Monday evening, though, I was leaving for a party when we got a phone call and a friend offered us tickets. The tickets turned out to be for the parade, not the Inauguration ceremony, but that was just as well. An opportunity to bear witness to an historic event is an opportunity to bear witness to an historic event, whether one is on the West side of the Capitol, or on the sidewalk between Treasury and Old Ebbitt.
Being the Inauguration of the President of the United States, I wore grey flannel, white OCBD, blue repp tie, and a black wool overcoat. I wasn't the only one who dressed appropriately for the occasion, but I was certainly in the minority. This country really needs a national moratorium on jeans.
A native Texan, I'm not inherently opposed to denim - but everything has its place. If you paid $200 for your jeans, it doesn't make them "dressy," it just makes you a fool. And wearing jeans with a coat and tie doesn't make them appropriate for presidential occasions, either. I'm sure I'll get a lot of flak for this, but I'm okay with that. Somebody needs to say it.
Jeans notwithstanding, a lot of people were really dressed up. Maybe not to my taste, but at least they were trying to be respectful. And as Peggy Noonan rightly observed, PETA really took one on the chin. Who knew there were that many full length fur coats in the world? And not just on women!
The coolest people on the street were by far the Secret Service.They are the classiest of the law enforcement branches, I'd say. Well dressed, polite, and quiet. At one point a couple of guys came walking down the street with big bags and equipment slung over their shoulders. My wife said, "here come the cameras!" Then we noticed that they weren't news media, they were snipers.
The rooftop snipers were out in numbers. We had blue tickets, for the end of the parade route, right around the corner from the presidential viewing stand. It was clear that we were in the safest place on the planet. The atmosphere was so jubilant, though, that rooftop snipers never felt remotely threatening. People just waved and cheered them. Sort of strange in retrospect, but at the time it seemed to make perfect sense.
The weather was brutally cold, so after the president and vice president came by, we went to Old Ebbitt to warm up with bourbon and crabcakes and watch the rest of the parade through the windows. At the end of the day, I was exhausted and near frozen. But I was glad to have had the opportunity to witness up close such an historic moment.
Inauguration Day
How Lordly is the life I lead
This was a popular film in my house when I was a child. My takeaway was that it's better to put your pennies in the bank than to give them to poor people. Also, a red carnation in the lapel is becoming. People have always told me that there's some other lesson to be taken, but I haven't found it yet. Perhaps they're talking about how great it would be to have a cannon on the roof?
I still sing this song at my wife on occasion, just as a reminder of what it's like to be me.
The rhythm would speak for itself
Today's WSJ draws attention to a quote in The Guardian that I can't stop thinking about.
"It was the very first production at Hampstead Theatre, in 1960. He wrote to me and asked me to play Riley [in "The Room"]. It was a very dense play and I didn't really understand it, but I was very flattered he'd asked me, so I thought, "Why not?" On the third day, there was a frightful row between Harold and Vivien Merchant on the rehearsal floor. She said: "I can't say this line. What does it mean? It doesn't seem to make sense." He said: "Just say the line, observe the pauses and it will work." I was heartened to know that I wasn't the only person who was puzzled. When Vivien complained to him about saying the lines, it meant that even as his wife, she hadn't been able to understand. . . . But I learned that if you said the lines exactly as he wrote them -- observing the pauses, the commas and semi-colons -- the rhythm would speak for itself."
Thomas Baptiste quoted in "Old Times: Actors Remember Harold Pinter," the Guardian (London), Jan. 8.
"Close the door"
While pulling Esquire's Handbook for Hosts off the shelf yesterday to look up their recipe for a hot toddy, I spied another must-have reference for young men in America: P.J. O'Rourke's The Bachelor Home Companion.
O'Rourke is, of course, one of the finest wits of the 20th century, and a master of American culture and politics. I first discovered him when I was in high school and Parliament of Whores was number one on the New York Times bestseller list*.
While famous for his political satire, a few of O'Rourke's early books took aim at a quickly disappearing culture - the Ty Webb style cad. Bachelor Home Companion is the second such book, the first being Modern Manners. As a young man coming of age in the age of political correctness, O'Rourke's books were more than just humorous reflections on "the performance of gender in 20th century American society,"** they were a celebration of all that was good in the world. Well, maybe not all. But they were damned funny.
