I Don't Get It

Perhaps at 24 I am embracing my inner crumudgeon. I just don't know what's hip anymore. Do people say hip? I've lost all touch with the youthful part of myself. All I feel now is lower back pain, looming bill payments and a general unease around teenagers. I am also utterly dumbfounded by most trends:

Sushi
It's not that I don't get the appeal, it's the social currency around it that confuses me. It's like the more exotic sushi you have sampled the cooler you are:
"I like California Rolls"
"Well, I have sashimi at least once a week"
"Well I once ate a seahorse and blowfish combo platter"
"Well I have been known to swim behind swordfish and nibble on their tails"
It's raw fish. It's cool if you like it, but odd when people recount their sushi meals like war stories.

Lowering Your Car
Sweet, it looks like my car is gliding on the road. I can't really drive it in the winter and even the slightest of speed bumps will tear apart my undercarriage but...it uh...it glides.

Vinyl Records
The coolest of the cool have record collections. I am all for collecting vinyl because you truly love music and digging through a record store to find a buried gem or an old favourite would be a fun hobby. Where I get off the "records are cool" bus is when collectors insist that the sound was way better back then; you can really hear how it was recorded. I've listened to my share of records and what you often hear is static and scratch marks clouding the original recording. Modern technology just cleans up the sound so you can fully appreciate what you are listening to. I'm not one to fawn over new gadgets but sometimes new really is better.

Hipsters
Hipsters to me are the new goths. It's a movement whose members believe they are achingly original where they instead come across as painfully similar; awash in a sea of plastic glasses, Chuck Taylors, unnecessary blazers and oh.....the bangs.

Damaged Fashion
I was searching for a pair of jeans at the mall the other day and I left with nothing. I am really not hard to please when it comes to jeans so this was odd. It was such a struggle to find a decent pair that didn't adhere to the "frayed or faded" style. Am I the only one who likes new clothes to look, I dunno, newish? Simple denim now undergoes a process that I can only imagine includes dragging them behind a car for an hour, taking a lawnmower to one of the legs while rubbing the other leg in bird poop.

I can't be fashionable. I don't know if I've gotten too old or I'm just not "phat" or "phunky" enough for the new trends. What I do know is that if I were to ever catch a child of mine cutting up a newly bought pair of jeans I would slap them 'til my hand hurt...then slap them again for making it hurt.

(life lessons a la Lisa Turtle's mom)