Tag Archives: James Brown

I wore my trench coat today.

13 Nov

from January 3, 2008

I wore my trench coat the other day. Which was a pretty stupid idea because it was one of the coldest days of the year. (But I’m full of stupid ideas. Remind me to tell you ’bout the time that I thought it would be a good idea to become a teacher.) [HEY! See the parenthesis, apostrophe, brackets, and caps? It’s going to be one of THOSE blogs. Stop reading now.] [Don’t say I didn’t warn you.]

I wore my trench coat the other day. Which was a pretty stupid idea (you may have read somewhere) because it was one of the coldest days of the year. And to make it worse I took out the lining so it was a THIN trench coat on one of the coldest days of the year, which you may have heard was a pretty stupid thing to wear on such a day, i.e.: the coldest day of the year so far. Or “thus far.” Will one of the present and/or (heh heh) past English teachers who allegedly read this blog help me out here? “So” far or “thus” far. I got it: It was one of the coldest days of the year up to that point. (Italics.) That’s how I’ll roll.

I wore my trench coat the other day. Which was a pretty stupid idea (and I am solidly ignoring this sentence fragment which I am typing for the third time) because it was one of the coldest days of the year up to that point. But today was colder. SHIT!

I wore my trench coat the other day. Which was a pretty stupid idea (and I am still solidly ignoring this sentence fragment which I am typing for the fourth time) because it was one of the coldest days of the year up to that point, until today, which was colder.

Where was I? I am confusing myself. And I haven’t even gotten to the point yet. And what are the chances of that happening before my laptop spontaneously bursts into flame to save itself from having to save this crap on its hard drive?

To  recap:

1- I wore my trench coat.

2- I took out the lining.

3- It was cold.

4- But today was colder.

Yada yada trench coat yada I wore the aforementioned black trench coat (and no, I did not afforemention that it was black. And no, “afforemention” is not a verb. I’m trying to start a trend. Remember how “blog slinging” caught on?)  I also wore black (albeit faded) jeans (albeit?) and black (albeit gray) sneakers (albeit again?) and a black t-shirt (no albeit here) and a nice black shirt (albeit it was blue) and carried a black backpack and it occurred to me that I looked just like one of those “trench coat mafia” guys that shoot up schools, and here I was walking into a school, and all I could think of was “damn it is cold. Why did I wear a trench coat (without the lining) on the coldest day of the year? Up to this point. Although it may be colder on another day soon.” 

But I entered the school without a glance toward me and took out my shotgun and it turned out I really was one of those trench coat mafia guys and- [Hold on a sec, I know the government reads everyone’s blogs and thermostats. DO NOT send the FBI around to break my legs, I’m kidding. I am a merry funster.]

It was warmer in the building, so it turned out I was glad I took out the lining (on such a cold day, coldest of the year, up to that point, etc etc) so I could walk around for a while with the coat billowing out behind me.

I’ve gone on record about capes. Love ’em! (Apostrophe again.) But as I’ve said before, unless you are the late Godfather of Soul James Brown or in drag as Supergirl there is no excuse for wearing a cape. And I am not the late Mr. Brown come back to life, and white, nor am I going to risk an assault by dressing as Supergirl (though I do have the legs for it) so wearing a long trench coat is the closest I can come to legally wearing a cape and pretending to be a superhero.

So, as I said, and if I didn’t repeat myself this blog would have been finished last week, I walked around for a while with the coat billowing out behind me. It was sooooo cool. Unless you were not me and just one of the people in the halls who saw me and thought I was sooooo uncool.  (I was told I looked very gothic, which just proves that people still dig Goths, but who cares she’s cute.) 

In fact, I wanted to keep the black trench coat on all day. Which would have looked silly (but soooo cool) but for the annoying fact that it was actually warm in my room. Who expected a warm room in Lafayette? So, take a guess, what do you think I did? Think carefully now! What did I do? What did I do? Hmmmm?

I took it off, that’s what I did. I was warm. And what fool (me?) wouldn’t take off his coat when it is warm? Even a very cool black gothic-looking trench coat (which had picked up some dust on the bottom, it being so long) without the lining? On the coldest day of the year so far up to that point, etc, in a warm room, though today was both colder outside and warmer inside my room.

This blog is why I get headaches so often.

So I took the coat off, but when I went outside my room, guess what I did? What did I do? What did I do? Hmmmm? I didn’t put it on. Why would you guess that? That would just be silly. And I may be stupid (often) [Hey!] but I am not silly. But it would have been cool, striding the halls, casting a fearsome shadow, cutting a dashing figure, using more descriptive phrases than usual, looking for all the world like a member of the trench coat mafia [Just kidding, FBI! Merry funster and all that.] and just generally being cool as Hell. (A- I am capitalizing Hell, even though I often don’t. B- Why is Hell cool? Shouldn’t Hell be hot? Is this a mixed metaphor thingy? Nah, I am using cool in a totally different sense than temperature. You should have known that. Why do I have to tell you these things?)

