I Am DMX

Let’s talk about how uncool I am.

I am free and easy with the knowledge now: I am uncool. Always have been. I have always been a fleshy, glasses-wearing, Tolkien-reading little kid. I was an Eagle Scout. After a brief borderline-drinking problem period in college - and, really, who hasn’t had a moment of concern that they might be a problemed drinker - I settled into what I am today: calm and graceful in my uncoollness. Almost cool in my uncoolness. And no longer at all concerned about my drinking; I enjoy it too much.

Which is good, because being cool is so time-consuming, it’s the only thing cool people can manage. Being cool is a full-time occupation, and it ain’t worth it, because the only people doing anything worthwhile are uncool people like me (and you, since you’re reading this - no cool people would bother with this low-rent web site, suckers). It’s true. Take actors. A lot of actors are paragons of cool: Jack Nicholson, Brad Pitt, Robert DeNiro, et al. But really, what do they do? They mouth words written by someone else, and they take direction from someone else. Their contribution to films is arguable. I can’t wait until digital technology replaces these fatuous assholes with CGI actors, and Ben Affleck can get back to drinking himself to death in privacy like the rest of us.

Being cool is all these fuckers can manage, there’s no time for anything else. There’re exercise routines to keep their impossibly buff bods. There are endless promotional appearances to keep their names in print. Then there’s the endless scramble to be in hit movies to keep their profile high. That doesn’t leave a lot of free time. Oh, sure, what free time they have is spent doing drugs and having sex with hookers on their private planes - you know, cool shit - but there ain’t much of it. Certainly not enough to put out a zine.

It’s uncool people like me who put out zines. We have to, because the cool people can’t.

When you start thinking about it in that context, you start to realize that cool people - truly cool people - don’t do anything worthwhile, and the whole bunch of them could probably be shipped off to some sort of horrifying-but-satisfying cool concentration camp and the world wouldn’t miss a beat. Every single person in this world doing something worthwhile is simply not cool - whether they are doing something artistic or not, whether they are famous or not. Because when you do something worthwhile with your time, when you put honest effort into things, you open yourself up to humiliation. Cool people don’t ever do this. They can’t - humiliation melts cool.

Some might say that Rock Stars are cool - sure they are, or at least many of them are - but not the ones actually making listenable music, if you ask me. Every rock star who was more than just a pretty face acting cool has embarrassed themselves simply because they have overreached their cool quotient - there has been at least one public moment when they did something uncool (like express emotion, attempt to understand the cosmos and express that understanding, or, perhaps, dance). Anyone who attempts to do something with their lives will eventually, inevitably, do something uncool. It’s the way it is. I do about four uncool things before breakfast.

To be cool is to be immobile, static, forever. Movement just invites a stumble, speech just invites a stutter. Thought invites mistakes. The cool among us avoid all these things carefully. The rest of us, having nothing to lose, actually do things.

That probably sounds arrogant, me saying that I’m one of the fucking coffee achievers while someone like Brad Pitt is a completely useless member of society who could easily be processed into food for the third world children and never ever be missed. But think about it, if someone ran up to you tomorrow and said “Brad Pitt just cured cancer!”, what would your reaction be? If you said anything besides ‘uproarious laughter’ I feel sorry for you and anyone who might rely on you. Now, you don’t know anything about me, really, so if someone told you I’d cured cancer, you might smirk and say “Get the fuck out of here!”, but there would be a kernel of doubt, admit it. That’s the difference: cool people are 100% incapable of anything worthwhile. Uncool people, while they may never do anything worthwhile either, are capable of it.

SO, while I sit here chortling as Britney Spears’ album sales plummet over the next few years, until her eventual Playboy centerfold and possible arrest ten years from now, I know one thing for sure: she and her ilk might be cool right now, but they’re useless. Gives me a warm little glow in my heart. So, overall, I don’t regret my uncoolness, and don’t fret about being cool much anymore, it’s much better to be someone who actually does things. This realization and comfort-level doesn’t prevent me from being uncool, of course, which is the other reason I can actually do things that matter, while cool people can only exist as empty vessels: shit happens to me, yo. I’m still going to be that dorky kid who can’t come up with a good comeback in time, or who chooses to parrot some inner-city slang with exactly the wrong level of irony and come off as a shithead. These horrible events now get put through the bullshit machine and emerge on the other end as the bitter, largely humorless rants appearing in The Inner Swine.

On the other hand, cool people go through life without these sorts of scarring moments, and emerge on the low end of their existences smooth, unmarred, and completely uninteresting. You can almost imagine their diary entries: 

I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again: happiness is boring. Suffering is interesting. Cool people have too smooth a ride to have anything interesting to say, and when they get it into their pretty little heads to try and disprove that statement, my entertainment levels shoot off the charts, because it means we have another Richard Gere on our hands. You might think that when someone like Mr. Gere makes an ass out of themselves, that would melt their cool, right? But you see, for cool to melt you have to be sufficiently deep enough to realize you’ve been humiliated.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go wait for the abusive emails about this column to start coming in, so I can feel the familiar burn of humiliation, and know that I am better for it. Until next time, kids, drop me a line if you wish, and I remain