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The Cool and the Lame

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The Cool and the Lame

06.14.04 (7:15 am) [edit]

Since I never got to try on my new suit for the Griffin Literary Awards (I missed Adam at Union Station and saw The Saddest Music In the World with Lisa and Sou instead), I was itching to try it for a wedding that Lisa invited me to. (Here is a http://www.livejournal.com/us... to her account of the festivities.)

Which also meant that I had never worn my tie clip. Bonnie and I found it in a vintage shop. Ever the romantic, she wanted to engrave it with a tiny R where it crosses over the middle of the tie. The first five engravers she contacted wouldn't do it in the amount of time I had before I had to catch my bus (two hours). If the sixth wouldn't do it, as she put it, it wasn't meant to be.

Like all good details, the R is too tiny to see except from up close. It reminds me of how opera singers have elaborate costumes that most audience people won't see, but the details are what make their characters believable, especially to the singers themselves.

The wedding was in a modern-looking church in Newmarket. The ceremony was led by an Asian priest with a pronounced accent. When he read scripture, he sometimes corrected himself, which produced snickers in the audience. "Jackie Chan." During the first few audible comments, I looked back and realized that the congregation was white. The priest continued to read scripture and, as the rules go, the congregation would respond appropriately with the words they knew. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that the words were a kind of power the congregation bonded over, words that they thought the priest aped as a parody of an English-speaking person. I didn't sing with them--I didn't know the words--and when we sat down, someone said "She Bangs," and people for rows around couldn't keep themselves from laughing.

"Why weren't you laughing?" I was asked afterwards by a man who looked like a football player despite his burgundy shirt and tie. "We find all of these things funny--funerals, weddings, whatever. We like to have a good time."

I didn't have an easy answer for him. Guys (a constant conversation topic between Bonnie and I) have a tactic we call, "Cool Chick / Lame Chick." This is how it works: a guy (who often have a few buds in tow) makes a joke. This joke usually has to do with women. The woman in the group is then faced with a decision that may or may not be posed explicitly: is she going to be a Cool Chick (i.e. laugh along, whether she thinks it's funny or not) or a Lame Chick (i.e. not laugh along, explain why she doesn't consider it funny, squirm, or leave). If there is more than one woman in the group, then the decision becomes exponentially more difficult because each woman's decision acts as precedent for the rest of the women. In any case, the It's Just a Joke is the weapon of choice for the Laid-Back Guy.

Jim, let it be known, was not the only Laid-Back Guy at the wedding, but as a man with a neck as wide as a pigskin and a penchant for classic rock, he had adapted "Cool Chick / Lame Chick" nicely for Asians like me.

So when they requested "She Bangs" during the reception dancing, I sat it out. Don't get me wrong; I put everything into my dancing and people appreciate it. As the dancefloor filled, a number of the dancers our age would refuse to let me sit down. A blonde bridesmaid in red kept leading me by the hand to dance as I'd try to leave. A guy with spiky strawberry blond hair would give me the guy-bonding "props" gesture. Later, in his amazement, he said to Lisa, "I don't know how he does it. Maybe it's his clever Chinese feet."

The details are everything: you stay quiet because you're Chinese; you dance hard because you're Chinese. You're publishing your first book because you're Chinese; you're doing your Ph.D. in English literature because you're Chinese; every word you speak seems in contradiction to what others see in your skin: these are the details that others can't seem to see except from up close.

posted by: speakmemory (reply)
post date: 06.15.04 (8:22 am)

this is great, ray. i know exactly what you're talking about.

posted by: teatimeturtle (reply)
post date: 06.15.04 (2:37 pm)

What if she laughs along, but actually thinks the joke is in bad taste? Is that cool or lame?

I read Lisa's account and was infinitely intrigued by the thing that ended with a backflip.

posted by: evilturtlenecks (reply)
post date: 06.15.04 (7:54 pm)

Women who laugh along to something they don't agree with would be "Cool Chicks" according to this Laid-Back Guy game.

Laid-Back Guys sometimes ask questions that they know may make women uncomfortable. Which suggests that:

a) A woman is, according to this game, all the Cooler if she laughs along to something she is uncomfortable with.
b) The precise limit at which a woman will stop laughing is the limit of her Cool. Laid-Back Guys find this limit because it shows the extent to which Cool Chicks will agree to the terms of the game.
c) The Laid-Back Guy always has a way out of the game. It's called, "It's Just a Joke," and it's designed to make a woman feel lame (i.e. too serious).

posted by: teatimeturtle (reply)
post date: 06.16.04 (8:45 am)

It seems as though you paint these 'laid back guys' as awfully two-dimensional. Is it part of the lame guy (...oops, I mean 'laid back guy') persona to not care what the woman really thinks therefore thinking that she's cooler if she just goes along with whatever he says? Would it be cool (in the grand scheme of things) if the woman turned the tables and made the guy look lame? Obviously the lame guy wouldn't think this was too cool, but as Mr. Shumacher used to say 'We must always look at the big picture.' I think that the woman can trump the 'it's just a joke' card with the 'you're a jerk' card. If she can make the guy feel bad for making her feel bad, then she holds all the cards and can then maybe make him buy her something.

haha

posted by: kurmidt (reply)
post date: 06.16.04 (10:47 pm)

'you're a jerk' sounds too lame. i think she should say something cool like 'glad this ain't your wedding' or perhaps 'can you crush a can in that neck?'

posted by: evilturtlenecks (reply)
post date: 06.17.04 (10:28 am)

Teatime: You're right about the two-dimensionalness of my caricature. The Laid-Back Guy is an abstraction of real guy behaviour distilled from different situations. The important thing is to judge the extent to which this abstraction corresponds to real world guy behaviour.

I think Kurm's right: how easy is it to say, "You're a jerk"? Would it turn the tables? How does saying so fit or not fit into the rules of the Laid-Back Guy game? Ultimately, does saying, "You're a jerk" free women from being called Cool or Lame through this game?

posted by: Lisa (reply)
post date: 06.17.04 (2:55 pm)

Reply to: evilturtlenecks--since we're speaking in two dimensions...

I think LaidBack Guys want you to work within their system. The extent to which you participate in being a Cool Chick determines how successful they are at being a LaidBack Guy. The reason he wants to be such a Laid Back Guy is that he's insecure at his root.

This, of course, implies that he cares what the victim thinks, sometimes it's posturing for other members of the group.

The problem is that subtlety is not the Laid Back Guy's forte (see my post on Assholes at the Drake) and making fun of him only works if he understands that you are now the Alpha and he is Beta.

Otherwise, leaving the system is the better choice.

Other people don't want to admit that his system is corrupt because it implicates them, especially if capital letters are used to describe the behaviour (Racist, Sexist, Classist, Homophobic, Yuppie Asshole, etc.).

Capital letters scare people, especially when they don't really know what the terms mean.

posted by: Wanda (reply)
post date: 03.27.06 (3:46 am)

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