Shopping for men's dress shirts (Part 1)

So I’m in Macy’s the other day, looking for dress shirts that have the measurements I need (15 ½ - 34/35) and finally find a couple that have those readings. Perfect. I grab a couple from different companies, including Hugo Boss and Geoffrey Beene, and head to the dressing rooms just to make sure they fit right.

And here is where the reason for my post today begins. This is part 1, with part 2 coming in the future…

If you’re selling something, generally your goal is for it to be very easy for potential customers to see your product in action, and hopefully once this happens, the product will sell itself. For instance, if you were interested in purchasing an iPod, Apple has set up rows and rows of iPods within their stores so that you can see just how easy it can be for you to carry all of you favorite movies and music with you wherever you go. Imagine though, if Apple decided that instead of making it easy, they were going to require that you open all of the packaging for a brand new iPod, break out the USB wires, and sync it to a computer within their stores anytime you wanted to see how an iPod worked. They would never do this, right? And why do we know this? BECAUSE DOING SO WOULD BE FREAKING RETARDED! How would that encourage people to give their product a test drive? And yet, my friends, that is exactly what dress shirt makers like Mr. Boss and Mr. Beene have done.

Back in the mall dressing room, I’m quickly given the task of unwrapping this shirt I want to try on. Think about that for a minute. This dress shirt is wrapped in plastic. Why? Is it going to go stale if exposed to air for too long? Did Mr. Beene unwrap an individual piece of cheese one day and think to himself, “This screams class”? Why are dress shirts the only line of clothing that has earned being wrapped in plastic?

Once said dress shirt is unwrapped, get ready, because now the real work begins. And unfortunately if you don’t have an engineering degree from M.I.T., this next step may be more stressful than a day in the life of Jack Bauer. For whatever reason, the shirt has roughly 7 strategically placed sewing pins inserted into it. Why? Again, we can only guess. Was the shirt alive when you packaged it? Was that the only way to keep it from escaping while on its way to department stores across the country? Is there a safe house in Wyoming where escaped dress shirts can gather and live out their days peacefully, like the pre-cogs did at the end of Minority Report?

Seriously, they’ve taken more security precautions with this shirt than they did with the velociraptors at Jurassic Park. The whole experience makes me feel like a contestant on The Amazing Race trying to figure out the bus schedule in Cairo.

By the time you’re done you pray to god that it fits, because if it doesn’t, then you get to do the whole thing all over again with a different shirt. Well I refuse. In the past, I’ve been determined to find a shirt that fits, and end up going through this routine several times. But a man can only take so much. Eventually you will break. Inevitably I end up walking around like Russell Crowe in A Beautiful Mind. I see sewing pins that aren’t there. In ties, in shoes, in pineapples…they’re everywhere. Before you know it I’m having insightful conversations with Ed Harris about how the whole thing is the Russian's fault.

So please, can we stop treating new dress shirts like they're something sacred?

Right now you’re probably asking yourself 2 questions….1) What could part 2 of this tale possibly hold and 2) can ManBearPig possibly squeeze more pop culture references (4 so far) into this story than your average Talk Soup episode (5)? Stay tuned…

Notes from the end of the Bench

The headline reads “American with swine flu dies”. Initially the reader is to assume in all horror that the “Brigade” has claimed their first American victim. The panic should now begin!

I will give you time to compose yourself…

As you are calming down, lowering the brown bag to your side, I should inform you of two facts. First, this happened in North Mexico otherwise known as Texas. Second, which you can only find out after scanning through a poorly written AP article, “Texas health officials stopped short of saying that swine flu caused (her) death”… she actually had “chronic underlying health conditions”. That is a nice way of saying her immune system didn’t work so well.

The underlying problem here… where can the News be found? The above story appeared to report the News, but after further investigation it was a sensationalized title, they really just wanted me to be scared enough to click to read the whole article so that I could see the adds for “Hot” singles in My area. If it would have said “Women in a coma gives birth then dies”, they know I would have just moved right past it to read, “Scary moments on ‘Idol’”. But by making me think that I was in danger… they sucked me in.

Were has Walter Cronkite gone, or even Paul Harvey? I flipped through the network channels stopping briefly for a riveting weather report, no News there! Granted it looked vaguely like the News, but with E! Entertainment sensibilities. CNN, Fox News, ESPN, all over hyped agenda pushing blood hunters, all fear - no substance. The Newspapers are going out of business, and the internet is just a vast wasteland of ads and pop ups.

What will it take to make the news more, well, newsy? Has this been the reality all along? Will ManBearPig be sending his assistant to my office with breakfast? That’s the News I would like to hear!

Tribute to Alexander Solzhenitsyn...

A titan of Russian literature Alexander Solzhenitsyn passed on August 8th 2008. This is a tribute to his seminal work One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich….

A Sum Greater Than The Parts?

