Pretentious People Enjoy Baffling You with Their Facial Hair

An evening out at a crowded hipster joint on Saturday night convinced me of one thing that will make for a pretty short blog post: pretentious people love sporting facial hair patterns that defy the laws of physics. There is no doubt in my mind that they believe the more socially awkward their beards and moustaches are – and the more they can make you uncomfortable by giving you the “Blue Steel” (TM Zoolander) gaze when you look at them (because obviously any lingering glance is because you feel confused, but ultimately humbled by their great creative growth accomplishment) – the more successful they will be at being quirky, which will hopefully make it okay for them to be lawyers instead of musicians, artists and writers … or make it acceptable for them to say they are musicians, artists and writers without having to actually “create” anything tangible.

The following are three of my least favorite combinations:

The Modified Tom Selleck



This one is basically characterized by the absence of a beard, and the presence of a mustache with neither rhyme nor reason. It didn’t even look good on Magnum P.I., and women secretly wanted to boff him in spite of it … not because of it. We know better now.

Choplets



Mutton chops have been around forever, but “choplets” are what happens when there is no moustache or attention paid to anything that surrounds the mutton chops. In this scenario, the hairy chops appear as though they’ve been vomited out by the rest of the hair. Often this look accompanies “ironic” pattern baldness.

The ZZ Topless



This look is basically what happens when a person with no hair grows an absurdly long beard. It can be seen with or without a moustache, and often is accompanied by a trucker hat or a derby.

And here’s a taste of what you’d really be doing if you weren’t thinking so hard about it, and genuinely were a true beard-or-stach-trepreneur:

The Spaghetti Bowl



The Hepa Filter Handlebar



The Dusty Cradle




Gratuitous experimentation with facial hair began as an ironic experiment in shocking others. I have not proven this hypothesis beyond a reasonable doubt, but it is my fairly educated opinion as a person that has mingled, often undetected, amidst the awkwardly bearded in New York City for almost a decade. However, I believe that now these pretentious many that have learned to so expertly manipulate their own hormones are so lost in their own irony that they are drowning in a sea of their razors’ worst decisions.

This blog post was brought to you by the World Beard and Moustache Championships (which is the next level you could achieve if you stopped simply competing with yourself or the homeless people in Williamsburg).

5 Conversation Topics Pretentious People Will Be "All Up Ons"

Whether you’re going out for some PBR/Old Kentucky Gentleman whiskey shot drink specials after work … or some cosmos, you can bet you’re going to run into some pretentious people you need to keep occupied that are attached to your boss, co-workers or your new significant other and need to be kept busy and impressed.

The following five topics will make you acceptable unto the self-proclaimed high-and-mighty set and will surely start a heated debate that will last well into the morning after hangover. (Most likely, this topic will be revisited in the future until an endless list is created.)

• “What are the empirical differences between The Dandy Warhols and The Brian Jonestown Massacre?” Note: Skinny jeans and Converse must be in the equation before broaching this topic. Also, be prepared with song titles, as this topic may erupt into a chronological list of each band’s entire catalogue.

• “Is it true that left-brained people, ie., artists, musicians and writers are incapable of holding down a job, doing their own finances, or being responsible, not unlike the mentally challenged?”
• “What’s your biggest guilty pleasure? And do you like [insert guilty pleasure here] because you actually, legitimately like it or because you ironically enjoy it?” Note: Don’t believe any answer. Most pretentious people are in such denial about irony and so confused about its true meaning that they have stopped being able to distinguish between what they actually like … and what they have just convinced themselves they like ironically or otherwise in order to have something interesting or mildly amusing to talk about in mixed company.
• “What’s your favorite iPhone app?” I only say “iPhone,” because those iPhone people tend to be much more apps-focused than Blackberry or other Smartphone users. This one will also give everyone an excuse to do the texting and status message updating they’ve been putting off doing for all of 10 minutes while getting acquainted. You get secret bonus points if you get someone to “meta” update their status message, meaning the person posts about posting a status message update or posts about an app while using the Facebook app, which was just declared to be the person’s favorite.

