Don't Mind If I Do...

First of all, let me be the first to welcome the newest member of THATJ into the fold. You've done proud by your people. The elders in your tribe have told me to tell you may now proceed on your journey towards manhood. Your vision quest awaits you. Talk to me about the acquisition of black lights and black light accessories, you'll need them now more than ever, and I know a guy. Now, let's make an awkward transition to what I'm sure we can all agree is a far juicier subject. Sauce.

Look, I understand that over saucing is a problem. However, I am of the firm belief that you have miscast the blame for this phenomenon. Hipsters of all sorts (San Franciscans, Chicagoans, the homeless, etc.) do love sauce, this is a fact, however hipsters enjoy sauce in moderation. Hipsters enjoy fancy sauces with locally sourced ingredients that, unless you are a hipster, you may have never heard of. Hipster sauces enhance the taste, the aroma, and the quality of the food that we consume. Assholes have given sauce a bad name. Assholes can have their Cracker Barrel slop. Hipster aren't assholes, we're simply not interested enough to be. So let's place the blame where blame is due. I'm looking at you!

A brief poem:
Sauces Are - Anon
Spicy, savory, and charmingly sweet.
Sour and salty and totally neat.

It's true because it rhymes. If you'd like to try attempt to refute one of the most prolific sayer of sayings in the history of the world when he/she says something in rhyme form, well, then by my guest and best of luck.

Entire cultural identities are defined by the sauces that they create. In America we have nacho cheese and ranch for literally everything, Canadians have their gravy for poutine, the Swiss dip everything in chocolate, Italians and their tomatoes, the French and their delightful and precociously pretentious velouté and béchamel, the Japanese have "spicy" and eel, the Chinese with their sweet and sour and whatever General Tso's comes with. I mean, would there even be a Mexico without mole? Let's just say I have my doubts. And if there wasn't a Mexico, where would stuff like this, or this, or even this happen? I love Mexico and I would be sad if it didn't exist. Being the resident representative of hipsterdom, I'm sad enough as it is, it's in my DNA, it courses through my blood stream (powered by fair trade coffee of course). Do you really want to see a hipster hopped up on sad? Would you be able to live with that burden on your conscience? I don't think so. I really and truly don't.

Think about it. Let's say you're sitting at on a park bench, minding your own business. You're kidnapped by a band if midnight marauders and whisked away to some undisclosed location. You have no idea where you are. You are blindfolded, you haven't slept in days, you can barely form a coherent sentence, you are confused and you are afraid. Then one day your captors bring you some food. You notice a cumin scented pomegranate sauce, even in your confused state, because thankfully, they were liberal with the application of said sauce. The next day a psychic's aura enters your brain (your parents hired a psychic to help find you because the police were positively useless!). You communicate to the psychic that, well, maybe, just maybe, you are somewhere in Morocco, based only on the sauce! Four days later, 12 Academi trained mercenaries storm your bunker and set you free. You WERE in Morocco after all, and, well, the sauce, the sauce saved the day. Seriously, think about it.

So do I want this? No thank you. But do I want this? Abso-fucking-lutely. So, give me sauce, or give me death.

Super Sauce Me

Sauce or Soup?

A delectable piece of meat is unparalleled in its deliciousness.  There is nothing better.  A little salt, a little pepper and some oil is really all that's required.  Pork, beef, veal, duck, chicken (okay maybe not chicken) it doesn't really matter what the meat is, a well prepared hunk of mammal is always the star of the meal.  All too often in today's American cuisine that's forgotten.  It's taken to such an extent that today's culinary "elite" (hipsters in cooks clothing) refer to the meat simply as the "protein" of the meal.  They are robbing the meat of it's uniqueness.  They are making it seem less relevant, less important. Delicious meat, you see, can be prepared by one and all.  So in order to downplay it's importance they call it a protein and make their sauces the star of your plates.  This is vanity at it's worst.  These "chefs" are taking the taste out of my mouth in order to line their pocket books and raise their celebrity profiles.  It's a culinary disgrace if you ask me.  Whose to blame in all of this you ask?  The French of course, them and their elitist American disciples...hipster foodies.

They come from gritty neighborhoods in Portland, San Francisco, Brooklyn, Chicago and Seattle and they have spread forth through our country and onto our television sets in a blitzkrieg fashion.  They have waged an unparalled PR campaign and convinced us that pomegranates are more important than pigs, that compotes should be the leading man and carne the character actor.  I've had enough.  My palate is confused and overwhelmed.  It doesn't want new it wants delicious.  The taste of a big beautiful cut of beef doesn't need to be hidden beneath a potpourri of fruits and vegetables.  It needs to be bathed in it's own fats and dropped on a plate.  If you want to put a little something on the side to add a little kick, that's okay, but we don't need to slather it in a bunch of crap.  I have long assumed that ketchup and mustard were invented to cover the poor taste of low quality sausages.  I long ago removed those crutches from life.  Today we have wonderful hot dogs and sausages that need nothing.  If you want to put some toppings on there to make your dog even more delicious I understand, but hiding it's taste is no longer necessary.  Our high end meats, like our hot dogs, have improved, as has our access to them, so why are we moving in the wrong direction with this?  I refuse to cover my rib eye in anything that would make it taste less like a rib eye.

