Coolest Motherfucker Alive

Gather round our round table of truthiness, where the Donnybrook Elite debate who wins the title of Coolest Motherfucker Alive. This time there were no parameters, except that the person should be alive, although I encouraged Donnybrookites to break the rules because we’re way too blue-blooded for them to apply to us anyway. You can vote on who you think is the Coolest Motherfucker Alive at the bottom, or leave it in the comments!

Bill Murray

Bill Murray is absolutely the coolest motherfucker alive. The man has built an empire for himself just based on how likeable/funny/charming/hilarious he is. He has eschewed publicists and agents alike, instead using the egalitarian methods of a Bill Murray hotline that everyone has to call. No one sees a Bill Murray movie for any other reason than Bill Murray; but now that he’s older, he rewards us with picking films that would also be good without him (i.e. mostly Wes Anderson films). That wasn’t always the case. Can you imagine the torturous redundancy of Groundhog Day being at all watchable with anyone less likeable than Bill Murray? That is how cool Bill Murray is. Or on the other end of the spectrum, with good films–can you imagine the subtle balance between hilarity and meaning in Lost in Translation without Bill Murray? He was perfect for the part. He’s captivating enough to be a screen stealer but still complements the film. Remember how he reacts when Margot is leaving him in the Royal Tenenbaums? Delivering the line “Well, I just want to die” before eating a cookie, with the emotion of someone who’s just lost their luggage, rather than their wife.

And now that he’s rich and famous, instead of retreating into a comfortable cloud of rich people shit, he has become a living legend: he is said to crash young peoples’ parties in Brooklyn, and surprises people on the street by coming up behind them and putting his hands over their eyes, yelling “Guess Who!”, and when they turn around he whispers “They’ll never believe you.” He has become immortalized as Zombie Bill Murray in Zombieland. At SXSW ’09, Bill Murray waltzed into the Austin bar Shangri-La with the RZA and the GZA, hopped behind the bar, and started serving people shots of tequila, regardless of what they ordered.

His zest for life is reminiscent of Hunter S. Thompson, who he’s played, by the way, in one amazing film you might remember called Where the Buffalo May Roam. There is no other contemporary actor who is so such a household name, yet so rebellious; Bill Murray is hands-down the coolest motherfucker alive.

- Angora Holly Polo

Tim Gunn

The one and only, Tim Gunn is definitely the coolest, most stylish, and most convivial motherfucker alive! The 57-year-old fashion consultant is the walking embodiment of quality, taste and style (and author of A Guide to Quality, Taste and Style). On first sight he’s lofty, but his genial laugh reveals how fun it would be to have a beer with Mr. Gunn. He’s refined; he’s discriminating; he has a name befitting of a 007 title. Tim Gunn is the epitome of calm, cool and collected. As evidenced recently, Tim Gunn can put you in your place without even raising his voice! He’s a mentor, he’s a philosopher, he’s cerebral; but more than anything else, Tim Gunn can completely destroy and reassemble a person’s ideas with little more than a squint of the face and a few words no more harsh than a feather.

Tim Gunn could be the gay James Bond (which isn’t so far off considering his father was an FBI special agent); he’s not afraid to kill a designer’s ego or stamp out the public’s opinion of a high-profile person. On Isaac Mizrahi: “He really is a terrible, terrible, terrible person.” On Alexis Stewart: “one of the angriest people I’ve ever met. [She] kept cursing under her breath in anticipation of her mother coming — ‘goddamn bitch,’ almost as if she had Tourette’s syndrome.” On Hillary Clinton: “I think she’s confused about what her gender is.” On Meryl Streep: “… she believes she’s too smart for fashion.” On the Kardashian’s Bebe Fashion Line: “I just think the Kardashians have an absence of taste and I don’t think that that should be perpetuated.”

Sure, there’re many reasons for fans of fashion and/or drama to watch any given episode of Project Runway, but there’s only two reasons that anyone should return season after season, and Heidi Klum is only reason #2. Liz Claiborne actually created a new position at their company in order to place Tim Gunn as Chief Creative Officer.

Here are just a few of the reasons Tim Gunn is awesome: He was a champion swimmer; he has a BFA in motherfucking sculpting; he went from being a kid who could hardly last a full semester in college to being credited with turning around the archaic curiculum of Parsons The New School of Design during an eleven-year run as Associate Dean; and in his own words: “I’ve made more bad decisions at 3 in the morning then I can list!”; “We are fabulous. We don’t have to meet anyone fabulous.”

