Il Est...

sans cravate ce soir.  Opting for the outdoorsy and rugged look, Brian instead wears the layered look, somewhat sacrificing fashion with an olive drab, shapeless flak jackety sort of thing as he reports live from New Jersey.  We are grateful, however, that it was not a cliché North Face or peacoat.

Monday Machine

BriWi's tie this evening is the sedate and snappy suitcoat navy and milk white stripe.  Monday mornings were the worst, he thought, as he stuffed brown bags and lunchboxes into backpacks.  Re-entry Day.  The day when The Machine revved back into life.  It always felt like they had fifty kids instead of just four.  He stood at the counter and slopped half-and-half into his coffee while he stood guard over breakfast, constantly checking his wristwatch.  His wife flitted like a bird from child to child, squirting syrup, doling napkins, pouring juice.  They both had a train to catch; they both had meetings; they both were "suits."  They both had wanted a career and a family, and now they both wondered why.

But First, A Word From Our Sponsors

"Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to Tonight in Stripes.  We're pleased to have you join us.  This evening, Phil is taking you on safari to meet up with the rare and wonderful Bengal tigers at Big Cat Rescue in Tampa, Florida.  We'll be going on the road with Pilar, literally, as we join up with a highway crew whose job it is to paint those white and yellow lines on our streets and thoroughfares.  And, finally, we'll be sitting down with the one man who has probably done more for the stripe than anyone in the news business, NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams.  His striped ties, like the silk cabernet franc with white piping pinstripes that he wore tonight, have become legend in the fashion world.  Won't you stay tuned?  We'll be right back after these few messages."

So Over Them

Stripes, stripes, stripes.  Let's call tonight's tie what it is and be done with it.  Lilac and deep, dark blue.  No waxing poetic about mystics and moonlight on wisteria.  No comparisons to funeral bouquets and veiled widows.  This endless string of stripes has me stupefied and stubborn.

Does Flava Flav Have This Tie?

STP.  Neck Bling.

The Last Vacation

We are back from our vacance just in time to see tonight's broadcast, for which Brian Williams has decided to wear a pleasantly breezy cravat of lapis and cloud white.  It is nautical and almost summery, as if we are standing at the rail and waving goodbye in the sunshine as the waves churn beneath us.  We feel the warmth of the rays on our shoulders, and the cool sea air as it lifts not only our hair, but our spirits.  The only tension we feel is that small thrill of expectation, of adventure as we sail off on a trip to a place we've never been before, or perhaps one we love returning to year after year.  It's one last wave from the dock from our friends seeing us off, and then we leave our real lives behind.

See Brian.

A man went into a store.  "I need a tie," he said.  "The ties are over there," said a clerk.  The man went where the clerk said.  He looked at the ties.  He got a blue one.  He went to the cashier and paid for it.  He wore the blue tie on TV.  The end.

There's No Place For It

Oh, bother.  I really do dislike this tie.  The fabric looks cheap; the field color is blue-violet, but not a nice blue-violet, more like the kind which was once blue or once violet, but now has faded into taking on the cast of the other due to age, exposure to sun, or just poor fabric quality (see beginning of sentence).  The stripes are very narrow and a garishly vivid (or vividly garish) fuchsia or electric raspberry.  They simply look odd next to such a somber color, like Prince Philip with a mohawk or Henry Kissinger wearing a tutu.  Not nice and just wrong altogether.

Spin

Brian Williams knots up a striper of ebony and lilac for this evening's newscast.  "Where is she?" her husband hissed, jaw clenched, as they introduced him.  He left the wings and walked out onstage, waving and smiling in the spotlight.  During his speech, she got on her cellphone again, trying to reach their daughter.  "Mailbox full," the recording told her unhelpfully.  Moments later, there she was, but...what on earth had she done?  "Like it?" her daughter said, running her hands through her short, choppy hair.  "I know it's a little...edgy.  But I was ready for something different.  So I told her, yeah, go ahead and go for it.  That's when she dyed it black and added the purple streak.  Awesome, right?"  As the candidate turned to welcome his family to the stage, they held hands and stepped out.

