..or do Facebook’s “recommended pages” not make a whole lot of sense sometimes?

..Avril Lavigne on ACID. What say you?

Today I’m pondering “cool.”

I don’t know why but it’s just been on my mind lately.

When we lived in Ashland, Oregon during the nineties we used to hang out in one of the coolest, hippest places in town; The Black Sheep pub on the plaza. One day I was having a beer at the hip and trendy Black Sheep bar while coffeesister was off shopping with her mom, and this attractive young lady came up and sat next to me.

She ordered a snifter of brandy and we got to talking. She told me that she’d just spent a week in Paris with her boyfriend, so I asked if they’d made it up to the top of the Eiffel Tower. I might as well have asked her if she liked cleaning outhouses, judging by the disdainful look she gave me.

“Why would we want to do that?” she asked. “That’s for tourists.” I was genuinely puzzled. “Okay, what were you?”

She excused herself to a table, taking her snifter away from me and my domestic beer, leaving us to wallow together in our hapless state of unhip.

I generally don’t mind being a tourist, as long as I’m not the kind wearing Bermuda shorts with white socks and sandals and three cameras dangling from my neck over a floral shirt. I have to maintain some form of dignity. But when coffeesister and I went to the top of the Eiffel Tower while in Paris for our 4th anniversary, it was one of the most memorable experiences of our lives. We had the observation platform to ourselves for about 20 minutes as we watched the sunset over the city of light.

This girl in the pub was too cool for that. I’m sure she went into the museums and fawned over the art, as did we. She probably sat at a few sidewalk cafe tables with her boyfriend, and they tried to blend in and not look like Americans while sipping their Espressos from tiny white cups. We did that too. But she’d rather be struck dead than be seen standing in line for tickets at the base of the Eiffel Tower, because that’s just so UN-COOL.

Some people assign a great degree of importance to being perceived as “cool,” while some others don’t give a damn what other people think. I’m kind of in-between I guess, but I try to lean toward the “don’t care what anyone thinks” side of it because, you know.. wistful nonchalance is cool, man!

Somebody Twittered on Twitter yesterday, saying, “I admit that I follow some celebrities.” Now, I don’t want to get onto a big thing about Twitter again, because Bubba will comment and tell me he doesn’t use it (for about the 5th time) and besides, we all know that you can get a blind monkey drunk on gin and let him have a go at your computer for ten minutes and he’ll STILL find eighteen blogs about Twitter.

I just want to ponder WHY the guy said, “I ADMIT I follow some celebrities” like he’s saying “I ADMIT I pick my nose and eat the boogers.” Hey, I follow some celebrities on Tweeter because they can be very entertaining. Kirstie Alley is a psycho-nutjob who tweets every minute or so when she’s on, which is almost all day long. My crush Alyssa Milano (so VERY uncool, I know) is as sweet as can be, while the top twitterer of the moment, Ashton Kutcher, is a prolific goofball. They’re all fun to read even if they don’t answer you (with the rare exception) because they each have about a million followers.

Yet it’s not cool to follow celebrities.

Here’s some more uncool, unhip and otherwise just plain embarrassing things you should know about me..

• I like Avril Lavigne.
• I want a Smart Car.
• I have two cats and no dogs.
• I hate sports (sorry, Alyssa.)
• While in Paris, I had a Big Mac at the McDonald’s on Avenue des Champs-Élysée.
• I don’t want an iPhone.
• I want an iPod but don’t have one.
• I’ll be fifty in a month.
• I don’t like wine.
• I’m a blogger.
• I was born in Stockton, California (armpit of the San Joaquin Valley.)
• I lived in Fresno for a time (armpit south of Stockton.)
• I cried at the end of Phantom Of The Opera (the stage version, not the movie.)

That’s all I can think of for now, but I’m sure there’s a lot more. If you know any other uncool, unhip things about me, then just comment below. Be gentle.