Acid Washed Eighties

It’s a karmic thang. At least for me. I’m firmly settled on the fact that when what I’ll call…"humbling” photos of me emerge, I must reveal them. I’ve tried to destroy most of the worst ones but every now and then a few will emerge from the vapors.

I’d like to think that I have a fairly decent moral code…a good sense of right and wrong without a big pile of stuff for which I need to ask forgiveness. I try to roll rather clean in that regard because my other burdens are generally heavy enough to tote. And since I’m not prone to mince words when calling others out on their shrunken clothes, unbuckled monk strap impertinence; I feel that it’s my calling to share the absurdity of my former missteps.

And the record already shows that I readily admit to and reveal my sartorial missteps and poorly guided decisions regarding dress and deportment. My one hundred damn percent polyester banana Prom episode is on the record visually and in print. Right here. 

Oh, and I was reasonably self-deprecating, here, in my first girl, Nik-Nik shirt story.

So my best childhood buddy, DCA starts texting me photos the other week when I was back home. DCA and his wife were preparing a slide show for their son’s birthday celebration and he ran across a gaggle of photos of us from the early eighties. Oy. I think DCA knew that I needed cheering up a bit and the photos were nothing short of guffaw worthy. Oy. Again.

Some might say that photos of this type should be destroyed…never revealed and if they did emerge, full denial of knowing the subject therein would be the best strategy. This I cannot do. See again my opening statements. So here we have my porn star mustache phase in full furl. Furl—yep. We gotta caterpillar rolled up and sittin’ right there. On my upper lip.What. Was. I. Thinking? Alas.

But it gets worse. Acid washed? DCA is on the left and RCC is in the middle. I remember this particular evening clearly. We were celebrating RCC’s wife’s birthday, drinking at The Cellar in Charlotte, N.C. At least I’d shed the mustache. And the fact that I had on Polo Ralph white bucks offers zero compensation for the acid washed shitake that had me preening like some kinda high-waisted soccer mom. I believe the waist band on these babies hit me just below the nipples. Shut up.

At least I wasn’t wearing my Jimmy damn Connors loves Roscoe Tanner tennis hot pants like this cat was.

I don’t know what to say about this one. Polo Rowdy loafers. On a pontoon boat in the middle of Lake Murray. With a Totie Fields moo-moo on. At least when I cross dressed, I did so with an eye for practicality and comfort. Shut ____.

And here’s the photo that almost made me run off the road when it came through on my iPhone. Oh lordy. Saturday morning in the men’s store. Surprise...I was hungover. Interestingly, all three of us in this photo went on to become entrepreneurs and business owners. DWT and DCA have enviable net worths today. I have a negative one. And DCA already had contact lens, thank goodness but for some reason that morning, he hadn’t yet put them in. His glasses weighed eleven pounds. But who am I to trash talk his momentary, pre-contact lens, bug-eyed-ness. Look at my porthole sized glasses and my “I need to look like Harry Reems” mustache. This is bad. I haven’t much else to say about this butcept that I thought until now that the seventies were bad sartorial years. I’m now clear on the fact that even though I was making my way out of a dark decade and into marginally better sartorial and grooming habits, I still had a long way to go.

Forgive me.

ADG II...travelling on business. Thank goodness.

My Sartorial Library: Who the Fu#&k is Alan Flusser?

It’s 1983. I’m mostly clad in Corbin and Berle and maybe one Southwick suit and a smattering of half-price Polo stuff that I’d go over to Columbia, S.C. and pinch when Brittons would have a sale. Oh, and I had Hertling suits from when Julie Hertling made jackets and pants. I was low on dosh but just like today, real, real high on appetite and taste level. The proverbial beer budget—champagne taste thang. But here we are in '83 and I’ve got a real job and the fools are paying me nineteen thousand—six hundred dollars per year plus car and expense account. Pinch me.

