Omar Posted August 30, 2008 Content Count: 2994 Joined: 03/06/08 Status: Offline Share Posted August 30, 2008 i saw two ants having sex today WTF doese this have to do with the subject of the thread. I am sorry but it did not make me lol. Link to comment
LegalSmash Posted August 31, 2008 Content Count: 2936 Joined: 02/04/08 Status: Offline Share Posted August 31, 2008 And now in breaking news: something long and pointless! Saturday, June 11 This is a Really Long, Pointless Story about a Shirt Let's start, and end, with the shirts. Dressing is a big deal to me -- ever since I (a) became single, and (b) lost 60 pounds, I've become something of a clotheshorse. I don't know the etymology of that expression, but it's such a neat word I wanted to use it. (Am I like a sawhorse, but for clothing instead of sawing?) At any rate, I've started shopping at the smallest, snottiest, exclusiviest (I know, not a word) little men's boutiques I can find. At first I was content merely having the guys at Nordstrom all know me by name (and call me when they got a new season's worth of fashions), but that was merely a gateway (like marijuana in the eyes of conservatives) to littler shops, where each individual thread in a garment has a value measured in dollars, not pennies. Sadly, these kinds of shirts require dry-cleaning, which requires that I make it to the dry-cleaner. This is something of an issue for me, because I'm wont to keep odd hours, and because when I'm awake I'm usually working (c.f. "being single, the suckiness inherent therein"). So, for the last week, in preparation for WWDC, I've been driving around with a big blue laundry bag full of dirty shirts in the passenger seat of my pimp ride. I should mention that, when I was a wee lad, I had visions of one day getting a pimp ride, so that when I passed pretty women on the side of the street who were forlornly walking somewhere, I could pull up and say, "Hey, mamasita, you want a ride?" I've since been informed that women find this, in fact, really creepy, so I've never actually done it, but I have to mention that every guy has a fantasy of one day doing this, even while admitting this fantasy is in direct opposition to any possible reality. [i should also mention that should I wish to Jackson out and hit on 12-year-old boys, instead of women, a pimp ride is the perfect way to go. The number of times I've had 12-year-old boys yell out "pimp-de-pimp-pimp-pimp!" to me when I drive by is surprisingly high, considering I had previously never heard the "pimp-de-pimp-pimp-pimp" call and have no idea what it means. But for 12-year-olds it's some kind of lingua franca.] At any rate, you can imagine how cool it is to drive by a pretty woman walking in the rain and think, "Hey, I should offer her a ride... wait, then she'd have to have my big bag of stinky shirts in her lap... that'd probably strike her as pretty strange... possibly even frightening." -- So it is that, when packing for WWDC 2005, I only took one good shirt with me. Mind you, this was a really good shirt. This shirt was made in London by a guy named Ted or James or some such, which to me lends instant credibility to it, because as much as I love (the blue states in) my country, when I think of America I think of rebels, I think of individualists, I think of can-do spirit and an indomitable dedication to individual freedoms and happiness. But I don't think, "nice shirts!" London, on the other hand, has class and panache, and Ted/James clearly was the latest in a long line of shirt-makers who had, for generations, been making shirts for discerning gentlemen, not carrying guns, and/or shipping off criminals to unsettled countries. Nor is the cotton in this shirt simply from normal cotton plants, oh no. It's grown someplace exotic, like Morocco, and it seems to carry a slight scent of the spices of distant lands on it. Bury your face in this shirt and you can almost hear Bogey whispering, "Listen, kid, this shirt is bigger than the both of us..." I've received about five or so unsolicited compliments in this shirt, which is five more than I have in any other shirt. Guys don't get complimented on shirts a lot, unless they say, "Hey, look at this shirt," which I admit I've done a couple times, but I'm saying I've been complimented on this shirt without fishing for it, five times. -- And so I wore this shirt on Tuesday at WWDC 2005, because Tuesday was the day of the Apple Design Awards. My previous company had won a number of these when I was running it, and so this award had a personal meaning to me. This was the first time my new company had entered, and I had high hopes. And, should I win, I wanted to be up on that stage smiling at the crowd while looking fine in my shirt that combined the best parts of London and Morocco. And here's where the story take a tragic turn, because, in their unknowable yet infallible wisdom, Apple suddenly decided the Design Awards would be on Wednesday. I found this out late Tuesday, and spent the day grousing to all and sundry about how this messed up my plans vis-a-vis the shirt. And everyone agreed that it was, in fact, a very nice shirt, but I should note that I didn't count these compliments towards my previously-mentioned total of five, because I was really fishing. For a moment I thought this mishap might end up for the best, because that night several of us nerds ended up at a bar, and in my mildly drunken state I started talking with a pretty lady about... well, I don't remember. Something, I'm sure. We'll call her Laurie Anderson, because she looks just like a young Laurie Anderson, and it'll be more evocative this way. I didn't exactly hit on Laurie, per se, but I will say I was glad I was wearing a nice shirt. It wasn't until the next night that one of her friends let me know, in a very friendly manner, that if I had intentions towards Ms. Anderson I might reconsider them, because she was, in fact, as interested in women as I was. Which was a nice thing to do, frankly, because it's good to know the boundaries of your relationship with someone right at the start -- I like it when women I'm talking to let it be known they have a steady boyfriend, for example, not because I can then cut bait and run, but because I can adjust my expectations and demeanor accordingly, and not embarrass myself or her. For example, you don't say, "I want to nibble your neck," to a woman with a boyfriend. Instead, you'd use the more coy, "If you didn't have a boyfriend, I would certainly be interested in your neck, vis-a-vis the nibbling thereof." See, it's all about delivery. But, upon reflection later that night, I felt I hadn't made very effective use of my shirt, and so it was with a heavy heart that I finally took it off, realizing that it had been sullied for naught. Actually, I was pretty drunk when I got back to the hotel, so all I remember is thinking how much effort it was to take clothes off and put them in a pile. -- It was the next afternoon (morning having been lost to C2H5OH), while I was putting on one of my t-shirts and again mentioning how unhappy I was to be thus dressed for the Design Awards, that Mike said, with that clarity of vision associated with the genius, "Hey, you could, like, go buy a new shirt." T2 and I looked at each other, and although it may have been that we were both still under the affects of chemicals, we instantly agreed this was why Mike was The Smart One. My day had a purpose now, and my step had a spring to it. I asked the concierge where I might find a fancy, fashion-forward shirt in downtown San Francisco. I figured this would be a slam-dunk. Here's a city whose culture ranks up there with New York and Paris. Here's a city where the rich scions of industry have nothing to do with their money but impress each other with their fancy baubles and ornaments. She pulled out a map and circled a block. "Here's a Nordstrom's!" Wrong, wrong, wrong. First off, Nordstrom's is NOT fashion-forward, even if they do try to sell orange shirts to golfers in the winter. Second, if I wanted to go to freaking Nordstrom's, I'd GO TO THE ORIGINAL ONE, RIGHT NEXT TO WHERE I LIVE. I'm in San Francisco. The city by the bay! Wow me with your culture! "There's a Saks on 3rd?" NO! No no no no no! You are not getting me. I want a boutique. "Well, Nordstrom's has different departments, they're kind of like boutiques..." No! How'd we get back here? Seriously, no! Then, suddenly, she saw. "Oh, there's a little place called Pink, you might check that out, if you're not freaked out by the name." Lady, I'm a true metrosexual. I'm not worried about my masculinity when I shop. You could tell me the store is called "Sweaty Men in a Bathhouse" and I'd go there if it had Moroccan cotton. T2 and I jumped into a cab and I immediately bought two "slim-fit" shirts from Thomas Pink, of London. The gentlemen who helped us were classy and helpful without the slightest trace of condescension, which was nice considering I came in wearing a WWDC polo shirt and T2 had what appeared to be an original 1970s "Dark Side of the Moon" T-shirt on. -- This year was the 10th anniversary of the Apple Design awards, and as such they decided to celebrate by gussing the whole event up, in an homage/parody of the Academy Awards. This struck me as entirely apropos, as I estimate to the 1,000 of us nerds who were there, this was our Academy Awards. This was our Nobel prize. This was our moment. At the start of the evening one of the high mucky-mucks of Developer Relations, who happens to be a very pretty lady, floated onstage in a drop-dead gorgeous gown. We'll call her Natasha Richardson because she looks like a Natasha's younger sister might. (Yes, I know Natasha already has a younger sister.) There's another fact you should know at this point, which is that nerds are not, inherently, asexual. We don't have much success with women, but that doesn't mean we are immune to their charms. Quite the opposite. We fall under such a spell that we are unable to function, and this renders us so unattractive that it creates a self-perpetuating cycle of desperate singlehood. So, in that first moment, 1,000 nerds fell in love with Natasha. Well, 996 nerd guys fell in love with her, and the four women in the crowd thought, "Wow, I wonder where she got that dress?" (Laurie Anderson was out partying elsewhere, but I think it's safe to assume she would have been crushing, too, had she been present.) As she started to speak a strange calm came over the crowd, as if we were cavemen seeing fire for the first time, or rats hearing a certain piper. There was also some guy in a tux on stage with her, I think. I don't know if anyone remembers. Maybe he was tall? Immediately my mind was no longer on whether I won the award, but on what I would say to her if I did. When the first award was given, the guy who won it kept whispering things to her as his product was described to the crowd, and I noticed that her lapel mic was sensitive enough that we could all hear what he was saying. This dashed somewhat my plans to hit on her on-stage, because everyone in the crowd would be able to hear me saying, "So, uh, want to ride in my car sometime, uh, assuming I move the laundry? I've been led to understand that it's, uh, pimp-de-pimp-pimp-pimp." -- When Natasha called out the name of our company for Best User Experience the four of us ran onstage, and I shook her hand as she handed me the cool glowing cube, hand-designed by Jonathan Ives. I think she said, "Congratulations," and if I recall I replied, coyly, "Thanks." Playing it smooth... way to go Wil. Don't tip your hand yet, old boy. Best to slip in under RADAR. Way under RADAR. Afterwards, the winners all had to come up front to sign a ton of forms in exchange for our phat loot. Natasha was there amongst us, and I recognized that, if ever I would had a chance, this was it. Time to shine! I strode up to her confidently. Ok, well, I didn't stride, really, because I pinched a nerve in my neck last month, and ever since I've had to walk kind of hunched over, with my head forward, as if I were a cro-magnan man, or possibly just suffered from osteoporosis. Check it out, ladies! I'm unevolved and/or very old! The problem is, if I stand up straight, the nerve gets pinched and I lose all feeling in my left arm, and the ability to move it. On the other hand, I knew being hunched over was unattractive, so I kept sort of bending my lower torso backwards to compensate for my bent-forward neck, the end effect being that I bobbed along like a pigeon when I walked. So I coo-cooed up to her and gave her my most winning wince (because I had tweaked the nerve in the bobbing motion). While I admit this isn't a word-for-word transcript, this is, I feel, an accurate depiction of what went down: Natasha: "Congratulations on your win!" Me: "Nice dress! So pretty! Where dress come from?" Natasha: "Oh, an assistant and I just ran out to Saks today to get it." [Note to four women in audience: question answered!] "Anyways, we're all very excited about Delicious Library..." Me: "Dress soft! Girl pretty!" Natasha: "Yes... uh, so, it's great to have strategic partners like Delicious Monster on our platform..." Me: "Dress for dancing. Pretty girl go dancing with me?" Natasha: "Um, I have to go over... there... now." A few moments later she had magically changed into an absolutely gorgeous set of matching coordinates to go to dinner. I overheard her say she was going to schmooze some developers. I kind of felt sorry for them, because they really didn't stand much of a chance. "Pretty girl want us port to Macintosh? Us make pretty girl happy!" -- The next night we celebrated our win in style, inviting everyone we met from the conference to get free drinks on us at Captain Eddie Rickenbacker's bar, within stumbling distance of Moscone center. Laurie and her entourage came with us, as well as various other new best friends I'd met at the conference. One guy we'd met while out carousing looked and acted almost exactly like Brad Pitt (circa Ocean's 11), so we actually called him Brad to make our lives easy. In fact, a lot of us got celebrity names; our crazy Australian friend was dubbed "Robert Downey, Jr," and it was a title that fit both his looks and his personality perfectly -- I don't think I ever saw him sober during the conference. (I was later dubbed "George Clooney," but I think at this point they were stretching the conceit.) Robert Downey and I had seen a couple of very pretty, very young German "au pairs" on our way to the bar, and had convinced them to come along because, well, partying with forty guys and one lesbian is only so much fun. I talked to them for a while at the bar, but it soon became clear they were much too young for me, so I grabbed an extra chair and called Brad Pitt over, and they quickly turned their full attention to him. My work done, I wandered outside with a couple drinks, and sat with Laurie while she smoked her "American Spirit"s. Laurie thought I might be down after getting passed over by the 20-year-olds. "You know, you're much cuter than Brad Pitt," she said, lying in that sweet motherly way that makes you feel good not because you believe it, but because you appreciate the sentiment behind the lie. "Look at you: you're smart, successful, handsome, and very intriguing." Her friend nodded agreement. And, seriously, whatever liberties I'm taking with the truth elsewhere in this tale, I'm not making this part up: "Also, you have totally great taste in shirts." Labels: mac community, stories posted by Wil Shipley at 9:22 PM 42 Comments: Anonymous Denis said... Woa the adventures of a man trying to get the woman & a shirt ? hmmm anywhom, try this link for a mens boutique. http://www.kulhmancompany.com But in the end Banana Republic seems best. June 12, 2005 8:58 PM Anonymous Adam Lindsay said... Great post. I had been half-wondering why you had that bag from Pink with you before the awards (but figured you had good taste in shirts). -adam, the 'student' wot landed next to you during lunch sunday, but didn't say much besides thanks for DL1.5 June 12, 2005 11:10 PM Anonymous Anonymous said... I do like tiny stores that have awesome shirts. I also like pink with blue stripes. June 13, 2005 12:13 AM Anonymous David Emery said... And people say that blogging won't change the world... ;-) Hey, if making delicious software falls through, you could always write a book! P.S. Congrats on the award! June 13, 2005 1:40 AM Anonymous Heiko said... :-) try http://www.hackett.com/ June 13, 2005 1:13 PM Anonymous Ben W. said... Funny how the story isn't really about shirts, yet all of the comments are. If you can bear to read it, I've plenty of advice on how to meet women. I really enjoyed the talk on Sunday, so if this is of any worth, you can consider it returning a favor. I'd love to hear from you if it is any use. It's much of the knowledge I have about girls, distilled into a single comment. Do with it what you will... Oh by the way, are you still going to put up the slides from Sunday? The First and Only Rule of Women: Women dislike any man who they can have under their thumb. That is, women don't want a man they can "have" or control. They want a man they can respect. Women get funny warm feelings around men they respect, men with confidence and power. If you "need" them, then you're showing weakness, which doesn't give them those funny feelings. So you just have to show them, subtly, that confidence they so enjoy. This means keeping your cool, even if this girl is the one and only. If you keep a mindset ranging from cool non-chalance to a warm inattention, or even something slightly more jerkish, women see this as confidence, which they like. I used to hate this, I even call it "the jackass effect," but it's the way nearly every girl thinks and feels, so you either play the game or get left out. This isn't as callous as it may at first sound. They just want you to be your own man, with or without them. Everything has a reason: Another important point, though much less important than the first, is that you can't just date girls willy -nilly and expect to find someone you really enjoy being with. Well, you can, at first, but after a while you'll progress beyond just wanting to be able to meet them, and you'll want to find someone you can spend time with and do things together with. There're lots of girls, but only a few that are interesting to you, a few that are attractive, and fewer that are both. Friends of your friends are likely to be good people as well. In order to find those you are most likely to be interested in, it is helpful to go do things in places where you might meet girls with shared interests. For music lovers, there's a "scene," for instance, frat-types congregate with sorority girls, and so on. It's up to you to find out where those girls are for you. The Road Ahead: Which leads me to my next point, the best way to meet girls is to not try to meet them. Rather, relax and go try out some hobbies on the side. It's much much easier to meet women in places where they don't naturally have their defenses up. At bars, or at a conference where they are working and the ration is like 19 to 1, women aren't likely to be receptive to anybody, short of Mr. Pitt himself. If you were to go out and take some class or activity or something on the side, you'll not only get a break from the things you work on intently most of the time, you'll put yourself in situations where you can casually meet women. Here too, the rule of the day is to regard them with disinterest. You may soon know some girls you'd like to date. I'd suggest you casually invite them to some neutral event for a date. Something you would both enjoy which would take the pressure off both of you. Here, the shared interest thing helps, but it may be better to ask her to something she might enjoy, but not yet know about. Then you can alway go for dinner later or something. The great thing about not being stupid: To get to where you want to be, you should basically just find and meet as many interesting women as possible. With each meeting, try to get to know them. Each time, you will screw up somehow, but with each meeting you'll also most definately learn something. This is the greatest thing about not being stupid. Any mistakes you make are temporary. Either you succeed in getting a date, or you learn about how to do better next time. Along with this comes the fact that things aren't always going to work out with every girl, even if you're confident, interesting, and generally do the right thing. In these cases all you can really do is move on and look forward to the day you meet another interesting girl. Which, if you're putting yourself out there, shouldn't be so long. For more, I highly recommend this site, which I think provides a pretty apt view of what's really going on in most relationships. June 13, 2005 5:56 PM Blogger Bill said... Dude-- I'll totally crack out a nice shirt next year if I can get a cool movie star name. b.bum (nice story. nice product. i'll be watching what comes next carefully.) June 13, 2005 8:00 PM Anonymous Daniel J. Wilson said... You might want to check out Alan Flusser's "Style and the Man: How and Where To Buy The Best Mens' Clothes". June 13, 2005 10:19 PM Anonymous Darrell Moore said... gee Wil, you're an ass... nice software, though. June 13, 2005 10:19 PM Blogger Wil Shipley said... Thanks for the advice on shirts and love, all. I should admit I'm not quite as vain or hopeless with women as I project in that story. It's a humor piece. -- Darrell: I'm sorry you find me an ass. I don't try to be. Possibly something I said has a different meaning to you than I tried to give it. I am glad you like my software, and that you distinguish between it and me. June 14, 2005 1:33 AM Anonymous Anonymous said... Is that really your pimpmobile in the picture Wil? I recognise that badge. So will women -- no wonder you're single. Loads Of Trouble, Usually Serious. Thomas Pink? Yeah. In London, when the mergers and acquisitions people are working an all-nighter, they allegedly send out a motorcycle messenger to fetch a green curry, and a fresh shirt from Thomas Pink. "London, on the other hand, has class and panache"? Hmmm. You could be right, but I never scraped off enough grime or soot to encounter either of those things. June 15, 2005 2:01 AM Anonymous Anonymous said... Wil, The lady on stage at the Apple Design Awards is (I believe), married, with kids. Just though you might want to know, in case you meet her again next year.. Oh, and in case this software thing doesn't work out, you might want to consider doing PJ O'Rourke's job. You have a talent for this. -jcr June 22, 2005 9:17 AM Anonymous Reggin said... Good Story. :thumsup: June 25, 2005 8:06 AM Anonymous reggin said... And by :thumsup: I mean June 25, 2005 8:06 AM Blogger accomplice said... Admittedly I came to your blog only out of a desire to condemn you for your encouragement to other nerds who believe that their plight with women is inherently different than other men. But instead, I find myself wanting to congratulate you on your award and for being among a handfull of americans who know the joys of Thomas Pink. When I worked in London, Pink was my staple for gifting the men in my life. Best of wishes. June 26, 2005 12:58 PM Anonymous Owlgarden said... If you ever visit Massachusetts (like for MacWorld??) (as if) go to Nantucket and check out Pollacks. Bobby, like me, knows his cotton. He always has great stuff from around the world which you (and not me) can afford. London might have nice shirts, but iTaly (sorry, I'm an Apple guy) truly blows away any other country for shirts. Again, bring money. Here are some shirt rules: 1) A nice shirt has tight threads and strong buttons. Don't buy a shirt if the buttons only have a couple a stiches holding them in. Look for extras on the tails. (a good thing!) 