- Father Guido Sarducci IV

Leonard Knight

Most of you reading this (if not all of you) are of something resembling what we’ll conveniently refer to as an “artistic” persuasion. Most likely this means that at some point you found something beautiful and from there tried to figure out why you found it so. What is the heart of aesthetics? Of allure? At it’s core, it is a matter of empathy. Further down than even that, it is a search for meaning. At the very bottom it’s a reason to wake up every morning. I doubt that any of us have truly found that yet, despite what we may believe.

And so you go on with your life, you learn, you build new additions to the house of good taste and remodel the rooms, you end up creating things yourself. The sad truth is that 99% of us will never find it and this cycle of aesthexploration will repeat itself until we die, unfinished and unfulfilled. I’ve wondered for a long time what the reason behind this is, why I feel the constant creep of failed, miserable potential in the back of my mind every time I put finger to key (or to string, depending on the case).

When I met Leonard Knight, I gained more ground towards avoiding the above fate than in all my years of writing, recording, performing and creating combined.

In the middle of the southwestern American desert there is a town that has been dying a slow death for fifty years. That town is Niland, California. If you drive down Main Street for several miles, the road ends – keep driving. Eventually you’ll get bored – there’s nothing to see out there, not even any strip malls. Just sand, desert, mountains, desolation. For a moment, you’re on the surface of Mars. Then Mars explodes in a primary color dream. Out of the bowels of the American wasteland erupts a monolithic cross crowning the top of a mountain, several stories tall, painted and sculpted from top to bottom in blinding reds, whites, blues and yellows. This is the holy mountain of Jodorowsky’s Spanish dreams realized in a purely American fashion, this is Salvation Mountain.

And on just about any given day you’ll find Leonard Knight, all 120 pounds and 92 years of him, scurrying like an ancient squirrel up, down, inside and out of the mountain he himself built with no electricity, no running water and temperatures in excess of 120 degrees on the daily. He was born in Vermont in 1931, served in the tail end of the Korean war, made a living as a guitar instructor (after being self taught) and spent years in both Nebraska and in the desert attempting to construct a hot-air balloon with the words “GOD IS LOVE” printed on it by hand. The balloon never flew. He gave up and decided he would spend a week constructing a concrete memorial to his efforts. Once he started building, he never stopped, and what was originally supposed to be a small remembrance to a time-consuming mistake (he spent about 14 years working on the balloon) grew into Salvation Mountain. As Leonard puts it, “I was just going to stay one week. It’s been a very good week.”

Leonard Knight is the truest example I have ever seen of what it is to be content, what it is to have purpose and what it is to live entirely on your own terms. No conversation about the coolest motherfucker alive is complete unless it involves Leonard. Here is a man who, in action, shows more grit and tenacity than anyone alive – how many 92 year olds do you know who can continue a decades long project in the middle of the scorched earth and approach living conditions unimaginable by most people with genuine joy? Go see Leonard. You’ll find him at his mountain, building, painting, smiling. He’ll greet you with a hug and a smile and take you for a tour of his creation explaining the entire process from start to finish. He’ll speak to you for hours about purpose, God, what it is to be truly happy and do it with a manner of speech and general demeanor that is both brilliantly profound and disarmingly simple at the same time.

“People call me an artist. I hope I’m not a counterfeit.”

Sorry, Leonard, but not only are you probably the only person alive today really deserving of that title, you also just happen to be the coolest motherfucker alive.

Interview with Leonard Knight, narrated by John Waters:

- Dr. Lazarus Helm

Kim Deal

No one exemplifies cool like Pixies’ bassist Kim Deal, playing the bass with a cigarette hanging out of her mouth. She’s one of the few people who actually makes smoking look cool, but when she smiles she positively glows. Kim’s adolescence is out of some teen movie. She and her twin sister Kelley were popular cheerleaders in high school who also had a full rock band recording setup in their bedroom by the time they were seventeen. Popular twin cheerleader rock stars! With their first band, the Breeders, Kim became really prolific in her songwriting.

