Hot Weather WTH Style

I began Saturday inauspiciously, cooling my heels at the emergency room waiting for one of our clients to get de-panicked. There's nothing like a country hospital waiting room at 1 in the morning to make a guy wonder if perhaps there isn't a less onerous way to make a living.

At the stroke of 9 the yutz who allegedly "manages" my building woke me up with the old Weedwhacker Under the Window Trick.

Which was okay, as I had to shower, shave and don the least hot of my funeral suits (an Oxxford that really fits well, pure chance that, got it on eBay) and attend a memorial service for a kid who overdosed on heroin.

Then back to the house for a nap and the regular day.

It was flat-out HOT today - sticky, low 90s, yecch, so I thought "Hey, What the Hell" and went to work garbed in a linen blazer from the Bros.; nice subtle checked buttondown, ditto; exceptionally baggy Bill's pleated poplins; obnoxious socks and bucks, and the Republican Nose Ring (aka the madras bow tie)...

...I think I solidified my reputation at work today, that being of a man who absolutely does not give a shit.

Is a wooden spatula Trad?

Forsaking the Trad part two

This pose is called "Ready For Ignition." It is frequently seen in the self-timed photography genre, and also in the "photographed by a malignant dwarf who lives in the crawl space" genre.

This suit has working buttons on the sleeves and flat-front trousers. Also twin vents. I have paired it here with a larger checked shirt and links from Charles Tyrwhitt and a Kent Wang pocket square, plus a bold striped tie from somewhere or another.

All these patterns jockeying for position in the viewer's perception is not my usual M.O., but I grow weary of the same Tradly things over and over.

It is a mood that will pass, especially later this morning, when I have to go into work early and will have no time to be creative. If I can find a shirt that works with my bloodshot eyes it will be enough.

The shoes are Edward Greens I found in the Torrington, Conn. Goodwill and had refurbished by NuShoe.

Forsaking the Trad

There are days when doing the same old Tradly thing just isn't happening. Plus I have a bunch of stuff that fails the usual Trad litmus test in one way or another, and these garments need either to be worn or moved along to someone else.

This Brooks Brothers suit is a nice open weave that is light and airy for the sticky weather we are just now starting to experience. And with the twin vents, darts, pleats and moderate shoulder padding it's more John Steed than John Bolton.

And why the hell not? I like being a traditionalist, but I won't be pigeonholed. Plus, let's face it, to most Americans I'm just the guy in the suit.

Particulars: BB suit (eBayed); BB shirt (clearance); Kent Wang links and pocket square (actually paid retail here); Footjoy seconds from Golf Locker; Waltham automatic from eBay; thrifted Harve Benard tie. Cost for the whole shebang, probably about $250, but who knows what it would be new. Lots more.

The Cinema - Zombie Voodoo Plus Bayou Equals Doo-Doo

Rule Number One of bayou life: Never leave a nightclub floozie alone with your dead brother

Blood of the Zombie and the uncredited bonus feature Voodoo Swamp are early 60s films by the immortal Barry Mahon. Cheap, amateurish, and ridiculous, they nonetheless take the viewer back to a simpler time, when men wore coats and ties, women Capri pants, and traditional slow-moving zombies abounded.

In Blood of the Zombie, some idiot inherits the rights to an old plantation, so he gets married, drags the girl around to series of juke joints and strip clubs on their wedding night, and then, when she is clearly getting tired of him clicking his fingers on the wrong beat, he stops to rescure one of the nightclub floozies, whose car has broken down.

So the gang gets to Kenilworth, only to get a frosty reception from cousin Monica, who has been running the joint as her own personal voodoo camp, with the assistance of her recently deceased but still mobile brother, Jonas.

"It was very... inconsiderate of you to arrive so late. Just for that, you get an extra zombie."

Jonas looks like Alice Cooper minus the top hat and moves like Cinderella's stepmother after a five-day drunk, but that doesn't prevent him from killing the floozie.