What is a satisfactory conclusion to another mans summation? What place does the observer have in judging the vision of the artist? Under what pretext can the hearer judge the mind of the master? In so much as the infant cannot judge the method of his conception, so a man cannot sit from afar in the seat of arbitration, and weigh the worth of another mans conclusions. In Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich, the author cinches up his story like a rope, fastened tightly around the waist in place of a leather belt, with the conclusion, “A Day without a dark cloud. Almost a happy day.” But was his conclusion enough? Was it Satisfactory? This was Solzhenitsyn’s story, and like a line entry at the end of the day’s blotter, it is a reconciliation of his experience, the sum of real parts of his life. Although the specific abstracted contents of his narrative of twenty-four hours in a Siberian Gulag are fictional, the general circumstances are an intrinsic part of the character of the author. As Emerson said in regard the recounting of the past, “In proportion to the completeness of the distillation, so will the purity and imperishableness of the product be.” So pure is the distillation of Solzhenitsyn’s narrative that one cannot help but be intoxicated by its sincerity. Upon this precept any thinker is drawn to consider the parts that make up One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich.

Francis Bacon once wrote, “Virtue is like a rich stone, best plain set” Virtue triumphs from amidst the thin walls of a ramshackle work camp in the form of a plain set man. In Solzhenitsyn’s narrative the Protagonist Ivan Denisovich or Shokhov as he is known, moves through the story at a deliberate gait. His actions, his words, his and character are not above par, they are not beyond reproach, yet they immortalize the virtues that can radiate from the depths of man. Ask of favors when in need, and repay just dues on time, can be seen in a borrowed pinch of tobacco. For work is what makes life, as sloth is poison to the soul, radiates from the vigor that seems imbued in the worn body of Shukhov. Solzhenitsyn’s triumph of the will over oppression plays out, not in melancholy pining, but rather the circumspect honesty, that even when striped of nearly all dignity life itself is good. There is no cynicism in Solzhenitsyn’s portrayal of Ivan’s virtue, wisps of satire maybe, but boldness is not often without some absurdity. Philip Rahv summed it up with some concision when he reflected, “the nature of man under extreme conditions of inhumanity, is treated unpretentiously, without despair or overt bitterness . . .” Any one who so chooses can see the virtue and triumph of man through Solzhenitsyn’s words.

“To have no regular work, no set sphere of activity, what a miserable thing it is? . . . Effort, struggles with difficulties? That is as natural to a man as grubbing in the ground is to a mole,” said Will Durant. So where the words of Schopenhauer, and so to the maxim presented by Solzhenitsyn. As we follow the day, the cold, the hunger, the exhaustion, there is one incubus that looms over the heads of all gulag prisoners like the sword of Damocles, that of the guardhouse. The isolation, inactivity, and punishment that could only add misery to the miserable. One would think that a break from the driven labor would be a welcome reprieve, but not with isolation, it was a potential sentence to eternal rest, welcome or not. The thoughts and fears of Shukhov highlight one of the greatest of human necessities: Activity. Despite the droning, white-washed images that accompany the labor camp, Solzhenitsyn’s drives home this point when he writes, “Shukhov went to sleep fully content . . . he’d built a wall and enjoyed doing it” This among his other gyrations and plodding made Shukhov alive, and as Rahv put it, “not merely a victim . . . but always a person” Again a pure distillation of truth that those of sloth may dismiss, and those of action applaud.

Another triumph of Solzhenitsyn’s narrative is the clarity of thought and universality of vision. The great Voltaire once spoke of his own writings, “like little brooks, which are transparent because they are not deep”. So to it is with Solzhenitsyn’s ideas. The manageable clarity lies in his reaching for touchstones that lie beyond the walls of politics and ethnicity. This is most plainly set forth in is frequent use of proverbial sayings. “You live with your feet in the mud and there’s no time to be thinking about how you got in or how you’re getting out”. “Work is like a stick, it has two ends”. Simple aphorisms free the narrative, give it truth, and bringing warmth to the frostbitten pages. The beauty of the English version also rests in the translation. Pithy sayings heard often are like the slap that so quickly looses its sting. These Russian proverbs though, as cleverly communicated to english, blow moisture into frigid minds, leaving one with lessons that edify the soul. The simplicity also hones the symbology. Although the novella does not reek of ideology, this temperance only poorly masks Solzhenitsyn’s inclination when he makes expressions such as, “A genius doesn’t adapt his treatment to the taste of tyrants!” The statement he is trying to make is only there to the hearing ear, but is a clarion call for reformation to the listeners.

So the question: is Shukhov final observation, “A day without a dark cloud. Almost a happy day” a satisfactory ending? The answer from the prospective of this reader is no, this is not a “satisfactory” ending, it is Solzhenitsyn’s ending. There is not a question of satisfaction that be put to consideration. Place the words of a fellow gulag zek along those of Solzhenitsyn’s and a comparison could be drawn; Interview a guard banished to Siberia and incite could be had; read and reread this work and greater depth and understanding could be gleaned. Never though could one rightfully judge how satisfactory the conclusion is; a summation that a man has drawn from the necessarily private interpretation of eight years of dreary existence in a Siberian Work Camp. Possibly if a great thinker had trodden day by day astride him, then there would be substance to merit an opinion. Even then a judgment would be shallow, as private thoughts that motivated this reflective summation are beyond critique. An Arabian proverb says, “A fig-tree, looking on a fig-tree, becomes fruitful” So too as naive readers are graced for a day by the company of Ivan Denisovich, they see, feel, touch, images, and a time as remote as the Siberian Wilderness. One can hope to earn a morsel from the lessons learned, and not attempt to slap at the piercing icicles of Solzhenitsyn’s insight. One can be warmed by this Russian author’s sum of the chipped pieces of a broken life; a sum that is a pure distillation of the spirit of man; a sum only as great as our hearts.