A Conversation With Santogold & Debbie Harry

This week's 4oth Anniversary edition of New York Magazine celebrates Wesleyan alumna Santi White '97 (Santogold) and Debbie Harry as they discuss the New York music scene, manipulative record labels and hipsters.
Debbie Harry gives a special shout out to Wesleyan's own MGMT:

NY: What’s your favorite band right now?
S: I really enjoyed Vampire Weekend’s record.
DH: I’ve been listening to a lot of songs by MGMT.

Other interview highlights:

NY Mag: So you still get out and catch a lot of current bands?
DH: I try, yeah. I mean, it’s not easy, but I drag my sorry old ass out.
S: I feel the same way.
NY: Do you think that hipsters evolved from punks?
DH: Hipsters?
S: It’s what everyone calls young guys now.
DH: Really? I just want to say grunge.
S: Hipsters, honestly, there’s nothing there! Everyone wears the exact same thing. My song “L.E.S. Artistes” is about fakers, people who are self-proclaimed artists but really just go out in the Lower East Side and Williamsburg to be scenesters.
DH: The point of being punk was to be an asshole and not to be put down for it.
S: You mean like embarrassing yourself?

[Edit by LauraAlyse] See the magazine's coverage on 2 other alumni here

Cheese Makers, Rock Stars

The New York Times reports a microtrend of fresh-out-of-college hipsters choosing organic farming in upstate New York over slumming around in Williamsburg:

Steeped in years of talk around college campuses and in stylish urban enclaves about the evils of factory farms (see the E. coli spinach outbreaks), the perils of relying on petroleum to deliver food over long distances (see global warming) and the beauty of greenmarkets (see the four-times-weekly locavore cornucopia in Union Square), some young urbanites are starting to put their muscles where their pro-environment, antiglobalization mouths are. They are creating small-scale farms near urban areas hungry for quality produce and willing to pay a premium.

Owen O’Connor, 22 (pictured above, right), a Wesleyan dropout, is mentioned as the namer and cofounder of the sheep- and chicken-raising venture Awesome Farm.

And now for

A refreshing or disgusting break from the cute-fluffy-animal or random-youtube timewasting fillerpost-parade. Summer boredom prompts me to surf the internet aimlessly (funnily enough so does mid-term frantic academic blitzkrieg) and I found this wonderful little website called Hipsterotica. Just in case you were missing those eclectic parties:

I knew what was going to happen from the onset. The way you softly inhaled the smoke from your Parliament Light, only to exhale deftly defined swirls, spelling Replacements lyrics in the ether. We sit in the diveiest of dive bars, populated solely by amputees and 9/11 victims. Your eyes glimmer like the pale blue on a Pabst can, even through your horn-rimmed glasses with plastic lenses that have no corrective value. Your sweatshop-free skirt is hiked just high enough to allow me to see your hyper-ironic Thin Lizzy tattoo, just inches away from those boyshorts you got from Neighborhoodies. You know, the ones with “I Am a Scientist” printed on the ass. You speak of Four Tet and Jean-Paul Sartre, often in the same breath, only to dip the end of your cigarette into the vintage “F-Troop” ashtray. After countless gin-‘n’-tonics, your stares only magnify, and you hint at the presence of your 1983 Volkswagen Golf parked outside. Before I can say “Grande soy latte,” we’re whisking by the squares in the promenade, screaming Undertones lyrics and, gradually yet decisively, rounding third base. When we arrive at your apartment, you’re quick to put the first William Shatner album on your reel-to-reel to player, explaining, “it just sounds so organic.” As he shouts “Mr. Tambourine Man,” we’re enthralled in the embrace of one another, smearing your Sephora all over my face. As I unbutton your dress, you assuredly remind me that it was made in downtown LA. In what seems like mere seconds, we’re naked and entangled, my ironic handlebar mustache giving you goose bumps with every forceful kiss. All at once, I catch sight of your signed Burt Reynolds poster framed on the wall, Shatner bellows “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds” and you scream “ahhh, daddy!” The sheer, unfiltered irony is overpowering in its raw sensuality, and I cum inside you, groaning a final Kierkegaard quote before burying my head in your frazzled, Debby Harry hairdo.