WAH…seven years older and one of the most stalwart Trad guys ever, was in ’83 and is today, one of my best buddies in the world. He’d just exited a first marriage and so his apartment was our staging area for all kinds of guy antics and debauchery and … I think today they call it a hook-up. Shut up. That's WAH today, still about as Trad as they come.

So I walk in one day and there’s this paperback book on WAH’s coffee table and the cover is packed with tasty images of all kinda sartorial goodies. “Who the Fu#&k is Alan Flusser?” I asked. Keep in mind; this was pre, the 1987 Wall Street/Michael Douglas Flusser launching pad. “He’s some designer/clothier guy who’s written a book” was the WAH response. Little did I know that my gander at the book and subsequent borrowing of it without explicit permission (I’ve yet to return it twenty-nine years later) would launch what would become a sartorial library that’s probably as robust as many and more so than most.

Also, obviously, I had at that moment, no idea that I’d end up making a little more dough through the years and piss scads of it away bespeaking some of the tastiest conceptions that the…to-this-day-second-to-none color, tone, texture master Sensei Flusser directed me to commission.

Even crazier, if someone had told me in 1983 that I’d actually be the owner of the very pair of Flusser’s alligator tassel loafers depicted on the cover of the book, I’d a checked you for a fever.

If someone had told me that I’d have a daughter one day who would, during one of her evening prayers, ask God to bless “President Obama and Alanflusser”, I’d have surely laughed you out of the room. LFG by the way, refers to Alan with a run-on one word moniker…Alanflusser.

So it’s only fitting that I kick off my sartorial library posts with my first ever book on such things. The Master Sensei Flusser’s first book is modest compared to what he would turn out later but it’s precious to me for many reasons.

Onward. Wearing my Bobby from Boston Advent Calendar Keepers Tweed…named such, courtesy of Flo.

ADG II

Billy Scott—R.I.P

“C-A-L-I-F-O-R-N-I-AAAA” …the part of Billy Scott and the Georgia Prophet’s song California where during the refrain they sound out each letter of the word…you remember, no? Well, actually, unless you were a fratty kid thirty years ago, perhaps you don’t.

The Georgia Prophets had two really fun hits that they are most remembered for…California and I’ve Got the Fever. Neither song, as great as they were to sing along to at the top of your lungs in a beer soaked KA house at 2am, were really great songs to dance to. Shag that is. Fever was too fast and California slightly too slow for the more elegant, nuanced hand dancing that characterizes the Carolina Shag. As I’ve posited before, our version of the Fratty-Trad mating dance is all about footwork and movement from the waist down while your upper body is fairly calm. Further, the Carolina version is about doing that footwork in a tight little confined bit of dance floor real estate. You move around, ultimately, all over the dance floor. But the footwork that if you’re good at it, has others stepping back to watch you dance, occurs in a space about the size of a shoe box.

 Oh, and they had another great song that you’d want on your jukebox at the fratty—Nobody Loves Me Like You Do. Hard to shag to too, though. So I’ve just settled on the fact that the Georgia Prophets songs were good as background music while you were standing there, waxed cardboard complimentary  cup of bad draft beer in hand, sh_t talking some sorority trixie on the off-chance that the next song would be one that you could shag to. Or go upstairs and look at etchings. Shut up.

Fever and California were good songs to dance to if you did that Virginia...UVA—Sweet Briar—Hollins sling your date around epileptically…all arms and no nuanced footwork technique. But hell, anyone could learn to do that shit in fifteen minutes. I loved the Sweet Briar—Hollins gals that I met at the Chinese Disco during one sweltering hot Washington summer of my youth. And when one of the Georgia Prophets songs cranked up, I’d dance with ‘em to those songs, but only my style of dancing. I saved the arm slinging, contortionated, epileptical activities till we returned to my place—the ever so elegant Presidential Gardens Apartments where all of the other 24/7 hungover interns lived.

