(no subject)

[kingtycoon]

This silly hat. I think about a time which doesn't seem that long ago but is. I was out Lakewood way - at a place, I think it was the Hi-Fi by then, I think it's been a few things since then? I don't know- this seems like last year, but it was long ago. They were having Pabst on draft, some kind of Pabst event and it was 50 cents a cup and they were handing out the Pabst trucker hat. I got pretty puzzled, as I prefer to do - I remember friends being out and then I was given this Pabst cap and at some point I stood on the bar and shouted about how having that hat would make me insufferable. The guy who owned that bar loved me, the dude from Warrant, I remember that well enough - he always requested Fuckbeast songs when they did their karaoke - not that I ever sang a song in Fuckbeast, I just chanted along poorly, but I liked that that dude had an understanding of me that I was like a bizarre novelty and that I'd be preposterous if only given the slightest provocation. See, cause I don't necessarily like it when people *know* about me, but I like that people are satisfied with caricatures. Usually people seem to anticipate a certain affect or behavior, and when you can demonstrate it to them, they are satisfied, and when you don't - they are confused - so I enjoy having my uninhibited madman public face because it's easy to conjure & fun to portray. But that hat.

So my current hat was given me by a truckdriver- it's about a quarry. One of the big ones that's ostensibly in Michigan, but it's not, not really. It's an island in the Lakes, some patch of land that no-one would visit for any reason, except that there's exposed rock and rock is really important to all kinds of construction - so the island, a patch of stone in the inland sea ends up hosting a lot of huge machinery & dynamite & there the island is shaved down to the nub for rock. Then they ship the rock by freighter to a stone-dock. There are a lot of these & they're pretty weird, as places go. The one I visited was in Ashtabula (Bulah, to the one & only person I know from there). The stone dock has many, many huge piles of stone in various grades, piles of dirt, salt and when I was visiting - coal. In fact there was a mountain of coal - about a quarter mile long and I'd guess 50 feet high. It had its own elaborate sprinkler system and was constantly being wetted down - the pressure, you understand, of such a weight of so much coal, that could ignite it. I was told frighting stories of a Fire-In-The-Pile & of dust explosions. So a trucker will go to a location like this, and they'll haul out a truckload of rock. You'll pay less than $100 for a ton of rock/stone (there's no geologists among these people, they all call it stone, which no geologist would countenance). For a few thousand dollars you can have a mountain of stone, for a few hundred dollars more, you can have a trucker deliver it to you. There are so many types of stone.

People don't know about stone docks or quarries - so thy spend a lot on these silly premiums, because Truckers love getting hats, there's a whole trade in hats in the road-construction industry, hats have a calculated value, there's an expected ROI on these hats. This one, for this particular quarry is pretty deluxe. It's pre-distressed & has three colors of stitching. It's a sought after item, is what I mean. I think about how I was given it and about how this night at a bar, the last time I received a crackerjack prize hat - and how that was probably a decade ago now.

I mean - the plaid shirt & beard & trucker hat they were de rigueur then no? It seems that things don't change in a speedy fashion for the gentleman of smallish means at this moment in American culture. I'm no doubt missing things. I used to care, rather a lot about what to wear, but that was before I was anyone's father - being someone's father is 100% what knocked me out of concern for that type of thing. Who knows how you're supposed to dress yourself now? I put on a suit when I want to or need to, but I have contempt for bow-ties and instant disdain for anyone wearing one. So! There is that elaboration.

I'm about to commit to going to a wedding in NC in June. It turns out to be cheaper than I thought and so I will go, and I'll need a new suit, I want a new suit, and I'll get a new suit, I wonder what it'll be like. I don't have enough cool clothes. I don't know what cool clothes are nowadays - I doubt that I have the appropriate physiology to be particularly fashionable.

But it's true that clothes make the man. You can pretend it ain't so - but if you look the part & are dashing in the proper way - it won't matter that you spent the previous night helping people to pretend about being in a Fabulous Unknown City, or that you forgot your minis at home & some of your fantasy-coins. It won't matter that you have a complex relationship with polyhedral dice or sophisticated opinions about comic books. No one will consider your obsessive interests a liability - because you'll look the part and they'll respond to your public face with the appropriate deference, assuming that if you say you're a wizard & mean it that you certainly look like you know what you're doing and can be trusted with money & jobs. They'll be pleased that you have the reassuring presence that they all call leadership these days and they'll quickly react to your whims as if they were their own ideas.

Comments

[sholanda.livejournal.com]

which dude from warrant???

my dad is a trucker and certainly likes hats.

is bridget getting married?

[kingtycoon.livejournal.com]

I think his name is Billy? He has long blond hair and is tiny. He used to have few bars in CLV, I don't know about anymore.

B is not getting married- but funny story. It's her roommate that's tying the knot. This girl & her husband, they're sweet people, really nice - if you've seen the famous houndstooth bathroom, that's the guy's really cool apartment - anyhow, I make a good impression! So after two weekends in two years - and both times with like, tearful sweet goodbyes at the teeny airport, they said they really wanted me to come! I mean, these are people I might never ever see again.

Still... I love being beloved. I love weddings. I love B and she hates weddings (somehow!?) - So I am down. I'm a pretty solid wedding guest, and I'm relieved to be asked to one and not be asked to be in it, so... Yeah, I'm going.