Put A Sock On It

Hat of the week ~ variant of 15th century sock hat.

I wear this hat when doing christmas related work, decorating the tree, supervising present opening etc.
Good memories - my first "santa hat" came as a gift from a neighbor on the first christmas with Laurie, I have a picture of that, I was wearing nothing but the hat and my underwear.
I'll have to post it.
We had bought the tree the day before for half price. Classically we had little, but the first Christmas as "us", we were quite happy.

This Christmas eve I rapped some 20 presents, most having been bought earlier in the day. Jane asked me today if there would be presents from "Santa" this year, "no" said David.
Jane, "Will you be rapping presents tonight?"
David, "yes"
Jane "To make it like there still is Santa?"
David "no, it's because I left it to the last minute"
Jane was amused.

My Dad didn't find it funny when he found out the reality of Santa. His reaction was a deeply personal one. One of deception, lied to, it was the lies that hurt.
So - there was no Santa in the Petty house the next generation, just the truth. Thanks to overwhelming social pressure we did have Christmas, but we never got presents from Santa.

Due to a magical experience Laurie had as a child, there was Santa this generation, till last year, when Anna fest up she wasn't buying it any more.

It's after 3 now, and stayed up, just a little more to post this ~ because I wanted to say I love you to my friends, but that sounds a little to much but, @#&% it's late, and I get emotional when sleep deprived.




The white sky has come down, close to the ground, the night is brightened and quieted. The sky has lain down, the ground is white with it, quieted.

To my friends. Some of whom I'm related to. Like music you make my life happier.

A Company Man

As I mentioned before I don't consider baseball caps really hats. Mainly because they are socially accepted head-ware. So when I wear my caps, I feel like I am in disguise - as a normal person. Or more accurately I feel like I am in disguise as an american.

To heighten this sense of conformity most of my caps are company hats. These are hats that were bought en-mass for a company event to be worn by company employees, to denote that they were, employees.

I have had a strict policy about logo-ed attire, since my time of hanging out with radicalized university students. (This was before I actually became a student and actually attended a radical campus, radical in the fact that it was so conservative it bore the distinction of being one of the only universities NOT to have student protests during the 60's).
That policy was NO LABLES. I refined that to "if I'm going to ware a company logo they better be paying me to advertise for them." I have stuck to that policy.

For a history of baseball caps.

Music Makes Me Happier

These are albums, and occasionally the songs that take me to time and place, they were the sound track of my life.

From about 1983 until my Mission I listened to music a LOT of the time, because I had limited means, the music like my wardrobe was on, again and again. Often they were lost, and so when I hear them again it takes me back.

I plan on continually updating this, and expanding on the music, and why it was significant to me.

1983
Simple Minds - 81-82-83-84
The Cure - Faith
B52's - B52's
Peter Gabriel - Peter Gabriels 3rd self titled album
Yazoo - Upstairs at Eric's
Eurithmics - Sweet Dreams

1984
Talking Heads - Take me to the River
OMD - Dazzle Ships
New Order - Power Corruption and Lies
Kraftwerk - Computer World
Madness - One Step Beyond...
Eurithmics - Touch
The Cure - The Walk
Heaven 17 - Penthouse and Pavement
The Smiths - The Smiths
The The - Soul Mining
Japan - Oil on Canvas
Human League - Travel Log, Dare
DEVO - New Traditionalists
Depeche Mode - Speak and Spell
Midnight Oil - 10987654321

1985
Flock of Seagulls - Flock of Seagulls, Listen
Blue nile - Walk Across The Rooftops
Ice House - Flowers
Fiat Lux - Hired History
The Cure - Head on the Door - Jason and the southern Road Trip
OMD - Organization, Architecture and Morality, CRUSH
New Order - Everything's Gone Green
Depeche Mode - Some Great Reward

1986
Fine Young Cannibals - Fine Young Cannibals
Peter Murphy - Should The World Fail To Fall Apart Don
The Cult - Love
Big Country- The Crossing
OMD - Crush

