Tag Formal

Proper Attire Required

Michael 11 Comments

I think I’ve reached fuddy duddy stage. I know I’ve gotten to fuddy duddy age yet I don’t feel I’ve overly dudded any fuddies. I believe I qualify for the standard because I know I look spectacular in a tuxedo yet have nowhere to wear one.

It became clear to me and confirmed for me that what is wrong with modern America (besides aging former reality stars insisting we’re part of the Me Generation), while watching Mr. Lucky (the fabulous movie, not the over-acted TV offering although it has a pretty nifty theme song) is we don’t dress for dinner anymore. Of course, the 1940s film industry wasn’t known for putting out documentaries of real-life America, but even the humble middle-class family was having more fun and doing it better dressed than most of us.

Consider this. In nearly every 1940s vintage film offering from romance to comedy to drama to noir, someone is going out to dinner where there will be dancing, at least one torch song singer singing at least one torch song, someone falls in love, the bad guy always pays and the good guys always end up with the lady. And all those people dancing at dinner? Formal attire required. Casino hopping? Tuxedos and gowns. Murder in the penthouse? The corpse is wearing no less than a smoking jacket and if the responding detective happened to be at dinner when the call came in – yep, even he shows up in a tux. Once I remember even white tie and tails.

Perhaps those at is not the norm but it’s not a stretch to say that the average 1940s family sat to dinner with jacket and tie, and dress and pearls. Possibly paste knock offs but something was hanging around mom’s and eldest daughter’s necks. After dinner together they repaired to the drawing room where apparently they drew stuff.

But back to Mr. Lucky with Cary Grant and Laraine Day. He wants to swindle her war relief group. She gives blood. He gives blood. They get together for a late night drive. They fall in love. He transforms his gambling boat into a medical supplies transport. It sinks. Neither is ever out of at least semi-formal attire until the last scene when he shows up in sailing garb. They live happily ever after. I cried.

How could you not get emotional when Cary Grant as Joe Adams as Joe Bascopolous (it’s complicated) tells Laraine Day as Dorothy Bryant, “I don’t know what to make of a dame like you,” and Dorothy answers, “Neither do I,” as they both look out into the countryside with the fire crackling in the fireplace after they drive all the way from New York to Maryland (apparently without stopping since she changed and tied his tie while they were on the road) to prove to her father she would marry him if she had to? (Yes, that was a question. Go back and read it slower.) I get choked up just thinking about it – and thinking how they both look still impeccably put together after a 5 or 6 hour drive in an open convertible. It’s uncanny.

Every movie from the 1940s that I’ve seen, which is close to every movie (worth seeing) from the 1940s, has that formula. Dinner, dancing, singing, at least one murder, accidental death or sufficient injury slash illness to render one character hors de combat, fall in love, question decision to fall in love, bad guy gets what he deserves, fall in love again, live happily ever after, all in formal attire.

I want to go to a casino in my tux and not be given the side-eye, or pop into Olive Garden in a white dinner jacket and bow tie (it is before 6!), or go dancing and end up with the snooty dame who nobody likes (whom nobody likes?) but is really a misunderstood sweetheart who only needs to see me in my formal wear to realize that yes happiness is right around the corner and I’ll be there waiting for her!

Ah sweet dream. Does that sound fuddy duddy to you? Of course it doesn’t!

I wonder where my cuff links are.

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Not me but darn close!

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Fit to be untied

Michael 14 Comments

It’s been a year and 2 months, roughly 14 months, almost exactly 1 year, 2 months, and 2 days depending on if you consider the day that you start counting day 1 or day 0. No matter which way you want to count it, it’s been a while since I brought this up here. Why does one shoelace always come untied while you’re walking? Or sometimes even just sitting. Of course, if that happens while you are sitting, I suppose it really matters on how actively you sit that could determine just how often “sometimes” might be. Or is it just me?

Surely you remember the quandary I expressed those 429 days ago (or 428). If not, allow me to summarize. Both feet are going the same place and at the same pace. Both shoes and both laces are made of the same materials. The temperature and humidity at my left foot are pert near identical to those at my right. All things being equal, why aren’t the laces? Why does one shoelace always untie itself? And in my case, it’s always the left shoe. With one exception.

This might be why I started thinking about this all over again. That one exception is with my newest pair of footwear, which actually are slippers. (Is slippers?) (Hmm) Yeah, yeah, go ahead and question it. Why do slippers even have laces? In the world of are you a “shoe person” or a “socks or barefoot person” at home. (Bare feet?) (Bare foot?) (No, barefoot but definitely with no space.) (Whew!) And yes, feel free to question that also, although I can assure you that a detailed examination of this hypothesis revealed that the vast majority (over 50% at least) of those questioned answered one or the other. (Now where was I?) (Oh yes…) In the world of are you a “shoe person” or a “socks or barefoot person” at home, I fall squarely in the center. (Middle?) (Center?) I fall right in between. I am a “slipper person.” (Or “slippers person” if you prefer.)

