How You Can Be Cool

Anytime you get on an escalator, you’ve got two choices:  either you lean to the side and just enjoy the ride or you frantically run up it like a spaz.  It’s pretty obvious which choice a cool person must make.

Granted, if you’re cool you’ve probably got places to be and appointments to keep.  Think of the escalator ride as your little oasis amid the madness of your day.  Bust a lean and reflect on all the cool things you’ve done today and all the cool things you’re about to do.  Catch your breath, read an ad on the wall, invent a backstory for the couple in front of you.

Look, if you madly sprint up or down the escalator, you’re going to get sweaty.  Cool people don’t sweat.

This little stunt is almost too perfect:

You take your phone, scroll through your contacts and choose your intended target.  For the purposes of this example, let’s call him Marco.  Ring him up, turn on some ambient background music and put your phone in a sock on the coffee table.  When you hear Marco on the line, that’s when it’s time to start weaving your spell.  Begin speaking out loud.

“I gotta introduce you to my friend Marco sometime.  That guy’s awesome, you’ll love him.  I do.  He’s hilarious…just a good dude, you know?  Actually, you know what the coolest thing about Marco is, is that he….”  CLICK.

That’s it.  Next time you need someone to help you move, Marco’s your man.

What’s truly cool about the staged pocket call is not only have you managed to manipulate your friend into liking you more, but, even if your friend does find out what you’ve done, even they’ll have to admit that it was a pretty cool little scheme.  Brilliant in it’s simplicity.

Everybody should try this at least once in their life, it’s pretty awesome.  This is how it should play out:

You buy a bouquet of flowers and just walk down the street with them.  At some point, inevitably, an older lady is going to jokingly say, “Oh, are those for me?”  You immediately respond with, “Oh, yeah, there you are.  I’ve been looking all over for you.  Here you go.”  You hand them the flowers and you walk away.  To that lady, you are now the coolest person in the world.

The best time of year to do this is around Valentine’s day because it’s a bit more sentimental for everyone.  Be careful, though.  This is when florists jack up the price of roses.

There’s nothing quite as gratifying as stumping your friends with a clever sports trivia question.  You can almost hear the hamster wheel in their heads groaning under the strain of thought as they stare off into space, almost willing the answers to come to them.

As satisfying as the initial question is, however, the truly thrilling moment is when your friends finally get the answer and explode into a flurry of cheers, high-5’s and “Oh, how did I forget that?!”.  You then get to look them square in the eyes and proudly say, “Well done! I knew you’d get there eventually”.

For your consideration, here are two great sports trivia questions to get you started:

1. There are currently nine teams out of the four major sports leagues (NHL, NBA, NFL and MLB) whose team name does not end in an “s”.  Who are they?  Answer is here.

2. There are six pairs of  currently active teams in the four major sports leagues who share the same team name (ie. Edmonton Oilers/Houston Oilers, but of course Houston Oilers are not currently active).  Who are they?  Answer is here.

Bullies suck.  Dissin’ em is awesome.  There are few things cooler then coming up with the perfect comeback at the perfect time.  What could be more satisfying then knocking a bully right off their high-horse and then watching them get all tangled up in their stirrups on the way down?

One of the coolest things you can do is to dis a bully when they’re bullying somebody else.  Imagine you see the manager at your local coffee shop yelling at one of his baristas while you wait.  Your response: “Easy there, Dad.  What, did your daughter break curfew again?”,  or, “OK Gandalf, we get it, We Shall Not Pass!”

Take That Bullies!!

If you’re going to reach the pinnacle of cool and become a pop culture icon, you gotta have a catch phrase.  This is just basic marketing but you’ve got to give people a wicked slogan to remember you by.

What follows is a short list of catch-phrase opportunities, followed by an example.  Feel free to try them out.

Greeting a friend: Yo, what’s the Headline?!

Leaving a party: It’s Pumpkin Time!!

When someone asks you, “Are you sure about that?”: I’ve read the scroll!

When someone says to you, “Dude, you look nervous.”: I feel like a 13 year old boy in a lingerie shop.

The whole point of talking trash with your friends is to make life more fun and, we can all agree, those who make life more fun are invariably cool.  Here’s how it works:

Whenever you find yourself in a genial competitive situation with one of your chums, start jawin’.  What you’re effectively doing is raising the stakes of the situation making it more important for both parties involved.  It’s friendly gambling.  Your currency is pride.  When both of you have a vested interest in the outcome, the glory for the winner is that much sweeter and bitterness of defeat is that much less palatable.

Here’s the key:  You have to lose half the time.  Your friends will get enormous pleasure out of making you eat your words and you’ll smile to yourself, knowing you orchestrated the whole thing, giving them this shinning moment of triumph and turning your friendship into a thrilling, edge of your seat dual that stokes your respective competitive spirits while teaching you both valuable lessons in sportsmanship and humility.

Yo Mama!

The next level of security is about to hit Canadian airports and word is these full-body scanners leave nothing to the imagination.

Putting aside the moral debate of whether or not some random security guard has the right to see every man, woman and child who walks through their check-point completely nude, it’s important to realize that when going through the scanner you should point towards your crotch for these three reasons:

1)  This has gotta be uncomfortable for the guard as well.  By “pointing out” the awkwardness of the situation you are making everyone just a little bit less tense.

2)  It’s a friendly reminder of how sterile these x-ray machines are surely making you.

3) The guard can see everything.  Might as well flaunt it.

P.S.:  Supposedly, if you feel this is too invasive, you can choose to get a “pat down” instead.  I think you should get to do both.  Isn’t that the usual order of things?  See someone naked, then feel them up.

