From my room I can hear the trains running out to the seas of Europe

[sovay]

My arm hurts and my head aches more than usual and I just sneezed, which had better be the Pneumovax, but I wish to express my delight that someone who runs a site dedicated to men's fashions on film and TV has devoted an entry to Walter Matthau in The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974) because I adore him in that movie and one of the things I adore about him is how good he doesn't look:



Look, I have one husband who can wear orange plaid and the other owns a tie we call the blue-ringed octopus: I'm not biased against the flamboyant. I am biased against a tie that matches a box of aspirin and looks like it was chosen so its owner could put all the mustard on his hot dog he wanted without risk. I am biased against a shirt that if it came on your TV screen at sign-off you would call the repairman the next day. The tweed jacket not pictured is a saving grace because it covers most of the shirt, but not even a raincoat improves the effect of the tie. The most I would ever attempt to argue for this ensemble is that it looks exactly like its character and avoids public indecency. But I am charmed by the analysis, even if I feel that "coordinating" is an optimistic designation for what that tie is doing. Now I just want to watch the film again.

Comments

[asakiyume]

The tie matching the bayer box is brilliant!

The very long 20-year-old telenovela we just finished featured a protagonist who inclined to garish clothing, and he was adorkable.

[ethelmay]

My daughter used to date a guy who wore extremely multicolored shoes (I remember pink and yellow for sure, and I think there may have been some shade of blue or green in there). When she ribbed him about them he said placidly, "They express my cheerful nature." Which they did.

[asakiyume]

Those sound like some fabulous shoes!

[sovay]

When she ribbed him about them he said placidly, "They express my cheerful nature." Which they did.

I really like that. He sounds slightly like he dressed like a Time Lord.

[ethelmay]

Multicolored running shoes were A Thing for a while (probably still are, but I have a general impression they've settled down a little). In women's shoes it got so I had the choice of wearing Barbie-frock-colored sneakers or looking like a 1970s nurse.

[sovay]

The very long 20-year-old telenovela we just finished featured a protagonist who inclined to garish clothing, and he was adorkable.

That is a magnificent conjunction of hat and shirt. Tell me more about the twenty-year telenovela?

[asakiyume]

It's called Pedro El Escamoso, meaning something like "Pedro the Showoff." Pedro is the guy with the unusual fashion sense. He's just a funny, sweet character who self-narrates his life throughout the show. But the show is full of interesting, unexpected characters--people who seem like antagonists, you get to see other sides of them; it's just (mainly) a lot of fun to see the characters interact. The first couple of episodes are so-so: it starts, as many of these novelas seem to, at a moment from much later in the story, a very standard novela-esque moment: Pedro is trying and failing to persuade the woman he loves not to go through with marrying another man (he's driven her to the wedding). Then you go back in time to see him arrive in Bogota, basically in just his underpants (shorts, really, but they are SHORT shorts), and begin winning friends. People who start out disliking him end up liking him, and it's believable--and that's a fun thing to spend time watching. The woman he loves is a bit of a whiny weak link, but all the other characters are marvelous (and she's not that bad. I GUESS.)

[sovay]

People who start out disliking him end up liking him, and it's believable--and that's a fun thing to spend time watching.

That does sound really charming!