So BillyScott at 70, had some severe stomach pains back during the first week of October. Pancreatic cancer gets you fast. Real fast. And the older I get, the younger 70 seems. Thank you Billy Scott, for all of my 2am sing-alongs with you. Thanks Billy, for taking me back this morning, to some of the greatest memories of the greatest seven years of my life—my undergrad fratty epoch. My love and prayers go to your family and all in your sphere who, like me, will miss you.

Onward.  C-A-L-I-F-O-R-N-I-AAAA

ADG    T-W-O

California

I've Got the Fever

Trad Randomanalia and My Girl--Say Yes

Just ‘cause I've got the yearn, doesn’t mean I’ve got the time or neuronal bandwidth. No, I’m not breaking up with anyone but I might keep that sentence on ice if I need to. I’ve got the yearn to tell stories and I’ve got a good dozen of them in my noggin but I don’t have the juice to write ‘em right now. Crafting an even remotely cogent ditty requires time to organize ones thoughts…even though I’m on the record more than once, admitting that the best I do editorially over here is use spell-check. I don’t have the time or quite frankly, the desire to have someone else read my drivel and offer pre-posting editorial insight.

So why are you writing to say that you don’t have time to write?” Because what I do have time to do, before jumping on a plane to Dallas, is throw one of those keyboard stream of consciousness thangs at you like I used to do in the old days. It’s easier to scratch the writing itch by throwing piles of twisty-turny junk like this at you than it is to write thoughtfully. So let’s twist and turn for twenty minutes about stories yet to come.  

About…

…the story that somehow came together in my mind regarding my Bookster-Flusser boondoggle contrivance.

...and the shooting party days of times past where folks wore such contrivances.

…and how my mind then went straight to the Vanity Fair subjects who were part of those days past. Stay tuned for my Bookster-Flusser-ADG Shooting Party story. I’ll have it done by August 2013, if I’m still here. Or hell, if any of us are still here.

…low vamp sensibilities. Or at least what seemed to be sensible in 1987. There’s a hell of story here. I kid you not. A recent query found me digging through the archives for these babies.

…my precious LFG who used to adore me. The rational me knows that she still does. The reptilian brained baby in me says that she dropped me. Fast. Like a bad habit. On a Wednesday afternoon at 3:47pm…and that she won’t ever come back to me. All of you warned me about this. The efficacy of denial is breathtakingly efficient for the short-haul. The sequelae thereafter … are palpable. Who am I to declare that none of this should or would happen ‘til my baby was fourteen?

Who am I? I’m her dad—the guy who has placed perhaps an inordinate amount of himself into her at the expense of not crafting a draw-down strategy. The good news is that my straight-A student, empathetic participant in the world, dancer extraordinaire is thriving and feeling none of the sequelae of anything associated with my feeling dropped. She’d tisk-tisk me and roll her eyes at even the remotest possibility of any emotional fallout. Tisk-tisking and eye-rolling. Its part of her new oeuvre—the one that damn showed up on a Wednesday afternoon. At 3:47 pm.

…Cleverley shoes. I’ve got two drafts on file about this incredible bespoke experience. But for now, let me just say that I’m floored by the level of service and exactitude that Cleverley et al have manifested amongst this, my maiden bespoke shodding expedition. They are remaking my shoes. From scratch—starting over. None of this revisionist tweaking here and there of the current pair. After two exchanges regarding a couple of non-deal breaking issues, Cleverley declared that the only way THEY would be happy is if they started over. Perhaps the reason I’m so over the top taken by their decision is that service in general seems so poor in most aspects of life these days. Kudos to Cleverley. They’ll be in Washington next month with my replacement try-ons.

…Catcher in the Rye. I finished re-reading it last night. I gave Salinger another chance after being jaundiced too much by his reclusive eccentricities. And I loved it this time. I loved it almost as much as I was indifferently “What’s the big effing deal about this book?” the first time I read it. I was nineteen the first time. I’m a decade older now. And a lot has gone on in these subsequent ten years to change my worldview. I’ll re-read Tender is the Night and The Great Gatsby every year for as long as I’m able to read. I won’t put Catcher in the Rye in that same queue but I’m glad I read it again. Salinger’s ability to write those catchy, clippy little sentences really got me this time. His ability to capture the angst and brooding of a hugely messy kid through staccato line-ups of surly rhetoric made it worth my time. Rat-a-tat-tat mother____.

