Tuesday, August 23, 2011

Less Hats, More Work.


I see hats.
I see lots and lots of hats.
Knit caps. Pork Pie hats. Fedoras.

I guess it's part of the business, but it's way too affected for my taste.

In my day if you wanted to show the world you were a character or were blessed with unusual talents, you did the kind of work that would make others say "Damn." What you didn't do was skip over to some Melrose boutique to find a knit cap that matched your tatted sleeve so that others would say, "Damn, that guy is a pretentious tool."

Mind you, I realize I am unusually obsessed over this misguided sartorial choice but the truth is I don't work at an agency anymore. I'm a hired gun. And so I don't get to gripe about office politics or bureaucracy or the unfair revenue distribution at the big 4 holding companies. I'm a man without a curmudgeonly cause.

And so I choose hats and the douchebags who choose to wear them.

But as my style-savvy friend Laura puts it, if I were deadly serious about the matter, I could deliver a death blow to this haberdasherous behavior.


This was my father's Hobbs Fedora. It's one of the few possessions I received upon my mother's passing 6 years ago. If I were to start showing up at work wearing this handsome chapeau, I'm sure many a hipster would start removing theirs.

But I can't. Not because I don't have the cajones. The hat is about 5 sizes too small for my over sized cranium. And, having sat in my mother's condo for years on end, it still reeks of cigarette smoke.


3 comments:

george tannenbaum said...

Hipster Haiku.

Through the summer heat
He had on his woolen hat.
In cold rain, hatless.

Rich Siegel said...

More Hipster Haiku:


I was like, thirsty?
Let's get a Pabst Blue Ribbon
and he was like, cool.

george tannenbaum said...

My father, who preceded me in the ad business, worked on Pabst Blue Ribbon for virtually his entire career. It never occurred to him that beer could be ironic. He's dead now, and likely rolling over in his ash pile.