Randomanalia on the Road

Blessed mania. That’s how I would characterize this week and last. I rolled in last Friday night from Seattle and enjoyed a very brief weekend with LFG and was then off to Gotham on Sunday early evening. New Jersey now and then back out to Seattle for Thursday and Friday. It’s simply a crazy flurry of business deliverables here in the final quarter and I’m beyond gratified to be stretched thin with work.

The downside of course, is that I miss my child and our weekend was too short due to my late re-entry and rapid departure for another week of travel. Saturday morning found me killing some time while LFG attended a birthday party. Birthday parties-I don’t remember so many of them when I was a kid and certainly-don’t recall them being nearly as elaborate as the ones my gal attends. Whatever happened to ice cream-cake-Pin the Tail on the Donkey’s ass and go home?

I killed some of my birthday party downtime by browsing through Steinmart in Chevy Chase. Richard at Wasp 101 made a remark about Flusser’s Steinmart line and I have to respectfully disagree. You must consider the context when assessing the tastiness of Flusser’s Steinmart garments. Steinmart is an off-price discounter with a more refined offering than Filene’s Basement-Marshall’s-Ross and certainly TJ Max. To that end-the goods are fairly tasty looking when you consider the typical shopper who rolls in to buy the stuff.

The Flusser cashmere sweaters look really nice for the money-less than a hundred bucks. Quality? … less than a hundred bucks. The Steinmart customer isn’t going to pay five hundred bucks for a Paul Stuart sweater-generally.

There are hints of Etro and Pucci et al in some of these contrivances. Etro and Pucci? Most people who roll into Steinmart won’t make the connection. "Pucci? That's something my wife pays big bucks to the Dermatologist to make her lips look".

Soccer after the birthday party resulting in a tie with the Pinky Team. No hot mamma coaches on the other side this week. Where’s my babe in the yellow coat?

I’m trad homeless by soccer time after my week of travelling. Alden Flex Welt tassels-old frayed khakis-PRL denim western shirt and Flusser green gator waist pageantry.

Shut the _____up. Thank you.

LFG wanted to have dinner at home and I was more than eager to “nest” after being gone all week. I haven’t had a travel schedule like this since I danced lead years ago...with The Chippendales.  LFG prepared a starchy dinner of Chicken Curry-Lentils-Basmati Rice and Corn. She Hoovered down an entire plate and asked for seconds. Fun.

Peace Pajamas on a freshly scrubbed little gal. Courtesy of Target.

Sunday morning we ended up doing the Green Shoe Walk of Shame. Folks-I didn’t intend this. I’m tired and a bit distracted and I didn’t notice that we both had on green shoes until we were walking down King Street to have brunch at La Madeleine. Guess who was embarrassed? She’s getting to that age I suppose.

National Airport Sunday night and the shuttle to NYC. Alden Flex Welt tassel loafer for this week’s sortie. It’s warm again so socks are optional and an old pair of 501’s de rigueur for the flight up to Gotham. Cannot believe that they haven't changed the carpet since last week.

Navy Blahhh Blazer anchors the upper torso this week. When’s the weather gonna get cold? I've been wearing this Flusser sb peak 3/2 open patch baby twice a week for ten years. And it's beginning to look it.

Shuttle to LaGuardia and then down to mid-town for one night. When it’s my client’s dime-I stay where they put me. When it’s my company’s dime-I’m gonna select tried and true standards that don’t break the bank. The Roosevelt Hotel is a steady goer-middle of the road hotel with some character and history. I’ve got a meeting the next day and my requirements are fairly basic.

If the Roosevelt is good enough for Don Draper to hold court as well as other things in-then it’s good enough for me.

The Flusser blazer was a bit out of kilter upon arrival at the Roosevelt so I steamed it in the bathroom-for 3 hours.

The Roosevelt is diagonally situated across from Paul Stuart at Madison and 45^th street.  I took a walk over to J. Press-Paul Stuart and the venerable 346 Madison Avenue after having a little hooch at The Roosevelt.

I pondered the first time I ever touched the door pulls on the front entrance to the Brethren. Over twenty five years ago when Brooks was perhaps doing a slightly better job of holding on to the trad-prep glory that had so clearly been theirs for over a century.

The door frames and pulls have not changed in almost a century-even when the interior has gone through several machinations of makeovers under the auspices of several owners. These are the same pulls that Garbo used when visiting Brooks to buy her pajamas-men’s pajamas.  These are the same pulls that an actual Brooks family member used to enter the store when it was still under family control.  These are the same pulls that customers used on decades of Christmas Eves on the way home and in need of a last minute gift-after having Mad Men big boy cocktails over at the Roosevelt. Made in the USA? Shit man-there was a time when the very upper floors of 346 housed artisans making clothes. How about made freakin’ up damn stairs?

Exiting the Brethren side door to 44^th street used to have you just to the left of J. Press. I liked the tatty old J. Press store with its back alley arrogant context to the Brethren’s flagship.  Their old location seemed to me like an ultra trad-ever more so authentic-as time attenuated the Brooks franchise-burr under the Brethren saddle.

I might be wrong about this but is seems that one of these old buildings housed Chipp. Just on the other side of the street from J. Press.

I don’t wear suits much anymore and certainly not pinstripes like the one that these trousers gird. However, I would pounce on this J. Press offering in a heartbeat. Looks like a Greenfield side tab treatment to me. Flat front-beltless-crisp and precise-pseudo beaded pinstripe. Clean. Extry clean.

Ok…I’ll close this drivel for now. Next stop-Seattle…again. We’ll see what the carpet holds for us there!

Onward.

ADG

Redux: Savile Row Meets Mount Everest

Ok…perhaps the title of this post is a bit of a stretch but not by too much. There is some history to correlate the British affinity for exploration and Savile Row. The Royal Geographic Society occupied No. 1 Savile Row before the building was purchased by Hawkes&Co. Today, Gieves and Hawkes still occupies No. 1. In 1866 while searching for the source of the Nile, explorer Dr. David Livingstone is rescued by journalist H.M.Stanley. Stanley is dressed by Henry Poole & Co and Dr. Livingstone by Gieves.

The legendary mountaineer...George Mallory

Most of us who engage in any kind of outdoor activity wouldn’t trade our North Face, Gore-Tex and Patagonia wares for the foppish predispositions of late 19th/early 20th century British explorers. However, you gotta give it to the Brits. It’s one thing to have worn a tie while playing golf in the late 1800’s but these guys even dressed for Everest!

The story of George Mallory and Andrew Irvine is a tragic but absolutely intriguing one. I’ve read three books on Mallory and his Everest attempts and loved every word of them. It’s a deep dive into exploration, risk taking and that Victorian-Edwardian British appetite for adventure. Unfortunately, Mallory never made it off of Everest and his body lay frozen there untilConrad Anker found him in 1999.

George Mallory and Sandy Irvine en route to India

Tweed Jacket and Plus-Fours meet the oxygen rig.

Mallory replete in a Norfolk Jacket
Every imaginable Country Suit treatment made it's way to Everest
Mallory died on Everest in 1924 at age 37. He was considered at the time of his death to be one of the world’s expert mountaineers. A Cambridge rower, he was friends with poet Robert Graves, serving in Graves’ wedding as Best Man. Style and aplomb were not lost on these explorers, even if some of them did not make it back from Everest.
Relaxing in Campaign or "Knock Down Furniture" including the infamous Roorkhee Chair
Conrad Anker finds Mallory's frozen body in 1999 and here above, is the sartorially-sequential-layered evidence of Mallory's attempt to foil the cold.

The proverbial unanswered question among Everest experts is whether or not Mallory and Irvine had made the summit and were on the way down when they fell. Most experts are inclined to believe that they never made it to the top.

Parts of Mallory's kit...Meat Lozenges...oy.

Seattle-Diabetes and ... Redux: Boyhood Toys

Luck of the draw-That’s how it usually works. I spend tons of time in hotels all over the country and have become accustomed to really just going with the flow-acquiescing to whatever caliber-style of hotel and whatever venue my clients select for their conferences and meetings. I’ve probably lived through every nightmare scenario that business travelers encounter-save anything resulting in physical injury. I’d rather be home than on the road most times so I’m not real impressed with anyplace I’m billeted if being at home with LFG was an option.

The Wit hotel-last week in Chicago was nice. The boutique-ish hotels as I’ve shared, seem to be trying too hard with their marketing spiel of “concepts-experiences-philosophies and approaches”. The last time I was here in Seattle the W Hotel was host to my meeting. I love the W in San Diego and Chicago. The Seattle W is another example of trying too hard on the boutique front. My diabetes care project has me in a superb Seattle venue.

The Fairmont Seattle is an impressive venue. While the boutique hotels remain a bit adolescent in their declaration-their callout-their beckon to you for approval, the Fairmont is a Grand Dame who simply has to manifest presence possessed and your approval becomes instant. I haven’t read the word “experience” anywhere. Kind of reminds me of the old wisdom…. “What you are hovers above and thunders so-that I can’t hear what you say to the contrary”. The carpet was a nicer complement to my typical winter business travel uniform-blucher-brogues and cotton moleskin Cordings-not cold enough yet for flannel-specially when I'm preaching all day.

Ended up with a Suite-alas, with nobody to appreciate it with me.

How much of this decorative shit can I get in my suitcase?-It's all nicer than my house.

Flusser Houndstooth on the job again this week.

I think it was LPC who asked me to "deconstruct the horizontal striped sock thing". I'll do so in a post next week.

If you are gonna have pockets included in your bespoke shirt order-be sure to tart it up with a pleated version and "man of no consequence" monograms. Shut up.

One of my business partners was the kick-off keynote speaker for this meeting. Why him and not me? I'm still speechless and that's not like me. 

Just because he is a former F-16 Fighter Pilot and lead demonstration pilot for the United States  AirForce Thunderbirds-big deal.

Now that's some extry nice carpet ....no?

Boyhood Toys

Toad posted about his memorable summer and it began to evoke tons of my own memories. I had the quintessential “boy’s life” and my neighborhood had all the ingredients for adventure and trouble. Truly it’s a wonder that my buddies and I all survived. Come to think of it, we all survived the formative years in our neighborhood-albeit with the requisite broken bones-stitches etc. Road rash….ah….we always kept a patch or two skinned up.

I don’t see as many kids with serious road rash these days. I glimpse at the random knee or elbow adorned from time to time…usually from a playground spill or a soccer stumble but never the serious…lay down your bike in slide-half your forearm our outer thigh missing kind of a thing. I was the proud owner of at least 100 stitches, a broken leg and a broken arm before age 13. One other point-my parents were not overly indulgent. I started working as a young kid…typical stuff…paper route…mowing grass etc. 75% of every toy listed on this post included me contributing at least 50% towards the purchase price.

So Toad posts about his favorite summer and I got to thinking about all of the memorable vehicles that populated my childhood. Amazing that I could find photos of almost 100% accuracy to populate my story. Copyrights?

My first bike was a Huffy. Almost identical to this one. It came from Roses Dime Store and had training wheels-but not for long.

Mine also had an airplane on the front fender. Kind of like the lady on the bow of a pirate ship. But maybe different. I don't know.

