A Study of The Rock and Roll T-Shirt Mating Call as Practiced by the American Male
As easily imagined by our regular readers, I’m not much of a t-shirt guy. I mean, I wear t-shirts as they ought to be worn (i.e. as underwear), not how the bulk of society deems they can now be worn (i.e as formalwear), and while there are a few occasions where I do step out of the house in a plain black affair (to make automotive repairs, etc.), I can’t recall the last time I even went out to the beach in one, for my thought is, why struggle in the heat with a puzzling tri-holed pullover when the great Hispanic thinkers of yore have given us the mighty guayabera? Easy on, easy off and plenty of pockets for smokes and sundries.
This is not to say that I’m anti-t-shirt either ; I still believe the plain white model can make a statement when paired with the right jeans and demeanor, but, sadly, most of the men I see attempting this style have neither. The jeans are baggy and droopy and their demeanor twice that. Yet, I understand I can be accused of unfairly ascribing my style sentiments to those who make the t-shirt their daily choice for chestwear
As an Oddity at the Paley Center Proves, Even with a Low Crime Rate, Tourists Can Still Be Assaulted in New York
There’s so much to see and do in New York - a walk through Central Park, a day amongst the roars of Bronx Zoo lions, the beauty of Lady Liberty calling for her poor and tired - but if one should like to see something truly incredible, something that’s nearly impossible to see anywhere else in the world, then a stop has to be made at The Paley Center for Media on West 52nd street where amongst its 140,000 hour collection of radio and television programming is an entirely curious footnote of American history called Turn-On. Offensive, mind-boggling, shrouded in mystery and lore, the program aired February 5th, 1969 and immediately earned itself the distinction of being the only television show to be cancelled before its first commercial break.
To this day, nearly forty years after Turn-On’s concurrent premiere and finale, the show remains an enigma, a great whatsits in the annals of media and poor judgment. Some may
It’s an old saying, sure, but the fact is that it holds true today as much as it ever has…
“Gentlemen don’t tell tales.”
When I was growing up, I took this little aphorism on board, and have generally remembered to keep it close. There have, of course, been moments where I forgot it, and the embarrassment has come back to haunt me whenever I remember those times. It is one of the great Unwritten Rules that part of being a man is holding the secrets with which one is entrusted close, but the sad evidence available in the popular media seems to indicate that it is being left by the wayside in a world of lurid headlines and prurient interest.
So at the risk of being cast in the role of a Cadly Mister Manners, I’m going to explain it. I accept that this is going to involve a great deal of ‘preaching to the choir’, but given that part of this magazine’s remit is to introduce new members to our great fraternity I don’t think it’s going to do any of us too much harm to remember this very important part of how we do what we do.
Let us start with a modern example. A friend of mine, who we shall call Peter for the benefit of this demonstration, recently made the acquaintance of a new lady in his life. He was (and still is) more than a little pleased about this and mentioned their nocturnal activities
Ladies, Looking for a Man that Can Commit? Chances are He's Driving a Vintage Car. Koop Kooper Relates his Lifelong Love Affair with Frustrating Wheels
Classic cars have been part of my life for a long time. In fact, my first car was a 1960 FB Holden, which is kind of like an Australian version of the '57 Chev but just a bit smaller. It was my first car at age 19 and it was my pride and joy. I still remember the day it was mine.
I had been told about the car by a friend and after a test drive with my girlfriend at the time I decided I just had to have it right now. Unfortunately I was heading to Singapore that week for work so I organised for my father to pick it up and bring it home.
