I think I'll go see Snakes on a Plane tonight. Looks stupid and fun. Why are those two things so often found in the same sentence? How many times do you go to something really hip and fun? Never. If I were to go to a Radiohead concert, it would be 'really amazing and cool' but if I go to a Def Leppard/Journey concert, it is pretty much stupid (in that no one listens to them anymore...really) but very fun. Nerds are WWAAAAYYY more interesting than cool people. Take a look at Hollywood stars. ZZZZZZzzzzzz (snore). We think we want to be just like them, sharing the glamour, sharing the fame. Ultimately we want to be just like them in every way. Do we really want that? I think we do. Man I know I do. Anorexia, divorce, illegitimate kids, bulimia, drugs, depression, Kabbalah, Scientology... Load me up baby, double dose! But wait...what was the most popular movie a couple of years ago and has been the most quoted movie since?.... hmmm. I believe it was a movie about a big huge nerd who wore unicorns on his t-shirts and called his goofy brother up to school to bring him some chapstick.
I remember being in high school and FINALLY getting in with the "cool" crowd. It sucked. Then in college I remember working out at the Baylor Student Life Center. To leave the workout room you had to walk in between this huge row of stairmasters. I used to watch as some young Baylor buck would parade by the stairmasters, acting like they didn't notice any of the chicks on the S-masters, and then casually glance down to see if their pecks were bigger than 1 minute ago. There would always be this one girl who would get visited by at least 5 guys in a 20 minute period. I always wondered what these perfectly sculpted people were talking about until one day when I happened to land on the bike right next to the queen bee of the sororities. It was enlightening. It went a little something like this (with NO exagerations).
Cool guy moseys over to Queen bee on stairmaster. Queen bee looks like she just stepped off an operatic stage production, still in makeup, and put on workout clothes.
Cool guy: "Sup" with a slight nod.
Queen bee: "oh ma GOSH! I totally didn't see you! How are you?"
Cool guy: "Cool, just hangin'"
pause for a few seconds as he leans on the bike, they both sort of look around.
Queen bee: "So, you are totally coming to the party tonight, right?"
Cool guy: "oh totally"
Queen bee: "totally, you better" (giggles)
Cool guy: "awesome..." (takes a look at his tricep as he leans on the bike next to him)
Queen bee: "have you seen Chad?"
Cool guy: "I'm Chad"
Queen bee: "OH (big giggles, and they both laugh perfectly) I mean Jeff!"
Cool guy: "totally fine, yeah he'll be there tonight totally too."
Now to the normal onlooker, or, the rest of us nerds in the room, that conversation looked very deep, filled with wit and profound insight on just how one can be cool. It looked like two beautiful people carrying on a conversation in perfect coolness. In actuality, it probably took 3 to 4 brain cells to develop the concepts formed in that discourse.
US Weekly is read mostly by nerds like you and me and what do we find? A bunch of unhappy, bored, drunk, sad, people who have been given, to their detriment, tooooo much money and too many people telling them that they are cool. What do we all want? To be cool because if we are finally cool we will be in a state of complete happiness. I heard a line from a movie one time and it really connected with me. "The only real currency in this life is what is said between two people when they are being uncool"
11 comments:
This blog specifically dedicated to a few ofl my younger folk, some students, some just friends, that read this blog from age 12-19. I love every nerdy one of ya.
The cool factor never stops haunting you. In fact, it only gets worse.
i've never been cool so i can't relate to cool people. i do think that the conversation you over heard is completely priceless. or should i say, worthless?
Sweet!
Now get out. You're ruining everyone's life and eating up all our steak.
The quote at the end of your post:
Almost Famous
Fantastic quote.
Love this blog.
Is it still cool to wear Keds shoes and loose shirts? Oh well...I guess that means my coolness went out when I had kids. I was never one of those cool people anyway...I wasn't good enough at fixing my hair. It's much more interesting to be a NERD!
Sorry, dorks, I can't relate; I'm the coolest person I know. I'm the Billy Zabka of every social group in which I run.
But yes, the cult of celebrity is disturbing, misleading, and hollow. You're dead on. I'll be getting to that in my Art and War posts on which I'm working. Hope to see you soon!
I'm with ya Seth. There is something so mysterious about the inner sanctum of coolness (probably because I was never really there). You know I've come to realize there are a couple of different types of "cool". There are gorgeus people who use recycled wit they picked up off there other cool friends but have nothing really interesting to say. Then there are interesting people who may or may not be good looking but are fun to be around. Operamama and I go a Sunday school class that reminds me alot of Kickapoo (the high school Seth and I went to at the same time and didn't know each other) There is a "A" crowd and "B" crowd and it's obvious which couples are in which crowd. I thought this cool stuff would fade away but I'm not so sure anymore - it's just the clique system reinvented for every stage in life. OpMom and I were in the A crowd for a bit which was fun because most of the couples in the A crowd were a there because they were the truly fun and interesting. Then we met up with some B stringers for dinner and listened to them bit-- (gripe) about the A couples. I think OpMom and I are transcliqued. It's an ackward place to be.
