THE TORCH OF COOL

During the Inquisition that was my teenage days, now way back there in mythohistory along with Achilles, Thermopylae and all that other stuff I've forgotten about since high school, I remember being puzzled as to why the grownups, then perceived as the nearly dead, were so revolted by my super-slick D.A. haircut with a rattail in front, my cherry-red sweater-vest with the black-gray-and-white-striped border over my knockout black shirt with the gold front panel tucked into my ultracool slim-belted 14-inch-pegged white flannel slacks with rattail comb sticking out of the back pocket, the pantcuffs breaking perfectly on my high-sided ox-blood cordovan ducks with a diamond shine. I couldn't figure out the attitude of the nearly dead, in the microseconds I gave it any thought. But in the fundamental certainty that unites all teenagers I was sure that anyway the old was gone forever and the new was here to stay. This was it. The style was set in stone.

I'd be wearing pegged pants and cordovan ducks and a DA haircut when I was 80, and my kids and their kids would too, all the way to the end of time, because who would ever need more than life requires, which is to be the coolest of the cool for as long as possible? And when at last one light-years-distant day I had miraculously reached the ancient age of fifty, I wouldn't have to manifest the revulsion I saw every day on the faces of the nearly dead of the 1950s toward the hypercool duds of the new era.

But now I've reached that half-century mark that was once so far away, the hair's a bit thin for a DA and rat-tail, even if I had the desire, not to mention the time, the grease and the warped sense of history, to create them; 14-inch pegged pants, I'd have to let them out at the waist and thighs, probably even the ankles; and red sweater vest over black gold-panel shirt, forget it, I haven't got the body for that, let alone an interest in defending garments. What's more, I haven't seen a pair of cordovan ducks in a shoe store for over fifty years now; and anyway, why the hell would I want to look like a 50's teenager in my 60s? And who would know but other sixty-year-olds from Elm Street? Wherever they are now.

Besides, now that I've passed my Achilles-equivalency and had hands-on experience with the Thermopylae factor, and having realized all too clearly that I myself am now one of the nearly dead-- in other words, now that I perceive (as only the nearly dead can) the fingerpoppin' transience of things, especially teenagers and teenage fads, I stop and look at the teenagers grungeing along around me, the females dressed like Crazy Jane with their hair done to look like they've just been saved from drowning, the guys with hair like somebody ran their heads through wet concrete, their bodies layered in torn t-shirts hanging out of these at-the-knees pants you could catch a cow in one leg of that end cuffless above shoes my great grandfather would have thought the ultimate in style and I can't help it: I want to say something dissuasive to these little boys as they slag down the street like the ultimate rag men, I want to say something corrective to these little girls walking by like 14-year-old bag ladies, but what for? Teenagers can't hear, as I remember.

So instead, like King Lear I cry to the darkening sky, 'Whatever happened to sharpness?' To the rains and the winds I shout, 'Where is the cool of yesteryear?' But the weather does not answer, any more than it did for Lear or my father or his father before him, when they too stood stumped on the doorstep and watched the kids go beyond reach reach in some incomprehensible fashion, and it comes to me that each new group, in stepping out thus, flares then in its one bright moment of flaming (or smouldering) youth before growing into age, in its turn bearing the torch of the one true style into eternity; that maybe only great grandfathers in the great beyond can look at what kids wear nowadays and smile, smile at how it has all come round again, just like they always knew it would, to one the true style, the way it is in heaven.

MAKE MY DAY.

This is not a story about monkeys. This is a story about my monkey rocket gun. Sort of like a bazooka, but one man can operate it. Fortunately, I'm one man.

When I was at the farm store the other day I bought some summer-leftover (i.e., cheap) shrieking bottlerockets and a one-meter length of gun-barrel caliber PVC pipe. I left the rockets inside by the kitchen door with a lighter, and the rocket gun leaning on the wall outside the door, just in case I saw some of them lowdown, lily-livered varmints.

A couple weeks later yesterday arrived, and as I was at the kitchen counter making lunch I glanced out the window and saw a couple of monkey critters, looked like an older and a younger brother - coupla teenage gunslingers, monkeywise - out to make trouble, just then climbing up to the top of my fence and sitting there all bouncy and excited, practically drooling as they sussed out the loot.

