Are my eyes really blue?

Congrats, I suppose. I’m not one to go in for conference solidarity, especially given the raw deal Vanderbilt tends to get from the SEC, but after winning seven titles in a row it’s hard not to acknowledge there’s something to this “S-E-C” nonsense, even in a down year like this one. I’ve said it before, but this league is where the Big XII was five years ago: couple or three national contenders (Bama, UGA, A&M), couple or three solid competitors (Florida, LSU, South Carolina, maybe Vanderbilt) and a bunch of skells (not to deny credit to Ole Miss for the 7-6 come-up). And yet, given the vagaries of the BCS system, the Tide has lucked into a rematch last year against a beatable foe and a title game this year against an undefeated team that, in retrospect, was materially inferior to at least one and maybe two other teams not in the title game.

If nothing else, Notre Dame’s categoric defenestration should be a cautionary tale to everyone asserting that an undefeated team deserves a crack at the title. It wasn’t halftime before the Twitterati were moaning that Alabama-Oregon was the rightful matchup and damning Stanford for both a lucky break against the Ducks and an unlucky one against the Irish. And while Notre Dame’s 12-0 run was nothing to sneeze at, the number of close games – triple overtime to beat Pitt? The same Pitt that Ole Miss handled easily? – should have been a red flag: if the defense can’t stop somebody, the Irish aren’t going to keep up in a points race. And then – down 28-0 at the half, the most points they’d given up in any game all season, and one of my BFFs (Notre Dame ’90) called it a night and went to bed.

Thing is, it’s hard to root for this Bama team. Yes, I get that the college football blogosphere has venom for ND because they haven’t won a title since 1988 and have yet to win a BCS bowl game, and because they have the NBC deal and they have the independents’ clause into the BCS mix and they still have millions of fans with no other tie to the school. But so what? The B1G (formerly the Big Ten) has its own cable channel, and a brand of pious fart-sniffing superiority ill-suited to their abysmal performance in meaningful games since 2002, and an undefeated should-have-been champ on mega-probation and unable to compete. The Pac-12 took the best-aligned conference in America and stuck on two crap football teams, then set up a title game that got filled with a .500 school the first time out – because their standard bearer for a decade was a USC team that cheated their way to prominence and got the Pac-1 treatment from a conference administration that couldn’t care less about anything but the Rose Bowl. Boise State took a single win in a BCS game, by ONE point in overtime, requiring three ridiculous trick plays to get there, and spun it into being the rightful uncrowned champions every year thereafter forever on a schedule of one BCS foe to start the year and a diet of Girl Scout troops and crippled-veterans homes thereafter. Hell, the Big East got a BCS bid every year and deserved it about as much as the CCS league in California. And lest we forget, the only way Oklahoma won a BCS game in six tries was to get matched up against one of those 8-4 Big East champions. Yet the venom all goes to ND. I don’t get it.

Because let’s face it, despite what Brent Musburger said between ogling college girls, Bama didn’t “win it on the field.” They won a game, on a field, but they got to that field because of a steady and reliable media drumbeat for half a decade that any SEC school automatically trumps a school with an identical record from a different conference. One-loss Alabama trumps one-loss Kansas State or Oregon or Ohio State. ESS EEE SEEEEE. And within the conference, they benefited from a schedule that kept them from facing the full run of Georgia AND Florida AND South Carolina every year (much like Vandy gets to duck Bama AND Texas A&M AND the Bayou Bengals) and from a league whose officiating is more or less openly skewed in favor of whoever has the higher AP ranking. If Notre Dame is a product of hype, Alabama is no less such a product – and yet, they make it stand up in the clutch.

Charmed life, really. Florida gets two titles because of the confluence of Tim Tebow and Urban Meyer. LSU is in the right place at the right time when a two-loss team gets a crack at the title. Auburn’s lightning-in-a-beer-bottle run through a substandard SEC gives them a crack at an Oregon team whose offense was completely stoppable with a month to prep (and don’t forget Auburn’s defense was nationally ranked WELL below the Cal team that provided the blueprint in 2010). And Bama gets a second crack at an LSU team with no discernible offense, followed by a shot at an undefeated-but-eminently-defeatable Notre Dame.

