100 Days, 100 Ties

Winger: C’mon, it’s Czechoslovakia. We zip in, we pick ’em up, we zip right out again. We’re not going to Moscow. It’s Czechoslovakia. It’s like going into Wisconsin.

Ziskey: Well I got the shit kicked out of me in Wisconsin once. Forget it!

Nothing like a movie to give a geography lesson, as well as a sociology lesson. From this exchange we can deduce the following:

1. The Czechoslovakians are/were less menacing than the Russian, um, menace. By the way, as you may have heard, the Czech Republic and Slovakia have split. There is very little chance of reconciliation, as they already have separate flags. And probably currency.
2. If you go to Wisconsin, be prepared to fight. Not because they are any more menacing than the Russians, or even the Czechs or Slovakians for that matter. But, due to this movie line, no state has ever been more empowered to defend its fight-worthiness.

My Tie du Jour doesn’t celebrate Czechoslovakia (bet there aren’t many blogs in the world today that feature 4 mentions of Czechoslovakia! Make that 5!!), nor does it promote the tourism or pugilism of Wisconsin. But it does celebrate the stripe, tiny though they may be. This one could have fit into Mad Men Week. It’s from Boynton’s in the Palmer House here in downtown Chicago. Due to the seemed age of the label and the lack of googlability, I’m assuming that Boynton’s was a clothing shop in the lobby or basement of the esteemed hotel.

Keep in mind that this is the Friday Freebie, so the best comment will get this lovely, thin tie from Boynton’s, which may or may not have been a mod, hip stone-age men’s store.

And this concludes Tie Week Month. Perhaps. There are still two tie-wearing days in August, so the month is not yet over (duh). I may either have a two-tie thing, like maybe a Pink Tie Overnight, or a Plaid Tie Two-Day Conference…you never know how I’ll feel on Monday, or if I’ll remember even thinking about it.

Have a great, grand Saturday night. Thanks for reading…Brooke

General Barnicke: Are you telling me that you finished your training on your own?

Winger: That’s a fact, Jack!

Rest of platoon: That’s a fact, Jack!

And that, my friends, is the classic exchange of the classic graduation ceremony scene, the best part of the entire film, at least for me. I remember seeing that on the commercial trailer, and I knew I needed to see this flick.

I realize that I am very late putting up yesterday’s blog, which means I am also behind in today’s blog. Late has been the norm for me lately, but when I finally do get to it, I still enjoy it.

So, back to Stripes Week, the final week in Tie Week Month…

It's beginning to look a lot like a Christmas tie...

My Tie du Yesterday is actually a Christmas tie…red with small green stripes (or is it green with large red stripes? Hmmm?), the TdY is from Alynn Neckwear. I am pretty positive I picked this one up at good ol’ Salvation Army at some point last year; I wore it during the last holiday season. Look at me using the power of deduction…a regular Sherlock Holmes, eh?

Hmm, the picture actually tones down the Noelesque qualities of this strip. But, believe me, in person, I got a couple of comments that made me think this tie, or at least this shirt/tie combo, would have done alright during Ugly Tie Week.

Here is reprise of the PCC, the Pop Culture Corner…I should have been doing this more often. I have always strived (striven? strivated?) to educate our youths with the wisdom of 60s, 70s & 80s culture. Wisdom may be a stretch…

Since it’s Stripes Week, let’s talk about Fruit Stripe Gum. It was the cool gum for a while during my youth, but you’ll have to read the Wiki link to get some real history.

Thanks for reading, patiently…Brooke

An army without leaders is like a foot without a big toe. And Sergeant Hulka isn’t always gonna be here to be that big toe for us. I think that we owe a big round of applause to our newest, bestest buddy, and big toe… Sergeant Hulka. — Bill Murray (as Pfc. John Winger), Stripes

For our final week of Tie Week Month, we are celebrating stripes. Striped ties will be featured, along with one of my favorite comedies of all time. Um, it’s Stripes, if you couldn’t tell from the opening quote.

As many of you know, Bill Murray and Harold Ramis were the stars of the film, but the other characters added so much more: Francis “Psycho”, Dewey Oxburger (late great John Candy), the perfect 80s hotties PJ Soles and Sean Young, Cruiser, Judge Reinhold’s “Death Before Disco” guy, Capt. Stillman (John Larroquette was dead on) and the perfectly cast Warren Oates as Sgt. Hulka.

It’s not a stretch to say this for many boys/men of my and my brother’s ages, but this flick (along with Caddyshack and Fletch at 2nd & 3rd) gave me and my brother a great deal of our lexicon that we used growing up. To this day, I can call my brother Grant out of the blue, and we’ll go through about 7-15 seconds of the script and hang up.

A couple of years ago, I had the chance to thank Harold Ramis himself for gifting us this banter. He, his wife and kids were at the movie theater here in Evanston, and I gathered my thoughts, approached him and said, “Mr. Ramis, I want to thank you for making my brother and I laugh for decades.” Or some piece of crap like that. What a speech fart on my part…he winced, his wife chuckled, I groaned. I couldn’t have made him feel older if I’d tried. I retreated to a corner of the lobby and thought of 5,832 ways I could have said it better.

Calvin Klein? It's written all over your underwear.

Oh, yeah, my striped tie for the day…it’s a peach/pink and blue and brown number from Calvin Klein that I picked up a couple weeks ago at TJMaxx. I love the blue in here, perhaps because it’s squeezed in between the other colors.

A couple of weeks ago I busted out a couple of postcards from the collection Catalog Man: Mail Order Fashion Hunks, that was given to me by my friend Susan Frischer, proprietor of MarketFresh Books. Here are some good (read: bad) pics of Guys With Bad (read: still bad) Ties.

Two Outta Three 'Staches Ain't Bad

Crimplene: an affliction of the crotch?

Flare Play? What miserable copywriting...

Enjoy the cheesy pix.

Thanks for reading…Brooke