Been pretty busy lately, so the blog has been neglected (over a month… yeesh!), and for that I apologize. I haven’t had anything earth-shatteringly important to write about, though (no major feline assaults or anything), so I thought I might try dealing with something that’s been on my mind, namely “COOLNESS”.
The main reason for thinking about coolness is simple: BATMAN. I kind of have Batman on the brain at the moment. I recently acquired Batman: Arkham Asylum (Coolest. Game. EVER.) I also picked up the Batman/Superman: Public Enemies direct-to-video, which came with a little Batman action figure. I have been playing the crap out of Lego Batman, which is cool in a dorky kinda way. Also, a week or so ago I caught a re-run of an episode of Wire Tap on NPR, in which Jonathan Goldstein discusses nicknames (and how the coolest ones start with “the”, eg: The Fonz, The Big Ragu) and Batman with his teenage daughter. And as you know, there isn’t anyone cooler than Batman. Why? HE”S THE GODDAMNED BATMAN, that’s why.
So now I have Batman and the Fonz rattling around in my brain. I remember watching Happy Days in my youth, and like most kids I thought “Gee, I wish I was as cool as The Fonz…”. I also wanted to be Batman (what kid didn’t?) Thanks to that Wire Tap episode, I now realize that the Batman/Fonzie level of coolness carries with it an incredible burden, and I’m pretty sure I’m just not cut out for that. So, what if I scale it back, and just be the coolest dude amongst the people I already know? That could be a little more attainable, so I set about imagining what that might entail.
So there I’d be, amongst my small circle of friends and acquaintances, being all cool. I’d do my thing, they’d be all “wow, that dude is like Shaft! He’s the GODDAMNED BATMAN!” They’d look forward to hanging out with me, just to see what badass, Clooney-esque hijinks I’d get into next, and awesomeness would ensue… Then, the dark side to all this occurred to me: if I was the coolest guy I knew, everyone I knew would bore me to tears. If I was that cool, everyone else by definition would be less cool, and I’d be surrounded by them.
Yow. What a terrible, unforeseen consequence of attaining awesomeness. Everyone would suck, except me. Oh, heavy lies the head that wears the crown and all that. Maybe that’s why Batman scowls so much.
Of course, now that I think about it, all of my friends are a bunch of dorks, so I might in fact be the coolest dude in the group…