Properly Coated

Jun 30, 2008 2:13 PM

A little variety is a good thing, too. From my own personal wardrobe, I have choices among several different articles of clothing all from different companies. That can create a mix-and-match conundrum. You look strange when you’re wearing a hat from one seed company and a coat from its biggest competitor. Worse yet, if you’re caught wearing a hat, a jacket, gloves and a shirt all from the same company, you have crossed that imaginary (but completely understood) line into being a shill. No one is so far in the tank for one company that he wears an entire ensemble from it unless he works there. I mean, let’s say, hypothetically, you put on your John Deere denim shirt and then go with a John Deere hat, and since it’s cold, a John Deere jacket. You show up at a meeting somewhere and the university guy giving the Power Point presentation can’t get his laser pointer to work, so you whip out your John Deere laser pointer and all of a sudden you’re labeled a company guy or something by all your farmer buddies at the meeting. Totally bogus.

There was a knock at my door a couple weeks ago. Lo and behold, it was Ada Austin, The Old Goat Woman! (I’m not being mean. That’s actually how she signs her e-mails and cards.) Seeing as how the reputation and sales of goat socks have expanded somewhat in the last few months (see “The hair of a goat,” March 17, 2008), Ada decided I needed more wardrobe. She stopped by to have me try on a jacket. You want to throw up a billboard, you make sure the measurements are right so the signage looks good. That’s not always easy with me. If you ever watch The Simpsons, you know that some of the best humor in the show is stuff in the background. I remember a scene where they were at a ballpark, probably watching their hometown minor league team, the Isotopes. One of the billboards in the outfield had a sign for some clothing store by the name of Royal Majesty or something like that. What caught my eye and made me review the scene a couple of times was the line immediately below the name of the store: “For the Obese or Gangly Gentleman.”

I usually have to shop at places like that. So far, it’s for the second half of the equation, not the first. Give me time and enough Bavarian Cremes for breakfast each morning and maybe I’ll need both sections of the store.

Ada was thinking before she showed up. She brought an XL and an XL Tall jacket for me to try. The XLT was far and away the winner. She also wanted to check on a spelling issue. You can’t just give a sock promoter a generic coat. It needs to be personalized. Ada said she couldn’t find my card, so she wanted to make sure she had the personalization right. I whipped out a card so fast she almost bled to death from the paper cut.