Rob Fleming in 2009

Nick Hornby's "High Fidelity" is a silent beast. The blogs today, the music, the clothing styles, a lot of it can be attributed or at least viewed through the lens of this story. When I think "Hipster", I think of the three men who work at Championship Vinyl. They aren't particularly hipsters themselves, but they laid the groundwork for all us modern day hipsters with their elitism. They are the three wise men, putting it all into perspective.

Everything in life has a Top 5 list. What have all our music blogs written about as of late? Top songs of 2008. Top songs for this or that occasion. We make mixtapes, and put our heart and souls into the order of the songs. If you half-ass your mixtapes or CD's, you aren't an audiophile. You probably listen to complete shit music.



My roommate Adri is basically John Cusack. He sweats over mix CD's, periodically travelling down to my bedroom to drop something off. He'll ask for a week "Have you listened to the mix yet?" It's important to him. To me, too. It's a dialogue between you and someone else using art and music as a medium. Adri also encompasses, in my mind, the problems John Cusack (Rob Fleming or Gordon) faces when it comes to girls. He has the mind of a pop cultural Wikipedian guru, but when it comes to love he's left tumbling with the tumbleweeds, like we all are apt to do. Yet being satirical snobs, we voice our hardships masked with the pretense of pop cultural manifestos. If Adri's pissed at the world, I'm probably going to get Elvis Costello on my mix, since that's a baseline that doesn't require much thought on his part. He's not thinking too too creatively on what I might like. He knows I hate Elvis Costello, yet he persists on giving me his music. Something's troubling him, his mind is clouded.

Another sign of possible alarm is when he puts a song that he has already given me on a previous mix on the new mix. Again, mind clouds. When that happens I find that I visit his upstairs room more, pressing for disclosure on his current issues. What usually happens is that we listen to music instead, I'm merely spending time with him, saying "I'd spend the afternoon listening to Elvis Costello's music with you if it'll make you feel better."

Still, listening to Elvis Costello takes more stamina than a man pulling my balls in different directions with C-Clamps tied to five horses on either side towing the ropes.

A new form of the mixtape has emerged: video mixes. I took an idea inspired by an internet download video mix my roommate Taylor had devised and made hour and a half long video mixes for each of my roommates and close friends for their Christmas presents. All of the videos were streaming files from YouTube, Google video, random sites.

I wonder if this will ever catch on as a popular alternative to CD mixes now that everyone has Ipods and MP3 players. It's not as cool to get playlists of random files from other people as it is to receive CD's and DVD's.

We all held a little party last night to watch these video mixes together. Every mix pertained to each person's personality and interests, so watching the mixes together makes everyone experience their close friends in video form. I think this works better than having everyone sit around listening to people's audio CD's. Although, fair warning for those wanting to make these mixes for people: 1) It takes a long time to make these mixes (each one took about a day) and 2) Don't put music videos on mixes meant to be viewed publicly as a group. People usually left the room during music videos and performances (unless the videos were really fucked up or classics that everyone knew).

If anyone's interested I'll post the process on how to make these video mixes. It's a little complicated, but with everything written down it's not too hard.

*On a side note, has anyone heard of Cakefarts and Puddingfarts? There are a couple of viral videos circulating akin to "2 Girls 1 Cup". They're fucking hilarious. Gross but absolutely some of the funniest things I've ever seen.

Watch them in this order:

1. www.cakefarts.com
2. www.puddingfarts.com*

Clinic -- "Tomorrow"