Answer 127 - Because they're pretty and make a pleasing sound

I don’t like martinis. I occasionally drink martinis because the glasses are fetching, however impractical. Vermouth is a nasty concoction and only a real-deal alcoholic could possibly enjoy the taste of chilled straight vodka, no matter shaken or stirred.  No, it’s the glass and the stuffed queen olives from Spain. It’s a statement. It says I’ve probably seen some college, can quote at least one Dorothy Parker quip, know the names of the members of the Rat Pack, and may or may not have at some point or another watched an Audrey Hepburn film. Whether I consider myself a fan is inane; it’s the knowledge of her position in the pop culture/fashion pantheon that counts.

The martini says I know cool. I may not be cool, but I know what it looks like.

For one thing, cool is taller and thinner than I am - with the dubious distinction of being utterly enigmatic, in that, the second it acknowledges its existence, it ceases to exist.

Though you may be white-hot cool, you can't refer to yourself as cool, nor can others.  Once the press or any public figure actually refers to you as cool, it's over.  You suddenly become un-cool. 

Ultra-cool involves absolute apathy toward outside opinion of any sort, while walking the perilously fine line of never, ever in any way, considering yourself to be the thing that you are.


   That's where the Hipster contingent failed and faded - the exterior appearance of cool firmly in place, because no self-respecting Hipster would ever make the aggregious error of the cool self-reference - but they somehow forgot that, with ultra-cool comes responsibility.  Though Audrey Hepburn was and is about the hippest, coolest thing walking, in and out of her time, she acknowledged the existence of the uncool - and not in sullen and disdainful condescension (ala Hipstereeze), but rather, in the way the Queen acknowledges her subjects - with genuine affection.

Further, she could put a full, coherent sentence together that didn't involve pop culture kitsch, and if she did spend hours a day looking at herself in every reflection - she most likely didn't spend hours a day pretending not to look at herself in every reflection.  The Hipster contingent announced, proudly, in sullen silence, it's ultra-cool, while apathetically refusing to acknowledge the announcement, nor the ears upon which the announcement fell.  And then, all in an instant (cup of Sanka) lost it.  The cool, that is.


Why are we so completely drawn to this house cat sensibility?

To complicate matters, everyone knows that house cats dislike most everybody, and are, in turn, only drawn to the people that dislike them, ignore them, or pretend they don't exist. 

I have to believe that cool is a step in the evolutionary journey that is human civilization. To where, I don't know.

But then again, Glenn Beck is gaining popularity.  It's conceivable that the Evolution button is on pause.

Still.. once in a while, I will drink a martini (two at the most. three I'm under the table and four, I'm under my host).  And pretend I'm Dorothy Parker, lounging like I just don't care...