1987
Billy Brag - Talking to Taxman About Poetry, Spy vs. Spy
Shriekback - Big Night Music, Care, Jam Science, Oil & Gold
English Beat - Best of. Strongly tied to Su-Lin
Simple Minds - Empires and Dance Paul
Smiths - Meat Is Murder, The Queen Is Dead
The The - Infected
Talk Talk - Color of Spring Su
China Crisis - Difficult Shapes & Passive Rhythms, Working with Fire and Steel, Flaunt the Imperfection, What Price Paradise
Love and Rockets - Express, Seventh Dream of a Teenage Heaven
OMD - Pacific Age
David Silvian - Brilliant Trees
Fad Gadget - Gag
U2 - Indian Summer Sky - after I first kissed Su as I went home
Crowded House - Crowded House
Depeche Mode - Music For The Masses

1988
Sinead OConnor - The Lion and the Cobra
Sisters Of Mercy - Floodland, The Damage Done, Body Electric, Alice, The Reptile House EP, Temple of Love, Body and Soul, First and Last and Always
Sugar Cubes - Life's Too Good
AhHa - Hunting High and Low
The Church - Starfish listing to it while working at the hospital

New Order - Substance

1989
Enya - Watermark
Sisters Of Mercy - First and Last and Always,
New Order - Technique
Mauve - Mauve
The Smiths - Strangeways Here we Come
The The - Mind Bomb
Chill's - Kaleidoscope World, Brave Words,The Lost EP
Dead Can Dance - Dead Can Dance, Spleen and Ideal, Within the Realm of a Dying Sun, The Serpents Egg

Mission Years 1989 - 1991
B52's - Love Shack Darwin Post Office
The Mission 3 tracks from Laurie
Bauhaus - Acoustic Track from Laurie
Cat Stevens - Moon Shadow Laurie
The Church - song Reptile would play a lot in my head

1991
Peter Murphy - Deep
David Silvian - Secrets of the Beehive Linked to Laurie - she sent it me
This Mortal Coil - Laurie
Suzanne Vega - Days Of Open Hand

1992
Sisters Of Mercy - Vision Thing Courting Laurie
Crowded House - Into Temptation Making out with Laurie in my Apartment in Provo

1993
His Name Is Alive - Livonia, Home Is In Your Head
This Mortal Coil - Blood
The Chills - Submarine Bells
Creatures - Boomerang
DeadCanDance - Into The Labyrinth
Suzanne Vega - 99.9F°
Shriekback - Sacred City

1994
Dead Can Dance - Toward The Within
Dead Can Dance - song - American Dreaming Makes me think of Laurie & I
The Jam - Greatest Hits Laurie introduces me to
Men Without Hats -Men Without Hats

1998
Madonna - Ray of Light

1999
Alphaville - Forever Young

2006
Ladytron - 604, Light and Magic

2008
This year seemed to be a reawakening in me of music as an intrigal - indispensable part of living. Two things, and ipod will all my music on, and having to spent 30 min. to 2 hrs. a day running errands and realizing if I was surrounded by music it became very bearable. Finally was Mobys Hotel, it reminded me how discovering new music is not a subtle process but an explosion of something akin to joy when you find that resonating cord in you.
Moby - Hotel

Cheesecake

Cheese + Cake how could that possibly be good? It's an unnatural, an unholy combination! There was NO WAY that the young Paul Leach could be forced to eat such an abomination. He withstood all entreaties to partake.

Then - one day, as grown man something happened (did it have to do with Allison?) and he a a peace of Cheesecake.
Oh the regret! The sorrow! All those wasted YEARS! A life hardly worth living, now made complete with the wonder of CHEESECAKE.

That was Paul's story he once relayed to me about cheese cake.

Living as a poor boy of limited culinary experience, I don't think I even had the opportunity until later in life to eat cheesecake. I was unimpressed.

It was only later I discovered I had chosen a side to which all of humanity falls - the side that like cheesecake and those that, just "have something wrong with them," as Su-Lin Fantella almost wrote.

No one gets to be over 40 without laving a cheesecake story of there own - here is mine.

I was newly Married and a student, as was my lovely young bride. We we summering with her parents, working to diminish some of our debts during the break. The location, Marin County - just out of San Francisco - some of the most expensive real-estate in the U.S. That obviously means some of the best bakeries in the nation.

Len, my brides father came from a humble laboring background and did just about all he could to forget that. One of those ways was to go and patronize the best bakeries, and bring home their wares.

In an act of generosity and bonding one night he came home with probably one of the best cheesecakes in the world, it was ostensibly a gift for me. What could I do? I graciously accepted. It was, cheesecake - undoubtably the best cheesecake I had ever had - but, still cheesecake.
I'd have rather had, I don't know - cherry pie... I said it was the best cheesecake I had ever had - and ended there. Len was happy, Laurie, my lovely young bride, relieved, and all was well.

