The Tragically Unhip

If I were to experience that incredibly irritating and deluded reverie in which a genie or sorcerer or Jesus tells me that whatever it is that I want, he’ll grant me it, I would immediately wish for the interior layout of the place of which I am employed to be switched around.  That is all.

I am not entirely assured in regards to the mental stability of whoever happened to establish the design of this particular space.  However, I do suspect an underlaying affinity for neo-Dadaism at the heart of it.

I spend forty waged hours a week in a medical professional’s office.  Most of you, I presume, are familiar with the ideologies of such a place: white walls, teal countertops (sometimes chocolate or Pepto-pink), framed art prints, and a visually communicated “front” or reception desk.  Traditionally, this desk is situated in a non-specific location within the waiting room area, sometimes in an enclosed space.  Its only unified position, in being that it faces the entryway and floor, procuring the respectful fear—through preemptive, paranoiac observation—of the occupants in hypertensive anticipation of an impending and scientific doom.

My situation is, of course, iconoclastic and individualistic of its own accord.  The front desk (albeit in name only) juts out of the middle of one wall, causing the door to be idiosyncratically stationed behind the desk.  This postulation for alternative or anti-order operates as the catalyst for patient befuddlement and my haphazard contortionism capabilities.

There exists an element of disquietude that far supercedes the spinal discomfort ensued.  As a result of limited activity (typical chiropractic patients are ‘sporty’ and in fair health, meriting little to no urgency in the acquisition of our services), I am often left to my own devices.  These devices typically involve hours of Facebook, Myspace, last.fm, and Vice magazine online.

Vice is fantastic because it renders various articles and literary tidbits that you wouldn’t often find in predictable publications such as Time, Newsweek, or O.  It also merits alternative versions of advertisement; the kind that could convince the creative minds behind the Coca-Cola campaign to buy clever Vitamin Water.  This is all fantastic, unless of course every person that passes by your computer screen is guaranteed to be privy to the contents of your desktop.  So, for example, when your boss comes up behind you, and you happen to be reading a review with album art in the left column, and that album art consists of a pink filtered photograph of tucked-back genitalia: nobody looks “good”.

I’ve always been a fan of the visual arts in the media.  Album art, tasteful and interesting upcoming film posters; I am the sort of person who still buys Vogue to simply peruse the advertisements. (Articles about which Prada bag to wear to which Libertarian luncheon or mid-afternoon movie, or, what sort of Bermuda shorts best describe me as a person on my next Mercedes Benz-drawn safari really don’t speak to me directly.) I have never really been able to pull off the dark and twisted alternativian/hip/un-jive/over-jive/under-jive/artist’s “Damn The Man and his attempted assuage of my preternatural lust for consumerism and the finer things in life” ideology.  (I am unsure if that is the exact dubbing of practice, but you should get the idea if you have ever met a person who enjoys Phish or only listens to record on vinyl.  Only.) The advertisement experience can be visceral as I pick through the pages while wearing Banana Republic or GAP or something from Target (very much in the spirit of when I would watch Julia Child prepare lobster something or other while eating McDonald’s).

I find it necessary to iterate this appreciation for advertisement because, despite the confusion that gold pants and unitards bring me, I often find myself considering various solid color additions to my wardrobe that could be easily obtained by American Apparel.  The problem is that every time that I have such a thought, American Apparel just has to go ahead and fucking ruin it.

Being in New York City, land of the eternal billboard, as well as on various hipster-driven websites, I am unquestionably exposed to the marketing campaigns of prior-stated apparel companies in droves.  Perhaps I’m just a tad more prudish than I give myself discredit for, but the photographic concepts provided by American Apparel just slay me.  There’s some aspect to each and every one of its campaigns that just makes me feel morally unclean.  There’s something remarkably trashy (but not in a fun way), and dirty (but not in a consensual way) about it that I have yet to unearth.  I’ll give it this much, it has the capacity to make me feel exactly the manner in which I imagine that I would feel if I were ever to be exposed to incest or kiddie porn directly.  Engaging in an American Apparel advertisement is like watching soft core porn scenes that take twenty minutes of dialogue in regards to “Cheryl” using the shower: get to the point already.  And then, it happens: that pivotal moment when you realize that you don’t have to wait anymore; that all of the secrets of the universe may not be answered, but they are well on their way, as a direct result of the event that you just witnessed.

Phlebotomizing along the right-hand side of a cannibal’s interview was everything I never knew I always needed: a breast.  Granted, this breast was attached to a woman.  This woman had only a pair of white pants on.  There was no notation, or labels, or emblems, or headers, footers; no text or icon-based branding whatsoever.  She was simply topless, in pants that occupied a mere 5% of the bottom right corner.  And yet, somehow we all knew exactly what we were supposed to buy based off of this simple image that, in varying degrees obviously, has been threading through Occidental art history for centuries.

One cannot measure the intensity of such mitigation.   Finally!  “Cheryl” (American Apparel) is “taking her clothes off and emulating the act of sweet love-making to the torso of someone” (no analogy required). And just then, in our greatest moment together, a new patient walks up from behind me in the office.  Naturally, this was at the precise moment that the Flash application starts to stick and the brief “American Apparel” that appears has given up hope, leaving the breast permanently frozen on my screen.  It is aware that God will always resent me, and accordingly abandons me, leaving me with this total stranger and a particularly gratuitous angle on screen.

I did what all other creepy, porn drenched computer nerds would do, which was react in an uncoordinated and overly flustered manner, ex-ing out of the page and pretending that I was doing something respectable, like donating money to the poor children of somewhere or ordering a sundeck umbrella.

I thought that the situation might have heightened as my boss entered the room.  However, I think that we have reached a point in our routine that no longer warrants incredulity, or even so much as a disrupted glance.  I think I need to improve upon my knitting abilities or learn to carve radishes into orchids and intricate fishes, something to occupy my time and my hands.

I remain perplexed by the nature and by the nurture of the million and one American Apparel colors. But now, having been bested by it, I do feel compelled to wear (in the Scarlet Letter sense of the word) a Golden Unitard: the bitch tag for the bright and splendid cotton adorners of this generation.