Coolest person in the world contest
I was as the Port Townsend Writers Conference a couple of years ago, and because there wasn’t a hot tub, and because I was eating meals with people I didn’t know, I started asking asinine questions at dinner, making conversation, etc, and somehow the question, “Who’s the coolest person in the world?” came up, as it so frequently does. Being literary types, we kicked this around a little, established some parameters–Could it be anyone from all time? we wondered. Yes, we decided. What did we mean by cool? We weren’t going to answer that question. It was uncool even to ask it. And then we started throwing names around. Lou Reed came up. Dylan. Someone mentioned the Dalai Lama, but I said, while I thought he was great and everything, I wasn’t sure he was “cool,” necessarily, even if cool people tended to attach themselves to him. The conversation continued the next night at dinner, with a slightly different configuration of people. Again, there was no hot tub. Stephen Malkmus was mentioned. Dennis Cooper. De Niro. Someone wondered if Jesus was cool. I wondered about a new bracelet campaign: What Would Jesus Do, if He Were Cool? Denis Johnson was mentioned. So was Beckett. I realized we had no women on the cool list. I pointed this out and then asked if, all things being equal, men were cooler than women. It was a disastrous question, of course, and had the same effect farting at the table would have had. Look, I said, I’m not saying men are cooler than women, but when considering the coolest person in the world, we’re only naming men. Then somebody said, Patti Smith.
Right. Yes. Possibly the coolest person in the world.
Ms. Smith has a memoir out called Just Kids, reviewed in this week’s NYTBR. While the review isn’t very interesting, the book looks like it probably is. And coming from the coolest person in the world, I’m guessing it will probably be, well, cool.
Awesome. It’s a toss up between Chief Joseph, Sue Johannsen from The Sunday Night Sex Show, or Bruce Springsteen. I have trouble thinking of women too. I even asked my girlfriend to name the coolest person–with emphasis on a woman–and she named Chief Joseph, who trumped Jack Kerouac. We’re all sexist, I suppose. You know what’s great about this? I can see these writers sitting around, wanting to talk about anything but writing, to get out of the book bathysphere for a few moments.
I’ve found the same to be true of stand-up comics. If you ask someone who their favorite ten comics are, they almost invariably rattle off a bunch of dudes. You may get an occasional Wanda Sykes fan, but it’s rare.
But there are a lot of really cool women in music — I’m thinking of Kim Deal from Pixies and The Breeders, and Kim Gordon from Sonic Youth. P.J. Harvey. Kristin Hersh from Throwing Muses. Chrissie Hynde. Tons more.
Maureen Tucker. Debbie Harry.
Is Joan Jett too mainstream? Or just too stupid? My friend’s band toured with her and she was talking about art museums in Europe and began saying the Venus de Milo was sexist because, “for the woman, the statue is all tits and ass, no arms, no legs, no head, nothing. For the guy, there’s a guy taking a piss.” When it was explained that the limbs of the statue had broken off over time, she pondered a moment or two and said, “But still…”
Kristen Hersh – nice to know Muses fans are still out there.
Lisa Crystal Carver’s a good one, too, although cult may be a more befitting adjective for her. (Slept with GG Allin for awhile, subsequently started a band Suckdog, wrote a memoir – Drugs Are Nice: A Post-Punk Memoir – which just may have to go on my thesis list…)
I like what you’re saying, Sammy. I’m surprised nobody mentioned Bukowski. He was the coolest motherfucker on the planet. Tom Waits is up there too, I’d say. Followed only by Robert Lopez.
Lopez might be cooler.
David Byrne. Hands down.
But Patti Smith was pretty fucking cool. She played such a huge role in the NY punk scene of the 70s.
Recommended reading (possibly as a companion to her memoir): Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk.
Women are generally too complex to be summed up simply as “cool.” Patti Smith, however, transcends and circles cool. Check out what my friend, Lyall, has to say about having recently been in the same room with Patti Smith: http://www.cityartsmagazine.com/blog/2010/01/soapbox-artist-lyall-bush-patti-smith
Patti Smith is so amazing. I listened to an interview with her on NPR and was struck by her awesomeness and coolness.
