I'm Chill! I'M CHILL!!!!!!!!!!!

Actually, I'm really not that chill, apparently. I used to be. I used to be super way chill. Like crazy damn chill. Mondo crazy chill. It used to be, at one time, a person sitting at dinner who suddenly quivered and trembled for no apparent reason would say, "Oh, I just got a Clucas." A couple on a date would walk into a movie theater, and the guy would increase his chances of a second date by saying, "Would you like my coat? It's awfully Clucasy in here."

"No, I insist, take my coat... Just give me about 20 minutes."

Everything changed, though in about 1995, when other dudes started getting real chill. Like, wicked mad chill. There was something about that year, something in the air that really started to mellow dudes out nationwide. The zeitgeist of the country had really begun to be shaped by the effects of a post-Cold-War, post-Desert-Storm-Mother-of-All-Ass-Whippings-Upon-Peoples-Not-Us, and dudes across the country were starting to feel safe. Not just the kind of safe you feel when you know a few karate moves or when you and bros are rolling six deep down the boulevard, but the kind of safe assured to you by the world's sickest military machine in history. The kind of safe you feel when you know that no matter what, at the end of the day, great men like Jack Ryan, Lieutenant John McClane, and Sergeant Roger Murtaugh are taking it upon themselves to personally ensure your freedom from fear by kicking as much commie, fascist, and criminally active diplomat ass as possible.

"Yeah, man, I was at Dumbo Drop. It made me the cop you now see before you."

It's that kind of safe that makes a man relax. Really relax. Chill. Chill and relax. If only someone could come up with a compound slang word to describe that sensation. But I digress. It's that kind of relaxation that produces in a man the need, the indescribable urge, to let the cuff of his jeans ride five or six inches underneath his heel to rest comfortably and raggedly between the sole of his foot and his flip-flop. The need to wear flip-flops with jeans in the first place. Without this level of chill we'd have no Smirnoff Ices, no trucker caps, no DMB. This country would collapse in a steaming pool of rage and aggression.

"YES!!! KICKING BACK!!!"

There is certainly something to be said for the man who has become so comfortable in this post-destruction-of-Ivan-Drago world that he can pick up the crappy guitar that his roommate traded to him for a couple bars of Sex Wax and a lid of pakalolo, learn two and a half chords, and become this rich-ass guy:

"Chairs are for the tense, bro. Namaste, or whatever."

I knew I shoulda learned to play the guitar like the Indigo Girls. Or all those youth pastors I went to college with.

And now for the real Jack Johnson, just to keep you smart:

Chill is Fifteen Rounds in the Blazing Nevada Sun, 
Laughing at Your White Supremest Opponent All the While