Trad-Ivy Tuesday: Uncurated Randomanalia

So for this Trad-Ivy Tuesday I’m back to unedited-uncurated-unfocused randomanalia. It’s just flat-out easier to throw a pile of this at you than it is to distil anything more thoughtful. It also seems that you people like the random stuff better than my more thought-out, scrivened gyrations and (I’m delusional, I know. Hang with me.) keyboard-esque hip thrusts. Shut up.

I now have an editor and I’m pleased by it. On the other hand, we are amidst writer-editor conflict right out of the gate. “Anonymous asked you: Good writers deserve good editors- not just to pare their prose, but to suggest topics. Until you get the editor you deserve, you has me. May I humbly suggest that the Blogosphere is full of stories of O’Hara and the Brethren? Why not a post on boxers? Whip out a half dozen pair and photograph them. Maybe discuss the subtle virtues of buttons vs all over elastic and the outrageous expense of Edwardian style tie backs. Touch briefly (ha) on knitted models. Tell about white linen show thru…”

Ok editor, you make a good point. The O’Hara anecdotes and his sartorial whateverishness have been done. And done. And done. But I’m still gonna eventually write about it for a few reasons. First, I write all of this stuff really, to please me as opposed to editors (Sorry…my new editor) or paying clients/publishers. If someone paid me to do this, I’d be mildly but not too much so, more compliant. Next…O’Hara and his Brooks Brethren buttoned-down poseuressence have indeed been done. But not by me.

I want to write about how I was late to the O’Hara short story party and what an impact a couple of them had on me. And how Appointment with Samara didn’t do it for me but the son of a legendary Boston Globe columnist who is associated with an O’Hara Brethren button down story did think Samara was ok. And I have some never told information that I want to peck out on the keyboard in my words and see how my retelling resonates. So thanks, new editor. Don’t abandon me but give me some wiggle room on the O’Hara thing. I bet you’re gonna find it tolerable. Whew. After that, I feel like I need a cigarette and I don’t even smoke.

How the hell do you smoothly transition from that? You don’t. You just move on. So now I’ll thank one of my readers for giving me a heads-up about the pair of Edward Green Oundle monks that were half-price at Leffot and coincidentally, just my size. Leffot has an incredible shodding line-up and I’m pleased that a tasty goods purveyor like Leffot doesn’t choose or seemingly have to play price point grab-ass with the public. All retailers it seems; must start some 20% off hoochie coochie sh_t with their new season’s goods within one week of announcing their arrival. For anyone with an IQ hovering above 90, which is a stretch for South Carolinians, the fact that the week-one discounts are built into the made in Outer Sweatshoplandia price point is obvious.

Leffot is a tasty joint and Will over at A Suitable Wardrobe says it better than me...“Steven Taffel of Leffot, on Christopher Street in Manhattan, has assembled what is probably the best collection of shoe brands offered for sale in the Eastern United States, with hard to find delights like Corthay and Aubercy complementing better known names such as Alden and Edward Green.”

Susan Tabak Photo

So Leffot needn’t have massive unit price discount promos very often. But Messrs’ Taffel et al a couple of times each year, clear out a few things. I’d cruised the discounted remainders as soon as I got the Leffot sale email but saw nothing in my size. A few weeks later my reader ping-pinged me with a link to the Oundle. I don’t win raffles and I’m never very lucky at chance games but karma and juju washed over me in this instance. 

My Edward Green Westminister double monks that I demanded be special ordered for me in what was ultimately the wrong size, went to a reader courtesy of a hugely discounted and lesson-learned-by-shoe size/last shape know-it-all…me. So the karmic shoe energies of the world prevailed the Oundle on me at a price that has me back to the original investment I had in the Westministers. I need another cigarette after rationalizing this one.

Sticking with shoes for another moment…these are now about a zillion percent off at the Brethren. But I still won’t take ‘em home. And don’t you either.

Even though we’ve passed the official “it’s after Labor Day, now put your linen, madras and seersucker away” deadline, I’m gonna hang on to my darker tan linen trousers for a few more weeks. My cousin Willie   (you've seen him before in another post, wearing his Scottish Kit, on the right in the above Kodak) who still lives down in that moral cesspool known as South Carolina, offers that below eighty-five degrees is his break point for eschewing linen in S.C. Makes sense to me—down there.