• “How long does fashion take to get to small Midwestern towns … like Chicago?” Note: Being from this “small, Midwestern town” they call Chicago, I was asked this question by a native New Yorker (who it turned out was not really a native New Yorker after all, actually hailing from Cape Cod and Tampa, FL in equal parts) that claimed to be rather worldly. This question is an excellent test to see just how deeply rooted someone is in his/her own bull, and how much the educational system failed the person, especially when it comes to lessons about geography. To use this conversation starter IN Chicago, eliminate “small Midwestern towns.” Everywhere else, adding a statement involving the phrase “nothing but cheese, corn, sausages and fat people” will really get things going and show you’re well aware there is no discernible difference between Chicago and any town in Wisconsin.

Warning: Check the nature of your company before starting any of the above conversations. For example, young Brooklyn hipsters are going to be less likely to believe that phrenology can prove that artists/musicians/writers are genetically lazier than MBA’s and lawyers. In fact, you might get hurt (at least emotionally) if you suggest it, or more likely set off a 3-day pot and “skiing” binge that will also cause an extraordinarily positive revenue shift at Union Pool/Don Pedro’s.

Pretentious People Really Like Overly-Descriptive Status Messages on Social Networking Sites

DISCLAIMER: Let’s pretend for a moment that we don’t all know that Twitter is solely a Tequila-soaked frat house for status messages. We all know certain people reveled in the joy of declaring the deliciousness of their sausage sandwiches when status messages were a mere glimmer in the eye of Myspace (yes, even before Facebook made sweet love to us all).

Pretentious people have always loved status messages. Most notably, it gives them a completely socially-acceptable forum in which to discuss the minutia of their existences. But the love definitely doesn’t stop there. The following are three huge reasons that overly-, often unnecessarily-descriptive status messages are popular among the tragically hip.



Status Messages Are Irrefutable Proof that You Are Busy.

As previously mentioned, the more pretentious you are, the busier you must appear at all times. A major barometer for your busy-ness is your status message. Did you only change it once today, and is it still about what you have for breakfast? Well, then you probably haven’t done much SINCE breakfast, right? If you change your status message every time a new assignment lands on your desk or every time the woman in the blue sweater on the North wall laughs at the giraffe-themed YouTube video her boyfriend sent her and interrupts you from sending that important e-mail to your boss (or getting your fourth Tetris in a row), everyone will know you have places to go and people to see. Thanks to the ability to comment on your own status messages, you can increase the appearance of being busy exponentially by responding to every friend comment or “like” that appears to give additional details. Just don’t forget your iPhone when you take a bathroom break.



The More You Explain, the Less People Can Argue.

If you are really descriptive about what you are doing at all times, no one can ask you to explain yourself (at least not without looking like he/she is trying way too hard). And the point of being out there on social networking sites is to guarantee yourself a place to have the last word. The more detailed your status message is, the more believable it will be. If you just say, “[Insert Name Here] is at home,” you’ve missed the train to the Big Time. Everyone can be at home, after all, and there’s nothing particularly interesting about it. To guarantee that everyone can get a mental picture of you immediately (and one that will hopefully stick with them for at least the next 30 seconds, when you post another update), you should say, “[Insert Name Here] is at home and can’t believe she has to tell her daughter to stop yelling at the donkey … AGAIN; the frustrations of parenting are endless!”



Status Messages Give You an Acceptable Place to Illustrate Why Your Kids Are Better and Cuter than Anyone Else’s Kids.

In real life, if you endlessly prattled on about your children and how cute they are, repeating everything they said and did every moment of every day right down to describing the shape of their first official “poop in the potty,” you’d be told you were annoying. People might also walk the other way when they saw you coming … after a while. However, when you brag about your children and your parenting abilities on the Internet (“[Insert Name Here] successfully explained that Mr. Snuggles went to Jesus”], anyone that publicly declared irritation is pretty much seen as a bitter child hater. And that’s a step down from someone that kicks puppies in the face or never went through a unicorn phase. On social networking sites, you get extra points for having children and mentioning the struggles you have with them on a regular basis, and you’re probably more likely to get into heaven, if it exists. You can then safely enjoy your superiority over your childless virtual friends in the privacy of your own home – or through comments on their status messages about eating dinner at midnight over the kitchen sink – without being called “bitchy” … at least not to your face. Note: You have to know that these childless friends are doing the same thing to you in reverse … but thankfully, you don’t have to care either.