2) Generic fits do not mean BULGY. Even if you're steroidal a shirt should be slightly loose not skintight. Only get a shirt fitted if you've known your tailor for a couple years. Off the rack is ok, but don't skimp on neck size. Learn your size. Avoid polyester. 3) White to the face. If you need to make an impression, always wear a white shirt. I don't care what you think or what else you're wearing. if you don't know what's appropriate then White to the face. (This advice came from an old NYorker article... it is correct) 4) Soft cotton-no button down collar, Stiffer cotton- buttons.This is the difference between a "Brooks Brothers" and a "Gap" Oxford. The Gap cotton is too loose for button downs, I have Brooks Brothers shirts I've owned for 20 years. Of course, i don't wear ties except for a formal occasion. Always wear button downs with a tie. 5) If you're a poor student reading this- check out your local Vintage (not thrift) store for vintage shirts in good condition. By good condition I mean not Faded! By Vintage I mean 50 years old- there is no shirt from the 70's that looks right today. Learn to wash clothes correctly- your shirts will last WAY longer. Thanks Wil for writing this article and the the cool software -owlg June 26, 2005 9:26 PM Anonymous Anonymous said... Will, if you ever come over to the UK visit Saville Row and pick up a very 'nice' shirt - Ted Baker's a bit chav in the UK these days. All the best. June 30, 2005 3:36 AM Anonymous Bald guy from Laurie's entourage said... Funny I do remember the shirts. They are nice shirts but Yea I'm more impresses with the car. Laurie says hi. July 04, 2005 10:11 AM Anonymous Anonymous said... In the USA you might be able to get away with button down collars with a tie, it won't fly in Europe (where all the cool kids are). If you're ever in LA, look up RAMS in the valley. He'll custom fit you a shirt and ship it from Hong-Kong. You don't need a fancy name like Thomas Pink to look good in a pink shirt. Andrew UK July 08, 2005 6:12 AM Anonymous manuel said... altho i only understand 50% of yer stuff, it is such a delight to strole thru your writings... am happy i found this blog and weee! i also use a mac. whatever, i dont even know what soft you do, your blog is gift enough August 17, 2005 7:37 AM Blogger MinCat said... thank you for that spectacularly brilliant piece. you dont know HOW close i was to grabbing my blue editor's pencil and stabbing myself through the eye~ September 03, 2005 12:37 AM Anonymous Ramblero said... Hmmmmmmm.......I kinda just fell into site this after having done a search for Pollacks (of the Nantucket Pollacks). (see earlier post by Owlsomething. The Deb owes me a jacket, I having promised to buy her either a sax (she was an award winning saxophonist in her ute) or a keyboard for Valentine's Day whilst in Jackson Hole last year. (There's an excellent leather-goods place in Jackson Hole (underneath The Snake River Grill) but while they were very close...they weren't quite right.) I've gotten terribly picky about clothes in my advanced years. In fact, I've gotten just terribly picky about everything...food...cars...movies...music...wine...you name it. I've been looking for The Coat for...oh....maybe 15 years now. In any event, I wandered by Pollacks (of the Nantucket Pollacks) a week ago Sat (in the midst of a deluge. We, with straight face, told the local people throughout NE we had come back to see The Rains (screw The Fall Colors), the underlying theme of what turned out to be the Trip from Hell (thank you JetBlu & Hertz) just as they were closing...and they wouldn't be open until Monday...and of course I went into a frenzy; we were leaving Monday on the 1:30 ferry for Hyannisport...but I digress. So, at my urging, The Deb and I wander into Pollacks Monday morning after a late breakfast, and I must say, they do have very nice clothes...including The Coat...which The Deb, after fondling it for 30 seconds said "you must have this coat!" The Deb does not mince words when it comes to clothing, especially since she knows how picky I've become....and in spite of it's upsettingly high 4 figure price. Of course, I reluctantly agreed and now they already have my upsettingly high 4 figure stack of lucre...and I don't have The Coat. It, purportedly, was shipped, insured, but who really knows? I'm convinced it was flown out by the same JetBlu that secreted away my luggage on the in-bound flight and, with great glee, flew it all up and down the East Coast for days while my blood pressure spiked...that or Gabriella has pocketed the money and is on her way back to Eastern Europe to set up shop on my dime. OK....more than a dime. Anyway....Owl was right. Pollacks is a must....but leave with the goods in hand. Oh...and congrats on whatever it was for doing whatever you do on Macs....or whatever. (I worked for Apple for eons...right arm...) Ask me later about The Keyboard. October 25, 2005 3:14 PM Anonymous Nathan Henderson said... A clotheshorse is a drying rack for clothes, but also refers to someone somewhat obsessed with clothing. http://www.bartleby.com/61/90/C0419000.html November 19, 2005 8:43 PM Anonymous Jamie Thingbox said... Have you seen http://www.englishcut.com/ ? The blog of a Saville Row tailor that's getting mentioned a lot of late. January 17, 2006 6:26 AM Anonymous Anonymous said... You really need to check out a store called Sean. They have locations in New York, San Fran, Santa Monica and Boston. No website yet, but well worth looking into. They carry very sharp french shirts from one designer. I buy all my casual clothes there and get a lot of compliments. January 19, 2006 2:54 PM Anonymous bjh said... You mean the fact that she looked like Laurie Anderson didn't give you a clue? Maybe if she reminded you of Ellen DeGeneris? April 25, 2006 11:39 AM Blogger Wil Shipley said... Laurie Anderson is gay? April 25, 2006 1:56 PM Anonymous Sharon said... Wil Shipley: "Thanks for the advice on shirts and love, all. I should admit I'm not quite as vain or hopeless with women as I project in that story. It's a humor piece." I bet you're not... I have had more than one fantasy about you. June 26, 2006 9:01 AM Blogger Wil Shipley said... Sharon: R U F3male? July 19, 2006 3:16 PM Anonymous Sharon said... Yes! I am a female, are you surprised? July 29, 2006 10:07 AM Blogger Wil Shipley said... Sharon: Well, I must admit some of my other would-be paramours are not, in the strictest sense. July 29, 2006 10:24 AM Anonymous Anonymous said... Damn that was funny, Wil. August 29, 2006 1:46 PM Anonymous Anonymous said... Where do you shop in Seattle? December 06, 2006 9:03 PM Anonymous Lakh said... Next time you come over to London - take yourself shirt shopping. City boys love Paul Smith. http://www.paulsmith.com You can also see his fine work in LA, NY and everywhere in Japan. For the finer cut - Dunhill is a sure bet too. July 03, 2007 4:47 PM Anonymous Brian said... Random tidbit: In the 19th century and early 20th, pink was considered a boy’s color, blue a girl’s. The rationale being pink was lighter shade of red, and ‘aggressive,’ and blue was a more ‘passive’ color. July 03, 2007 8:27 PM Anonymous Graham said... I bet you shop at Blackbird! Maybe that's too hipster-ish, but I've gotten some great clothes there on sale. I got an APC overcoat for $170 marked down from $400. Barneys isn't bad either... I don't really like Ian or Zebra Club. Where do you get fancy dress shirts around here though besides Nordstrom? July 03, 2007 10:39 PM Anonymous Anonymous said... Thanks for the lovely story. If you're ever in Rome check out my favourite shirt maker. http://www.danroma.com/ Nathanael July 04, 2007 5:50 AM Blogger kate said... hey buddy, i have spent two hours reading your stories and looking through your site andyou are brilliant, ever thought about writing novels?? i strongly urge you to try. thanks for the giggles: ) July 12, 2007 3:52 PM Blogger Lorenzo said... Hey, look for Barba shirts from Naples. they're the best! Trust me, I'm Italian. Lorenzo http://www.fnv.co.it September 20, 2007 2:47 PM Blogger Brett said... George Clooney (aka Wil Shipley the Fashionista), Although I check your blog from time to time (especially the Cocoa programming posts) I hadn't noticed, or paid much attention to this entry until a few moments ago. There's a good chance that I had glanced at it in the past but moved on after realizing that it was a "Really Long, Pointless Story about a Shirt". I apologize if it was the title that stopped me, but it hadn't occurred to me exactly what famous, voguish shirt this tale was about. Today I scrolled down far enough through the entry to get a glimpse of the topic and recognized it at once. It is the rare attendee who will wear a striped pink designer button up at an event where the oldest, oversized, cola stained, WWDC/Apple/NeXT t-shirt is considered a status symbol. I was with you at Captain Eddie Rickenbacker's and remember you generously offering me a vodka tonic and that chair alongside the young German nannies. And I also remember wondering if you would get breakfast grease all over that shirt as I sat across from you at Denny's, at the early hours of the following morning, with notables such as Dean Cain, Fred Savage, and Robert Downey Jr. Fond memories. A whale is not a fish. Brad Pitt October 31, 2007 11:36 AM Anonymous John said... They should make a film of this. Now, if only someone had some ideas about who to cast in each of the roles... December 21, 2007 8:41 AM Anonymous Anonymous said... You should try an Anna Matuozzo shirt (advice from a Steve Winwood fan!) July 25, 2008 3:07 AM Post a Comment Link to comment
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XeNo Posted August 31, 2008 Content Count: 6465 Joined: 07/22/08 Status: Offline Share Posted August 31, 2008 I'm so cool I quote posts longer than longcat pictures. And now in breaking news: something long and pointless! Saturday, June 11 This is a Really Long, Pointless Story about a Shirt Let's start, and end, with the shirts. Dressing is a big deal to me -- ever since I (a) became single, and (b) lost 60 pounds, I've become something of a clotheshorse. I don't know the etymology of that expression, but it's such a neat word I wanted to use it. (Am I like a sawhorse, but for clothing instead of sawing?) At any rate, I've started shopping at the smallest, snottiest, exclusiviest (I know, not a word) little men's boutiques I can find. At first I was content merely having the guys at Nordstrom all know me by name (and call me when they got a new season's worth of fashions), but that was merely a gateway (like marijuana in the eyes of conservatives) to littler shops, where each individual thread in a garment has a value measured in dollars, not pennies. Sadly, these kinds of shirts require dry-cleaning, which requires that I make it to the dry-cleaner. This is something of an issue for me, because I'm wont to keep odd hours, and because when I'm awake I'm usually working (c.f. "being single, the suckiness inherent therein"). So, for the last week, in preparation for WWDC, I've been driving around with a big blue laundry bag full of dirty shirts in the passenger seat of my pimp ride. I should mention that, when I was a wee lad, I had visions of one day getting a pimp ride, so that when I passed pretty women on the side of the street who were forlornly walking somewhere, I could pull up and say, "Hey, mamasita, you want a ride?" I've since been informed that women find this, in fact, really creepy, so I've never actually done it, but I have to mention that every guy has a fantasy of one day doing this, even while admitting this fantasy is in direct opposition to any possible reality. [i should also mention that should I wish to Jackson out and hit on 12-year-old boys, instead of women, a pimp ride is the perfect way to go. The number of times I've had 12-year-old boys yell out "pimp-de-pimp-pimp-pimp!" to me when I drive by is surprisingly high, considering I had previously never heard the "pimp-de-pimp-pimp-pimp" call and have no idea what it means. But for 12-year-olds it's some kind of lingua franca.] At any rate, you can imagine how cool it is to drive by a pretty woman walking in the rain and think, "Hey, I should offer her a ride... wait, then she'd have to have my big bag of stinky shirts in her lap... that'd probably strike her as pretty strange... possibly even frightening." -- So it is that, when packing for WWDC 2005, I only took one good shirt with me. Mind you, this was a really good shirt. This shirt was made in London by a guy named Ted or James or some such, which to me lends instant credibility to it, because as much as I love (the blue states in) my country, when I think of America I think of rebels, I think of individualists, I think of can-do spirit and an indomitable dedication to individual freedoms and happiness. But I don't think, "nice shirts!" London, on the other hand, has class and panache, and Ted/James clearly was the latest in a long line of shirt-makers who had, for generations, been making shirts for discerning gentlemen, not carrying guns, and/or shipping off criminals to unsettled countries. Nor is the cotton in this shirt simply from normal cotton plants, oh no. It's grown someplace exotic, like Morocco, and it seems to carry a slight scent of the spices of distant lands on it. Bury your face in this shirt and you can almost hear Bogey whispering, "Listen, kid, this shirt is bigger than the both of us..." I've received about five or so unsolicited compliments in this shirt, which is five more than I have in any other shirt. Guys don't get complimented on shirts a lot, unless they say, "Hey, look at this shirt," which I admit I've done a couple times, but I'm saying I've been complimented on this shirt without fishing for it, five times. -- And so I wore this shirt on Tuesday at WWDC 2005, because Tuesday was the day of the Apple Design Awards. My previous company had won a number of these when I was running it, and so this award had a personal meaning to me. This was the first time my new company had entered, and I had high hopes. And, should I win, I wanted to be up on that stage smiling at the crowd while looking fine in my shirt that combined the best parts of London and Morocco. And here's where the story take a tragic turn, because, in their unknowable yet infallible wisdom, Apple suddenly decided the Design Awards would be on Wednesday. I found this out late Tuesday, and spent the day grousing to all and sundry about how this messed up my plans vis-a-vis the shirt. And everyone agreed that it was, in fact, a very nice shirt, but I should note that I didn't count these compliments towards my previously-mentioned total of five, because I was really fishing. For a moment I thought this mishap might end up for the best, because that night several of us nerds ended up at a bar, and in my mildly drunken state I started talking with a pretty lady about... well, I don't remember. Something, I'm sure. We'll call her Laurie Anderson, because she looks just like a young Laurie Anderson, and it'll be more evocative this way. I didn't exactly hit on Laurie, per se, but I will say I was glad I was wearing a nice shirt. It wasn't until the next night that one of her friends let me know, in a very friendly manner, that if I had intentions towards Ms. Anderson I might reconsider them, because she was, in fact, as interested in women as I was. Which was a nice thing to do, frankly, because it's good to know the boundaries of your relationship with someone right at the start -- I like it when women I'm talking to let it be known they have a steady boyfriend, for example, not because I can then cut bait and run, but because I can adjust my expectations and demeanor accordingly, and not embarrass myself or her. For example, you don't say, "I want to nibble your neck," to a woman with a boyfriend. Instead, you'd use the more coy, "If you didn't have a boyfriend, I would certainly be interested in your neck, vis-a-vis the nibbling thereof." See, it's all about delivery. But, upon reflection later that night, I felt I hadn't made very effective use of my shirt, and so it was with a heavy heart that I finally took it off, realizing that it had been sullied for naught. Actually, I was pretty drunk when I got back to the hotel, so all I remember is thinking how much effort it was to take clothes off and put them in a pile. -- It was the next afternoon (morning having been lost to C2H5OH), while I was putting on one of my t-shirts and again mentioning how unhappy I was to be thus dressed for the Design Awards, that Mike said, with that clarity of vision associated with the genius, "Hey, you could, like, go buy a new shirt." T2 and I looked at each other, and although it may have been that we were both still under the affects of chemicals, we instantly agreed this was why Mike was The Smart One. My day had a purpose now, and my step had a spring to it. I asked the concierge where I might find a fancy, fashion-forward shirt in downtown San Francisco. I figured this would be a slam-dunk. Here's a city whose culture ranks up there with New York and Paris. Here's a city where the rich scions of industry have nothing to do with their money but impress each other with their fancy baubles and ornaments. She pulled out a map and circled a block. "Here's a Nordstrom's!" Wrong, wrong, wrong. First off, Nordstrom's is NOT fashion-forward, even if they do try to sell orange shirts to golfers in the winter. Second, if I wanted to go to freaking Nordstrom's, I'd GO TO THE ORIGINAL ONE, RIGHT NEXT TO WHERE I LIVE. I'm in San Francisco. The city by the bay! Wow me with your culture! "There's a Saks on 3rd?" NO! No no no no no! You are not getting me. I want a boutique. "Well, Nordstrom's has different departments, they're kind of like boutiques..." No! How'd we get back here? Seriously, no! Then, suddenly, she saw. "Oh, there's a little place called Pink, you might check that out, if you're not freaked out by the name." Lady, I'm a true metrosexual. I'm not worried about my masculinity when I shop. You could tell me the store is called "Sweaty Men in a Bathhouse" and I'd go there if it had Moroccan cotton. T2 and I jumped into a cab and I immediately bought two "slim-fit" shirts from Thomas Pink, of London. The gentlemen who helped us were classy and helpful without the slightest trace of condescension, which was nice considering