You’ll notice I haven’t said anything about the Texas matchup after the 2009 season. That was the one I sweated. I wasn’t much of an Alabama fan at that point, but too much was at stake. A game in the Rose Bowl (if not the bowl game itself), for a 14-0 season and national title, featuring Alabama’s first Heisman winner, against the one foe in all of major college football that Bama had never won against…well, it was biblical stuff, to the point I went to Bible study because I was too scared to watch live. Which they did, of course, and at that point I guess I was done. Two years later, I was kind of secretly pulling for LSU (possibly thanks to the New Orleans residential presence in the house) and this year I kind of wanted ND, simply because a bunch of Papists taking a title from Bama right before Obama was sworn in again might have killed Cousin Pa for good.* And yet the process continues and the machine grinds on.

Because that’s what it is: a machine. One commenter on Twitter compared it to the Red Army hockey teams of the 1970s: joyless, merciless, indefatigable, inexorable, an unsmiling juggernaut that ground everything in its path to rubble. No venom, no emotion, no malice – a steamroller has no malice toward asphalt. Bama QB AJ McCarron has as many national championships as he has losses as a starter these last two years. Five players off last year’s Crimson Tide were taken in the first thirty-five picks of the NFL draft, and it didn’t even make a blip.

At this point, it’s the late-90s Yankees. It’s the Shaq-Kobe Lakers. It’s the new-look Miami Heat. It’s Manchester United. Everything leading up to the title is a foregone conclusion and the championship game is a formality. It’s equal parts triumphant victory and a sigh of relief that they weren’t the ones who broke the streak. And not to put too fine a point on it – it’s bred a strain of Alabama fans that are more annoying, more embarrassing, more entitled and arrogant and oblivious than anything Notre Dame cranked out at the height of the mid-20th century.

I think I knew that at some level. Cal was the halfway house that pried my affections open and made it feasible for me to go in on Vanderbilt, and James Franklin took care of the rest. I’ve got my team now. I could claim Alabama on the basis of a quarter-century of fandom and upbringing, and Vanderbilt might be tenuous because of my brief three-year sojourn and how it ended, but I’ve made my choice. And the joy in beating Tennessee and plating the most wins since the First World War is all the greater because we don’t have a rack of five-star prospects reloading every year. You can’t buy the merchandise in every sporting goods store in the country. Nobody’s thinking about us when the mindless crowds chant and tweet and scream “S-E-C” over and over. And we don’t have to win the BCS title game to give meaning to a successful season. We know who we are, and what we are, and we hold our heads higher for it, and somehow, that’s enough.

So go ahead, Tide. Congratulations. It’s yours. But it’s not mine, not any more, and that’s just fine with me.

* As it is, I can only point out that Bama has won three titles in four years since Obama was elected. Hopefully one can die of cognitive dissonance.

The Overcup Oak was the pub at the top of the student center at Vanderbilt.  It served beer (though not on the card, unfortunately, at least back then) and assorted simple foodstuffs, it had a fireplace inside and a balcony outside, and it was dark and cozy with a back row of booths down its own hall.  It was usually plenty full of an afternoon, but at 10 PM, it was rarely more than half-full.  Ideal for nursing a chocolate espresso milkshake (with three shots’ worth of grounds dumped in) while plowing through 250 pages of reading for tomorrow’s seminar.

That was something we didn’t have in undergrad – an on-campus third space, open late with space to sit and read and offering food and drink.  There was the Campus Store on the dorm quad (later a Pizza Hut) but it didn’t really lend itself to hanging out.  Ironically, right downstairs was a “lounge” with a pool table, a big TV and some easy chairs…which sat locked unless reserved for an event.  And of course, you had to be a “student organization” to schedule it…but I digress.

