IF YOU HAVE TO ASK IF YOU'RE COOL, YOU'RE NOT!

To be cool is to be many things. Hard to put into words, but if you've got it, easy to put into a suit or a dress. Cool is as cool looks.

To find the cool people you can check the Top Ten lists in TIME and PEOPLE magazine. But you won't find any hard and fast rules to the game. It's a vague notion first spawned by the post-World War II rich-and-famous. Eventually being rich-and-famous wasn't quite enough. Next they needed to let the world know they really didn't need to be rich-and-famous.

Now that's cool!

Cool as in Frank Sinatra's Vegas Rat Pack...the Kennedy clan...Jack Kerouac's Beatniks ...the Woodstock generation...Hugh Hefner's Playboy...the three-piece-suiters on Madison Avenue and Wall Street.

Consistent with human nature's eternal inconsistencies, today these are among the most un-cool. Today's cool can range anywhere from Paul Newman's Cool Hand Luke, to Clint Eastwood's flinty anger, to John Lennon's martyred music, to white teenyboppers' favorite Rap and Hip Hop artists like DiddyCombs, Jay-Z Carter, and Birdman Williams.

Clearly cool is a moving target. So where do most of today's young wannabe look for role-models? One place is the many cop shows on television where cool is the name of the game...where cool is how the good guys nab the bad guys...where you can pick up just the right swagger and repartee for the part. As in the patented formulas of CSI, Law & Order, NCSI, and Hawaii 50.

Check 'em out. Each has just the right role model for your wannabe cool. The cool-talking boss...the cool-looking chick...the cool but offbeat buddy...and the lab technician whose quirky ways are so uncool they're actually cool. Yep, they're all there in whichever program you wanna make your homework assignment tonight.

Just remember, though, history's biggest wars and baddest recessions were probably started by cool wannabes....!