I think it would be fair to grade this on a curve. It is inherently ten times harder to be cool as a writer than it is as a rock star. Unless you accidentally write a book while trying to do something cool, you already have a dash of nerd in you. Which makes Bukowski a very strong candidate. And of course Tom Waits was an egregious oversight. What about Miles Davis? Or Thelonious Monk? Jazz is (I’m sorry, was) full of cool people. Hell, they kind of invented it, right? And what about people who do really cool shit, like Philippe Petit? Or Nat Turner? Or athletes, like Duane Thomas, who famously disdained the importance of the Super Bowl after performing so heroically in it? Or Lawrence Taylor – the man played football ON CRACK. How cool is that? Or Thomas “Hollywood” Henderson, who huffed cocaine vapors on the sidelines of a Monday Night Football game for the Dallas Cowboys, and then after crashing and burning for years, won the Texas lottery TWICE!
I guess we could talk about this all day, and it’s certainly more fun than putting together submissions to lit mags…
Or Doc Ellis who pitched a no hitter on LSD.
I think we have a winner, Steve.
I think cool implies at least a little bit of a “fuck you” attitude.
How about Annie Leibovitz?
You have to be really cool to be a woman with a fuck you attitude and not be dismissed as a bitch.
Too true Shira. I think most cool women are perceived as threatening because of the needed “fuck you” attitude and people are in general more comfortable with men being anti-establishment because they are more part of the establishment. Not sure if that makes any sense but it’s kind of like an insider critiquing a group instead of an outsider. A bit like how it was okay for me to give my little brother a hard time when we grew up, but if anybody else did it I would turn on them and beat the crap out of them. Anyway, Annie L—totally cool!
Asa, I like your insider/outsider insights. You, by the way, sound like a bad-ass.
My first thought was Miles Davis, but Steve might be right when he says Byrne. Runners-up: Sterling Hayden, Toshiro Mifune, Billy Wilder, and Shira.
The problem with “cool” writers is that their work is almost always bad. Because it’s cool to go into a studio and spend 17 minutes banging out “Sister Ray,” but really you have to be a nerd to sit around revising sentences. So people like Palahniuk, Kerouac, Bukowski, Ellis—writers, by the way, whose books are always shoplifted—may be good at being cool, but not so good at producing something I want to read after I’m 16.
I should point out that Pete did make the “nerd” point first, and I did not attribute it to him like I was going to. Not cool.
And, then, even more uncool to admit it? Have you slid into a spiral of uncoolness?
Slid?
David Byrne? Honestly, I thought Steve was joking. That guy might be the biggest nerd in the world, especially if we apply (and we must) the inverse rule of degree of coolness as it relates to being whatever you are, which in his case is “rock star.” Seriously, the guy wore a suit when he was in his 20s playing in a rock band. The fact that he may have made it somewhat cool TO BE a nerd severely works against him as well.
I agree that he’s not quite cool enough. I think David Byrne is cool. But Eno’s cooler.
Eno is cooler than Byrne, but now we’re getting into “Who’s The Coolest Math Rock Guy,” which is kind of like discussing who is the toughest chess player. Unfortunately, it’s tough to be overtly intellectual and cool at the same time if you’re a rock musician. Jazz musicians can get away with it more easily.
Eno. Byrne. Reed. I think we should include Bowie and Iggy here.
Come to think of it, Iggy is the coolest of the bunch. He was legitimately dangerous, and chicks love that shit.
And we all know that that is the only true barometer of male coolness… like Shira said, women are more complex than that.
Plus, Iggy played Nona’s dad in The Adventures of Pete and Pete, which, admittedly, may only be considered cool for a segment of readers/contributors, but still. This cameo actually raises another question – is Iggy cool for agreeing to play the part, or are the show’s creators cool for choosing Iggy for the role? Or both? Just where does the energy lie here?
When we become chicks then we become simple.
I absolutely adore you Dan Vice. We all know you are a master of lying and I’m glad to make it into a snippet of your fiction.
Dan, you make a great point about writers like Bukowski and Kerouac, though I think Kerouac’s biggest crime against coolness was that the book that made him famous, “On The Road,” could have easily been titled, “That Time I Left My Mom’s House For More Than A Week.” And it reads like an abbreviated plot summary of Auggie March with less interesting anecdotes and without any depth added.
But you are only talking about the coolest famous person in the world. I believe I saw the actual coolest person in the world the other day. I saw him on the congested, unremarkable street I live on. To me, he is style defined:
I saw that unicyclist again, near my house, pedaling in the twilight, unconcerned by the traffic slumping off and pushing onto the ramps leading to the Long Island Expressway; he cruised in his own upright way, unconcerned by the churning, metallic tides around him, the shifting colors of the heavens saluting.
You’re right, Paul; we’re only considering the famous. The unicycle dude might just be the coolest person in the world.
What about Warhol? I thought he was too neurotic to be cool, but I watched a documentary about him last night in which he was described as “cool.”