I have several pairs of slippers. (several pair?) (Whatever!) I have my “nighttime walk around the house when I can’t sleep slippers.” I have my “to and from the shower so I don’t get the carpet all wet slippers.” And now I have my “wear during the day at home but look more like casual shoes but are actually slippers for a little more formal look slippers.” (I see where this post is starting to get a little personal but at least I can say I don’t have any “these are really too racy to discuss in public slippers” so you can be comfortable sticking around for the rest of the story if there are children (or not) about (or around).) And that’s how I came to have slippers with laces. Faux laces because they really don’t do anything but sit there and look lacy. (Not that kind of lacy. I said this post wasn’t racy and if it was racy lacy I wouldn’t have even brought it up.) And those are the exception. If you’ve forgotten what they are the exception to, please feel free to go back and re-read the first, no second paragraph. (I did.)

So among the shoes with laces that untie the left foot (left shoe?) (left foot shoe?) themselves… So among the shoes with laces that all by themselves untie the shoe that goes on the left foot, there is one exception, those slippers, and they untie both left and right foot. (Feet?) It totally defeats the purpose of getting slippers that look like shoes (sort of) when you end up walking around with your slippers (that look like shoes) untied. Like how is that formal? The only thing I can think of that looks less formal is walking around in a tuxedo with your left shoelace untied. (And those little waxed laces they put on shoes they expect you to wear with your tux are the worst! (worse?) (worst!)) (Hahaha. I just thought of something funny. There really are places that expect you in formal wear that let me in! Sometimes even by invitation!!) (Heeheehee)

Anyway, If anybody has any hints as to how you keep your shoelaces from untying themselves, please feel free to comment.

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Oh Balls!

Michael 7 Comments

I was watching the Father of the Bride last night. The original with Spencer Tracy and Elizabeth Taylor as father and bride. If you haven’t seen it or the 1991 remake with Steve Martin and Kimberly Williams-Paisley reprising those roles, the premise is that fathers go a little wacky when their daughters and wives plan that most father-unfriendly affair, a wedding.

I bring up that it was the 1950 production I saw because a scene in it made me sit up and say, “Now that’s blog-worthy!” If by the time you’ve finished reading this you don’t agree with me, well, that’s ok, not all of what I think is blog-worthy is blog-worthy but then, isn’t that the fun of it?

Anyway, there is a scene when Spencer Tracey in his attempt to either maintain a little control or save a few dollars decides he will wear his own formal attire, presumably from his wedding 20 some years earlier, rather than buy or rent a new tuxedo. It wasn’t that even formal styles a couple of decades apart are going to be different or that almost everybody’s body a couple of decades apart is going to be different that particularly tickled my questioning brain. Those aren’t blog worthy. Sort of ticklish and predictably funny yes, but blog worthy? It was when he pulled his cutaway from its storage box and a cascade of moth balls poured out across the floor that I sat up and said to myself, “Whatever happened to moth balls!?”

MothballsWe know moth balls still exist. You can find them in Amazon so they are still real. And we still say when something isn’t used anymore that it is mothballed. Is that because we used to use mothballs when we stored things we aren’t using anymore? Or is it because we don’t use moth balls anymore? Or do we? Just because I don’t have a closet hanger filled with moth balls doesn’t mean all my neighbors don’t.

So I did a little search. That’s when I discovered that Amazon carries moth balls. I also found out that hanging them in closets, tossing them in dresser drawers, and adding one or two or twenty to your vacuum cleaner bag (all things I remember my mother doing about the time Spencer was trying on a 29 year old formal jacket) aren’t top search results for “moth balls.” Instead I found recommendations for keeping houseplants pest free, attics bat free, and backyard sheds mouse free.

I don’t have an attic or a backyard shed and my houseplants are already critter free. On a more traditional note I’ve had real wool sweaters in my closet for more years than I probably should have and still they are not moth eaten and I’m not sure what moth balls do, or did for a vacuum cleaner and see no reason to discover what now. So I don’t think I’m going to jump on a moth ball bandwagon and order a pack or case. Sorry Amazon. But if you have a can’t miss use for those little white waxy spheres, please let me know. Maybe I’ll change my mind.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a twenty year old tux in that closet I’d like to try on. Just in case.