Oh, and one more thing that I got this time. The connection between Holden and his little sister at the end of the book really, really hit me. His humanity peeps out from time to time earlier in the book but Salinger gives Holden permission to allow it to further manifest in the end—of course though—only in a governed, cadenced, WASPy kind of way. Why did this resonate with me this time? Was I a sociopath the first time I read it? Nope. If you really want the answer, read the LFG paragraph herein. Again. You know…the one about my daughter. That should explain it. Geez. It really pisses me of when people don’t get it. And that one should be easy to get. Really. It’s easy.

…why I wore brown Belgians and purple socks to the Georgetown Club last week.

I looked professorially sartorial up top. But I’ve got a problem with convention-construct and authority that seems to be getting worse in my old age. Hold me.

…why I’m just going to leave you wondering about this one. Yes, he played a Penfold. With a diaper on his head.

 …my golf bag that hadn’t been unzipped from the travel case in eleven years. Yep. Eleven years. I’m shedding stuff over here and I don’t play golf anymore. But I used to…a lot. And the stuff in one of the pouches, as I dumped it on the floor, became an exhibit of a life I used to live. A life of marriage, in-laws, cigars…Cubans and lots of them. Sea Island….courtesy of my in-laws. There was even a receipt in the bag from a pro shop in Boca. It predates my marriage. And no, I’m not going to make a f_cking collage out of it. I kept the Snap-On Zippo lighter and threw the rest of the shit in the trash. Remember, I’m shedding over here. My little casa will probably be a rental property once again, as it has been for more years than not. I’m the American Dream in reverse—so far—other than rental property. My plan is to move to Chevy Chase. There’s a woman there who needs me to be closer.

…why these shoes with the toes make me hurl. They give me the creeps. I don’t give a damn if as soon as you don them; your net worth increases by seventy percent, your boobs or wanker gets perkier and your breath never stinks again. These things are scary. Scary in a Lon Chaney…Vincent Price kinda way. Not a Hitchcock kinda way. He’d a never stood for ‘em.

…about why two inch cuffs are adequate. But why I’m gonna keep this mistake intact. At least this year.

…the pedestrian, base, inappropriateness of wearing my new A Suitable Wardrobe Spring 2012 linen pocket square during the winter…avec wool thornproof swathing.

Read the previously posited drivel about my problem with rules, construct and authority. Kiss kiss.

Oh, and Will also sent me a sample of Timbuktu…one of the nice fragrances he now offers.

…the fact that after the next round of stunning expenditures on my mouth and jaw, I’ll never have another penny to spend on anything. “Come on ADG, smile more.” Folks, I’m gratified to even be able to chew and swallow food. You have no idea. With this as context, I’ll be ok not to have a mouth full of beautiful Kennedy-esque ivories. Every bespoke supplier in the world who services the desires and proclivities of ADG threw up a little bit a few weeks ago and never knew why. Well now they’ll know. I’m outta play ‘till at least April 51^st, 2014. And the antique toy soldier market value index dropped 30% on the same day. Analysts knew not why but were certain that they'd see it rebound momentarily. It won't. Word up for da antique toy soldier market analysts…April 51^st, 2014. 

…about the Merkin the Teacher story that I will finish writing—even though I’m not qualified to do so. I’d be at Carrie Haddad’s this Saturday night for the opening reception of her next Merkin exhibition but I’m busy. LFG still trumps everything else.

 …the story of my little pictures. Oil on Masonite caricatures mostly by Dickens illustrator Fred Barnard. One of the pictures is of Barnard himself. These belonged to him. All of the subjects are of his contemporaries…other illustrators who worked in late 19^th-early 20^th century London. But the better part of this story never to be written is the onerous-ass process of finding a corner to hang the little fellers in. Littler is the opposite of easier—proxemics and scale-wise. I had to take four times my normal dose of Adderall to tether myself down for the task. Pert near kilt me.

