So Winik’s been all up on my ass lately trying to get me to write another blog. Like, as soon as the Celtics’ season started and I (somehow!) deemed that to be more important than making fun of my friends, she’s just constantly been on my case. So it’s probably my own fault that I didn’t see it coming when she verbally assaulted me the other day. I mean, there we are just canoodling on my couch watching Top Chef: Just Desserts, when all of a sudden she makes a comment about how I’m not actually funny in-person. Excuse me? She says I have a great writing tone, but in real life I’m just kinda boring and not funny. Ok…I guess that’s kinda true, except for the fact that it’s not. I’m freaking hilarious in pretty much every walk of life. Seriously, who’s quicker than me with witty one-liners? Maybe Brady on his best of best days? Maybe?
But that’s neither here nor there. You want a blog? I’m giving you a blog. Although, technically I posted a great one about Teo on the “Barre New Year’s” Facebook event page. But you probably didn’t have access to that one. Zing!
Anyway, I’m going to be doing a few blogs over the next two weeks. I figure since nobody is going to TOUCH my 1250 score on Facebook Snake, I have a little time to spare. Here’s the first:
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So earlier this semester I’m at some party and this mush walks past my friend and me. My buddy not-so-subtlety calls him a tool, which the kid hears and then immediately wants to start a fight. Being the intimidating presence that I am, I step in and try to break the whole thing up. To this day I will never know why this worked, but the kid sees me, backs down, and says (direct quote). “Whoa. You look smart. I’m not gonna fight you because you look pretty smart.” And walks away.
So here are 8 ways to trick people into thinking you are smart when in reality you spend 75% of your day watching Bravo and couldn’t point to Palestine on a map to save your life.
1. Read everything by Malcolm Gladwell. Apparently he’s one of those “it” authors that everybody is talking about these days. Listen, I don’t read books. Never have, never will. Just don’t see the point. If I ever wanted to read something, I probably would just write it myself. In fact, before I heard of this Gladwell guy, the only eight books I had read since middle school were the seven Harry Potters and The Book of Basketball (this is sadly true).
But luckily for me, I realized that everybody and their grandma was reading this guy, so I powered through The Tipping Point, Blink, and Outliers. Here’s my advice on the Gladwell books: Know them by heart. Be able to elaborate on his ideas and shit. But never be the one to bring him up first in a conversation. I repeat. NEVER be the first to bring him up in a conversation. Actual smart people will jump on you like a trampoline if you do. It simply reeks of superficial/mainstream intelligence. Believe me, I found this out the hard way. One minute you’re just having a delightful conversation about those hockey players from Outliers, and the next thing you know, you’re getting questioned about Thomas Friedman. Seriously, who? Instead, wait until some other hopeless victim brings up Gladwell in a conversation, then just casually interject here and there and pretend like he’s old news at this point.
2. Start a blog and trick girls into thinking you have a unique writing style. Since they don’t read Barstool and/or Bill Simmons, they will probably think you’re hilarious and witty. But really, you know fully well that you’re just copying their styles and playing it off as your own. But hey, they don’t know the difference!
Side-note: Since I started my blog, writing has become the Number 1 thing that girls admire about me. We all know that girls like guys who are talented, and since I can’t sing or play the guitar, this is really my only viable option at this point in my life. What’s depressing is that my best attribute before I started writing was…wait for it… the way I turn the steering wheel when I’m driving. Yup. With one hand and my palm wide open. Apparently girls love that. That’s what they’re looking for in a future husband. Open palms. Wide open.
3. Always carry the Wall Street Journal around with you. Sometimes when I’m by myself and I know a bunch of people are about to come into the room, I immediately pull out the WSJ and start pretending to read it. Then when people come in, I’m just oozing smartness in every direction. Ho-hum, just reading the Journal. No big deal. Oh hey everyone! Nothing going on over here, I was just reading the Journal. Then I just need to answer a short series of questions and I’m in the clear.
“What’s that you’re reading, Mike? Anything interesting?” Then I run through some pre-determined answers I thought of earlier in my head: “Oh, well the banks are considering lowering interest rates to combat all the foreclosures in the housing market, blah blah blah.” And that’s really all there is to it.
