Texas cowlick

   It shines, like one fine

   business opportunity for

   wind, far as the eye can

   see.

Mitch Cullin
1986

The shirt tail and the seamstress

 We don't usually quibble with
 Geoffrey Chaucer, but our many
 shirtlifters, spotted in stained
 glass windows and insulating
 tapestries, marble and bronze,
 and canvas and oils, could well
 have been spared renascences to-
 day if he'd admitted a prescient
 seamstress to his epic parade.

 Such broad self-ripping of 
 bodice is upon us now, that 
 one scarcely has the chance 
 to evaluate the tissues for 
 their treatment by the trade.

 Eccovi il medico, we seem
 to have our Despina at last,
 and as in all her appearances,
 just in time.






















Rob Allen

Origins of Wednesday xxxvii: black tie optional balloting

The fine line between incredulous
and dubious has been reduced to 
such a wanton scrawl in this e-
lection, that we begin to ignore
the distinction entirely when a
new pronouncement is upon us, and
enjoy a freedom of interpretation
implicit in its promulgation. 

Faced with bizarre information from
our registrars of voters, that bal-
loting is to be black-tie optional
this year - yet another ploy to 
suppress turnout by egalitarians -
it fell to our friend Gérard to find
the permission always laid in plain
sight in that phrase, to adopt a
mode in the display of the identi-
fying tourniquet, as one of mourning.

Jeremy Young

Doom on hold

 I admit, it was observing
 my English Cocker that gave
 me the discovery, that if
 I am watching someone else
 worry, I'm almost disabled
 from worrying at the same
 time. Not that I'm incap-
 able of sympathy, if that
 counts. I suppose I should
 be troubled by this defect,
 but like all the things one
 should do or be, I'd still
 rather go to the theatre.

Jeremy Young

If that's your story

stick to it.

We'd say, it's bad enough, when the candidate in the lead shows a dogtag every day, but only if we're buying dinner. Now we have a candidate closing hard, who's throwing away his dogs, as fast as the other one's scarfing down money. It would be enough, in normal times, to restore our good opinion of information. But these demonstrably are not normal times. This campaign's beginning to remind us of Kosovo in the 90s. If we wanted to know, don't you think we could?

  See one you like?

  Lucky you. How do

  they fare, where 

  you come from?

                

iii  Bruce Weber

v    Joachim Ladefoged

      Balkans, 1999

Ages of industry

   This industry, which made

   Vittorio de Sica a house-

   hold name, is almost more

   forgotten now than he is.

   We still have classes and

   we still have ages of ser-

   vility, but not the thwap

   of a flying buffing cloth

   or the snap of a flick in

   sprockets of our imagery.

  

   

Vittorio de Sica

Shoeshine / Sciuscià

1946

Ruth Orkin

New York

1948

Kit Butler for Church's

2016