If you want to rub elbows with the elite, you need to hop on the rumbling status message bus. Just don’t expect anyone to talk to you in the midst of transcribing life passing by through the window into 140-character bursts.

Stuff Pretentious People Like: Being Busy

If there’s one thing pretentious people just love, it’s being monumentally busy. The world is a fast-paced place, after all, and pretentious people are right in the thick of it at all times. They’re not like the rest of us, who just glide through life with nothing to do all day, waiting for them to be available so we can have something really fun to do. You are the Ford Crown Victoria to their Porsche 911 Turbo, so you better get out of the way, at least until they tell you there’s room in their passenger seat (which might be on the 10th of Never, honestly).

Despite their monumentally “occupied” status, don’t expect to ever see them anywhere out on the town. They don’t do the same things socially, because they exist on a higher plane, participating in activities to which you are not invited. They have a whole other set of friends that also have a whole other set of friends. And none of the friends you share in common will ever see them either. While this may sound suspicious (and you might start to suspect they are actually sitting at home on any given night in elasticized ankle sweats, eating Edy’s Dibs and watching re-runs of “The Ghost Whisperer”), the whole phenomenon makes sense. The friends you have in common obviously suck as much as you do and aren’t invited either.

While pretentious people are very busy, they are often not very happy about the horrible things they have to do. These also double as excuses for why they can’t work you into their schedules this week and will have to be penciling you in until after their “busy season:”



1. Work. I bet you didn’t realize pretentious people have jobs (being so very awesome seems like it would be a full-time endeavor), and jobs that are 10 times more taxing than anything you could even imagine. Actually, you probably knew about the absolute shit storm that is their office environment, because you probably spent 5 hours today reading their 50 Facebook and Twitter updates, full of very colorful adjectives that make you feel like you are right there, with an obnoxious, demanding boss standing over your shoulder, preventing you from checking your personal e-mail or im’ing all day long. You may also have found out about their dire, busy, unreasonable work situation by two other means: through a hastily-written response to an e-mail from you attempting to solidify plans for the weekend, telling you in 3 paragraphs or more why making plans is impossible right at that moment because of how busy work is that day; through a short, hectic, stressful response to an instant message you sent to ask a quick question about when the person intends to return a DVD you loaned him/her 8 weeks ago. You’ll probably never know exactly what this incredibly important job entails, because there’s just no time to explain (and how could you wrap your little head around it?). No matter what, pretentious people know one important fact – no one in history has ever worked as hard as they do … not even James Brown.






2. Stay up Late or Get up Early. Because you’ve never had to get up before 11 a.m. a day in your life, and because “You don’t need as much sleep” as your “superiors” do, you don’t know the feeling that results from getting less than 12 hours of sleep per night. Pretentious people are sometimes forced to get up at ridiculous hours to be at work or get on conference calls … sometimes as early as 10 a.m. When no less than 12 hours of sleep will do – and 10 a.m. is the magic waking hour – you can expect pretentious people to be very busy starting at 10 p.m. However, because of their busy lifestyle, this often does not happen. Sometimes they have to stay up late to go see friends’ bands play on a school night or go to a charity event with the friend of a friend of a friend that knows that guy from that band who used to be Bruce Springsteen’s assistant. And you can’t expect them to be in any shape to do anything with you the day after that, can you? NOTE: This horrible task can also be used as a way to further leverage an unreasonable work environment, because anyone that was reasonable or humane would send an employee that only got 7 hours of sleep the night before home to prevent that person from getting sick/not being able to think straight/being unable to keep his/her eyes open/etc.



