Rain in the Desert

Every now and then my very good friend, Christine, who lives in New York, takes pity on me and sends me articles to read from the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal.  Some of these articles are about current events that she finds intriguing, but most of them are about fashion.  Commentary is included, on sticky notes or in red ink, and I save up this precious information for rainy Sundays like today.  The articles make me laugh, snort derisively, gasp in astonishment, swoon with covetousness.  They always make me feel like I am still connected to civilization.

But, Underemployed, - you might ask - don't you live in Chicago?  Isn't Chicago a large metropolitan area, still Second City in America's hearts and minds, and teeming with the latest and greatest wonders of the world?

I will answer to that, yes, I live in Chicago.  But, no, it is not a particularly large metropolitan area.  If you set a brisk pace, you can walk from one end of downtown Chicago to the other in under an hour.  Granted, there still remain a few good museums and some architectural wonders in that stretch, in spite of the efforts of a long string of mayors from the Planet Dork. 

"Doesn't anything stay open here past 8:00 pm?" a tourist once asked me.

Yes.  Bars. 

Outside of downtown, but still within city limits, is a conglomerate of neighborhoods continuously decimated by the policies of the aforementioned mayors with the intent that none of these communities will ever produce a viable political opponent.  Before visiting these neighborhoods, it's a good idea to check the Red Eye ("Dick and Jane Write a Newspaper") which helpfully prints a homicide map for the city.

And outside the city limits is a jumble of meaningless suburbs, corn fields scattered amongst them with increasing frequency as one approaches the borders of Iowa and Wisconsin.

So far away from the runways of Paris and Milan!  I look forward to these missives from Christine like a child looks forward to the Easter Bunny.  

This week's dispatches include an article on "boomerang" children who are happily living at home with Mom and Dad until they are forty or so (producing a boom market for cheap hotels, I would surmise).  Christine's sticky note said, "So your kids should move in and stay in?"  To which I will answer that all of my grandmother's children stayed home until they were married.  True, they all got married at twelve, but still.  Not so unusual in my experience.

Then there is one about a web site that will take information about the clothes in your closet and tell you what size to buy when you're shopping online.  According to the article, it doesn't work, mainly because women lie about their size, even to themselves, and designers lie to us about our size, which makes us love them because we are stupid.

Another article is about the Olfactory Police-people in New York calling 311 on IHop and on some poor bastards roasting coffee.  Seriously?  Pancakes and coffee?  Every one of those idiots drive smelly cars and color their hair with cyanide.  Pray that your child doesn't marry one of them.  

Article on bird prints?  Yes!  They are fabulous.  I agree with you, Chris, about the Nicholas Kirkwood pumps.  Caveat emptor:  decades from now (or even next year), should any of those clothes survive, they will be easily identified as vintage 2012.  So if you buy anything, don't bother with dry-cleaning.

Pastels, gingham, and wrinkled silk?  Lie down, it will pass.

That awful Stella McCarthy jacket?  Channel grandma for only $3500.

And I got the entire WSJ magazine on Men's Fashion.  "Men's Fashion" is an oxymoron.  Sure, they try (although why, I'm still a little fuzzy) and some of them even succeed (Fred Astaire and James Bond come to mind, and one of them is fictional).  But, really, what's the point?

Lastly, an article about entrepreneurs selling their inventions at Wal-Mart.  Christine, I actually do have an invention that I think we would do well with.  We'll talk.

And peplums DO work if one has hips.  They DON'T work if one has boobs.  Peplums-with-big-boobs make one look like Mae West or Dolly Parton on a bender.  The adjective I would choose to apply here would be "blowzy", but few people would know what I was talking about.

Fortunately, I'm in no danger.

Thank you, Chris, for all the time and work you put into keeping me abreast of trends in human evolution.  It's always a while before they get out here.  Please continue.  I feel wonderful right now, enlightened, and not-a-little smug.

And hopeful.  Hopeful that someday, maybe even today, I will be able to buy a knee-length pencil skirt in Chicago.

Gotta go.  The stores close early on Sunday.