My Culinary Heroes

The internet and high end food stores have given me access to anything my stomach desires.  Chefs were becoming obsolete and they changed their game.  They started dressing different and getting tattoos and piercings and going on TV in order to convince me that I needed to come to their restaurants.  They became more flash and dash than dollop and dash.  Their recipes became things that were too complex for me to make at home and as soon as I do figure them out they start using new even more foreign and difficult to find ingredients and cooking devices.  But I'm on to them.  I see what you're doing celebrity hipster chefs and I'm not buying it.  I'm going to Ruth Chris's and I'm going to have a nameless Mexican cook me a delectable steak and it will be the best thing I've ever eaten.  

Because The Fire of One Thousand Suns Cannot Burn Us

Biking in skinny jeans on a 103 degree summer day? Not a problem for a Hipster my friend, not a problem in the slightest. From the perspective of a mere mortal of Jewish origins, I can understand why an action of this nature might seem uncomfortable, unnecessary, and, even, inexplicable. What I suggest to you is that you attempt to walk a mile in the shoes of greatness before making sweeping generalizations on the actions of the a clearly superior brand of cool. In fact, Hipsters are so (unintentionally) cool, that they literally cannot become hot. We are made of more ethereal stuff than that my friend and we will not succumb to the whims of nature nor the mores of the washed. In short, the fire of one thousand suns cannot burn us. So it is written, so it shall be.

So, while you may have your Jew Jitsu (admittedly awesome), we're more than willing to take our imperviousness to nature, our blatant disregard for heretofore unchallenged societal notions of proper hygiene, our inexplicable and ultimately undefinable brand of cool, and our not unflattering definitional comparison to pornography (silly Potter; Judge, not Harry). 

Thusly, I leave you with a real life Hipster doing real life Hipster things on a real life Hipster farm. I dedicate this realness to you my web footed friend who probably always poses (so phony) for pictures and therefore is never able to actually capture anything resembling the truth. Real life man. Dig it.

Bandana, check. Tie dye shades, check. Croaks, check. White tee, check. Unruly beard, check plus.

Hipster win. Please believe.

The Jewish Descapegoation Plan - Phase 1

Impressive introduction hipster. Not impressive enough however to merit the ever-desired capital H prior to your desired label/persona. Maybe if a little more effort were put into the important aspects of life (i.e everything), then you and your comrades could finally become a welcome part of society. Until then, however, you will be loathed and despised, because, come on, really? Biking in skinny jeans on a 103 degree summer day? WTF.

Anyhow, without giving any more attention than has already been drawn towards this segment of humanity who thrive to do nothing more than represent everything they are attempting to avoid representing, let us focus on the true purpose of this blog: Scapegoat Transition.

With a fairly negative/prosecution-heavy history going as far back as memory serves , Jews around the world have been seeking a NES-Inspired-Flashing-Screen-Envoking-Reset-Button. A restart to all the negative events in history that have plagued our every step: Jesus’ Death (he did kinda screw us). The Holocaust. These guys (Thanks for that one Miss Rowling). A new group of individuals who shall finally free us from all the adversity to which we have succumbed, and ultimately allow us to take over world’s finances in peace. And Hollywood. We rock that sh*t.

Leading us to our new revolution

Not leading us to our new revolution

Before commencing our less-than-secretive descapegoation plan (don’t worry, Webster will be adding that badboy within the year), I present you with a few ground rules for this “initiative”:

1. Jews from the East Coast don’t count. They could quite possibly be worse than hipsters.

2. Jews with “ultra-strong” beliefs do not count either. They are kinda cray cray.

3. Hollywood “Fraction” Jews DO count (1/8 of Zac Efron!)

4. Jewish Hipsters have 30 days to pick a side.

5. Genocide is off-limits. Sorry psycho readers… try hugging someone, might make you feel a bit better.

Over the next until-we-get-bored-and-stop-writing-blog-posts number of days/weeks/months/eras, I shall help push our cause, and show the world how truly scapegoatable hipsters really are. All the while promoting the unbelievable freshocity of my own Jewish brethren. Need I remind you?

hipsters: May the odds be ever in your favor (that is of course if you actually believe in statistics -- they are kinda mainstream)

Your turn my good friend Mr. Diez. Your turn.

