A New Member of the La Historia Team

Please join me and give a warm La Historia de la Musica Rock welcome to the newest member of our blogteam, Hipster Kitty.

Although she's of course famous all over the internets for the work she does at Memebase and at I Can Has Cheezburger, it turns out that Hipster Kitty doesn't actually write. I guess it's her lack of opposable thumbs.

The whole zero-productivity thing on her part might be a problem for some of those other blogs, but the opportunity to have an internet celebrity like Hipster Kitty on staff was much too tempting for me. I was more than happy to create a new, non-creative post for her, one that will require only the one special thing she has already graciously given unto the internet, which is that certain self-righteous and superior attitude that doubts your indie cred and viciously seeks to invalidate whatever it is about yourself you might think is cool.

In thinking about it, it seemed to me that Hipster Kitty might be a perfect complement for me: I've always been obsessed with coolness, yet have so often been clueless about what, in fact, you might have to do to actually achieve it.

In her new role here at La Historia, I'm sure that Hipster Kitty will do exactly what she means to do, which I can only presume will be to increase my insecurity and produce additional self-doubt as I traipse about South Florida in my Pelican T-shirt with the Lark's-era King Crimson issuing forth from the Sony earbuds.

So, yeah, it's all about the learning here at La Historia de la Musica Rock, and if Hipster Kitty is the new teacher in class, well, let the bell ring.

She brings plenty of attitude to a blog that might have sometimes been lacking it, that's for sure.

With Hipster Kitty's haughty dismissal of their importance, I'd like to share with you some excerpts from the interview I conducted with her when I first found out she might be willing to work for LHdlMR.

We met for lunch at a brew-pub she recommended. I had a burger and a Sam Adams; she had an avocado reuben and a PBR.

RASTRO: Nice place we're at, pretty cool menu and decor . . .

HK:             Well, I did pick it.

RASTRO: Yeah. So, I guess this would be the first time you've ever worked for a blog . . . .

HK:            Actually, I've worked for more than a few blogs . . .

RASTRO: More than a few? Really?

HK:             Yeah, but you've probably never heard of them.

RASTRO: Kinda stepped into that one, didn't I?

HK:            Yeah you did. Anyway, don't worry about it. A noncorporeal meme such as myself has all kinds of extra time she can use for familiarizing herself with internet timesinks. The fact that you've not had the time to hear about these places, well, I wouldn't worry about it. Too much.

RASTRO: Right. So, music. I wanted to say that this role of cultural arbiter you play, I think it fits right in with what I'm trying to do with La Historia. I've always been trying to tell people what music's best for them . . . .

HK:             I'm kinda more into keeping it a secret.

RASTRO: Yeah, I guess so. But, still, I've sometimes felt I needed someone to point me in the right direction, musicwise.

HK:             I'm there, dude.

RASTRO: Figured you might be. Straightforward question: How would you describe your taste in music?

HK:         Well, I often like to say that I like the music you might find on a Quentin Tarantino soundtrack, only I liked it before it was on the soundtrack.

RASTRO: That's a good way to put it, I think. You know, I was listening to "Jeepster" the other day, from that movie of his . . .

HK:         Death Proof.

RASTRO: Yeah, that was it . . . and I was thinking about how those of your persuasion . . .

HK:         My persuasion? What do you mean by my persuasion, imaginary cats?

RASTRO: No, no, no. HIPSTERS.

HK:         Oh OK. Well, you can say the word. Hipster and proud, that's me.

RASTRO: Yeah, so anyway, I was thinking how if you graphed T Rex's pouplarity, it'd be like a fucking sine wave, up then down even in Bolan's lifetime, then fluctuating since depending on the popular attitude toward glam at the time.

HK:         Hmmm, true that, I think.

RASTRO: Except that IT'S BULLSHIT. T Rex are either good music or they're not, and why the fuck should I have to keep up with whatever trend it is that makes either a straightforward appreciation or an ironic re-appraisal the preferred reaction du jour? If I like something, I stay with it, and then I can forget about having to keep up with the social networking part of it.

HK:         Please don't use that phrase "social networking." But anyway, what you're saying won't work. Just look at The Arcade Fire. I--of course--was onto them early, but now that they've won a Grammy, not only am I off the boat, I HAVE to be off the boat.

RASTRO: Well, I'm not a fan anyway, but they're not getting any better from here, are they?

HK:         Thought you'd see what I was saying.

RASTRO: Maybe. I wanna get back to the ironic re-appraisal thing. Did you see that movie with Ellen Page that Drew Barrymore directed, the name's escaping me . . .

HK:         Whip It.

RASTRO: Yeah! That was it . . .

HK:         I know.

RASTRO: So you'll remember how like, the central object in the film, was Ellen Page's Stryper shirt.


HK:         Yeah, yeah it was.

RASTRO: And I'm here to ask what the fuck is that about. Stryper were a CHRISTIAN GLAM METAL band. It's impossible to embody more varieties of suck, and now in retrospect Drew Barrymore or whoever is going to tell us that well, you might have missed it the first time, but they were actually pretty good?

HK:         Actually, a gal by the name of Shauna Cross wrote that film.

RASTRO: Whatevs. So Shauna Cross is gonna tell me that this band who dressed like a bunch of honeybees were of any use at all?

HK:         No, no, you misunderstand. They sucked but we can still like them. Sometimes we're even obligated to.

RASTRO: That's utter, complete, perfectly-formed bullshit.

<RASTRO fumes>

RASTRO: Alright, do you have any questions for me, anything you might be unclear on, anything maybe that's been bothering you?

HK:             Well I'd have to ask what's with all the Neil Young.

RASTRO: What, what do you mean Neil Young

HK:             Nothing, just why do you listen to a geriatric old fart?

RASTRO: LISTEN, man, Neil Young is a fucking musical genius, don't go there.

HK:             Alright. In the interest of harmony, I'll skip the lecture you'd otherwise get.

RASTRO: Thanks.

HK: No problem. But I've got another thing we can work on. This '70's prog stuff, you know it's gotta go . . . .

RASTRO: Fuck you.

OK, so actually that interview didn't end all that well. Maybe my fault.

But after I split and stuck her with the check and then another week went by, I still couldn't stop thinking about Hipster Kitty's internet celebrity, and how it might help the anemic hit-count around here.

So I called her back and here she is. She probably won't like most of the music I'm scrobbling or even am writing about, but her opinions should at the very least keep me honest.



Hipster Kitty's opinion on the music I scrobble will be found from here on out below the "Last Child" widget at the right-hand column