Tieku 2

Midnight and white stripes:
Cool, classy, yet so played out.
Remember...Pink Tie?

Make It Stop

SPT.  This tie looks like it belongs in Vegas. On Beyoncé. Or something. Yikes.

Have Mercy

SPT.  Purlap tie getting a helluva workout.

The Art

Tonight, Brian falls back on a favourite cravat, a smoky denim blue with muted charcoal polka dots.  Each time she came by his easel, he felt a ridiculous thrill.  I'm old enough to be her father, he admonished himself.  Maybe her grandfather.  But she was lovely, even in her old blue smock and with smudges of charcoal on her fingers and, disarmingly, the bridge of her nose.  Her curls were in constant motion as she illustrated a technique on his practice pad; her wrists looked delicate and fine.  And she was cheery and upbeat.  He liked that.  She smiled at everyone and all the time.  No fool like an old fool, he reminded himself, but he was just taking an art class for his therapy.

Brian Is Always Thinking Of Us

Ho hum, Brian Williams.  Perhaps you decided to wear such a soporific cravat this evening to be a Calming Influence during these Turbulent Times. A navy blue tie with slim white stripes is not exciting.  It is not shocking.  It is not even the least bit inspiring.  It is...oh, don't make me say it.  Ah, but I must--"boring."  Were it up to me, I would vote against a Continuing Resolution extending the life of this tie.  I would have to propose legislation to defund this tie and so many others.  But I would never hold The Nightly hostage in order to do so. 

Someone Needs To Give The Tie Storage Facility A Good Going-Over

SPT.  That purply burlap thing again. Urk.

Command Performance

Brian Williams knots up another striped tie, this one a smooth silk of bootblack and white.  It was dreadful, having to attend these Command Performances simply because his wife was a Somebody.  Not one of his friends owned a tux.  Just him.  This cocktail party was going to be hell, and he knew it the minute the butler opened the door.  The whole house was a sea of white.  White floors, white drapes, white furniture.  They even had a white dog, a yappy little thing with a rhinestone collar.  Wait--check that.  These people had a lot of money.  A lot.  Fido's collar was probably diamonds.

Alas, This Tie Is Still With Us

Dogpatch Designer Challenge Tie. (Added immediately upon first viewing on 16 January 2012.)

Pretty And Sweet

Brian Williams employs The Save on Friday by knotting up a tie of soft, muted orange dotted with charcoal medallions, each centred with ivory.  She was fascinated by the market, the stands busy with customers burdened by shopping bags full of artisan loaves, fresh produce, knobby packages of cheeses and meats, and here and there, a huge can of olive oil.  Stopping by one fruit stand, she was hailed by its proprietor.  "Pretty lady!  Pretty lady!  You try this.  Sweet. Sweet."  Amazed, she watched as his long knife expertly carved a cantaloupe, then handed her a chunk aloft on its tip.  She smiled and carefully took it.  The melon juice trickled down her chin.  It was sweet.

Telling It Straight

It's getting so that I actually fear this tie, this cranberry thing with turquoise medallions that interlock in some Byzantine fashion rendering it a decent facsimile for a strange sort of plastique stained-glass window thingy that your Aunt Sylvia might buy you for Christmas from a dollar store "just so you have something to open."  I don't know why I have such a viscerally negative reaction to this particular cravat.  Brian has had it at least since I began doing The Report back in 2007, and I have never felt good about it.  That's the way it goes sometimes; I can't apologize for it, so I won't.

Quelle Horreure!

SPT.  Goodness, but this was a Disaster.  Teensy tight knot, scary burlap-looking material, ugh.  Even if this actually was not Solid Purple, it read that way on camera, and it was dreadful all round.  Something like this, you simply cannot unsee.  It was almost...Chuck Todd-worthy.  Horrors.