Style Hick

I think I've finally begun to hobble less over the last 10 days from a one day, ten hour stint in a prized pair of burnt orange, pebble grain, vintage wingtips.
Evidently the prior owner gave them up for adoption for good reason. That wasn't exactly paying it forward. They could have at least come with a disclaimer like, "Caution, May Include Suffering."
Sadly, I knew at the end of that day that my get-up lost it's nattyness when someone asked me if they should call for a gurney. And with any luck, maybe the offer of a vintage percodan to go along with my vintage wingtips wouldn't be too far behind.
While I shall not give up on my dirty red Florsheims, my mistress Birkeys will always be near. That, and a big-ass glass of scotch.





Credits:
hookedonvintage.com
scienceblog.com

Hollywood Hi-Lights

While this isn't totally uncharted territory for me, I'll absolutely take this opportunity to not leave well enough alone. Just a sec, let me put this smoke out.

I'm just asking here, but couldn't they have just stopped at skinny? No, of course not. Somebody always feels compelled to take it, at least for now, one step further. Of course, OF COURSE I'm alluding to Jeggings, or denim inspired leggings for the uninitiated and/or others who have already stopped reading this.

Someone, somewhere must have thought a void needed to be filled. "The market is yearning for this" someone shouted from ontop of their garage. "We need to develop something so thin, so tight, that you can actually see the femoral artery pulsate." Sheezus, where have I been?

Beside the fact that, as minute a craze as this may be, chances are good you're gonna see someone/somewhere who probably, by somebody's standards, shouldn't really be wearing them (not excluding the one half of one percent of the population that maybe could). These women of bone and corpuscles should have their own store. Kind of like Lane Bryant for the invisible.

One more quick thing cuz I need to waste a little more of your time but, at some point, we will all want to know who, who I say, shall rise above, to be courted by thousands, potentially scoffed at by millions, who will lay claim to coining the corny?
What was so bad about denim inspired leggings for Pete's sake?
Guys don't dink around. Here you've got a jacket that looks like a shirt...SHIRT JACKET, boom!
Skort wasn't brilliant either. Sounds too much like scortched and wort.
I myself prefer the term culotte, er, kew-lah...er whatever.

I predict, and you heard it here first folks, that someday, someone will actually bond a jean-like fabric directly to the skin, so that there is absolutely no possible way for there to be any less room between skin and fabric, because the skin IS essentially the fabric. And they shall be called...Skeans!

credits:
spotlightingnews.com

No Holes Barred

Sifting through some still unopened Christmas gifts (Look, I'm sorry okay?) and discovering a fairly decent GO-GOs versus Bangles argument, a dirty/funky Talking Heads, Take Me To The River, a fine Fine Young Cannibals, a much missed Stan Lynch and Howie Epstein pairing and a more manic Neil, I-Have-Never-Seen.

Young slays here, pounding on 'Ol Black like a 5am napalm strike. Poncho, Charlie Drayton and Steve Jordan deliver as if a screaming, pregnant youth was giving birth to a 20 pound Thompsen machine gun in 4/4 time.

credits:
SNL's 25 Years Of Music and
kb-blogspot.com

Birmingham Small Arms And The 441 Victor Special

Next to his late sixties, folksy record collection, the next cool thing my brother brought home from college was a '69, BSA 441 Victor Special. Jeez, just the name was cool by itself. Much cooler than say, Honda 305 Super Hawk. Because everybody had those. But nobody had a BSA, at least not in our town. It actually looked kinda like a dirt bike with its high suspension and fenders. And come to find out, that's actually it's claim to fame.
Having won 2 back-to-back 500cc World Motocross Championships in '64 and '65, is how it acquired the "Victor" status. But alas, in '67, the single stroke-low torque, brutish Brit lost out to the up and coming lighter and quicker, 2 stroke CZ.
My brother, on many levels, was just way ahead of the pack.

credits:
motorcycleclassics.com
motorcyclespecs.co.za

It's All About The Sexy

Yep, I'm gonna get all apparel on yer ass. It's been force fed on me of late and I got no where else to go with it. So I figure hell, If I gotta deal with it, then you gotta deal with me dealin with it.