By 1998, things had changed – I lived in the greater DC area and “the pub” wasn’t a particular place.  Instead it was mental shorthand for any number of spots we might go – the Meeting Place, the Fourth Estate, Recessions, a handful of establishments frequented in the name of trying to woo Channels girls – but the big difference was that the pub had changed from ‘place to hang out and get some work done’ to ‘place to hang out with friends and socialize.’

Then, of course, there came the 4Ps, and for four and a half years, that was The Pub.  That was where everything happened – birthdays were celebrated, new girlfriends were vetted, the departing were sent off in glory and the returning were welcomed back.  It was a place with its own routines and rituals, a collective home above and beyond just a role as “third space” – it’s where we were us.

It took a couple years out here before I started to realize I was missing the pub.  I scoured everything from the Sunset to San Jose in search of another Irish pub that featured live Irish music and was public-transit accessible…and it didn’t really work.  The mistake, of course, was trying to recreate exactly what I had before.  I know that now, obviously, but the inability to house nine pints and bellow out a teary chorus of “Fields of Athenry” was highly discouraging in 2007.  I forgot my own advise: stop trying to be the person you were and become the person you are.

So for about five years I always tried to start making a habit of Sunday night at the pub, first of the month.  And there were a couple of good spots in San Jose – one Irish place with live music (though it tended more toward instrumental pickup sessions) and one ancient old building with a couple of big leather chairs, cask-conditioned ale, no televisions, tons of soccer and 2-Tone memorabilia on the walls, and a pub quiz that I romped for the better part of a month in 2009.  It was perfect for just hanging around, killing time, getting my head together for the coming week.  And invariably, by March, it had gone by the boards every year.  Maybe it’s down to the coming of sunlight past 6 PM, maybe it’s part and parcel of March Madness taking over all my weekends, but for whatever reason, I got out of the habit every time.

And then, last month, I discovered my new pub. Close enough to make transit not-awful and a cab theoretically plausible.  Some simple food options, including the apple pie (why do all Irish pubs have apple pie?) – and most importantly, live music on Sunday evenings.  Everything I’d had previous Januarys, but without the hour on the light rail at the end of the night.  A pint an hour, music in the background, not too light, suitable for…what exactly?

Because being down the pub isn’t a social thing anymore – quite the opposite.  It’s 5-time and 5-space, an opportunity to hide in plain sight somewhere that’s on the darker side and has Guinness.  And with the cunning use of the Kindle, it’s a mental vacation from the laptop and the television and the threat of work on Monday morning.

Now, the trick is going to be doing the same thing Tuesday nights at home, albeit in slightly different form: the cellphone stashed away upstairs and only the Kindle and TV at home.  Chance to catch up on magazines, on Downton Abbey (oh yes), to maybe actually go out and socialize or have people over (we’re way behind on cocktail hour).  Two kinds of getting separation from the constant stream of updates, the eternally recurring refresh, the hole I dug for myself when I took on the modern geek lifestyle.

Step one toward a healthier 2013.  Steps two and three–but you’ll have to wait to hear about those…

* As of today, the only SEC team to win its bowl game while allowing fewer than 28 points…is Vanderbilt. If there were any question that this is a down year for the SEC, it is unavoidable. Look at Florida – overranked and overrated all year, woefully unprepared, and beaten down by an unbanked Louisville with their old defensive coordinator at the helm in the biggest Vegas upset in BCS history.

* Vanderbilt could have had Charlie Strong in 2002…but they took Bobby Johnson instead. It’s not inconceivable that we could have started our renaissance a decade earlier than we did. I certainly hope the fact that Strong is a black head coach wasn’t a factor then, nor the fact of his having a white wife – but I guarantee you it cost jobs elsewhere.

* The holidays have been about British accents. I am completely caught up on The Hour and on Downton Abbey, just in time for series 3 of the latter. Gripping, addictive stuff. And having seen The Hobbit last year (ha!) I have bought and embarked on The Lord of the Rings trilogy again, which will no doubt bore the rest of the house to tears.

