Peter Gunn — Ivy Noir

Episodes of Blake Edwards' late 1950s TV series Peter Gunn are available on DVD, and for fans of film noir and/or natty dressing they are indispensable.

Craig Stevens does a passable Cary Grant imitation, both in style and manner, and the series is beautifully shot. Lots of secondhand smoke and jazz lingo.

Stevens was wearing a buttondown collar with French cuffs in the second episode I watched. Made it look good, too.

Getting My Ya-Yas Out Again

I've listened to Get Yer Ya Ya's Out approximately 80 bazillion times but I never noticed Mick Taylor's sly little rhythm guitar bit on "Sympathy For the Devil" before hearing the remastered CD version.

Swallowed up on the LP, Taylor snuck in a little Stax-y, Steve Cropperesque fillip at the end of each verse (after the simple barre chord pattern that every beginning guitar player learned absolutely first thing out of the box ca. 1981).

The anniversary set also has a short disc of okay unreleased Stones (including a fairly frantic "Satisfaction"), a disc of B.B. King and the Ike and Tina Turner Revue — great stuff but you wonder what the Stoned crowd made of it — and a DVD of leftovers from the Maysles film "Gimme Shelter," including Mick Jagger and Keith Richards doing an incredibly out of tune "Prodigal Son" and some fun with a donkey.

Ya-Yas proper is still a great record. The mix improves Bill Wyman's bass as well, and he is suprisingly busy on the Chuck Berry covers.

Forget whatever it is the Stones have devolved into, get this set, and remember what it was like when giants roamed the earth.

PS: The CD box set also comes with a little hardcover book that includes Lester Bangs' review from Rolling Stone. Bangs was the H.L. Mencken of rock and roll writing. Or something.

Hooray for Global Warming

I'll take this in November. Nice enough for lightweight chinos, breezy enough for a partially lined tweed jacket. Just wish I could be going fishing instead of frowsting about in the newsroom and, later, at the town hall in Falls Village, Conn.

Which is why I am stamping around looking annoyed.






The skinny:

Two-button tweed jacket, a sack, no less, from Eljo's in Charlottesville, Va. Brooks Brothers shirt and grenadine tie by Sam Hober. Cheap chinos by Lands End, and shoes from the late great Footjoy, purveyor of decent middlebrow footwear.

And a Wang in my pocket.

He Who Laughs Last Gathers No Moss

iGent of the Century

Here's a movie for all the Walter Mittys of the online men's clothing forums — Adam Abraham's 1999 Man of the Century.

Co-writer Gibson Frazier plays Johnny Twennies, who writes and speaks from the Ring Lardner/Damon Runyon Handbook, and dresses as the big town's premier columnist should, circa 1923.

Unfortunately, it's 1998.

This disparity doesn't ruffle Johnny's club collar in the least, and he cheerfully plows through modern New York, a wisecracking, walking anachronism.

There's a plot, and music, and fantasy, and it's all very amusing and more or less clean.

And those guys sometimes derisively referred to as the "iGentry" should take a look at this film — just to be sure they're not getting a little too caught up in the style thing.

M Squad and the High Roll, Unvented Sack

I can't find a decent shot of Lee Marvin as Lt. Frank Bellinger from "M Squad" — one that shows off the unvented, 3 roll 2.5 sack suit (with single forward pleats on the trousers).

This late 1950s cop drama is pretty good, with a jazzy soundtrack and plenty of low-key lighting.

And Lee Marvin barging around Chicago in this excellent suit. More like a modern high-roll three-button in some ways, with the lack of a vent and a little more shoulder than an Ivy purist would like.

But I looked carefully at a couple of well-lit shots with the aid of my fine cheap DVD player's pause and zoom features, and this jacket is not darted. The top button rolls over, but just barely.

He also wears a stingy brim fedora.

The net effect is surprisingly contemporary. The guys at Thick As Thieves might want to check out "M Squad" from NetFlix.

New Hat and Other Autumnal Stuff

Lower Lake camps from Bald Peak

Duck butt (shot from the Rail Trail between Salisbury and Lakeville)

Fat slob in new hat

The Village Hat Shop has these walkers from New Zealand. I'd been looking for something more casual, and this is almost bookie-like.