Moral cesspool? Yep. I was searching online for an update on the publication of Mel and Patricia Ziegler’s memoir about their brilliant for the first six years, concept known as Banana Republic. So when I googled keyword stuff I not only got the Ziegler update that I was looking for, I also found the above. Eight bucks and five days later, courtesy of Alibris, I was in to this page turner. I blew through it in about three sittings. 

We always avoided Myrtle Beach except for an evening drive down to the Pavilion from time to time when I was a little kid. As the smarm moved north, my parents even decamped the wood framed screen porched gentility of Ocean Drive and built a house at Ocean Isle Beach, North Carolina. I was bored mindless there.

Ok…off of my little Carolina rant and back to clothing. I noticed something a while back when I came home with my nine thousand dollars’ worth of dry cleaning. Even though I love my weekend GTH stuff, my standard fare linen is hugely monochromatic. I think the khaki indoctrination from years ago became an immutably imprinted imprimatur, declaring the color tan to be the little black dress of men’s trouser palate options.

My baby began 7^th grade last week. Shitake. It seems like just yesterday that she was in preschool and the kitting out process meant nothing more than a navy blue uniform.

And I think uniforms are great. Really. Just look at these future Old Etonians. We’d probably get better behavior out of our boys and girls if they had to wear top hats to class. And I’d demand that they wear them properly. Not like the topper that the guitarist Slash from Guns N Roses wore. That hairy mugwump gives the proper topper a bad name.

I'm pretty much out of the fray when it comes to taking LFG shopping for her clothes. It was a no-brainer when she was in that three to seven year age range. I could simply buy those smock thingys at the Gap Outlet and if I was within one size of correct, all was good. I did though, accompany trail her by fifty feet to Georgetown the other day and bought her a pair of must-have flip flops. "Flip flops" her mother axed? "It's back to school shopping time." Yep.

As well as a pair of Mossimo lace-up Bluchers from Target. Yep.

Students—style—duende—deportment? I don’t see it with my thirty-something year old clients so why should I look to see it amongst the ranks of students? Here’s a young undergrad named Walter Cronkite. I rest my case regarding the decline. In clothes and evening news anchoring.

I tole you this was gonna be random. When I was searching for pictures to help me tell the story about my daddy’s Mustang, I ran across a cache of pictures depicting the racing life of the Ford Falcon. I’m not gonna poach too much from what I found because there’s another unique post therein. But the photo above cracked me up! Talk about incongruence. A Ford Falcon atop a Citroen transport vehicle. Suffice it to say, they weren’t headed for Daytona or Darlington. Citroen. Just saying it out loud with my country ass accent cracks me up. Falcon. Imagining a French aristocrat saying it in high French cracks me up. High German? Could be impressive. High? I must be.

Wanna talk interior design for a moment? Good. Neither do I. But I will share that even though I’m not a hoarder, I remain flummoxed by the amount of accumulata that I’ve managed to pack into a thousand square feet in Old Town Alexandria. I’m trying to edit ruthlessly but its tough going. Plus, I’m dragging my feet getting to Bethesda as my ten to fifteen minute radius from LFG’s house hasn’t yet yielded a place with the right bones for me to resettle my damn self.

And please, shoot me if I ever experiment with Chinese red lacquer again. 

Or as Reggie Damn Darling refers to it..."Retail Red".

I lost count of the number of primer coats it took to cover this mess.

I’m priming the darker colored rooms…my hunter green bedroom, LFG’s purple Dr. Seuss bedroom and the hallway before I have the painters come in and do the entire place rental property beige. Again.

LFG shared recently that even if I wasn’t moving, it was time to take down all of her formative years artwork from the LFG kitchen gallery.

I disagreed. She prevailed.

Pert near kilt me to take it all down. Daddy Land be closed.

Shut up. And I mean it.

Ok. I’m thinking that one thousand four hundred and almost seventy words are enough for this Tuesday’s load. Onward. Editing. With scant efficacy. And wondering wherever my head of college hair went.

ADG II