HW 23 - 1st Constructivist Exploration of Cool

Questions About Cool
a. Is anyone cool to everyone?
b. Is anyone cool for a lifetime?
c. If you try to be cool, aren't you being uncool?
d. Is this mostly an uncool world with just a few cool people?
e. Can there be a whole room full of just cool people?

So, let me think about who is cool. Well, David Beckham seems cool. At least he is a cool looking guy I think most people would agree. He was cool when he scored a goal from the halfway line for Manchester United. He was even cooler when he scored an amazing freekick for England during the 1998 World Cupagainst Colombia. Then he became uncool when he was given a red card in the next game against Argentina, and England was knocked out of the Cup finals. He was hated throughtout England. People said he was stupid. He became cool again in the 2002 World Cup against Colombia. finals when he scored the only goal in a game to beat Argentina. Some people also thought he was cool when he married a Spice Girl. In spite of his very cool freekicks, most people think that Lionel Messi and Christiano Ronaldo are cooler football players. So, is David Beckham a cool guy? The answer seems to be sometimes he is depending on what he does. What I think I am trying to say is that David is a cool guy for his looks but not always for his actions. Also it would be hard for him not to know that he looks cool, and when you start to think you are cool, then usually that it is the beginning of the end of your coolness. You know the way an actor or an actress or a model gets this certain "I'm so cool" look, and everyone thinks "what a jerk."

So, who else is cool. Barack Obama could certainly be placed in that category. First black president of the United States. He is cool for his intelligence and for the way he goes about trying to include as many people as possible in whatever decisions he has to make. And the guy never gets flustered. He has the idiot right-wing conservatives giving him a hard time about evrything, even his birth certificate. There is this story I heard that perfectly illustrates his coolness. At a press confererence when he was about to answer a final question from reporters, he was trying to find a reporter who had not asked a question before. One of his aides told him to pick the baby-face looking guy in the back, and Obama pointed at him saying, "You, the baby-face one." Unfortunately for the reporter, his fiance subsequently dumped him, and he told friends that it might have had something to do with his having been embarassed by the President. The cool part about this story is that Obama was told what happened and found the time to call "babyface" and apologize to him for ruining his "game."

In the book The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian the main character Arnold(Junior) Spirit does not fit into the spectrum of "cool." His head is visibly larger then it should be due to a brain condition. He is a Native American boy who lives on a reservation where the older Indians see no future for themselves as they drink their lives away. Arnold goes quite a few miles away from home to an all white school that can give him a better education than that of the reservation high school. I guess I'm a sucker for a good underdog story. I thought it was really cool how Arnold was bold enough to make a move to an all-white school despite all the criticism he got from his friends and family on the reservation. And of course everyone at the new school gave him a hard time too. Arnold, showing great heart and competitiveness, joined the basketball team. When his new school played his reservation high school, it was demolished by Rowdy, his best friend and the school's best player, and the other kids on the reservation team. Later in the season his new school avenged that loss by murdering his reservation school. Arnold actually scored the first bucket of the game after he succesfully blocked Rowdy's dunk attempt. Arnold was very cool. At the very end of the book after all the dramatic events and emotional rollercoasters that came between Arnold and Rowdy's friendship, the two of them met on the playground and just played one on one for hours not keeping score. I really don't know a single cooler way to end a story then having a one on one basketball game with your best friend as the moon rises up and the streetlights come on.