My next bike was identical to this one. Three speed. Snoop-Dog would be proud. Treasure City was the purveyor of Ross brand of bikes. More precisely...The Barracuda. We had no big chain stores except Sears and their bikes were way to average for my gang. This was about the time of the movie Easy Rider and we all wanted choppers. I don’t know if I can pen the words to help you understand-visualize how we further “chopped” the forks on our bikes. We would find an old junk bicycle. We would take a hack saw and cut the forks off. We would then remove the front tire from our bike. Using a hammer or a brick, we would then hammer the extra forks onto the forks of our bike. No welding, no nothing…just hammer them on till they seemed secure. Eyeball the alignment between the fork tips. Reattach the front tire and alas, you were Dennis Hopper or Peter Fonda. I was Peter Fonda. Parental supervision…most moms stayed at home in my neighborhood so there was plenty of it but somehow we got away with murder.

JUST went back online-can’t believe I found a picture to support my explanation. I think that one of my many trips to the emergency room was due to these forks coming off when I did a wheelie. After the Evel Kneivel movie with George Hamilton came out, we were jumping over anything that would get us airborne. Helmets? I don’t think there was a helmet in the entire town.

Then I graduated to the “English Racer”…or at least that’s what we called them. The Schwinn dealer in my hometown started carrying Raleigh bikes. My Raleigh Record was similar to this one. Except mine had the Brooks leather saddle that you had to break-in. You’re a_s got broken in before the seat did and this was way before padded shorts were available in my hometown. I learned about the Tour de France and guys like Eddie Merckx and Jacques Anquetil…this was long before America had any presence in the Tour. I think my first helmet was one of those leather strapped-spaghetti string thingies of that era. We started a bike club…fun times. The Raleigh was lighter than the Schwinns for sale in the shop but weighed a ton compared to the Trek and the Marin bikes that I ride today.

But alas, it was mini bike time the next summer. These things were death traps. Helmets? Still no helmets. The Keystone mini bike was a two-cycle engine instead of the Briggs and Stratton or Tecumseh four-cycle that was standard on most department store mini bikes at the time. The gas cap was the measuring cup for the two-cycle motor oil that was requisite. I was then and to this day, remain an imprecise guy. Some days my Keystone would be running a bit too rich and I’d essentially be spraying for mosquitoes in the neighborhood. Blue smoke and a lower engine pitch. Street legal? Police intervention? Ce qui? Do what daddy? When it ran lean, the pitch was higher. I blew the motor up after one summer. Don’t let those springs on the front forks fool you. These mini bikes had no shock absorbers. It was a tooth rattling ride.

My wealthier buddies had these Honda Mini Trail 50cc bikes. I was beyond jealous. We would congregate in the school yard. They would kick start their bikes. I had to pull a cord to get mine going...humiliating. They had three gears. One down, two up. I had none. Most of those guys never turned out to be sh_t. Serves ‘em right.

Ahhh…then there was the passing fancy called the Solex. I paid $215.00 of my summer money for one of these babies- my biggest regret. The Raleigh-Schwinn dealer had these for one summer. These were in and out of style around my town about as fast as the Nehru Jacket.The Yamaha Mini Enduro. 75cc of Motocross fantasy. There was no Motocross per se in South Carolina. But we read about California Motocross…bought a magazine or two and once again, our imaginations went wild. Throw $275.00 in with your imagination and Richbourgs Small Engine shop would sell you one of these. Four of us in my neighborhood each got one at the same time. Why do I remember the prices of these babies? …because I had to save my money to own them. My buddy’s dad…who was essentially my surrogate dad, made us kidney belts to wear when riding these bikes. Kept us “tight” in the solar plexus which is important when you are 13 years old and flabby around the middle.

Yes; by now we had helmets. Orange metal flake…from the sporting goods section at K-Mart. My town now had a K-Mart and the Sporting Goods department was pretty solid. Zebco fishing stuff etc. My helmet was identical to this one except mine had a clear bubble visor attached. There were no "child size" helmets at K-Mart in 1969. I looked like Atom Ant with this helmet on...it was as big as me. I swear but for the grace of God…paralysis and death.

Ok, now onto weapons.

We roamed Purvis’ woods (Remember Melvin Purvis-late of John Dillinger-FBI fame) shooting anything that moved with this arsenal.

The Daisy B.B. gun. My Uncle Doug supplied me with all of my firearms. He showed up at the hospital with this one when I was six. Based on the loot that my Uncle Doug provided, I would have volunteered for a hernia repair every six months.

The power in this baby was so minimal that you could see the arc of the B.B. as it blazed (ambled) across the horizon. I remember standing in R.R.’s front yard and shooting R.G. in the back with this gun. He had no shirt on and as I simultaneously realized that it was going to hit him and more significantly, I realized that my a_s was about to be grounded for life, I ran after the B.B. as it approached his back. I almost caught up with it. It hit him and he fell to the ground screaming. By then I was crying too. I sat on his back crying-picking the subcutaneous round out of his back with the flick of my fingernail, begging him not to tell. One stroke of my pediatric but panicked fingernail and the B.B. popped out. No blood. I think I gave him a bounty of stuff not to tell on me. My talking GI Joe with real life hair and beard-seven Frisbees-Major Matt Mason spaceman set and then later in life, I kept him supplied with good dope, still worrying that he’d out me for trying to kill him at age 9.

The Crossman 177 caliber break barrel pellet rifle. This one could kill you.

And finally, the CO2 pellet pistol. This one too, could end your life. If my parents had known about the power of this one and the Crossman rifle, they’d have taken them from me for sure.

I’ll end this drivel now. What a great trip down memory lane this one was. After this stage in my journey, it was girls, cars and more powerful bird guns. And no, I’m not a member of theNRA and for some reason, wouldn’t get on a motorcycle today on a bet.

Update and Redux: I love you madly…Goodbye Richard Merkin

November 3^rd Update: There are many instances thus far that have reinforced to me the goodness manifest in the blogosphere. None though, was as powerful as a response I got from my post about the passing of Richard Merkin. While many of you posted comments about Richard in response to my heartfelt homage to him-a private email from one of Richard’s family was really touching.

I’ve just now received permission to share this story with you and I can’t think of a better preamble to the redux Merkin post. I received an email from a stranger with two photos attached and quite frankly-I didn’t understand the context-corollary to Richard Merkin until the sender explained.  Here are some excerpts of the emails from one of Richard’s family. I can tell you that their kind response was no less meaningful to me than my post was to them.

  I wish you could have met him. It would have blown your mind.

·        I am amazed that you never met him and were able to write something this warm and personal.

·        Your blog made me cry.  Twice

·        He would have loved the piece you wrote.

·        The photos are of the Coney Island Pier.  I carved his initials after dropping his ashes off it.  I would love for people to visit him there.

·        Those two photos are where he is now. 

·        He grew up close to and spent a lot of time in Coney Island."

And….

 “I hope many people go visit the spot and remember him. The pier has a cross section a ways out. If you are far to the right as possible with your back to the beach you should be able to look down and see his initials.  That is where he rests.”

 I’ll be in Gotham on Monday but won’t have time to go out to Coney Island and visit with Richard Merkin. Rest assured though-I will. And I think I’ll take LFG with me to say hello. I bet she and Richard would like that.

Onward.

We've lost another dandy and this one is irreplaceable. Richard Marshal Merkin 1938-2009

New Yorker editor Chris Curry wrote about Merkin… “ “I love you madly” is how Richard Merkin always signed off on the phone. Richard, whose paintings graced our pages for twenty years, died on Saturday. He was a life force, and he brought a smile to all who knew him. I was Richard’s editor, and when he phoned the office, the whole department knew it: you could actually hear his big, wonderful voice across the room.”

I still have a big, wonderful voicemail from Richard Merkin. I’ll always have it. I’m like that-I hold on to memories and things that are meaningful to me. I’ve cached 35 voice mails from LFG that begin when she was just old enough to talk on the phone. I still have Merkin’s phone number programmed in my old cell phone.

Merkin is gone now and there are so few bon vivants and dandies remaining to carry the torch of sartorial erudition and in Merkin’s case-bohemian aplomb. My optimism wants me to believe that our best days are ahead of us but I’ll never forget Richard Merkin telling me about his departure from the Upper West Side to Croton-on-Hudson.

It went something like this….and I loosely paraphrase.. “When I first moved to the Upper West Side it was a mélange of everything New York. I knew things were in decline when the hookers were gone and TGI Fridays moved in. New York today ain’t the New York that I loved”. Merkin was the incarnate-the personification of New York-a microcosm of refinement one minute and a gritty street-wise raconteur the next... and when he declared it over, he moved to Westchester.

When Alan Flusser included Merkin in his 1993 Esquire article The 25 Best Dressed Men (Living or Dead) , he said… “Coming upon Merkin in the street is like walking into a bazaar in Marrakesh-you don’t know what to look at first”.

I first sought out Merkin in 1997. He wrote a style column for Gentleman’s Quarterly in the late 1980’s and I devoured every word he wrote. Toad and I both agreed that GQ wasn’t a favorite magazine of ours but I loved the stories-the yarns-the tales that Merkin cobbled together each month. He would have been an uber blogger. Yes he was an illustrator, a caricaturist, a New Yorker contributing artist and a teacher. But he was indeed a raconteur. Raconteur is absolutely the right word for Merkin because he was a storyteller. He described himself something other than just an artist or illustrator. Merkin was a “literary visualist”. He was also a damned good writer.

So I found his address in New York and I wrote him. I shared with him my admiration for his columns and wondered if they had ever been assembled as a collection and where might I find such. His reply is yet another reminder, just as my personal note from Merkin’s buddy Tom Wolfe proves, that we should never consider ourselves too busy or important to write someone a letter if they are deserving of our correspondence. I’ve arranged in a photograph all of the things that Merkin sent me in a packet. What a thoughtful response to a complete stranger.

His letter reflects the same jaunty style of his monthly column.

Fast forward eleven years and by now, I’ve assembled an almost complete collection of Merkin on Style articles. I took me that long to track down various copies of GQ magazine. Alan Flusser and Richard were close friends for decades so I asked Alan about Merkin’s status these days and Alan provided me his address in Westchester. I sent Richard a complete set of his articles and asked if I could come up and meet him. That’s when the phone rang. The same big, wonderful voice left a message thanking me for my letter and enclosures and invited me to call him back. He’d long since forgotten about his 1997 letter to me.

Richard Merkin was about to have knee surgery. He promised me that after he recovered I could come up to Westchester and together we would go through his cached paintings, pastels and collages and I could pick some things that I liked. It didn’t hurt that I was a friend of Flusser but Merkin was just as kind in 1997 when he was unaware of that connection.

I was riveted at the prospect of spending even a brief amount of time with this guy. Friend of Bobby Short, Eddie Hayes, Tom Wolfe and other Gotham cognoscenti. I was certain of one thing and uncertain of another. I was uncertain what to wear for a visit with Richard Merkin. One of Merkin's friends, Boston Globe columnist George Frazier would cut you to size in a heartbeat if he didn’t like how you dressed. I knew that Merkin didn’t fancy navy blazers or Gucci bit loafers so that was an easy edit. What I was certain of was that if we got on well, I’d find the balls to ask him if I could have one of his pocket squares.

Many of us through the courtesies of Merkin and Gentleman’s Quarterly got a glimpse of his Upper West Side digs about fifteen years ago. Here are some shots of casa Merkin and the sartorial goodies therein.

