Wednesday, January 16, 2002

What's cool and what's not

By BILLY MURPHEY
Laugh Lines

From the first time the discriminating caveman chose a designer-label "club" for his woman, man has been preoccupied with cool and uncool. Whether it is today's status symbol SUVs or yesteryear's Model A Fords with the moon roof, we always want or do things for no other reason but to impress.

Why do actors always wear sunglasses indoors, for instance? Is there going to be a total eclipse of the sun? Would you call it "legally blind" chic? And just think about that word "chic." Why is it a cool word when describing someone's fashion sense, but if I use it to flag down a waitress, it is uncool? Its pronunciation even determines its coolness. "She is so 'Sheeek,'" is cool. "She is a hot 'chick,'" is uncool.

Lots of terms fall into this category. Why is it cool to hear some woman accessorized with Gucci say, "Ciao," but if I hunker down, eating a plateful of chow, it is not?

Living in the epitome of coolness, Peachtree City, I find myself swallowed up in the game of cool and uncool. After all, it is the distinction that makes the difference. It is all about timing and manner, too. Anyone who put their nest egg into Internet stocks a year ago can testify to that. You don't overhear people bragging anymore, "Yep, I got a bundle invested in that WebVan.com."

Even the word "cool" is cool. The way it rolls off the tongue with the right person saying it. Just the right, warm, breathy speaking of the word can make the heart flutter. Or, gather any group of teen girls together and have them squeal it to the right boy band and you have an avalanche of popularity spread faster than any computer virus ever perpetrated.

Cool might have officially started at the tail-end of the hippie movement with a mellow, possibly chemically influenced, George Carlin. Though he was our first official nonconformist, his deeds had the opposite influence on society. He began one of the most pious and fastidious art forms, the act of dividing people and things into two categories, cool and uncool: "Drugs good! Nixon bad!" Many have come since to continue the practice, many (see anything Joan Rivers) have failed.

It would be cute and silly if this judgmental world existed only among those too young to know any better, but, alas, adults have perfected this doctrine. This is why a movie is a hit just because it has the name "Julia Roberts" or "Russell Crowe" below the title. This is why a cell phone ringing causes 90 percent of any assemblage to turn, look and reach.

All of us have our own set of guidelines to what is cool. Mine streams towards the "If it's popular, it can't be cool" ideal. Of course, this philosophy in itself is flawed. It makes the distinction that anything unpopular must be cool, thus uncool is really cool and cool is really uncool.

It was Phil Collins that ruined my philosophy, though. In the '80s and early '90s his hits were so popular that there was a backlash to the point where people went in the opposite direction and started getting sick of "cool." Combine this with our current society's penchant for overdoing everything and these days we have "reverse coolism."

Some examples would include the iMac, Jack Black and shopping at thrift stores. The iMac has been outdone years ago for half the price. Jack Black knows the joke is on you. And though shopping at thrift stores is indeed cool, it is made uncool when one shops at the thrift store just to be cool.

The uncoolest thing of all, though, is putting yourself into the position of telling others what is cool and uncool, present company excluded, of course.

[Visit Billy Murphy on the Internet at www.ebilly.net.]

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