became friends.

These were the books that jealously wouldn’t wait to be read.  These were the after school-books.  The week-end books when the world was too cold for walking but too soon for skating.  These were the books that were finished before any teacher ever assigned them.  These were the books that turned into libraries and later, with part-time money, into dim paint peeled bookstores, dusty with promise.

Fall Fever has a serious heart.  It is what once was — coming again on the low evening light.  Every year when the sun moves south, I hear it scratching its quill pen verse on the skinny wind.  I see the words and accumulating phrases and remember the books that brought me here.  The tales that told me, showed me, explained to me why we are all just souls — single, lost and divine.  Fall Fever remembers that for me.  And it reminds me that it is the stories we tell each other that gather us together against the wind.