Short Temper

It was anomalously 90 degrees yesterday. My approach to such unseasonal temperatures is simply to slow down, but I see that this is not to everyone’s taste. The frenetic pace comes at a price, however, and I’m afraid that the desire to move at winter speeds in sweltering heat is too dearly bought. There are two things that should hardly ever be seen on a man, except when he is engaged in some form of athletic activity, or some form of manual labour: sweat and shorts. I shall consider you, dear readers, as men about town. As such, I exhort you not to sweat, and not to wear shorts. To my rural readers, of course, one must make exceptions. Honest toil makes for honest perspiration, but how many really know about that anymore? Still, there’s probably no good reason for shorts, even in the country. To my lady readers, I am sure you will join me in this prescription. Although you will have no first-hand knowledge of either sweating or shorts, I am sure you have seen them both on men, and I am sure that, with me, you object.

Um, no.

Here’s the basic problem. Shorts are ugly. Moreover, male legs leave a lot to be desired. Shorts tend to do nothing for the masculine pins, being ill cut, ill-conceived, and often ill coloured. Men demonstrate far more sartorial bravery in shorts than at any other time, and they should not be surprised if I label it what it really is: foolishness. Few men can pull it off. In large part it has to do with the choice of footwear that is paired with shorts. I occasionally see a man looking enviously good in well-tailored shorts, with expensive boat shoes, and then I think to myself: those shoes are going to be ruined by his sweaty feet, and he will smell. Of course, had he been wearing socks I would have thought he was sadly misguided. Trainers are for training. Sandals are for hippies, geography teachers, and those men generally lacking in taste. Flip flops? Please. Canvas deck shoes I can nearly picture, but the sweating! There’s no escaping those leaky feet. It’s just a no-win situation.

Unfortunately, I shall be in Italy in late May and it will be so hot that my betrousered legs may slow to a stop. In that case I shall be forced to make a difficult decision. I shall not make it lightly, but only after due apologies to the gods of good taste. If, in the meantime, anybody can suggest some plausible way to look good in shorts and shoes without the aforementioned problems, I shall be much obliged.

Being Boring

Mother always used to say ‘there’s nothing more boring than the bored’. Indeed, having to endure the ennui of another is insufferably dull, and best avoided. At least, however, the bored can be ignored. They can languish in their lack of imagination for all I care. I shall pay them no heed. You will find me out doing (not to mention outdoing), getting, living, being. One mustn’t forget that being manly is inherently active. It needs constantly to be brought about, vigilantly recapitulated, vigorously upheld. This ‘blog’ would perhaps have found a more appropriate title in ‘becoming manly’.

What mother did not mention was what to do with the actively boring. For it transpires that some people are perfectly happy to share the day-to-day, hour-to-hour, minute-to-minute experiences of their mundane lives, as well as anything and everything that has ever happened to them, with anyone within earshot. This can be so utterly mind-numbing that there is serious risk of them turning their listeners into the bored. These people are reprehensible because they begin a vicious circle of decline in others. They bore you, you become bored; you become boring, others are bored, etc. The actively boring violently assault the lives of interesting people by having no notion of when is enough. One is tempted to pierce one’s own skin with needles just to make sure one is alive.



If you are wont to drone on – if you’re not sure, solicit the honesty of someone you trust – ask yourself occasionally when it was that you last heard someone else’s voice. Gauge your audience: if you’re a particle physicist and you happen to be conversing with philatelists, chances are you are going to need a third subject in order to find common ground. In certain parts, there may be class distinctions to bear in mind. The local costermonger support group (i.e. the pub) is not likely to want to hear about your most recent skiing holiday. Likewise, the costermonger probably doesn’t care for the professor’s continual irritation with the former’s use of punctuation. In short, it’s important to be rounded. A one dimensional life isn’t likely to gain dynamism in conversation.

There’s nothing more boring than the bored. There’s nothing more irritating than the actively boring.

Cooking Up a Storm

I am pleased to note that men are not strangers to the kitchen. In fact, it seems that there is something of a movement to get us there, through various forms of appeal. Most of the celebrity chefs on our goggle boxes are men of some description, with more or less refinement. Last night I saw Anthony Bourdain extolling everyone to get into the kitchen and properly cook. This morning I found a book, with accompanying blog, called Men’s Cooking Manual, which looks unnecessarily like the mechanics guide to a family car. In short, men are cooking. But I’m worried it’s all fire and grunting.

Man Vs. Food

Eating isn’t about quantity, it’s about quality. It’s also about traditional values and some form of local or national belonging. There are an awful lot of gluttons, posing as gourmands, and the gourmets are left out of the equation. Skip around the Food Network for five minutes and you’ll find all kinds of strange overweight men eating as much as possible. Man vs. Food, for example, is really not a sound message; especially not for Americans. If this is how we eat, then I am suspicious about how we cook. Is there an awareness of art? Is there an appreciation of skill? Are palates being cultivated? Is heritage being honoured and preserved? Is the necessary time being taken? Cuisine merits respect. Do we respect it?