Like one of those cool guys in one of those cool guy movies I dropped the cilantro and ran for my ammo, ripped open a pack with my teeth, pulled out a couple of rockets and slipped through the doorway, grabbed my rocket tube and began to load, minimizing noise and movement. The monkeys paused at sight of these strange, yet not threatening actions, watching intently to see if maybe I was just out there doing some human/pipe thing - they are weird, the clothed ones - after which I would go back into the house and do whatever humans do in whatever inside is.

But there was a snag, like in the movies, where they do it for the tension, somebody's rifle jams or something, and there was tension here too, real life imitating Hollywood: the fuse was affixed to the stick of the rocket with cellotape, to keep it straight in the package; I had to cut the tape and bend the the fuse to light it properly-- would I get it fixed in time? Talk about tenterhooks.

So I had to set the pipe down and cut the tape, bend the fuse quickly as time was ticking away, and indeed the beasts became suspicious of all this frantic action, the camera panning right as they began to opt for safety, drifting off slowly to the edge of the picture, then unobtrusively down to the ground and across my shiitake logs to pause on my absentee neighbor's lawn, where they sat on their haunches to see what I was up to, if I would finally go back into the house and let them pillage in peace.

I got their range, pointed the rocket launcher, lit the bent fuse with the lighter, lit it again, it wouldn't catch, time was running out, then at last it began to spark, I tapped the rocket well into the barrel, aimed it right above the two peering red faces and held it steady in the hissing silence that followed for about 30 minutes though it could only have been 3 or 4 seconds, but what a long and heavy silence, a smoky length of deep dramatic soundlessness, in which the monkeys were entranced as well, thinking their own thoughts, it was kind of mystico-ethereal as we all stood there unmoving in our places for no discernible reason, like members of some sort of post-historic diorama, the mind enters strange channels at such moments, then abruptly the atmosphere was split down the middle by a soul-tearing shriek that filled it all with fear as a bullet of smoke streaked howling above the two really wide-eyed monkey faces and straight on beyond for another 30 meters when it ricocheted off a telephone pole and exploded with a bang that echoed from the mountain and put a big cap on the moment for the terrified beasts.

As soon as I recovered my senses and looked again, the monkeys were nowhere in that universe, they had disappeared without a trace, probably dug themselves straight into the ground, I hope they took with them advice not to go anywhere near the garden of that crazy guy with the magic pipe. I even heard my distant and usually quiet neighbor making sounds like what the hell was that? Who's firing rockets that loud at this time of day, as I blew the smoke from the end of my rocket barrel and sauntered back to making lunch like Clint Eastwood.

Later I noticed that the other end of the launcher had burned a hole in my shirt. Made my day.

THE TAO OF COOL

Heard some adult gradeschoolers on LA radio the other day speaking mockingly of older guys driving sports cars "trying to be cool, and they're not cool."

There were three of of them bloviating, two men and one woman, sounding for all the world like kids in third grade making fun of someone new, someone different, ostracizing some other kid because of his shoes or bookbag or hair or you name it, we've all been there, but many of us - hopefully most - sooner or later graduated.

The giveaway was that the mocking trio acted like insiders who knew it all-- even the motive of every older guy who drives a sports car. Maybe in fact he just likes superb cars and always has; maybe he's been building street rods all his life; maybe he just likes speed, or is a former race car driver; maybe he has a truly lived life's appreciation of beauty and elegance, or maybe now at last he is able to realize his dream of one day owning an Alfa Romeo. These and the many other possible reasons were beyond the grasp of the left-behind trio.

It was painfully plain to hear them, still held back after all these years - now salaried and heeded (presumably-- and for not having graduated?) - projecting the history of their own failing struggle with being cool-- for that is what the sports-car scenario meant to them: being cool; i. e., they themselves were uncool, and bitter about it-- a fact that was clear to all graduates who happened to overhear.

As Lao Tzu would have said, were he living today and speaking in this modern context:

“He who speaks of the Cool knows nothing of the Cool; he who speaks not of the Cool needs not, for he is Cool.”

or

"There is no way to the Cool; Cool is the way."

That's why those older guys don't talk about the Cool-- they drive it.

Bugs the hell out of certain people.

And by the way, that 'c' in America? It stands for 'cool.'