Over the last two years, every couple of months, one men's magazine or another touts Barker Black, the spin-off shoe company that started it's world takeover from Elizabeth Street. (The above is from a 2005 GQ)  Each time a company gets this much good ink, I resist. Band Of Outsiders¹ is a perfect example of a hip-outfitter whose product seems like it was designed with the fashion editors at GQ in mind - but turns out to be useless in the long run of things. Thom Brown likewise (I'm working on a theory that Brown represents the corruption of menswear by women's fashiong - for later.)

I thought I would hate Barker Black shoes. But, I don't. Initially I rolled my eyes: oh this whole Skull and Crossbones pattern in the brogues is just too cute by half. But you really only notice them when you get very close to the shoe - as in this spread from the British Esquire.

 

At a real-life distance, it actually just looks like normal a pair of very well constructed shoes. In the first photo, notice the crown shape in the loafer. I don't care if these shoes make some wall street types feel "subversive" - they are great, classic shoes - period. Just avoid their velvet slippers which are a bit too Vegas lounge for my taste. The detailing is enjoyed by the wearer and any woman who might find them by the bedside in the morning light. The shoes themselves are incredibly conservative. The brash bits are only in the most unobtrusive details. So, despite the relentless pimping by the men's fashion media complex, I'm a fan.

1. Take note of Band of Outsiders absurd website - which uses an obvious blogspot.com template and fills it with polaroids of Jason Schwartzman in their clothes.  Imagine a hooker who wanted to capture a clientele of ultra-slender, passive, intellectual types, ones who want to make love to mix-tapes of The Postal Service, Lauren Hill and Feist, so she gets plastic surgery to look like Tina Fey - that's Band of Outsiders. A whore for trust-funded hipsters. I thought this style of advertising lost its punch after the first round of Orbit-girl ads had my fellow Bard College students buying packs of spearmint gum with their Camel Reds from me at the campus bookstore (where I played Weezer and Ben Folds Five albums).

A few years ago my mother found an amazing recipe for Thanksgiving Turkey. It requires all sorts of Rosemary and onions and the rinds of lemons. This magic list of instructions that was published once in Southern Living, has transformed our Thanksgiving. From the time I ate the broccoli and threw up at the kids table (thr table looked like a a giant crayola crayon) until about four years ago, I hated the dry, flavorless main course. Now it is my favorite meal of the year.

Meanwhile, Foreign Policy provides five of the most vaporous reasons to be thankful ever committed to the internet. I was sure to include "improved air safety" in my pre-meal prayers.

The following headline (found on Drudge this morning) is reason to be thankful: Pope to purge the Vatican of modern music. Cue "Hallelujah Chorus" Seriously, if I want to listen to third-rate K.T. Tunstall music, I'll buy a K.T. Tunstall album and listen to the tracks she doesn't release as singles. Pope Benedict understands something: if the people want to worship with pop music in English, they'll can go to a U2 concert or become Lutherans.

 

I'll be running around New Hampshire this weekend chasing the people who want to lead the free world between the years 2009 and 2013. If anyone wants to get together in Nashua, Concord, Manchester, North Conway, or even northern Mass for a drink, send me an e-mail or leave a comment and I'll send you an e-mail.

I wanted to take some delight in the reaction to my piece on the Crystal Clear Atheism conference; it proves my point that this new crowd of atheists is humorless. This isn't too surprising - these people have invested so much of themselves in this identity. Imagine a coterie of dogmatic hockey-haters living in Toronto when the Leafs are in the Stanley Cup Finals - that is what atheists are like.

Replies have generally made this complaint: You didn't refute our arguments, you just compiled series of ad hominem attacks.  

My response: Yes. That's about right.

Did you really think a 25 year old would attempt a point by point refutation of Bertrand Russell (or the far-more interesting Michael Martin) in the space of three pages?  Should I expect a learned refutation of Aquinas' natural theology in your idiotic Spaghetti Monster pamphlets?

So the apologists for un-belief call me a misogynist for calling Margaret Downey "dippy." Uhm- she was tossing koosh balls (the ones that look like globes) around a hotel ballroom. Case closed.

One atheist even compared their conference to a Star Trek convention in trying to defend against my charge that atheism is becoming a movement. For some reason I don't think Trekkies look to their leaders for advice on how to confront the world around them. But the whole sun-depleted-losers-getting-together thing - that's just the same.

Do I have some special hate-on for atheists? No, at least it isn't on evidence in the recent panel on the "new atheism" I spoke at recently. I didn't begin foaming at the mouth at the very sound of Will Wilkinson's voice.  (Hint atheists: listen to that panel and you'll find out that I think some forms of atheism are compelling, even respectable.)