Merkin told a great story about running into songwriter J. Fred Coots at the New York Athletic Club. Coots most famous jingle was a little ditty called “Santa Claus is Coming to Town”. Merkin shared that Coots was frail but still dapper and that he admired Coots silk pocket handkerchief. Coots acknowledged the compliment and then stuffed the pocket square into Merkin’s breast pocket declaring that he was looking for “nice homes for my things”. I’d already settled on the Coots story as context for my request.

A younger dandy amidst his kit.

The same closet illustrated in the GQ article.

How can I not admire a guy who sports a windowpane topcoat and adorns his wall with the Walter Sickert caricature of Max Beerbohm from Vanity Fair? Maxminimus.

Alas, my visit never happened. We had several more phone conversations but he never really bounced back from two surgeries. And I certainly wouldn’t blame him for not wanting to muster the energy to accommodate a stranger who might have ended up overstaying his welcome or being a bore and I could tell that his gusto was on the wane. I’m so glad to have known him in sort of an attenuated way.

I’ll treasure the goodies that he sent me and I’ll check my voice mail every so often.

General Updates and Sleeve Cuffs Revisited

The H1N1 Swine Mephistopheles has landed in our shop. One of my business partners little girls has a confirmed case. We’ve been sick with respiratory gunk but I don’t think that we’ve had the full blown Swine Flu. Be careful out there.

The sequelae are physiognomically apparent-however, I think there’s something appealing about this little guy.

Heading out to Seattle this morning for the balance of the week. Then it’s off to Gotham next Sunday after an LFG weekend and then to Seattle again for the end of next week... We have a few final destinations before the end of the year including Las Vegas and a couple of other sorties to New England. So we’ve got many more opportunities to critique carpet before Santa arrives

.Just a couple of housekeeping things before launching another older post. Please go over to To The Manner Born and sign up as a follower of Toad and leave a welcome back message. I’m thrilled that he’s back in the fold and we need to let him know that his posts will be followed and appreciated.

A few of you have commented on my updated subtitle. I loved the phrase so much that I asked LPC if I could use it. She was predictably gracious and if you haven’t visited her. Please do so here.

Stay tuned for the following posts...

Hats and why I don’t wear much beyond a baseball cap. There’s a childhood reason. Dig the Vel dishwashing liquid in this old picture of me and Santa.

Cooking with LFG

 

The enduring style contribution of windowpane.

 

The delicate issue of non-cowboys wearing cowboy boots.

 Australia’s R.M. Williams Boots and why you should own a pair.

The dangers of drinking and dressing.

Now…on to Seattle and Sleeve Cuffs

I’ve had this on and off appetite for sleeve cuffs for years. My buddies at Flusser tell me that it’s related to the same Southern redneck predisposition that I have for rear view mirrorfuzzy dice, hula girl dashboard figurines…you know…dual exhausts and Cragar mags. If they didn’t restrain me, I’d put every bell and whistle treatment possible on my bespoken togs. Color, proportion, treatments etc….I pay them well for the restraint they insist on me demonstrating. Ah but sleeve cuffs...I could never wear them with the elan of Merkin and Fleming.

Sleeve cuffs were the last frontier for me. I’d already done bellows/poacher pockets. Open patch pockets with pleats…English split back trousers with a center buckle. It was time for sleeve cuffs. I have a navy blue windowpane suit with sleeve cuffs as well as a green cashmere-wool blend sportcoat with the adornments.I had to show the lining along with the sleeve cuff of the cashmere-wool blend green bomb sportcoat. I told you I was a redneck.
Navy Blue Windowpane...single breasted peak lapels-three button rolled to the second-ticket pocket-English split back trousers-sleeve cuffs. This one predates my marriage.
I’m done though. Two togs cuffed …enough.

Onward. Cuffed.

Jesus-Indians and Contraceptive Co-Pays

I don’t think Jesus minds too much if we miss the Handlin’ for good reason. The cocktail flu ain’t really a strong enough reason to not go and get a dose but the real flu probably gets you off the hook. If ever there was a time when you just might get bitten-it might be when you are throwing off some viral juju. A sip of strychnine out of the Mason jar though-might do you good.

I got dressed in an attempt to go but just didn’t have the stamina. So I had fellowship at home-with DayQuil. I leave tomorrow for another round of airports-hotels-meeting rooms and carpet reviews so I’ve gotta rest up. Besides-dressing right now in the mid-Atlantic area is no easy feat. The temps can vary as much as thirty degrees so it’s no man’s land regarding consistent requirements for fabric and clothing weight. And it’s been misty-rainy here as well.

Brittons was the bomb…as kids would say today. I don’t exaggerate when I say that their Main Street store in Columbia S.C. circa 1985 was as tasty as any haberdashery you would find in Gotham. It was nothing short of a miniature Polo Mansion. This was also a time when you could only buy Polo in a few places in S.C. and Brittons had the best of the best from the Polo line. They also had a taste level that allowed the creation of private label stuff that so mimicked the look of Polo-plebes like me could actually afford a few things. They did a ton of well customized Hertling and they styled stuff from Country Britches that to this day-I can visualize. I didn’t have the money to buy anything Polo at regular price back then but I was first in line for their sales twice a year.

It never really gets what I call “tweedy cold” in South Carolina so many of us who were trying to sport that classic Polo look back then did so mid January in a pool of sweat. It just didn’t get cold enough to wear head to toe tweed and flannel. I wore it anyway-surprised?

My company also demanded that we wear suits so tweed sportcoat were nonexistent in my closet. But then I walked in and spied this bullet proof baby.

I call it bullet proof because after almost 25 years of accompanying me around the world-this coat remains as pristine today as when I bought it-at half price-for the stunning sum of one hundred and eighty dollars.

I was making 29k back then as a hospital rep for a drug company-that was a lot of dough…for the coat and for a 24 year old kid to bring home each year.

I had never seen pockets like this. Mainly because I’d never seen The Shooting Party or any Merchant Ivory stuff or read any English explorer biographies like Mallory or had never seen turn of the century golf photographs. They stood out kinda funny but I liked them. The stiffness of this fabric made them stand out even more.

I even closed the throat-wind latch on this baby one day when it became a ...brrrr chilly 58 degrees. Almost did that auto-asphyxiation thang on myself before I could get it undone. Ever been in a situation where calling 911 was not out of the question but not so much that before dialing-you had enough presence of mind to realize how embarasing it was going to be when the arrived? This was one of two times I've been caught in those tentacles. The other was when I accidentally zipped up my ........

Some of the Mallory team....I can hear them now..."Hey guys-before we attempt Everest-lets swing by Brittons in Columbia South Carolina and get kitted out for the climb"!

Never have I owned such a versatile coat. Jeans-earth tone cords-gray flannels-seersucker-gingham-lycra…it goes with everything! In my attempt to make it to fellowship, I paired it with a fifteen year old pair of Polo cords and brown suede brogues.

What’s the oldest thing in your clothing cupboard? Speaking of cupboards-LFG turned in her first of four book projects the other week. The Indian in the Cupboard was her choice for project uno. She had a choice of making a shadow box-a book cover or an advertising poster to accompany the more thorough written report to be turned in. I love working with her on the right brain projects. I struggle to help her with the left brain stuff-I had to hire a tutor to get me through grad school statistics. I is a Liberal Arts man.

LFG knocking out another page or two of The Indian in the Cupboard post Cotillion last month. My mother had to knock my a_s out to get me to read anything at that age.

So LFG decides on creating a book cover. We find some clip art to her liking. I print our various sized for her and then she goes to work.

I really thought it was cool when she suggested that we put the little Indian in the side pocket of Omri’s pants. Cool no?

Ok….gotta get to work here. No chemotherapy strategies today. I’m down-market with perplexing issues regarding women’s contraception and hormone replacement. Still blows my mind that the cash out of pocket co-pays for oral contraceptives are often times higher than the co-pays for Viagra. That’s logical right? Being the father of an only child-a budding woman…should turn any man into a feminist to some degree.

Onward-With little Indians-And Big Tweedy Bellows Pockets-And Higher Co-Pays

ADG

Halloween-Redux:Shell Cordovan-Tanned Ankles and Vietnam

Ok…a few housekeeping things before I post one of my oldies…

Item One: Several of you asked about LFG and her Trick or Treating endeavours. Here’s photo evidence of my little M&M and two of her besties. I lasted just long enough to take photos and go back to bed. I don’t have the full blown H1N1 but I’ve definitely got the runner up.

My Baby

And Her Other M&Ms

Item Two: So many of you were very kind and encouraging to me when I put a tentative toe in the blogging water. I’ve made a discovery that I DEMAND you check out and read and add as a fave and become a follower etc.

Mon Avis, Mes Amis is the English Country corollary to so many of our great “gal blogs” over here. It's Brideshead meets soccer-school plays-parenting-colour-texture-books-drinks-travel-snotty noses and misplaced jumpers and homework. Superb writing with just the right amount of British Colonial-Sardonic Aplomb. To quote her observations about another author…”I’d read her grocery lists”. You’ll just find some damned good writing over there.

I wish that I could turn phrases like these……

“….Then a trip home on the redjet with the delightful company of the Friday night commuters who will have been necking gin and tonics since Waterloo. 

…My server is still buggered which is driving me slowly mad. I am hoping in my absence that the techy-geeks-who-still-live-with-their-mums will mend it.. Or I'll be doing a massive Naomi Campbell on them when I get back.

...with siren voices. Am off this avo for an eyewateringly expensive haircut, mooch round South Audley St, Hatchards and some drinks with amusing and cosmopolitan literary types. Oh the utter utter bliss.

….What wouldn't I give for a cocktail. Yes, I am aware it's ten am here. Your point, caller?...”

So get on over there and make yourself known.

The men’s store that I worked in during holidays and summers had a patina. So do shell cordovan shoes. The nature of the muscle sheath-or “shell” from a horse’s flank ensures a patina relatively fast-after six months or so of curing the hide before being made into a pair of shoes. The haberdashery of my youth had a time born patina having opened in 1927. The fixtures were original and had layers of polish, nicks and memories all over them. I know this well-I walked around constantly when there were no customers in the store-cleaning glass and shining fixtures. It also had a smell that imbued for me an olfactory patina if there can be such a thing. It smelled like men-Bay Rum and tobacco. This was an ultra trad alpha male kind of haberdashery-nothing foppish about this joint. The first time I smelled the place was with my dad when I’d go with him to pick up stuff he’d bought. My dad was a clothes fanatic. I was probably five or six years old and I remember as a small child feeling that it was too cold in the store-hyper air-conditioned in the summer. I can smell the place as I write this.

My uniform was fairly typical when I worked there. Navy blue Stanly Blacker blazer-odd trousers of khaki-seersucker-tropical weight British tan or light gray-a Gant button down-regimental stripe tie and always Weejuns. Either the navy ones or the brown pair-both of which you’ve come to know to a degree greater than I’m sure you wanted.


