Big Dick Energy

I think of Popular Culture as this great huge lake — and I’m a smooth, flat stone, skipping across the top of it.  Every once in a while, I touch the water and get a little wet, but by the time there are any ripples, I’m already back in the air.  Great analogy, right?  And this explains why, by the time I got around to Big Dick Energy, it was already passé.  However, after I saw it a couple of times in my Internet travels, I hit The Google to discover just what BDE was made of.  Total disappointment!  It turns out, according the Beeb (BBC) BDE is merely that intangible confidence exuded by the uber-cool.  Trust millennials to concoct a smutty genitalia description for something that’s been around since Cleopatra took one look at Julius Caesar and said, “I’d like one of those, please.”

No, for all their tweeting about Rihanna, Cate Blanchett, Idris Alba and Harry Styles, millennials didn’t invent Big Dick Energy – they just think they did.  However, it’s impossible to explain this to them because nobody has an answer for “What is cool?” and every generation has its own frame of reference.  Back in the day, my generation actually named Steve McQueen the King of Cool because – uh – he was.  Unfortunately, these days, poor Steve wouldn’t be considered the king of anything — way too much testosterone and too little angst.  The guy probably never had a panic attack in his life.  Believe me, his brand of man just doesn’t fit — in the land of the metrosexual.  Meanwhile, on the other end of the gender scale, my generation had a ton of uber-cool women – Julie Christie comes to mind, as does Diana Rigg and, of course, Ann-Margret.  These women didn’t have drama; they had hairstyles and sunglasses.  And they wore their sexuality like a tailored dress: it just fit them.  All of these women were simply too self-possessed to be “cool” in the 21^st century.  For example, I don’t think any of them was ever slammed up against the wall in a fit of uncontrollable passion (a la Angelina Jolie in Mr. and Mrs. Smith) in any movie they ever made.  No man would have dared.

So, sail on, millennials!  There’s no doubt Cate Blanchett and Idris Alba have Big Dick Energy, but so did James Dean and Ava Gardner and before that Bogie and Bacall and before that … So you should remember that, in 50 years, your Big Dick Energy is going to be just as old- fashioned as I am, skipping across the lake of Popular Culture.