But then, not more than a few days passed but Len brings home another cheesecake, for me. On the third occasion, I could see the lie stretching out before me, down the years... Len bringing cheesecake every time he visited, or perhaps cheesecake care packages when we lived too far for him to drive, Thanksgiving cheesecake, Christmas...

I knew what I had to do. The years of watching american sitcoms had taught me one thing, don't lie to make someone feel better, painful as that would be, the lie becomes more painful, and although hilarity will ensue, it's not funny if your the guy in the situation comedy.

So I told Len that I didn't like Cheesecake. He bought me no more cheesecake, but he never did get me any cherry pie.

Trilby

Trilby -- it's like a Fedora (that's an Indiana Jones hat for the Hat nube), but with a narrower brim. Typically they were made from felt or wool. My trilby is made from straw, in china. I have been wanting one for a few years now and when I saw it this summer in WALMART I simply rejoiced.
So this hat is my most resent head-ware acquisition. Ironically the very first hat I wore, really wore, on a day to day basis was a very similar straw hat in South Australia. I actually wore that one out.
According to an undocumented wikipedia entry the name for this style of hat came from a very popular novel of the same name. The novel was subsequently turned into a play and one of the actors in the play wore a narrow brimmed fedora - and the name of the play/book was forever attached to this style of hat.
In my mind this style has been linked to the end of hats as we know them as everyday ware for men, and can still be occasionally seen being worn by very old men, hipsters, mods, and jazz heads.
I find it simultaneously easier and more difficult to be outside of fashion. Not eschewing fashion wholly, but being interested in it disconnected from time and place. Basically that means you seek after fashion that you like, unrelated to the fashion of the day.
It's easier in that you don't have to spend time and money on keeping up with what's current. The downside of which is being an outsider, to some degree. The best example of this ascetic in popular culture was portrayed by the character Kramer in the sitcom Sinfeild, who was once described by the most fashionable character (Elaine) as a "hipster doofus".

Black Cap

All the hats I have acquired in the last few years have been from the temple of elemental evil, or WALMART™ as some people call it. This is due to it's proximity, and the fact that it's not squeamish about child labor so I can make impulse hat buys and not break $10.

I came across this hat and I loved it instantly. I have wanted one for some years and got it in black and green, (the green one will get it's own post).

I really like the style, it put's me in mind of one of the most stylish thugs of the 20th century - the nazi. I think my sense of style is genetically inherited. My father confessed he nearly joined the Hitler Youth movement (Canadian chapter) in the 30's because he "liked the look of their uniform". Fortunately the second world war broke out before he got around to signing up.

I did some research on the hat - as all that was inside the cap was "made in china". In my exhaustive research for this post I believe the style is "army cap".

Hat of the Week - Genesis

I think I have always liked hats. It has the whiff of "dressing up" a game I enjoyed from my earliest memories.
I never felt confident enough to wear hats consistently as a youth as it was a hatless period in my culture.

How I overcame my hat insecurities.
I was serving a mission for my church in Australia. Firstly I got a bit of sun stroke I think, and after that it was intolerable for me to feel the sun directly on my head.
Secondly, I was a missionary, in AUSTRALIA. If you care what people think of you then, well, lets just say I had nothing to lose when it came to others perceptions of how I dressed.
So having a degree of necessity and having shed most of my sense of pride, dignity and conformity (you might think your an outsider now, but just try being a preacher in Murray Bridge, South Australia).

This meant that post mission I wore hats a lot more often, but as any hat wearer knows, it messes up your hair. Given the style of hair I preferred it meant my hat waring was an occasional thing. That changed by the fact of testosterone - which is the cause of "male pattern baldness". This accomplished two things - one it proved I was a MAN. My gender had been brought into question a number of times in my youth through afore mentioned "outsider" status. Two it meant the elimination of "hat hair", thus removing the final barrier to almost constant hat wearing.

I currently own over 20 hats, collected over almost as many years. I feel obliged to disclose that nearly half of them are "baseball" style caps. In the hat higher-achy of my mind they barely qualify as a "real" hat. Mainly because they are socially acceptable head-ware. The less common the a hat is, the more "HAT" they are on my mind.

I have decided to share my hat love with whosoever cares, (besides Magna, one more reason for the love Magna) thus am Launching my "Hat of the Week".