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Kim Deal showed up to the Pixie’s audition without a bass, saying she’d never played the bass but it was still cool, she could learn quickly enough. And she did. When the band got successful she started fighting with Frank Black, wanting to explore her sound more, showing up late to shows–general rock star behavior. Yet in loudQUIETloud, you still want to side with her. She’s instantly likable. She’s headstrong in a bad ass kind of way. Plus, Frank Black is a dick. He is full of drama in interviews, he puts out too many albums that are indistinguishable from the next, and he releases gross sex albums even though he’s old and fat, and I hear he is terrible to work with from a label perspective. Don’t get me wrong, I love the Pixies, and Frank Black’s contribution to that band – the Pixies wouldn’t be the Pixies without him. But he is a giant douchebag. Kim Deal got fired from the Pixies, but that didn’t stop her career – then she recorded Last Splash with her twin sister Kelley, which went platinum and was a huge hit. Take that, Frank Black! Maybe you should have let her sing lead vocals on more than “Gigantic”!

Kim Deal is the coolest motherfucker ever. Even cooler-than-thou Portland band Dandy Warhols worship at the Kim Deal idol of cool in their song “Cool as Kim Deal.” Shouldn’t you?

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Editor’s note: most people named Kim are cool. This is a rule you should familiarize yourself with.

- Angora Holly Polo

Jon Hamm

Did anyone watch the Emmys red carpet pre-show? ‘Cause I did. I watched the whole damn thing. Hey, don’t judge me, judgy-pants.

Anyhoo, they interviewed Jon Hamm, who was there with his girlfriend of twelve years. And she was cute, but not, like, gorgeous, ya know? And she kind of took over the interview in this somewhat annoying way – I mean, it’s very obvious that we’re all here to see your boyfriend, lady, so why are you interrupting the interviewer and telling boring stories? But Jon Hamm was preciously gracious and interested in what she was saying, and it was just totally adorable to see TV’s biggest misogynistic badass being just a total gentleman with his girlfriend. OH and did I mention it’s his GIRLFRIEND? Not his wife. That means Jon Hamm is loyal and monogamous, but also totally counter-culture, which is totally cool!!!

Also, he’s DREAMY. He’s very good looking but seems to be just modest enough and realistic enough about it that you don’t want to punch him in the face. Like, he’s cute but would still shotgun a beer at a tailgate party. Even my boyfriend has a crush on him.

Also, he’s hilarious – did you see him when he played Liz Lemon’s boyfriend for those precious few episodes of 30 Rock?

Oh and also, he plays the lead character in that one tv show that seems to be getting a little bit of buzz from the critics for its motherfucking coolness.

- Ivvy Goldberg (ESQ., motherfuckers)

Bill Brasky

‘Nuff said.

- Angora Holly Polo

Julian Assange

Julian Assange, founder of Wikileaks. Supernerd and counterpropaganda vigilante. American intelligence agencies and the Obama administration — who, if you haven’t been paying attention, is happy to not only bury Bush administration lawbreaking in the catbox, but extend its rendition and surveillance practices — have their crosshairs on him.

A spurious rape charge against him in Sweden, timed right around his massive, classified AfPak war document dump, had no merits and was withdrawn. The document dump was a trumpet blast that could have torn through the warmed-over propaganda that passes for a national discussion about Operation Longer Than Vietnam Already. With the American media constantly distracted by right-wing memes (mosque controversy, anyone?) designed to get the hoopleheads excited for November balloting and happy to be complicit in this colossal waste, good thing for renegades like Assange, international whistleblower extraordinaire and coolest motherfucker alive — until some nameless assassin tracks him down. He’s doing the job our media won’t.

- Col. Hector Bravado

Woody Allen

Okay, so maybe he isn’t that cool anymore, but he’s still alive. There was a time when Woody Allen owned this planet. Or, at least New York. Which wouldn’t be very impressive except that he managed to transform the entire world into New York. It’s easy to watch his movies now and think about the Soon-Yi debacle, to watch him spin off into self-parody as he apparently directs Larry David or Kenneth Branagh (strange, but true) to act, basically, like Woody Allen. But this cat invented everything you all want now.

Tight pants? Check.
Hot mates? Totally. Diane Keaton in 1978? Sign me the fuck up.
Not owning a car? Old news (take that, bicycle kids).
Ironic glasses? That’s a Woody Allen trademark, sugar.
And he is a man of letters. Four books to his name.
You’re in a band? Cool. So is Woody. Jazz. Yup.
He’s a vegetarian.
He makes a movie a year. And has for forty odd years.
Neurotic before it was hip.
Has elaborate, consciously educated and urbane conversations about French Existentialism and Bugs Bunny. Often at the same time.

