Roadside Stop

Tonight, Brian finds his way back to the distressed blue silk tie with charcoal polka dots.  Her GPS cord, frayed and spiky with bare wires, had finally given up.  Even though she'd never read a map in her life, she rummaged through the glove compartment of her car, praying one would magically just...be there, like there always was in her dad's Fords.  Resigned, she stopped at the next gas station, which out here, looked like a cabin or a very small hunting lodge.  Inside, the men were covered in denim and grease.  Most of them had a cigarette hanging from one corner of their mouth, and all of them looked at her interestedly.

Winter

It has been a while since we've seen this particular cravat of charcoal grey with barely discernible ash-coloured medallions, a classic foulard pattern.  Sometime in the depth of night, she awoke, freezing and aware of a dull pain in her back and legs.  Her mind felt furred and disconnected, like she was floating up from a drug-induced sleep.  A long glow of white light appeared suddenly, and she instinctively raised her hand to shield her eyes.  A massive bolt of pain rocketed up her spine; she gasped, and slipped away again, but not before she saw the frost.  It was frost, in beautiful patterns blooming against the dark window half-buried in the snow.

Frivolous Is Not In His Lexicon

For his offering this evening, Brian ties on a cravat of deep navy with widely spaced stripes of true red snugged by white on either side.  It would have been cliché to have worn this Patriotic Tie yesterday, on Election Day.  As is his habit, Brian Williams wears it the day after instead, so as not to be cutesy or flip.  The News is a Serious Business, and as the Trusted Voice Of Our Nation's Ever-Changing Scene, he cannot afford to be viewed as either.

Private Symphony

Brian Williams chooses the violet textured silk cravat sprinkled with small white dots.  She wakened every morning at exactly eight even though there really was no reason to.  No alarm urged her out of bed; no employment awaited her.  She didn't even have a dog or cat awaiting a rush of kibble into its dish.  But she liked to be part of a routine, a cog in a bustling movement of Life.  She pulled on her robe and slid her feet into slippers.  In the bathroom, once she accomplished her own few necessaries, she filled a small watering can.  She walked back out into her room and greeted her charges, a lush row of African violets, velvety and beautiful.  "Good Morning, lovelies," she crooned to each purple and white-throated bloom.  After a careful watering, she gently daubed away any beads of water from every solitary leaf on which they stood.  She pressed a button on the CD player, and out flowed Rachmaninoff, softly, as she conducted, perfectly.

Vive Le Difference

Tonight's tie is so similar to last night's that, if you only took a cursory glance at your television, you would be aghast, thinking Brian Williams had worn it two nights in a row.  This one, however, is suitcoat navy with light blue stripes.  Completely different!  It's like rotini instead of fusilli; Hagen Dasz instead of Ben & Jerry's; lilac instead of lavender.  Totally, entirely, thoroughly, and altogether different.  Like night and day.

Can I Order Off The Menu?

Straight from The Ward Cleaver Collection: Formal Wear, Brian knots up the suitcoat navy tie with creamy white stripes.  It's a perfectly fine, serviceable tie, absolutely appropriate in virtually every tie-wearing situation.  There is nothing wrong with it.  No one at the wedding will lean over to her seatmate in the pew and whisper, eyebrows raised, anything about it in mock outrage.  Great-Aunt Selma won't close her eyes and shake her head, frowning slightly, as she sits shiva next to it.  Even Tim Gunn wouldn't object to it with a grey shawl collar half-zip, dark wash jeans, and navy or charcoal pinstriped shirt for a casual look.  But I'd like to see something else, please.

As Serious As A Fake Heart Attack

Yippee!  No stripes today!  Instead, BriWi has chosen to preview Halloween by donning his Circus Fun Tie, the tomato red one with white polka dots the size of a pencil eraser tip.  After The Nightly, he'll swing around on his swivel chair, revealing his enormous yellow shoes and go clomping off set to finish getting ready for the photo shoot.  Once he pulls on a curly orange wig, bright lime-green jacket (two sizes too short), and purple balloon-style pants, the only thing left is the requisite round, red nose.  Oh, that Brian!  And here we thought The News was nothing to joke about!

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.