midwest hipsters

For a fairly small Midwest city, Madison likes to think of itself as kind of urbane and hip, kind of "with it." Sometimes, to the point of arrogance. Case in point: I was driving to work today when I spotted a Subaru with a bumper sticker that said, simply, "1/20/09." And I was all like, "Wow, dude. You are so damn cool. I guess you redefine 'living in the moment,' don't you? You've got a freakin' bumper sticker with today's date on it."

That's what I was like.

But when I drove by him, I just had to laugh to myself, because this dude was not cool in any conventional or unconventional sense of the word. He had this little girl in a car seat in the back, and a grizzled old golden retriever riding shotgun, and he was drinking coffee out of an NPR travel mug or some shit like that. And I was thinking about rolling down the window and yelling at hime, "Hey dude. Next Tuesday? 1/27/09. What are you gonna do about it?"

But I didn't do it after all. For one thing, it was pretty cold out. And also, I decided that maybe it's good that some people think they're all hip and trendy: it just gives me something to sneer at ...