You gotta love Marty Beckerman! I was given his book the other day... and it kicks ass. Anyway, check out his latest article East Coast, Fuck You: A Generation's Last Beacon of Truth, Light and Beauty Strikes Back Against the New England Lit-Hipster Establishment. Marty sounds off on just about everything. Here's my favorite paragprah that sums up NYC perfectly:
As everyone who's anyone knows, books and albums are meant to be appreciated, not actually enjoyed. This is why Hipsters pay absolutely ridiculous rents to live in New York City—so they can bitch about all the writers/musicians who actually make enough money to buy their own food.But there's more. Marty talks about the differences between East Coast and West Coast drug usage...
This is because all Hipsters want to be writers/musicians, but—thanks to East Coast Mediocrity—are unable to create anything with Heart, Soul or Passion. Thus, America is plagued with this eternally jealous, quasi-artistic subculture of snooty, ambitious (yet soul-dead) intellectual drones who dictate that "literature" can only be cynical, worthless bullshit reaffirming their lifelong belief that life isn't worth living.
You know these people—they wear horn-rimmed glasses, listen to bad garage/grunge bands (sloppy female singers encouraged), avoid bathing and talk shit about anyone talented enough to be successful as an artist. Granted, most of the successful writers/musicians in America are untalented scum, but that's only because the good writers/musicians are scared of losing their Hipster Credibility by actually marketing themselves to the Mainstream.
In effect, these Nazis keep pop-culture from being worthwhile ("If you go on MTV, you're a sellout," "If you pitch a manuscript to Random House, you're a sellout," "If you don't need your mommy to pay your rent anymore, you're a sellout"), then they have the audacity to complain about the fact that pop-culture sucks.
Again, New Englanders love nothing more than Mediocrity, and eventually these Snooty Hipster Fucks become the literature professors and music critics who declare that you're "uncultured" because you think Virginia Woolf was a pretentious cunt and the Velvet Underground only had five good songs. Remember: Art only matters when it doesn't matter to anyone.
It's an overgeneralization that soft drugs like marijuana and psilocybin-enriched mushrooms are more prevalent on the West Coast, while cocaine, pills, methadone and speed are easier to procure on the East Coast. In actuality, L.A. is full of cokeheads/pill-poppers and NYC is full of stoners. However, the reasons for taking drugs seem to be different on each side of the continent.
On the West Coast, smoking weed is a joyous, merry activity done for giggles and making the food at Taco Bell taste better. Sure, a lot of people take it too far and eventually refuse to do anything without getting stoned first, but the point is they're still having fun.
On the East Coast, however, kids take drugs because they need drugs to get through life.
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