…about my intent to pounce. Even with the fun-money evaporation issue aforementioned, I’m gonna pounce on one of these. This is gingham on steroids. Double Elephant Folio Gingham. Uber Gingham. Larry the Cable Guy Gingham. And I need not worry about how to style this shirt. I don’t have to worry about the nuances of yokes, sleeve buttons, pleated pocket or no pocket and a discreet monogram—opposite button number four. (The traditional placement for a monogram on the torso is “oppo-five”…opposite the fifth button. But I prefer mine “oppo-four”. It makes the garish-no consequence impertinence of visible monograms…more visible…and less pertinent. Shut up. Shut up I said.) The scale of this gingham makes all considerations, beyond simply saying “yes, I’ll have one”, irrelevant. Now I just gotta figure out how to get them to say “yes” to my request to forgo the four shirt minimum usually required by bespoke shirt makers. Martini and Rossi-on the rocks-say yes. Scary...the stuff I can recall from my childhood.

Ok. That’s it for now. These run on sentences sure are a lot easier to string together. And enjoy the O’Jays…Use ta Be My Girl. LFG will always be my girl. But right now, she’s redefined what that feels like. Oh, and I just remembered… some cover band was playing Use ta Be My Girl at the Florence Country Club one night just as the KA Summer Party was getting going. And B.G. aka “The Charmer”, sauntered in with a gal on his arm about ten-fold out of his league. It was his first and unbeknownst to him at that moment, last date with her. The Charmer had on a killer madras sportcoat. But M.M.’s date had just thrown up a moment before The Charmer and his ten-fold date sauntered in. The Charmer, smiling ear to ear, swathed in madras with the ten-fold gal on his arm, went down. Slipped his elegantly shod and swathed ass down…in the vomit.

Ten-fold girl remained upright, having extricated herself from The Charmer’s hold as he barrel-rolled and Cab Callowayed his tanned ankled, Weejun shod, madr-ass around before finally ending up on the floor. You couldn’t help but laugh. My date was slapping at me, telling me to quit laughing at The Charmer while at the same time, laughing her ass off.  I’d never seen a man go from Cock-of-the-Preening-Walk to Beet Red Emissary of Emesis in seven seconds flat. And I’ve never seen it again. Ten-fold girl was stoic. Poised. Which made the whole thing even funnier. At least to me. Ten-fold girl, you see; used to be my girl.

Onward. In a run on stream of consciousness kinda way.

ADG Two

Ruff Hewn

Bulletproof. No other way to put it. These knit shirts were bulletproof. I have no clue who made them for the Ruff Hewn folks but I’ve never met another knit shirt with the staying power of these babies. I found this white one in the bottom of my wash-dry-fold trunk the other day and figured that since it was a hygiene holiday, a beat-up, rough Ruff Hewn would be an appropriate topper.

The balance of the hygiene holiday rig included, from my bedroom floor, a pair of Flusser top-pocket silk-linen-cotton boondoggle togs now approaching ten years old. They are though, young’uns compared to the Ruff Hewn knit. Unfortunately, the Hewn knit, in its dotage, can no longer manifest a popped collar. And Medicaid doesn’t reimburse for the necessary Pharma interventions to make it perky again. You want perky, you pay cash outta pocket.

And surely, why not add to the confusion by girding my former washboard abs with a Flusser blue ostrich o-ring strap.

I never bought a Ruff Hewn knit shirt in a retail store and certainly never bought one because of the logo. RHYC? The Ruff Hewn Yacht Club? Please. Even though my daddy, my gaindaddy, my gait gaindaddy and my gait-gait gaindaddy were all members, I chose long ago to use the Groucho Marx sieve for filtering my club options.

