It is better to be mad than cool

by cfmullen • Cool is no longer cool. Cool is now mad. However when used in combination with the word mad, followed by the word cool, cool is acceptable. In fact, it is mad cool. But let me reiterate, cool is not mad, anymore. • For as long as I can remember, cool was my go-to word. "That's cool," is the expression I used at every memorable moment of my life. It was the way I described everything from the edgy and iconoclastic, to the cute, charming or funny. "Cool." It was a word that even made me cool because I used it. • Truth be told, (and that's what we do here at DOT) I've done as much to destroy this once excellent word as any suburban housewife describing her new kitchen to her girlfriend: "You should see it, Carol. The granite counter is really cool." • Somewhere in heaven, Miles Davis flinches every time someone utters that word and marginalizes the expression that he and his coterie of jazz masters invented. They made cool, hot. • If I close my eyes, I can see a young Miles Davis dressed in a sharp, sharkskin suit, holding his trumpet, listening as Gerry Mulligan solos on his baritone sax. Mulligan, suave and serious, finishes. Miles nods and in his hushed, raspy voice, says one word: "Cool." Then he puts his trumpet to his lips and blows. And the world listens. His groundbreaking, The Birth Of The Cool, becomes one of the albums that will spin on the turntable in my brain forever. • Last week, I was on a bus when three young girls, high-schoolers, got on. Frenetic energy began flying everywhere. Loud conversation and exuberant shouts bounced off the windows. And there was that word. It punctuated every conversation. "Mad." "That math class (I swear they said this) was mad fun." "That lunch room was mad crazy yo."  "Did you check out her sneakers - those are mad laces.”  Everything was mad.  Except for me. I was cool, which as we have established, isn't. • It took fifty or so years to utterly obliterate the coolest word of the 20th century. So, the question is: When will the balding, middle-aged stockbroker, standing on line at Starbucks, turn to his friend and say, "You have to try one of those new pineapple cheese frozen Lattes. It's mad tasty."