Man, that moment I came home from the airport and saw her sitting on the corner waiting for me is a moment etched in my memory forever. Her chrome shining in the light, a vehicle from a different time, a car with a story to tell, a car which was ready for adventure in the big city. And adventures we did have. Adventures as a single man, I must add, as that very night my girlfriend came over to have dinner with my family. After dinner, we jumped into the car and took it for a drive to the foreshore where we sat on the lovely Wednesday night
More Than Just Hitting Him in the Wallet, High Gas Prices Have Tim Steiner Saying Ciao to a Lifestyle
This spring in America, as gas prices rose above four dollars a gallon, everything changed. It was a sudden irreparable shift, and the reaction was a collective gasp, like the first glimpse of a monster comet streaking across the sky, about to impact, and to destroy those automotive dinosaurs known as SUVs. It was a feeling that, like any huge beast scavenging for scarce resources after a catastrophe, those massive trucks that had armored suburban moms and upwardly mobile IT guys from Menlo Park, may not be dead all at once, but their days were surely numbered. At that moment, we all knew that even if gas prices were to lower, we could never take cheap gas prices for granted again.
This was the doomsday scenario we all had feared: an America without cheap and reliable supplies of gasoline. Would some sort of “Mad Max” inspired world emerge, where wolf packs of commuters would kill each other over jerry cans of gasoline? Would we see a return to the mile-long lines at gas
French actress Roxane Mesquida has a very bright future ahead of her. Just 26 years old, she is staggeringly beautiful, highly intelligent, and driven to push herself to the limits as an actress. She began acting in 1997, in Manuel Pradal's Marie Baie des Anges, before really establishing herself in a series of films with the provocative and gifted French director Catherine Breillat. Roxane Mesquida's latest Breillat collaboration is The Last Mistress, justly lauded at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival and the London Film Festival. Based upon the novel by Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly, freely adapted by Breillat, the story takes place during the final years of the French
The latest scam in business is to make the customer do all the work. That's why a Sydney supermarket called Woolworths is busy introducing a system of automated checkouts, so we all become our own checkout-chick or checkout-chap. The system has been trialled in stores in Sydney and Melbourne and involves customers self-scanning everything in their trolley. Not that they trust you to be honest; the device weighs each product as you throw it into your 'paid for' basket, calculating whether it's the same weight as the one you have just scanned. Suddenly, after nearly five decades of good behaviour, I find my criminal mind whirring. If I could find a lump of garlic that weighed exactly the same as a Gillette razor, I could scan the garlic, eat it on the spot, and use my other hand to throw through the $12 razor. If caught by security, I'd just breathe on the officers and make good my escape
I blame Woolworths for forcing me into this life as a garlic-munching criminal mastermind. There's something about the untrusting rapaciousness of modern business that makes you want to get your own back.
Of course, the customer-as-worker is an old lurk. Service stations were first in when they removed the attendants and decided people could pump their own fuel. Maybe that was fair enough when the stuff cost 50 cents a litre, but at present prices I'd like it served by the bottle on a silver tray by a waiter in a monkey suit. 'The unleaded today, sir? Or a rather cheeky 98 octane?
Next came the fast food restaurants who decided the customers should clear their own tables and leave the trays neatly stacked. Over the road, the local pub went the other way - they were willing to clean up afterwards, providing you cooked the stuff yourself, using
There’s so much to see and do in New York - a walk through Central Park, a day amongst the roars of Bronx Zoo lions, the beauty of Lady Liberty calling for her poor and tired - but if one should like to see something truly incredible, something that’s nearly impossible to see anywhere else in the world, then a stop has to be made at The Paley Center for Media on West 52nd street where amongst its 140,000 hour collection of radio and television programming is an entirely curious footnote of American history called Turn-On. Offensive, mind-boggling, shrouded in mystery and lore, the program aired February 5th, 1969 and immediately earned itself the distinction of being the only television show to be cancelled before its first commercial break.
It’s an old saying, sure, but the fact is that it holds true today as much as it ever has…
French actress Roxane Mesquida has a very bright future ahead of her. Just 26 years old, she is staggeringly beautiful, highly intelligent, and driven to push herself to the limits as an actress. She began acting in 1997, in Manuel Pradal's Marie Baie des Anges, before really establishing herself in a series of films with the provocative and gifted French director Catherine Breillat. Roxane Mesquida's latest Breillat collaboration is The Last Mistress, justly lauded at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival and the London Film Festival. Based upon the novel by Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly, freely adapted by Breillat, the story takes place during the final years of the French