No more whites for a while!

People were out and about on the path by the river.  Our last major hurrah before kids and we teachers return to the classrooms.

I noticed a woman wearing whites and with a sun hat on walking in the other direction towards me.  As we got closer, I was really, really tempted to comment "no white after Labor Day" and that she has to pack away that outfit after tomorrow and wait for the Fourth of July next year.

As powerful as that temptation was, I didn't yield to it.  I smiled and kept going.  I wonder what kind of thoughts others have about me when they smile as they pass me!

Way back, during my first year of graduate school, was when I learnt about this fashion statement of no white after Labor Day.

It was in the semester system and, thus, Labor Day was typically a fortnight after classes began.  It was sometime after Labor Day that a Taiwanese classmate, who has even tasted my cooking at home but whose name escapes me, came to school in whites.  She was fashionable always and had an air of affluence about her.

Matthew, who was big guy and remarkably confident about life and what he wanted to do, and with a wonderful sense of humor, saw her in her whites and made that comment about no white after Labor Day.  The things one learns in graduate school!  Though never one interested in fashions, I have always been an idea junkie and Matthew's comment caught my attention.

Over the years, much to my father's displeasure at times, I seem to be even less interested in what I wear.  Though, I do observe some rules, I suppose.  Every once in a while, I remind students that they, too, need to come to class not in rags but in business-friendly attire.  Sometimes I joke that it matters especially if they are single--"you might miss out on your soul-mate" is one of the humorous lines I use.  But, of course, I doubt whether even one student has paid attention to anything I have ever said!

Students do notice how we faculty present ourselves.  Once, when I was at a student's wedding, another student commented that I looked good in the rather formal trousers/shirt/tie that I had on.

If only she had stopped there.

But, she continued. "Compared to the lounge clothes that you wear to class."

Now, it is not as if I wear some lounge-wear to class.  Or, worse, walk around in a Hugh Hefner robe. I am guessing that the clothes that I typically wear to work did not meet her expectations of how a faculty ought to be in that setting.

Her comment was a contrast to another student who, a couple of years ago, told me that I am "totally with it" even without wearing formal clothes.

Appearance is in the eye of the beholder, perhaps.

And then there are some who can look stunning in whatever they wear.  Expensive bling is not needed.  Perhaps even in the middle of their sleep, they look uber-presentable. To them, rules such as no whites after Labor Day do not apply.

Way up there on that very short list is Audrey Hepburn, of course! ;)

Source

It sucks that there are no more movies like "Roman Holiday"

Ever since I re-activated my Netflix account, I have been diligently adding movies and television shows to my queue.  Old movies and new ones.  Old TV shows and new.

But, I can't seem to watch even one movie in full.  I did watch a French movie--yes, with subtitles--but hit the pause button more than once.  I slept through a couple of movies. It is awful.

I thought it is only contemporary full-length fiction that I found unappealing.  Now, even movies and television shows?

So, the rational, scientific me set up a hypothesis. Similar to how I tend to re-read the old classics, I wondered whether I might enjoy watching again some of the classics that I loved.

I scanned through the Netflix library.  I wanted to test the hypothesis with Pillow Talk.  That Rock Hudson/Doris Day comedy seemed just right for the summer.



But, Netflix didn't have that as a streaming option.

It came down to between Roman Holiday and Sabrina. Both with Audrey "Mallika" Hepburn.

Roman Holiday.

Boy was that enjoyable!  

The cafe scene was way more enjoyable than I remembered it.  When that scene ended, I "rewound" to the beginning of that scene and laughed and enjoyed it all over again.

Turns out that I could thoroughly enjoy Roman Holiday whereas I have problems even to get started with the more recent movies.  If it were a horse race, this race ended with the sixty-year old movie winning it before the other horses even left the gate.

 A movie that came out sixty years ago!



I am not sure whether I should be happy with the hypothesis and the test that I conducted, or whether I should be all the more worried.

I thought I would be at least seventy years old before I started talking about those good old days.  I thought I had a good two decades left in me before I became one of those cranky old men.  But, here I am inching towards the five-oh, and I am already tired of newer fiction, tired of newer movies, and tired of newer television shows.

I am watching again, and again, a movie that came out a decade before I was born.

What the hell is wrong with me!

What will I do when I am seventy?  And, by some ill-luck, if I were to live until a hundred ... OMG, the future has never seemed this scary! ;)

Maybe the prosaic me should start reading poetry. Like the one by Keats Shelley.

Arethusa arose
From her couch of snows
In the Acroceraunian mountains,---
From cloud and from crag,
With many a jag,
Shepherding her bright fountains.
She leapt down the rocks,
With her rainbow locks
Streaming among the streams;---
Her steps paved with green
The downward ravine
Which slopes to the western gleams;
And gliding and springing
She went, ever singing,
In murmurs as soft as sleep;
The Earth seemed to love her,
And Heaven smiled above her,
As she lingered towards the deep.                                   click here for the rest of the verses

I have the rest of the summer to figure out what Shelley means here!