Ernie had a bit of a gloss and a layer of what I’d call “trad patina” which is interesting since he was only in his thirties. My mom always said he looked “freshly scrubbed”. He was a local boy, having returned to our hometown and the store, after working post Vietnam down in Charleston at the very traditional and a bit higher end clothing store-Jack Krawcheck. Ernie eventually bought our hometown haberdashery. Mr. C. - the guy we worked for-bought the store from the founder in 1947 after he returned from the War and sold it to Ernie in the mid 1980’s.I’m standing at the front of the store one morning when Ernie walked in. My brown Weejuns are shined to a nice gloss-not yet victimized by roofing tar. That was a few years down the road. I look down at Ernie’s shoes and they are glossy beyond description. I’d never seen anything like it before. They looked like Weejuns but not quite. They were just different enough in construct for me to know that they weren’t’ made by Bass. All I know is that my Weejuns went from sugar to shit in about thirty seconds. Kind of like my MG Midget did when my dad showed me the Triumph GT-6 that I was on the cusp of owning. The MG was fine-at least until I saw the GT-6.

So I’m thinking that Ernie is using some kind of special polish on his nicer than Weejuns loafers. All I need to do is get some of that deeper darker ox blood looking polish and go to work on my Weejuns. That’s when I received from Ernie the shell cordovan tutorial. The lore-the back story as well as the realization that I wouldn’t own a pair any time soon. You couldn’t buy them in my hometown and I didn’t have the dough anyway. They were absurdly expensive and rightfully so. Ernie wore a half size larger than me-otherwise I would have stolen his. Horsehide? But more precisely-the muscle sheath of the rear flank-yielding enough material per horse for only a couple of pairs of shoes? Ok, I’m getting the picture. But I’m also lusting for the depth of shine-the deep patinated luster of the shoes. Alas, I would be thirty before I owned a pair.
Mine are the Alden Full Strap version-number 684 in color 8. There are color variations but if you are only gonna own one pair-they must be color 8. Ernie sported the Alden Leisure version-style number 986.

There are other characteristics of Alden loafers that make you aware of the fact that they are nicer than Weejuns. Kind of a "better than you" thing.
Ernie's shoe story and the tutorial was one thing. Ernie’s stories of Ocean Drive in the 1960’s were even better. The Pad was THE place to hang out in the 1960's after being on the beach all day-in Ernie’s case-as a life guard for Vernon’s Beach Service. You donned Bermuda shorts or khakis-hemmed and cuffed a bit too short in order to show off your tanned ankles while shagging (shagging-the Carolina dance-not the British thang-that often occurred later-after the dancing). Your loafers HAD to be shined to a gloss before hosting the aforementioned tanned ankles. A guy’s midsection was usually bisected with an alligator belt and slide buckle.
Learning the intricacies of the southern dance as well as sporting the trad summer uniform was generally done for the purposes of successfully navigating the dating-mating ritual. Like most things college boys do-you did it for the girls. I still have behaviors-tethered exclusively to the idea that girls like it or expect it.

I can’t think of Ernie without thinking about shell cordovan loafers and tanned ankles. But I can’t think about shell cordovan without thinking about Vietnam. You see, Ernie would stand around the store in those loafers-telling me stories about being a 19 year old infantry grunt-slogging through the jungle scared shitless one hundred percent of the time. He knew his number was coming up but he went back to the beach anyway-back to Ocean Drive and the lifeguard stand and he simply told his dad to come fetch him when he had to report. He told the story of seeing his dad in street clothes-walking up the beach to his stand. He knew his dad was there for one reason only-It was time to report for basic training.

By November Ernie was walking point somewhere in Southeast Asia. As I listened to his stories I realized how lucky I was-having been too young for this war. He told the story of loving the letters that his mom sent him that contained those little packets of moist towelettes from Kentucky Fried Chicken. He had written home telling her that the heat was really bad and that he could never get relief. Ernie said that those little handy wipe packets offered thirty seconds of liberation from the jungle. He’d wipe his face and the back of his neck with them-it was home-it was mom-in a little packet from Kentucky Fried Chicken.

Ernie lasted less than a year before returning home. The good news is that he returned home physically and psychologically intact-but not before spending about a year in various Veterans hospitals. Ernie-shod in his translucently buffed shell cordovans told me about spreading his bedroll out and reveling in the mental foreplay and anticipation of how good the stolen small can of Coca-Cola was going to taste once he sat down for a rest. That’s the last thing he remembered about Vietnam. His next memory involved waking up in a hospital in Japan. He and his platoon were flanked by those cunning guys in black pajamas-sandals and AK 47’s. Ernie was softened up a bit before the ground attack with mortar shrapnel.

Today Ernie is pretty much retired. LFG and I saw him when we were home last month. He still has a patina and he still has the shell cordovan loafers. They will last a lifetime if you take care of them and no trad wardrobe would really be complete without a pair. They go for around a half grand a pair these days so start saving your money.

Chicago-Oral Oncologics-Toad and Pumpkins

I love Chicago. My memories of a woman on North Clark Street in Lincoln Park are vivid. I didn’t even mind slumming with her during the cold months. Her move to Schaumburg was the deal breaker for me. The Chicago burbs for some reason seemed to blunt the intensity. We had to drive in for our usual frolic in the city and …. Well, you get the picture.

Travelling light as always. Orvis carryon replete with my propaganda. Lucky Brand jeans-old as dirt Ralph D.B.-Ralph double monk suedes.

My two day meeting at the Wit hotel was really great. The moral and ethical threads regarding chemotherapy cannot be extricated from the dialogue regarding how you market it-how much should it cost and who should pay for it. The smoldering dynamic in oncology is the issue regarding profit margins realized by the physicians for administering the chemotherapy. Oral products versus infused regimens change the entire dynamics of chemotherapy economics. If the efficacy and survival endpoints are the same-should a physician then choose the regimen that he makes the most money on-even if the less profitable alternative is an oral agent that the patient can simply consume at home with a glass of water to wash it down?

Ok…I’ll stop. For a moment there I thought that I was writing a White Paper on oncology practice management economics. Back to the Wit for a second. I wish that I could have done in my Wit guest room,  a “Control-F” like we do on computers to find words in a document. I’m all about “experience-concept-philosophy”. However, instead of you telling me about the experience manifest in your concept and philosophy-allow me to discover it on my own. Everything short of the towel that I stole had an “experience” attached to it. “Experience the telephone-Experience room service-Experience these expensive ass peanuts in the Servibar- Experience the Shower Head-Experience the Catalogue where you can actually buy the same showerhead-Experience-Experience -Experience –Experience” Shut up already. I promise you that the word experience could be found a hundred times in my room. I would go back to the Wit in a heartbeat. Really nice and very well run-they like scores of other boutique hotels just need to stop trying to be so boutique-ish and just “be”. 

The carpet in the rooms was butt ugly. Here are my Ralph double monks offering some contrast to the dookie brown zebra carpet.

I rolled in to the Wit with a few hours to kill and took a sartorial walk up Michigan Avenue and over to Oak Street. Before I departed the room though-I “experienced” a snack from the Servibar. The offerings seen here cost four thousand dollars. Margins on this stuff are higher than on infused chemotherapy.

Didn’t pack a raincoat or an umbrella. Old Ralph navy blue serge D.B. buttoned up and collar popped offered my best defense against the Chicago elements-not too cold out but just damp and misty enough to take notice. Fifteen year old blazer from the Ralph outlet back when the outlets were full of samples-prototypes-etc. Matter of fact-everything I have on in this picture either came from eBay or the Outlets save the pocket square.

This gal does the Yellow Mac with greater panache than anyone. Check out this incredible uber marionette event in Berlin-Here.

Kinda sad that the Playboy Building ain't the Playboy Building anymore.

I remain committed to Federal legislation that would control the manufacture-distribution and donning of Spandex. Most of the time it’s just not pretty. Spandex blend Yoga Pants walking north on Michigan Ave however, seemed to strike just the right balance between function and form-very, very nice butt that my camera didn’t do justice. Jesus-I was JUST lookin’ not lustin’. Quiet please.

Thanks to the Wit-I was able to experience one of their little loaner umbrellas.

The Ralph store on Michigan Ave rivals Gotham’s mansion. I asked one of the guys there about the square footage difference. The Chicago store is larger than the Mecca Mansion on Madison. Absolutely stunning. Even though I’ve not a penny to spend-I relished what Ralph does best-the Aspirational Lifestyle was manifest clearly in the Chicago store. Take an hour and watch the Charlie Rose interview with Ralph. He is an amazing strategist and entrepreneur. I hope the economy will kick up enough for high end retailers to experience a good holiday season. God knows I won’t be helping them this year. Ralph et al nailed it this season. Everything looked great.

The only difference between this-The House of Ralph in Chicago and the one of my upbringing in South Carolina is that we never took the wheels off of ours.

Walking down the stairs back to the street level-I’ll take one of each.

 Tasty goods for this season-reminds me of Polo in the early 1980’s. Our boy Tintin just posited some great thoughts about Ralph circa 1985.

 Really reminiscent of the late 70’s-early 80’s Polo horse blanket plaid sportcoat. My camera-as always doesn’t do this one justice.

The Ralph sortie was so heady that little ole Paul Stuart on Oak Street was bland at best. Their goods are second to none-unequivocally so. It’s just that I don’t see Paul Stuart really fitting in Chicago. It’s a Gotham grounded legacy and they seem like a stepchild in Chicago.

The horizontal striped and polka-ed knit ties were noteworthy though.

Back to the Wit and to work. I’ve conducted meetings in every conceivable venue-good and bad. I can tell you that the meeting room in the Wit was stellar. Floor to ceiling glass comprised two of the four walls. Excellent-excellent meeting room experience.

The meeting room carpet experience though-was almost as bad as the carpet in my room.

Back home and prepping for Trick or Treating-I figured I’d share with you a few years worth of LFG Pumpkin carving shots. We aren’t fancy-just a bunch of triangles configured for desired facial features.

Good

Better

Best

Bestest

This is the only surviving photo of LFG’s first ambulating Halloween. She kept the lady bug antennae headband on for hours-much to our surprise. Cute as ever. This would also be the last Halloween that I lived in the same home with my heart-my raison d’être-my strategy-my LFG.

And finally-it is with mixed emotions that I announce the end of my celibacy-promiscuity strike. Actually, it never really began. I am pleased to report that on November 10^th, the voice of reason-the honest rolling merchant of Midwestern skepticism will return. Toad will be back. And-he's grumpier than ever! Here's the press release announcing the end of his sabbatical...Curse you all. Ya sleep with dogs ya get fleas. If ACD was man enough to revive Holmes, I'll be man enough to be found in my usual spot beginning Nov 10. Mrs. T and I are heading to NOLA first

October 30, 2009 1:31 PM

Onward-Experientially.

ADG

Smile Train and Angel Nell

Angel Nell just financed the repair of a child's face.

I first discovered Smile Train while watching years ago a special on plastic surgeons and other healthcare providers who travel to developing countries a few times a year to do one thing and one thing only-repair cleft palates.

I do strategy consulting for a living and I extol the virtues of making trade-offs in order to perform fewer things at higher levels of quality and value. Smile Train operates under the same premise. I give to very few charities-all of which involve children.

Our little consultancy sends one terminally ill child each Christmas on their dream journey through the Make-A-Wish foundation.

We do so in celebration of the gift we have in our consulting organization-a gaggle of healthy kids.

LFG and I also support monthly the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. Danny Thomas has his own special place in heaven-what a legacy he created through St. Jude. I think that giving anonymously is the most magnanimous way to share and celebrate. To that end, I don’t tell this story with the expectation of recognition or accolades. Giving is kinda like good parenting. You don’t deserve extra praise for stepping up and doing a decent job at it-you should be delivering on said behaviors as baseline conduct.

One of the things I like about Smile Train is their business model. They cajole-praise-harangue-shame-love-browbeat industry-physicians-nurse anesthetists and others to donate technology and time to their cause. Subsequently they are able to assure that when private citizens like you and I donate $250.00 to their organization-one cleft palate gets repaired. I like that measurable outcome-I like to know that the precise amount given takes care of a child.

I saw a father who had carried his three year old little girl in his arms from another village to the surgery camp so that she could get her face repaired. He had walked for hours. Our kids get their clefts repaired soon after birth-as soon as possible. Many of these kids have walked around for years with one hand over their mouth-in shame. This dirt poor father with no shoes wanted nothing more for his precious daughter than I’ll ever want for LFG-I could see it in his eyes. When he was told that he was too late-that the surgery camp tents were already being dismantled-that he would have to wait one year before their return-he crumbled.

This wasn’t a propaganda rigged show to pull at your heart and solicit your money. This was a Discovery Channel or Nightline/20-20 special or something similar. I loved the interview that they did with one of the surgeons. He essentially said…  “Look-I am an aesthetic plastic surgeon in Southern California-I run a cash business based on vanity and I take home over a million dollars each year. The LEAST I can do is take a couple of weeks off and travel to developing countries and repair the faces of these children.” Amen.

So who the hell is Nell? Folks-I have no idea but to me she is an angel and through her kindness-a child’s face will be made whole and the life attached to that face will now be forever changed. The fundamental goodness in people can still be discovered amidst this chaotic and often times jaundiced world within which we live. Kind deeds tend to be contagious and Nell at minimum-deserves accolades and a more formal gesture of thanks-ergo a repaired palate. I didn’t finance that cleft palate repair-Nell did.

Damn it ADG….what the heck did Nell do?

She recovered all of my old posts through some magic juju in Google Reader and emailed them to me. One at a time-over the course of three days-totaling in excess of a hundred emails. I’ll repost them from time to time-sprinkled amongst new drivel. Let me know if there are any memorable ones that you’d like to see.

Thanks Nell-whoever you are.

Onward-Nellishly.

ADG

Damn It Toad!

If you don’t come back at once I’m gonna go on a promiscuity strike. Or is that a celibacy strike? Either way it ain’t gonna be good and the end result will be on your hands. This blog holiday-sabbatical cannot be THAT intriguing. Perhaps restorative to a degree but really-how much restorative luddite-ish escape does a man of your constitution require?

Ok, now that we’ve done another Toad Taunt-let’s touch on some additional Trad Impertinence. Want to?

I was NOT kidding when I told you that I gave my GTH pants to Aunt Tootie.

Here she is at Wal-Mart-picking up a few things for the weekend. Ham Hocks, Pickled Pig’s Feet, Slim Jims (for me), Glory Brand canned collard greens and a few other odds and ends.

Yellow Cords…I mean really. Not sure why y’all had such a craving for them. I’ll sell 'em to ya for a thousand million dollars-LFG set the price. Take it up with her.

Now on to the latest Orvis catalogue I received. I’m not a hat guy-much beyond a baseball topper. However the cover shot shows a four hat mélange that has a fetching wool-plaid hat sandwiched therein. They call it the Stormy Kromer.

Now I suppose if I lived in Michigan or Wisconsin or somewhere similar-I’d be sportin a Stormy Kromer. Nice enough looking hat I suppose. On further perusal though-something just wasn’t quite right.

I began to feel a little bit “all overish” while pondering this head warmer. Then it hit me. The Stormy Kromer is channeling way too much Ed Gein for me.

And finally-my latest intrigue courtesy of Sky Mall. The Dog Genealogy Kit. I’m from South Carolina. My own family tree seems to peter out at about 1957. Hardly enough tree for said doggie to hike a leg on.

Onward.


ADG....and the "G" ain't Gein.

Top Drawer Stuff

Just rolled in from Chicago on a smaller than usual plane-felt like I was in an H1N1 capsule. As much as I travel and spend time sequestered on planes I feel like it’s just a matter of time before the viral spore hits me. The smaller planes are packed-I’m glad that airlines remain solvent but they've become an incubator for vicious virus congregation. On second thought-I’m too damned mean and cranky after two days of work to be a good host for a virus.

I don’t wear suits and ties too much anymore so most of the things in my accessories box spend more time entombed therein that out and about. I have another quasi junk drawer where this and another couple of boxes live. When packing for Chicago the other day I opened the boxes and saw good fodder for a post.

I thrive on memories and there are a few nuggets in here that take me way back. My wedding band is in here. I have a box of things for LFG and if and when she wants them I’ll pass them over to her-my wedding band included. I want her to know that there was a time when her mother and I had a good connection-one that was equally yoked at least for a period of time long enough to yield this incredible gift from God-LFG.

My maternal grandfather's pocket watch.

Vintage Cuff Snaps

There’s also something in the box that I wouldn’t be caught dead wearing but I just can’t seem to discard it or sell it for scrap gold. It is testimony to why I beg my family and have always admonished girlfriends to NOT try to buy me a watch or jewelry. I don’t wear much jewelry and chances are if you buy me something I’m not gonna like it. I don’t wear watches with metal bands/bracelets because my wrists are small and I don’t like the scale. The Rolex thing is lost on me-unless we are talking 1930’s Prince with a leather band. So if you look closely you’ll see elements of a gold rope bracelet slinking around the other items in there. A lovely-nice-stunning woman gave me that for Christmas almost twenty years ago. I was aghast. Too disco for me.

My Lee-Jackson cuff links live here. Wore them to the Union League Club in Chicago years ago. Kinda liked taken my Southern boys into that club with me. I can tell that they are Lee and Jackson. Most wouldn’t be able to. These are gifts from one of my best buddies who is a native Virginian. Matter of fact, he called me tonight when I was in the airport in Chicago.

An old fraternity ring and my father’s signet ring. My mother gave it to me when he died. I’ve worn it from time to time and even though I had it sized to fit me-the scale is a bit much for my hands. LFG can have it one day.

Cuff links from London with the Vanity Fair image of the cricketer Lord Hawke. The print hangs in my bedroom. I also have a set somewhere that have the Vanity Fair image of Winston Churchill on them.  Hawke was typical in his view of amateurs versus professional cricketers in his day. Walter Hagen broke that same barrier for golfers in the States during the early 20^th century.  Hawke on professionals…."Pray God, no professional shall ever captain England. I love and admire them all, but we have always had an amateur skipper and when the day comes when we shall have no more amateurs captaining England it will be a thousand pities."

My uncle gave me this little Willie Wirehand lapel pin when I was a kid. I thought it was just the coolest thing and I wore it to church every Sunday when I was a little fella. He spent his entire professional life as an executive and lobbyist for rural electric cooperatives in several locations across the country.

When I first moved to Washington he was still coming here for work and we would always meet for dinner and he’d take me to some of the legislative things that interested me. Here’s some additional scoop on the mascot… 

Willy Wirehand - was created for use by rural electric cooperatives and public utility districts. Willy was a stick figure, with a lamp socket for a head, an electric plug for legs and feet, and wore gloves similar to those worn by farmers. 

Next month will be the one year anniversary of my uncle's death. I was a pallbearer-along with Willie Wirehand on my lapel.

My childhood pocket knives are in that old collar box that I bought at the Georgetown Flea market. I carried one all the time except when at school. Today that would be scandalous I suppose. The tiny one is a cheapie but I wouldn’t take anything for it. It was my first ever pocket knife-from my grandmother. I still have the massive scar on my left index finger where that Barlow knife took the end of it off. The tip was hanging on by the nailbed only. Hurt like a mother ____ when they sewed it back on. 

And finally-rolling around in the drawer are two great memories. The gearshift knobs from my MG Midget and my Triumph GT-6.

Onward. With Stuff.

Greatest Hits

Greetings from the Wit Hotel in Chicago. I’ll be peddling my tonic here for a couple of days before heading back to the land of political puffery and posturing. I thought about this the other day. Living inside the beltway and not working in politics is kind of like living in Hollywood and not being in the movie business. I’ve done the public policy-government affairs thing. I loved the expense account but lost my appetite for the bullshit. And trust me-when my bullshit tolerance reservoir is full-I gotta go.

Looking back on my first seven months of blogging and the evaporation of over a hundred posts-I’m prone for recollect some of the ones I most enjoyed. The great thing about dumping all of that history is that I get to recycle!

The only significant pangs that I get are from reminiscing about a few of the LFG posts-mainly because I no longer keep a handwritten journal and I do miss that. I wrote letters to LFG beginning when she was two years old. I think the last time I wrote in that journal was about a year ago.

So I started rolling through an old cache of blog pictures and thought I’d just do a medley of stuff that came to mind. 

The old patch madras sportcoat-getting the "Banks" out. Inspired by our old buddy Toad

Two inch cuffs-Jay Kos cords. Alden Flex Welt Tassels

LFG's summer dance recital and my military sunglasses. That was a fun post!

"Puerto" Rykken and the Yellow Mac (Photo stolen-without permission from Will at A Suitable Wardrobe-Sorry!)

Gram Parsons' Nudie Suit

LFG's first Chucks

Suede Alden Flex Welt Tassels-501's and Horizontal Stripes from my second post

Sargent Shriver-Bereaved and confused. comforted by his grand daughter

Navy Blue Weejuns. I have them. You don't. Shut up.

My letter from Tom Wolfe. I have one. You probably don't.

Anyone remember "Sun Tzu and the Art of Pink in N.J." ?

Or the British Tan and Lymphoma Post?

Jesus and the Ford Pinto?

LFG-The "Pootist"

My post on sleeve cuffs-here sported by my sartorial hero Merkin. R.I.P.

My Gurkha shorts post. Charlotte and Me...replete with a skunk wig..on me-not her. Dig those rings she wore...at eighty years old. Will you live that long? If you do-will you have that much duende-style-understated aplomb? She had loads of it and my aquaintance with her was one of the most splendid and incredible gifts I've been offered. Her eyes at eighty were so blue. This photo doesn't  come close to capturing her majesty or Her Majesty.

Speaking of Her Majesty. At Gus and Gus in Rehoboth Beach this summer.James Dean and Jack Purcells. Few of you knew that Purcell was a Badminton legend till I posted a story about him. Damn.

My junk drawer. Several of you sent me emails asking if in the back of the drawer-out of this photo did there exist hanky panky items like fur handcuffs etc. You obviously don't know me. I'm not big into props and the actual items out of view are Tylenol PM and Rolaids. Quiet please.

LFG and Shirley Manigault from my S.C. vacation post.

LFG and I have done a hair reversal since this photo was taken all those years ago. She has hair now. Shut up.

Early morning post from the Mills House in Charleston

Caricatures in my office.

Boxers-On sale at the Gap Outlet in Old Town.

Remember when I had a cocktail and decided to bris my mocs?

Middle aged man with a cute daughter. Anyone seen my washboard abs?

iPhone photo technology-not. Pic from my earlier trip to Chicago.

