?Forgive me if I wax serious here.?
Anthony did a good job on beginning to fill you in on what true
?Coolness’ is.? In light of that, and the fact that I am trying to
cement the idea of ?Cool’ into a philosophy worthy of the ?Rise of the
Cockroaches’ card game, I have seriously begun to contemplate just
exactly what ?Coolness’ is.?

The first thing I did in these wonderings was to
review my knowledge of history, trying to trace ?Cool’ back to its
roots.? At first it seemed that there had always been a concept of
?Cool’ even if it hadn’t been called that.? But the more I think about
it, the more it seems that this idea began somewhere around the 1920’s.?
Before the 1920’s America was still too divided between working class
and upper class for people to have developed a term defining that
admirable attribute into which people either fell or they didn’t.? It
seems like it was the advent of mass communication that spawned this
idea.? Before that, people lived in small communities where individuals
were admired for what they had to contribute to the community AS
individuals.? However, as books, moving pictures, radio, and newspaper
became available to both the upper class and the working class, these
products of mass media had to create characters and appeal to ideas that
were universally admirable.? They had to create characters that
almost everybody could look at with wide-eyed admiration.

And really, that’s what ?Cool’ is.? Someone who is
cool is someone who is defined by universally appealing attributes.?
James Bond is cool.? The Fonz was cool.? If you don’t agree, you’re in
the minority.

Now coolness means a lot to me.? I form fan-hoods
around the worthiness of a character or idea of the term ?cool’.? And I
suspect so do most of you.? This coolness has become a tangible and real
force in our society.? It is how we make our modern mythology.? Because,
really ?Cool’ is a myth.? These characters worthy of the term ?cool’ are
larger than life.? Just as people in real life who earn the name of cool
are usually either acting the part or hiding that portion of themselves
which is firmly Un-cool.

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