Voodoo drumming by the Rhythmless Nation. Zombie that resembles an early-70s Glam Rock star. The absolute worst jazz ever heard in any film anywhere. Bored voodoo slaves. Mean blonde cousin Monica. No hooters (this was 1961). Absurd, and the DVD purchase only redeemed by...

The extra flick, Voodoo Swamp, in which Barry saved money by omitting any titles at all. (The "The End" at the film's finale is clearly a video addition. It would have been funnier in the middle somewhere.) Miss Ryan comes to New Orleans to find her sister Vicki, who hasn't been heard from in a month. Alas, Vicki's been kidnapped and turned into the "Before" picture for a psoriasis treatment by the evildoers who live at the Slave Camp in the middle of Voodoo Swamp.

So Miss Ryan and Jack the Private Eye set out in a teeny little canoe with only one paddle. Of course she shoots it with the machine gun by mistake and it sinks.

A hulking bad guy follows them, but he turns out to be okay later. Oh, and gets his head chopped off and thrown in a pit of snakes.

Eventually everything comes to a head 'round the voodoo fire and the good guys win.

If she actually took something off this really would be a horror movie

Many scenes of snakes with their mouths open. Snake eating frog, and apparently enjoying the experience. More bad stripteasing. Many sequences have no sound, a technical difficulty that in retrospect is a blessing. Girl in Capri pants. Girl in wet Capri pants. Girl putting Capri pants back on when dry. Please bring back Capri pants - this low-rider jeans thing has gone on way too long.

Miss Ryan looks demure here, but wait until you get a load of her in Capri pants

Taken together, these films are so horrible, yet entertaining, that I am introducing a new rating category, just to deal with the "So Bad It's Good" phenomenon.

Ladies and gents, I give you:

The Iron Coil

A Poem

Lament of an Angler (part one)

A plantar's wart befouls my foot
Each step is fraught with pain
I do not leap from rock to rock
But hobble down the lane

To stubbornly cast dry fly to trout
And still my footly lament
Until I trip and fall about
And bruise my fundament.

Catskills 2008 - Next Trip

"Trip" is right. I have a plantar's wart buried deep in the ball of my left foot, and no amount of padding and tape can keep it from hurting like a mamma-tamma.

Which makes for clumsy wading. "Whose feet are these?" he asked as his fundament met solid rock.

The loose confederation of fly rodders who stock about two and half miles of "our stream" were at work over Memorial Day, and there are now a lot of confused brown trout to supplement the wiry and wary wild rainbows.

(Read that last bit like Elmer Fudd, or Barbara Walters.)

I didn't get going Sunday until mid-afternoon, so I used a combo of an elk hair caddis ties as a Royal (flash of red) as the top/indicator fly and a green soft-hackled wet fly on a short dropper - about a foot of mono separated the two.

This is because a) it was windy and I didn't want a lot of stuff blowing around and tangling b) a foot was all the 3X I had left.

The soft-hackle wet is a great pattern for the sunlight. It causes fish to emerge from their hidey holes while other flies get the brush-off.

The new stocked fish are still pretty stupid - I suspect a fly tied to imitate a liver pellet would be a big hit - but the Grandpa in the photo came out of nowhere and grabbed the caddis, not the soft hackle.

That fish has been in the river a while. He measured up at about 16 inches, give or take. A good trout for this little creek.

(All fish returned unharmed.)

Coming this week...

The teaser again.

Off for a fishing weekend in the Land That Time Forgot and a visit to the podiatrist Tuesday. Oh! What an exciting life I lead!

Oh!

An intensely bad early Sixties zombie/voodoo/jazz flick got my attention - confused zombie, inept zombie manipulation, a-rhythmic voodoo drumming, and really atrocious jazz - and it's about time to send a volley in the direction of Senator Obama-Lama-Ding-Dong. Plus photos of confused trout! It all starts Wednesday or thereabouts.