* It’s been a full couple of weeks, if lazy down the stretch. I’ve been to two Warriors games (Golden State and Santa Cruz alike), watched Vanderbilt’s bowl win and heard the Skins beat Dallas to make the playoffs, read and relaxed at Riptide like I’ve wanted and needed to for ages, finally got caught up on my back issues of the Economist, and I still have a football ridearound and relaxing evening down the pub yet to come. Two full weeks off – I haven’t gotten this kind of protracted vacation since I changed jobs, nor needed it so much.

* I’m sure regular readers (if any) will be shocked, SHOCKED that I wound up getting the Levi’s-Filson collaboration for Christmas – the classic trucker jacket in black “tin cloth”, a nice heavy waxed cotton. It was bought for me in XXL, rather than the XL I had originally thought appropriate (or the L which I tried on and found a bit snug). And honestly, it’s dead solid perfect. Not as heavy as the peacoat, goes over a light sweatshirt, easy to take the backpack on and off when work returns, and ticks all kinds of fashion boxes: made in America, classic workwear, can go from rockabilly to cyberpunk with only a change of shades, classy yet casual, modern and timeless, and will also probably last the rest of my life. Don’t know if it will become the same signature piece as previous jackets, but it’s two others set aside and free space in the closet for the trouble.

* Three in the afternoon is like 9 at night: not late enough to call it, but too late to really start anything new. I guess I should work on laundry or something.

Within 24 hours, the Washington Redskins beat Dallas in primetime to reach 10 wins and the first division crown since 1999, and Vanderbilt defenestrated North Carolina State to win the Music City Bowl and reach 9 wins for the first time since Nicholas II was Czar of All The Russias.  Put it this way: last time the Dores hit 9, women couldn’t vote, Prohibition hadn’t happened, and radio wasn’t a thing.  Oh, and we were 18 years away from the forming of the SEC.

In a year that was trying and stressful on the fronts of job, health, family and politics, the games gave hope and something to root for and community. All of San Francisco pulling for the Giants in another World Series.  The Vanderbilt twittoblogosphere online and the chance to see baseball and football in person in the same year for the first time since 1996.  The sudden rise of Golden State and the rediscovery of pro basketball in Oakland and Santa Cruz alike. And the fact that on October 20, Vandy raised the victory flag over Dudley Field after beating Auburn…and it hasn’t come down since.

Things can start rough.  Things may not go well.  Endure, persevere, don’t give up, and keep building, and believe that things can get better – that you can make them get better.  That’s the lesson from being a Commodore in 2012.

So on to 2013.  More shutdown time.  Less reckless spending.  Not so much on the sweetened drinks and gallons of coffee. Back to the weights. Do the things it will take to make life better, and enjoy them.  Put down the phone, close the laptop, read the magazines and books, serve the drinks at home, see friends.  Enjoy wearing the work chukkas and the black trucker jacket on those cool evening walks up Murphy Street of a Sunday.

Breathe in, be still, and absorb the moment.  Still a good idea.  Here’s to a lucky 2013.

When’s the last time I was glad I was a Redskins fan? 2007? No – sneaking into the playoffs propelled by the ghost of Sean Taylor was emotional and cathartic, but ruined immediately by the Gibbs resignation. 2004, when Gibbs actually came back? That and the Dallas win that year on Monday night when I called my boy and woke his wife up at midnight because we scored two TDs in the last 2 minutes to win 14-13? That might be it. Before that…when? 1999 when Norv blundered into an NFC East title only to be confounded by the Turk brothers against Tampa Bay? The hot start in 1997 when I was first in DC? Draft day when they took Shuler and we were happy about it? 1991?