I came in wearing a WWDC polo shirt and T2 had what appeared to be an original 1970s "Dark Side of the Moon" T-shirt on. -- This year was the 10th anniversary of the Apple Design awards, and as such they decided to celebrate by gussing the whole event up, in an homage/parody of the Academy Awards. This struck me as entirely apropos, as I estimate to the 1,000 of us nerds who were there, this was our Academy Awards. This was our Nobel prize. This was our moment. At the start of the evening one of the high mucky-mucks of Developer Relations, who happens to be a very pretty lady, floated onstage in a drop-dead gorgeous gown. We'll call her Natasha Richardson because she looks like a Natasha's younger sister might. (Yes, I know Natasha already has a younger sister.) There's another fact you should know at this point, which is that nerds are not, inherently, asexual. We don't have much success with women, but that doesn't mean we are immune to their charms. Quite the opposite. We fall under such a spell that we are unable to function, and this renders us so unattractive that it creates a self-perpetuating cycle of desperate singlehood. So, in that first moment, 1,000 nerds fell in love with Natasha. Well, 996 nerd guys fell in love with her, and the four women in the crowd thought, "Wow, I wonder where she got that dress?" (Laurie Anderson was out partying elsewhere, but I think it's safe to assume she would have been crushing, too, had she been present.) As she started to speak a strange calm came over the crowd, as if we were cavemen seeing fire for the first time, or rats hearing a certain piper. There was also some guy in a tux on stage with her, I think. I don't know if anyone remembers. Maybe he was tall? Immediately my mind was no longer on whether I won the award, but on what I would say to her if I did. When the first award was given, the guy who won it kept whispering things to her as his product was described to the crowd, and I noticed that her lapel mic was sensitive enough that we could all hear what he was saying. This dashed somewhat my plans to hit on her on-stage, because everyone in the crowd would be able to hear me saying, "So, uh, want to ride in my car sometime, uh, assuming I move the laundry? I've been led to understand that it's, uh, pimp-de-pimp-pimp-pimp." -- When Natasha called out the name of our company for Best User Experience the four of us ran onstage, and I shook her hand as she handed me the cool glowing cube, hand-designed by Jonathan Ives. I think she said, "Congratulations," and if I recall I replied, coyly, "Thanks." Playing it smooth... way to go Wil. Don't tip your hand yet, old boy. Best to slip in under RADAR. Way under RADAR. Afterwards, the winners all had to come up front to sign a ton of forms in exchange for our phat loot. Natasha was there amongst us, and I recognized that, if ever I would had a chance, this was it. Time to shine! I strode up to her confidently. Ok, well, I didn't stride, really, because I pinched a nerve in my neck last month, and ever since I've had to walk kind of hunched over, with my head forward, as if I were a cro-magnan man, or possibly just suffered from osteoporosis. Check it out, ladies! I'm unevolved and/or very old! The problem is, if I stand up straight, the nerve gets pinched and I lose all feeling in my left arm, and the ability to move it. On the other hand, I knew being hunched over was unattractive, so I kept sort of bending my lower torso backwards to compensate for my bent-forward neck, the end effect being that I bobbed along like a pigeon when I walked. So I coo-cooed up to her and gave her my most winning wince (because I had tweaked the nerve in the bobbing motion). While I admit this isn't a word-for-word transcript, this is, I feel, an accurate depiction of what went down: Natasha: "Congratulations on your win!" Me: "Nice dress! So pretty! Where dress come from?" Natasha: "Oh, an assistant and I just ran out to Saks today to get it." [Note to four women in audience: question answered!] "Anyways, we're all very excited about Delicious Library..." Me: "Dress soft! Girl pretty!" Natasha: "Yes... uh, so, it's great to have strategic partners like Delicious Monster on our platform..." Me: "Dress for dancing. Pretty girl go dancing with me?" Natasha: "Um, I have to go over... there... now." A few moments later she had magically changed into an absolutely gorgeous set of matching coordinates to go to dinner. I overheard her say she was going to schmooze some developers. I kind of felt sorry for them, because they really didn't stand much of a chance. "Pretty girl want us port to Macintosh? Us make pretty girl happy!" -- The next night we celebrated our win in style, inviting everyone we met from the conference to get free drinks on us at Captain Eddie Rickenbacker's bar, within stumbling distance of Moscone center. Laurie and her entourage came with us, as well as various other new best friends I'd met at the conference. One guy we'd met while out carousing looked and acted almost exactly like Brad Pitt (circa Ocean's 11), so we actually called him Brad to make our lives easy. In fact, a lot of us got celebrity names; our crazy Australian friend was dubbed "Robert Downey, Jr," and it was a title that fit both his looks and his personality perfectly -- I don't think I ever saw him sober during the conference. (I was later dubbed "George Clooney," but I think at this point they were stretching the conceit.) Robert Downey and I had seen a couple of very pretty, very young German "au pairs" on our way to the bar, and had convinced them to come along because, well, partying with forty guys and one lesbian is only so much fun. I talked to them for a while at the bar, but it soon became clear they were much too young for me, so I grabbed an extra chair and called Brad Pitt over, and they quickly turned their full attention to him. My work done, I wandered outside with a couple drinks, and sat with Laurie while she smoked her "American Spirit"s. Laurie thought I might be down after getting passed over by the 20-year-olds. "You know, you're much cuter than Brad Pitt," she said, lying in that sweet motherly way that makes you feel good not because you believe it, but because you appreciate the sentiment behind the lie. "Look at you: you're smart, successful, handsome, and very intriguing." Her friend nodded agreement. And, seriously, whatever liberties I'm taking with the truth elsewhere in this tale, I'm not making this part up: "Also, you have totally great taste in shirts." Labels: mac community, stories posted by Wil Shipley at 9:22 PM 42 Comments: Anonymous Denis said... Woa the adventures of a man trying to get the woman & a shirt ? hmmm anywhom, try this link for a mens boutique. http://www.kulhmancompany.com But in the end Banana Republic seems best. June 12, 2005 8:58 PM Anonymous Adam Lindsay said... Great post. I had been half-wondering why you had that bag from Pink with you before the awards (but figured you had good taste in shirts). -adam, the 'student' wot landed next to you during lunch sunday, but didn't say much besides thanks for DL1.5 June 12, 2005 11:10 PM Anonymous Anonymous said... I do like tiny stores that have awesome shirts. I also like pink with blue stripes. June 13, 2005 12:13 AM Anonymous David Emery said... And people say that blogging won't change the world... ;-) Hey, if making delicious software falls through, you could always write a book! P.S. Congrats on the award! June 13, 2005 1:40 AM Anonymous Heiko said... :-) try http://www.hackett.com/ June 13, 2005 1:13 PM Anonymous Ben W. said... Funny how the story isn't really about shirts, yet all of the comments are. If you can bear to read it, I've plenty of advice on how to meet women. I really enjoyed the talk on Sunday, so if this is of any worth, you can consider it returning a favor. I'd love to hear from you if it is any use. It's much of the knowledge I have about girls, distilled into a single comment. Do with it what you will... Oh by the way, are you still going to put up the slides from Sunday? The First and Only Rule of Women: Women dislike any man who they can have under their thumb. That is, women don't want a man they can "have" or control. They want a man they can respect. Women get funny warm feelings around men they respect, men with confidence and power. If you "need" them, then you're showing weakness, which doesn't give them those funny feelings. So you just have to show them, subtly, that confidence they so enjoy. This means keeping your cool, even if this girl is the one and only. If you keep a mindset ranging from cool non-chalance to a warm inattention, or even something slightly more jerkish, women see this as confidence, which they like. I used to hate this, I even call it "the jackass effect," but it's the way nearly every girl thinks and feels, so you either play the game or get left out. This isn't as callous as it may at first sound. They just want you to be your own man, with or without them. Everything has a reason: Another important point, though much less important than the first, is that you can't just date girls willy -nilly and expect to find someone you really enjoy being with. Well, you can, at first, but after a while you'll progress beyond just wanting to be able to meet them, and you'll want to find someone you can spend time with and do things together with. There're lots of girls, but only a few that are interesting to you, a few that are attractive, and fewer that are both. Friends of your friends are likely to be good people as well. In order to find those you are most likely to be interested in, it is helpful to go do things in places where you might meet girls with shared interests. For music lovers, there's a "scene," for instance, frat-types congregate with sorority girls, and so on. It's up to you to find out where those girls are for you. The Road Ahead: Which leads me to my next point, the best way to meet girls is to not try to meet them. Rather, relax and go try out some hobbies on the side. It's much much easier to meet women in places where they don't naturally have their defenses up. At bars, or at a conference where they are working and the ration is like 19 to 1, women aren't likely to be receptive to anybody, short of Mr. Pitt himself. If you were to go out and take some class or activity or something on the side, you'll not only get a break from the things you work on intently most of the time, you'll put yourself in situations where you can casually meet women. Here too, the rule of the day is to regard them with disinterest. You may soon know some girls you'd like to date. I'd suggest you casually invite them to some neutral event for a date. Something you would both enjoy which would take the pressure off both of you. Here, the shared interest thing helps, but it may be better to ask her to something she might enjoy, but not yet know about. Then you can alway go for dinner later or something. The great thing about not being stupid: To get to where you want to be, you should basically just find and meet as many interesting women as possible. With each meeting, try to get to know them. Each time, you will screw up somehow, but with each meeting you'll also most definately learn something. This is the greatest thing about not being stupid. Any mistakes you make are temporary. Either you succeed in getting a date, or you learn about how to do better next time. Along with this comes the fact that things aren't always going to work out with every girl, even if you're confident, interesting, and generally do the right thing. In these cases all you can really do is move on and look forward to the day you meet another interesting girl. Which, if you're putting yourself out there, shouldn't be so long. For more, I highly recommend this site, which I think provides a pretty apt view of what's really going on in most relationships. June 13, 2005 5:56 PM Blogger Bill said... Dude-- I'll totally crack out a nice shirt next year if I can get a cool movie star name. b.bum (nice story. nice product. i'll be watching what comes next carefully.) June 13, 2005 8:00 PM Anonymous Daniel J. Wilson said... You might want to check out Alan Flusser's "Style and the Man: How and Where To Buy The Best Mens' Clothes". June 13, 2005 10:19 PM Anonymous Darrell Moore said... gee Wil, you're an ass... nice software, though. June 13, 2005 10:19 PM Blogger Wil Shipley said... Thanks for the advice on shirts and love, all. I should admit I'm not quite as vain or hopeless with women as I project in that story. It's a humor piece. -- Darrell: I'm sorry you find me an ass. I don't try to be. Possibly something I said has a different meaning to you than I tried to give it. I am glad you like my software, and that you distinguish between it and me. June 14, 2005 1:33 AM Anonymous Anonymous said... Is that really your pimpmobile in the picture Wil? I recognise that badge. So will women -- no wonder you're single. Loads Of Trouble, Usually Serious. Thomas Pink? Yeah. In London, when the mergers and acquisitions people are working an all-nighter, they allegedly send out a motorcycle messenger to fetch a green curry, and a fresh shirt from Thomas Pink. "London, on the other hand, has class and panache"? Hmmm. You could be right, but I never scraped off enough grime or soot to encounter either of those things. June 15, 2005 2:01 AM Anonymous Anonymous said... Wil, The lady on stage at the Apple Design Awards is (I believe), married, with kids. Just though you might want to know, in case you meet her again next year.. Oh, and in case this software thing doesn't work out, you might want to consider doing PJ O'Rourke's job. You have a talent for this. -jcr June 22, 2005 9:17 AM Anonymous Reggin said... Good Story. :thumsup: June 25, 2005 8:06 AM Anonymous reggin said... And by :thumsup: I mean June 25, 2005 8:06 AM Blogger accomplice said... Admittedly I came to your blog only out of a desire to condemn you for your encouragement to other nerds who believe that their plight with women is inherently different than other men. But instead, I find myself wanting to congratulate you on your award and for being among a handfull of americans who know the joys of Thomas Pink. When I worked in London, Pink was my staple for gifting the men in my life. Best of wishes. June 26, 2005 12:58 PM Anonymous Owlgarden said... If you ever visit Massachusetts (like for MacWorld??) (as if) go to Nantucket and check out Pollacks. Bobby, like me, knows his cotton. He always has great stuff from around the world which you (and not me) can afford. London might have nice shirts, but iTaly (sorry, I'm an Apple guy) truly blows away any other country for shirts. Again, bring money. Here are some shirt rules: 1) A nice shirt has tight threads and strong buttons. Don't buy a shirt if the buttons only have a couple a stiches holding them in. Look for extras on the tails. (a good thing!) 2) Generic fits do not mean BULGY. Even if you're steroidal a shirt should be slightly loose not skintight. Only get a shirt fitted if you've known your tailor for a couple years. Off the rack is ok, but don't skimp on neck size. Learn your size. Avoid polyester. 3) White to the face. If you need to make an impression, always wear a white shirt. I don't care what you think or what else you're wearing. if you don't know what's appropriate then White to the face. (This advice came from an old NYorker article... it is correct) 4) Soft cotton-no button down collar, Stiffer cotton- buttons.This is the difference between a "Brooks Brothers" and a "Gap" Oxford. The Gap cotton is too loose for button downs, I have Brooks Brothers shirts I've owned for 20 years. Of course, i don't wear ties except for a formal occasion. Always wear button downs with a tie. 5) If you're a poor student reading this- check out your local Vintage (not thrift) store for vintage shirts in good condition. By good condition I mean not Faded! By Vintage I mean 50 years old- there is no shirt from the 70's that looks right today. Learn to wash clothes correctly- your shirts will last WAY longer. Thanks Wil for writing this article and the the cool software -owlg June 26, 2005 9:26 PM Anonymous Anonymous said... Will, if you ever come over to the UK visit Saville Row and pick up a very 'nice' shirt - Ted Baker's a bit chav in the UK these days. All the best. June 30, 2005 3:36 AM Anonymous Bald guy from Laurie's entourage said... Funny I do remember the shirts. They are nice shirts but Yea I'm more impresses with the car. Laurie says hi. July 04, 2005 10:11 AM Anonymous Anonymous said... In the USA you might be able to get away with button down collars with a tie, it won't fly in Europe (where all the cool kids are). If you're ever in LA, look up RAMS in the valley. He'll custom fit you a shirt and ship it from Hong-Kong. You don't need a fancy name like Thomas Pink to look good in a pink shirt. Andrew UK July 08, 2005 6:12 AM Anonymous manuel said... altho i only understand 50% of yer stuff, it is such a delight to strole thru your writings... am happy i found this blog and weee! i also use a mac. whatever, i dont even know what soft you do, your blog is gift enough August 17, 2005 7:37 AM Blogger MinCat said... thank you for that spectacularly brilliant piece. you dont know HOW close i was to grabbing my blue editor's pencil and stabbing myself through the eye~ September 03, 2005 12:37 AM Anonymous Ramblero said... Hmmmmmmm.......I kinda just fell into site this after having done a search for Pollacks (of the Nantucket Pollacks). (see earlier post by Owlsomething. The Deb owes me a jacket, I having promised to buy her either a sax (she was an award winning saxophonist in her ute) or a keyboard for Valentine's Day whilst in Jackson Hole last year. (There's an excellent leather-goods place in Jackson Hole (underneath The Snake River Grill) but while they were very close...they weren't quite right.) I've gotten terribly picky about clothes in my advanced years. In fact, I've gotten just terribly picky about everything...food...cars...movies...music...wine...you name it. I've been looking for The Coat for...oh....maybe 15 years now. In any event, I wandered by Pollacks (of the Nantucket Pollacks) a week ago Sat (in the midst of a deluge. We, with straight face, told the local people throughout NE we had come back to see The Rains (screw The Fall Colors), the underlying theme of what turned out to be the Trip from Hell (thank you JetBlu & Hertz) just as they were closing...and they wouldn't be open until Monday...and of course I went into a frenzy; we were leaving Monday on the 1:30 ferry for Hyannisport...but I digress. So, at my urging, The Deb and I wander into Pollacks Monday morning after a late breakfast, and I must say, they do have very nice clothes...including The Coat...which The Deb, after fondling it for 30 seconds said "you must have this coat!" The Deb does not mince words when it comes to clothing, especially since she knows how picky I've become....and in spite of it's upsettingly high 4 figure price. Of course, I reluctantly agreed and now they already have my upsettingly high 4 figure stack of lucre...and I don't have The Coat. It, purportedly, was shipped, insured, but who really knows? I'm convinced it was flown out by the same JetBlu that secreted away my luggage on the in-bound flight and, with great glee, flew it all up and down the East Coast for days while my blood pressure spiked...that or Gabriella has pocketed the money and is on her way back to Eastern Europe to set up shop on my dime. OK....more than a dime. Anyway....Owl was right. Pollacks is a must....but leave with the goods in hand. Oh...and congrats on whatever it was for doing whatever you do on Macs....or whatever. (I worked for Apple for eons...right arm...) Ask me later about The Keyboard. October 25, 2005 3:14 PM Anonymous Nathan Henderson said... A clotheshorse is a drying rack for clothes, but also refers to someone somewhat obsessed with clothing. http://www.bartleby.com/61/90/C0419000.html November 19, 2005 8:43 PM Anonymous Jamie Thingbox said... Have you seen http://www.englishcut.com/ ? The blog of a Saville Row tailor that's getting mentioned a lot of late. January 17, 2006 6:26 AM Anonymous Anonymous said... You really need to check out a store called Sean. They have locations in New York, San Fran, Santa Monica and Boston. No website yet, but well worth looking into. They carry very sharp french shirts from one designer. I buy all my casual clothes there and get a lot of compliments. January 19, 2006 2:54 PM Anonymous bjh said... You mean the fact that she looked like Laurie Anderson didn't give you a clue? Maybe if she reminded you of Ellen DeGeneris? April 25, 2006 11:39 AM Blogger Wil Shipley said... Laurie Anderson is gay? April 25, 2006 1:56 PM Anonymous Sharon said... Wil Shipley: "Thanks for the advice on shirts and love, all. I should admit I'm not quite as vain or hopeless with women as I project in that story. It's a humor piece." I bet you're not... I have had more than one fantasy about you. June 26, 2006 9:01 AM Blogger Wil Shipley said... Sharon: R U F3male? July 19, 2006 