Want to be cool? Of course you do! Everyone in the world wants to be cool, including my granddad, who's 81 this year. So, if you're going to actually achieve that all elusive status, you'd better pay attention to the Maxim 10-step guide to Cool. It's a bit like those "10 steps to great sex/better orgasm/female ejaculation" articles that you get in Women's magazines, except that the advice given herein isn't entirely fictitious and obfuscatory, nor was it dreamed up by a gaggle of female journalists cackling over the photocopier in a disparate attempt to fill dead-magazine-space.
Before we begin, a short disclaimer: please note that cool and fashionable are not the same thing. If you want to be "fashionable" (note the inverted commas) then go out and spend a months wages on a pair of DnG jeans with glitter all up the sides and some incomprehensible English slogans ("Yes Free Now" / "I Sex Hemorrhoid") written down the inside leg. Needless to say, they won't make you cool. Coolness isn't something you can buy - which is precisely why you need to read on. So, no talking at the back, pay attention, I'll be asking questions afterwards. Ladies and Gents, presenting Maxim's glorious "10 steps to cool"!
1) Stop reading, right now. Erm, yes, sorry about this. After such an enthusiastic beginning I have to warn you that reading this article any further would seriously compromise your cool. Why? Because there's nothing less cool than discussing cool. Cool isn't like the social history of Russia between 1870 and 1945. You can't study it, and if you do, then you kill the very thing you're trying to study - it's a bit like the pop culture equivalent of Schrödinger's cat. Put down the magazine and go about your business.
2) Stop trying. Again, sincere apologies: this isn't really what you wanted to hear, is it? Perhaps I shouldn't have built up this article with such an enthusiastic introduction. But the truth is that trying to be cool aint cool. Cool people are too cool to care about being cool. So, the bad news is that points 1) and 2) in addition mean that being cool is a bit like having ridiculously pointy ears or a huge penis. You either got it or you aint, and no amount of trying (or vacuum suction pumps ordered from the back of mens' magazines) is going to make any difference.
Hello? You still reading? I can only assume, then, that you're helplessly uncool and are in such disparate need of advice that you'll believe literally anything. Ok losers, points 3) -10) are specially for you. They're an idiot-proof guide to helping you create at least a semblance of cool. Here goes:
3) Stop smiling. In it's simplest from, being cool is about not caring. 'Dispassionate observer of the world' is what we're going for. Maintaining this facade is going to be tough: it's especially hard not to break into a massive toothy grin when teenage girls start rubbing their nubile bodies against your leg like dogs on heat, thanks to your newfound, irresistibly magnetic aura of cool. I suggest you cheat and try intensive Botox, ensuring a rigid, expressionless countenance.
4) Be more gay. Whooo there, my hetro friend! Calm down! There's sense in what I say! Let's take a look at the 20th centuries icons of cool: James Dean, Steve McQueen, William Burrows, Jack Kerouac, Marlon Brando, Andy Warhol... all of them were either gay, or would shag anything with a fully functioning orifice. And even the straight icons of cool were utterly attractive to gay men. So dig out you're gold lame hot-pants, put on your muscle-vest and crack open a tub of Vaseline... you'll be all the cooler for it.
5) Be blacker. Sorry. Another piece of advice of marginal utility. Pountain and Robins argue that the very concept of cool came to America via ancient West African civilization, due to the slave trade. What's certainly true is that the Blues, which developed on the American slave plantations, is one of the first examples of cool that we'd recognize today. Thanks to centuries of being stripped of their rights and being sold like pieces of property by dominant white society, black culture is able to retain the definitively 'cool' stance vis-a-vis white society: distanced, skeptical, disengaged. And if this sounds too much like a sociology lecture, then let me put it more simply: black people are cool because MTV tells us they are.
6) Be poorer. If you can't be black, at least try to be working class. Like being black, it gives you good reason to be pissed off with the world around you. All the cool youth movements were working class (Northern Soul, Punk, Mod, Rockabilly, Rock and Roll), while all the shit ones (Hippies, the Goa trance scene) were for infuriatingly middle class kids, bankrolled by their wealthy parents.
7) Under no conditions wear a Bluetooth device in your ear. Admittedly this is a bit of an aside, a slight deviation from the piece, but really, what in the name of Jesus cocking christ do you think you're doing with a plastic flashing penis attached to your ear? Are you really so busy that, in the time it takes to press a phone to your ear, you might have lost some million-dollar share trade? And if you're involved in million-dolloar exchanges on the NASDAQ, what the fuck are you doing sat in McDonald's picking cold French Fries from a bag like a bored Orangutan at feeding time? If you're so interested in showing off pieces of stupid, pointless technonogy, why not nail your phone to one ear, your i-Pod to another, allowing you can ponce around Bucharest with blood slowly trickling out of your frontal lobes, while you loudly conclude your utterly fictitious business deals. At least that way you'd manage to retain a bit of dignity.
8) Stop following fashion. Caring what other people think is not cool, and following trends is the ultimate expression of bowing to social pressures. You're meant to be a Rebel Without a Cause, remember, an Easy Rider, thumbing your nose at social mores... However, you're still going to need a distinctive look. I suggest you adopt some deliberately esoteric style and follow it unswervingly. Possible looks include: 19th century dandy (ruffs, waxed mustache); Boer War concentration camp victim (badly shaved head, striped pajamas); 80's Afghani Mujahadeen (Turban; CIA-funded grenade launcher). In the unlikely event that your chosen look becomes fashionable, change it immediately and deny ever having dressed that way.
9) Hedonism. Take lots of drugs. Have unprotected sex with lots of men, women and children. Anything that combines pleasure and danger, really. Try snorting cocaine off electrified rails, or felating yourself with a food blender...
10) Die. The natural conclusion of point 9). Being cool while alive is tough. Being cool when dead is a lot easier - just ask Janis Joplin, John Lennon, Jimi Hendrix, James Dean, Kurt Cobain etc etc etc. Being dead is admittedly not a lot of fun, but hey! You're cool with that! Live Fast, Die Young!