Looking over my journalistic record it seems I have a hate-on for people who meet in hotel ballrooms, sell each other lame bumper stickers and pretend that they face the worst sort of persecution.  Whether they are atheists, Christian Zionists, "values-voters", or Maroon-5 fans. (someone needs to commission me for that last one).

I do enjoy being called an "insult to human dignity" by people who buy bumper stickers that say "Abstinence Makes the Church Grow Fondlers." Oh, and if you are comparing me unfavorably to Goebbels, it would help to spell the man's name right.

I got back from Cairo last night and you should expect something on the NDP and the situation in Egypt soon.

In the meantime, I hope you enjoy my piece on the recent Crystal Clear Atheism conference.

So, I'll be leaving Washington today on a week-long trip to Cairo, where I will cover the convention of the ruling "party," the NDP. Should be fun. Travel, especially the type that involves 10-hour flights and long waits at the airport, allows me to catch up on some reading. A friend has insisted that I'll love David Foster Wallace, and so I'll be reading "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never do Again" while I wait in Dulles. If I like it, I'll try to pick up a copy of Infinite Jest in Arabic.

But when I'm traveling or on vacation I  prefer to reread novels that are sentimental favorites or non-fiction works that are important to me. As I pack up my carry-on (no toothpaste!), I thought I'd force my airplane reading selections on you. First up will be the seventh volume of Frederick Copleston's eminent History of Philosophy, the one covering the Post-Kantian Idealists, to Marx, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche. 

Next up, the only novel on my list. Lunar Park by Bret Easton Ellis. I know, you are freaking out. But I actually found the book extremely moving. Maybe I'm a sucker, but I felt that Ellis' last novel, whose main character is Bret Easton Ellis  himself actually redeemed Ellis, the writer, from his own ego and his own excesses.

On the way back I'll be reading some Biblical theology: Mary in the Mystery of the Covenant by Ignace de La Potterie, SJ (my second Jesuit). Potteries's exegesis of the Marian passages of Scripture are just astonishing in their level of detail. Especially helpful is his discussion of John 6:41-47, in which the theologian explains and diagrams both the Concentric and Parallel Structures that Biblical authors employed in composing scripture.  

Finally, to politics, I'll be toting along my beat up edition of James Burnham's The Machiavellians, probably the most important book in shaping the way I think about politics. I have to thank Kevin Michael Grace for generously sending it to me a little over a year ago.  It's a second edition copy from 1943 and is full of pencil marks from its previous owner(s).

Other than that, I'll take a stack of the last month's men's magazines: Men's Vogue, Esquire, Details and GQ. Unfortunately, the TSA will make me check the bag containing my most valuable travel accessory.

As the MLB playoffs were getting started, Ross Douthat took note of the lame "There's Only One October" ad campaign which featured Dane Cook (Dane Cook!) hawking the Cleveland Indians to the masses. I thought it was dumb too, but it could never live up to the sheer inanity of the NHL's immediate post lockout campaign. The Sun Tzu quote, the bare-chested guy sitting in skates, his "spiritual mentor" dressing him, while wearing K-Mart's least risqué lingerie herself - those were the days. So, I'm not sure what to make of the new NBA campaign that I caught as I watched Kevin Durant's debut last night.

Of course I like using Jerry Sloan for "conversation" but I can't help but feel that the self-conscious classiness of these ads is meant to distract us from the circus this league became over the last year or so. I wonder if it wouldn't be better to highlight the big stories of the year: the sudden relevance of the Boston Celtics, the incredibly competitive Western Conference, the arrival of Kevin Durant, the development of Deron Williams, the struggle of Tracy McGrady, the criminal conduct of the New York Knicks. The talent level in the NBA is off the charts. The best it's been since the mid-90s. Slowly the play is improving as well - think of the Spurs, Suns, Jazz, Rockets and Mavericks all playing good fundamental basketball with different styles and tempos.

Tim Russert finally gets the rough hand in a great little piece by Paul Waldman at The American Prospect.

Russert may be the only journalist in America who considers all his conversations with government officials off the record unless they request otherwise -- an extraordinary gift to the powerful and an inversion of ordinary journalistic practice -- but that doesn't make him an insider. Because he's from Buffalo.

My only problem with Waldman's piece is that it assumes "broadcast journalists" could (or once did) serve an important function as journalists. I can't think of any major broadcast figure who was lauded for his reporting. Instead they are all hailed from on high for possessing a quality. Jennings was dignified. Williams is warm. Murrow was authoritative. Browkaw was chewing on taffy. We should admit to ourselves that the Sunday Talk Shows are less entertaining versions of Conan O'Brien for people  convinced that television can edify them, or educate them about current events.