It doesn’t matter how ridiculous it is, if you propose a toast, social convention dictates that everyone stop what they’re doing, listen intently and drink in the name of whatever insane premise you’ve put forth.  By doing so, everyone is publicly agreeing with you.  Now that’s power.

Here’s the catch, you need to be the first person to propose the toast.  There is a slight decrease in the status of everyone else who failed to recognize the momentousness of the occasion.  Their lose is your gain.

So, whether you’re a grandchild toasting Grandpa’s 90th birthday, a Maid of Honor toasting the Bride or a Super Villain toasting to world domination, raise your glass and bathe in the cool.

Foreign things are cooler then domestic things and the accent is the most delicious indicator of the foreign mystique.

We love accents.  We love trying to place accents.  When we hear one, it can be intoxicating.  If someone with an accent asks us to do something we’re far more inclined to want to do it.  Partly it’s because we’re hypnotized by the strange rhythms and tones of their voice and partly because we want to give this foreigner a good impression of our city and country.

The good news is, accents can be faked.  Try adding a slight British pip to your words, or maybe a hint of French je ne sais quois.  You’ll be surprised how far it’ll get you.  Arnold Schwarzenegger has had plenty of time to lose his accent but he’s chosen to keep it because he knows how persuasive it can be.  An entire state made him their leader because he sounds like a cartoon.

We spend all day suppressing our emotions and hiding how we feel that there’s something wonderfully cathartic about letting it all out with a good scare.  We love to be terrified.  Two of the most popular things in the world are roller coasters and horror films (note: a horror film set on a roller coaster is a license to print money).

Armed with this knowledge, it is obvious you need to have a killer ghost story in your tool belt.  Whether it’s told by candle light during a power failure or by campfire light during a corporate retreat, if your story is bone chilling enough, people will be emotionally roused.  Emotional arousal is proof of cool.

(note:  Try having a funny ending to your story.  Lead your audience down a terrifying path only to let them off the hook with a hilarious conclusion.  This has the effect of eliciting two emotions.  First you freeze the heart with horror  and then you use comedy to start it right back up again.  It’s almost too easy.)

The ol’ Finger Salute is awesome because it is always done in one of two spirits, both of which are cool:

1. The spirit of irony and fun.  You recognize it’s hilarity and are employing it for the sake of comedy.  You’ll often deliver this through the windshield of your car towards a friend as you pick them up or drop them off.  It’s a friendly greeting.   

2. The spirit of sincere anger and malice.  You’re so overcome by rage that you have no other recourse but to resort to a ridiculous hand gesture.  You’ll often deliver this through the windshield of your car towards a fellow motorist when merely swearing at them just doesn’t feel like it’s enough.  

Regardless of your intention, it’s cool because you’ve chosen to focus all your emotion into the tip of your middle finger.  And hey, there’s nothing quite as satisfying as letting someone know they’re Number #1.

A friend told me yesterday that she always brings an extra pair to concerts in case the band rocks her into such a delirium that she’s moved to throw her panties at their feet.  Being prepared just makes good sense.

If the elastic isn’t springy enough you can wrap them around an ice cube from your soda in order to add a bit of weight and get maximum distance.

Ladies, it’s time to Tom Jones up the place.

 “Why don’t you two go get a room?  Nobody wants to see that!”  Wrong.  Actually, we kinda do.

In order to be involved in a public suck-face session you have to: a) Have someone who really digs you, b) Be super confident and c) not give a damn what anybody thinks.

These are all character traits that are universally regarded as COOL.

Plus, we can’t help looking.  It’s like free public porn.

  Guy 1: Hey, you should have come over on Sunday.  A bunch of us got together to watch the game.

Guy 2: Oh, yeah?  Who was there?

Guy 1:  Mark, Dave, Melissa and Clayton.

Guy 2:  Melissa was there?

Guy 1: Yeah, she’s a huge Eagles fan.  She got so upset when they lost that she “accidentally” broke a glass.

Guy 2: Wow, sounds like a pretty cool chick.

Guy 1: Yeah, yeah, she is cool.

Guy 1– “Dude, why are you all scratched up?”

Guy 2– “Don’t ask.”

Guy 1– “You’re bleeding.”

Guy 2– “I was trying to put a sweater on Carson and he was being difficult.”

Guy 1– “………”

Guy 2– “I had to fold his legs back to get his head through the neck hole.”

Guy 1– “………”

Guy 2– “I squeezed him between my legs to hold him still but when I was pulling the sweater down, he bit me.”

Guy 1– “Who’s Carson?”

Guy 2– “My French Bulldog.”

Guy 1– “………………”

Basically you just need to replace the word awesome in your sentence with a noun or proper noun that exudes the kind of awesomeness you’re trying to convey.  For example:

“I just got back from boarding up at Baker.  The snow was butter!”

“I love your new shoes man, those are so ninja!”

“Did you see the hit that Urlacher laid on Adrian Peterson in the Bears game on Sunday?  That $%&# was Van Damme!”

“How was your date last night?”  “Zinfandel, dude.  Zinfandel!”

Hmm, what to choose?  A tribal design?  Asian characters?  An arm-band?  Yaaarrrr.  Anchor tattoos are cool, especially if you’re like my grandfather when he was a kid and you gave one to yourself using a bottle of ink and a safety pin.  Popeye chic.

This little nautical design is awesome because it is the exact opposite to the very worst tattoo that I have ever seen in my life:  the Tasmanian Devil wearing a Calgary Flames jersey.