But when I left the building I put it on again and damn if it wasn’t still sooooo cool. But it was the coldest [shut up!] and I was freezing my coolness off, not to mention my ass, and I got in the car and pulled out of the laundry bag a big heavy sweater which I wrapped around my trench coat while I sat and shivered until the car warmed up. (Yes, I was going to do the laundry, and damn if I wasn’t the coolest cat in the place.) (“Coolest cat?” Who am I, Sammy Davis Jr. here?)

Well, I love my trench coat. I wonder if it loves me? (Oh my God. That is so lame. ) [So why didn’t I just delete it?] Anywho, or how, anyhow, I put my trench coat away, after brushing the dust off the bottom, and there it awaits until the temperature rises and I once again decide the need to feel pretty. I mean cool. Cool. Until I feel the need to be cool.

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Grammar, capes, and me

9 Nov

from January 3, 2007

It is very interesting to me, and I’m the one who counts, that I can carry on epic email conversations with people that I see every day. If I’m not doing anything else and I’m on the computer, which is always, I can send umpteen bamillion emails, and I never let anything end because, let’s face it, I’m fascinating on the email, in person not so much. The real interesting part is that these massive electronic communiqués (HA! Take that!) are not, at all, ever referred to in any real, verbal, conversations that I may have in person, face to face, with the person to whom (proper use of “whom”- 5 points!) I am speaking. [And this is where I take a 90-degree turn and shift topic. Sit back and enjoy.] Go back and reread that last sentence. I’ll wait..………… Done? OK. I don’t talk like that. Yet I write like that.  I’m writing this more or less on the fly, composed in my head as I type, unedited. I wonder what an editor would do to this? First, the parenthetical asides (See? I am a writer. “Parenthetical asides” indeed. Sometimes I make myself sick with my smug intelligence.) would go. (Don’t you hate it when the aforementioned “parenthetical asides” are longer than the sentences they are interrupting? Here is the same sentence sans parentheses: First, (and should that be “firstly”? Ah crap, now I have to start over.) First, the parenthetical asides would go. Second(ly?) there are six(!) commas and about a thousand or so clauses in there. (Yet not one sanity clause. (“You can’t fool me. There’s no such thing as Santy Claus,” My first Chico Marx reference!)) Go back and check- that double parentheses is not a typo, though technically I should have used brackets inside the parenthesis. But who gives a fuck? Oh- I need to close the original parentheses here.) Done. This is like the second time I’ve had fun with parentheses in a blog. Go back and check. And yes, this is fun to me. And no, I refuse to break paragraphs here. This is a stream-of-consciousness deal here, so live with it. You only read this, but this ACTUALLY GOES ON IN MY HEAD. [And this is where I return to the original topic. You may need to reread the first few lines. It is all very confusing.] As I was saying, my conversations at work with real people are totally separate from the email conversations I have with the same people. Frankly, this is all I have to say about that. Let’s change topics again. Let’s talk about the death of James Brown. This was a very sad event. It was the end of an era. James Brown was, you see, perhaps the last man who could legitimately wear a cape. No one wears capes anymore. I don’t mean like superheroes. I mean real people. The fat Elvis wore capes; silly sequined ones, but capes nonetheless. Old British nannies wore capes, as did old British cops. Frank Costanza’s lawyer wore one. (And there I go violating the “real people rule,” but I love that episode and it was Larry David in the cape, and it ended with the line “Who are you?” “I’m Frank Costanza’s lawyer” so I’ll break the damn rule.) The movie star to whom all others are compared, and all others fall short, Bela Lugosi, wore a cape. He was buried in a cape! Tell me that’s not cool. So when James Brown died a certain era, a certain way of life, died with him. Like Frank Sinatra (Senior, not Junior- and who else laughed at my “Frank Sinatras Junior and Senior” joke in my last bulletin? Oh, only me.) Like Frank Sinatra before him (ignore the sentence fragment) Like Frank Sinatra before him, James Brown was the epitome of a certain, not just style, but way of living. Sinatra had that tough guy, macho, beat-up-the-commies swagger of the 1950’s and James Brown had something similar I’m sure but he had a cape too, damn it. Who else today can wear a cape? (I would have said Gerald Ford, had he not died. And now I’m using him as a mediocre joke in a James Brown gag. How sad. For me, not him.) Think about it. Would Tom Hanks wear a cape? Would Sir Ian McKellan wear a cape? Would Ludacris wear a cape? I think not, sir. (Say that in an offended upper class British accent for the full effect. Perhaps something out of Python.) So with James Brown goes the end of the cape era. But one question remains- what the hell should I do with all my capes? I have like a closet full of them and I don’t want to look like an idiot. I’m not going to wear them in public. People will think I’m mocking James Brown.

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