3:16 PM Anonymous Sharon said... Yes! I am a female, are you surprised? July 29, 2006 10:07 AM Blogger Wil Shipley said... Sharon: Well, I must admit some of my other would-be paramours are not, in the strictest sense. July 29, 2006 10:24 AM Anonymous Anonymous said... Damn that was funny, Wil. August 29, 2006 1:46 PM Anonymous Anonymous said... Where do you shop in Seattle? December 06, 2006 9:03 PM Anonymous Lakh said... Next time you come over to London - take yourself shirt shopping. City boys love Paul Smith. http://www.paulsmith.com You can also see his fine work in LA, NY and everywhere in Japan. For the finer cut - Dunhill is a sure bet too. July 03, 2007 4:47 PM Anonymous Brian said... Random tidbit: In the 19th century and early 20th, pink was considered a boy’s color, blue a girl’s. The rationale being pink was lighter shade of red, and ‘aggressive,’ and blue was a more ‘passive’ color. July 03, 2007 8:27 PM Anonymous Graham said... I bet you shop at Blackbird! Maybe that's too hipster-ish, but I've gotten some great clothes there on sale. I got an APC overcoat for $170 marked down from $400. Barneys isn't bad either... I don't really like Ian or Zebra Club. Where do you get fancy dress shirts around here though besides Nordstrom? July 03, 2007 10:39 PM Anonymous Anonymous said... Thanks for the lovely story. If you're ever in Rome check out my favourite shirt maker. http://www.danroma.com/ Nathanael July 04, 2007 5:50 AM Blogger kate said... hey buddy, i have spent two hours reading your stories and looking through your site andyou are brilliant, ever thought about writing novels?? i strongly urge you to try. thanks for the giggles: ) July 12, 2007 3:52 PM Blogger Lorenzo said... Hey, look for Barba shirts from Naples. they're the best! Trust me, I'm Italian. Lorenzo http://www.fnv.co.it September 20, 2007 2:47 PM Blogger Brett said... George Clooney (aka Wil Shipley the Fashionista), Although I check your blog from time to time (especially the Cocoa programming posts) I hadn't noticed, or paid much attention to this entry until a few moments ago. There's a good chance that I had glanced at it in the past but moved on after realizing that it was a "Really Long, Pointless Story about a Shirt". I apologize if it was the title that stopped me, but it hadn't occurred to me exactly what famous, voguish shirt this tale was about. Today I scrolled down far enough through the entry to get a glimpse of the topic and recognized it at once. It is the rare attendee who will wear a striped pink designer button up at an event where the oldest, oversized, cola stained, WWDC/Apple/NeXT t-shirt is considered a status symbol. I was with you at Captain Eddie Rickenbacker's and remember you generously offering me a vodka tonic and that chair alongside the young German nannies. And I also remember wondering if you would get breakfast grease all over that shirt as I sat across from you at Denny's, at the early hours of the following morning, with notables such as Dean Cain, Fred Savage, and Robert Downey Jr. Fond memories. A whale is not a fish. Brad Pitt October 31, 2007 11:36 AM Anonymous John said... They should make a film of this. Now, if only someone had some ideas about who to cast in each of the roles... December 21, 2007 8:41 AM Anonymous Anonymous said... You should try an Anna Matuozzo shirt (advice from a Steve Winwood fan!) July 25, 2008 3:07 AM Post a Comment Link to comment
Robfal Posted August 31, 2008 Content Count: 578 Joined: 06/30/08 Status: Offline Share Posted August 31, 2008 SOMEONE POST TEH LONGCAT NAO! Link to comment
GrayFox Posted August 31, 2008 Content Count: 2433 Joined: 06/20/08 Status: Offline Share Posted August 31, 2008 I was bored gimme a break. LOL good one. -.- (While debating and discussion is fine, we will not tolerate rudeness, insulting posts, personal attacks or worthless inflammatory posts. Our decision is final in these matters.) oops triple posting. my bad sorry. TL;DR! Link to comment
raven maniac Posted August 31, 2008 Content Count: 2488 Joined: 10/08/07 Status: Offline Share Posted August 31, 2008 And now in breaking news: something long and pointless! Saturday, June 11 This is a Really Long, Pointless Story about a Shirt Let's start, and end, with the shirts. Dressing is a big deal to me -- ever since I (a) became single, and (b) lost 60 pounds, I've become something of a clotheshorse. I don't know the etymology of that expression, but it's such a neat word I wanted to use it. (Am I like a sawhorse, but for clothing instead of sawing?) At any rate, I've started shopping at the smallest, snottiest, exclusiviest (I know, not a word) little men's boutiques I can find. At first I was content merely having the guys at Nordstrom all know me by name (and call me when they got a new season's worth of fashions), but that was merely a gateway (like marijuana in the eyes of conservatives) to littler shops, where each individual thread in a garment has a value measured in dollars, not pennies. Sadly, these kinds of shirts require dry-cleaning, which requires that I make it to the dry-cleaner. This is something of an issue for me, because I'm wont to keep odd hours, and because when I'm awake I'm usually working (c.f. "being single, the suckiness inherent therein"). So, for the last week, in preparation for WWDC, I've been driving around with a big blue laundry bag full of dirty shirts in the passenger seat of my pimp ride. I should mention that, when I was a wee lad, I had visions of one day getting a pimp ride, so that when I passed pretty women on the side of the street who were forlornly walking somewhere, I could pull up and say, "Hey, mamasita, you want a ride?" I've since been informed that women find this, in fact, really creepy, so I've never actually done it, but I have to mention that every guy has a fantasy of one day doing this, even while admitting this fantasy is in direct opposition to any possible reality. [i should also mention that should I wish to Jackson out and hit on 12-year-old boys, instead of women, a pimp ride is the perfect way to go. The number of times I've had 12-year-old boys yell out "pimp-de-pimp-pimp-pimp!" to me when I drive by is surprisingly high, considering I had previously never heard the "pimp-de-pimp-pimp-pimp" call and have no idea what it means. But for 12-year-olds it's some kind of lingua franca.] At any rate, you can imagine how cool it is to drive by a pretty woman walking in the rain and think, "Hey, I should offer her a ride... wait, then she'd have to have my big bag of stinky shirts in her lap... that'd probably strike her as pretty strange... possibly even frightening." -- So it is that, when packing for WWDC 2005, I only took one good shirt with me. Mind you, this was a really good shirt. This shirt was made in London by a guy named Ted or James or some such, which to me lends instant credibility to it, because as much as I love (the blue states in) my country, when I think of America I think of rebels, I think of individualists, I think of can-do spirit and an indomitable dedication to individual freedoms and happiness. But I don't think, "nice shirts!" London, on the other hand, has class and panache, and Ted/James clearly was the latest in a long line of shirt-makers who had, for generations, been making shirts for discerning gentlemen, not carrying guns, and/or shipping off criminals to unsettled countries. Nor is the cotton in this shirt simply from normal cotton plants, oh no. It's grown someplace exotic, like Morocco, and it seems to carry a slight scent of the spices of distant lands on it. Bury your face in this shirt and you can almost hear Bogey whispering, "Listen, kid, this shirt is bigger than the both of us..." I've received about five or so unsolicited compliments in this shirt, which is five more than I have in any other shirt. Guys don't get complimented on shirts a lot, unless they say, "Hey, look at this shirt," which I admit I've done a couple times, but I'm saying I've been complimented on this shirt without fishing for it, five times. -- And so I wore this shirt on Tuesday at WWDC 2005, because Tuesday was the day of the Apple Design Awards. My previous company had won a number of these when I was running it, and so this award had a personal meaning to me. This was the first time my new company had entered, and I had high hopes. And, should I win, I wanted to be up on that stage smiling at the crowd while looking fine in my shirt that combined the best parts of London and Morocco. And here's where the story take a tragic turn, because, in their unknowable yet infallible wisdom, Apple suddenly decided the Design Awards would be on Wednesday. I found this out late Tuesday, and spent the day grousing to all and sundry about how this messed up my plans vis-a-vis the shirt. And everyone agreed that it was, in fact, a very nice shirt, but I should note that I didn't count these compliments towards my previously-mentioned total of five, because I was really fishing. For a moment I thought this mishap might end up for the best, because that night several of us nerds ended up at a bar, and in my mildly drunken state I started talking with a pretty lady about... well, I don't remember. Something, I'm sure. We'll call her Laurie Anderson, because she looks just like a young Laurie Anderson, and it'll be more evocative this way. I didn't exactly hit on Laurie, per se, but I will say I was glad I was wearing a nice shirt. It wasn't until the next night that one of her friends let me know, in a very friendly manner, that if I had intentions towards Ms. Anderson I might reconsider them, because she was, in fact, as interested in women as I was. Which was a nice thing to do, frankly, because it's good to know the boundaries of your relationship with someone right at the start -- I like it when women I'm talking to let it be known they have a steady boyfriend, for example, not because I can then cut bait and run, but because I can adjust my expectations and demeanor accordingly, and not embarrass myself or her. For example, you don't say, "I want to nibble your neck," to a woman with a boyfriend. Instead, you'd use the more coy, "If you didn't have a boyfriend, I would certainly be interested in your neck, vis-a-vis the nibbling thereof." See, it's all about delivery. But, upon reflection later that night, I felt I hadn't made very effective use of my shirt, and so it was with a heavy heart that I finally took it off, realizing that it had been sullied for naught. Actually, I was pretty drunk when I got back to the hotel, so all I remember is thinking how much effort it was to take clothes off and put them in a pile. -- It was the next afternoon (morning having been lost to C2H5OH), while I was putting on one of my t-shirts and again mentioning how unhappy I was to be thus dressed for the Design Awards, that Mike said, with that clarity of vision associated with the genius, "Hey, you could, like, go buy a new shirt." T2 and I looked at each other, and although it may have been that we were both still under the affects of chemicals, we instantly agreed this was why Mike was The Smart One. My day had a purpose now, and my step had a spring to it. I asked the concierge where I might find a fancy, fashion-forward shirt in downtown San Francisco. I figured this would be a slam-dunk. Here's a city whose culture ranks up there with New York and Paris. Here's a city where the rich scions of industry have nothing to do with their money but impress each other with their fancy baubles and ornaments. She pulled out a map and circled a block. "Here's a Nordstrom's!" Wrong, wrong, wrong. First off, Nordstrom's is NOT fashion-forward, even if they do try to sell orange shirts to golfers in the winter. Second, if I wanted to go to freaking Nordstrom's, I'd GO TO THE ORIGINAL ONE, RIGHT NEXT TO WHERE I LIVE. I'm in San Francisco. The city by the bay! Wow me with your culture! "There's a Saks on 3rd?" NO! No no no no no! You are not getting me. I want a boutique. "Well, Nordstrom's has different departments, they're kind of like boutiques..." No! How'd we get back here? Seriously, no! Then, suddenly, she saw. "Oh, there's a little place called Pink, you might check that out, if you're not freaked out by the name." Lady, I'm a true metrosexual. I'm not worried about my masculinity when I shop. You could tell me the store is called "Sweaty Men in a Bathhouse" and I'd go there if it had Moroccan cotton. T2 and I jumped into a cab and I immediately bought two "slim-fit" shirts from Thomas Pink, of London. The gentlemen who helped us were classy and helpful without the slightest trace of condescension, which was nice considering I came in wearing a WWDC polo shirt and T2 had what appeared to be an original 1970s "Dark Side of the Moon" T-shirt on. -- This year was the 10th anniversary of the Apple Design awards, and as such they decided to celebrate by gussing the whole event up, in an homage/parody of the Academy Awards. This struck me as entirely apropos, as I estimate to the 1,000 of us nerds who were there, this was our Academy Awards. This was our Nobel prize. This was our moment. At the start of the evening one of the high mucky-mucks of Developer Relations, who happens to be a very pretty lady, floated onstage in a drop-dead gorgeous gown. We'll call her Natasha Richardson because she looks like a Natasha's younger sister might. (Yes, I know Natasha already has a younger sister.) There's another fact you should know at this point, which is that nerds are not, inherently, asexual. We don't have much success with women, but that doesn't mean we are immune to their charms. Quite the opposite. We fall under such a spell that we are unable to function, and this renders us so unattractive that it creates a self-perpetuating cycle of desperate singlehood. So, in that first moment, 1,000 nerds fell in love with Natasha. Well, 996 nerd guys fell in love with her, and the four women in the crowd thought, "Wow, I wonder where she got that dress?" (Laurie Anderson was out partying elsewhere, but I think it's safe to assume she would have been crushing, too, had she been present.) As she started to speak a strange calm came over the crowd, as if we were cavemen seeing fire for the first time, or rats hearing a certain piper. There was also some guy in a tux on stage with her, I think. I don't know if anyone remembers. Maybe he was tall? Immediately my mind was no longer on whether I won the award, but on what I would say to her if I did. When the first award was given, the guy who won it kept whispering things to her as his product was described to the crowd, and I noticed that her lapel mic was sensitive enough that we could all hear what he was saying. This dashed somewhat my plans to hit on her on-stage, because everyone in the crowd would be able to hear me saying, "So, uh, want to ride in my car sometime, uh, assuming I move the laundry? I've been led to understand that it's, uh, pimp-de-pimp-pimp-pimp." -- When Natasha called out the name of our company for Best User Experience the four of us ran onstage, and I shook her hand as she handed me the cool glowing cube, hand-designed by Jonathan Ives. I think she said, "Congratulations," and if I recall I replied, coyly, "Thanks." Playing it smooth... way to go Wil. Don't tip your hand yet, old boy. Best to slip in under RADAR. Way under RADAR. Afterwards, the winners all had to come up front to sign a ton of forms in exchange for our phat loot. Natasha was there amongst us, and I recognized that, if ever I would had a chance, this was it. Time to shine! I strode up to her confidently. Ok, well, I didn't stride, really, because I pinched a nerve in my neck last month, and ever since I've had to walk kind of hunched over, with my head forward, as if I were a cro-magnan man, or possibly just suffered from osteoporosis. Check it out, ladies! I'm unevolved and/or very old! The problem is, if I stand up straight, the nerve gets pinched and I lose all feeling in my left arm, and the ability to move it. On the other hand, I knew being hunched over was unattractive, so I kept sort of bending my lower torso backwards to compensate for my bent-forward neck, the end effect being that I bobbed along like a pigeon when I walked. So I coo-cooed up to her and gave her my most winning wince (because I had tweaked the nerve in the bobbing motion). While I admit this isn't a word-for-word transcript, this is, I feel, an accurate depiction of what went down: Natasha: "Congratulations on your win!" Me: "Nice dress! So pretty! Where dress come from?" Natasha: "Oh, an assistant and I just ran out to Saks today to get it." [Note to four women in audience: question answered!] "Anyways, we're all very excited about Delicious Library..." Me: "Dress soft! Girl pretty!" Natasha: "Yes... uh, so, it's great to have strategic partners like Delicious Monster on our platform..." Me: "Dress for dancing. Pretty girl go dancing with me?" Natasha: "Um, I have to go over... there... now." A few moments later she had magically changed into an absolutely gorgeous set of matching coordinates to go to dinner. I overheard her say she was going to schmooze some developers. I kind of felt sorry for them, because they really didn't stand much of a chance. "Pretty girl want us port to Macintosh? Us make pretty girl happy!" -- The next night we celebrated our win in style, inviting everyone we met from the conference to get free drinks on us at Captain Eddie Rickenbacker's bar, within stumbling distance of Moscone center. Laurie and her entourage came with us, as well as various other new best friends I'd met at the conference. One guy we'd met while out carousing looked and acted almost exactly like Brad Pitt (circa Ocean's 11), so we actually called him Brad to make our lives easy. In fact, a lot of us got celebrity names; our crazy Australian friend was dubbed "Robert Downey, Jr," and it was a title that fit both his looks and his personality perfectly -- I don't think I ever saw him sober during the conference. (I was later dubbed "George Clooney," but I think at this point they were stretching the conceit.) Robert Downey and I had seen a couple of very pretty, very young German "au pairs" on our way to the bar, and had convinced them to come along because, well, partying with forty guys and one lesbian is only so much fun. I talked to them for a while at the bar, but it soon became clear they were much too young for me, so I grabbed an extra chair and called Brad Pitt over, and they quickly turned their full attention to him. My work done, I wandered outside with a couple drinks, and sat with Laurie while she smoked her "American Spirit"s. Laurie thought I might be down after getting passed over by the 20-year-olds. "You know, you're much cuter than Brad Pitt," she said, lying in that sweet motherly way that makes you feel good not because you believe it, but because you appreciate the sentiment behind the lie. "Look at you: you're smart, successful, handsome, and very intriguing." Her friend nodded agreement. And, seriously, whatever liberties I'm taking with the truth elsewhere in this tale, I'm not making this part up: "Also, you have totally great taste in shirts." Labels: mac community, stories posted by Wil Shipley at 9:22 PM 42 Comments: Anonymous Denis said... Woa the adventures of a man trying to get the woman & a shirt ? hmmm anywhom, try this link for a mens boutique. http://www.kulhmancompany.com But in the end Banana Republic seems best. June 12, 2005 8:58 PM Anonymous Adam Lindsay said... Great post. I had been half-wondering why you had that bag from Pink with you before the awards (but figured you had good taste in shirts). -adam, the 'student' wot landed next to you during lunch sunday, but didn't say much besides thanks for DL1.5 June 12, 2005 11:10 PM Anonymous Anonymous said... I do like tiny stores that have awesome shirts. I also like pink with blue stripes. June 13, 2005 12:13 AM Anonymous David Emery said... And people say that blogging won't change the world... ;-) Hey, if making delicious software falls through, you could always write a book! P.S. Congrats on the award! June 13, 2005 1:40 AM Anonymous Heiko said... :-) try http://www.hackett.com/ June 13, 2005 1:13 PM Anonymous Ben W. said... Funny how the story isn't really about shirts, yet all of the comments are. If you can bear to read it, I've plenty of advice on how to meet women. I really enjoyed the talk on Sunday, so if this is of any worth, you can consider it returning a favor. I'd love to hear from you if it is any use. It's much of the knowledge I have about girls, distilled into a single comment. Do with it what you will... Oh by the way, are you still going to put up the slides from Sunday? The First and Only Rule of Women: Women dislike any man who they can have under their thumb. That is, women don't want a man they can "have" or control. They want a man they can respect. Women get funny warm feelings around men they respect, men with confidence and power. If you "need" them, then you're showing weakness, which doesn't give them those funny feelings. So you just have to show them, subtly, that confidence they so