Copy of Old's Cool = Old School + Wit.
How lasting and lovely is the shadow you and your recalcitrant buddies are casting on this world? Look at us–we're certainly throwing some shade!
(If you don't know what recalcitrance means, I wouldn't bother reading any further.)
Seriously, while we're still alive we're working hard to create wicked smart products and connections we believe in, live with courage and integrity, and stay eternally curious and present. While always urging ourselves to dream big, build a life, and make the love that's worthy of our own admiration. Are you?
Along the way we've realized that true success is simplicity, friendship, self-mastery. "The meaning of life is to find your gift," Shakespeare said. "The purpose of life is to share it with the world."
Look good. Have fun. Safety third.
Truth. Excellence. Beauty.
First day of kindergarten and the bus pulls up. It's me, my brother Tripp, and a couple of the neighbor's kids–Kerry and Brian Davin, and I think the love of my life, at least up until then, June Harrelson. I go to get on the bus first, because it's always me first, and who else is there?, when my brother grabs me by the scruff of the neck. I turn around and say "What are you doing?" He says "What are YOU doing? Ladies before gentlemen," and jerks his thumb to the back of the line. I'm about to say I don't see any ladies around here when Kerry and June walk past me, looking down at the fatuous twerp I was (and probably still mostly am) with disdain, and giving a wink and smirk at Tripp. I always hated him!
Should I make a silver fork in my mouth joke? Or should I just say I learned everything I needed to know before kindergarten.
I wanted to also mention an old-school friend Amedeo Panetta, a family man of integrity and old-world charm, who always understood the beauty in the real and the true. He was a jewelry maker, albeit costume, but had a fine designer's eye. He was also crazy about artichokes. One night he was telling me about flying on a piston-powered DC-7 Globemaster to Italy back in the late '50s. I asked him what it was like because I'd heard it was glamorous as hell; I'd also heard hellacious–dangerous, smoky, boozy, loud, and expensive.
He went to a drawer in the dining room breakfront and took this fork out. It's from his trip: a standard piece from an American Airlines 'Flagship' in-flight service. But damn, it's real silver. The finesse involved and attention to detail brings me close to tears. In my opinion, this subtle and gorgeous humdrum utensil perfectly embodies 'old's cool' in spirit and function. These are the archetypes of a classic, aesthetic, original, and principled everyday lovely life that we're striving for.
A Classic Call to Authentic Adventure.
We’ve created a brand that incarnates our ideals of authenticity, utility, and shoulders-back-and-to-the-wheel craftsmanship. The truth is kind of a side hobby. We're all about fun and games too.
So come join us on our naive, quixotic journey–we'll try, in our own inimitable way, to make every step taken full of interestingness and beauty, and, to kind of quote Woody Allen, "un-jejunosity."
Who's Johnny Mustard?
My folks bought a house in 1964 from the Cruikshanks, an old couple who left their dog Mustard behind since they were moving to a retirement home and couldn't take him. Because my middle name is John, my porn name is Johnny Mustard, according to the old-school rules:
middle name + first pet = porn name
I always thought it had a nice ring to it, and decided to use it as a pseudonym if I ever needed one. Which is kind of ironic because I headlined under my real name when I was actually making skin flicks back in the late '80s. I still remember the director yelling:
"Put some mustard on it!"
Just Do Wit.
We’d also like to introduce you to the jamocos, anecdotes, jokes and heroics that have inspired us throughout our worldwide mischief and misadventures, which we've gathered and edited into a three-volume collection of priceless, life-jolting wit and wisdom:
The Official Old's Cool Education I, II, & III – "The Smark Aleck's Guides to Life."
Stealing is the name of the game.
When we were living in New York City with three young'uns in diapers, we would invite friends over for a game of Scrabble. My son Neuman would sit in my lap for a while, start fidgeting, get really bored, and then try to eat the tiles (and might get to sink his teeth into one or two of them) before he would eventually fall asleep. I didn't realize it at the time, but wasn't that a perfect metaphor for the game we were trying to play?
Me: Neuman, don't touch Tripp's word.
Neuman: Mine!
Me: No, it's not yours, it's Tripp's.
Neuman: Want!
He was so insistent, it got me thinking–it must be human nature to take what doesn't belong to you. The light bulb went off: what would happen if you could steal someone else's word, at any time? And while I was at it, why not get rid of the board, and the complicated rules? How about a quick, nifty, cutthroat game that rewarded literate larceny, and guts?
One Up!–The Wicked/Smart Word Game was born, out of the mouth of babes, as it were.
