Ten Reasons Why I’m Thinking About Taking Up Smoking

1. Anxiety. Mainly about my own life and the directions it may or may not take, but other sources that contribute heavily include: the 2008 Presidential Election, NYC congestion pricing, supply-side economics, the Electoral College, Internet piracy, faith-based education, flash floods, and urban blight. Although puffing on a cancer-stick is hardly the same as popping a Xanax, it’s certainly cheaper and it doesn’t need a prescription. Furthermore, nicotine’s adrenaline rush would be a nice counter-balance to the depressive effects of my daily martini, making my evening disposition slightly less apocalyptic.

2. It Gives You Something To Do With Your Hands. This actually isn’t that much of a problem with me. I’m an actor so I’m pretty good at figuring out what to do with my hands (don’t saw the air too much!) Nevertheless, every once in awhile you do find yourself at a bit of a loss, either due to an awkward conversation or general nervousness in front of others. In cases like these, often a simple mechanical task would do the trick and lighting up is as simple as it gets. It’s considerably cooler than stuffing your hands down your pants and jiggling your change with one hand and adjusting your underwear with another.

3. Fire Is Cool. Well? Fire is cool, and if you don’t believe me, set something ablaze and tell me you don’t see the poetry in it. Me, I like to listen to the cigarette paper crackle and watch the tobacco smolder like a piece of burning coal. Lighting the cigarette is cool too, whether with a match or a Bic. Cup your hand against the wind and watch the flame lean into the end of the cigarette like a white-hot river encircling a piece of driftwood. Suck in the oxygen, light up, and inhale. There’s nothing like holding a bright-red glowing nub close to your lips to make you feel one with the elements.

4. Smoke Is Cool. Truer words have never been spoken, unless they were spoken by a mouth emitting smoke. What is it about smoke, anyway? It is essentially dirty air, waste matter dissipating itself into the oxygen we breathe. And yet it has a beguiling presence, billowing from the mouth, the nostrils, and expelled into the air like a cloud. One’s face is always more mysterious and appealing behind a smokescreen, and when smoke is released in an airless room, it rises in seductive circles and vanishes like a ghost. Poetry, people!

5. It Pisses People Off. Smoking’s also great because it pisses a lot of people off, which is always a worthy goal. Talk about huffing and puffing! Yank the chain of the feverish anti-smoking contingent and prepare yourself for a barrage of self-righteous vituperation. This is first-rate fun, I say. The only drawback is, despite their self-satisfied shrillness, they’re usually right. Smoking, as they say, “kills.” But, whatever! Light up on a weekday afternoon in front of an elementary school and watch the ensuing hijinks!

6. It Forces You to Go Outside. I wouldn’t have thought that this would be a big selling point for me, considering that I live in New York City and I’m outside all the time (To those of you tree-licking outdoorsy environmentalists tsk-tisking at the city slickers in their unnatural asphalt jungles, consider this: we don’t have cars and we do a lot more “hiking” probably than you do just getting to work. Think about it.) Nevertheless, it is appealing to be engaged in a task that forces you, by and large, to just be outside—not walking or sitting on a park bench, but just to stand there and get some damn air and appreciate things, dammit. And smoke.

7. Smoking Looks Cool. Yeah, so, smoking looks cool, obviously, or Humphrey Bogart wouldn’t have done it and neither would have James Dean, both the coolest movie stars ever, Q.E.D.

8. Politicians Don’t Smoke. Except for Obama, and he’s basically quit, thus further inhabiting the role of a “bright and clean and a nice-looking guy” that Joe Biden cast him in. Otherwise, this is a big check in the “pros” column as far as I’m concerned. The fact that none of the smarmy, hypocritical, K-Street-funded asswads on Capital Hill have the balls to light up a Satan stick and suck in some tar proves that smoking has something going for it.

9. It Would Anger My Parents. A delicate point this, as they will no doubt one day read this blog entry. Nonetheless, with apologies to the folks that set me going, this final point still retains some residual adolescent appeal. Hey, my parents are great people and as such they never really gave me reason to piss them off, a lost opportunity that still stings. Here then is my chance finally for some pointless, angsty rebellion. Cocaine’s a little pricey, and kind of illegal, and heroin involves needles, which hurt. Smoking would be just the way to piss off my folks a little bit—but not so much that they would disown me.

10. We’re All Gonna Die From Global Warming Anyway. It’s happening faster than even Al Gore says! There were melting ice floes on the North Pole this summer and last week was the hottest in October in New York since the Dutch set up tent! I’m giving it fifty, sixty years tops. In the meantime, you can find me in Siberia, purchasing land and rolling coffin nails with happy Slavic shepherds. Peace out.