enjoy. This means keeping your cool, even if this girl is the one and only. If you keep a mindset ranging from cool non-chalance to a warm inattention, or even something slightly more jerkish, women see this as confidence, which they like. I used to hate this, I even call it "the jackass effect," but it's the way nearly every girl thinks and feels, so you either play the game or get left out. This isn't as callous as it may at first sound. They just want you to be your own man, with or without them. Everything has a reason: Another important point, though much less important than the first, is that you can't just date girls willy -nilly and expect to find someone you really enjoy being with. Well, you can, at first, but after a while you'll progress beyond just wanting to be able to meet them, and you'll want to find someone you can spend time with and do things together with. There're lots of girls, but only a few that are interesting to you, a few that are attractive, and fewer that are both. Friends of your friends are likely to be good people as well. In order to find those you are most likely to be interested in, it is helpful to go do things in places where you might meet girls with shared interests. For music lovers, there's a "scene," for instance, frat-types congregate with sorority girls, and so on. It's up to you to find out where those girls are for you. The Road Ahead: Which leads me to my next point, the best way to meet girls is to not try to meet them. Rather, relax and go try out some hobbies on the side. It's much much easier to meet women in places where they don't naturally have their defenses up. At bars, or at a conference where they are working and the ration is like 19 to 1, women aren't likely to be receptive to anybody, short of Mr. Pitt himself. If you were to go out and take some class or activity or something on the side, you'll not only get a break from the things you work on intently most of the time, you'll put yourself in situations where you can casually meet women. Here too, the rule of the day is to regard them with disinterest. You may soon know some girls you'd like to date. I'd suggest you casually invite them to some neutral event for a date. Something you would both enjoy which would take the pressure off both of you. Here, the shared interest thing helps, but it may be better to ask her to something she might enjoy, but not yet know about. Then you can alway go for dinner later or something. The great thing about not being stupid: To get to where you want to be, you should basically just find and meet as many interesting women as possible. With each meeting, try to get to know them. Each time, you will screw up somehow, but with each meeting you'll also most definately learn something. This is the greatest thing about not being stupid. Any mistakes you make are temporary. Either you succeed in getting a date, or you learn about how to do better next time. Along with this comes the fact that things aren't always going to work out with every girl, even if you're confident, interesting, and generally do the right thing. In these cases all you can really do is move on and look forward to the day you meet another interesting girl. Which, if you're putting yourself out there, shouldn't be so long. For more, I highly recommend this site, which I think provides a pretty apt view of what's really going on in most relationships. June 13, 2005 5:56 PM Blogger Bill said... Dude-- I'll totally crack out a nice shirt next year if I can get a cool movie star name. b.bum (nice story. nice product. i'll be watching what comes next carefully.) June 13, 2005 8:00 PM Anonymous Daniel J. Wilson said... You might want to check out Alan Flusser's "Style and the Man: How and Where To Buy The Best Mens' Clothes". June 13, 2005 10:19 PM Anonymous Darrell Moore said... gee Wil, you're an ass... nice software, though. June 13, 2005 10:19 PM Blogger Wil Shipley said... Thanks for the advice on shirts and love, all. I should admit I'm not quite as vain or hopeless with women as I project in that story. It's a humor piece. -- Darrell: I'm sorry you find me an ass. I don't try to be. Possibly something I said has a different meaning to you than I tried to give it. I am glad you like my software, and that you distinguish between it and me. June 14, 2005 1:33 AM Anonymous Anonymous said... Is that really your pimpmobile in the picture Wil? I recognise that badge. So will women -- no wonder you're single. Loads Of Trouble, Usually Serious. Thomas Pink? Yeah. In London, when the mergers and acquisitions people are working an all-nighter, they allegedly send out a motorcycle messenger to fetch a green curry, and a fresh shirt from Thomas Pink. "London, on the other hand, has class and panache"? Hmmm. You could be right, but I never scraped off enough grime or soot to encounter either of those things. June 15, 2005 2:01 AM Anonymous Anonymous said... Wil, The lady on stage at the Apple Design Awards is (I believe), married, with kids. Just though you might want to know, in case you meet her again next year.. Oh, and in case this software thing doesn't work out, you might want to consider doing PJ O'Rourke's job. You have a talent for this. -jcr June 22, 2005 9:17 AM Anonymous Reggin said... Good Story. :thumsup: June 25, 2005 8:06 AM Anonymous reggin said... And by :thumsup: I mean June 25, 2005 8:06 AM Blogger accomplice said... Admittedly I came to your blog only out of a desire to condemn you for your encouragement to other nerds who believe that their plight with women is inherently different than other men. But instead, I find myself wanting to congratulate you on your award and for being among a handfull of americans who know the joys of Thomas Pink. When I worked in London, Pink was my staple for gifting the men in my life. Best of wishes. June 26, 2005 12:58 PM Anonymous Owlgarden said... If you ever visit Massachusetts (like for MacWorld??) (as if) go to Nantucket and check out Pollacks. Bobby, like me, knows his cotton. He always has great stuff from around the world which you (and not me) can afford. London might have nice shirts, but iTaly (sorry, I'm an Apple guy) truly blows away any other country for shirts. Again, bring money. Here are some shirt rules: 1) A nice shirt has tight threads and strong buttons. Don't buy a shirt if the buttons only have a couple a stiches holding them in. Look for extras on the tails. (a good thing!) 2) Generic fits do not mean BULGY. Even if you're steroidal a shirt should be slightly loose not skintight. Only get a shirt fitted if you've known your tailor for a couple years. Off the rack is ok, but don't skimp on neck size. Learn your size. Avoid polyester. 3) White to the face. If you need to make an impression, always wear a white shirt. I don't care what you think or what else you're wearing. if you don't know what's appropriate then White to the face. (This advice came from an old NYorker article... it is correct) 4) Soft cotton-no button down collar, Stiffer cotton- buttons.This is the difference between a "Brooks Brothers" and a "Gap" Oxford. The Gap cotton is too loose for button downs, I have Brooks Brothers shirts I've owned for 20 years. Of course, i don't wear ties except for a formal occasion. Always wear button downs with a tie. 5) If you're a poor student reading this- check out your local Vintage (not thrift) store for vintage shirts in good condition. By good condition I mean not Faded! By Vintage I mean 50 years old- there is no shirt from the 70's that looks right today. Learn to wash clothes correctly- your shirts will last WAY longer. Thanks Wil for writing this article and the the cool software -owlg June 26, 2005 9:26 PM Anonymous Anonymous said... Will, if you ever come over to the UK visit Saville Row and pick up a very 'nice' shirt - Ted Baker's a bit chav in the UK these days. All the best. June 30, 2005 3:36 AM Anonymous Bald guy from Laurie's entourage said... Funny I do remember the shirts. They are nice shirts but Yea I'm more impresses with the car. Laurie says hi. July 04, 2005 10:11 AM Anonymous Anonymous said... In the USA you might be able to get away with button down collars with a tie, it won't fly in Europe (where all the cool kids are). If you're ever in LA, look up RAMS in the valley. He'll custom fit you a shirt and ship it from Hong-Kong. You don't need a fancy name like Thomas Pink to look good in a pink shirt. Andrew UK July 08, 2005 6:12 AM Anonymous manuel said... altho i only understand 50% of yer stuff, it is such a delight to strole thru your writings... am happy i found this blog and weee! i also use a mac. whatever, i dont even know what soft you do, your blog is gift enough August 17, 2005 7:37 AM Blogger MinCat said... thank you for that spectacularly brilliant piece. you dont know HOW close i was to grabbing my blue editor's pencil and stabbing myself through the eye~ September 03, 2005 12:37 AM Anonymous Ramblero said... Hmmmmmmm.......I kinda just fell into site this after having done a search for Pollacks (of the Nantucket Pollacks). (see earlier post by Owlsomething. The Deb owes me a jacket, I having promised to buy her either a sax (she was an award winning saxophonist in her ute) or a keyboard for Valentine's Day whilst in Jackson Hole last year. (There's an excellent leather-goods place in Jackson Hole (underneath The Snake River Grill) but while they were very close...they weren't quite right.) I've gotten terribly picky about clothes in my advanced years. In fact, I've gotten just terribly picky about everything...food...cars...movies...music...wine...you name it. I've been looking for The Coat for...oh....maybe 15 years now. In any event, I wandered by Pollacks (of the Nantucket Pollacks) a week ago Sat (in the midst of a deluge. We, with straight face, told the local people throughout NE we had come back to see The Rains (screw The Fall Colors), the underlying theme of what turned out to be the Trip from Hell (thank you JetBlu & Hertz) just as they were closing...and they wouldn't be open until Monday...and of course I went into a frenzy; we were leaving Monday on the 1:30 ferry for Hyannisport...but I digress. So, at my urging, The Deb and I wander into Pollacks Monday morning after a late breakfast, and I must say, they do have very nice clothes...including The Coat...which The Deb, after fondling it for 30 seconds said "you must have this coat!" The Deb does not mince words when it comes to clothing, especially since she knows how picky I've become....and in spite of it's upsettingly high 4 figure price. Of course, I reluctantly agreed and now they already have my upsettingly high 4 figure stack of lucre...and I don't have The Coat. It, purportedly, was shipped, insured, but who really knows? I'm convinced it was flown out by the same JetBlu that secreted away my luggage on the in-bound flight and, with great glee, flew it all up and down the East Coast for days while my blood pressure spiked...that or Gabriella has pocketed the money and is on her way back to Eastern Europe to set up shop on my dime. OK....more than a dime. Anyway....Owl was right. Pollacks is a must....but leave with the goods in hand. Oh...and congrats on whatever it was for doing whatever you do on Macs....or whatever. (I worked for Apple for eons...right arm...) Ask me later about The Keyboard. October 25, 2005 3:14 PM Anonymous Nathan Henderson said... A clotheshorse is a drying rack for clothes, but also refers to someone somewhat obsessed with clothing. http://www.bartleby.com/61/90/C0419000.html November 19, 2005 8:43 PM Anonymous Jamie Thingbox said... Have you seen http://www.englishcut.com/ ? The blog of a Saville Row tailor that's getting mentioned a lot of late. January 17, 2006 6:26 AM Anonymous Anonymous said... You really need to check out a store called Sean. They have locations in New York, San Fran, Santa Monica and Boston. No website yet, but well worth looking into. They carry very sharp french shirts from one designer. I buy all my casual clothes there and get a lot of compliments. January 19, 2006 2:54 PM Anonymous bjh said... You mean the fact that she looked like Laurie Anderson didn't give you a clue? Maybe if she reminded you of Ellen DeGeneris? April 25, 2006 11:39 AM Blogger Wil Shipley said... Laurie Anderson is gay? April 25, 2006 1:56 PM Anonymous Sharon said... Wil Shipley: "Thanks for the advice on shirts and love, all. I should admit I'm not quite as vain or hopeless with women as I project in that story. It's a humor piece." I bet you're not... I have had more than one fantasy about you. June 26, 2006 9:01 AM Blogger Wil Shipley said... Sharon: R U F3male? July 19, 2006 3:16 PM Anonymous Sharon said... Yes! I am a female, are you surprised? July 29, 2006 10:07 AM Blogger Wil Shipley said... Sharon: Well, I must admit some of my other would-be paramours are not, in the strictest sense. July 29, 2006 10:24 AM Anonymous Anonymous said... Damn that was funny, Wil. August 29, 2006 1:46 PM Anonymous Anonymous said... Where do you shop in Seattle? December 06, 2006 9:03 PM Anonymous Lakh said... Next time you come over to London - take yourself shirt shopping. City boys love Paul Smith. http://www.paulsmith.com You can also see his fine work in LA, NY and everywhere in Japan. For the finer cut - Dunhill is a sure bet too. July 03, 2007 4:47 PM Anonymous Brian said... Random tidbit: In the 19th century and early 20th, pink was considered a boy’s color, blue a girl’s. The rationale being pink was lighter shade of red, and ‘aggressive,’ and blue was a more ‘passive’ color. July 03, 2007 8:27 PM Anonymous Graham said... I bet you shop at Blackbird! Maybe that's too hipster-ish, but I've gotten some great clothes there on sale. I got an APC overcoat for $170 marked down from $400. Barneys isn't bad either... I don't really like Ian or Zebra Club. Where do you get fancy dress shirts around here though besides Nordstrom? July 03, 2007 10:39 PM Anonymous Anonymous said... Thanks for the lovely story. If you're ever in Rome check out my favourite shirt maker. http://www.danroma.com/ Nathanael July 04, 2007 5:50 AM Blogger kate said... hey buddy, i have spent two hours reading your stories and looking through your site andyou are brilliant, ever thought about writing novels?? i strongly urge you to try. thanks for the giggles: ) July 12, 2007 3:52 PM Blogger Lorenzo said... Hey, look for Barba shirts from Naples. they're the best! Trust me, I'm Italian. Lorenzo http://www.fnv.co.it September 20, 2007 2:47 PM Blogger Brett said... George Clooney (aka Wil Shipley the Fashionista), Although I check your blog from time to time (especially the Cocoa programming posts) I hadn't noticed, or paid much attention to this entry until a few moments ago. There's a good chance that I had glanced at it in the past but moved on after realizing that it was a "Really Long, Pointless Story about a Shirt". I apologize if it was the title that stopped me, but it hadn't occurred to me exactly what famous, voguish shirt this tale was about. Today I scrolled down far enough through the entry to get a glimpse of the topic and recognized it at once. It is the rare attendee who will wear a striped pink designer button up at an event where the oldest, oversized, cola stained, WWDC/Apple/NeXT t-shirt is considered a status symbol. I was with you at Captain Eddie Rickenbacker's and remember you generously offering me a vodka tonic and that chair alongside the young German nannies. And I also remember wondering if you would get breakfast grease all over that shirt as I sat across from you at Denny's, at the early hours of the following morning, with notables such as Dean Cain, Fred Savage, and Robert Downey Jr. Fond memories. A whale is not a fish. Brad Pitt October 31, 2007 11:36 AM Anonymous John said... They should make a film of this. Now, if only someone had some ideas about who to cast in each of the roles... December 21, 2007 8:41 AM Anonymous Anonymous said... You should try an Anna Matuozzo shirt (advice from a Steve Winwood fan!) July 25, 2008 3:07 AM Post a Comment Link to comment
GrayFox Posted August 31, 2008 Content Count: 2433 Joined: 06/20/08 Status: Offline Share Posted August 31, 2008 And now in breaking news: something long and pointless! Saturday, June 11 This is a Really Long, Pointless Story about a Shirt Let's start, and end, with the shirts. Dressing is a big deal to me -- ever since I (a) became single, and (b) lost 60 pounds, I've become something of a clotheshorse. I don't know the etymology of that expression, but it's such a neat word I wanted to use it. (Am I like a sawhorse, but for clothing instead of sawing?) At any rate, I've started shopping at the smallest, snottiest, exclusiviest (I know, not a word) little men's boutiques I can find. At first I was content merely having the guys at Nordstrom all know me by name (and call me when they got a new season's worth of fashions), but that was merely a gateway (like marijuana in the eyes of conservatives) to littler shops, where each individual thread in a garment has a value measured in dollars, not pennies. Sadly, these kinds of shirts require dry-cleaning, which requires that I make it to the dry-cleaner. This is something of an issue for me, because I'm wont to keep odd hours, and because when I'm awake I'm usually working (c.f. "being single, the suckiness inherent therein"). So, for the last week, in preparation for WWDC, I've been driving around with a big blue laundry bag full of dirty shirts in the passenger seat of my pimp ride. I should mention that, when I was a wee lad, I had visions of one day getting a pimp ride, so that when I passed pretty women on the side of the street who were forlornly walking somewhere, I could pull up and say, "Hey, mamasita, you want a ride?" I've since been informed that women find this, in fact, really creepy, so I've never actually done it, but I have to mention that every guy has a fantasy of one day doing this, even while admitting this fantasy is in direct opposition to any possible reality. [i should also mention that should I wish to Jackson out and hit on 12-year-old boys, instead of women, a pimp ride is the perfect way to go. The number of times I've had 12-year-old boys yell out "pimp-de-pimp-pimp-pimp!" to me when I drive by is surprisingly high, considering I had previously never heard the "pimp-de-pimp-pimp-pimp" call and have no idea what it means. But for 12-year-olds it's some kind of lingua franca.] At any rate, you can imagine how cool it is to drive by a pretty woman walking in the rain and think, "Hey, I should offer her a ride... wait, then she'd have to have my big bag of stinky shirts in her lap... that'd probably strike her as pretty strange... possibly even frightening." -- So it is that, when packing for WWDC 2005, I only took one good shirt with me. Mind you, this was a really good shirt. This shirt was made in London by a guy named Ted or James or some such, which to me lends instant credibility to it, because as much as I love (the blue states in) my country, when I think of America I think of rebels, I think of individualists, I think of can-do spirit and an indomitable dedication to individual freedoms and happiness. But I don't think, "nice shirts!" London, on the other hand, has class and panache, and Ted/James clearly was the latest in a long line of shirt-makers who had, for generations, been making shirts for discerning gentlemen, not carrying guns, and/or shipping off criminals to unsettled countries. Nor is the cotton in this shirt simply from normal cotton plants, oh no. It's grown someplace exotic, like Morocco, and it seems to carry a slight scent of the spices of distant lands on it. Bury your face in this shirt and you can almost hear Bogey whispering, "Listen, kid, this shirt is bigger than the both of us..." I've received about five or so unsolicited compliments in this shirt, which is five more than I have in any other shirt. Guys don't get complimented on shirts a lot, unless they say, "Hey, look at this shirt," which I admit I've done a couple times, but I'm saying I've been complimented on this shirt without fishing for it, five times. -- And so I wore this shirt on Tuesday at WWDC 2005, because Tuesday was the day of the Apple Design Awards. My previous company had won a number of these when I was running it, and so this award had a personal meaning to me. This was the first time my new company had entered, and I had high hopes. And, should I win, I wanted to be up on that stage smiling at the crowd while looking fine in my shirt that combined the best parts of London and Morocco. And here's where the story take a tragic turn, because, in their unknowable yet infallible wisdom, Apple suddenly decided the Design Awards would be on Wednesday. I found this out late Tuesday, and spent the day grousing to all and sundry about how this messed up my plans vis-a-vis the shirt. And everyone agreed that it was, in fact, a very nice shirt, but I should note that I didn't count these compliments towards my previously-mentioned total of five, because I was really fishing. For a moment I thought this mishap might end up for the best, because