The Washington Redskins have won 7 in a row, from a dismal 3-6 start that had the coach talking about evaluating for next year and fans flipping out calling for his head. And now they haven’t lost in two months, they host a wild-card game next week (no traveling to a Seattle team with a worse record for us!), and a sixth-round draft pick rookie has just set the Redskins single-season rushing record, ahead of Portis, ahead of Riggo, ahead of Byner, ahead of everybody. A franchise QB and a franchise RB, neither of which we have had for ages, and in a league that’s gone all pass all the time, the Skins remind the world that you can still run the damn ball to double-digit wins.

The Junks have been all fired up on this streak, and Bickel in particular has insisted on repeated playings of the fight song, and “Celebration,” and “Party Rock Anthem,” and one specific Miley Cyrus song. And before the game I swore in public (well, on Twitter) that I would download it if they won. I was supposed to be riding around all day listening to this game, until NBC flexed it. Instead, I heard the whole thing in the passenger seat, parked in front of the house the entire second half, doing endless shtick on Twitter with my old DC pals and sparring with the rest of the Twittersphere as Sonny and Sam called the game, like the old days.

And they made it happen, with amazing power running and three picks on defense, and before I was back in the house I’d tweeted a screenshot of the download. And I’d never really heard the song, about somebody far away from her friends and last and homesick until her song hits “and I know I’m gonna be OK.” I may not be there, but we’re still all celebrating together, because at long last – finally – this fandom’s paying out.

Got my hands up, they’re playing my song, I know it’s gonna be OK
Yayyyyyyayyyyyayyyyyyyy, it’s a party in the USA…

NB: I found this in drafts on the iPad. After watching the BBC opening ceremonies coverage, thanks to the cunning use of somebody else’s BitTorrent, I am more reminded than ever of how well it was all carried off. And if there’s one message to take away, it’s still this: fuck NBC with a rusty rake.

I’m sad to see it end. More than I expected. I never see as much as I want to, although this year it should have been easier. If NBC were more competent about their iPad app, maybe I would have. Hopefully the streams stay up for a bit.

Every four years, like bloody Brigadoon, this little magic village appears. And we see some of the people we saw there four years ago, and meet some new ones, and remember some we don’t see anymore. And normal service is suspended and we watch something special, and hell, some of our basketball players even colonize it briefly. And then Monday arrives and it’s gone as if it were never there.

It’s like Disneyland. We can’t stay. We wish we could.

The weather cooperated. So did the traffic. It couldn’t possibly have gone better. London stakes its claim as the capital of the world in the 21st century, and rightfully earned. Great Britain can be proud – they gave us their best for 16 days and it was awesome.

Also, FUCKING HOLOGRAM FREDDIE MERCURY. Magic.

…to the multiplex in Cupertino at 9 AM (!) for the traditional solo holiday trip to the movies, in this case the first installment of The Hobbit. And make no mistake, they are doing exactly what they said they would: expand to two movies so they didn’t have to cut the way they did on the Lord of the Rings trilogy, then expand again to try to somehow cram in all the bits they left out (which, given that the story takes place sixty years earlier, is asking a lot – most of those bits come out of contemporaneous events in the supporting materials in Return of the King).

Sadly, it kind of shows.  The first installment is nearly three hours long, and a lot of it feels forced and stretched, especially at the beginning.  I know that the first ten minutes of The Fellowship of the Ring had to establish why the ring was a big deal, but the prolonged intro to why the dwarves’ kingdom under the mountain was important…well, I understand why they did it, and I’m sure it needs to be in there, but it makes for a confusing intro, as does having Old Bilbo and Frodo appear contemporaneously with the same part in that first movie.

“In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.”  Bang, right out the gate, if it was good enough for J. R. R. Tolkein it should be good enough for his cinematic heirs.  They made a virtue of necessity with the cutting of the first trilogy, and crafted tighter, more gripping films for it.  If I’m making a mental note “this is the place to run take a leak” while the movie is going on, that’s not a good sign.

Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed it.  I knew I would.  But I’m a fan, I know this story, all this is doing is putting it up on a big screen with stunning visuals.  To me, they’re at serious risk of pulling a Watchmen: you can’t compose a film entirely of fan-service and expect mainstream audiences to be on board.  It’s taking a pounding on Rotten Tomatoes right now, and to be honest, it may have earned it.  It’s an excellent retelling, but maybe not a great movie.

