Tuesday, December 9, 2008

Tie me a river




Haven't said a damn thing on this site since this summer. A funny thing happened to my summer of unemployment -- I got a job on a political campaign.

Now that's over and I'm back to being unemployed and trying to develop a free-lance writing base while I think about what's next.

I don't have too many profound thoughts these days -- at least not much worthy of actually posting here.

But, here's something I've noticed that I've not read or heard much about elsewhere (not that I've actually looked): Striped ties are in, big time. To be more pacific, ties with diagonal stripes seem to be dominating, at least judging by all the people on TV who are wearing them.

A great way to test my hypotheses is to simply watch TV, particularly sports.

I just noticed this at the beginning of college hoops season. Remember how many games show up on TV early on, with all those tournaments and intraconference challenges and 23-hour marathons. Lots of games, with lots of announcers and sideline reporters (although those are mostly women) and of course, the talking heads in the studio -- usually two but sometimes three or four.

Striped ties have long been a staple. There's the ubiquitous type with those tight stripes of the same size. Ricky Pinto had a nice gray/black tie on the other night.

And those ties with wider stripes of the same size have been around forever. Just look in any LL Bean catalog. Tim Russert's gone, but those ties that he favored live on.

But now, it seems that we are seeing weird color pairings with thin diagonal stripes, set apart by wider blocks of color, plus all sorts of other odd iterations. Did GQ issue and edict that I missed in the campaign hubbub?

So, if I feel like it, I'll get on here whenever I'm watching a game and report on tie sightings. Just to test this idea out a bit more.

Keep an eye out when you're watching TV sports and see if you don't notice it.

I just wonder if it'll last till March. (CARY STEMLE)

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