I Feel As If We Were Headed Here All Along

SPT.  It just is.

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. 

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.

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.

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."

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.

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.

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.  

In Which We Get A Bit Snarky

SPT.  Add to that our regret that we cannot add this tie to the Axis Of Evil twice for its shininess.  Or its cheap fabric.  Or that odd Thing Which Dwells Beneath The Knot.


Oh, here:

                  
But any more would just be petulant.

Oh, Here's An Idea!

Oh, Mr. Brian Williams!  Just how many navy blue and yellowgold stripedy ties do you own? Answer:  ALL OF THEM.  ALL OF THEM IN THE WHOLE ENTIRE WORLD.  Brian Williams, I feel like you should just get in there, into your Armoire du Cravates, root around for awhile, and pull out each and every single one of them.  And then, in one glorious Fashion Rebellion, WEAR THEM ONE RIGHT AFTER ANOTHER UNTIL YOU HAVE EXHAUSTED THE SUPPLY. 

Then burn the whole lot.

And never, ever buy another one for the rest of your life.

The Recipe

Mr. Williams rebounds nicely by wearing the stripe of rich mahogany and strands of burnished gold.  She was a joy to watch in their tiny kitchen, and even lying ill with 'flu, he smiled as he saw her bustling about to prepare their dinner.  Her black hair had been pulled up in a loose bun, but her earrings danced as she moved about the stove and counter.  Now and then, the spice grinder whirred, and he breathed in the healing aromas of cinnamon, cardamom, cumin, and turmeric as she toasted them in the pan.  Her myriad bracelets jingled and rang, something suddenly sizzled, and she sang and laughed.

Sad, Sad Tie

Oh, this sad, sad tie!  Why does Brian Williams continue to provoke us here at The Report by wearing it?  The fabric quality appears cheap, and the colors--flat, wan, dime-store purple and white in a stripe (always a stripe!)--seem as if they belong in a tube of Dollar Store toothpaste instead of around the neck of The Most Trusted Voice In America's News. 

Bon Appetit!

Bri ties on a stripe of charred navy and pumpkin from the Standby Stable tonight.  He leans on this cravat like I lean on my jar of Nutella when I run out of desserts in the house.  Do I hate this tie? Only sometimes.  It's like peanut butter to me. I have to be desperate or in the mood for it or it has to really work well with the rest of the ingredients.  Tonight, this Peanut Butter/Nutella Tie made it on all three counts. 

Why Is This Permitted On National Television?

SPT. So awful in its godawful shiny godawfulness. And awfully shiny.  Did I mention that? Urk.

In Which I Waver, But I Am Overruled By Sam, Who Asserts His Professional Authority

SPT. I'll admit it:  I like this one the most.  It's textured almost to the point of having a pattern*, and the colour is a lovely plumwine.  So close.





*A quick consult with my son, the fine men's clothier and personal shopper, placed this cravat firmly into the SPT category. "Not enough to call it even a pin-dot," was his verdict.

This One Will Send New(er) Readers To The Sidebar

TWSNLBRAINDTM.  I know. I almost cannot believe it either.  And no, I haven't missed it.

Formal

Live from atop the noisy Democratic National Convention, Brian is wearing a cravat striped with solid smoky blue and pale gold, the latter an embossed rope pattern.  It is an instantly formal and aristocratic tie, one which evokes admirals with epaulets and drapes of bullion fringe, or French uniforms from 1757, or the plush interiors of royal palaces.

Magic

Looking dashing, Brian Williams wears a silk stripe of bootblack and porcelain white this evening.  When he finally found her, she was standing in a drift of books and papers, feeding documents into the scanner on the fourth floor of the university library.  Moving deftly and lightly, their white gloves gave her hands the appearance of doves flitting to and fro, as if she were a magician practicing her act.  He was afraid to startle her here in the reverent silence of the archives; his arrival was unexpected.  He felt for the box in his coat pocket and smiled.

ETA

For this evening's Florida broadcast, Brian knots up an old standby, the suitcoat navy cravat with slim stripes of blush pink.  His flight was delayed, then delayed again. No amount of frantic consultations of his watch could make time advance any faster.  By the time his plane touched down, he had imagined a hundred different transports as fail-safe strategies.  Grabbing his bag, he hailed the first cab in line and tersely gave the destination.  Once there, he flung the doors open, gracelessly gained information from staff, and finally found the room.  Too late.  She was already here.  A small rosy bundle was held out to him, and wordlessly, he took her in his arms. 

The Glint Of Gold

Reporting from Tampa and the site of the RNC, Brian Williams knots up a conservative striper of darkest navy and gleaming gold. There was nothing cheerful about her, this governess, the children decided.  Was her nightdress even corseted and dark?  Even in the heat of the summer, she wore close-fitting sleeves and terribly scratchy skirts and always, always the darkest of blues, violets, greys, and browns.  Only the occasional wink of her gold spectacles relieved the unrelenting severity of her mien.