Published Feb 18, 2007
I need new clothes for the new season coming up. To be frank, I needed new clothes for the last season, but, in true LA fashion, summer seems to have come already and obviated the need for sweaters and layering. Nonetheless, I need new clothes for the new season. And I’d like it if some weren’t blue, although most often that’s the color I end up wearing.
It’s really just that I look good in blue. It brings out my eyes, and the chicks (almost) always dig that. Plus, blue includes both the default casual look of denim and the default business casual look of blue oxford and khakis. So, it’s kind of an invaluable color for a guy. Nonetheless, I’m not the biggest fan of the color. That’s kind of illegal for a guy to say, but there it is — blue is nothing special to me.
My room as a child was painted in a nice gender-neutral yellow, not a stereotypical light blue, robbing me of that obivous association. I can’t remember the first blue clothes I had, but I do remember hating the first blue clothes that I could remember. They were my gym clothes in elementary school, and they were the worst thing in the world. First of all, being a geek, I hated gym. Second of all, gym class didn’t always go the best for me. Third of all, this outfit had truly disastrous shorts. Not only were they short, as was the style at the time, but they were poofy. Gathered at the waist by a tight elastic band, they flared out by a full inch in every direction as soon as that band terminated. This look only enhanced the stick-like-ness of my legs, which admittedly were scrawny, just like the rest of me. It also made me look like some 19th-centrury matron. I was not a fan.
Instead, I loved the color red. This was the color of my special blanket, a woolen red tartan. It was also the color of my first sportcoat, which also sported a jaunty tartan.1 Heck, even my first cat2 was red. But I was never brave enough to wear my red Michael Jackson-style mesh t-shirt.3
I also liked green. I had this pen set with this really awesome emerald green that I’d draw with all the time. At the time, I had an imaginary country4 named Wadeland and it had a green flag with three triangles on it. Later, when I was in fifth grade, I coveted the red Robotech Alpha fighter but instead got the green.5
I thought I hit the jackpot in 9th grade when I got a shirt that was olive-green on the outside and red on the inside. I felt rugged in the lined sailcloth, but, somehow, the girls just didn’t dig that look.
I have a lot of blue in my house now. Some, like my carpet, is unintentional. I have a blue Ikea chair that I sit on a lot, but I do wish that Ikea made it easy for me to change the cushions on it, because blue is just not an inviting furniture color. And I’ve learned that inviting is key in furniture.
But still I look good in blue. Better, even, than in green, and blue is also more verstaile. It’s a tough world I live in. Maybe if I wait yet another season to buy new clothes I can put off making any color-related decisions for a few months.6
1 My parents liked to dress me in my lederhosen and red plaid sportcoat, probably something of a first in looks for a Jew.
2 Oh, he was a mean cat; he used to sleep under the covers in my bed and bite my toes all night long.
3 I’m shocked I can’t find a picture of a shirt like this online, but adding in the word “Michael Jackson” gives me a selection of snarky t-shirts about child molestation. What I’m talking about, and what was all the rage when the Great Gloved One was bigger than Oprah is now (and V: The Final Battle ruled primetime), is a red t-shirt, the front of which had a layer of black mesh on top of the shirt. Said shirt was also available in black with red mesh. Of course, the day after I got my black-on-red shirt, Matt showed up with his red-on-black shirt and stole my thunder.
4 Of course I had an imaginary country, I needed friends *somewhere*
5 This is one of those toys that I had that would probably be worth something these days. The other was the original Transformers Jetfire character; Jetfire was a rebranded Robotech Macross VF-1 and I got, totally unintentionally, one of the original series that literally was a repainted VF-1, with Macross insigina and all. eBay has a “buy it now” price of $75, not bad if I still had the thing.
6 Except insofar as I need to design a Web site and collateral for my company. But these will contain — get this — green! Yay! Victory at last.
I dunno, the couches in my living room are blue, and I never thought they seemed uninviting…
Of course, there’s very little overall color-coordination in my house. The floor is pale wood, the dining table, chairs, and coffee table are dark wood with forest-green enameled highlights, the couches are blue… Kind of a mess. Things were slightly better coordinated at my last place, which is where I lived when I bought almost all of the current crop of furniture… But only slightly.
In any case, I like pure colors, in dark, saturated shades. Forest green, navy blue, wine red, royal purple… I’m not so keen on yellow and orange; their corresponding shades just look muddy.
I felt the need to christen my first “favorite” site with a comment:
• While you may want new clothes, at least you have the business attire you need right now. And as far as casual clothes go, certain rugby playing gals think geeky guys in rugby shirts are a good look, so you’ve got that going for you at the moment.
• While (almost) all chicks may prefer you with blue eyes, I bet (almost) no chicks prefer the visual of you as a “19th-centrury matron.” You in a red Michael Jackson-style mesh t-shirt, on the other hand: Meow!
• Regarding the blue in your house: I think you might be more aware of it than others; perhaps because you don’t like it very much. The carpet is so neutral that it pretty much fades away and the overall feeling is sage green now, I think. Very inviting.
• Regarding your “lederhosen and red plaid sportcoat.” My parents liked to dress me in plaid tartan skirts that each closed with single large, gold safety pin. Unfortunately, like most little kids, I wasn’t always so good with the fine motor skills, which lead to one particularly disastrous day in kindergarten when I stood up and left my skirt in my chair. I had on pale yellow underoos that day and I’ll never forget it.
PS - Auros - As a woman with a deep, red couch and a royal purple couch, I like your taste in colors!
PPS - First post after my computer has been fixed…we’ll see if my words are filled with question marks or if the quotes, apostrophes, etc. show their faces
I felt the need to christen my first “favorite” site with a comment:
• While you may want new clothes, at least you have the business attire you need right now. And as far as casual clothes go, certain rugby playing gals think geeky guys in rugby shirts are a good look, so you’ve got that going for you at the moment.
• While (almost) all chicks may prefer you with blue eyes, I bet (almost) no chicks prefer the visual of you as a “19th-centrury matron.” You in a red Michael Jackson-style mesh t-shirt, on the other hand: Meow!
• Regarding the blue in your house: I think you might be more aware of it than others; perhaps because you don’t like it very much. The carpet is so neutral that it pretty much fades away and the overall feeling is sage green now, I think. Very inviting.
• Regarding your “lederhosen and red plaid sportcoat.” My parents liked to dress me in plaid tartan skirts that each closed with single large, gold safety pin. Unfortunately, like most little kids, I wasn’t always so good with the fine motor skills, which lead to one particularly disastrous day in kindergarten when I stood up and left my skirt in my chair. I had on pale yellow underoos that day and I’ll never forget it.
PS - Auros – As a woman with a deep, red couch and a royal purple couch, I like your taste in colors!
PPS – First post after my computer has been fixed…we’ll see if my words are filled with question marks or if the quotes, apostrophes, etc. show their faces
OK, now that’s truly bizarre. You posted two copies of your comment, and the first one has the various special characters (quotes, bullets) in UTF-8, and the second has them in ISO-8859-1. They’re both readable, but not at the same time. :-P
Actually, I amend that comment — it’s only the bullets that are encoded two different ways. The quotes show up correctly in both encodings.
When I posted the first comment, I had hit “preview” first. Then I remembered you saying that doing so may have something to do with making things funky. So I posted again without previewing the post and voila!
Lord, how will I figure out what’s causing that bug? that’ll be a fun little thing to track down!