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I'm enjoying Mindy Smith's new Christmas record, My Holiday. It's a pleasing mix of standards and originals, and her rendition of one of my favorite holiday songs, What Are You Doing New Year's Eve?, is especially lovely.
That cut's not streaming at her MySpace site, but a few other tracks from the album are. Give them a listen.
There's a company in New Zealand, Magnoli Clothiers, that claims to make vintage-style clothes to order. You send the measurements, select the fabric, select the style, etc. and the garment comes to you in few weeks via the mail.
The prices aren't bad (about $500 for a suit), so I was very excited when I learned about it, but the results are reportedly somewhat iffy, which is probably understandable, given the mail-order nature of the business. Members of an online vintage-clothes forum on which I mostly lurk have had mixed results, though they all seem to think highly of the guy who runs the company, who also posts to the forum. He does his best to made things right, it seems.
Anyway, I was browsing the site and noticed that he offers a replica of the tie that Bogart is wearing in the final scene of Casablanca (the scene at the airport, when Rick Blaine surprises Ilsa Lund by sending her off with Victor Lazlo). It's a red tie with a simple, slightly irregular white or cream pattern that is subtly vintage, and I knew right away I had to have it (it's handmade from 100% silk, which doesn't ensure that it's a great tie, of course, but it's not a snob when it comes to ties).
Having discovered it, I wanted to see if I could receive the tie in time for my wedding on Saturday. I bought it via the website late Tuesday afternoon and emailed the proprietor to see if he could ship it to me in time. He wrote right back saying he could, if I was willing to pay $35 for the required postage, which I immediately sent via Paypal (the only way he accepts payment).
Then I went to BAM to catch Max Ophuls' Letter from an Unknown Woman.
I arrived home about 9 pm, only to learn that he had received the payment for the extra postage, but not, somehow, the original payment. I had a little trouble figuring out the time difference between NYC and New Zealand, but as best as I could figure, it was then the middle of the afternoon there. I wrote back, asking if there was still time to get it shipped, but I didn't hear back from him for half an hour.
I gave up and went to dinner, only to find upon my return that he'd emailed me in the interim saying he could still get it to me if I could pay him within the hour.
But when he'd sent that blasted email, I had no idea, so I didn't know if it was too late or not.
But I sent the payment, anyway, hoping it would work out and trusting him to credit me the extra dough toward a future purchase if it didn't.
It turned out he'd decided to trust me, too, and had shipped the tie before he received payment, so, assuming nothing goes awry along the way, I'll be wearing a tie that both Rick Blaine and Humphrey Bogart would approve of when I get hitched on the 8th.
I'll also be sporting a beautiful black woolen suit from the early 1950s (it's a great suit, one I've never gotten to wear it before), brand new black cap-toed shoes purchased from Stapleton Shoe Co., a great little old-style shoe store in the financial district that has been around since 1952, a white shirt, a white cotton pocket square (I bought a trio of cotton pocket squares from Brooks Bros. for the occasion, one of each trimmed in grey, a muted pink, and blue, but they were meant to complement another tie, and I'm not sure they'll work with this one, so I'll have to pick up another), a white boutonniere (can't remember the name of the flower, but it's more carnation-esque -- though much nicer than a carnation -- than rose-ish), and, whenever we're outside, my new grey fedora (which was just a smidge too large, and I've since returned for one that fits better).
What can I say? I'm doing my darnedest to see to it that, for at least this one day, Flo has no regrets about throwing in her lot with me.
It's a big week for Flo and I. We're to strap on our respective ball-and-chains on Saturday. We're both thrilled, of course, but it's also a little nervous-making.
This morning, after stopping off at the post office to get a money order -- that's the only form of payment accepted -- we went down to One Centre Street to get our marriage license. We liked the no-nonsense, seen-it-all, borderline-curmudgeonly woman who presented us the application. She came off as having been there and done that many times over, and of course, she has -- how many times has she delivered those by-rote instructions, one wonders. A thousand? A million?
Probably closer to the latter -- at a rate of, say, twenty times an hour, eight hours a day, five days a week and fifty weeks a year, she's recited the instructions 800,000 times if she's worked there twenty years, and it wouldn't surprise me a bit if she's been there longer than that. She was definitely a grizzled veteran.
I asked her if she was ever tempted to talk anyone down from their nuptial ledge ("Honey, you're settling," was the line I assigned her in my hypothetical example. "You could do so much better.") She harrumphed, saying, "Yeah, right. And get sued?"
But we saw a slyly softer side of her as she interacted with her colleagues and co-workers. She's definitely hardboiled on the outside, but with a gooey center. And somehow a truly quintessential New Yorker. She made our morning.
The application process went quickly, and in relatively short order, we were fully licensed to tie the knot. So now it's just a matter of counting down the minutes, hours and days until Saturday afternoon. I've informed Flo that she has until midnight on Friday to come to her senses. After that, I won't accept any retractions of her proposal of some months back.
I was feeling a little giddy and romantic after securing the license, and it struck me as a good idea for us to walk out and take in the glorious view of Manhattan from the walkway beneath the westernmost tower of the Brooklyn Bridge. It proved to be the right move, a celebratory stroll that felt just right. We both enjoyed the walk on this sunny, crisp December morning, and the vista that spread before us was inspiring.
So the countdown is on. At some point a few minutes after the hour of one o'clock on Saturday afternoon, I'll officially be Mr. Flo -- and damned proud of it.
I've long had a fedora that was just a bit too small for me (I have a giant head), and it was only a couple of weeks ago that I finally broke down and took it to J.J. Hat Center on Fifth Avenue (covering New Yorkers' pates since 1911!) to see what they could do with it.
They stretched it to its limit and it was still snug, but it was big that I could wear it a bit to see how I felt in a fedora before dropping any cash on a new one.
Well, as it turned out, I felt fine. The brim on that hat was a bit wide for my taste, and I learned from the guy at J.J. that it wasn't a very good hat (it was wool felt, not the fur felt of which quality hats are made), but overall, I enjoyed the experience of wearing it and thought I looked okay in it.
So on Saturday, I went back to J.J. and purchased one that fits. Turns out my hat size is a whopping 7 7/8, which is giant.
I loved the Borsalinos, but they were in the $250-300 range, which is more than I had any business spending, so I ended up with a Lagomarsino, in medium grey with a narrower brim than my other hand and a narrow band in contrasting black.
And I look pretty good in it, too -- or so says Flo, anyway.