So I'm in the hipster coffee shop the other day, the one with the service that ranges from sullen to indifferent, the one that just instituted a password that doesn't work for their wireless internet access. And I'm sitting across from a couple, but I can only see the guy. His hair is dyed a fakey red color, he's wearing little glasses, one of those blue gas-station attendant jackets with the name patch, a PiL pin on the jacket, black jeans, and black converse all stars.
Got the picture? You're thinking emaciated twenty-something hipster, right? Wrong! This guy was fifty if he was a day, and he was, shall we say, somewhat stout of frame. Now, I mean, on the one hand, just because you've hit the half-century mark doesn't mean you have to wear dockers and polo shirts every day, and the guy was probably saw Television in '77, back when, as far as I was concerned, Television was just what I watched New Zoo Revue on.
But, I mean, I know the guy was trying to send a message like, "You youngsters don't know squat about music, and you damn sure don't have a monopoly on cool! I was cool before you were born!" But the message he was actually sending was, "I can't admit that I'm aging! I think I'm still in my twenties! And these jeans don't exactly flatter the pear-shaped man!"
Now, I hope to have to deal with this dilemma, but how does one reach a certain age and neither succumb to fuddy-duddyness nor pathetically try to hang on to a style best left to the youngsters? I suppose one answer is to become a dapper, sharp-dressed man, but, sadly, I don't think that option's open to me...
