Elisa Gabbert and Kathleen Rooney were here for a few days to give a reading at Cal State San Marcos. While they were here, I learned several things.

1. A hipster is, basically, a kind of socialite, or sometimes just a wannabe socialite, with trendy alterna-style. Hipsters are to hip as beatnik is to beat.

2. Some of my peers are, like me, deeply suspicious and even totally against marriage.

3. I learned about The Sartorialist, which has an entire section devoted to people on bicycles. I'd never wear any of the outfits that the women have on, but I really wish I could get away with dressing like this guy. Don't worry, I can't. I'm not an art director living in Milan. My problem is that I don't just ride my bicycle down the street to the coffee shop/bar. I ride it six to twelve miles up and down San Diego county roads, and in between riding I teach. And, ahem, all the New York bikes featured on The Sartorialist were total hipster bikes. I think I need to do a whole blog post about stylish outfits that can survive six miles of hills on a real bicycle, plus a bus, and possibly even a train. Do any outfits actually exist?

4. I am late to the whole tag-cloud trend, but I am amused by it, still. "Body," "head" and various forms of "decapitate" are apparently some of my favorite words to use. I guess I'm not over that whole body-mind thing yet.

5. There are disputes over the right way to write an exquisite corpse poem. I enjoyed having the disputes, because it seems rather supremely ridiculous to argue about the correct way to play a Surrealist parlor game.

6. As Kathleen demonstrated, red lipstick is very wearable, and also, as Lucky Magazine recently noted, weirdly minimalist. I wore red lipstick today during my bicycle commute, and to teach. My students were fascinated and a little freaked out. We talked about color and tried to list all the kinds of red, blue, and yellow we could think of. People (ok, boys) yelled out their car windows at me. Was it the spring fever, or was it the red lipstick?

7. You can read more about their visit, as well as Kathleen's book tour, here.