And Bachelor Home Companion is more than just satire. It also includes helpful information that I've put to use both before I was married, and when my wife was traveling a lot for work.
| Bachelor Measuring Units | Customary Household Measuring Units |
| 1 shotglass | 3 Tablespoons |
| 1 handful (dry measure) | 1/3 cup |
| 1 handful (liquid measure) | 1/2 cup |
| 1 mouthful | 1/3 cup |
| 1 good splash (from tap) | 4 Tbsp |
| 1 good splash (from wine bottle) | 1/2 cup |
| 1 good splash (from whisky bottle into highball glass) | 6 fl oz |
| 1 beer can | 1 cup |
| 1 dog dish | 1 pint |
| Customary Household Measuring Units | Bachelor Measuring Units |
| 1 teaspoon | too much salt |
| 1 Tablespoon | too much instant coffee |
| 1 cup | too much mixer |
| 1 pint | not enough whisky |
| 1 quart | too much gin |
| 1 gallon | enough beer to last until halftime |
| 1 peck | I forgot to buy sweet corn |
| 1 bushel | I bought too much |
| 1 pound | 3 oz of T-bone steak after 15 minutes on the grill |
Today, O'Rourke is H. L. Mencken Research Fellow at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, and he continues to write for a variety of publications. His contemporary writing may not be what it once was, but his place in the history of American satire is firmly set.
* Today's number one is
** I'm pretty sure I took that class in college. We did not read P.J. O'Rourke. The class would have been more interesting had we.
Doctor's Orders
Falling asleep in the middle of the afternoon yesterday should have been a good indicator. But I suppose I was in denial. After all, being sick is no fun. Yes, you get to stay home from the office. But you also get to worry about work piling up and clients frantically calling for help. And, being sick, you don't even get to enjoy your time off.
So, you fight back against whatever microscopic invaders have penetrated your defenses. You hunker down for battle, scrambling the white blood cells and declaring your immune system at DEFCON 1. For a first strike against the enemy, you unleash the hot toddy.
Hot toddy recipes vary, of course. My wife includes honey and black tea. I tend to make it up as I go along. Today, though, I've opted today for the classic recipe*:
Mix double shot of favorite whisky or brandy with 1 teaspoon (or less) sugar. Fill glass with hot water and garnish with clove studded lemon slice and bits of stick cinnamon.
I will now retire to watch The News Hour and ponder the fate of the world. Question at hand: Does the fate of the world matter if I feel like this?
* Esquire's Handbook for Hosts. New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1949. p. 174
Poeta, poetinha vagabundo
It's been all about the bossa nova at my house lately. A glass of claret and a Toquinho record. It's the cure for what ails you.
Ready Made Disposable Society: Bespoke
A couple of years ago, I was at a local tailor for alterations to a suit I'd just purchased. While I was waiting, I was looking at a couple of bespoke suits in his shop, all quite impressive. We talked for a while, and I asked him what it would take to have a bespoke suit tailored. He told me that his suits typically start around $3,000, but that they can go up quite a bit depending on the fabric one chooses.
$3,000 being well out of my budget, I thought I'd take it down a notch. "How about just a pair of trousers?" I don't remember exactly, but I think it was somewhere around $750. I humbly picked up my ready made suit and went home.
The first I remember learning the term bespoke was around 1989. I was thumbing through a copy of GQ magazine, and, while I wasn't entirely sure what the term meant (I would have been all of 13), it was fairly obvious that that was the suit one wanted. Since that introduction, I've always kept bespoke suiting in the back (well, middle, anyway) of my mind. It's kind of like a Rolls Royce - I'll likely never have one, but it's nice to know they're still out there.
A few years ago, though, I found myself in Bangladesh where tailored clothing is not yet only an option for the wealthiest of society. To be sure, you can go to a tailor in Dhaka and have a suit tailored for $2,000, if you so desire. But there's a wide range of tailors below that level - everyone from the guy with the rented sewing machine in the alley of the local bazaar, to the more mid-range shops filled with bolts of fabrics and people haggling over the price of a shirt. I picked one of the latter for my first foray into custom clothing.
I went in and was fitted by a tailor, picked out a collar, cuffs, and some fabric Between my broken Bangla and the tailor's broken English, we communicated pretty well, and I left with a claim slip for a single shirt and a pair of pants. A couple of weeks later, I returned and picked up my packages. Total cost for one shirt and one pair of pants: $32.
When I got home, I tried on the clothes and they fit perfectly. One of the worst consequences of industrialization and economic efficiency is the dominance of ready made clothing. After years of off-the-rack clothes that surely don't fit anybody, I finally had a set of clothes that was made to measure - and it felt like it. The next day I returned and ordered several more shirts.