3. Go without a Vacation for 6 Months. If you know just one awesome person, you are probably aware of the dangers of not taking a vacation at least six or seven times a year. Just thinking about and being outraged by going without a one- or two-week vacation for 6 months or even a year can occupy a lot of time in a person’s schedule. After all, normal people get many, many vacations per year to tropical destinations and a chance to really “de-stress.” In real life, and not insane, obligation-filled, responsibility-driven, deeply-sucking lives that involve very adult problems like jobs, mortgages, children, house-cleaning, grocery-shopping, bill-paying, etc., even if you promised to do something important, as soon as you decide to take a vacation, you are in no way obligated to anyone but yourself. If you are truly awesome and super busy, you can let as many people down as you want, drive the company you work for into the ground or let someone die in the street (if it comes to that) starting two weeks before your intended vacation time is set to start and ending two weeks after you get back. You need time to pack and prepare, because you’re worth it. When it’s time to go to Detroit or Memphis on a two-week road trip with your unemployed best friend and her disability-collecting boyfriend that squats in Brooklyn, you can’t afford to miss going to see your favorite band that plays just 30 times per year in your home city, so let no one – and no company that pays your salary’s dwindling revenue – stand in your way.


The bottom line is, when it’s “busy season” in the Land of the Rather Awesome, go with the flow. The world doesn’t really work on your schedule anyway. You’re just lucky enough that every once in a while the world decides to take some time out of its busy schedule to give you a night sitting at your corner bar so you can get out of the house for a change. You have been a little bit depressed lately …

Stuff Pretentious People Like -- Long Absences

Hello Dear Readers,

More Stuff Pretentious People Like is Coming Soon ... I was on hiatus, studying up on the latest fads so that I could bring you completely accurate information. Actually, I was on vacation from the pretension ... actually, I was just taking the news of Phil Collins official retirement from music very, very hard ... (You know that a) I'm not serious, "but, seriously ..." and b)He's not really retiring from music ... he's just trying to make us hungry for a comeback, just like Celine Dion and so many other noise polluters before him).

Regardless, I will be back soon with much more. Can you feel it ... in the air tonight?

Stuff Pretentious People Like: Heated Discussions about Non-Controversial Subjects

Pretentious people have the best time when they are talking about stuff. Not only do they love the sounds of their own voices (individually, of course), but they love the feeling they get when other people think they are really knowledgeable about something. And many of them have discovered one of the best-kept secrets out there -- if you talk really loudly and sound really passionate about what you are saying, the subject matter becomes unimportant. What comes through is that you have given the subject a lot of thought and have decided it is important ... and thus, it becomes important.

The following is just a sampling of some stuff (a little crap potpourri, so to speak) and some of the reasons why they enjoy talking about it so much.

Collecting Stuff



While most pretentious people collect a pretty small range of things -- such as records, broken musical instruments they can't play and comic books -- what they collect is not as important as how they talk about it. If your passion is Hummel figures, talk about it a lot whenever you are in social situations including exciting details -- the outfit each and every one of your 1,000 Hummel figurines is wearing, where you got each figurine, how your mom started you collecting them, and now she's dead so you have to do it to properly honor her memory, the history of Hummel figurines, etc. The more details, the better. And the more people that don't know what you are talking about, the better because that means you don't even have to know for sure that the details you are providing about whatever it is you are collecting (especially their history, etc.) is actually accurate.

Tip: Make sure before you start to talk about your impressive collection, whatever it is, that you are not in the presence of other people that know anything about the particular thing you collect. A general question like, "Have you ever heard of Hummel figurines?" or "Anyone know anything about Hummel figurines?" will suffice.

