Smoking Is Cool

By Dan Keston © 2008

"Smoking is not cool it just makes you look bad in front of your friends."
– Wilford Brimley, "One to Grow On", National Broadcasting Company.

I was watching "The Smurfs" on a Saturday morning back in October of '82 and here was the deal: Handy Smurf had a crush on Smurfette, because she was the Smurfiest Smurf around. Now I don't know if Handy was afraid to explain his feelings to Smurfette because he had social anxiety disorder, or if it was genital herpes, or if he just felt that in a town with only one female the local smurf handyman was unlikely to outsmurf the local smurf doctors, smurf lawyers, and smurf hedge fund managers - I don't know – but when NBC cut to commercial the big cliffhanger was that Handy (yes, the pining lonely smurf in town was named Handy) was debating whether or not to profess his love.

Commercial one was a PSA that began on a playground in Anytown, U.S.A. In the spot, a bunch of youths are playing handball when one boy calls out to his friend from behind the bleachers. Hidden from view are three boys passing around a Camel Light, coughing violently every time they inhale (of course). They subsequently try to persuade the fourth boy to partake, but he wisely says no and runs back to the handball court. We then cut to Wilford as he delivers the goods the way only Wilford can - "smoking isn't cool, it just makes you look bad in front of your friends."

I probably should have realized then that if Wilford Brimley is proclaiming that smoking is "not cool," then chances were it really "is cool," but I was nine and easily duped. However, as time passed I realized that not only IS smoking cool but it is as cool as the left side of a McDLT.

I say this as a native of Los Angeles, a place where smokers are only slightly more respected then pedophiles and slightly less respected than Beth from the Real World. Here you cannot smoke in restaurants and you cannot smoke in bars; and if you want to smoke at work you have to walk outside away from all other coworkers and covertly inhale inside the quarantined "smoke-friendly" area/leper colony. I mean really... is smoking this bad?

Let me interject here by saying that I am not a smoker. I do not "puff" at parties, I do not "take a drag" by the bus stop, and I do not "enjoy a butt" while hanging at the local mall. Overall, I am happy to leave restaurants not smelling like smoke and I am a proponent of clean air. Yet as a non-smoker even I find it offensive that you can't smoke in a bar. It is a BAR. If you don't want to load your system up with toxins, why the hell are you going there anyway? Go ride your pony to see Enchanted and leave Smokey McAdams be.

My second question for you smoker haters would be this, "Do you really think it is fair that tobacco companies have to spend THEIR OWN MONEY supporting ads that say how terrible their product is when beer and liquor ads do not? Joe Simpleton sits at home and watches commercials during his favorite show ("Two and a Half Men") and gets this message from commercials – drink 27 Budweiser's and you will frolic forever in a land of beautiful models who want to have sex with you - or - smoke a cigarette and die a horrible death with lung and throat cancer alongside the lab rat who warned you not to smoke in the first place. This, my friends, is bullsheezee, and not just for the fraudulent health claims. It is bulsheezee because in reality it is the cigarette, and NOT beer, that makes you look cool.

As a man, I truly believe that if you feel comfortable walking down the street with a Coors Light in your hand then you probably feel comfortable wearing your fraternity letters well past your 35th birthday. I also believe, contrarily, that walking down the street with a cigarette in your hand makes you look suave, debonair, independent and just aloof enough to be mysterious. When I was living in New York I would sometimes dangle a lit cigarette in my hand even though I had no intention of smoking it. When I went to a restaurant alone I would sit outside and smoke while waiting for my food and it would look like I CHOSE to be there by myself to enjoy some alone time with my Kafka hardback; without Joe Camel, I was just another lonely guy ordering Teriyaki take-out because he couldn't find someone to eat with. "Hey ladies, how are you doing tonight... okay then, guess not."

And speaking of ladies, do I need to say that women look sexy when smoking? Obvious phallic undertones aside, any man worth his salt knows that a girl smoking a cigarette is just a more respectable version of a girl with a lower back tattoo. She gets you thinking about the same things only she'll serve it up with a side of existential conversation, cool enough to know that even though she is going to taste like a commoner's ashtray if she makes eye contact with you from across the bar it is not going to matter to you what she’s been inhaling. Not even a little. Not a single bit.

Listen up, big tobacco. Don't feel bad about promoting your image and don't feel guilty about counting your fortunes on the porches of the massive plots of Carolina land upon which you once enslaved men. While you are responsible for lacing your product with arsenic, you are not responsible for the people who smoke it. For goodness' sake America, if you think cigarettes are bad for you don't make the companies that sell them run self-deprecating ads. JUST CHOOSE NOT TO SMOKE!!!! Take some responsibility for your life and stop blaming Uncle Phillip.

You know where I stand. I think smoking is cool.


Dan Keston is currently an independent film producer in Los Angeles. He has made, bought, sold, and written many things, including cigarettes.

15 Seconds

By Dan Keston © 2007

This year I accomplished one of my life's goals when I got a movie into competition at the Sundance Film Festival.

With minimal experience and a microscopic budget, I found a way to make a movie about kids and guns that was not only interesting enough to be one of sixteen selections out of five-thousand entries at the most prestigious festival in the world, but also the topic of a story on NPR and the lovechild of the largest gun lobby in Washington. And outside of the excruciating experience of watching this disturbing film with my parents (and subsequently my wife's parents) and the less than stellar reviews of film critics, the approval of Midwestern teenagers and the division of Lionsgate that bought it made me feel that this MIGHT just be one of my fifteen seconds of fame.

Or at least it was a MIGHT until, during a party that was kicking into gear at about 2:00AM on the first Saturday, P. Diddy, Mos Def, Pharell, and Damon Dash, while rapping on stage, started simultaneously chanting the name of my movie to the crowd while the crowd screamed it back. That was the moment when the MIGHT became a SURE.

Now a few weeks later, with the Park City dust and my nerves all settled, I can't help but think about all of the things that have happened in my life and, more importantly, how many of my fifteen seconds I may have already used up.

Conversely, I wonder how many I might have left.

I know that I used up a second during the 1984 AYSO soccer city semifinals, that's for sure. As the star center forward on the Meteors and goal scoring L'Enfant terrible of the Pacific Palisades league, I was so good that one of the coaches in the junior league sent his cadre of 8-year olds to watch me play so that they could learn how to score. It was wonderful – not necessarily wonderful to peak athletically at 11 – but wonderful to be honored for my prowess at such as a young age.

Anyway, it was a still a one – one tie in the semis with Culver City after overtime, so despite our "2-4-6-8-who-do-we-appreciate" effort it came down to penalty kicks. Squared at four PKs apiece, it came down a single last kicker. Me.

It was surreal. I think Bette Midler's "Wind Beneath My Wings” was playing. The only motion was slow. I looked left and shot right. The goalie let out a fractured nooooooo!!!!! but it was too late. The team rushed me. The Meteors had moved on.

But a second was gone.

I also remember being 16-years-old and sitting on a beach in Antigua with a half-naked girl named Tara. I was there for the summer with eleven other American kids, helping the tiny island rebuild itself after Hurricane Hugo. All morning I would build fences and dig ditches (which is odd because I am Jewish), but in the afternoons, we had free reign over the isolated, endless beaches that stretched back and forth across the coast (before massive hotels would take it away).

Tara was half Indian, half hot something else. Who cares, I don't even remember. What I do remember, however, is sitting alone behind a dune with nary a soul anywhere in sight and an entire beach to myself making out with my first love.

That had to be a second, too.

Then there was the day when the advertising agency I was working for asked me to kill the Taco Bell dog (people liked the Chihuahua but the commercials made them think Taco Bell was dog meat, which of course, it is). How f-ing cool is it to be the guy who killed the Taco Bell dog?

I'd say one second cool.

And this year, at some point, my wife is going get pregnant and then have a baby - which I'm sure will be absolutely "magical" - and if I don't appropriate a second for that I'll never hear the end of it.

That's five seconds right there…almost gone. And as I relish my Sundances, score my goals, kiss my loves, kill my icons, and raise my family, I gain memories that make me happy but ultimately sadder because one-by-one I lose my dreams... they become experiences... and will never happen again. At least not in the same way.

I have 15 seconds. The countdown has begun.

Dan Keston is a writer from Los Angeles, CA.

If I Was Homeless I'd Live In Los Angeles

By Dan Keston © 2006

When I was younger, I used to live in an apartment building in Greenwich Village, and every morning I had to step over a different huddled mass on my doorstep in order to get to work. I never saw their faces; all I saw were the twitching feet slightly exposed to the blistering wind chill, and the hodgepodge of knickknacks that each person had accumulated from the previous day. Some people feel sorry for homeless people and want to give them money. Others feel disdain for the stranded, wishing they would go away. I, however, just walk by and wonder, “Why don’t these people move to L.A.?”

I know that people don’t choose to become homeless, but I can tell you that if I was, the first thing I would do is stick my thumb in the air and catch a ride out west. Out here, it rarely drops below sixty. There are buildings-a-plenty in which to crash. And let’s be honest: if you walk around looking a little ratty but hold your head high, chances are somebody is going to think you are an actor just trying to keep a low pro.

Don’t believe me yet? Here is a typical day for Dan Keston, a homeless, 32-year-old man.
6:00. Rise and shine. You are probably thinking that Homeless Dan should sleep in (because he can), but that is not how Homeless Dan operates, especially when there is a kind surf breaking down at the beach. After all, Homeless Dan had planned on surfing today, so he slept on the beach last night (also because he can). Homeless Dan grabs a longboard off a yuppie’s Venice boardwalk porch, then spends a few hours catching waves while the guy is off selling art lofts.

9:00. Homeless Dan puts the board back and walks down to Bally’s gym. This is Homeless Dan’s one expense, a $19 per month membership to Bally’s. There is no question that Homeless Dan is not the only member here who doesn’t work out. Homeless Dan has seen multiple people who regularly use this place just to get a hold of the showers and have a locker. Homeless Dan cleans himself off, puts on his one other pair of clothes, and heads out to get something to eat. He likes it at Bally’s. He joined after getting a free three-week pass.

10:30. The open air market. To be honest, Not Homeless Dan sometimes wonders why he ever pays for food. There are open air farmers markets in Los Angeles, everyday, that offer free samples of top quality meat, cheese, deserts, fruit, veggies and anything else you need to balance out your diet. Obviously constructed for people for whom going to the market just isn’t expensive enough, these “fresh” food places are the regular stomping grounds of Homeless Dan. On Wednesday and Saturday, the market is at Arizona and 2nd. On Sunday, it moves a half mile south to Main Street. Thursday in Westwood. Monday in West Hollywood. Tuesday in Culver City. Friday in Venice. Everyday, there is an abundance of free food, right outside your door.

Let’s assume today is Wednesday. After eating seven tamale samples (the equivalent of a full tamale), Homeless Dan walks down to the promenade. There he walks around like a tourist until one of the solicitors comes up to him and asks if he wants to see a free movie this afternoon starring Nicolas Cage and Christina Ricci starting at 3:00. Well, of course, Homeless Dan does. He loves Nicolas Cage.

In Santa Monica, studios are constantly doing market research on soon-to-be-released movies. In order to do so, they need to assemble an audience to watch and subsequently rate them, and these random folks ultimately determine a movie’s release date, marketing budget, and possibly the ending if it doesn’t test well. So, in other words, Homeless Dan is deciding the fate of a movie that probably costs $100 million, and is telling Universal, a billion dollar company, exactly what they should or should not do. Sometimes Not Homeless Dan, who works in the movie business, cries himself to sleep at night because he knows deep down that he has considerably less power than Homeless Dan.

It’s now 12:00. The movie doesn’t start until 3:00, so Homeless Dan has three hours to earn his shower money. Why the sad face? It’s not as hard as you think. Not Homeless Dan knows. Once, when he was in college and in a fraternity, during a hazing ritual he once made one of his pledges paint his face white and dress up like a mime and perform for money. He wouldn’t let the pledge back into the car until either an hour had passed or he earned $5.00. Fifteen minutes later the pledge came back. He gave him $16.43. He wasn’t even that good of a mime.

