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Cool
Cool. That's cool. Be cool. Stay cool. We all use the word,
but what does it mean?
The editor turned to me because I'm as far from cool as
you can get without falling off the edge of the square earth.
In high school we learned that cool is another way of saying
"not warm." Cool kids knocked the books out of
your hand, teepeed your house, and drove so fast that you
finally paid them ten dollars to stop and let you out. Was
that out loud?
After graduation, cool morphs into something different.
I took to the street to find out "what it is."
From all accounts, tattoos are still in. And they are getting
bigger and badder. Anyone can ink their rear end, but facial
tattoos require the kind of commitment you only find in
state penitentiaries.
I spoke to Steve, a local tattoo artist. He said that body
art is so trendy, he fears that it will go away.
"I mean, at some point it has to become cool to not
have a tattoo, right?"
Ah, yes. Like Dr. Seuss's Sneetches, who got so many stars
on their bellies that Sylvester McMonkey McBean had to bring
in his Star-Off Machine.
Kids agree that music is cool, so long as it's loud and
obnoxious.
I met with Wretch, a band that specializes in loud and
obnoxious. Lead singer Angelo Miles is the one your mother
warned you about, all the way down to the porcelain rings
that were implanted, by scalpel, into his ear lobes.
Angelo said, "Cool is not caring about what the masses
think of you."
"Then why all the tattoos?" I asked. "Isn't
that a type of caring?"
Angelo chuckled, and I moved to the next question. Quickly.
Wretch gave me their CD, which is growing on me. Like a
cyst. It's the kind of music that is loud even when you
don't turn it up. My wife caught me listening the other
day and made a face.
"If anger could masturbate," she said.
Inside The Wild Planet clothing store I found a girl who
"doesn't talk to reporters." Her blue hair suggested
that she is not, in fact, from this planet, so perhaps she
was guarding her identity. A customer, Kyle, did talk. Kyle
was recently released from prison -- er, high school --
and had this to say:
"Uncool is when people talk bad about you. That's
jacked up."
Consulting my Dictionary for Hopeless Geeks, I saw that
"jacked up" describes something that is "not
quite right."
When I was growing up, the Fonz represented cool. I asked
Kyle if that was still true, and he said, "The Fronds?"
So it goes.
The blue-haired girl was too cool for me, yet Angelo was
happy to talk and could easily outscream her. I was so confused.
I turned to a famous philosopher, Homer. Homer Simpson.
"I used to be with it," said Homer, "but
then they changed what 'it' was. Now, what I'm with isn't
it, and what's it seems weird and scary."
Michael is a bouncer at a local bar. His job is to maintain
order and occasionally get shot. No kidding. He showed me
the wounds. Michael has been shot, stabbed, bitten, spat
on, and trampled. He only keeps bouncing because "it's
a cool job."
"Nobody knows what cool is," said Michael. "You
just try not to be the guy who is trying too hard."
A man wearing a cow's worth of leather strutted by, shot
us a look, and hopped onto his Harley, which began flashing
and sounding till he finally found the keys and revved the
engine so loud that you could almost hear his soul cry.
You try not to be that guy.
I brought our dilemma to an uptown club, where cool is the
same as anywhere else, only with more zeroes at the end.
There I found Dann Alari, AKA Dann the Mann. According to
Dann, cool is best defined by The Tao of Steve, a movie
whose central point is this: If you ever doubt what is cool,
ask yourself, "What would Steve McQueen do in this
situation?"
The Jose Cuervo girl passed by and Dann paid scholarly
attention to her step. Once she was out of smelling distance,
he regained consciousness.
"So, yeah," he said. "Be like Steve McQueen
and don't give your power away. Also, clean your room."
We seem to be getting somewhere. I fear it may be the beginning.
I approached Kelly Bear, because she looked the most like
Barbie. Surely she could shed some light.
"I have no idea," she said. "I don't want
to be cool."
Kelly consulted her friend, Christina, and they made a
lot of festive, high-pitched noises. I thought they were
on to something.
Christina said, "Cool isn't even a good word for cool.
Tight is better."
Christina seemed to understand my confusion. Others had
climbed the mountain to ask her these same questions.
"Everybody cares what people think," she said.
"It's a matter of degree."
I scribbled in my notes.
"Are you going to print that?" she asked.
"Why?" I said. "Do you care?"
Cool is harder to come by as you age. Anyone who has ever
been called "mister" is instantly disqualified.
Cool fades subtly over time until, after not paying attention
for a while, you wake up one morning and poof, you're wearing
tube socks with Bermuda shorts.
A kid at my health club thinks it's cool to burp when he
enters the room. It proves that he is free from societal
understandings regarding bodily gas.
Steve the tattoo dude said that people compete to appear
crazy. Some go so far as to scar themselves with glass-tipped
soldering irons. They'll show you the wounds.
By these guidelines, though, wouldn't Charlie Manson be
the coolest of them all? He is clinically insane, he plays
a guitar, and he's got a tattoo in the middle of his forehead.
So confused.
Dr. Barton, a psychotherapist, said, "There is a dark
side of cool that prevents you from admitting your emotions,
and that's not healthy."
Only a small percentage of people are certifiably, Johnny
Depp cool. They share what Dr. Barton called the It Factor,
a grace to which others are attracted. The cool don't think
much about it.
In other words, if you think you're all that, you're probably
not even a bag of chips.
"The ones who were cool in high school," said
Barton, "don't really cut it in the real world."
You can test his theory yourself. The next time you drive
by those orange-vested trash collectors on the side of the
freeway, look more closely: It's all the cool kids from
high school.
From what I gather, cool cannot -- must not -- be defined.
It is a power so awesome that words turn back frightened
as they approach its ultimate reality. Science can only
wonder at the promise of harnessing cool. We might use it
to propel ourselves to distant galaxies, where it's cool
to have four eyes but where creatures with glasses are referred
to as eight-eyed freaks.
"What is cool?" may even be a question that has
no answer, like, "Why is Anna Nicole Smith on TV?"
When people say "be cool," I guess they are reminding
us about the road back to ourselves. They are telling us
to keep it real.
That's the best I can figure it, and if you disagree with
me, you can sit on it.
Written by Jason
Love
