Jay McInerney has a great article in the current New York. It gives a quick shout-out to The Hipster Handbook

Hipsters believed they were the ultimate anti-yuppies. Unlike their forebears, they wanted to be known not by their job or ambition but by their self-conscious disregard for either. If anything, the cult of connoisseurship was even more exaggerated in this subgroup. Their code, enshrined in Robert Lanham’s hyperironic 2003 Hipster Handbook, was inherently elitist, defining itself in opposition to the mainstream. Hipster consumerism championed the notions of alternative and independent, rejecting the yuppie embrace of certain consumer brands in favor of their own. So it was vintage T-shirts rather than Turnbull & Asser dress shirts with spread collars, Pabst Blue Ribbon over Chardonnay. But ultimately, whether you love Starbucks or loathe it, a world in which we are defined by our choice of blue jeans and coffee beans owes more to Alex Keaton than to Abbie Hoffman.

You can read it all here.

Tune in tonight…. I’ll be discussing the Jesusyness of Sarah Palin and the Mavrickiness of McCain on BlogTalkRadio. Using Google maps, I’ve seen Capitol Hill from my home, so I’m an expert on all things political. From Rumproast:

Check out the premiere of our BlogTalkRadio show Radio Rumproast Monday September 15th from 11PM-12:30AM ET. Our guest will be Robert Lanham, author of the The Hipster Handbook, Food Court Druids…, and The Sinner’s Guide to the Evangelical Right. We’ll talk about his books, evangelicalism in politics, the general election and ferrets. We’ll also feature a roundtable of bloggers, including Rumproast’s poputonian, discussing the past week’s events and, of course, we’ll be taking your calls. Radio Rumproast: We like it well-done.

Misty Harris quoted me a couple of times in her latest article for Canwest News Service (Canada’s AP):

Guitar solos have vanished from the concert scene at the same time millions of gamers are pretending to be a Guitar Hero.
Gym memberships are down while stores can’t keep the home exercise game Wii Fit in stock.
Precious hours of real life are being sacrificed to the online universe Second Life, and high-powered marketing campaigns this fall are planned to sell still more virtual fantasy trussed up as reality.
Forget concern over counterfeit goods such as watches and handbags. Increasingly, it’s organic human experience that’s being knocked off.
“People are just too overwhelmed by all the technologies that exist to be active participants in real life,” says Robert Lanham, who has written three books on the idiosyncrasies of contemporary human behaviour.
“When you’re microblogging on Tumblr and juggling Twitter, Facebook, and Myspace accounts, who’s got time for yoga classes or guitar lessons? Perfecting your Stratocaster licks playing Rock Band is simply less time-consuming than trying to become the next Jimi Hendrix or Eddie Van Halen.” [….]
But however convenient or ego-stoking these hi-tech encounters, cultural commentator Lanham says they’ll never be as fulfilling or as sexy as the real thing. “Saying, ‘Dude, my virtual band totally rocks … we’re playing a gig in my living room tonight’ is never going to have the same allure as securing a real gig in an actual rock band,” says Lanham. “And it’s unlikely the words ‘he’s such a romantic text-messager, his SMS skills made my knees buckle’ have ever been uttered, or sent via SMS for that matter.”

You can read the whole article here.

Evidently, I’m one of the most influential and “visible” New Yorkers on the interweb. Of course, the people who generated the list live in Vancouver. Hilarious. See the full list at NowPublic.com

“Visibility and connectedness define today’s elite,” said Leonard Brody, CEO of NowPublic. “Today, there are innumerable new ways for one’s voice to be heard. The goal of the MostPublic Index is to measure who is currently most effective in broadcasting their own personal brand online, as well as identify emerging players.”

Julia Allison is going to be pissed she didn’t make the list.