Is it Hip to be Square? As we age, we find this to be true.

We’re not exactly the bourgeois bohemians to whom Huey Lewis and the News were alluding in their “Hip to be Square” anthem. However, we pride ourselves on being square yet in the know or hip up to a point. 

We’re good researchers and reporters who read a lot. We loved subscribing to People magazine years ago, so we could keep up on the latest celeb gossip and palace intrigue, then about the threesome: Prince Charles, Princess Diana and Camilla. 

Through the years as we aged, our interest in celeb-oriented publications waned. We’d pick up a copy of People at the dentist and were clueless. Who were these young bucks? We didn’t recognize most mentioned. Even terms alluded us. We dialed down other subscriptions and knew even fewer. 

We stopped frequenting department and specialty shops to spot fashion trends when the pandemic hit. We didn’t go to concerts/opera or sporting events for the same reason and rarely watched any on TV, except for tennis which Barbara liked and opera which Margaret loves. 

We ate out less, in part because of the pandemic. At the same time, more restaurants prepared foods we had never heard of. We tired of asking, “What’s that?” or Googling every ingredient. Why was cauliflower suddenly a star and in so many forms, sometimes disguised as pizza crust? We craved familiar standbys such as a good bowl of onion soup, roasted chicken, a fresh tuna burger with crispy fries, pizza made with a flour-based dough and for dessert a big wedge of chocolate cake without vegan frosting. 

Yes, we are square. But are we hip? 

Ask us about coronavirus variants, the best masks, how to avoid the country’s hot spots to steer clear of catching Covid-19, and we’re experts. Being in the old age category and highly susceptible to getting sick or worse a long-hauler problem, we’ve stayed on our toes and in the know.  

To be cool and stay abreast of what’s trendy, we decided to do some research to get back up to speed. Here’s what we’ve learned, with help from our kids, a niece and the Internet. Now at least we can pretend to “get it” when we rejoin society and cocktail conversations. We can banter about some of these names and trends. The only problem is, like technology, by the time you read these, and we use the terms or drop the names in daily parlance, they’ll probably be obsolete.   

Hollywood stars

Benedict Cumberbatch

Lana Condor

Letitia Wright

Simone Ashley

Ronny Chieng

 

Magazines

Kinfolk

Wired

Bone-shaker

Cherry Bombe

Milk Street

Inventory

Wilder Quarterly

 

TV series

Succession

The Witcher

Squid Game

Virgin River

Manifest

Catastrophe

 

Food trends

Plant-based burgers

Pantry meals

Flexitarian eating

Low-waste foods

Carb alternatives

Piri Piri sauce

 

Cocktails

French 75

Mudslide

Aviation

Painkiller

 

Hot female athletes

Jacqueline Carvalho

Muni He

Emmi Peltonen

Monica Puig

Eugenie Bouchard

 

Clothing trends

Hoodies under blazers

Color clashing

Cropped cardigans

Boiler suits

Statement sleeves

Sustainable fashion

 

Authors of best debut novels

Claire-Louise Bennett, Checkout 19  

Natasha Brown, Assembly

Keith Ridgway, A Shock 

Leone Ross, This One Sky Day

Isabel Waidner, Sterling Karat

Rebecca Watson, little scratch

Laura Rooney, Normal People

 

Artists or art collectives

Jakob Kudsk Steensen

Keiken

Rosa Menkman

Reza Hasni

Michael Benisty

 

Architecture and design styles

Passive homes

Maximalism, Japandi and Cottagecore styles

Open plans that aren’t totally open

Decreased carbon footprints

Demographic driven design

Any version of the color green that suggests nature

 

Music  

Nilufer Yana

Soul Glo

Earl Sweatshirt

Mitski

Jlin

Jake Xerses Fussell

 

Politicians

There aren’t any since Patrick Leahy retired, that was easy

 

Psychological addictions

Hypersexual disorder

Cannabis withdrawal

Hoarding disorder

Narcissism, which everybody knows about unless you’ve lived under a rock

 

Overused terms during COVID-19

Pivot

Flattening the curve

Immunocompromised

Presumptive positive case

Zoonotic

Zoomed

 

If you’re hip, share your list.