Reading Pennsylvania. My late 1980’s New Jersey cohorts and I would drive to the outlets in Reading on occasional Sundays. We’d pile in a car, usually not mine because a 1986 Jetta didn’t hold too many of our gang and I was usually too hunked-over from the previous evening’s, usually Gotham debauchery, to drive.We were mainly headed there to check out the Polo Ralph outlet and a couple of others but then we wandered into the Ruff Hewn store. None of us knew what it was. Some kind of J.Crew wannabe perhaps? 

And certainly they sold other things. Khakis, sweaters, button downs, rugby shirts. But none of it interested me or, as I recall, any of my posse. Quite frankly, the knit shirts wouldn't have interested me either. I was still wearing my Lacoste knits from college—at least the ones that were holding up ok and immutably by this time, the Polo Ralph knit was standard fare.

But they were ten bucks each. “Small imperfections” they said. I never found any to speak of and if I did, they weren’t deal breakers. Nobody had any idea how long they’d last and who cared at two fins a throw? Made in the U.S.A. to boot.

So at one point we all had a pile of these knit shirts in an array of colors. Here’s one of my other N.J. corporate indentured servant minions, JBA (R.I.P.) sporting one of the Ruffs at a company boondoggle on Marco Island. I have no idea what kind of rig I had on that evening. The allsiest thing I know is that I’d been on the beach for eight hours. I traipsed in and showered and throwed on a cotton sweater ‘cause I was late for the cocktail thing. And I do recall that this was my Drambuie Phase. Dig the watch. It’s my Patek Pho-cheap. Undoubtedly from somewhere on Canal Street. Shut up. I was twenty nine years old. Buck up and show us some of your twenty nine year old mélange.

Fast forward a few years and I ended up in Washington D.C. So did my New Jersey corporate indentured servant wingman JTS. And JTS, his wife AES and I discovered the Blue Ridge Outlets in Martinsburg West Virginia; about as equidistant as our old Montclair NJ…Reading Pa outlet jaunt was from previous years. So once again we had a Ruff Hewn source. But the arrogant mugwumps now had the audacity to charge about fifteen dollars a throw for them.

I might have shared before what a loyal friend JTS is to me. The effer called me every day during the darkest moments of my divorce process. Not to engage me in any kind of maudlin esoteric examination of my purpose for living and to recommend a couple of self-pity maintenance books. Nope. The phone calls went like this… “Ok you little shit, bathe AND shave. Go to the office…DO NOT sit your sorry ass at home in your robe. EAT …and why not make it a greasy burger for lunch at the deli on Washington Street. I’ll pick you up from your office at 530 and we’ll go eat again. Now kiss my as_ and stop crying.” Folks, friends like that are the ones you need in moments of inflection. You can find plenty of the other type who, in their unwitting way, will jump in your  hot tub of pity and splash around with you till your fingers, toes and gumption are more than pruny. But not my man JTS. I’m forever in his debt.

JTS is a UVA man and when he and I got promoted and ended up in DC we inevitably found ourselves in the Charlottesville realm for fun and frolic. Here above is my man JTS and little ole Ruff Hewn wearin’ ADG at some Point-to-Point or Steeplechase thang near Charlottesville. I don’t remember too much about this event but I do recall that the tittie-twister that JTS just exacted on me is the reason why in this picture, I’m howling. And the other thing I recall from that day-evening is that the County Sheriffs who were lording over this event use those same little zip-tie plastic handcuffs that the Ocean Drive S.C. beach cops used on me in college. Oh, and one other thing, don’t do tittie-twisters on anyone. They hurt like hell and can cause cancer.

So fast forward these twenty-plus years and I’ve blown through a lot of things. Money, marriage, cars, clothes, collectibles and friends. There’s been a lot of churn in my previous few decades and most of it good. But for some odd reason, two Ruff Hewn knits remain with me. The proverbial “if they could talk” speculation is beyond my comprehension today so I’ll just close this ramble…swathed in the other remnant of a two-decade run. Another survivor of the churn…my navy blue Hewn.

Onward. Ruffly. ADG II