Cats (and why they are better than dogs)



This subject never disappoints and can really go on for hours. Pretentious people love to talk about their love affair with cats and how quirky, smart, elegant and wonderful they are and how dumb, needy and "too accessible" dogs are in comparison. Because cats force you to earn their love by being high-maintenance and doing things as they please, when you manage to get them to love you, it's an actual accomplishment, as opposed to dogs who will just blindly like anyone without prejudice (because how much fun is it to spend your life trying to please something, essentially interrupting your life constantly to do whatever it wants just to pay it off in favors so it will continue to like you?). They also love to say repeatedly that cats are so much more rewarding to have than dogs. The argument that they will keep throwing in your face is that cats are much easier to take care of and also more independent than dogs (because they are smart enough to do their business in a litterbox), thus much less of a hassle. This discussion will inevitably lead to references to that cat on YouTube that was taught to use and flush the toilet. When you get home that night from your social engagement, an email from the pretentious person will be waiting in your inbox with a link to this video, so the conversation continues even beyond the life of the actual physical interaction.

Famous Friends No One Has Ever Heard of



Pretentious Person: "You know Gary, right?"

You: "No ... Gary who?"

Pretentious Person: "You know, Gary ... from that band ..."

You: "What's his last name?"

Pretentious Person: "Gary 'Very Scary' ... you know ... he was in the Nantucket Fuckers, The Butt Planets, Uncle Earl's Testicle, Screaming Demons, Fuel Cousin ..."

You can see that just this conversation has already eaten up about 30 seconds of time that you will never get back. And you've not actually received any information that tells you anything ... about anything. Typically the "famous people" that pretentious people talk about do not actually have last names (or at least the pretentious people don't know them, rather only the nickname they went by in their bands (because that's what all their real friends call them), none of which have been actually active since at least 1987, if not before). Still, the person will have a handful of "hanging out" or "funny, personal comment" stories about said famous person that you still have never heard of, typically taking place at a show for another band you've never heard of. The need to explain the famous person's context for the ensuing story to make any sense whatsoever will be so great that the pretentious person will have many minutes of guaranteed, uninterrupted talking time without being actually obligated to say anything of real significance. By the time the person explains who the person is (which still will be mostly a mystery) to the best of his/her ability , you will be so discombobulated that the relevance of the story to what you were talking about (which you've now forgotten) in the first place is totally unnecessary.

Every pretentious person has at least four of these supposedly famous friends and is typically constantly adding to that roster as the relationships with these famous people (aka, the stalkings of these famous people) progress.


The Past Accomplishments of Threatening People in the Room



Sometimes in order to continue to be liked (or at the very least tolerated), pretentious people have to call attention to the accomplishments of others and acknowledge that other people besides them have done stuff in their lives. By calling attention to the accomplishments of others, they look kind, giving, selfless and generous and thus earn more time to talk about themselves later. Pretentious people like best to point out the accomplishments of the people in the room by which they feel most threatened. A tangent goal of pointing out another person's accomplishments is embarrassing the person to the point that he/she will feel uncomfortable, embarrassed and like being quiet, thus giving the pretentious person more space to talk. The more over-the-top and passionate the person is about the praise, the more chance there is that the person being complimented will appear to be full of him/herself and will be compelled to down-play the accomplishment, thus seeming to be ingenuine. Regardless, conversations praising other people are excellent opportunities to bring the competition down a notch without being openly insulting.

Just don't expect to get complimented for that Ph.D you just got in astro-physics or the marathon you won two weeks ago. The pretentious person will inevitably choose to point out your most mediocre achievements from many, many years ago, such as that writing contest you won in third grade, that time you won the 100 breaststroke at a local meet in 1978 or that time you sold the most boxes of Girl Scout cookies in the Tri-State area. This way, it will be implied that your minor achievement 20 years ago is really the last and also the greatest thing you've accomplished in your life.

Stuff Pretentious People Like: Strange Afflictions

When a pretentious individual just can't get enough attention, sometimes the only way to do it is to claim some form of "constitutional weakness." While this practice may not seem like it makes sense given the pretentious person's nature to think very highly of him or herself, it makes perfect sense when you think about what a good ol' questionable syndrome or condition can do for a person. When you have something that hasn't quite been proven by medical science or is so rare that no one you know could possibly have it, you're pretty much guaranteed to be unique. And pretentious people will take appearing cutting-edge and "special" any way they can get it ... even if it means pretending like they're seeing leprechauns or having waking dreams that wild dogs are attacking their hands with popsicle sticks ... or admitting they had to take special ed in high school (because of a misunderstanding, of course) or be evaluated in a psych ward for 6 months.