Country Ham and Grits. Mills House-Charleston

Stoli-Belgians-Green Linen@O'Hare

I gave these pants to my Aunt Tootie.

Onward.

ADG

Trad Ramblings and LFG Specifics

Wow-what a week. I began last Sunday in Wellesley /Boston and snow flurries. We finished up today at about seventy two degrees. The leaves were lovely in New England but this kind of weather variance is hell to accommodate sartorially.

I’ve made the approach to National Airport from the north-skimming the Potomac probably a five hundred times in the last twenty years. It’s really a stunning view-the monuments and the White House and Capitol on the left-almost like you can reach out and touch them. I usually have an aisle seat and don’t pay that much attention anymore. I’m just ready to get off said plane and go home. My window view afforded me a quick snap with the iPhone on approach yesterday afternoon.

God loaded LFG with enough antics to replenish my daddy reservoir from the get go. We had a date at our usual spot after soccer practice. Cactus Cantina saw LFG reveling after a couple of tequila shots. Photo evidence herein.

We got home and LFG read to Piggy Pie Porker and SeaWeed. These two characters are her favorites but they stay with me when she’s away. She asks them about me and gets updates in her absence. She cracked me up last night when she told me that Piggy Pie had a “health problem” and need “diabeedees” pills. I asked how she knew about such a remedy and she said she saw something on television. Oy-the DTC Pharma stuff is reaching fourth graders. She declared that Piggy Pie developed this health issue from eating “too many eggs”. Pray for Piggy Pie.

Speaking of pork-I noticed a rather interesting dichotomy playing out in my refrigerator tonight. Half sours in tandem with a ham hock. Don’t tell me we aren’t eclectic over here.

LFG replete in Sponge Bob pajamas passed out in no time last night and I was right behind her. I would live under a rock before I would give up the bliss that comes from times like these.

Soccer was really fun today and the rain was minimal until after the game ended. LFG is by far the smallest gal on her team and she’s really having fun.

They won three zip today which was nice considering that they got stomped six zip two weekends ago.

I suggested to our coach that we give the beaten team today another chance next weekend. Just so I can see this stunner from the other side. Here she is grinning at LFG and I’m thinking-“If you think she’s cute and has a move or two, wait till you meet her daddy .” Looks like she's sporting army pants-I'll march to her bark. That dog behind her ain't bringing much bark to the scene. Hold me.

I mean come on-the woman has a yellow rain coat. Wait till she sees mine.

Shell Cordovans for soccer-why not? Don't mess with me. I've got more style and game in my pinky than most of these cats out here.

Home from soccer and LFG is supposed to be folding clothes but no-she decides to do flam taps and double paradiddles instead. I can’t afford another set of drums. My Slingerlands are long gone but I can pop for some sticks every now and then.

The child is out of control and a double dose of Cotillion is due this little beast.

Ok, on to some Trad randomalia….

I wore pink the other week in support of Breast Cancer awareness and prevention. I wear pink routinely so it wasn't much of a deal for me.

Everybody was wearing pink so you know I had to do something to tart my rig up a bit. Yellow cords and an orange pocket square. That doesn't match. Bingo!

Remember-hand felled button holes should look-on the verso-like LBJ's gall bladder scar.

Tone on tone herringbone with yellow monogram opposite the fifth button. Come on back Toad and tell me I'm a man of no consequence.Chicken. Shut up.

And finally-would someone get over here and clean this cluttered bedroom up just a bit. Those sleeve buttons need closing as well-according to the sartorial conscience of the world our buddy Mr.Tintintintintintintintintin.

Onward. With LFG.

Medicaid and Butt Implants-TaTa

 I’m on the homestretch folks. You know how it feels when it’s been a week since you’ve hugged your kid(s)? I land at National Airport tomorrow and go straight to soccer practice and fetch LFG for the weekend. I miss her so much I can’t stand it and I’ll relish my weekend with her. She and her peers took the first round of standardized math tests today. 

No Child Left Behind and the law of unintended consequences will be the topic of another post sometime soon. These teachers are caught between a rock and a hard place with regard to teaching versus “teaching to the test”. Stop me now or this is gonna turn into an elementary school parent activist post.

LFG and her mom saw Julie and Julia a while back and LFG begged to go see Julia Child’s kitchen at the Smithsonian. I was only too happy to oblige. When we returned home LFG prepared with a little help from ADG…. Coq Au Vin. Thanks to your Federal tax dollars we have the greatest museums in the world just a train ride away. Merci.

I am not exaggerating when I say that I sat from eight this morning until three this afternoon before I presented. I had to endure at least two hundred PowerPoint slides before I was on. You can only drone on for so long on Medicaid reimbursement and if job justification is indexed to the number of slides in a deck-these fruit loops I listened to today are safe for another thousand years. Ban PowerPoint-it’s one of the first things I’m gonna do as President-after we regulate the use of Spandex.

So I had plenty of time to take phone pictures of random stuff-including this bullet proof twill contrivance I’m sporting for this jaunt. Polo striped support hose link the twill trou to the Belgians. Nice carpet no?

Here’s a dreadful shot of the poacher pockets. Apple rightfully so, isn’t focused on phone camera quality in the iPhone.

Extra long barrel cuff on my horizontal striped dress shirt. I get bored with conventional contrivances so I’ve learned to even tart up my dress shirts with fuzzy dice.

Monogrammed horizontal stripe-getchaself one or two.

And if your dirty clothes pile isn't fraught with monograms-well I just don't know what's gonna become of you.

No waistband behind the side tabs. Cleaner look and again-I gotta make these rigs a little bit dodgy. Mission accomplished.

Dontcha think?

Ok…somebody’s gotta come and take the Sky Mall catalogue away from me. I could create a separate blog about this crazy stuff. This next offering that I landed on had me trippin. Here we go…  “Honey, does my butt look too big in these jeans? Not big enough baby, go put your butt pads in and let’s roll.” Help me.

Oh, and I’ve cornered another separated at birth from Vanity Fair. My good buddy Elegantologist channels the great line draftsman and Punch Illustrator Phil May.

Our Man in Richmond

The Inimitable Mr. Phil May

Ok, I’ve gotta say some prayers and hit the hay. My Johnny Guitar Watson offering has no relevance to this post-I just believe that at least one of my posits should resurrect this greatest ode to padded butts.

Onward. Tatatingly

Early Festivus-Call Out The 501st Belgian Cavalry

A quick flight back home to repack the bag and we are off again. I should have stayed in either Philly or Boston but I wanted to be back in my own bed for a night. Those of you who travel know what I mean. And no you idiot-that's not National Airport carpet. That's the carpet in my house.

I did have to shove a bunch of clothes down to the end in order to find my way into said bed.

Jumped back on the plane in the Eagle university stripe from yesterday but this time we manifested waist pageantry in early recognition for Festivus. Everyone in my family wears the red Festivus belt during the season but I just felt a randy ass craving being flung on me to bust the bad boy out early and let me tell you-it goes with nothing. Just how I like to roll-keep ‘em guessing. “Is that his mamma’s belt or his sister’s…and how ‘bout them bedroom slippers?” I was just caught in the tentacles of circumstance and this is what ended up walking out the door to National Airport.

Levis 501-Belgian fellowship for the rest of the rig and boys let me tell you-we are gonna have a talk pretty soon about jeans. If you are over forty years old and are wearing anything but good ole 501s chances are that people are laughing at you. I’ve got some Lucky Brand jeans and cords but you gotta be careful. Nothing says mid life crisis man trying to play young like an ill suited pair of jeans. When in doubt dial 501-501-501.

Flusser three button cavalry twill suit. Flap breast pocket and bellows patch pockets. Double vented and tougher than Kevlar. I’ll wear the suit tomorrow and the coat with a pair of 15 year old Polo corduroys on Friday. Stand back and shut up.

I love how the trad-sartorial twerps go on and on about how déclassé and pedestrian it appears when you leave one of your hand felled sleeve buttons unbuttoned. Get over it. I’m a redneck from South Carolina. This is how we roll. If my boys over at Flusser didn’t rein me in I’d have fuzzy dice hanging off of the ass end of this rig. Maybe I'll put a nipple ring in the chest piece. I haven’t this week crossed paths with anyone in four different airports who had the sartorial presence to even determine if I was breaking a rule or not. Be quiet.

Seriously-this is a dying art-a focus and devotion to hand craftsmanship that in LFGs lifetime will see nobody left with the skills to do this level of handwork. I’ve mentioned before that those in the know speculate that there are fewer than twenty people left in Gotham who can do hand felled button holes really well. To that end if you mess with me I’ll have the next one (when I can afford another coat-twenty years maybe) made with seventeen sleeve buttons and I’ll unbutton ten of ‘em.

I love bellows or poacher pockets. I used to put LFG in one of them when she was a baby. Breast pocket flap is usually reserved for odd jackets and overcoats but I tried to break every rule possible when building this baby.

Now on to Sky Mall again. I found something that I might be interested in when I again perused this Bouillabaisse of bullsh*t. To the left of our Back Buddy is a neck stretcher thang. I’m considering it.

Onward. With John Wayne and The Cavalry....ADG

Houndstooth-Biologics and The Kama Sutra

Our fourth quarter generally slows down to a crawl by Thanksgiving but this year our homestretch is anything but calm. Based on the economic climate of the world-as my buddy Puerto Rykken says… “the world as we knew it has blown up” …I am blessed to have a manic final run.

Mania this week sees me in New England twice and Philly in between. I get dizzy looking at the flights-rental car reservations and hotel destinations. God help me when I assemble receipts at the end of this week. The points are nice but are hard earned. Business travel is anything but glamorous so the eight hundred thousand American Express points I had a few years ago have at least one lost hair and one gray hair to accompany each of them.

I always go into cold weather kicking and screaming but this week I only mustered a yelp when I rolled out a wool sportcoatfor the first time . My optimism tells me that we’ll have another round of moderate weather before the wool gear has to be worn full time so no need to howl quite yet.

Flusser cream and brown houndstooth. Three-Two roll…Brethren inspired open patch breast pocket and flap pockets. Difficult to see in the photos but welted seams finish this one. Almost forgot-this is a rare exception to my ADG house model-notch lapels.

 Here’s a 1990 Bergdorf promo piece with Flusser wearing a similar version of said jacket along with light gray flannels. Dig the suede two eyelet George Cleverly bespoke shoes-made when Cleverly was still alive. Those shoes are sitting in my closet-Alan gave them to me right about the time that LFG was born.

 Travelling light requires shoe discipline-one pair for the week. Brown suede monk straps.

Day one-yesterday saw me accompany this rig with bulletproof cavalry twill Flusser trousers. Gotta tell you-if you have to pick a durable fabric for business travel-cavalry twill is it. This stuff will outlast me-no doubt. And no dumbass that's not the carpet in my home-I'm at the airport.

 Monochromatic monogram opposite the fifth button-no breast pocket. My old buddy Toad used to say that a man who monograms his shirts is a man that to him, is of no consequence. That makes my shirt drawer a no consequence clearing house times thirty or so. 

Don’t monogram your shirt cuffs-it’s too predictable. Shut up.

