It is exactly 12.20 AM and I’m going to write about something.
I think I started to grasp what “cool” is when I was at a friends house- I was 8 or 9- and we were playing with his skateboard (I have never been on a skateboard since, or before. It was that one time). I was going down the hill on it with my knees trembling at the top of the skateboard like I was on a very small sort of boat, and then somehow I was on my stomach flying like superman.
What an American sort of story, I’m thinking to myself. Next up we’ll have cookies and homemade lemonade.
Of course, I’m not American so what happened next after congratulating ourselves was that we were invited back into my friend Tom’s perfectly inhuman house. I remember leather couches, and lots of white and metal. The kitchen I was fascinated with; this was when everyone in our town was going for white-washed appliances and wooden cupboards and such and such. And here was this kitchen with shiny, shiny black and silver knobs and silver fridges and dishwashers. They had a lemonade maker as well, but what’s going to happen next is not the drinking of lemonade but the drinking of a ginger ale as dry as it could possible be. I’m amazed it was a liquid. It felt like drinking towels.
And to go with the ginger ale was different cheeses all cut up very nicely, thank you very much. I remember the “leavers dinner” at the primary school I went to (ie. From ages 5-9. Or 5-10. Can’t remember) where the ladies put out all this cheese that nobody would eat. It was probably damn expensive too.
Nowadays I’m fond of putting expensive cheese onto pizzas. Camembert- though not really expensive- works well on it.
Anyway. So I’m sitting at Tom’s parents outdoor table and eating the win- ginger ale and cheese (honestly, I really wanted to say “wine and cheese” there. Where I live it’s so drummed into the poor, poor population that we “make the best wine and cheese around” that one can’t seemingly co-exist without the other. Like bobs-and-bits. And there’s another one too; now there’s “wine and cheese”. That’s the local authorities for you) feeling pretty sophisticated. You could throw on a jazz record of say, Thelonious Monk and it wouldn’t be out of place. The only music I remember hearing at Tom’s house was Michael Jackson, though. That was “cool” for us then too. It still is. It was all Thriller stuff, mostly- except the MIDI-ish ramblings on the Sega of “Moonwalker” of songs such as “Smooth Criminal”. The best part of that game is that you could throw off your hat- al la “Billie Jean” and just kill somebody. Just like that. WHAM.
I still have a tape of “Thiller” that I borrowed from him.

I wonder where that tape has got to. The case is probably dusty and Michael’s pristine white suit probably hasn’t seen the light of day in years.

Throughout the years “cool” has changed. I got into Jazz. Rock. That weird Japanese stuff of Tim’s that he sent me. More classical. Games that weren’t on Sega (I still remember Alex the Kid with fond memories, even though I have no idea what the hell you do in the game. I think you can transform into another creature or something. That could be a totally different game. Probably is. In fact- I played “Moonwalker” on an emulator last year- mainly to do the hat thing. It wasn’t the same).

Now “cool” is Bob Dylan’s ray-ban wayfarers and skinny jeans on a brunette. Beside her Miles Davis is playing “Summertime” and Coco Chanel is smoking at the side of a little table talking to a German man. Oh so noir.