Tuesday, October 30, 2012

Blue

And tonight we forgive Brian Williams for looking a little less than dapper, considering the horrors of Sandy.  His tie, slim stripes of deep turquoise and China blue, was slightly askew and looked as if he wrenched it on right before lunging onto the set of The Nightly. What is there to say when the news is so bad?

Monday, October 29, 2012

Through A (HiDef/LCD) Glass Darkly

The Report took a Reset Week, and sadly, it was All For Naught. This evening, Brian Williams thwarts our serenity by merely waiting us out and Starting Over, knotting up the selfsame cravat of last Monday, 22 October's Crayola blue and yellow gold stripe.  Just like smelling grape Dimetapp brings rushing back all the sleepless nights of my sons' childhood respiratory illnesses and ear infections, seeing this tie tonight flickers to life a Bergman-esque retrospective of last week's neckwear.  In a melancholy revue, I see glimpses of SPT, a black and white striped silk, the moody deep turquoise and worsted grey slim stripe, and the satisfyingly Lichtenstein-like intarsia pattern, but what does it all mean?

Monday, October 22, 2012

See Brian. See Brian Wear Stripes.

Tonight Brian Williams reverts to one of his many yellow and blue striped ties.  It's boring.  This is the Dick and Jane of cravats.  Is it offensive? No. Is it exciting? No. Look. Look. It is a tie.  And that is all that it is.

Wednesday, October 17, 2012

I Feel As If We Were Headed Here All Along

SPT.  It just is.

Tuesday, October 16, 2012

Revisit

Tonight Brian Williams wears the more sedate cousin of last night's garish and brash cravat.  The muted, smoked violet and sooty navy stripe is a vast improvement in style and palette.  She had not been on the property for more than twenty years, but little had changed.  In the halflight of the dawn, she edged her car closer to the towering iron gates ahead.  Under their shroud of silent mist, lavender fields slumbered fragrantly in neglect.  The house waited still and patient, its dignity in tarnish and disrepair, but very much alive. 

Monday, October 15, 2012

In Which We Inventory Our Provisions For The Cruel Season Ahead

Life is getting tougher here at The Report.  Brian Williams, ever steadfast in his resolve to wear striped ties, purple ties, and resolutely boring or stultifyingly unsatisfactory ties, sometimes reaches far, far back into his Armoire des Cravates to resurrect neckwear that should have been left to moulder away in obscurity.  Tonight's cravat is a perfect example of all of those things:  it is the familiar wide striper of lurid orchid and ultramarine blue that has been admonished regularly here.  Tonight it even dares to demonstrate an off-kilter dimple.  We can only sharpen our corkscrew and fortify our supply of vermouth.

Thursday, October 11, 2012

Okay, So Now I Just Creeped Myself Out

Yawn.  It is a tie of rather wide red and blue stripes.  So pedestrian it was, that Mitch McConnell had one on almost exactly like it.  As a matter of fact, his entire ensemble matched Brian Williams', and when they were on a split-screen during the vice presidential debate analysis/recap, they looked kind of...icky, like Mitch was a sort of aging, creepy Bdub Fanboi.  Yuck.

Wednesday, October 10, 2012

Good Grief

Oh, hell. This is that tweedy, intarsia technicality tie that forces me to make a Judgement Call every time because I can't remember what I decided last time Brian Williams slung it on.  It's a claret purple, but that textured pattern underwoven (thanks, HD) tilts the balance a bit away from the dreaded SPT.  Or does it?  This is like arguing the merits of fancy desserts.  Is chocolate mousse really just chocolate pudding?  Is creme brulee just custard?  And is tarte tatin just half an apple pie? To quote an expert in such distress, "Aaugh."

Tuesday, October 9, 2012

Not Retro In A Good Way, Baby, No.

...And it's a return to the Mango Madness series of 2007 (6/14 and 6/18), with a brief revisit in November of 2008 (the 12th, to be exact).  Either BriWi is having a good cleanout of L'Armoire de Cravates, or he had a brief pang of Dangerous Fashion Angst, and he found this new offering of Cheez-Whiz orange sprinkled with little magenta mums.  It's a sort of Peter Max meets Laugh In meets Austin Powers meets the Niagara Falls Botanical Clock at Blake Edwards' The Party.  Way to sock it to us, Bri. Ouch.

Monday, October 8, 2012

Lullabye

It is the stripe of midnight and lavender this evening, the latter diagonals shot through with contrasting threads.  When he couldn't sleep, he often went into the orchid houses, armed with only a lantern lighting a small space at a time.  It was silent there, the heavy, damp quiet of a night in a Sao Paolo shantytown, late, when everyone was either passed out or just dirt-tired.  He breathed in the delicate perfume of the frail flowers, tenderly patched the sphagnum moss of their pots as if tucking them in their beds for the night, now and then cooing as he found a new bud or blossom.  Ceaselessly pushing a shock of white hair away from his eyes, he worked on for hours, tending to his charges and singing lullabies in Portuguese.

Monday, October 1, 2012

Not Good...Not Good At All

Oh, brother.  Tonight's tie is almost painful for those of us who watch The Nightly, whether we are tuning in for Bri's ties or the national news, or both.  The field colour is a vivid royal blue--almost forgiveable--but the stripes!  The stripes are narrow pairs of salmon, bordered on all sides by burgundy.  The result? Thanks to the odd mix of colours and perhaps the lighting, it was like a Punky Brewster and Rainbow Brite reunion had gotten out of hand and someone found a stripper pole.