My New England jaunts find me working with a company that offers biotechnology derived interventions for Multiple Sclerosis-a very chauvinistic disease. My sister and mother both have lupus-another disease that seems to pick on girls more than boys. I pray every night that LFG does not receive the genetically gifted affinity for lupus-not that God hears those kinds of prayers.

So I finish one meeting yesterday and rush to the airport for Philadelphia-more chauvinistic healthcare market segment consulting-contraception and hormone replacement therapies. Not quite as dramatic as last week’s oncology work or the MS biologics from yesterday but important. I discovered the importance of hormone replacement for perimenopausal women as well as those right in the throes of that beast. I remember my mom attacking me with a topsider one day when she was hot-flashin. Scary.

I stow my carry on stuff and realize I have nothing to read during my next flight. Retrieving one of my bags is out of the question so I settle in with a copy of Sky Mall magazine. I start trippin’ every time I read the thing. I swear that the people who contrive this shit have to be paying someone off. It’s the false claim-false advertising hall of fame. Please-someone tell me that you’ve bought stuff from this catalogue and that it was a good decision.

 Two items caught my attention in the midst of all the tchotchke therein. First we have Topik. Folks it’s freakin’ spray paint for you bald head. I’d love to have all of my curly hair back from twenty years ago-I’m still holding on to most of it but please-if you see me swathed in trad wrappings head to toe-kitted out second to none but sporting hair paint, just shoot me on the spot. 

I’m assuming also, that some of those little fortifying fibers are gonna end up on your shoulders and probably on your plate during some love connection date. I’m gonna try Suede Renew instead.

I’m not kidding when I tell you that fifteen seconds after reviewing this next product-I went straight to Jesus and asked him to forgive me. With that out of the way though, I have to attest that I can’t possibly be the only one who sees clearly what the other uses are for the “Body Back Buddy”. ... and I'm not talking crowd control riot stick either. This thing just flat our scares me. Here’s what Sky Mall says about this miracle stick…

"Our most popular design reflects years of feedback from massage therapists, chiropractors, and physical therapists. With 11 therapy knobs, (eleven mind you) the Body Back Buddy stimulates in between muscles and pinpoints trigger points for a more finely-tuned treatment. This portable massager combines the best of the Body Back Buddy features for those who want the ultimate self massage tool."

Eleven “therapy knobs.” "the ultimate massage tool"... I almost swallowed my snuff right then and there. Ok, I’m sure that you can hit some hard to reach spots with this thang-back massage wise. However, let’s be honest here-you can also knock out pages one through seventy eight of the Kama Sutra with this baby-no help needed-and that’s just wrong. I’ll also declare something that I know others have surmised but are just too uptight to admit-some of those Kama Sutra suggestions are just plain silly and seven of them are downright dangerous. I know.

I’m not big on too many federal laws but in the interest of preserving the value of men-I suggest that the Federal Government ban the Body Back Buddy at once. The Kama Sutra should be regulated at the State Government level-similar to the method used to restrain the free market activities of health insurance companies. I’m just looking out for all of us.

And today I did so in moleskin trousers from Cordings. BB gator belt with slide buckle and an Eagle button down university striped shirt from Steinmart. All of which predate the birth of LFG. As a matter of fact everything in this post does. Trad is timeless folks.

Onward-with your Back Buddy-ADG

Walter Reed-Windowpane Flusser-Edward Green and Afghanistan

Let me first say again how humbled and overwhelmed I am to get so many positive messages and blog comments from you. Thanks again.

I’ve lamented for years the advent of business casual dress in the corporate realm. Guys particularly-from a practical perspective don’t know how to do it and generally, this casual thing seems to have digressed often times into a hygiene holiday. Some might have heard my rant about this before when I just get crazy while in meetings at large-multibillion dollar company headquarters and the executives I’m interacting with are slobs. Intellect trumps style in high science-research based companies that I consult with but geez-some of these six figure guys look like they rolled out of bed and right to the office.

Julian Schnabel can wear pajamas and a robe to work-he’s an artist who walks down a flight of stairs to a studio. You-marketing executive are not. Put your big boy clothes on and command some level of respect commensurate with your whateverishness. I’ll never darken the door of any meeting without a sportcoat-unless my clients have invited me to some Outward Bound-Trust Building-Granolaesque thing where we are doing activities.One of my business partners does the same-one doesn’t.

Ok, ok, I’m losing you. I donned the ultimate big boy outfit on Thursday so that I could spend time with private practicing oncologists in DC as well as oncologists at Walter Reed Army Hospital. We aren’t an oncology sales and marketing consultancy per se but by happenstance a lot of our work this year has been with oncology product and service providers. It’s a mixed bag in that most oncologists are truly trying to do the right thing by prolonging life. Survival endpoints remain one of the holiest of Holy Grails in oncology-now nuanced with subsets of metrics that look at quality of life as well. What’s the use in having one more birthday if I’m prostrate and puking during this exalted extra year that’s been afforded me?

What’s fascinating about consulting in this healthcare market segment is that you can’t extricate any of the waltzing hat trick variables of clinical outcomes-ethics and economics from the dialogue. Remove one of the variables and the waltz becomes the Chicken Dance-and we’ve all seen someone do the Chicken Dance at a wedding reception and it ain’t pretty.

So it’s raining like crazy on Thursday. My stolen thirty year old Briggs umbrella has now been stolen from me-I’m going to be spending time with very serious clinicians so I’ve gotta kit out in a respectful and weather sensitive way. The solution-wear older stuff that you don’t mind getting soaked. My rig was somber enough-navy blue Flusser windowpane…three button single breasted peak rolled to number two as always…flap and ticket pockets…English split back trousers…no Thurstons to hold ‘em up because I’ve gained enough weight since this 14 year old suit was contrived that I don’t need ‘em. I was wearing this suit when I met my future in laws for the first time-we took them to church here in Old Town. White linen in the breast pocket-gotta keep this rig toned down a bit.

Old Flusser dress shirt that remains a standard…rounded collar…no pin…french cuffs and the cheap old cuff snaps that I bought at the Georgetown Flea market. 

Anybody remember that post? Puerto Rykken gave me the dress shirt 18 years ago.

Polo Ralph tie from the outlets-I haven’t bought a tie in ten years.

If it it’s raining why wear brown suede dress shoes? Two things-I only wear brown suede dress shoes with suits. Zero exceptions…even with seersucker in the summer. The Prince of Wales started it-go check with him. Tom Wolfe campaigned it in The Bonfire of Vanities-characterizing defense attorney-mouthpiece Tommy Killian as a man who routinely donned them. 

Here’s the scene…“Killian was standing under the marquee just outside the front door. He was wearing a chalk-striped gray suit, brown suede shoes, a brown fedora. (How dare he be so debonair on the day of my doom?)”

You realize this is yet another opportunity for me to pull out my letter from Tom Wolfe where he and I engaged in personal correspondence about such shoddings. Don’t bitch-if you read this blog you are prolly gonna see this letter several times a year.

Ok, that was Thing One. Thing Two is that these Edward Green shoes are so old and destroyed that they are my bad weather go to shoes. Suede Renew is a great product and it comes in colors. Kinda like Rit Dye meets Scotchguard. Spray the brown stuff on ‘em-let it dry and brush the nap back up. These shoes are 13 years old-that process don’t work no moe. LFG’s mother and I bought these shoes using my American Express points at Saks in Gotham. 

There’s another post worthy of these shoes and our trip back through the Lincoln Tunnel-Edward Green green shoe box in the back seat. The former Mrs. G. got nauseous while we were stuck in tunnel traffic and the box came in real handy. I just reached into the back seat and kinda slung the shoes out of the newly anointed receptacle-just in time. I’ll leave it there for now.

The last portion of my day saw me with oncologists at Walter Reed. It was sobering-not the part where you see oncology patients in recliners being infused with attenuated poison-some still healthy looking; complete with hair and some-more succumbed to the neoplastic reaper-wasting fast and losing hair faster than me.

These patients have the opposite of the WWII coined description of battle weary soldiers’ gaze-the “Thousand Mile Stare.” A lot of these patients have what I’d describe as a “Three Foot Stare.”  I’ve seen enough of that to not let it distract me from the reasons I’m visiting such places.

What hit me in the gut when rolling into Walter Reed was the sequelae of Improvised Explosive Devices courtesy of Afghanistan and Iraq. I can at a half century of existence, call these soldiers children. They are limbless and mangled kids and they are sitting in the lobby of Walter Reed-I can’t type this without the blur of tears clouding my vision. I saw one guy-maybe twenty two or three years old just staring down at the stump of his right leg. I saw another guy whose wound was deliberately unwrapped after debridement-I suppose the healing was deemed better that way and you could see what was left of a calf muscle and the repaired-rerouted tendons.

I watched the 60 Minutes segment on Afghanistan last Sunday. I listened while running errands yesterday, to two hours of C-span radio where South Asia and Afghanistan experts-retired Four Stars-Academics-Former CIA leaders testified regarding what we are up against in Afghanistan. It ain’t pretty and it ain’t gonna be fast. Sun Tzu posited a few thousand years ago that “Nobody wins in a prolonged battle”. Shit, Afghanistan ain’t ever been anything but a prolonged battle for the Russians, the British, and other naïve predecessors over the past two thousand years.

Battle deaths are tragic and finite and kinda like chemotherapy-there’s a defined endpoint albeit mostly an ugly one. But what’s the endpoint for these broken boys that I saw in the Walter Reed lobby? I want for them a happy and productive life. We owe them that regardless of how f_ _ ked up these wars are. My Marine sniper nephew after two Iraq tours remains the stunning intact physical specimen that he was after basic training…but for the grace of God and thank you God, for keeping him safe. The Walter Reed lobby boys should have thirty year-optimistic gazes and intact limbs. I saw none.

Onward. With gratitude. 

P.S. On a lighter note, I found a great "Separated at Birth" visual when looking at some old Vanity Fair caricatures. Here's our man Conor and his Victorian antecedent!

Conor from Young Man-Old Man

The Victorian Conor

We’re Back

Just let me state a reason for my blog being down from the get-go. I’m going to define it as a “branding” issue and leave it at that. My old posts are gone sans two and that’s ok.  It just represents a kind of shedding I suppose. I do kinda miss some of them already but I’ll accumulate more crap in no time.

Never when I began to contrive drivel for posts-encouraged by my friends who-in this community are some of the kindest around-did I think that I’d love doing this so much. As Max Beerbohm (Maxminimus) stated … “My gifts are small and I’ve learned to make good use of them”.  I am  not a writer-contrary to what you, some of the nicest folks in the world have said about what I posit here. Tintin is a writer. Elegantologist is a writer. Sartre over at Advice to My Sons is/was a writer.  I’m a busy guy and I don’t have more than twenty or thirty minutes here and there to build my stories and I damn sure don’t have time to run it through the grammar-syntax department. I dump what I see and feel here and I will resume doing so at once.  

This isn’t a false modesty play to garner another round of very nice emails from all of you who sent them to me. I will tell you though-and you know who you are-those emails are the reason that I will tell my stories again. There is also a small coterie of you that provided me some very pragmatic and focused advice. Again-you know who you are and I thank you for that.