Hm, I always put Warhol in the same area as Woody Allen on the cool scale, which is very low and pretty much in the not cool at all category. I may have to re-evaluate this, Warhol did wear sunglasses.
But the cool flocked around him. Sean Lovelace published a killer Andy Warhol story in Willow Springs a couple years ago.
David Byrne is definitely on the short list, but Pete’s right about the nerd end of it–he’s lucky it’s cool to be a nerd now.
Anyway, Eno’s cooler than David Byrne. Mark Mothersbaugh is as cool as David Byrne. David Bowie is less cool than Eno but cooler than Iggy Pop. Iggy Pop is cooler than any American or British musician who debuted after 1982 but still lamer than a lot of his contemporaries due to his speaking voice. Patti Smith is cooler than anyone in Please Kill Me who is still living. Alex Chilton would be in the top five if the Replacements hadn’t written a song about him. The Residents are cooler than everyone except Damo Suzuki.
[...] January, Sam posted some words about Patti Smith and her memoir, Just Kids. I finished the book last night and will say that it [...]
[...] been a lot of talk on Bark about cool people. Here’s are video arguments [...]
Late to this party, but, meh.
Rick Moody has an essay called “Against Cool” from one of the Best Ams (94?) but I don’t remember where it originally appeared. Anyone read this? It’s been a while for me and I didn’t find it (in a very lazy search) online.
Bessie smith is the coolest woman in the workd as well as Patti smith. Other cool people Muddy Waters, B.B. King, Blind Lemmon Jefferson, Mark Rothko, Jean Genet, william burroughs.
clara bow is the coolest woman in the world.
For me, to be the coolest in the world implies that the world knows about you. So writers just don’t ever cut it. My first thought was, they have to be multi-talented. My vote is Frank Sinatra. He ruled music and added to what Jazz was. Girls swooned, guys wanted to be him. Cant say that about any writer. No matter how cool.
He also had his acting, which he definitely could fill the seats. And the whole Vegas thing. The New York thing.
He did it his way and it definitely was cool.
By the way, yes, men are WAY cooler than women and don’t let these self-absorbed ultra-feminist Yanks tell you otherwise. For example, why do men make better bosses and better leaders? Because they call their team their subordinates, exercise their legitimate authority, make their employees feel 2-feet tall, are neurotic and praise and thank in an artificial “I don’t really mean it, but corporate etiquette mandates that I say it anyway”.
Men, on the other hand, do not change personality as they move up the corporate ladder, treat their subordinates as they would anyone else (and are basically just looking for the job to get done), without needing to flex their given authority and resort to “I’m the boss” – they use charisma and natural instinct to lead. When one can work without monthly hormonal imbalances to worry about and the threat of the weekly emotional Jerry-Springer moment and without fear of sexual harassment breathing down your neck, is that not SO much better?! YES, it is. Especially when you have a stable personality to work for (whether upbeat, depressing or angry, at least it won’t change on you from day to day. A male boss will praise you whenever he truly feels you deserve it, and it is always clear that it is heartfelt, because men don’t feel the need to bullshit for little things, which women just don’t seem to understand, unless the BS will spare someone’s feelings. We don’t throw around congratulations just to appease some HR review board. Consequence? Our team feel like equal contributing useful members who are not treated like shit by their neurotic fake female boss! Even in the odd case where a certain female boss might be intellectually more capable for a certain leadership post, her utter lack of sincerity (especially corporate American women), power obsession and self-absorbed arrogance make for an environment in which employee productivity will diminish, thus annulling any edge she may have had over her male counterpart. Does it really make sense to sacrifice workforce morale for the sake of a little more brainpower? Absolutely not! Do you see why Bill will always make a better leader than Hilary!?! This is why SOFT SKILLS are being lauded as the “new thing”; ironically, it is WOMEN who think this is their area of expertise, where their emotional intelligence is meant to shine through. Ha! Try shining through the dark dank miserable grey atmosphere these same women create! Like shining a torch at a black hole. Whereas, even moderate intelligence, combined with a genuine smile and congratulations, relaxed interpersonal communication and a stable environment will outperform as a leader EVERY TIME!
What’s the point, do you ask? That there’s a reason men are cooler than women and why you see no women on your short(or long)list And it’s not sexist to say so, just a statement of reality!
Typo above: The first paragraph is speaking about WOMEN, in contrast to MEN who are discussed beginning in the 2nd paragraph. I tend to omit things in my stream-of-consciousness comments ; )
[...] the coolest person in the world, Patti Smith’s Just Kids won the National Book Award in nonfiction. Short excerpt here. [...]
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