And he’s fucking funny as shit.

He stole Sinatra’s girlfriend. That’s right. Mia Farrow. All you rock-a-billy, retro, Mad Men loving, fifties hack folks keep it in mind: A skinny Jewish dude stole the Chairman’s girlfriend.

Coolest motherfucker alive by far.

And he got Scarlett Johanssen and Penelope Cruz to make out on camera. Just saying.

- Irving J. Silvertoad

Jay Smooth

Jay Smooth is the Coolest Motherfucker Alive. Why? Because he has brought legitimacy to the video blog…a medium, that is, by definition, a pathetic waste of time for both those who are self-absorbed enough to sit in front of a webcam believing anyone gives a shit what they have to say and to those fuckers who spend hours watching 15-year-olds rant on youtube. But the thing is, when Jay Smooth speaks, we should all be listening. Whether he’s ranting about celebrities falling all over themselves to defend Roman Polanski, defining and deconstructing the No Homo phenomenon, or perhaps most famously, explaining How to Tell People They Sound Racist, Jay Smooth’s carefully crafted videos give a thoughtful, progressive perspective on a wide range of topics.

And it’s not just his cogent arguments about music, culture, and politics that have me hooked: it’s his honesty and humility about how hard it can be to battle The Little Hater that keeps so many awkward nerds from creating art in the first place. Between his long-running radio show Underground Railroad, his recurring gigs with NPR, and his many speaking engagements, Jay Smooth has become quite the hot commodity, leaving illdoctrine.com (and, more recently, nildoctrine.com) sadly lacking in regular updates. But when he comes back around and posts yet another video apologizing for letting The Little Hater beat him down and promising to make videos more regularly, I fall for him all over again, because I have my own Little Hater, which is probably why this post is getting turned in at the last minute and also why there hasn’t been a Fucked Update in, like, a year or something.

- Cap’n Colleen

You

I feel like you and I have reached the point in our relationship where I can finally open up to you and tell you how I really feel about you. I am green with envy whenever you’re around. Why? Because, well, I think you’re the coolest motherfucker alive and I wish that you would offer a class at Colorado Free University to impart your coolness upon me. Look at you, sitting there in your Puma trainers, skinny jeans and faded Urban Outfitters unicorn t-shirt, with your carabiner key ring sitting in silence just waiting for the opportunity to clang out an alert that you have keys that go to something. The way you’ve chosen to tie that piece of rope around your waist instead of using a belt really sets you apart from all of us regular folk and pulls the whole look together. And how you finger through your iPhone apps and check-in at the local coffee shop with Foursquare makes me feel like there should be a position even higher than Mayor, just for you.

Whenever I straddle my Diamondback I secretly picture myself jumping on a vintage fixed gear cycle, riding alongside you to go drink PBR tallboys in the park and build up a good solid stink of sweat and Parliaments. Sorry…P-Funks. And might I say, that latest band you’ve been talking about that no one else has heard of is probably the best band out there right now. Your taste in music is impeccable and we should all be so lucky as to have your ears. And I truly admire the stance that you have taken against the meat industry, turning your back on the time-honored tradition of slaughter to go your own way, engaging in the far more humane vegan lifestyle. I’ve been remiss in stoking the flames of my palette with the things I enjoy the taste of, and I see this now. Henceforth, I shall deprive myself the pleasure of taste.

I secretly wish there was a way I could work three jobs for no money to allow myself the privilege of waking up at the crack of 11:00 every day with a stinging hangover, yellow fingers and teeth, with whatever hottie from the local bar was blacked out at closing time lying right next to me. It’s a lonely life for the uncool, I’ll tell you that much. While the uncool are busy looking around for someone to date, you’re going home with a different person every night. Meaningless hookups with random people whose names you don’t know or care to find out are much cooler than commitment and monogamy.

Please don’t let this confession of mine upset you. I know what a modest person you are, so I hope that this hasn’t stroked your ego to the point of mental ejaculation. But you really are the coolest motherfucker alive, and I’d feel terrible if I kept that to myself.

- Baron Chysler LeBaron

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