My huckleberry friend ...

I know it is summer for, without fail, it is in this season of the year there is always a constant reminder from any number of directions about Audrey Hepburn.

Yes, Audrey Hepburn.

They don't make them beauties like her anymore. All the better that way.

In the video from Breakfast at Tiffany's, at the end of the lyrics and the comments that follow, Hepburn looks up, smiles, and says hi. I dare you to sit stiff and not smile throughout the singing and, more importantly, when she looks up and smiles.  Go ahead, try!

Moon River, wider than a mile,
I'm crossing you in style some day.
Oh, dream maker, you heart breaker,
wherever you're going I'm going your way.
Two drifters off to see the world.
There's such a lot of world to see.
We're after the same rainbow's end--
waiting 'round the bend,
my huckleberry friend,
Moon River and me.

Yes, drifters we all are, drifting to see the world. The universe. And there is, indeed, such a lot to see.

We are lucky to drift along with one or two or more fellow-travelers. Thanks to them, we are not completely lost. We get our bearings.  Every once in a while, we drop anchor.  But, otherwise, adrift we are in this ocean of life, wondering what the next day will bring.

Audrey Hepburn makes that drifting charming.
Awesome.
Beautiful.

She should have been named Mallika!

Men lost their charm ... maybe we never had it?

Easy there, before you draw your weapons.  Calm down.  Don't jump to conclusions, yet.

First, consider this excerpt:

Most men hold charm in vague suspicion: few cultivate it; still fewer respond to it; hardly any know whether they have it; and almost none can even identify it. Women commonly complain about the difficulty in gaining any conversational purchase when, say, trying to engage the fathers of their children’s classmates or the husbands of their tennis partners. The woman will grab from her bag of conversational gambits—she’ll allude to some quotidian absurdity or try to form a mock alliance in defiance of some teacher’s or soccer coach’s irksome requirement. But the man doesn’t enter into the give-and-take. The next time they meet, it’s as though they’ve never talked before; the man invariably fails to pick up the ball, and any reference the woman might make to a prior remark or observation falls to the ground. Men don’t indulge in the easy shared confidences and nonsexual flirtations that lubricate social exchange among women. Even in the most casual conversation, men are too often self-absorbed or mono-focused or—more commonly—guarded, distracted, and disengaged to an almost Aspergerian degree. 

No, not the time yet to draw your weapons.  Put them back. Especially if you are a woman; "hell hath no fury like a woman scorned" :)

The essay, from which I excerpted those few lines, comes at an interesting time in my life.  (Yes, every post is always about me.  It is my blog!)

You know, who better than me--a divorced, single, middle-aged guy who occasionally stirs out of his home to wonder how the world outside is--to ruminate on the male charm and how much it has disappeared!  "If I were charming" is a line that reminds me of "if my aunt had balls, she would be my uncle" ;)

I mean, we don't refer to Prince Charming as a yardstick for nothing!  Well, it is also a fictional character for all the compelling reasons!

No, put that weapon down. Behave!

Back to that excerpt.  I, as a straight guy, agree that there are very few men who I find to be charming.  If it were not for his utterly atrocious treatment of women, former president Bill Clinton would be way up there.  But, "no cigar" in more ways than one, unfortunately.

When it comes to personalities on the screen, which is what that essay is mostly about, I am not that different from most when I think of George Clooney or Bradley Cooper.  Though, when discussing the movie that we watched, my daughter thought that Cooper was overrated in this category.  Maybe charm, too, is in the eye of the beholder.

In the old days, the phrase a charming man was often code for “a gay man,” and undoubtedly the undying but unfounded speculation about Grant’s bisexuality is based on the suspicion that no man so charming could possibly be heterosexual. There is no getting around the basic womanliness of charm.

Maybe.  As one Seinfeld episode put it, we live in an age when a guy who is not bad looking, has healthy habits, and keeps a clean home, is easily thought of as a "gay man."  "Not that there is anything wrong with that" as the episode kept up the theme, remember?  Now, think about me: I cook, keep a relatively clean home, have healthy habits, without any protruding beer gut ... thank heavens I am far from good looking!

You worked up enough?  Calm down by watching Charade, which brings together a charming man and one of the best looking women to ever be a movie star--the one and only Audrey Hepburn.

If you are worked up even after watching it, then you may draw your weapons ;)

Capris remind me of ...

... Audrey Hepburn

Grace Kelly and "Laura Petrie", too, yes ...

... but, it will always be Audrey Hepburn.

So, why this homage to capris and Hepburn?  Summer time means pretty much every other woman on the bike/walk path by the river is in capris :)

How about this one:



Or, this one, perhaps?

Influenza: "they done the old woman in"!

All the talk about H1N1, reminded me of the classic scene from My Fair Lady; thanks to YouTube, here it is: