Tupac vs. Shakespeare. Jews vs. Arabs. Enron vs. California. South Ossetia vs. Russia. John Galt vs. James Taggart. Reagan vs. Responsibility. Thousand Oaks vs. Victorville. McDonalds vs. The World.
Above are the greatest battles the world has ever know. The title of this post is THE greatest battle the world has ever know. Some might say then the former (which is below the latter orientationwise) wholly contains the latter. Or that the latter is a subset of the former (the reference which is below the other referred to situation). This might result in some sort of very acute topological discrepancies for the more educated reader. If you agree with the former or latter statement contained in this paragraph (heretofore "the Twilight Zone") then I would say skip the remainder of the paragraph. If you subscribe to the Twilight Zone train of thought then I present to you the following: you may or may not be right depending on if Bush really did lie, and the people really did lie.
Now to the task at hand. Justin Timberlake (heretofore "JT") and John Mayer (heretofore "JM"). These two guys exhibit two qualities that will allow me to frame the debate:
1) Are amongst the "coolest" people in the world
2) Partly because of 1), live fantasy lives
They, amongst alot of people, do not live lives that are in any way similar to the lives of myself or any of you readers. This is a function of many things that I will not go into at this time, but we can assume that they greatly influence the ability to become cool. JT is an all american guy in that he has a very light, funny, and congenial personality and reputation. Most of the pictures you see of him in the magazines and at public event he is flashing the pearly whites or making jokes and chumming it up in interviews. JT is an entertainer in a pure sense. On the Kim Kardashian scale he has a much higher rating than JM does. JT is not "great" in any true artistic sense other than being an entertainer and producing successful popular products. It is widely agreed in many a community that artistic ability and commercial success have a correlation coefficient that hovers around -0.723449. This tells us, in fact, that the less popular you are, the more truly artistically talented you tend to be, on average. JM breaks this mold, however. He is a true outlier in that he is widely heralded as one of the greatest guitarists of the current generation - and is commercially successful. JM is also widely heralded as being something else: a huge douche bag and womanizer. Even with that being said studies show that 93.371% of women over the age of 15 who are both: 1) alive and 2) in a non-medically induced coma would sleep with him. This indicates a HEAVY premium that the market has placed on his coolness. JT is always doing some sort of project - music, movies, tv - while it appears JM's attitude toward his life is more concerned with being "himself" and that money will be made either way. The fact pattern of JT's life show that he goes out of his way more than JM in order to make his money - which is never cool. Giving the appearance of working hard has a strong negative impact in most models of coolness. Another great metric we can look at is mean(smiles/day). The data tells us the JT has damn near a value of 11 - while the data also shows us that JM hasn't smiled in almost 13 years. Das tite.
From the above we can extrapolate a conclusive decision that JM is cooler and better at life than JT. There may be better metrics to look at that I have (knowingly) skipped, so please provide your own data in the comments section.
Thank You.
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ReplyDeleteOne metric you did not consider is that JT has not made relevant music in the past couple years and he sucks as an actor.
ReplyDeleteAnother metric you missed is that JM consistently blows trees, gets money. In my estimation, this is the most important metric and cannot be overlooked. Additionally, due to JT's love of "always doing some sort of project - music, movies, tv" he has saturated the market with him image. If you refer to the Saturation Curve attributed to Dr. Weinsteinbergowitzgreen from 1996 it will show that the more saturation there is a negative correlation with coolness.
On a kind of related note, I noticed that the poll has changed. There is now only 1 voter who believes "Things" will reach a 9th follower. Someone has been following the blog recently and has apparently decided it is not going to reach that elusive 9th follower. A dark omen indeed.
ReplyDelete@ DR/1: Please see movie entitled "the Social Network" - fantasy.
ReplyDelete@ DR/2: Can't explain that fact...but have a feeling it has something to do with Bu......
Who is John Galt? perhaps may answer the question.
ReplyDeleteBTW, "The Social Network" was doodoo. Eisenberg and JT were awful in that. The plot line sucked too. I mean who wants to see a movie about litgat...
ReplyDelete@ Mr. Renob: I'm not sure what litgat is, but I believe the greatest cinematic masterpiece of this century or any other, otherwise known as "The Social Network", is truly the high watermark of Western civilization, and your crass remark that this holy film was "doodoo" is nothing but that sir, doodoo.
ReplyDeleteThe drama, the love, the esprit de corp which is so evident in every scene is so palpable that I get aroused just thinking about it.
@Mr. Me: I'm not sure how Mr. Me Big Bad Blog Master came up with his silly little theory that JM is better than JT, but it is nothing but a bunch of right-wing malarkey. Need I remind Mr. Me of the cinematic triumphs Alpha Dog and Black Snake Moan, not to mention the audio orgasm that is FutureSex/LoveSounds?
What has JM done except an interview that shows his inherent bigotry and get a silly arm sleeve? I can answer the question for you right now, nothing.
@dinky: you're nothing but a h8r. a real h8r.
ReplyDelete@all: i think this debate is lacking. The assumption that JT and JM are #1 and #2 is weak. let me walk you through a quick thought experiment and then u can tell me who is "cool". what is one thing that everyone likes? ice cream. what is another thing that everyone likes? sports. who do we admire and worship more than anyone (excl. obama and goldblum)? athletes. that brings me to a recent article in GQ about the coolest athletes ever. narrowing this list to athletes currently competing, leaves us with Tom Brady and Tim "The Freaky Franchise Big Time Timmy Jim" Lincecum. Now Brady is pretty cool. Very handsome - rich - successful - charming - respected - flowing hair - sweet dance moves- supermodel wife - kids....what wait? he's got wife and kids? that shit aint baller! thats not "cool". therefore were left w a 5'10 165 weed-smoking fifa-playing stringy-haired bucktoothed pacific northwesterner called Timothy. This is simply the logical answer using the scientific approach.
@ All: One of my top 5 favorite movies is Alpha Dog (actually not even kidding). This definitely adds points to cool factor because it is a hipster thing to say that one of your favorite movies was not a commercial success. And JM is cool precisely because he does nothing but be cool most of the time.
ReplyDeleteErrata: Kelly Slater is also an active athlete named by GQ. but he only made something like $500k this past year (see ESPN the magazine most recent edition) so that shit aint baller or cool at all.
ReplyDeleteTo give a female's perspective, I obviously determine a man's coolness based solely upon how much I do or do not want to sleep with him. If JT were to approach me and say, "Hey Nina, forget about that Asian guy in the Middle East. Let's have babies until the end of time!" My response would probably be, "Bryan who?" (Just kidding Bryan! I miss you! Come home soon!) On the other hand, if JM approached me in the same manner, I would probably say, "My boyfriend's helping support our troops! Do you hate America?!" Based on these reactions, I would say that the winner of the JT vs. JM debate would definitely be JT.
ReplyDeleteThat being said, athletes are by far cooler than any other human beings on the planet. Any combination of even moderate attractiveness, skill and earnings will cause an athlete to easily trump both JT and JM in the coolness/"girls want to sleep with them" department.
A female's perspective! Something "Things" and some would say, my life, is really lacking!
ReplyDeleteI think a female perspective, or even the mere presence of a female, in Falstad's life would do tremendous things for his confidence and life in general.
ReplyDeletefalstad has not spoken to a live woman outside of a chatroom since 9/11.
ReplyDelete