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I'm not cool.
I used to think I was cool, but I have been taught otherwise in the past couple of weeks by a couple of guys named Tarantino and Rodriguez.
In a pair of hour-and-a-half long lessons, Quentin and Robert have shown me that I will continue on this trend of non-coolness until I acquire some, if not all, of the following:
1) A really icy way of staring people down
2) Many shades of black clothing
3) Enough firepower on my person to annihilate every living thing in the Brazos Valley.
My first lesson was given during the vampire shoot'em up flick From Dusk Till Dawn, which I saw a couple of Fridays ago.
The following Friday, I partook in a showing of Desperado.
Here's what I learned from the two films: if someone talks bad about you, you shoot him. If someone looks at you funny, you shoot him. If someone sees you eyeing his unbelievably beautiful girlfriend, you shoot him and sleep with her later.
Such were the morals preached by leading men George Clooney, Quentin Tarantino and Antonio Banderas.
I carefully took notes as Clooney spat out one-liners while drilling holes in Mexican bloodsuckers.
I ripped off Post-It notes and stuck them on my jacket as Banderas magically made two pistols appear from his sleeves before shooting up a podunk saloon.
I dropped my pen and shouted at the screen, "Ay de mi!" when the gorgeous Salma Hayek danced for Tarantino.
Upon returning home, I processed the information and decided to copy the successful ways of these stars of the silver screen.
Hell, I was prepared to pawn my senior ring and my Volkswagen in exchange for several black suits, a guitar case and a few serious hand cannons.
I decided to make the debut into my new life the following Monday. I figured I'd wake up early, run out to the military depot store for some new toys and be on campus in time for my 9:10 class.
That night, I slept fitfully and dreamed of my life to come. It went a little bit like this ...
I awoke early, slipped on my off-black jacket, a white T-shirt and tossed back my long hair into a crude ponytail.
The exotic dancer I brought home the night before was gone, but her lipstick message on the bathroom mirror left nothing to the imagination.
I loaded up my backpack with the fake bottom full of ammo and smaller weapons and stepped outside to hitch a ride to school.
Halfway down the block, a Traditions bus stopped for me. The driver opened the door and called out to me, "Howdy! Need some help?"
I stepped on the bus, slid the .44 Magnumn out of my ear and shot the driver in the face.
"Thanks," I replied, "but I think I'll just help myself."
I surveyed the rest of the passengers on the bus. Most were either puking their guts out, scrambling out the windows, or giving me a horse-laugh for murdering the driver.
One lady caught my eye, and I stared her down.
She looked right back into my eyes and sashayed her way to the front of the bus.
"Need a driver?" she asked breathlessly. I nodded coolly; things were looking up. As she drove us down Texas, I got a call that there was a bomb on the bus and if we went below 50 miles per ... no wait, that's another story.
The woman dropped me off by the Bus Stop Snack Bar. It wasn't open yet. I shot the nearest person out of frustration while my stomach growled.
I went around the back of the Reed McDonald building. There, a PTTS officer was giving a ticket to a woman who was having a baby in her car.
I let him be. Anything that evil can't be killed by conventional weapons.
I walked into The Battalion newsroom to find an irate freshman looking for me, wanting to bitch about a sports column.
The freshman was screaming at the clerk on duty for being slow and told her to "shake a leg".
I pulled the .357 I had stashed in my nose and shot him in the knee. I cracked his lower leg off and shook it front of his face as he collapsed.
The clerk stared at me and began to say something. I silenced her with a piercing gaze from my smoldering baby blues and kissed her passionately.
"You're welcome," I whispered and walked away.
I awoke in a cold sweat and realized the killing thing just wasn't my cup of tea.
Could I shoot a man in the head just for cutting me off in traffic? Wasn't giving him "the other famous Aggie hand signal" just as satisfying for me?
I struggled out of bed and looked at myself in the mirror. I remembered the scene in Dawn where Tarantino gets a bullet through his hand. I thought back to a football game three weeks before when I had sprained my foot.
I still complained about the pain 21 days later; Tarantino had gone back to shooting his gun 15 seconds after his wound.
Then I flashed to the scene in Desperado when Banderas shoots banditos behind his head, behind his back and through his legs.
I can't make a free throw.
If I try to shoot someone behind my back, I'm going to shoot myself in the ass.
It's useless.
I'd still like to date Salma Hayek though.
