| 27th February 2006 10:03 PM |
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| Ten Thousand Motels |
THEREFORE I AM: Cool will always be cool with me
By David Spates / Chronicle columnist
CROSSVILLE CHRONICLE
fEB 27,2006
Cool is still cool.
Thank goodness. I’d hate to live in a world where cool was, well, uncool. A recent Associated Press story noted that cool stands alone in American slang. Most slang comes and goes like Hawaiian shirts, parachute pants and Members Only jackets. To stretch the clothing analogy even thinner, bell-bottom pants and wide-colar shirts were groovy in the 1960s and ‘70s: Now, groovy isn’t even groovy. Mullet haircuts and parachute pants were bad in the 1980s. These days, bad is just plain bad.
But cool has endured, probably because cool spans numerous generations. My kids use cool. I use cool. My parents use cool. Even my grandparents use cool. Heck, Shakespeare used cool: "O gentle son, Upon the heat and flame of thy distemper, Sprinkle cool patience." That’s from Hamlet. You can look it up. In the 1920s, Calvin Coolidge’s presidential campaign slogan was “Keep Cool With Coolidge.”
Maybe my grandparents don’t use cool like I use cool, but they use it nonetheless. Perhaps they’ve made a “cool million” through wise investing. Maybe they insisted that I “cool my heels.” My grandparents may not be on the cutting edge of pop culture these days, but I’m quite certain they could spot a “cool customer” in any era.
Cool may have dozens of different uses, but for me, a child of the ‘70s and ‘80s, cool was — and is to this day — personified by one man: Arthur Fonzarelli. The Fonz. Fonzie. The greaser who rented a room above Mr. C’s garage.
No one has ever been, nor will anyone ever be, cooler than the Fonz. Some may say that Fonzie’s coolness was relative of the company he kept. If you’re standing next to dweebs like Richie Cunningham, Ralph Malph and Potsie Webber, you’re bound to look cool by comparison. I say hogwash. Pound for pound, Fonzie’s coolness matches anyone’s.
Fonzie was so cool that even inanimate objects like jukeboxes and pinball machines recognized and honored his coolness. Women swooned. Men stepped back. A restaurant owner allowed Fonzie to use the men’s room as an office. The Fonz’s leather jacket — a lifeless, soulless piece of fabric and cowhide — was cooler than any other article of clothing in American history. Not true, you say? Can you name another piece of TV clothing in the Smithsonian? I rest my case.
Pop culture “experts” may disagree, but I contend that Fonzie is a huge factor in the perpetuation of cool over the years. When I was 7 years old and had only an emerging sense of cool, I knew one thing for certain: Fonzie had it.
But cool has had numerous torchbearers: Charlie Parker helped popularize cool when he recorded “Cool Blues” in 1947, according to the AP story. That’s no surprise. Musicians are almost always cool, but Charlie was among the first. Coolness and popular music go hand in hand. Some of these musicians’ names you’ll know and some you won’t, but they’re all unwaveringly cool: Miles Davis, Elvis Presley, Tina Turner, John Lennon, Dave Grohl, Iggy Pop, Keith Richards, Joe Strummer, the list goes on and on.
Some actors are cool (Samuel Jackson), but other’s aren’t (Bronson Pinchot). Sports stars usually are cool unless they do something to derail their coolness (yes, we’re talking about you, Bode).
Forrest Gump’s mama said, “Stupid is as stupid does.” The same is true for cool. Cool is as cool does. You may not be readily able to define cool, but you know it when you see it.
“Cool just sits back and keeps getting used generation after generation and lets the whole history of the language roll off its back,” the AP quotes Robert Thompson, a Syracuse University professor of poplar culture. (I can’t help but wonder: What kind of doctorate do you need to get that gig?)
Cool is as cool does, and Fonzie did cool better than anyone. Fonzie wasn’t cool only because he was a good fighter, a ladies’ man and a whiz with a wrench. Fonzie was cool because he kept his cool. He didn’t get overly excited, and he didn’t get down in the dumps. He was cool and level throughout, even when he water-ski jumped over a shark and unknowingly created a 21st century slang term for a new level of absurdity.
I don’t care if the Fonz was the first person to ever “jump the shark,” he’s the foremost bastion of coolness in my book. In fact, when it comes to matters of cool, I try to remember four little letters, WWFD.
What Would Fonzie Do?
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| 27th February 2006 11:23 PM |
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| Kilroy |
Jump the Shark is a great site.
A great reference in honor of the great Heyyyyyyyyyy
Fonzie.
I liked the Fonz when he wore the blue parker. He was actually a little scary and alot more real with the parker. The Leather was hollywoods thing, it was'nt real. The tough guys where I came from in the late 50's did'nt wear motorcycle jackets, they wore really tough demin. The kind of demin that would stand by itself and always had a strange smell. Not that many cycles on the poor side of the county. Cars,truck,and tractors mainly and dirt poor farm boys with their FFA Jackets. That's what our fonzie wore. He was scary.
Fonz was cool yes
So was our Fonz but he did not like the Stones and diffently not the Beatles. He was a Jerry Lee Lewis fan, not Elvis.
He went for the scare stuff , he was to old to understand the Stones Never gave them the time.
Fonz was cool, but like all the Hollywood heros He Jumped the Shark. Hee Hee Hee
[Edited by Kilroy] |
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