Skonesteinberg

Suspenders Are Acceptable But Only If Acquired Second Hand

It's a story all too familiar and all too real. Visceral and heart wrenching yet coolly reasoned and   delightful. A tale of intrigue, a tale of loathing, of backstabbing and deception. Mere enmity? Nay. It is perhaps the oldest rivalry known to man. Some even say it's the oldest rivalry in the history of the world. Well folks, the time has come to lay out the facts, and, as such, the time has come to settle the score once and for all. This is the tale of the Hipsters and the Jews. The Hipsters (always capitalized, respect) and the Jews have been at odds (mostly ironically of course) for thousands, if not millions of years. This may seem like mostly conjecture, and, well, perhaps that's because it is. But then again, perhaps this skepticism is merely a failure of our much maligned and woefully inadequate system of education in this fine country. My unyielding prowess in logical reasoning tells me that if you were home schooled this may be a familiar tale, but alas, if you were not the subject of a social experimentation rendered unto you by your chromosome givers then all you must do is this. Rid yourself of prejudice, suspend all disbelief, and prepare yourself for a knowledge bomb when I tell you that it all started when...

... the pteranodon first took flight. Yes, you read that correctly, and yes, I am absolutely going Cretaceous on your asses. If Don Bluth's documentary is an accurate representation of historical fact, which I can only assume it is, then Bluth may have indeed discovered the first Hipster to grace this fine planet. Petrie, the spindly and totally EMO "Flying Dino" (as he was called in his post LB4T circus days), was a Hipster of the finest feather (or anti-feather, as they called it way back when). An emotional roller coaster. A tightly wound ball of nervous creative energy. The ability to fly when extremely frightened. Comic relief. The initial scorn but ultimate acceptance of his closest friends and family. Hipster. Cera on the other hand may be our very first Jew. Possessing little more than the ability to whine and be easily offended, Cera is a real drag on the gang throughout their entire counter-factual journey. You know, Jew stuff. Cera also, horrifyingly, loves smashing beetles. Of course, and this should go without saying, the Beetle is sacred to all Hipsters, and thus The Great Beetle Smashing Incident at the ravine led directly led to the rift that would last until the end of time.

In the end, Petrie learns to fly, wins the respect of each and every one of his friends and family members, is hilarious, and he done talks funny to boot! Cera just mopes and whines and smashes beetles. I guess she "learns" to play well with others but if I had to guess, she secretly still loathes her fellow dinosaurs and simply 

Edge: Hipsters.

Fast forward a few geological blinks of an eye to 33 A.D. Perhaps the most famous Jew of all time (excluding Harvey Weinstein) Jesus Christ (our main man) meets his demise. While the Romans did the "deed" as it were, a big assist more certainly went to that irrascable Hipster Judas Iscariot. Judas a Hipster you say? Well, they tell me he had Satan entered Judas, and, frankly, that's good enough for me. Every Hipster has a little demon in him, that's how the Hipster's got their funk/groove. And unlike Stella (big ups Angela Bassett), they will never give it up. Anyhow, we all know the story, J.C. started up some culty thing and Judas got sick of all of his hopey changey preachy crap so he did what any major league asshole would do and went all Benedict Arnold on his behind (they did not call it Benedict Arnolding back then). Well, the Romans banged out the whole Crucifixion thing and it looked like Judas would win the day, you know, with him being alive and Jesus being dead. But Jesus would have the last laugh, pulling of the very first David Blaine and resurrecting himself all while becoming more popular and powerful than ever! And even though he was no longer a Jewish dude at this point, I'll be damned if Jews don't still love the guy!

Edge: Jews.

Historical Statistical Relevant Indisputable Result: Dead Heat. Not to be confused with White Heat, White Lightning, or White Chocolate (person not food), which I can only assume is a confusion that you have already experienced. I have as well, all too often in fact.

Now that we have covered the history of this blood feud, let us commence with the beginning of the end times (it being entirely possible that the end times last forever of course). This final battle shall commence thusly. Mark the Jew and Matthew the Hipster will go tête-à-tête in what will perhaps be one of the greatest dueling keyboard battles of all time (note: strictly non-musical category since, as we all know, the epic Vitalij Kuprij/Zoot Money battle of 1983 is, perhaps, the greatest single battle in all of human history).

Will the Hipsters emerge smugly stroking their collective ironically waxed mustaches while simultaneously being perplexed as to whether the Black Keys are sell-outs or if their embracing of being sell-outs reverses the selling-outness of their selling-out all while staring vacantly through non-prescription thick rimmed eyeglasses or will the Jews do whatever Jews do when a celebratory mood is afoot (I guess this?!)? Only time and the annals of history will tell. Your move my Jewish arch enemy friend. Your move. Your people are counting on you. Let the games begin!