So here’s my promise to me… I will continue tell you about things trivial and superficial. I’ll continue to share things with you that touch me and for certain, I will not under any circumstances stop reveling about my child. LFG is my personal strategy and I would be like chopping off a big part of my blogging lifeline if I didn’t share our antics. What I’ve realized is if I edit my stuff, the joy of driveling (Damn-that’s a book title) will be lost and then I might as well shut this thing down again. If I never write another thing I've received something from several of you that has made all of this worthwhile. It's one thing to get an email from somebody asking where they might find a pair of Navy Blue Weejuns. It's quite another when a guy sends me an email letting me know that he's inspired to be a better father to his daughter. 

Clothes are a great metaphor for me to use when sharing my ideas and observations.  It’s the only thing I know other than my healthcare strategy career. I essentially grew up selling rags and hanging out with clothing people. I can find a story-a yarn-a memory when I see a shoe string or a certain color. I’m wildly sentimental and wouldn’t trade that for the world. Some days I wish that I didn’t observe my surroundings in such a highly tuned way. The pain wouldn’t be quite so amplified but on the other hand-neither would the fun-the joy-the antics.

On a closing note let me thank Tintin for spending an hour on the phone with me yesterday. I need to publicly acknowledge you for your kind gesture my friend. Surely one of your last billets as a nomadic military brat had to have been within walking distance of a sporting goods store for you my friend-have balls bigger than Texas. Shut up.

Onward.

ADG and LFG

Ps…God-I know that you are tres strategic and don’t generally trifle with the day to day tactical things but I’ll make two requests. First, could you cancel LFG’s soccer game today? And finally, it would be just fine with me if I didn’t have to have another week like this one past, for another little while.

Jesus-LFG-The Flusser Books-The Flusser DC Visit This Week

 Like a lot of my drivel, context is important-or an excuse. South Carolina hadn’t seen the likes of Flusser during my formative years-we had trad be we didn’t have Flusser. The most stylish guy I’ve ever known showed me the first book by this guy Alan Flusser. Hometown buddy WAH remains one of the most ardently stylish guys in existence and I don’t know exactly what I did to deserve his friendship but his boys are a talisman of it I suppose. His oldest is my godson and to the detriment of his grades, has pledged my college fraternity. He gave his next boy my surname. So looking back on my friendship with WAH, I seem to recall that he didn’t give me the first Flusser book. I stole it from him…or I borrowed it and forgot to return it.

  

 I walk in to WAH’s apartment and he has this paperback book... Making the Man. I’d never heard of Alan Flusser and certainly, had never seen a book devoted to traditional men’s clothing. To say that I was clothes crazy was an understatement and I didn’t know that anyone had really taken such an erudite approach to assembling such lore. Of course I'd been working in a traditional haberdashery and had seen, heard, touched and tasted all things trad for years. I didn’t know much about Savile Row but had survived the Disco 70’s intact and reasonably unscathed-having destroyed most of the photo evidence of my sartorial missteps. I blew through the first Flusser book in no time.

 I love the dedication in Alan's first book… "To my father whose wonderful esoteric wardrobe first whetted my appetite for french lisle, hand clocked socks, English suspenders and garters, Brooks Brothers button down shirts and alligator tassel loafers, and whose memory is never far from my mind when in my travels, I happen upon some exquisite legacy from his time, an item crafted by artists and altogher elegant.”  

 Fast forward however many years and I see an advertisement in M Magazine. Anybody remember M Magazine? It was to me a bit more traditional, less twee version of GQ. There’s a new book for sale called Clothes and the Man…now a larger, better illustrated, more comprehensive digest by this guy named Flusser.  I’m in DC for a meeting about the same time and I find Alan Flusser shirts at Britches of Georgetown. These shirts are strong to say the least. Butcher stripes and rounded collars and spread-contrasting collars and french cuffs. I don’t think I’d ever worn anything but a button down collar shirt before Flusser. And I put a collar pin through said shirts. Heresy-and damned good looking at that.

The book is off the hook. Remember, there is nothing else of this caliber and I honestly think that I read it in one night. All of my buddies borrowed it…that was back when one lived with several roomies for all of the economical reasons of post undergrad efficiencies. Shit, I think we lived in an efficiency at that time. Fake it till you make it I always say.

 The next Flusser tome, titled Style and the Man was a handy dandy little reference on where to buy high quality, well made clothing and accessories. Most of the international purveyors listed sans London and maybe a one or two-off in Paris have not seen little ole ADG walk in the door and sadly, several of those referenced that I had darkened in the States no longer exist. No offense to Joseph A. Banks. It’s a great place to go for some basic things and I always recommend Banks as an alternative to Brooks when young guys have no dosh and are just entering the workforce after school. However, when F&R  Tripler in Gotham closed its doors-a Banks franchise later opened in that hallowed space. That’s just plain wrong. 

Kinda like whoever is in the old Anderson and Sheppard location on Savile Row simply has no right to be there-doing whatever they are doing-in the same space where Max Beerbohm, my blog site nicknamesake, purchased what I'm certain, was one of his last bespoken garments…and where Astaire danced around, making sure that his sartorial contrivances were not going to be entrapments while jigging on stage and screen.

 Later my buddy Mark “Puerto” Rykken, Flusser’s general manager and business partner kept telling me about Alan’s next book...Dressing The Man. I’d gotten to know Alan a bit by then, having made enough money to flirt with Flusser togs and ultimately dive way too far into even deeper addictive sartorial waters with this group of piranhas. I waited for what seemed like forever before the Holy Grail appeared. I have to tell you-and I have a little bit of knowledge in books sartorial-this is the best book ever written on the subject-period. The Bernard Roetzel book is a distant second and Roetzel should feel complimented by that statement.

 Alan kindly signed my first copy of the great book and then just as karma would have it, my neighbor borrowed it and then moved to Europe. Bye bye Flusser tome. That’s Jesus and juju right there-getting me back for nicking WAH’s copy of Alan’s first book. When I asked Alan to sign another copy for me a few years later, he admonished me not to “eat this book”.

So LFG and I have a standard prayer list. Every night when she’s with me we go through the prix fixe roster of blessing recipients. It’s a rather monotonous-flat mention of family members that I hope upon arrival are accepted without being docked for style points. I believe in God so in my book there’s no harm in throwing a prayer up on behalf of those that might benefit. After the standard recipients are mentioned, LFG for probably six months or so then asked-unprompted- blessings for Obama before signing off with an amen. I don’t care what your politics are folks, our President needs our prayers-the world needs our prayers. This ain’t party centric as I know for a fact that Jesus and Allah are both libertarians and thespians. Now Joseph Smith-don’t get me started.

Out of the blue one night LFG drones through the standard menu, then rolls on into the President Obama blessing and then before saying amen says “and Alan Flusser”. I posited an audible on that one and as I chuckled I asked why she decided to pray for Alan and she said “I don’t know daddy, it just came to me”. Folks, it was cute but I don’t trifle with higher influences so I told her how sweet it was to mention Alan in her prayers. She’s known Alan all her life and she never calls him Alan or Mr. Flusser. It’s always been “Alan Flusser”. It’s cute. Alan has two grown daughters and I remember standing in his office with LFG when she was about two years old. Alan has an otherworldly eye for texture-color-style and assemblage and he glanced LFG up and down in my arms and said … “Well done”. He was talking about the girl-not her clothes.

I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to let Alan know that LFG had prayed for him so I wrote him a quick note. Here’s the one he sent back in reply.

 Alan is a superb writer. The Flusser Custom Shop mailings are literary works just like the old Banana Republic catalogues used to be. The Flusser gang will be in DC this week. Here is the catchy email coming out of Camp Flusser making the local devotees aware of his arrival.

From: Alan Flusser
Date: Wed, Oct 7, 2009 at 5:16 PM
Subject: Washington
To: __________________


Dear Folks,

In the spirit of discerning dissent, we arrive at "Disfunction Legislative Central" to conduct our own fashion tea party aimed at upending the nation's current sartorial mediocrity and malaise. Between the hours of 1PM Wednesday Oct. 14th. and 1PM Friday Oct. 16th. at the AKA White House (1710 H. Street NW, Wash, D.C. 20006, tel 202 904 2500), activities commensurate with such goals will be taking place in the form of individual treatises and all manner of pontification on the rare masculine art of fine habiliment. Alternative neckwear, outerwear, innerwear, footwear, anklewear, and everymanwear, festooned by the occasional three-piece, will be amongst the subjects at hand. Oh yes, hands will also be on the menu, as in, to dress. Lives will take on more color, spirits will be lifted, wallets will leave lighter, slimming torsos to silhouettes. Is there anything that we, your humble servants at The Alan Flusser Custom Shop, will not do in service of Man and Country?

All luxury purveyors need business so if any of ya’ll desire the Flusser experience, swing by their suite this week. I’ve not a penny to spare so my purchases will be limited to …………shut up.

Onward-Flussardly

ADG

Belgian Shoes: Man-Up

As one person so aptly said about Belgians….

“The brilliance of the shoes was how they resembled a simple pair of penny loafers, but instead of a slit to hold Lincoln's copper likeness; there was a tiny leather bow. So elegant, so correct, and so very desirable.”

I still have my Bass Weejuns …penny loafers from college. Two pairs actually. The standard brown pair that everyone had as well as the coveted navy blue Weejuns. (You don’t remember navy blue Weejuns and I’m sure you’d argue whether or not they were ever coveted by anyone) The navy blue ones were the sh_t when I was in undergrad….amidst the Preppy resurgence of the late 70’s-early 80’s. So, I suppose that I’ve always had an appetite for loafers…they are the man’s no brainer shoe right? I wear every version of them….Alden variations being the prevailing choice these days.

I also suspect that part of my affinity for “go to hell” clothes comes from living in a southern fraternity house …four years of blurry nirvana. We were obnoxious in most ways but especially in that southern preppy madras-seersucker kinda way. My confidence in wearing GTH clothes…patch madras pants... and navy blue Weejuns was well entrenched before I emerged from my teens.

Now I’m not saying that Belgian Loafers are necessarily GTH shoes. What I would posit is that if you think them too effeminate…if you feel tentative about wearing them…then don’t buy them. You have to have a healthy dose of don’t give a sh_t to wear them with the elan and confidence that should accompany them. I love ‘em and wear the heck out of ‘em year around…comfy wool socks and Belgians in the winter and sockless during the summer. I can also wear Stubbs and Wootons while voraciously remaining inextricably hooked on the opposite sex.

I read a few posts from somewhere a few years ago where guys were kinda checking in with one another about whether or not to buy Belgians and/or how and when to wear them. The posts included the predictable responses of… “I wear them as house shoes….I have black ones that I wear with a dinner jacket” …etc. Then there was a guy who said that the little bows were too effeminate so he removed them with nail clippers! Geez…spend close to four hundred bucks for a pair of Belgians and then perform some kind of “reverse neutering” on them? … As if THAT’s gonna make them more of an Alpha Male’s shoe. If you are that kinda guy…just take a pass on the option of being shod in Belgians.

Belgian Shoes…like a bowl of biscuit batter in the South or a hanky about to be inserted into a breast pocket …can smell fear a mile away. They all have strong characteristics that must be dealt with confidently. You’ve gotta step up to all three with the same approach…treat ‘em like you own the hell out of ‘em…let ‘em know who’s boss…handle them with strength and aggression or the outcome will be embarrassing. They’ll walk all over you.