Check it out

Well, here's PARADE magazine saying that it's OK to wear checked shirts!  As they say, "The look, once associated with Hee Haw, is suddenly the height of friendly fashion."

Glenn Plaid

Tattersall

   I know I feel better about it all.  I have always worn and liked checked shirts.  If I was ever mistaken for George "Goober" Lindsey, so much the better! Plaid, tattersall, Glenn Plaid: I have shirts like that and always have.

What I don't have, and likely never will, is any understanding of why people, and I know this happens, will think that it's OK now to go get a checked shirt, or a plaid shirt, or any other doggone thing, and wear it in public, given the imprimatur that comes with America's favorite Sunday supplement magazine.

I dunno.  I guess it goes with my red socks and the winter hats I wear and things like that.  If I like wearing something, I wear it, and I don't care if a magazine likes it or not.

Now then, before you start saying, "Oh, he's getting cranky now that he's getting up in years..." I will point out this is nothing new.  I wish someone could explain why a) magazines print articles that would seem to grant us permission to wear certain items of clothing and b) some people are governed by the sartorial choices of people sitting in magazine offices far away.

And I'd also like to know why restaurant commercials insist on showing food bouncing off plates, dropping from the sky, and otherwise in motion.  I don't want to eat shrimp that came from above.  Shrimp comes from the sea.  And I don't need to see my food bounce.  

For fifteen minutes in the early 90's, a woman calling herself Faith Popcorn earned a dollar or two by setting herself up as a trend consultant.  Popcorn, born Faith Plotkin, hired herself out as a "futurist," and companies would shell out money for Popcorn's  salty, buttered-up reports about what was going to be popular, so that companies could plan to sell stuff that was going to be popular.  Ms Popcorn, pictured at left, stumbled across something that only had a kernel of truth (let me know when I overdo it with the popcorn allusions, please!) but her fame was short-lived.  Why?

Because, if you want to know about Americans and what we like, you don't need Faith Popcorn to tell you.  We like baseball, hotdogs, apple pie and Chevy Chase!  We like beer and riding to the beach and watching TV and Facebook and reality shows about those women from one family that are always objecting to things.  You know who I mean, the women with the huge "But!"s. The Kardashians, we like them, and we like shows where people who cannot sing and dance sing and dance and we like shopping at WalMart and we like food on our plates, not ricocheting off the dish. 

And we like checked shirts.    Just ask George "Goober" Clooney.