Balloondogging

Interesting column I urge you to read because a) it's potentially enlightening, and b) it leads me to this series of thoughts I hope someone reads: During this year's election process my father, a very practical thinker, tells me repeatedly that people vote their pocketbooks. For all Obama's capacity to inspire people with his social message, he won so handily because Americans believed he was our best bet to deliver us from economic shambles. And Americans got it right I think. Though the GOP is currently in even worse shambles, the party will inevitably rally around an economic cause that provides renewed focus and respectability with a new generation of voters. They'll find their equivalent to Reagan's welfare queens. And that equivalent iiiiiiiisssssss (drumroll please) OUR PARENTS!!! Of all the irony. My mom is always ribbing me because with all the money my parents spent raising me - buying me shoes, feeding me, sending me to college - I can never repay them. And she's right. But according to the above posted column, a HUGE amount of my taxes are going to be paying for her and other Baby Boomers' social security. So in the next couple election cycles I could be the one going on and on about how the government shouldn't take my hard earned money to pay for some aging Boomer's margarita-filled retirement lifestyle. It should be sink or swim for those oldies! Let 'em fight it out for themselves on Jerry Springer!!

Speaking of generational trends, there's this heartrending (i learned that word from a thousand different movie reviews) performance by Bon Iver.


That's another guy whose music career is benefiting from a good story. Times ago he went away to live by himself in a cabin in Wisconsin where he chopped wood, grew a sick beard, wrote an album critics are required to say is "hauntingly great" (or some variation thereof), and presumably wore a shit ton of flannel. Now his rise in popularity mirrors closely the rise in popularity of flannel amongst the demographic of his fanbase. Flannel in my mind was immediately preceded in fasionability by Western shirts. Western shirts have had a good run, you can still pull one off no problem as long as it doesn't have gold trim or something and double as a dress shirt. A friend of mine who is the most evolutionarily feminine specimen I know - all carnal and fem-crazy - once intimated to me that a guy wearing a Western shirt looks attractive via tapping into some masculine ideal. It's the old school American ideal that men are rugged and can carry a woman in their arms and build a fence. She said wearing a Western was "like cheating". The same goes for flannel I say. It refers to a kind of man who is stoicly emotional and fucking chops wood and starts fires and keeps women warm with body/facial hair. This theory was supported when I arrived at a holiday party all flannel, beat up Tims, hair ignored and unshaven. I met a girl who told me I looked like I was very comfortable in my relationships with women and did I enjoy short girls? (she was a gymnastic 4'11"). To her I looked like a warm chair by the fireplace and fuck if it ain't snowing. So I'm all for flannel. I will say, however, if you're going to wear flannel just choose a pattern that I can't spot from a quarter mile away. Ease off the large checked flannel. It's like a blinking light signifying trendiness. Objectively it's a good look, however, context would suggest you find a more subtle flannel pattern.


Sorry Pat Driscoll (photo courtesy of Black20 Superstars and members of comedy troupe The Dan Ryan)