I picked up both the World 1-1 and World 8-4 Converse All-Stars last year, and now they’ve announced a new line, too. I don’t even like oxfords, but darned if these aren’t, uh, super. As in Super Mario. It’s a joke, you see. Ha, ha.
Is it possible to wear these with slacks and a button-down without looking like a complete tool? I’m guessing… no.
My grandmother’s passing was unexpected, and it was heartbreaking in its suddenness; I missed seeing her one last time by a matter of hours. I’m still having trouble believing she’s gone, because she’s been an enormous presence in my life since the beginning: Ever more diminutive in stature as her extreme arthritis ravaged her limbs and caused her to shrink from a height that even in her youth never quite reached five feet, but a towering pillar of charity and love not only to her family but to all around her. The truth is, I had planned this trip with the intention of seeing my grandfather for very likely the last time, assuming my grandmother — ever the fighter — would be around for a while longer even as Alzheimer’s takes its toll on my grandfather. I suppose the one upside to her loss is that all the family activity around Grandma’s memorial has helped him cut through the fog of illness and be himself, something all too rare in recent months. Needless to say, I’m soaking up every minute of my time with him, every snatch of conversation we share.
I take a lot of crap from people who think I’m pretentious for having taken to wearing a hat over the past year or so, but those people are cordially invited to to shove off. They don’t know the reasons behind the change, and frankly they don’t deserve to know. The hat here is the one that started it all; Cat found it as we were walking through Nolita while spending Thanksgiving 2010 in New York. She and her brother encouraged me to try it on, even though I figured I’d look like a complete twit in a hat. I put it on despite my misgivings and they both assured me it worked. I checked a mirror and sure enough, it actually looked OK. Later, I saw a photo of myself and realized why it worked: I looked an awful lot like my grandfather.
Grandpa always cut a dapper figure. It’s something of a generational thing, of course, but even after other men his age had abandoned wearing a proper hat and dressing well, he continued to cover his head when he went out, to wear French cuffs, to don slacks. Even after he retired — and really right up until the past few years, where his health has diminished — he continued to dress in a nice shirt and slacks to do nothing more than sit around the house and nap in his favorite chair. When I see myself in a hat (and, subsequently, in dressier clothes to properly match my headwear, because wearing a hat so nice with a screen-printed T-shirt would make me look like a twit), I see him reflected. I remember always being able to tell if he and my grandmother were at church when I arrived late, because his hat would always be sitting by itself atop the coatrack in the entry vestibule.
I was told that Grandpa recently saw my favorite portrait of Cat and me from our wedding, the one in which I’m standing slightly to the back in a suit and the hat, and asked, “Is that a picture of my father?” I gave it a closer look, and I really do look a lot like my great-grandfather in his younger days there. (No doubt Grandpa was also wondering why his father had posed in a suit with a lovely Vietnamese lady in a beautiful dress.) It’s a resemblance that no one ever noticed until I adopted a different mode of dress. It’s a connection that means the world to me — now more than ever.
Yesterday I had to borrow a tie from my grandfather for the memorial, because the ones I’d packed (unaware that I’d be saying my farewells to my grandmother) seemed inappropriately cheery. Not that Grandma would have minded my wearing a colorful tie in her memory, but sometimes it’s OK to step in line with social mores. I selected the one pictured above.
“Does it look OK?” I asked.
“Turn and let me see,” he replied. He looked for a moment and nodded, then told me to keep it after the memorial. I found myself suddenly choked with emotion and thanked him. It’s a great tie. I’ll be wearing it often with the hat Cat gave me, and not just because they look good together. I don’t know how much longer my grandfather will be with us, especially now that the love of his life is gone, but I will always keep a part of him with me in how I present myself.
So, I started up a new blog category.
ANYWAY. Remember that e-ink watch I got for Christmas, the one I was super-stoked about and loved madly? Yeah, well, after about a day of wear I discovered that I am incredibly allergic to the metal (ion-plated nickel, I think?) they used for the face and band. My wrist became red and puffy, and it itched for almost a week after I stopped wearing it. Needless to say, this turn of events was kind of disappointing. I really loved that watch.
I’ve never really worn jewelry until the past year or so, when I began wearing watches and a wedding band (which, being tungsten carbide, is not only indestructible but also irritation-free). So I didn’t realize until the past year or so that I seem to have inherited my mother’s hyper-sensitive skin. She can’t wear gold and several other kinds of metals because she breaks out on contact. It’s OK, because I inherited lots of other things from her — my love of reading, my interest in pretentious rock bands of the ’70s, my artistic streak — so I’ll forgive her the less fortunate inheritances, like skin allergies and a lack of height.
I was able to exchange the disastrous watch for another, so I decided to go all-out and find one that was as far removed from a futuristic, metal-banded, e-ink LCD-screened watch I couldn’t wear. I bought instead… an analog watch made of wood.
“Wood?” you say. “They make watches of wood!?” Yes, apparently they do. I discovered the existence of wood watches at the same time as e-ink watches, and they both fascinated me in equal measure. In fact, I put both on the wish list from which my sister-in-law selected the e-ink one. Now that I have it in hand — or on wrist, as the case may be — I like it just as much as the previous watch, because it really is different.
Rather than sporting a funky, abstract face, it uses a simple, old-fashioned analog dial. Where the other watch was thick and very heavy on the wrist, this one is quite thin and incredibly lightweight. And the aesthetic differences should be obvious.
The thing I find most interesting, though, is that there the other watch seemed destined to look worse as it aged due to nicks and scratches on its jet-black surface, this style of watch is said to improve over time. Weathering and exposure to skin oils supposedly “cures” the wood, giving it a richer and more vibrant tone over time. I hope that’s true! I like the idea of a technological device that actually becomes better as it becomes older. Also, the watch’s primary color is similar to the tone of my skin, so a little weathering might add some welcome contrast.
Oh, and it’s different than the e-ink watch in another way, but perhaps the most important one of all: It’s hypoallergenic. Also, it was just slightly less expensive than the other one… enough that the leftover credit netted me a Marillion album I’ve been meaning to pick up for a few years. Flawless victory? Here’s hoping.