On James Campbell and Being Cool

The greatest thing about the Fringe Festival, is that you’re right in the very thick of all of the artists you have just seen onstage in the bathroom, on the streets, pubs, clubs, and all the rest of the biggest little city in the world (sorry Reno). I had a chance to briefly meet James Campbell, the author of Coffee yesterday and have to confess to being at least superficially impressed by his particular brand of cool.

In my mind all cheerleaders should be blonde, all politicians crooked, and all playwrights should darkly pace outside the theater while talking into their cell phones, drinking white wine, and smoking. For beginners, legitimacy might also be increased if one periodically rubs their temple, as if in pain from either a migraine or a deep, tortured, soul. If James had been on an advertisement selling Camel Cigarettes, I would already have black lung disease.

I also believe that anything said with a British accent is entirely more intellectual. My sole ambition (will be contradicted in the near-to-immediate future) is to learn how to passably fake it. Some form of Anglo-idolization has been present throughout American history. Though textbooks do not speak on the subject, there must have been people on the shores of Boston in 1773 who resented the waste of all that jolly good tea.