Look, I’m totally and utterly okay with artistic people making new and interesting things. Variety is the spice of life, and all that jazz. At one point, I’m sure I saw some sort of brass be-nozzled motorcar being driven by some hippie in a pirate shirt, a leather vest and copper-colored welding goggles and I thought, Well that’s unique. I’ve never seen that before. Good for him. What a feat of pointless yet harmless fantasy engineering.
But that was then, about five years ago. This is now 2010. Steampunk, the subculture inspired by the steam-powered innovations of Victorian Era England, is now a behemoth of suckage. You can’t go to a comic con, Dickens Fair, renaissance fair or some other such nerd-centric event anymore without seeing a gaggle of arrogant, pasty white people in outfits that no doubt cost more than a decent mid-Nineties sport bike, an item that would make the rider about seven or eight thousand times cooler than a backpack that has a visible bubbling water tank in it and serves no functional purpose other than to supplement one’s battered top hat.
Does my utter dismissal of all things Steampunk betray my bitterness and age? Possibly. Do I care? No. Not one iota.
Just like you don’t have to like all of the silly drivel that I post on the Interweb, I don’t have to like your brown leather pilot’s pantaloons. Nor do I have to admire your page-boy haircut and overly serious air of contentment. I don’t see the need to pay hundreds of dollars for a bracelet that you made with a soldering iron when baked out of your mind. Maybe you think comics are silly (you’re really, really wrong.) To each his or her own.
I think the core of the problem that I have with Steampunk is the usage of the word punk. There is nothing punk-rock about this manner of dress or way of being. There is no youthful angst. There is no anti-establishment anger. There is no rocking or rolling. There is only fashion and self-absorption. Steampunk would far more accurately be titled Steamgoth. Then, I’d recognize from the get go that it’s supposed to be a flight of fancy or sport for people that want to look different and to be able to “dance” to music even though they are hopelessly Caucasian. It’s not supposed to be any kind of vehicle for social change or rebellion.
We can agree to disagree. I’m okay with that. It’s America. Whatever. Have fun at Burning Man riding your horseless carriage around. I’ll be at the Giants game having a beer and looking at girls in tight jeans with hoop earrings thinking about how awesome boobies are.
Totally unrelated to this rant is something else I feel that I need to mention: John Denver.
I recently downloaded a twenty dollar John Denver anthology from iTues after playing “Thank God I’m a Country Boy” on the Internet jukebox one night at the bar. Kevin was there, and we both totally got our jam on, as it were, when the song started. The next night, John Denver occupied a few megabytes on my iPod.
Let me say this about that so far: John Denver is forty-percent awesome, awesome, awesome. The latter sixty percent, the part that isn’t country influenced and simply singer-songwriter style guitar music as made popular in the early Seventies, well, is horribly depressing - on the level of Steampunk. So, if you find yourself feeling nostalgic one night while on iTunes, please save some money and only download the following songs. You’ll thank me.
Thank God I’m a Country Boy
Rocky Mountain High
I’d Rather Be a Cowboy
Back Home Again
Matthew
Baby You Look Good to me Tonight
The Cowboy and the Lady
Wild Montana Skies
I CANNOT STRESS THIS ENOUGH: DO NOT LISTEN TO ANYTHING WITH THE WORD LOVE IN THE TITLE. I’m serious here. You’ll find yourself reaching for the closest bottle of benzodiazepines and the closest gallon of booze if you dare try to listen to one of those songs.
If you do, by some failure of technology, accidentally listen to a John Denver song that is not listed above, and find yourself kind of liking it, DROP WHAT YOU ARE DOING, and play this track without delay: “Death or Jail” by Sick of it All.
You’ll thank me. Actually, if you ever see any Steampunk kids in any kind of group or gaggle, do the same thing. It’ll help you sleep at night.
Or smack them around a bit.
Guess who will never be allowed within 50 feef of my children?
All of them.