4 posts tagged “clothing”
Since I'm on a long holiday weekend, you're getting the week's reading a little early.
- In my opinion, Mary Carillo is the best tennis announcer on
television. This weekend, of course, she's covering the Wimbledon
finals for NBC. She's too artful to say anything negative about
grass-court tennis during this fortnight, and all that
serve-and-volley tennis is definitely fun. But grass-court tennis can
be a little too much about power and quick points for me. And
apparently for Carillo, too. A few years ago, she explained—in a piece
called "Living Life on Clay"—why she wanted her children to live like clay-courters. Here's a taste:
[M]y wish for them is to dream in different languages, to build a character that translates well everywhere in the world. I want them to live their lives as though they were playing them out on clay.
. . . .
There is great comfort in consistency-always having someone, or something you can trust.
Life demands great discipline and deep daring.
And a fatigued mind makes bad decisions.
Don't get easily depressed. It's amazing what a stout heart and a nimble mind can do if you're resilient enough to stay the course.
The reward is the journey.
Read the whole thing. It's one of the most literate, moving pieces I've seen a TV sports journalist produce.
- ChaliceChick of The Chaliceblog has actually printed up an FAQ sheet to hand people who ask about her new SmartCar. Really. As I said in CC's comments, it's brilliant.
- Would you like to see how the Humpdome was transformed over a few hours from a baseball to a football stadium? Of course you would. And when you're impressed with photographer John Loomis's work, you'll want to check out his portfolio. Loomis blogs, too.
- Everywhere, I suppose, men can't be trusted on the internet to give their correct ages, heights, and—euphemism alert—"intimate details." We now have confirmation from Pakistan, anyway. (NSFW?)
- Tell me I don't need this wallet, or this one, or this one. But, er, if I was going to buy one of these wallets I don't need, which one should it be? Advice, please. Oh, wait. What about this one? (Link via Josh Spear)
...that one of my new Threadless t-shirts was a big, er, hit at the Phillies-Mets game on Saturday. People kept checking out the shirt, trying to figure out what it said/meant, and smirking when they "got" it. But I was still surprised when—while standing in a long, long line for a helmet sundae with sprinkles (shut up!)—a young, handsome, probably (slightly) buzzed dude approached, told me he'd laughed out loud, and did the fist pound with me. Then he offered to buy me a beer!
All because I listen to bands that don't even exist yet.
I have a new favorite t-shirt. And next time, I'm totally saying yes to the beer.
I guess I'm actually way too middle-aged to be doing it, but I buy t-shirts from Threadless. Threadless is the company that's getting all the press lately (links via Population Statistic, and, oh, here's a link to NPR's recent piece, too) for crowdsourcing. It's built an online community that actually designs—and helps select the most promising designs for—the shirts. So I frequently spend free time looking at designs and ranking them on a 0-5 scale. (I'm a tough grader; currently, my average score is 1.55.) Somehow or other, it's fun, even though I know I'm (literally) being made a capitalist tool in the process....
Anyway, a few months ago, I bought a t-shirt called Funkalicious, designed by Christopher Golebiowski. The design is retro or ironic or ironically retro, of the 80s persuasion; it shows an astronaut carrying a boom box, and there are silly, delightful primary-color echoes suggesting movement. Whenever I wear the shirt, I get comments (sometimes about the astronaut's, er, bulge). I love the shirt.
I occasionally see someone wearing one of the bazillion different Threadless t-shirts, and that's not surprising, given all the attention the company has received lately. On Sunday, though, while I was wearing my t-shirt, I saw someone else wearing the same Funkalicious tee. That's a first for me. Each t-shirt is printed in limited numbers. In fact, if you see a t-shirt that you like, you better buy it quickly, particularly if you wear a medium or large. The clever tees sell out quickly. So I'm thinking that the odds of seeing someone else wearing the same Threadless t-shirt that you're actually wearing must be pretty slim.
Whatever the odds, I felt a little bit like I'd shown up at a party wearing the hostess's dress. [Clarification: I've never actually worn a party dress. Or any dress. Really.]
Except here, I was one of two people wearing the same t-shirt at a Radio Shack.
Glamorous.
For some reason—and I swear it's not some perverse Matlock fetish—I want a pair of seersucker shorts. They're everywhere I look right now, in catalogs, in stodgy department stores, and in trendy little shops. I keep trying them on, too. And I keep being disappointed.
Here's the problem: I'm short. You may not know that about me; maybe it doesn't come through in my little(?) missives here. It's true, though. On a good day, I'm barely hitting 5'7". And given my height, or—more exactly—the, er, brevity of my legs, I like shorts that aren't too long. My favorite pair of shorts, for instance, has a 7 ½-inch inseam. The seersucker shorts I've been seeing and trying on, though, have inseams in the neighborhood of 12 ½ inches. Yikes. That means the shorts go way, way, way over my knees.
That's the danger that shorts can pose to the short man. You may end up looking like you're wearing manpris. Or the shorts can give the illusion that you're actually 4'7".
Beware, short men: This summer may be dangerous.