And that was Atlanta, this is L.A. In Brentwood, there’s used to be a guy named Mr. Wendell who sold poems for a dollar. Then he became the star of a song by rap superstars Arrested Development. Now he gets royalties. There was another guy on the Venice boardwalk who ate glass. Then he got his own show. Homeless Dan, on the other hand, just wants a little pocket change. Some days he just holds out the cup and shakes it. Other days he might try the “I just need a beer” sign. Anyway, he mixes it up to keep things fresh. Homeless Dan sees himself as creative.

5:00. The movie is over (Homeless Dan gave it 3.5 stars) and Homeless Dan walks a few blocks to the public library to check his email. Yes, he has email, and yes, he checks it often. It’s how he stays in touch with his friends, and cell phones won’t work for him because he has no place to plug in the charger. Plus, it’s free, as are libraries, which have email and internet access. Homeless Dan can spend an hour checking in with his parents, friends back east, research the daily news, and finally, find out what’s going on that night in L.A.

But first, it’s dinner time, so Homeless Dan heads down to the Santa Monica indoor mall for some more free samples. This food is not quite as healthy or fresh at the outdoor market, but Homeless Dan sure loves his chicken teriyaki on a toothpick. And his gyro lamb kebob samples. And his Wetzel’s Pretzel bites. And all the other mall food court tastes that are free and while he is not 100% sure what he is eating, it doesn’t really matter because fried + food = good. And beggars can’t be... well... you know the drill.

Let’s move on. The night is for the young and uninhibited, and if Homeless Dan isn’t uninhibited I don’t know who is. Los Angeles nights are packed with world famous symphony orchestras, sizzling hot independent bands, and comedy shows – far superior shows that most people anywhere else pay for – that just happen to be absolutely free. Just pick up an LA Weekly (which, in theme, is free) and find out what is going on. Listen to a world famous author read from his novel at Dutton’s. Catch a free jazz night at the MOCA. Listen to an open air concert at the Santa Monica Pier. If there a list, just tell them you’re Tommy Lee.

Exhausted from an exciting day of surfing, eating, and entertainment, it’s time to find somewhere for Homeless Dan to rest his head. I suggest he jimmy open the guest bedroom window of the three story home next to Not Homeless Dan. Owned by some jackass who bought it during the housing rush but never figured out what to do with it other than use it as a write-off against his other, larger real estate investments, it just sits there empty. Nobody lives in it. Nobody ever goes by. Except Homeless Dan.

You don’t have to be Homeless to know that this day sure beats a day of digging in the trash cans for leftover falafel on Bleecker Street and freezing your ass off while NYU students beat you up on film. But maybe you think that this article is still just a little mean and want to punch me in the face.

I disagree, and you shouldn’t. And I’m not just saying that because I’m me. I’ll admit, my sympathy level dropped after the incident¹ , but still there’s no arguing that the day I described above is not much worse, and probably even much better, that the average day of you and me.


¹ The incident happened when I was 14. My mother, upon seeing a man on the side of the freeway with a sign saying “Hungry. Will Work for Food”, pulled over and rolled down her window, offering him a paper bag with half a turkey sandwich. The man asked what it was. My mom said, “It’s half a turkey sandwich, I thought you might want it.” The man looked in the bag, then replied gruffly, “No thanks, I’m a vegetarian” and handed it back.

Dan Keston is a writer living in Los Angeles, CA.

Rainy Days and Sunny Ways

By Dan Keston © 2005

Every time I travel, I come face to face with one eternal truth: getting away from your friends, family, dog, job, and the address where the post office sends your bills is great, but no matter how far you go, there is no place, however distant, that enables you to get away from yourself.

Or, more importantly, how you view the world. Which is why I am so shocked when, while eating one of the best Club Sandwiches I have ever had, the 60-year-old host of Noodles and More hands me a fly swatter. The old man handed it to me not because I asked for it; he simply noticed a bee circling my head, eyeing my bacon (which was hickory smoked to perfection may I add), and stopped what he was doing to head out to the porch and kindly say, "I just wanted to make sure that bugger wasn’t ruining your lunch."

