The Unipiper

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I play the drums while riding a bicycle, and I think Brian Kidd and I are going to have to go for a ride.

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What an unfortunate title - I immediately thought of the Unabomer - but with pipe bombs. I wonder if NSA has an analyst assigned to this - maybe one of those World of Warcraft guys?

Well, this fellow is perhaps the überest Überclown of all, but after you’ve done five minutes or so of bagpiping while riding a unicycle, wearing a Darth Vader mask, and emitting flames – maybe on a tightrope, with cats? – people are going to be glazing off, except for the eight-year-olds. It seems pretty limited. I suppose the right drugs might help… As for the Portland sign, deliberate weirdness for weirdness’s sake is false, put-on, bobo weirdness and is yet another reason to never go to Portland.

Perhaps the two of you and a tricycle-pianist.

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who peed in your cheerios this morning?

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Portland is a nice place. So yes, never come to Portland.

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It was Ragbag, not me or ToeToe.

This will probably get some well-deserved comments on diehipster.com :smile:

He’s not a hipster. It’s a complicated creative act that requires continuous practice and several skills.

The use of hipster as a pejorative reminds me of in the 1980s when “JAP” (Jewish American Princess) became an acceptable anti-Semitic slur.

I do know there are posers who adopt affects who are maybe rightly called hipsters because they lack any commitment or depth to their stance. But, man, this guy is just doing something goofy and wonderful—very well.

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I always like people who propose what other people should and will feel in reaction to someone who has garnered respect and attention already!

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Interesting to see the man behind the mask. For some reason I had always assumed he was a middle age man with a graying beard. Funny how our brains fill in the blanks.

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Don’t worry, we won’t miss you.

Like most “weird” Portlanders - he is not from Portland.

I know very few Portland natives that meet any of the stereotypes of Portland - but many transplants from elsewhere who do. The phrase “Keep Portland Weird” should actually be “Come Make Portland Weird”… (We natives enjoy plenty of things that aren’t normal, country-wide, but we’re not nearly as strange as Portlandia makes us look. Those are the newcomers to Portland.)

The U.P. visited Trek in the Park when I went last summer:

It was a fitting venue.

I eat puppies for breakfast. They pee on themselves quite adequately.

The ‘Keep Portland Weird’ sign is the most interesting thing in this story. Whereas the bagpiper is a pretty straight goof, with limited intellectual and aesthetic appeal, there are many levels of irony in that sign. Notice how orderly it is, for instance. And why did someone think the people there had to be so admonished? Or was the sign-painter perhaps deliberately, consciously ironic, knowing that some fellow, slow on the uptake like me, would slowly get it in real time in the pages of Boing Boing?

What would a similar sign mean in New York, or Timbuktu? KEEP TIMBUKTU WEIRD (but in Arabic, of course).

Indeed, I had better stay away from Portland.

What’s troll school like? Are there beatings?

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