One of the forgotten heroes?

Men should cook, but men should cook properly. The aforementioned blog appeals to a masculine love of sharp knives, tools, swearing and sex. First and foremost, however, should be a passion for food, what it does, and what it means. A passion for creation, and for the instruments of creation, is not effeminate. An active involvement in traditional tastes ought to come with a sense of duty. Lighting up the grill alone will simply not suffice.

A Manly Wine? A Manly Whine

A friend of mine recently made use of my apartment in Montreal, which has seen a succession of temporary sub-lessees over the last seven months or so. As a thank you for her couple of nights repose, she left Mrs. VB and me a bottle of wine in the place, ready for our eventual return. Knowing my penchant for things manly, said friend asked the expert in the local Société des alcools du Québec (SAQ – provincially run liquor store) for a recommendation on manly wines. Blank looks ensued.

Naturally, there will be divergences on such a subject. If, for example, a manly wine is supposed to reflect the character of manliness, then we should need a clear definition of manliness in order to proceed. Unfortunately, judging by the myriad groups and societies out there in the ethereal world, no such common ground exists. It may be that my own definition (provisional) would have foxed the sommelier: robust but refined; sophisticated but blunt where necessary; polite but candid; traditional, with one eye cast to men of great vintage, but also forward looking; fun, jaunty, even eccentric if judged by popular tastes, but solid, reliable, distinguished and, above all, grounded. If anyone can recommend me a wine that sounds like this man, please waste no time in letting me know.

I thought this was a fairly unique problem I was having, but then yesterday I saw this (click to enlarge):

Apologies for picture quality. The only way to get it was to photograph my screen.

Personally I have no problem with oak. What better symbol of strength, endurance and stickability is there than the oak tree? But regardless, I found this faux campaign entirely distasteful, precisely because it failed on point of politeness, sophistication and distinction. A man does not need to point out who is a wimp. It gives the impression that he is somewhat self-conscious of his own status as a man. Self-worth and self-assurance lead us to accentuate the positive, not to point fingers and sneer; certainly not to get up meaningless petitions. The conspicuous failure, however, is the absence of substance in its definition of the opposite to the thing it protests. One cannot laud ‘authenticity’ while practicing gimmickry. One cannot appeal to the ‘interesting’ without demonstrating what on earth that empty label might mean (the word ‘interesting’ always gets crossed out of student essays). One cannot celebrate ‘complexity’ while denigrating the word ‘cause’ by applying it to a shallow marketing campaign.

So I ask you again, dear Readers, for your recommendations. Please, nobody say Ravenswood.

The Devil Is in the Details

I have spent the last six weeks editing a book. Publishing in the digital age isn’t what it was. The days of turning in a physical manuscript and waiting for the proofs seem long-since gone. To be an author/editor is also, now, to be a copy editor and type setter. My eyes are addled by the constant scrutiny, searching earnestly for rogue commas and inadvertent spaces; watching out for the differences between Em spaces and En spaces; burning the occasional ‘which’ that should be a that, which follows a genuine rule you know; juggling leading (line spacing), and font sizing, headings and subheadings, headers, footers and the like. I’ve also been unifying spelling and punctuation. When you have fifteen people writing in English who hail from half-a-dozen different countries it is quite apparent that English is not one language but many. Also references: there are really only four main styles of academic referencing, but most academics write in an idiosyncratic combination of all four. Making one out of four is a devilish business. And of course there are mistakes, and often not of the obvious variety. Would you be able to spot that a quote from Cicero is mistakenly attributed to ‘On Ends’ when really it came from ‘On Duties’? Well, to my surprise, I did.

Now, forget page counts and word counts. When you consciously set about eyeballing every facet of a document (you can hit the show/hide button in MS Word to make every key stroke appear on the page, including spaces and carriage returns) the relevant number becomes the character count. There are, at present, 707,000 characters in this book. I am, understandably I think, bleary eyed. But I am also satisfied.

Why? Because this stuff is important. Too many people these days cannot form basic sentences in their native language (I am reasonably convinced that the problem is worst for English speakers). Spelling has gone out of the window; punctuation is like some mysterious black art; grammar, so far as many people are concerned, is merely your mother’s mother. Mistakes are passed over unnoticed. The beautiful, slippery, taut but paradoxically flexible vagaries of grammatical rule are jettisoned in favour of expediency, laziness, and an altogether unengaged approach to discourse. I maintain, however, that these things are the pillars of politeness. They afford us grace in our interlocutions. They hold us together by a common bond. They pour meaning into belonging, and grant that feeling an esteem, appreciated most, perhaps, when we see it abused. And yet our language, when used properly, also allows us to transcend its strictures, and therein lies its power, its authority, and dare I say it, its cool. But rules can only be broken when rules are known. Otherwise transgression is simple ignorance, and in simple ignorance there is no power, and no authority. There is no cool.

The Devil is in the details. We should do well to pay them mind. Our language is, after all, a precious inheritance.