This would never happen in Los Angeles. Back home, the hostess would probably be staring at her nails contemplating the many ways she could sleep her way into a bit part on Young and the Restless. Certainly, she would not give a damn about me. However, here in Eatonville, Washington, population 890, the host genuinely surprises me not because he moves mountains but rather because he does not think twice about being nice just for the sake of doing so.

This is not an isolated incident. As I continue my trip from Washington down into the heart of Oregon, I am continually amazed at the pure goodness of the people here. In Willamette wine country, my wife and I are eating dinner when the person at the next table overhears us order a glass of a local wine. He proceeds to get up, walk to our table, and tell us that he is the owner of that vineyard, and he profusely thanks us for ordering a bottle of his Pinot Noir. Then he invites to come take a private tour of his winery the following day, and taste some of the vintages he is already planning for next year.

What the hell is going on here? No offense to anyone, but if I overheard someone ordering my wine the only thing I would do is count my $12.50. I certainly would not invite them into my home and spend two hours showing them around.

So who is the crazy one here? The old man who wanted his customer to enjoy his lunch? The vintner who wanted to show me his appreciation? Or me, the cynic, for thinking they are f-ing nuts simply for being kind?

The answer, of course, is me. Going on vacation makes me realize that I am self-absorbed, self-conscious, insincere, sarcastic, and generally not as nice of a person as I like to think. So what am I going to do about it? Am I going to start being nicer to all the people around me? Start enjoying the little things in life, smell the sweet fragrances of the Washington Evergreens, and learn to relax during my few weeks away from fighting the 405 Freeway?

Hell no! I am going to drink endless cups of the strong, delicious coffee that can be found on every corner in the northwest and spend many hours hiding from these overly friendly freaks in the gargantuan bookstores unique to the cities of Portland and Seattle.

The most extreme of these book monoliths is Powell’s City of Books, the only bookstore so large it can be called a city and nobody would ask why. Powell’s welcomes over 6,000 shoppers each day and has 3,500 sections color-coded for its guests’ browsing pleasure. This store is especially great for me on this overcast Thursday morning, because when I am depressed about my view of the world nothing makes me happier than getting lost in a bookstore so large I am guaranteed to find many, many non-fiction volumes that confirm all of my biggest fears about myself and fictional escapades that offer a glimpse into the depths into which I could plunge should I decide to quit my job and write fiction books. Sure, I could visit the self-help section and read something uplifting like Tony Robbins' "Bring out the Real You in 12-Easy Steps," or Martha Stewart’s "How I Beat Five-O and Still Be Selling Tons of Cookies, Bitch" but if I wanted something uplifting I would go see a movie.

Hmmm…how ironic. In Los Angeles, the land of the movies, our entertainment is warm and fuzzy but we ourselves are totally unpleasant, while in the Pacific Northwest they are sweet as pie but their art comes in much darker forms. At least this is the conclusion I have come to while drinking my coffee and reading the Post-Intelligencer at Starbucks.

Yes, the first Starbucks was opened in Seattle, Washington in 1971 just outside of Pike Place Market. And here I sit, at the mothership, enjoying beans handpicked by penny-a-day migrant workers and paying way too much for a grande. Which, as we all know, is really a small.

Are Seattleites wearing macchiato colored glasses? Or are they as cynical as I? My guess is the latter - they know my coffee is really a small, and this is their way of getting the rest of the world to pay $1.50 for a small cup of coffee while they laugh their way to the bank.

It wouldn't be the first time the world has felt the silent wrath of the Pacific Northwest. Every day at work, I can almost hear them laughing at me as I notice yet another glitch in my Windows for Macintosh program. For those of you that don't work on a Mac, Billy G and his buddies made software just good enough to work so companies would continue to buy their programs, but added enough delays in the functionality that every day its employees would be reminded that they should have bought a PC.

Which further leads me to my conclusion that these people are not, indeed, as nice as I thought they were at first glance. They just want to sell me coffee, wine, and computers. These just seem nice. It’s a big cover up, a scam, a ruse, a ploy.

But then again, they put a lot of effort into that Club Sandwich. And it sure was good.

Dan Keston is a Los Angeles based writer. He has written commercials, sports and movie columns, short stories, and too many checks.