Have yourself a merry little Christmas
It may be your last
Next year we may all be living in the past
Have yourself a merry little Christmas
Pop that champagne cork
Next year we may all be living in New York
No good times like the olden days
Happy golden days of yore
Faithful friends who were dear to us
Will be near to us no more
But at least we all will be together
If the Lord allows
From now on, we’ll have to muddle through somehow
So have yourself a merry little Christmas now

I don’t know whether his experience at my undergrad alma mater informed Hugh Martin’s writing on Meet Me In St Louis, but the famously bleak original lyrics do reflect a lot of what I felt those four years at Christmas – even at home with the immediate family, I missed my friends and missed being younger. At some point in your life, everyone has to accept that Christmas will always be at least a little melancholy and you’ll always miss the bits you can’t go back for.

But you have to make your own way going forward. For some folks that means kids of their own, for some it means a good roaring drunk with your friends on Festivus night before facing the guns, for some it leads to crowded airports and crowded freeways. And thanks to an accident of history and calendars, it meant we were working right up to the Friday before Christmas Eve, and in my case, a two-week vacation that starts on the 24th. Twelve Days of Christmas indeed.

But it also means Christmas Tree Lane, and cable cars in the city, and live music at Symphony Hall, and lots of white peppermint mocha wherever I can get it, and a roaring holiday party with people flying in to attend and folks spilling out the doors, and presents under the tree waiting for the morning and the nephews and nieces. And that great gift of two weeks to just relax and get my head right, with friends and the family I chose myself.

Hang a shining star upon the highest bough, let the past take care of itself, forget about worrying about the future, and for once, have yourself a merry little Christmas now.

Well, I suppose I should get this in quick, just in case.  Better than waiting for the 31st I guess.

If you look at my resolutions for 2012, I failed just about across the board. The soda intake was mildly curtailed, but coffee took its place at work. Exercise was not appreciably stepped up for reasons that will be explained momentarily. Blogging didn’t get much beyond the usual nonsense, the elections damn near killed me the last couple of months, and while I kept the toxicity of the ancestral lands at arm’s length, it still got to me.  I also failed to get up to the city as much as I wanted, or out to the pub as much as I needed.  And I definitely didn’t give it a rest on jackets, or footwear, or Nerf guns, or watches.

A big part of all this was my back.  That pain at the base of my left shoulder blade, which had been an occasional nuisance going clear back to late 2009, suddenly and loudly reasserted itself this spring.  It meant an MRI, it meant four or five different physicians, it meant two cortisone shots into my spine and three different prescription drugs which each failed to do anything but induce constipation and inhibit drinking. And there were words like “arthritis” and “degenerative” and I was left wondering for a little while whether I didn’t have exactly what my father had…and whether I was about to find out what would eventually kill me.

From a purely distraction standpoint, things should have gone great.  Vandy basketball beat Kentucky and won an SEC tournament and sent three guys to the NBA. Vandy baseball came out here for three games and a tailgate (sadly all losses, except for the tailgate).  Vandy football turned in its best recruiting class ever and followed up with its best season in thirty years and a decisive beatdown on Tennessee.  The Warriors drafted a Vandy guy and became the hottest team in the NBA, the Giants won another World Series and the Redskins traded up to draft the most electrifying player in the NFL…and assured themselves of at least a .500 season for the first time in recent memory. The Avengers turned out to be the best fun of the summer, some great books passed through the Kindle, I got to see Vanderbilt for the first time in six years and a Vandy football game for the first time in a decade more, the wife and I became symphony-goers.