I returned to pick up my packages and rushed home to try them on. When I slipped on the first shirt, I started to panic. The sleeves were about a half inch too short. I tried on the next one - sleeves were a full inch too short and too narrow, chest was about an inch too narrow. Each shirt I tried on got progressively smaller.
I was really distraught, and returned to the tailor hoping to get things corrected. Taking out a custom tailored shirt isn't exactly easy. Or possible. It requires a new shirt. And Bangladeshi economics subscribes very much to the theory of caveat emptor.
To be fair, the tailor was clearly as distraught as I was. It was pretty clear that, while he'd done the first order himself, this second order was likely delegated to hired help. It was right before Eid, after all, and business was really busy. And who would believe that a man could really have arms that big*!
I ended up moving back to the US, and never was able to recover my other shirts. Total cost: $50. Sure, I was out $50, which stung at the time, but looking back, it was worth the experience.
I still have the original pants and shirt, and they continue in regular rotation. My neck has gotten a little bigger since I've been back in the land of donut, but it still works. The pants are some of the most comfortable I've ever had.
Maybe someday I'll go back for that $3,000 suit from the tailor in Georgetown, but until then, I'll always have Dhaka Tailors and Fabrics.
* I'm not really that big, but much more so than the average Bangladeshi.
Ready Made Disposable Society: Detachable Collars
Yesterday, I was putting away laundry when I noticed a white shirt collar that will soon resign the shirt to weekend-around-the-house wear. I do what you can to keep my collars and cuffs white, but living through Texas or DC summers, you're fighting a losing battle. When I lived in Bangladesh, the woman who washed my laundry dyed all my white shirts blue. I suppose that's one way of attacking it.
I started thinking about what a waste it is that the collar and cuffs of a shirt, probably all of 10 percent of the actual shirt, will often dictate the fate of the rest of the shirt. Hardly equitable, now, is it?
Now, unless you're attending Eton or, I don't know, a practicing barrister, perhaps, your collar is more than likely permanently sewn to the rest of your shirt. I wouldn't suggest that we should all be wearing wing collars or anything, but what's to keep from making day-to-day shirts with detachable collars? Nothing, it would seem, since one can find a shirt with a detachable collar, for a price.
But why should this option be reserved for people who buy $125 shirts? And even those are few and far between. When I think of how much easier, cheaper, and less wasteful it would be to worry about replacing a collar than an entire shirt, I can't help but wonder why more people aren't clamoring for them.
This really brings up a much larger issue, which is that in our economic quest to provide as much low-quality merchandise to as many people as possible, we've created a society in which most people never buy anything of value. We get to feel wealthy with our disposable fakes, while the wealthy continue to enjoy quality goods and services.
I hate the idea of looking costumey, and given the choice, I'll keep cycling out 90 percent perfect shirts. Maybe that's the tradeoff. But judging by the photo of the Clerk and Teller shirt linked above, it shouldn't have to be.
The typed and the printed and the spelt all wrong
Growing up, I regularly had pen pals my age, and loved writing and receiving letters. This was right before the Internet took over all forms of communication, and before cellular phone companies made long distance charges all but obsolete. If you had a friend in another city or state, you were still best off keeping in touch via written letter.
Despite the ubiquity of Internet communications, I'm always on the lookout for the opportunity to write letters. When a good friend taught English in Japan for a year, we exchanged letters regularly. When I lived in Bangladesh, I wrote letters at least twice a week.
What's so great is, letter writing is an opportunity to give someone a gift. Who doesn't like to open the mailbox and see a hand addressed envelope with a letter inside? And it's so much more personal to receive a hand written missive than a three word SMS.
I once wrote an extensive letter to a film historian, a few of whose books I had just read, and received in reply a lengthy handwritten letter and a photograph of the author with John Wayne! Daniel Clowes sent me a postcard in reply. In college, I wrote a letter to my favorite author at the time, Haruki Murakami, and received, several weeks later, a letter from his assistant informing me that Mr. Murakami did not answer interviews. In a fit of rejection, I threw the letter away - a move I have regretted ever since.
For Christmas this year, I received a new fountain pen. I have a small collection of fountain pens that belonged to my Grandfather and Great Grandfather that my Grandmother gave me a few years ago. I treasure them, of course, and it's nice to add one of my own to the collection. Besides, there's nothing like sucking the ink up into a new pen and setting it to paper. I immediately went out and bought a new box of stationery, and look forward to a new year filled with new opportunities to write.