that night several of us nerds ended up at a bar, and in my mildly drunken state I started talking with a pretty lady about... well, I don't remember. Something, I'm sure. We'll call her Laurie Anderson, because she looks just like a young Laurie Anderson, and it'll be more evocative this way. I didn't exactly hit on Laurie, per se, but I will say I was glad I was wearing a nice shirt. It wasn't until the next night that one of her friends let me know, in a very friendly manner, that if I had intentions towards Ms. Anderson I might reconsider them, because she was, in fact, as interested in women as I was. Which was a nice thing to do, frankly, because it's good to know the boundaries of your relationship with someone right at the start -- I like it when women I'm talking to let it be known they have a steady boyfriend, for example, not because I can then cut bait and run, but because I can adjust my expectations and demeanor accordingly, and not embarrass myself or her. For example, you don't say, "I want to nibble your neck," to a woman with a boyfriend. Instead, you'd use the more coy, "If you didn't have a boyfriend, I would certainly be interested in your neck, vis-a-vis the nibbling thereof." See, it's all about delivery. But, upon reflection later that night, I felt I hadn't made very effective use of my shirt, and so it was with a heavy heart that I finally took it off, realizing that it had been sullied for naught. Actually, I was pretty drunk when I got back to the hotel, so all I remember is thinking how much effort it was to take clothes off and put them in a pile. -- It was the next afternoon (morning having been lost to C2H5OH), while I was putting on one of my t-shirts and again mentioning how unhappy I was to be thus dressed for the Design Awards, that Mike said, with that clarity of vision associated with the genius, "Hey, you could, like, go buy a new shirt." T2 and I looked at each other, and although it may have been that we were both still under the affects of chemicals, we instantly agreed this was why Mike was The Smart One. My day had a purpose now, and my step had a spring to it. I asked the concierge where I might find a fancy, fashion-forward shirt in downtown San Francisco. I figured this would be a slam-dunk. Here's a city whose culture ranks up there with New York and Paris. Here's a city where the rich scions of industry have nothing to do with their money but impress each other with their fancy baubles and ornaments. She pulled out a map and circled a block. "Here's a Nordstrom's!" Wrong, wrong, wrong. First off, Nordstrom's is NOT fashion-forward, even if they do try to sell orange shirts to golfers in the winter. Second, if I wanted to go to freaking Nordstrom's, I'd GO TO THE ORIGINAL ONE, RIGHT NEXT TO WHERE I LIVE. I'm in San Francisco. The city by the bay! Wow me with your culture! "There's a Saks on 3rd?" NO! No no no no no! You are not getting me. I want a boutique. "Well, Nordstrom's has different departments, they're kind of like boutiques..." No! How'd we get back here? Seriously, no! Then, suddenly, she saw. "Oh, there's a little place called Pink, you might check that out, if you're not freaked out by the name." Lady, I'm a true metrosexual. I'm not worried about my masculinity when I shop. You could tell me the store is called "Sweaty Men in a Bathhouse" and I'd go there if it had Moroccan cotton. T2 and I jumped into a cab and I immediately bought two "slim-fit" shirts from Thomas Pink, of London. The gentlemen who helped us were classy and helpful without the slightest trace of condescension, which was nice considering I came in wearing a WWDC polo shirt and T2 had what appeared to be an original 1970s "Dark Side of the Moon" T-shirt on. -- This year was the 10th anniversary of the Apple Design awards, and as such they decided to celebrate by gussing the whole event up, in an homage/parody of the Academy Awards. This struck me as entirely apropos, as I estimate to the 1,000 of us nerds who were there, this was our Academy Awards. This was our Nobel prize. This was our moment. At the start of the evening one of the high mucky-mucks of Developer Relations, who happens to be a very pretty lady, floated onstage in a drop-dead gorgeous gown. We'll call her Natasha Richardson because she looks like a Natasha's younger sister might. (Yes, I know Natasha already has a younger sister.) There's another fact you should know at this point, which is that nerds are not, inherently, asexual. We don't have much success with women, but that doesn't mean we are immune to their charms. Quite the opposite. We fall under such a spell that we are unable to function, and this renders us so unattractive that it creates a self-perpetuating cycle of desperate singlehood. So, in that first moment, 1,000 nerds fell in love with Natasha. Well, 996 nerd guys fell in love with her, and the four women in the crowd thought, "Wow, I wonder where she got that dress?" (Laurie Anderson was out partying elsewhere, but I think it's safe to assume she would have been crushing, too, had she been present.) As she started to speak a strange calm came over the crowd, as if we were cavemen seeing fire for the first time, or rats hearing a certain piper. There was also some guy in a tux on stage with her, I think. I don't know if anyone remembers. Maybe he was tall? Immediately my mind was no longer on whether I won the award, but on what I would say to her if I did. When the first award was given, the guy who won it kept whispering things to her as his product was described to the crowd, and I noticed that her lapel mic was sensitive enough that we could all hear what he was saying. This dashed somewhat my plans to hit on her on-stage, because everyone in the crowd would be able to hear me saying, "So, uh, want to ride in my car sometime, uh, assuming I move the laundry? I've been led to understand that it's, uh, pimp-de-pimp-pimp-pimp." -- When Natasha called out the name of our company for Best User Experience the four of us ran onstage, and I shook her hand as she handed me the cool glowing cube, hand-designed by Jonathan Ives. I think she said, "Congratulations," and if I recall I replied, coyly, "Thanks." Playing it smooth... way to go Wil. Don't tip your hand yet, old boy. Best to slip in under RADAR. Way under RADAR. Afterwards, the winners all had to come up front to sign a ton of forms in exchange for our phat loot. Natasha was there amongst us, and I recognized that, if ever I would had a chance, this was it. Time to shine! I strode up to her confidently. Ok, well, I didn't stride, really, because I pinched a nerve in my neck last month, and ever since I've had to walk kind of hunched over, with my head forward, as if I were a cro-magnan man, or possibly just suffered from osteoporosis. Check it out, ladies! I'm unevolved and/or very old! The problem is, if I stand up straight, the nerve gets pinched and I lose all feeling in my left arm, and the ability to move it. On the other hand, I knew being hunched over was unattractive, so I kept sort of bending my lower torso backwards to compensate for my bent-forward neck, the end effect being that I bobbed along like a pigeon when I walked. So I coo-cooed up to her and gave her my most winning wince (because I had tweaked the nerve in the bobbing motion). While I admit this isn't a word-for-word transcript, this is, I feel, an accurate depiction of what went down: Natasha: "Congratulations on your win!" Me: "Nice dress! So pretty! Where dress come from?" Natasha: "Oh, an assistant and I just ran out to Saks today to get it." [Note to four women in audience: question answered!] "Anyways, we're all very excited about Delicious Library..." Me: "Dress soft! Girl pretty!" Natasha: "Yes... uh, so, it's great to have strategic partners like Delicious Monster on our platform..." Me: "Dress for dancing. Pretty girl go dancing with me?" Natasha: "Um, I have to go over... there... now." A few moments later she had magically changed into an absolutely gorgeous set of matching coordinates to go to dinner. I overheard her say she was going to schmooze some developers. I kind of felt sorry for them, because they really didn't stand much of a chance. "Pretty girl want us port to Macintosh? Us make pretty girl happy!" -- The next night we celebrated our win in style, inviting everyone we met from the conference to get free drinks on us at Captain Eddie Rickenbacker's bar, within stumbling distance of Moscone center. Laurie and her entourage came with us, as well as various other new best friends I'd met at the conference. One guy we'd met while out carousing looked and acted almost exactly like Brad Pitt (circa Ocean's 11), so we actually called him Brad to make our lives easy. In fact, a lot of us got celebrity names; our crazy Australian friend was dubbed "Robert Downey, Jr," and it was a title that fit both his looks and his personality perfectly -- I don't think I ever saw him sober during the conference. (I was later dubbed "George Clooney," but I think at this point they were stretching the conceit.) Robert Downey and I had seen a couple of very pretty, very young German "au pairs" on our way to the bar, and had convinced them to come along because, well, partying with forty guys and one lesbian is only so much fun. I talked to them for a while at the bar, but it soon became clear they were much too young for me, so I grabbed an extra chair and called Brad Pitt over, and they quickly turned their full attention to him. My work done, I wandered outside with a couple drinks, and sat with Laurie while she smoked her "American Spirit"s. Laurie thought I might be down after getting passed over by the 20-year-olds. "You know, you're much cuter than Brad Pitt," she said, lying in that sweet motherly way that makes you feel good not because you believe it, but because you appreciate the sentiment behind the lie. "Look at you: you're smart, successful, handsome, and very intriguing." Her friend nodded agreement. And, seriously, whatever liberties I'm taking with the truth elsewhere in this tale, I'm not making this part up: "Also, you have totally great taste in shirts." Labels: mac community, stories posted by Wil Shipley at 9:22 PM 42 Comments: Anonymous Denis said... Woa the adventures of a man trying to get the woman & a shirt ? hmmm anywhom, try this link for a mens boutique. http://www.kulhmancompany.com But in the end Banana Republic seems best. June 12, 2005 8:58 PM Anonymous Adam Lindsay said... Great post. I had been half-wondering why you had that bag from Pink with you before the awards (but figured you had good taste in shirts). -adam, the 'student' wot landed next to you during lunch sunday, but didn't say much besides thanks for DL1.5 June 12, 2005 11:10 PM Anonymous Anonymous said... I do like tiny stores that have awesome shirts. I also like pink with blue stripes. June 13, 2005 12:13 AM Anonymous David Emery said... And people say that blogging won't change the world... ;-) Hey, if making delicious software falls through, you could always write a book! P.S. Congrats on the award! June 13, 2005 1:40 AM Anonymous Heiko said... :-) try http://www.hackett.com/ June 13, 2005 1:13 PM Anonymous Ben W. said... Funny how the story isn't really about shirts, yet all of the comments are. If you can bear to read it, I've plenty of advice on how to meet women. I really enjoyed the talk on Sunday, so if this is of any worth, you can consider it returning a favor. I'd love to hear from you if it is any use. It's much of the knowledge I have about girls, distilled into a single comment. Do with it what you will... Oh by the way, are you still going to put up the slides from Sunday? The First and Only Rule of Women: Women dislike any man who they can have under their thumb. That is, women don't want a man they can "have" or control. They want a man they can respect. Women get funny warm feelings around men they respect, men with confidence and power. If you "need" them, then you're showing weakness, which doesn't give them those funny feelings. So you just have to show them, subtly, that confidence they so enjoy. This means keeping your cool, even if this girl is the one and only. If you keep a mindset ranging from cool non-chalance to a warm inattention, or even something slightly more jerkish, women see this as confidence, which they like. I used to hate this, I even call it "the jackass effect," but it's the way nearly every girl thinks and feels, so you either play the game or get left out. This isn't as callous as it may at first sound. They just want you to be your own man, with or without them. Everything has a reason: Another important point, though much less important than the first, is that you can't just date girls willy -nilly and expect to find someone you really enjoy being with. Well, you can, at first, but after a while you'll progress beyond just wanting to be able to meet them, and you'll want to find someone you can spend time with and do things together with. There're lots of girls, but only a few that are interesting to you, a few that are attractive, and fewer that are both. Friends of your friends are likely to be good people as well. In order to find those you are most likely to be interested in, it is helpful to go do things in places where you might meet girls with shared interests. For music lovers, there's a "scene," for instance, frat-types congregate with sorority girls, and so on. It's up to you to find out where those girls are for you. The Road Ahead: Which leads me to my next point, the best way to meet girls is to not try to meet them. Rather, relax and go try out some hobbies on the side. It's much much easier to meet women in places where they don't naturally have their defenses up. At bars, or at a conference where they are working and the ration is like 19 to 1, women aren't likely to be receptive to anybody, short of Mr. Pitt himself. If you were to go out and take some class or activity or something on the side, you'll not only get a break from the things you work on intently most of the time, you'll put yourself in situations where you can casually meet women. Here too, the rule of the day is to regard them with disinterest. You may soon know some girls you'd like to date. I'd suggest you casually invite them to some neutral event for a date. Something you would both enjoy which would take the pressure off both of you. Here, the shared interest thing helps, but it may be better to ask her to something she might enjoy, but not yet know about. Then you can alway go for dinner later or something. The great thing about not being stupid: To get to where you want to be, you should basically just find and meet as many interesting women as possible. With each meeting, try to get to know them. Each time, you will screw up somehow, but with each meeting you'll also most definately learn something. This is the greatest thing about not being stupid. Any mistakes you make are temporary. Either you succeed in getting a date, or you learn about how to do better next time. Along with this comes the fact that things aren't always going to work out with every girl, even if you're confident, interesting, and generally do the right thing. In these cases all you can really do is move on and look forward to the day you meet another interesting girl. Which, if you're putting yourself out there, shouldn't be so long. For more, I highly recommend this site, which I think provides a pretty apt view of what's really going on in most relationships. June 13, 2005 5:56 PM Blogger Bill said... Dude-- I'll totally crack out a nice shirt next year if I can get a cool movie star name. b.bum (nice story. nice product. i'll be watching what comes next carefully.) June 13, 2005 8:00 PM Anonymous Daniel J. Wilson said... You might want to check out Alan Flusser's "Style and the Man: How and Where To Buy The Best Mens' Clothes". June 13, 2005 10:19 PM Anonymous Darrell Moore said... gee Wil, you're an ass... nice software, though. June 13, 2005 10:19 PM Blogger Wil Shipley said... Thanks for the advice on shirts and love, all. I should admit I'm not quite as vain or hopeless with women as I project in that story. It's a humor piece. -- Darrell: I'm sorry you find me an ass. I don't try to be. Possibly something I said has a different meaning to you than I tried to give it. I am glad you like my software, and that you distinguish between it and me. June 14, 2005 1:33 AM Anonymous Anonymous said... Is that really your pimpmobile in the picture Wil? I recognise that badge. So will women -- no wonder you're single. Loads Of Trouble, Usually Serious. Thomas Pink? Yeah. In London, when the mergers and acquisitions people are working an all-nighter, they allegedly send out a motorcycle messenger to fetch a green curry, and a fresh shirt from Thomas Pink. "London, on the other hand, has class and panache"? Hmmm. You could be right, but I never scraped off enough grime or soot to encounter either of those things. June 15, 2005 2:01 AM Anonymous Anonymous said... Wil, The lady on stage at the Apple Design Awards is (I believe), married, with kids. Just though you might want to know, in case you meet her again next year.. Oh, and in case this software thing doesn't work out, you might want to consider doing PJ O'Rourke's job. You have a talent for this. -jcr June 22, 2005 9:17 AM Anonymous Reggin said... Good Story. :thumsup: June 25, 2005 8:06 AM Anonymous reggin said... And by :thumsup: I mean June 25, 2005 8:06 AM Blogger accomplice said... Admittedly I came to your blog only out of a desire to condemn you for your encouragement to other nerds who believe that their plight with women is inherently different than other men. But instead, I find myself wanting to congratulate you on your award and for being among a handfull of americans who know the joys of Thomas Pink. When I worked in London, Pink was my staple for gifting the men in my life. Best of wishes. June 26, 2005 12:58 PM Anonymous Owlgarden said... If you ever visit Massachusetts (like for MacWorld??) (as if) go to Nantucket and check out Pollacks. Bobby, like me, knows his cotton. He always has great stuff from around the world which you (and not me) can afford. London might have nice shirts, but iTaly (sorry, I'm an Apple guy) truly blows away any other country for shirts. Again, bring money. Here are some shirt rules: 1) A nice shirt has tight threads and strong buttons. Don't buy a shirt if the buttons only have a couple a stiches holding them in. Look for extras on the tails. (a good thing!) 2) Generic fits do not mean BULGY. Even if you're steroidal a shirt should be slightly loose not skintight. Only get a shirt fitted if you've known your tailor for a couple years. Off the rack is ok, but don't skimp on neck size. Learn your size. Avoid polyester. 