J.T. Already Brought Sexy Back...All the Good Ideas Are Taken

My new car makes for a terrible mirror.  I'm totally wearing a tie, I promise.

It has been . . .1.25 years since my last post.  A lot has happened since then.  Doctor Who has come back with a bang, albeit with plot twists more convoluted than my box of cables.  Dear god . . . I try not to think about it.  The box of cables that is.  I got a new job as an HMI designer for a company called Russell Automation.  None of that will make sense to any of you I think; I'm not even sure exactly what I do and I've been here for over half a year.  I got a new car (brand new, which means I have dug a huge pit into which  I can throw my hard earned money).  I've spent accumulative months in Southern California on business where I see a complete lack of effort put into clothes.  California Casual.  Hold on, I need to go rinse my mouth out.

I think one of the pennies is falling out.

All things considered I have a much better opportunity now to buy and wear nice clothes.  With my subscription to Esquire and Fall sprinting towards us I feel armed and ready to impart my wisdom (most of it is just well scripted arrogance) to you, the reader(s).  While I cannot promise a regular posting schedule as I work twice as many hours as before, I can say that I spend all day on the computer, so the stars seem suitably aligned for blog post conjuration.

Did I close the web browser in my office before I went outside?

                       

Two days ago, I, along with the help of my lovely wife, went through my closet and began systematically throwing away (not literally) clothes that don't fit.  This left my closet bare and dejected.  If this was anything it was a good thing.  The pitfall of dressing well is that it becomes very easy to wear clothes that make a man look anything but dapper as hell.  Ill fitting clothes can do one of two things: make him look as though he's a pubescent teen wearing his father's clothing, or a pubescent teen wearing clothes that should have been thrown away the moment he started getting taller.  Most of my closet consisted of the former.  As a 6'2" man weighing at most 150 pounds I am what you would call a 'beanpole'.  I certainly don't mean to sound sorry for myself as heroin-chic is still very much 'in', but lord it takes a lot of money to find clothes that fit.  Most of the time.

On Sunday I went shopping in Portland.  I went to more stores than I have ever done before, in search of perfect clothes.  While one of my favorite quotes by Tolkien reads: "There is nothing like looking, if you want to find something.  You certainly usually find something, if you look, but it is not always quite the something you were after", is a wonderful sentiment for the great mysteries of life, it sucks when you're trying to find clothes.  I will say now that if I had the money, I would be wearing nothing but Hugo Boss.  Nothing else seems to hang as well as that stuff did right off the hanger.  Until I find a tailor I will have to settle with cardigans instead of blazers.  The most profitable venture was H&M, the IKEA of clothing.  There I found three shirts that fit almost perfectly (pictures soon).  Scratch one thing off my list.  That left: wingtips, one blazer, trousers.  Of those three I managed to find a beautiful pair of wingtip shoes (with tassels!) at a vintage shop by the name of Ray's Ragtime (also pictures soon).

My "Who are you and why are you taking my picture?" face.
Shortly after looking at the picture I suffered an existential crisis.

My closet, a little fuller now, is beginning to mature as I pretend to do.  Over the course of the year I hope to acquire all that I desire.  I also hope to provide whatever readers I may have with sarcastic anecdotes, pictures taken either on my phone or my co-worker's camera (the hypocrisy of asking my wife to take my pictures is more than my tender male ego could handle), and what I think is useful advice for any man who wants to look above the cut.  So, until next time, remember that it takes a lot of work to be Dapper as Hell, but women (and men) will be throwing themselves at you as though your core was super dense and generated a gravitational field.

This is a Panphin.