Pretentious people also know they get extra bonus points if they claim one or two -- or even several -- afflictions that almost prevented them from making it past infancy or childhood, because they then become miracles of science with a greater purpose on this earth than the rest of us. After all, some supernatural force granted them the right to live because, well, they are better than the rest of us average ones that had just an occasional cold or the flu or the chicken pox or did not experience scarring bullying or the trauma of a 70 percent lower weekly allowance than all the other kids. And don't think mild "physical deformities" or simply less than perfect circumstances that were not life threatening and often eventually went away on their own don't count. They are sometimes even worse because they bring about taunting, which can in many cases be more devastating than illnesses because it causes such terrible psychological damage that survival is almost unbelievable. Such conditions include being sway-backed/having bad posture, having to wear glasses or braces, developing breasts too early or not early enough, having a bad haircut between the ages of 8 and 11, having a family that was on a strict budget, etc.

Another reason syndromes and diseases, real or imaginary are great is because one of the major rules of social etiquette is that if someone wants to talk about being ill or feeling "feverish" or like the side of the body that is supposed to go numb while having a heart attack or stroke (regardless of actual age)"might" be feeling a "little tingly," everyone has to listen. Because if you don't believe and listen to someone that might really be experiencing a medical emergency or have a terminal disease, it's pretty much your fault if the person dies. Even if it's a psychological problem that is causing the symptoms, this problem could grow in intensity until it leads to suicide, for which, again, you'd be responsible because you were a heartless nay-sayer.

The following is a brief list of syndromes and diseases that pretentious people would just love to have and would love for you not to believe they have so later, if -- rather when -- they die you can spend a lifetime sucking on the bitterness of your own guilt (and what brings about immortality more successfully and eternally than guilt?):

Malaise: This affliction is an old favorite among the pretentious population and one that can be used over and over again without being questioned. Basically (in case you are unfamiliar with its clinical definition), it's a feeling of general discomfort or uneasiness. Symptoms include being "generally dissatisfied," "out of sorts," feeling like you're "coming down with something" or feeling vaguely "like something bad is about to happen." It can also be used as a gateway to talking about potential psychic abilities and can really springboard a pretentious person's credibility as someone that is "wacky" or "unique." Malaise can lead to a variety of other major diseases (including some that are terminal) and can provide hours of conversation for pretentious people ... because the "What could it be?" question is one that can really be discussed forever ... as long as there's not a trip to an actual doctor involved.

Restless Leg Syndrome (RLS): This is a real problem. Its symptom is basically the irresistible urge to move the legs. Other names for it include, "I Am Training for a Marathon and Ran 50 Miles This Week Disease," "7 Cups of Coffeeitis," and "Computer-Related Day Job Virus."



Photic Sneeze Reflex: This is basically the need to sneeze when exposed to direct light. It can cause disruptions that force people to pay attention to you whenever lights are turned on. Pretentious people will get very embarrassed about this problem, which might cause them to have to talk about it for a while to anyone that has to watch it in horror and panic.




Foreign Language Syndrome: This is a particularly big problem within the Pretentious People Community because so many of them "used to be fluent" in so many different languages. This is basically a psychological disorder that prevents a person from being able to control speaking English or the native language of choice with a foreign accent. Because they already often "sometimes dream" in French, German, Latin, Portuguese, Dutch or a variety of other languages because they were once so proficient, it's natural that this would happen. Madonna started suffering from it when she went to England, and it really only happens to people that travel abroad a LOT.



Bonnet Syndrome: This one is not psychological, so it's extremely hard to question. Basically, it's caused by eye degeneration that leads the sufferer to see ghosts and little costumed elves and leprechauns and things.



Darby O'Gill of "Darby O'Gill and the Little People" suffered from Bonnet Syndrome. It is often misdiagnosed as alcoholism and drug abuse and can mimic the feeling pretty much everyone gets on St. Patrick's Day or while being forced to watch any holiday parade.