3) White to the face. If you need to make an impression, always wear a white shirt. I don't care what you think or what else you're wearing. if you don't know what's appropriate then White to the face. (This advice came from an old NYorker article... it is correct) 4) Soft cotton-no button down collar, Stiffer cotton- buttons.This is the difference between a "Brooks Brothers" and a "Gap" Oxford. The Gap cotton is too loose for button downs, I have Brooks Brothers shirts I've owned for 20 years. Of course, i don't wear ties except for a formal occasion. Always wear button downs with a tie. 5) If you're a poor student reading this- check out your local Vintage (not thrift) store for vintage shirts in good condition. By good condition I mean not Faded! By Vintage I mean 50 years old- there is no shirt from the 70's that looks right today. Learn to wash clothes correctly- your shirts will last WAY longer. Thanks Wil for writing this article and the the cool software -owlg June 26, 2005 9:26 PM Anonymous Anonymous said... Will, if you ever come over to the UK visit Saville Row and pick up a very 'nice' shirt - Ted Baker's a bit chav in the UK these days. All the best. June 30, 2005 3:36 AM Anonymous Bald guy from Laurie's entourage said... Funny I do remember the shirts. They are nice shirts but Yea I'm more impresses with the car. Laurie says hi. July 04, 2005 10:11 AM Anonymous Anonymous said... In the USA you might be able to get away with button down collars with a tie, it won't fly in Europe (where all the cool kids are). If you're ever in LA, look up RAMS in the valley. He'll custom fit you a shirt and ship it from Hong-Kong. You don't need a fancy name like Thomas Pink to look good in a pink shirt. Andrew UK July 08, 2005 6:12 AM Anonymous manuel said... altho i only understand 50% of yer stuff, it is such a delight to strole thru your writings... am happy i found this blog and weee! i also use a mac. whatever, i dont even know what soft you do, your blog is gift enough August 17, 2005 7:37 AM Blogger MinCat said... thank you for that spectacularly brilliant piece. you dont know HOW close i was to grabbing my blue editor's pencil and stabbing myself through the eye~ September 03, 2005 12:37 AM Anonymous Ramblero said... Hmmmmmmm.......I kinda just fell into site this after having done a search for Pollacks (of the Nantucket Pollacks). (see earlier post by Owlsomething. The Deb owes me a jacket, I having promised to buy her either a sax (she was an award winning saxophonist in her ute) or a keyboard for Valentine's Day whilst in Jackson Hole last year. (There's an excellent leather-goods place in Jackson Hole (underneath The Snake River Grill) but while they were very close...they weren't quite right.) I've gotten terribly picky about clothes in my advanced years. In fact, I've gotten just terribly picky about everything...food...cars...movies...music...wine...you name it. I've been looking for The Coat for...oh....maybe 15 years now. In any event, I wandered by Pollacks (of the Nantucket Pollacks) a week ago Sat (in the midst of a deluge. We, with straight face, told the local people throughout NE we had come back to see The Rains (screw The Fall Colors), the underlying theme of what turned out to be the Trip from Hell (thank you JetBlu & Hertz) just as they were closing...and they wouldn't be open until Monday...and of course I went into a frenzy; we were leaving Monday on the 1:30 ferry for Hyannisport...but I digress. So, at my urging, The Deb and I wander into Pollacks Monday morning after a late breakfast, and I must say, they do have very nice clothes...including The Coat...which The Deb, after fondling it for 30 seconds said "you must have this coat!" The Deb does not mince words when it comes to clothing, especially since she knows how picky I've become....and in spite of it's upsettingly high 4 figure price. Of course, I reluctantly agreed and now they already have my upsettingly high 4 figure stack of lucre...and I don't have The Coat. It, purportedly, was shipped, insured, but who really knows? I'm convinced it was flown out by the same JetBlu that secreted away my luggage on the in-bound flight and, with great glee, flew it all up and down the East Coast for days while my blood pressure spiked...that or Gabriella has pocketed the money and is on her way back to Eastern Europe to set up shop on my dime. OK....more than a dime. Anyway....Owl was right. Pollacks is a must....but leave with the goods in hand. Oh...and congrats on whatever it was for doing whatever you do on Macs....or whatever. (I worked for Apple for eons...right arm...) Ask me later about The Keyboard. October 25, 2005 3:14 PM Anonymous Nathan Henderson said... A clotheshorse is a drying rack for clothes, but also refers to someone somewhat obsessed with clothing. http://www.bartleby.com/61/90/C0419000.html November 19, 2005 8:43 PM Anonymous Jamie Thingbox said... Have you seen http://www.englishcut.com/ ? The blog of a Saville Row tailor that's getting mentioned a lot of late. January 17, 2006 6:26 AM Anonymous Anonymous said... You really need to check out a store called Sean. They have locations in New York, San Fran, Santa Monica and Boston. No website yet, but well worth looking into. They carry very sharp french shirts from one designer. I buy all my casual clothes there and get a lot of compliments. January 19, 2006 2:54 PM Anonymous bjh said... You mean the fact that she looked like Laurie Anderson didn't give you a clue? Maybe if she reminded you of Ellen DeGeneris? April 25, 2006 11:39 AM Blogger Wil Shipley said... Laurie Anderson is gay? April 25, 2006 1:56 PM Anonymous Sharon said... Wil Shipley: "Thanks for the advice on shirts and love, all. I should admit I'm not quite as vain or hopeless with women as I project in that story. It's a humor piece." I bet you're not... I have had more than one fantasy about you. June 26, 2006 9:01 AM Blogger Wil Shipley said... Sharon: R U F3male? July 19, 2006 3:16 PM Anonymous Sharon said... Yes! I am a female, are you surprised? July 29, 2006 10:07 AM Blogger Wil Shipley said... Sharon: Well, I must admit some of my other would-be paramours are not, in the strictest sense. July 29, 2006 10:24 AM Anonymous Anonymous said... Damn that was funny, Wil. August 29, 2006 1:46 PM Anonymous Anonymous said... Where do you shop in Seattle? December 06, 2006 9:03 PM Anonymous Lakh said... Next time you come over to London - take yourself shirt shopping. City boys love Paul Smith. http://www.paulsmith.com You can also see his fine work in LA, NY and everywhere in Japan. For the finer cut - Dunhill is a sure bet too. July 03, 2007 4:47 PM Anonymous Brian said... Random tidbit: In the 19th century and early 20th, pink was considered a boy’s color, blue a girl’s. The rationale being pink was lighter shade of red, and ‘aggressive,’ and blue was a more ‘passive’ color. July 03, 2007 8:27 PM Anonymous Graham said... I bet you shop at Blackbird! Maybe that's too hipster-ish, but I've gotten some great clothes there on sale. I got an APC overcoat for $170 marked down from $400. Barneys isn't bad either... I don't really like Ian or Zebra Club. Where do you get fancy dress shirts around here though besides Nordstrom? July 03, 2007 10:39 PM Anonymous Anonymous said... Thanks for the lovely story. If you're ever in Rome check out my favourite shirt maker. http://www.danroma.com/ Nathanael July 04, 2007 5:50 AM Blogger kate said... hey buddy, i have spent two hours reading your stories and looking through your site andyou are brilliant, ever thought about writing novels?? i strongly urge you to try. thanks for the giggles: ) July 12, 2007 3:52 PM Blogger Lorenzo said... Hey, look for Barba shirts from Naples. they're the best! Trust me, I'm Italian. Lorenzo http://www.fnv.co.it September 20, 2007 2:47 PM Blogger Brett said... George Clooney (aka Wil Shipley the Fashionista), Although I check your blog from time to time (especially the Cocoa programming posts) I hadn't noticed, or paid much attention to this entry until a few moments ago. There's a good chance that I had glanced at it in the past but moved on after realizing that it was a "Really Long, Pointless Story about a Shirt". I apologize if it was the title that stopped me, but it hadn't occurred to me exactly what famous, voguish shirt this tale was about. Today I scrolled down far enough through the entry to get a glimpse of the topic and recognized it at once. It is the rare attendee who will wear a striped pink designer button up at an event where the oldest, oversized, cola stained, WWDC/Apple/NeXT t-shirt is considered a status symbol. I was with you at Captain Eddie Rickenbacker's and remember you generously offering me a vodka tonic and that chair alongside the young German nannies. And I also remember wondering if you would get breakfast grease all over that shirt as I sat across from you at Denny's, at the early hours of the following morning, with notables such as Dean Cain, Fred Savage, and Robert Downey Jr. Fond memories. A whale is not a fish. Brad Pitt October 31, 2007 11:36 AM Anonymous John said... They should make a film of this. Now, if only someone had some ideas about who to cast in each of the roles... December 21, 2007 8:41 AM Anonymous Anonymous said... You should try an Anna Matuozzo shirt (advice from a Steve Winwood fan!) July 25, 2008 3:07 AM Post a Comment Never am I ever listening to someone tell me long cat is bad again. NEVA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Link to comment
matt 187 Posted August 31, 2008 Content Count: 2678 Joined: 08/07/07 Status: Offline Share Posted August 31, 2008 And now in breaking news: something long and pointless! Saturday, June 11 This is a Really Long, Pointless Story about a Shirt Let's start, and end, with the shirts. Dressing is a big deal to me -- ever since I (a) became single, and (b) lost 60 pounds, I've become something of a clotheshorse. I don't know the etymology of that expression, but it's such a neat word I wanted to use it. (Am I like a sawhorse, but for clothing instead of sawing?) At any rate, I've started shopping at the smallest, snottiest, exclusiviest (I know, not a word) little men's boutiques I can find. At first I was content merely having the guys at Nordstrom all know me by name (and call me when they got a new season's worth of fashions), but that was merely a gateway (like marijuana in the eyes of conservatives) to littler shops, where each individual thread in a garment has a value measured in dollars, not pennies. Sadly, these kinds of shirts require dry-cleaning, which requires that I make it to the dry-cleaner. This is something of an issue for me, because I'm wont to keep odd hours, and because when I'm awake I'm usually working (c.f. "being single, the suckiness inherent therein"). So, for the last week, in preparation for WWDC, I've been driving around with a big blue laundry bag full of dirty shirts in the passenger seat of my pimp ride. I should mention that, when I was a wee lad, I had visions of one day getting a pimp ride, so that when I passed pretty women on the side of the street who were forlornly walking somewhere, I could pull up and say, "Hey, mamasita, you want a ride?" I've since been informed that women find this, in fact, really creepy, so I've never actually done it, but I have to mention that every guy has a fantasy of one day doing this, even while admitting this fantasy is in direct opposition to any possible reality. [i should also mention that should I wish to Jackson out and hit on 12-year-old boys, instead of women, a pimp ride is the perfect way to go. The number of times I've had 12-year-old boys yell out "pimp-de-pimp-pimp-pimp!" to me when I drive by is surprisingly high, considering I had previously never heard the "pimp-de-pimp-pimp-pimp" call and have no idea what it means. But for 12-year-olds it's some kind of lingua franca.] At any rate, you can imagine how cool it is to drive by a pretty woman walking in the rain and think, "Hey, I should offer her a ride... wait, then she'd have to have my big bag of stinky shirts in her lap... that'd probably strike her as pretty strange... possibly even frightening." -- So it is that, when packing for WWDC 2005, I only took one good shirt with me. Mind you, this was a really good shirt. This shirt was made in London by a guy named Ted or James or some such, which to me lends instant credibility to it, because as much as I love (the blue states in) my country, when I think of America I think of rebels, I think of individualists, I think of can-do spirit and an indomitable dedication to individual freedoms and happiness. But I don't think, "nice shirts!" London, on the other hand, has class and panache, and Ted/James clearly was the latest in a long line of shirt-makers who had, for generations, been making shirts for discerning gentlemen, not carrying guns, and/or shipping off criminals to unsettled countries. Nor is the cotton in this shirt simply from normal cotton plants, oh no. It's grown someplace exotic, like Morocco, and it seems to carry a slight scent of the spices of distant lands on it. Bury your face in this shirt and you can almost hear Bogey whispering, "Listen, kid, this shirt is bigger than the both of us..." I've received about five or so unsolicited compliments in this shirt, which is five more than I have in any other shirt. Guys don't get complimented on shirts a lot, unless they say, "Hey, look at this shirt," which I admit I've done a couple times, but I'm saying I've been complimented on this shirt without fishing for it, five times. -- And so I wore this shirt on Tuesday at WWDC 2005, because Tuesday was the day of the Apple Design Awards. My previous company had won a number of these when I was running it, and so this award had a personal meaning to me. This was the first time my new company had entered, and I had high hopes. And, should I win, I wanted to be up on that stage smiling at the crowd while looking fine in my shirt that combined the best parts of London and Morocco. And here's where the story take a tragic turn, because, in their unknowable yet infallible wisdom, Apple suddenly decided the Design Awards would be on Wednesday. I found this out late Tuesday, and spent the day grousing to all and sundry about how this messed up my plans vis-a-vis the shirt. And everyone agreed that it was, in fact, a very nice shirt, but I should note that I didn't count these compliments towards my previously-mentioned total of five, because I was really fishing. For a moment I thought this mishap might end up for the best, because that night several of us nerds ended up at a bar, and in my mildly drunken state I started talking with a pretty lady about... well, I don't remember. Something, I'm sure. We'll call her Laurie Anderson, because she looks just like a young Laurie Anderson, and it'll be more evocative this way. I didn't exactly hit on Laurie, per se, but I will say I was glad I was wearing a nice shirt. It wasn't until the next night that one of her friends let me know, in a very friendly manner, that if I had intentions towards Ms. Anderson I might reconsider them, because she was, in fact, as interested in women as I was. Which was a nice thing to do, frankly, because it's good to know the boundaries of your relationship with someone right at the start -- I like it when women I'm talking to let it be known they have a steady boyfriend, for example, not because I can then cut bait and run, but because I can adjust my expectations and demeanor accordingly, and not embarrass myself or her. For example, you don't say, "I want to nibble your neck," to a woman with a boyfriend. Instead, you'd use the more coy, "If you didn't have a boyfriend, I would certainly be interested in your neck, vis-a-vis the nibbling thereof." See, it's all about delivery. But, upon reflection later that night, I felt I hadn't made very effective use of my shirt, and so it was with a heavy heart that I finally took it off, realizing that it had been sullied for naught. Actually, I was pretty drunk when I got back to the hotel, so all I remember is thinking how much effort it was to take clothes off and put them in a pile. -- It was the next afternoon (morning having been lost to C2H5OH), while I was putting on one of my t-shirts and again mentioning how unhappy I was to be thus dressed for the Design Awards, that Mike said, with that clarity of vision associated with the genius, "Hey, you could, like, go buy a new shirt." T2 and I looked at each other, and although it may have been that we were both still under the affects of chemicals, we instantly agreed this was why Mike was The Smart One. My day had a purpose now, and my step had a spring to it. I asked the concierge where I might find a fancy, fashion-forward shirt in downtown San Francisco. I figured this would be a slam-dunk. Here's a city whose culture ranks up there with New York and Paris. Here's a city where the rich scions of industry have nothing to do with their money but impress each other with their fancy baubles and ornaments. She pulled out a map and circled a block. "Here's a Nordstrom's!" Wrong, wrong, wrong. First off, Nordstrom's is NOT fashion-forward, even if they do try to sell orange shirts to golfers in the winter. Second, if I wanted to go to freaking Nordstrom's, I'd GO TO THE ORIGINAL ONE, RIGHT NEXT TO WHERE I LIVE. I'm in San Francisco. The city by the bay! Wow me with your culture! "There's a Saks on 3rd?" NO! No no no no no! You are not getting me. I want a boutique. "Well, Nordstrom's has different departments, they're kind of like boutiques..." No! How'd we get back here? Seriously, no! Then, suddenly, she saw. "Oh, there's a little place called Pink, you might check that out, if you're not freaked out by the name." Lady, I'm a true metrosexual. I'm not worried about my masculinity when I shop. You could tell me the store is called "Sweaty Men in a Bathhouse" and I'd go there if it had Moroccan cotton. T2 and I jumped into a cab and I immediately bought two "slim-fit" shirts from Thomas Pink, of London. The gentlemen who helped us were classy and helpful without the slightest trace of condescension, which was nice considering I came in wearing a WWDC polo shirt and T2 had what appeared to be an original 1970s "Dark Side of the Moon" T-shirt on. -- This year was the 10th anniversary of the Apple Design awards, and as such they decided to celebrate by gussing the whole event up, in an homage/parody of the Academy Awards. This struck me as entirely apropos, as I estimate to the 1,000 of us nerds who were there, this was our Academy Awards. This was our Nobel prize. This was our moment. At the start of the evening one of the high mucky-mucks of Developer Relations, who happens to be a very pretty lady, floated onstage in a drop-dead gorgeous gown. We'll call her Natasha Richardson because she looks like a Natasha's younger sister might. (Yes, I know Natasha already has a younger sister.) There's another fact you should know at this point, which is that nerds are not, inherently, asexual. We don't have much success with women, but that doesn't mean we are immune to their charms. Quite the opposite. We fall under such a spell that we are unable to function, and this renders us so unattractive that it creates a self-perpetuating cycle of desperate singlehood. So, in that first moment, 1,000 nerds fell in love with Natasha. Well, 996 nerd guys fell in love with her, and the four women in the crowd thought, "Wow, I wonder where she got that dress?" (Laurie Anderson was out partying elsewhere, but I think it's safe to assume she would have been crushing, too, had she been present.) As she started to speak a strange calm came over the crowd, as if we were cavemen seeing fire for the first time, or rats hearing a certain piper. There was also some guy in a tux on stage with her, I think. I don't know if anyone remembers. Maybe he was tall? Immediately my mind was no longer on whether I won the award, but on what I would say to her if I did. When the first award was given, the guy who won it kept whispering things to her as his product was described to the crowd, and I noticed that her lapel mic was sensitive enough that we could all hear what he was saying. This dashed somewhat my plans to hit on her on-stage, because everyone in the crowd would be able to hear me saying, "So, uh, want to ride in my car sometime, uh, assuming I move the laundry? I've been led to understand that it's, uh, pimp-de-pimp-pimp-pimp." -- When Natasha called out the name of our company for Best User Experience the four of us ran onstage, and I shook her hand as she handed me the cool glowing cube, hand-designed by Jonathan Ives. I think she said, "Congratulations," and if I recall I replied, coyly, "Thanks." Playing it smooth... way to go Wil. Don't tip your hand yet, old boy. Best to slip in under RADAR. Way under RADAR. Afterwards, the winners all had to come up front to sign a ton of forms in exchange for our phat loot. Natasha was there amongst us, and I recognized that, if ever I would had a chance, this was it. Time to shine! I strode up to her confidently. Ok, well, I didn't stride, really, because I pinched a nerve in my neck last month, and ever since I've had to walk kind of hunched over, with my head forward, as if I were a cro-magnan man, or possibly just suffered from osteoporosis. Check it out, ladies! I'm unevolved and/or very old! The problem is, if I stand up straight, the nerve gets pinched and I lose all feeling in my left arm, and the ability to move it. On the other hand, I knew being hunched over was unattractive, so I kept sort of bending my lower torso backwards to compensate for my bent-forward neck, the end effect being that I bobbed along like a pigeon when I walked. So I coo-cooed up to her and gave her my most winning wince (because I had tweaked the nerve in the bobbing motion). While I admit this isn't a word-for-word transcript, this is, I feel, an accurate depiction of what went down: Natasha: "Congratulations on your win!" Me: "Nice dress! So pretty! Where dress come from?" Natasha: "Oh, an assistant and I just ran out to Saks today to get it." [Note to four women in audience: question answered!] "Anyways, we're all very excited about Delicious Library..." Me: "Dress soft! Girl pretty!" Natasha: "Yes... uh, so, it's great to have strategic partners like Delicious Monster on our platform..." Me: "Dress for dancing. Pretty girl go dancing with me?" Natasha: "Um, I have to go over... there... now." A few moments later she had magically changed into an absolutely gorgeous set of matching coordinates to go to dinner. I overheard her say she was going to schmooze some developers. I kind of felt sorry for them, because they really didn't stand much of a chance. "Pretty girl want us port to Macintosh? Us make pretty girl happy!" -- The next night we celebrated our win in style, inviting everyone we met from the conference to get free drinks on us at Captain Eddie Rickenbacker's bar, within stumbling distance of Moscone center. Laurie and her entourage came with us, as well as various other new best friends I'd met at the conference. One guy we'd met while out carousing looked and acted almost exactly like Brad Pitt (circa Ocean's 11), so we actually called him Brad to make our lives easy. In fact, a lot of us got celebrity names; our crazy Australian friend was dubbed "Robert Downey, Jr," and it was a title that fit both his looks and his personality perfectly -- I don't think