I often wear a hat. Not in the house, except sometimes to bed, but that’s another night’s tale. The hat is a wide-brimmed green Tilley. A dozen pins decorates it.
When I checked in for my medical appointment yesterday, the young guy doing my intake looked at my hat and grinned.
“I was just admiring your pins.”
I replied, “That’s my flair.”
His grin grew wider. “You can never have too much flair.”
I answered, “No, but I think I need to speak to you about your flair.”
Laughter answered me. “I know. I gotta work on that.”
We both nodded. It was all an unspoken reference to Office Space from 1999. I figured the kid I was speaking to is about 29 years old, five or take, you know. But just a child when the movie came out.
I feel like we’re part of a secret tribe. The tribe of flare.
Wind and clouds dominate Ashlandia’s Monday morning, where it’s 38 degrees F. Blue sky and sunshine have worked their way into the scene. At least the rain has stopped. Snow tops ranges and trees located over 3500 feet, offering us some wintry scenery. December 16, 2024, winter solstice is rushing our way.
We went south into higher elevations yesterday. Up there in elevation, down there on the road, the snow accumulaiton over 3,000 feet looked like six to eight inches. This was eight miles from our place, a twelve minute drive. My wife and I agreed, it was nice to visit the snow and admire the beauty of the white dusting the tall pines over the craggy white-topped mountains bathed in sunshine and backlit with blue sky, but leaving that icy scene behind was also nice.
Over in Europe, governments are losing votes of confidence. France already went; now Germany has joined them. Just to lift my spirits (please note the sarcasm), I read a NYTimes opinion piece, “A Mild Defense of Lara Trump”.
Fair enough. But before anyone gets super sniffy about Lara Trump’s fitness for high office, I feel I should remind everyone of Tommy Tuberville.
Honestly. Whether defending white supremacists or blockading hundreds of military promotions for months, the gentleman from Alabama has not exactly covered himself in glory. And when it comes to sycophancy, it’s hard to imagine Ms. Trump would be much more pliant than Mr. Tuberville, who recently declared that it is not Republican senators’ job to vet Mr. Trump’s cabinet picks. So much for “advice and consent.”
But no need to dogpile Mr. Tuberville. When it comes to jelly-spined Trump toadies, he is not alone in the Senate. Josh Hawley? Ron Johnson? Mike Lee? In so many ways, the coin has already been devalued.
Yes, let’s start a cheer *snark*: Lara Trump is not the worse senator in a chamber full of crappy voter decisions. That’ll cheer us up.
The Neurons surprise me by introducing with a poem learned in high school. William Wadsworth, of course, because that’s who I mostly learned in that era. Syliva Plath, Edna St. Vincent Millay, ts elliott, Billy Collins and others came later.
The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;—
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
That’s all I wanted to remember: ‘The world is too much with us, getting and spending’, and ‘for this, for everything, we are out of tune.’
That’s my feeling today. I’m an guitar set aside, gathering dust in a closet. My strings and frets are worn, and I feel out of tune.
Despair not, for Der Neurons immediately introduced a song to the morning mental music stream (Trademark sagging) to address my feelings.
I’m singing this note cause it fits in well with the chords I’m playing.
I can’t pretend there’s any meaning hidden in the things I’m saying.
But I’m in tune.
Right in tune.
Yes, it’s the Who, one of the bands of my youth, coming through with “Getting in Tune” from 1971 and their epic album, Who’s Next? The present is just an echo of the past, isn’t it?
Ah, maybe I just have a case of the Mondays. I offer this Office Space clip for elucidation.
Let’s get on with this. Coffee, stat! Here we go. First, the music. Cheers
I wear a hat on most days. It’s an olive green Tilly, my second one. Several pieces of flair adorn it.
I encountered a new young barista at the coffee shop today, Teagan. She told me how much she likes my hat and all the stuff on it. I smiled, replying, “That’s my flair.”
Saying, “Oh, my God,” Teagan began laughing.
“Office Space,” I supplied.
“Yes, yes, yes!”
She and I reminisced about the movie’s big moments and enduring legacy. The red stapler. The consultants. Cubicles. Destroying the annoying printer. TPS reports. She loved the movie, she said, especially the ending.
Yes, it worked for me, too, when it came out in 1999. I’d retired from the military and was working for a startup in Palo Alto, CA, at that point. Written and directed by Mike Judge, starring Ron Livingstone, Jennifer Aniston, and Stephen Root, the movie spoke to me about corporate culture and management. Remembering it now after the convo with the barista, I sit here grinning, ready to break into a laugh.
Michael Seidel, writer 