Memoirs of an NYC burgah: Cliches

Cliches are totally fucking cliché. And for that reason alone please excuse my negligence in the passing over the assignment of an accent mark as a halo above the letter “e.” What is high brow becomes low brow, and what is low brow reinvents itself in its penury wallowing and becomes high brow. Nothing is as it seems with these sneaky little familiarities that we like to curl up under like a blanket on a gelid winter’s night. A comfort to us in our daily colloquialisms. I mean, doesn’t it just enrage the hell out of you when someone attempts to impart wisdom on you with a conventional cliche, such as “money can’t buy you happiness?” Someone said that to me today and I wanted to tickle that mofo’ into oblivion and “knock some sense into them” or “help them seem to see the light.” Do you see what I’m doing here? I’m stealthy. Thank you, concerned acquaintance/bag of douche for reminding me of this readily available tidbit of knowledge that we all have had access to since the time we emerged from the womb, and by the by, who the hell are you? I kindly responded to this statement (while wearing a loose fit over-sized Topman tank, Urban Outfitters button down-unbuttoned (naturally), and a pair of designer skinny jeans with my bumble and bumble perfectly imperfect “surf-styled” shock of hair) that I would be quite satisfied if I were living in a duplex penthouse in TriBeCa with Ryan Gosling by my side and an endless supply of money, so I would like to disagree. I’m a fucking cliche so many times over.

And so you see, even I, the prosecuting party in this cliche-ridden conversation, am victim to an endless suffering. A bed that society has forced me to lay in and that I, a product of my environment, have not only welcomed but purchased 300 thread count Egyptian cotton sheets for. Life is an anomaly of cliches, and I would like to dissect some of them for you. Here are a few of my favorites:

Drinking Starbucks coffee. Drinking an un-franchised or fair trade brand of coffee to combat corporate America. Skinny jeans. Being skinny. Belonging to the “in” crowd. Promoting yourself as a burdened youth on the outside of the “in” crowd…Hot Topic? Ew. (What I just said was a cliche). Having an eating disorder when convenient for conversation and attention. Kathy Lee Gifford. Being obese in a post-trans fat society. Gay men who are as straight as a rainbow and ride an imaginary unicorn throughout life with deep v-necks and flimsy wrists with man bag in tote. The suburbs. Suburban imports into urban environments. Sex. Models being embraced for their monstrous flaws that would otherwise ostracize them from their social groups (read between the lines of model Ashley Smith’s gap toothed snarl). Pooping, or as I like to say, defecating (Who even does that anymore?). Blondes who become brunette and brunettes who become blondes. Colored contacts…they’re never going to work for you so just take them out of your eyes right now and save yourself from the ostensible lie that you are living. Drug rehab for celebrities. Spiderman the Musical. Political sex scandals. Audrey Hepburn/Marilyn Monroe quotes. iMessage. Credit cards that tap instead of swipe (Is society that burdened by the swipe?!) Miley Cyrus. Allergy medicine. Asian fusion cuisine. Boob jobs. Minimalist design. Tacky design. Cat ladies who live by themselves. AnneHathaway. Wealth and opulence. Investment banking as a young professional. Private universities. Online shopping, ESPECIALLY online grocery shopping. Liberal arts educations. Feelings. Sneezing.

I’d say that this is a pretty sufficient overview of the encumbrance that the multitude of cliches in our lives wreaks upon society. We are prisoners of our own making in an intangible cell of the subversive cliche. For every reaction there is an equal and opposite reaction-Newton’s Third Law of Motion. Just look at the ubiquitous urban dwelling species, the hipster. As a derivative of the past beatnik movement which set out to create an alternative culture to counteract social forces, the hipster has in fact turned into one of the most tragic cliches, negating their effort to be “different” and creating a counterculture that is essentially all the same with a uniform of scruff, irony, passionate artistry, and thick framed glasses (with or without lens).

See this is why cliches suck. Just when you try to avoid them, you end up creating another. If it’s not one thing, its another. Fuck, there I go again.

2 Comments Add yours

  1. Awesome. As someone with an active hatred of clichés, I enjoyed an expansion on the subject. And something I could read while shaking my fist.

  2. Corey Goldstone says:

    Paragraph on hipsters ties it up quite nicely. Well said [Ray] Charles.

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