I also discovered this "cool" issue has an interesting twist especially prominate in the South. The whole archetype of the "Southern Woman" is something I discovered at Baylor. You see these perfect hair/makeup/clothes women who do and say all the right things. Most (not all) are about mud puddle deep but cleverly disguise this. I imagine it would be hard to cultivate a real personality when you spend all your time working out, starving yourself, and reading relationship advise from Cosmo. The real crackup for me though was meeting there moms. The moms look like a wrinkled version of their 18 year old counterparts. Now really I admit I wasn't that close to any of these families but it always seemed to perfect to be real. The syrupy sweetness in a thick Southern draw is interesting at first, then peculiar, then just annoying. Anyone know what I'm talking about?
About 80% of the Baylor student body is like highschool popularity concentrate. It is where all of those popular people in High School went and then they graduate and reproduce little popular cool people.
It is hard for people to be real. It can be embarassing. However it is a much better alternative than the sterile examine-every-word-I-say-before-I-say-it state of mind that your average "cool" person suffers. Usually that state of mind will devolve and produce conversations consisting of "totally" and "dude" maybe an occasional "right" or "riiiight (gigle)" BORING.
give me a big geek who says dipwad things anyday. It is better to start out socially interacting having bad breath than no breath at all. At least you can brush your teeth and get better rather than be a muttering, stagnant corpse of a personality. Plus everyone, including yourself can laugh about your old bad breath.
Sorry for all the analogies. They sort of flow out me like a river flowing... just kiddn.
I have a bunch of guitar students that are very talented, extremely interesting, kind of geeky kids. What they need is to be told that they are interesting. And that it is usually the geeky people who accomplish the greatest things in life because if they make it through without deserting their personalities and melting into the norm, they end up making a real difference in the world.
Seth - I both agree with and relate to everything you've said here (and caught your comment about who your target audience is).
I have been trying to expand my boundaries a little bit and realize that loneliness is loneliness, emptiness is emptiness, and sin is sin, no matter who you are.
Meaning, we all try to find something -- anything -- to fill up the place that we all have inside us that is made to be filled by God. For some people, it might be trivia, useless minutia, "emo", arts or crafts, technology, intellectual stimulation, whatever. For many of the others, it's social interaction, image, fitting in, saying all the right things and looking a certain way, and so forth.
The most hurtful part of all this, no matter which crowd you run with, is the alienation that it creates for those "on the outside". Like oppop was saying, there's a distinct air thrown off by people when they get into a clique. It says "Look at us, we're somebody and you're not".
Even though Jesus had an "inner circle" of friends and disciples, it's clear from Scripture that He knew what the pain of alienation was all about, and had great compassion for those "on the outside". He went and sought them out, and I bet many of them were amazed that a Man of such great stature actually cared about them personally.
I'm really hoping that the Lord will help us break out of these mindsets and really make a difference in people's lives. And then, we can't get too proud of ourselves for being "different" than the others because we actually cared enough to reach out. :-)
Right on C hammer! I was thinking about this post today at work and it hit me that there are even cool nerds. If anyone overheard the "cool" conversations us "cool" engineers have at work they would probably wet themselves laughing. It goes something like this. "Hey, I found a cool cheat in the labrynth of level four on the new World of Warcraft." "Oh yeah, right (sarcastically), like the cheat you found last week where you can extra RPGs by blowing the left leg off an armoured bi-ped." Listening engineers all roar with laughter, "oooh he zinged you dude." To the outsider we're still nerds. But in our own inner circle we have devided into the witty nerds i.e. cool nerds vs. the plain old nerds. It's almost natural phenomena that's probably related (or at least similar too) the pecking order found in the animal kingdom. You know the alpha male pisses out his turf and selects from the most fit i.e. 'coolest' females. The other males align with him or seperate from the pack to form they're own hierarchy.
Seth I couldn't agree more. If I was trapped on a deserted island I'd choose the geek over 'too cool McGee' anyday.
Catcha later alligators ;P (Proud to be geeky.)
C-Hammer and OpPop right on. It is our natural tendency to want to be in cliques. The only person I have ever met that didn't give 2 shi#'s about cliques is my little Sister. Even when she was a little girl and all the other girls were forming clubs, she was like "mmm okay, I'll just go play on the monkey bars with my friend joe." In college while the other studs and studetts were wanting to party hardy and they asked her if she wanted to come along, she would reply, "mmm nah, I think I'll go home and draw."
I think that part of this comes from a cast-iron self esteem that was instilled in her by our dad. The other part by her love for God. Every day of her life she was told that she was beautiful by him and she believed it. It still amazes me how powerfully our parents shape our lives and our concepts of ourselves by how we are treated in our early years.
There is a fine line between making your children believe that their poop doesn't stink and that they are a marvel created in God's immage.
Post a Comment