(Note: “Foreclosure” is a great word to throw out there every once in a while. Everybody thinks that everybody else knows what it means, but nobody actually does. So you’ll never get challenged on it, but you come off looking wicked smaht).
4. Know what you don’t know. Can’t over-emphasize the importance of this one. My personal weakness is Vietnam. I literally know nothing about nothing that happened there. Doesn’t matter how many times I read over the Wikipedia page, it’s like my brain just doesn’t want me to know anything about it. But since people reference it from time-to-time, you always need to have an exit strategy. Try to wiggle your way out of the conversation somehow. Or better yet, change the subject to something in which you’re the expert.
My favorite one typically involves me overcooking my raviolis. As soon as someone brings up the topic of the Vietnam War, I usually say something like, “Oh, my raviolis are probably overcooked. Better go check on those!” But Mike, you aren’t even cooking anything…“Well, you’re not Italian. You probably didn’t even know that the meatball is the world’s most self-explanatory food. Seriously, what’s more self-explanatory than a meat ball? It’s just a ball of meat.” Boom. Subject is already changed and I’m back in the driver’s seat. Staples…that was easy.
5. Pick friends that don’t have your major. Difficult to execute, but will pay huge dividends if you can pull it off. Especially if you’re in the business school and can talk with reasonable knowledge about things like… paying dividends. Shit drives English majors up a wall. They can’t get over the fact that we actually go to class and just learn about analyzing financial statements all day. And the irony of all ironies is that usually during my business classes, I’m just on my computer writing (in English!) for all of my successful blogs. Like, you can’t even make this stuff up. My life is just a fairytale.
6. What’s that saying? You learn a lot about a man by the way he acts when he thinks nobody is watching. Well you learn even more about a man by the type of music he listens to when he thinks he’s by himself. Listen, I don’t have particularly great taste in music. When I know I home alone, all I do is blast electro-club remixes in my room. Basically just one Rihanna mash-up after another. But as soon as I hear that front door open, I immediately switch to my “Chill Hip-Hop” playlist on my iPod, full of classics like Nas, Biggie, A Tribe Called Quest and Common. I don’t even like half the shit on there, but I listen to it because it’s universally accepted that you can’t make fun of someone for liking those artists.
7. Be smart about when you wear your glasses. We all know that wearing spectacles makes you appear to be smarter. But you know what DOESN’T make you look smart? Wearing glasses when everybody knows you don’t really need them. Nobody likes a fraud, just ask the NY Jets. My general rule: Wear them on the first day of class, and then you can wear them for the rest of the semester. In my case, I forgot to wear my glasses during the first week of classes in September, so I wasn’t allowed to wear them for the entire fall semester. I have to wait until January. That’s just the way it goes.
Props to Sarah for being the first one to discover this back in like 9th grade. Just completely beat everyone to the punch on that one. Mitch, on the other hand, comes out of nowhere last summer and just decides he’s going to start wearing glasses to help him pull off the whole Kid Cudi/hipster look. I questioned Mitch on this, and his response was that they were prescription. Prescription? Ok, Mitch. That and $2.00 will get you a ride on the MBTA. Congratulations.
8. Dress nicely to class. Ok, so it’s semi-hypocritical of me to say this. The real reason I transferred from Wake was because I didn’t have any boat shoes to wear to class on a daily basis. Now I wear them to class at least four days a week, and I only have class Tuesday-Thursdays. So that’s a lot. Obviously, when you dress like an asshole you sacrifice a little in the “That person looks like a regular guy who I would want to become friends with” department, but you gain so much everywhere else. People just look at you and smell success.
Disclaimer: Don’t make the mistake of looking too smart. You know, to the point where people assume you would be a good person to work with on a group project. Because there is nothing worse in this world than being the #1 guy in a group project. All the organizing meetings and emailing professors and whatnot. Just seems like the absolute pits to me. That’s why I always try to come off as the #3 guy for any group project. Not too smart, but not a complete slouch either. That way, I don’t have to take on the majority of the work, but I pull enough weight that I still get to sit around with the other top dogs and bitch about how the rest of the group is slacking off.