Take this Canada Goose Ontario Parka. Beautiful clean lines. And yeah it's utilitarian, utilitarian as all get out. There ain't many parkas out there you can pull out 5 years from now and still look every bit as good and have it continue to put out the same BTUs as this feller right here.

Close your eyes for just a sec and envision your self being transported from one building to another, absolutely undeterred by the elements, protected by this force-field if you will.

I got me one just like the one pitured. I know what your thinkin, you're thinkin I don't look all sexy like, wrapped up like some bear. But I'll tell ya what ladies and gentleman, step inside one of these bad boys and zip it up tight, flip that hood o'er your head and I'll show ya sexy real quick.

credits:
canada-goose.com

Super Bowl Fever

Sicker-than-a-dog I am. Quite possibly the up tick in my temperature has brought me a tad closer to delirium. I can't seem to fend off the constant barrage of 'S' words that keep bleeping in and out of my sub-conscious. Words like: sick, sucks, soup, super, sandwich, Sunday, sympathy, snotty and whiskey.
Maybe it was fate that brought the viral gods together today. Maybe we weren't meant to mingle or snack or sip or to bore people into a coma with this years version of why I always root for the underdog (go Saints).
Nope. Looks like we'll be watching the commercials from our own couch tonight. Well, I'll be on the couch, surrounded by rolls of toilet paper, Vick's, unofficial Super Bowl deli plate and a not so old bottle of scotch. My wife will be perched across the room with her traditional glass of wine in one hand, and spray bottle of disinfectant in the other.

credits:
yourtranslationservice.com

An Old Man's Back Yard

Is it better to have had and lost, than to have never had? I'm refering to the property value of the real estate out back.
If it wasn't for my classmate in the junior high, gym class showers and his loud running commentary on everybody's physical features, I would have never known I had a bit of a shelf, as they say. And I wonder how, at that age, he was so knowledgeable in that regard.
In all these years, I never really thought much of my patio except for when I enjoyed a brief window of whistles, catcalls and rubber necking double-takes from female co-workers, who by now I am sure, are as baffeled by its disappearance as I am.
My wife compares it to the images on Mount Rushmore, withered by the elements, wind, rain and snow. But like seedlings emerging from the embers of a forest fire, a new, greater front porch takes shape. And what a grand porch it is!

credits:
photobucket.com

3 Out Of 4 Cylinders

Oi, what's all this flap over the un-even harmonies on Rhiannon at the Grammys? Live bands, mathematically speaking, should be un-even.
When I saw The Eagles (everybody just groan now and get it over with) in the early 70s in support of On The Boarder, still in their Chuck Berry at a campfire mode, they were still havin fun and on the loose end of tight. Hell, even Glenn Fry was choog-aloogin in those days. But he is from Detroit, so, he should.
Saw em again at a baseball stadium in Miami ( Jimmy Buffet opened...ugh) touring behind Hotel California and they weren't as much fun but were really really tight...really tight...too tight.
THEN, I saw them once more when The Long Run came out, and they were a holier-than-thou sounding pristine and I vowed never again.

My long winded point is, rawk is about imperfection. It's not about running on all 8, but how you try to get there and what it sounds like while you do.
A prominent drummer friend of a friend of a friend had heard a record, okay, it was a tape I played on and said he really enjoyed it. And I told him I thought I sounded pretty wobbely. His epic reply, which I had tattooed on my upper neck in thick black gothic letters, was: "Rock-n-Roll is wobbely Todd." Every time I read that back I catch myself nodding my head in agreement.

A cooler thing to have done, although Taylor and Stevie never would have gone for it, was to have brought the vocals down in the mix and brought Waddy way the hell up and just had him crank for the duration. Nobody would have been the wiser if the girls weren't particularly on it.
The crowd would have actually rawked for a change and maybe I wouldn't have turned the TV off.

credits:
Fred Young of the Kentucky Headhunters
From ginbaby.vox.com