But the back pain took me out of the gym and away from running, and the pain and the constant struggle with the insurance company left a sort of black cloud over everything. And turning 40 didn’t do me any favors either. And the IRS reared up again.  And I felt compelled by June 28 to do a post on rebooting the year, and did I do any of that?  Not really.  I did cut out some of the junk food, and Hostess did me a solid by going out of business and taking those little white powdered donuts with them, but I didn’t even get back on Tuesday night shutdowns – and the fact that I was thinking of bringing that back for 2013 just drives home how distracted and unsuccessful I was.  And I didn’t even have the worst health issues in the house.

Still, we had a good time on our New York vacation, and a good time on part 1 of our San Francisco holiday mini break, and we survived our holiday visitor, and we’ve continued to have good housemates occupying our spare room.  And I got an iPad for my birthday from the lovely wife, which has almost completely fulfilled my portable computing needs. And tonight we were able to walk up and down Christmas Tree Lane, peppermint hot chocolate in hand, and come home to open cards and surprise packages and sit under the lights of our own tree and put the Yule Log up on the TV.  And the kinesio-tape did wonders for my back, and I’m about to have two weeks off.

I said before of politics that you grind it out at the coal-face day after day.  Turns out life is pretty much the same thing.  Every morning that your eyes open, you’re ahead of the game already…best to just gut it out and keep going.

2013. Onward.  Unless the world ends in the next twenty-six hours.

On the way to the Holiday Bowl in 2004, we stopped by an Eddie Bauer outlet in Gilroy and damn near cleaned it out. After that, I literally went four years without buying myself any new outerwear. Then it started again, and went more or less like this:

VANDY 3, January 2009: a black Columbia Sportswear softshell with the obvious sporty markings. Good down to about 55 degrees. Sheds light rain. No hood. Can hold an iPad (awkwardly) in the inside left “pocket”. Stuffs adequately into a large bag.

CERT COAT, summer 2009. Canary yellow ski-type jacket with zip-in fleece, suitable for emergency wear at work. Didn’t pay for it, thank goodness.

ENGINEERS JACKET. November 2009. Green oilcloth Lands End coat with plaid flannel lining. Four patch pockets with snaps. No handwarmer or internal pockets. Good down to about 50 degrees. Stands up to moderate rain. No hood. As faux-Barbour outerwear goes, could do worse. First new jacket in 5 years in a color other than black.

GAP PEACOAT. December 2009. Looked all right, broadly speaking. Buttons not securely attached. Slightly awkward arm fit. Wound up donating to charity a year later.

SABOTEUR INVINCIBLE. Early autumn 2010. Gray blazer, double vents, red silk lining, “waterproof”. Not very good in serious rain. Little on the snug side. Probably wouldn’t do it again.

PEACOAT. Christmas 2010. Actual USA-made navy surplus in 46L. Fits perfectly. Suitable for any level of cold in California. Too heavy to wear at higher than 60 degrees. Looks awesome.

EDDIE BAUER CANVAS JACKET. June 2011. Just the wrong shade of off-white; gives impression of old-man poplin windbreaker. Good fit. Works well for mornings running the smoker. No water resistance, but good for temps down to 60 or so.

SEERSUCKER BLAZER. February 2012. On sale at Nordstrom, double-vent, great fit. Vandy lifestyle at its finest. Not really a regular-wear piece of work.

UNIQLO BLAZERS. April 2012. $30 apiece in NYC. Both look great and fit comfortably. One blue, one off-white.

UNIQLO BLOUSON. April 2012. Exactly like engineers except plain black cotton. Not at all water resistant. But was also $30!

So there’s been a lot of swings and misses in the last four years. Right now, as winter sets in, the move is either peacoat or engineers most days. But there hasn’t been a serious hard-raining day yet. My bases are pretty much covered, I suppose, but it would be nice to have an option for warmer than 50 degrees that let me stick my hands in my pockets and didn’t scream “I WILL NEVER TAKE THIS EXERCISING OR HIKING.” That’s sort of what I had in mind for the canvas until the color proved exactly wrong, and it’s not good against a chance of rain.

In case there was any doubt, this is all basically a Keltner list to suss out my thinking on outerwear at the moment…