I ever saw him sober during the conference. (I was later dubbed "George Clooney," but I think at this point they were stretching the conceit.) Robert Downey and I had seen a couple of very pretty, very young German "au pairs" on our way to the bar, and had convinced them to come along because, well, partying with forty guys and one lesbian is only so much fun. I talked to them for a while at the bar, but it soon became clear they were much too young for me, so I grabbed an extra chair and called Brad Pitt over, and they quickly turned their full attention to him. My work done, I wandered outside with a couple drinks, and sat with Laurie while she smoked her "American Spirit"s. Laurie thought I might be down after getting passed over by the 20-year-olds. "You know, you're much cuter than Brad Pitt," she said, lying in that sweet motherly way that makes you feel good not because you believe it, but because you appreciate the sentiment behind the lie. "Look at you: you're smart, successful, handsome, and very intriguing." Her friend nodded agreement. And, seriously, whatever liberties I'm taking with the truth elsewhere in this tale, I'm not making this part up: "Also, you have totally great taste in shirts." Labels: mac community, stories posted by Wil Shipley at 9:22 PM 42 Comments: Anonymous Denis said... Woa the adventures of a man trying to get the woman & a shirt ? hmmm anywhom, try this link for a mens boutique. http://www.kulhmancompany.com But in the end Banana Republic seems best. June 12, 2005 8:58 PM Anonymous Adam Lindsay said... Great post. I had been half-wondering why you had that bag from Pink with you before the awards (but figured you had good taste in shirts). -adam, the 'student' wot landed next to you during lunch sunday, but didn't say much besides thanks for DL1.5 June 12, 2005 11:10 PM Anonymous Anonymous said... I do like tiny stores that have awesome shirts. I also like pink with blue stripes. June 13, 2005 12:13 AM Anonymous David Emery said... And people say that blogging won't change the world... ;-) Hey, if making delicious software falls through, you could always write a book! P.S. Congrats on the award! June 13, 2005 1:40 AM Anonymous Heiko said... :-) try http://www.hackett.com/ June 13, 2005 1:13 PM Anonymous Ben W. said... Funny how the story isn't really about shirts, yet all of the comments are. If you can bear to read it, I've plenty of advice on how to meet women. I really enjoyed the talk on Sunday, so if this is of any worth, you can consider it returning a favor. I'd love to hear from you if it is any use. It's much of the knowledge I have about girls, distilled into a single comment. Do with it what you will... Oh by the way, are you still going to put up the slides from Sunday? The First and Only Rule of Women: Women dislike any man who they can have under their thumb. That is, women don't want a man they can "have" or control. They want a man they can respect. Women get funny warm feelings around men they respect, men with confidence and power. If you "need" them, then you're showing weakness, which doesn't give them those funny feelings. So you just have to show them, subtly, that confidence they so enjoy. This means keeping your cool, even if this girl is the one and only. If you keep a mindset ranging from cool non-chalance to a warm inattention, or even something slightly more jerkish, women see this as confidence, which they like. I used to hate this, I even call it "the jackass effect," but it's the way nearly every girl thinks and feels, so you either play the game or get left out. This isn't as callous as it may at first sound. They just want you to be your own man, with or without them. Everything has a reason: Another important point, though much less important than the first, is that you can't just date girls willy -nilly and expect to find someone you really enjoy being with. Well, you can, at first, but after a while you'll progress beyond just wanting to be able to meet them, and you'll want to find someone you can spend time with and do things together with. There're lots of girls, but only a few that are interesting to you, a few that are attractive, and fewer that are both. Friends of your friends are likely to be good people as well. In order to find those you are most likely to be interested in, it is helpful to go do things in places where you might meet girls with shared interests. For music lovers, there's a "scene," for instance, frat-types congregate with sorority girls, and so on. It's up to you to find out where those girls are for you. The Road Ahead: Which leads me to my next point, the best way to meet girls is to not try to meet them. Rather, relax and go try out some hobbies on the side. It's much much easier to meet women in places where they don't naturally have their defenses up. At bars, or at a conference where they are working and the ration is like 19 to 1, women aren't likely to be receptive to anybody, short of Mr. Pitt himself. If you were to go out and take some class or activity or something on the side, you'll not only get a break from the things you work on intently most of the time, you'll put yourself in situations where you can casually meet women. Here too, the rule of the day is to regard them with disinterest. You may soon know some girls you'd like to date. I'd suggest you casually invite them to some neutral event for a date. Something you would both enjoy which would take the pressure off both of you. Here, the shared interest thing helps, but it may be better to ask her to something she might enjoy, but not yet know about. Then you can alway go for dinner later or something. The great thing about not being stupid: To get to where you want to be, you should basically just find and meet as many interesting women as possible. With each meeting, try to get to know them. Each time, you will screw up somehow, but with each meeting you'll also most definately learn something. This is the greatest thing about not being stupid. Any mistakes you make are temporary. Either you succeed in getting a date, or you learn about how to do better next time. Along with this comes the fact that things aren't always going to work out with every girl, even if you're confident, interesting, and generally do the right thing. In these cases all you can really do is move on and look forward to the day you meet another interesting girl. Which, if you're putting yourself out there, shouldn't be so long. For more, I highly recommend this site, which I think provides a pretty apt view of what's really going on in most relationships. June 13, 2005 5:56 PM Blogger Bill said... Dude-- I'll totally crack out a nice shirt next year if I can get a cool movie star name. b.bum (nice story. nice product. i'll be watching what comes next carefully.) June 13, 2005 8:00 PM Anonymous Daniel J. Wilson said... You might want to check out Alan Flusser's "Style and the Man: How and Where To Buy The Best Mens' Clothes". June 13, 2005 10:19 PM Anonymous Darrell Moore said... gee Wil, you're an ass... nice software, though. June 13, 2005 10:19 PM Blogger Wil Shipley said... Thanks for the advice on shirts and love, all. I should admit I'm not quite as vain or hopeless with women as I project in that story. It's a humor piece. -- Darrell: I'm sorry you find me an ass. I don't try to be. Possibly something I said has a different meaning to you than I tried to give it. I am glad you like my software, and that you distinguish between it and me. June 14, 2005 1:33 AM Anonymous Anonymous said... Is that really your pimpmobile in the picture Wil? I recognise that badge. So will women -- no wonder you're single. Loads Of Trouble, Usually Serious. Thomas Pink? Yeah. In London, when the mergers and acquisitions people are working an all-nighter, they allegedly send out a motorcycle messenger to fetch a green curry, and a fresh shirt from Thomas Pink. "London, on the other hand, has class and panache"? Hmmm. You could be right, but I never scraped off enough grime or soot to encounter either of those things. June 15, 2005 2:01 AM Anonymous Anonymous said... Wil, The lady on stage at the Apple Design Awards is (I believe), married, with kids. Just though you might want to know, in case you meet her again next year.. Oh, and in case this software thing doesn't work out, you might want to consider doing PJ O'Rourke's job. You have a talent for this. -jcr June 22, 2005 9:17 AM Anonymous Reggin said... Good Story. :thumsup: June 25, 2005 8:06 AM Anonymous reggin said... And by :thumsup: I mean June 25, 2005 8:06 AM Blogger accomplice said... Admittedly I came to your blog only out of a desire to condemn you for your encouragement to other nerds who believe that their plight with women is inherently different than other men. But instead, I find myself wanting to congratulate you on your award and for being among a handfull of americans who know the joys of Thomas Pink. When I worked in London, Pink was my staple for gifting the men in my life. Best of wishes. June 26, 2005 12:58 PM Anonymous Owlgarden said... If you ever visit Massachusetts (like for MacWorld??) (as if) go to Nantucket and check out Pollacks. Bobby, like me, knows his cotton. He always has great stuff from around the world which you (and not me) can afford. London might have nice shirts, but iTaly (sorry, I'm an Apple guy) truly blows away any other country for shirts. Again, bring money. Here are some shirt rules: 1) A nice shirt has tight threads and strong buttons. Don't buy a shirt if the buttons only have a couple a stiches holding them in. Look for extras on the tails. (a good thing!) 2) Generic fits do not mean BULGY. Even if you're steroidal a shirt should be slightly loose not skintight. Only get a shirt fitted if you've known your tailor for a couple years. Off the rack is ok, but don't skimp on neck size. Learn your size. Avoid polyester. 3) White to the face. If you need to make an impression, always wear a white shirt. I don't care what you think or what else you're wearing. if you don't know what's appropriate then White to the face. (This advice came from an old NYorker article... it is correct) 4) Soft cotton-no button down collar, Stiffer cotton- buttons.This is the difference between a "Brooks Brothers" and a "Gap" Oxford. The Gap cotton is too loose for button downs, I have Brooks Brothers shirts I've owned for 20 years. Of course, i don't wear ties except for a formal occasion. Always wear button downs with a tie. 5) If you're a poor student reading this- check out your local Vintage (not thrift) store for vintage shirts in good condition. By good condition I mean not Faded! By Vintage I mean 50 years old- there is no shirt from the 70's that looks right today. Learn to wash clothes correctly- your shirts will last WAY longer. Thanks Wil for writing this article and the the cool software -owlg June 26, 2005 9:26 PM Anonymous Anonymous said... Will, if you ever come over to the UK visit Saville Row and pick up a very 'nice' shirt - Ted Baker's a bit chav in the UK these days. All the best. June 30, 2005 3:36 AM Anonymous Bald guy from Laurie's entourage said... Funny I do remember the shirts. They are nice shirts but Yea I'm more impresses with the car. Laurie says hi. July 04, 2005 10:11 AM Anonymous Anonymous said... In the USA you might be able to get away with button down collars with a tie, it won't fly in Europe (where all the cool kids are). If you're ever in LA, look up RAMS in the valley. He'll custom fit you a shirt and ship it from Hong-Kong. You don't need a fancy name like Thomas Pink to look good in a pink shirt. Andrew UK July 08, 2005 6:12 AM Anonymous manuel said... altho i only understand 50% of yer stuff, it is such a delight to strole thru your writings... am happy i found this blog and weee! i also use a mac. whatever, i dont even know what soft you do, your blog is gift enough August 17, 2005 7:37 AM Blogger MinCat said... thank you for that spectacularly brilliant piece. you dont know HOW close i was to grabbing my blue editor's pencil and stabbing myself through the eye~ September 03, 2005 12:37 AM Anonymous Ramblero said... Hmmmmmmm.......I kinda just fell into site this after having done a search for Pollacks (of the Nantucket Pollacks). (see earlier post by Owlsomething. The Deb owes me a jacket, I having promised to buy her either a sax (she was an award winning saxophonist in her ute) or a keyboard for Valentine's Day whilst in Jackson Hole last year. (There's an excellent leather-goods place in Jackson Hole (underneath The Snake River Grill) but while they were very close...they weren't quite right.) I've gotten terribly picky about clothes in my advanced years. In fact, I've gotten just terribly picky about everything...food...cars...movies...music...wine...you name it. I've been looking for The Coat for...oh....maybe 15 years now. In any event, I wandered by Pollacks (of the Nantucket Pollacks) a week ago Sat (in the midst of a deluge. We, with straight face, told the local people throughout NE we had come back to see The Rains (screw The Fall Colors), the underlying theme of what turned out to be the Trip from Hell (thank you JetBlu & Hertz) just as they were closing...and they wouldn't be open until Monday...and of course I went into a frenzy; we were leaving Monday on the 1:30 ferry for Hyannisport...but I digress. So, at my urging, The Deb and I wander into Pollacks Monday morning after a late breakfast, and I must say, they do have very nice clothes...including The Coat...which The Deb, after fondling it for 30 seconds said "you must have this coat!" The Deb does not mince words when it comes to clothing, especially since she knows how picky I've become....and in spite of it's upsettingly high 4 figure price. Of course, I reluctantly agreed and now they already have my upsettingly high 4 figure stack of lucre...and I don't have The Coat. It, purportedly, was shipped, insured, but who really knows? I'm convinced it was flown out by the same JetBlu that secreted away my luggage on the in-bound flight and, with great glee, flew it all up and down the East Coast for days while my blood pressure spiked...that or Gabriella has pocketed the money and is on her way back to Eastern Europe to set up shop on my dime. OK....more than a dime. Anyway....Owl was right. Pollacks is a must....but leave with the goods in hand. Oh...and congrats on whatever it was for doing whatever you do on Macs....or whatever. (I worked for Apple for eons...right arm...) Ask me later about The Keyboard. October 25, 2005 3:14 PM Anonymous Nathan Henderson said... A clotheshorse is a drying rack for clothes, but also refers to someone somewhat obsessed with clothing. http://www.bartleby.com/61/90/C0419000.html November 19, 2005 8:43 PM Anonymous Jamie Thingbox said... Have you seen http://www.englishcut.com/ ? The blog of a Saville Row tailor that's getting mentioned a lot of late. January 17, 2006 6:26 AM Anonymous Anonymous said... You really need to check out a store called Sean. They have locations in New York, San Fran, Santa Monica and Boston. No website yet, but well worth looking into. They carry very sharp french shirts from one designer. I buy all my casual clothes there and get a lot of compliments. January 19, 2006 2:54 PM Anonymous bjh said... You mean the fact that she looked like Laurie Anderson didn't give you a clue? Maybe if she reminded you of Ellen DeGeneris? April 25, 2006 11:39 AM Blogger Wil Shipley said... Laurie Anderson is gay? April 25, 2006 1:56 PM Anonymous Sharon said... Wil Shipley: "Thanks for the advice on shirts and love, all. I should admit I'm not quite as vain or hopeless with women as I project in that story. It's a humor piece." I bet you're not... I have had more than one fantasy about you. June 26, 2006 9:01 AM Blogger Wil Shipley said... Sharon: R U F3male? July 19, 2006 3:16 PM Anonymous Sharon said... Yes! I am a female, are you surprised? July 29, 2006 10:07 AM Blogger Wil Shipley said... Sharon: Well, I must admit some of my other would-be paramours are not, in the strictest sense. July 29, 2006 10:24 AM Anonymous Anonymous said... Damn that was funny, Wil. August 29, 2006 1:46 PM Anonymous Anonymous said... Where do you shop in Seattle? December 06, 2006 9:03 PM Anonymous Lakh said... Next time you come over to London - take yourself shirt shopping. City boys love Paul Smith. http://www.paulsmith.com You can also see his fine work in LA, NY and everywhere in Japan. For the finer cut - Dunhill is a sure bet too. July 03, 2007 4:47 PM Anonymous Brian said... Random tidbit: In the 19th century and early 20th, pink was considered a boy’s color, blue a girl’s. The rationale being pink was lighter shade of red, and ‘aggressive,’ and blue was a more ‘passive’ color. July 03, 2007 8:27 PM Anonymous Graham said... I bet you shop at Blackbird! Maybe that's too hipster-ish, but I've gotten some great clothes there on sale. I got an APC overcoat for $170 marked down from $400. Barneys isn't bad either... I don't really like Ian or Zebra Club. Where do you get fancy dress shirts around here though besides Nordstrom? July 03, 2007 10:39 PM Anonymous Anonymous said... Thanks for the lovely story. If you're ever in Rome check out my favourite shirt maker. http://www.danroma.com/ Nathanael July 04, 2007 5:50 AM Blogger kate said... hey buddy, i have spent two hours reading your stories and looking through your site andyou are brilliant, ever thought about writing novels?? i strongly urge you to try. thanks for the giggles: ) July 12, 2007 3:52 PM Blogger Lorenzo said... Hey, look for Barba shirts from Naples. they're the best! Trust me, I'm Italian. Lorenzo http://www.fnv.co.it September 20, 2007 2:47 PM Blogger Brett said... George Clooney (aka Wil Shipley the Fashionista), Although I check your blog from time to time (especially the Cocoa programming posts) I hadn't noticed, or paid much attention to this entry until a few moments ago. There's a good chance that I had glanced at it in the past but moved on after realizing that it was a "Really Long, Pointless Story about a Shirt". I apologize if it was the title that stopped me, but it hadn't occurred to me exactly what famous, voguish shirt this tale was about. Today I scrolled down far enough through the entry to get a glimpse of the topic and recognized it at once. It is the rare attendee who will wear a striped pink designer button up at an event where the oldest, oversized, cola stained, WWDC/Apple/NeXT t-shirt is considered a status symbol. I was with you at Captain Eddie Rickenbacker's and remember you generously offering me a vodka tonic and that chair alongside the young German nannies. And I also remember wondering if you would get breakfast grease all over that shirt as I sat across from you at Denny's, at the early hours of the following morning, with notables such as Dean Cain, Fred Savage, and Robert Downey Jr. Fond memories. A whale is not a fish. Brad Pitt October 31, 2007 11:36 AM Anonymous John said... They should make a film of this. Now, if only someone had some ideas about who to cast in each of the roles... December 21, 2007 8:41 AM Anonymous Anonymous said... You should try an Anna Matuozzo shirt (advice from a Steve Winwood fan!) July 25, 2008 3:07 AM Post a Comment And now in breaking news: something long and pointless! Saturday, June 11 This is a Really Long, Pointless Story about a Shirt Let's start, and end, with the shirts. Dressing is a big deal to me -- ever since I (a) became single, and (b) lost 60 pounds, I've become something of a clotheshorse. I don't know the etymology of that expression, but it's such a neat word I wanted to use it. (Am I like a sawhorse, but for clothing instead of sawing?) At any rate, I've started shopping at the smallest, snottiest, exclusiviest (I know, not a word) little men's boutiques I can find. At first I was content merely having the guys at Nordstrom all know me by name (and call me when they got a new season's worth of fashions), but that was merely a gateway (like marijuana in the eyes of conservatives) to littler shops, where each individual thread in a garment has a value measured in dollars, not pennies. Sadly, these kinds of shirts require dry-cleaning, which requires that I make it to the dry-cleaner. This is something of an issue for me, because I'm wont to keep odd hours, and because when I'm awake I'm usually working (c.f. "being single, the suckiness inherent therein"). So, for the last week, in preparation for WWDC, I've been driving around with a big blue laundry bag full of dirty shirts in the passenger seat of my pimp ride. I should mention that, when I was a wee lad, I had visions of one day getting a pimp ride, so that when I passed pretty women on the side of the street who were forlornly walking somewhere, I could pull up and say, "Hey, mamasita, you want a ride?" I've since been informed that women find this, in fact, really creepy, so I've never actually done it, but I have to mention that every guy has a fantasy of one day doing this, even while admitting this fantasy is in direct opposition to any possible reality. [i should also mention that should I wish to Jackson out and hit on 12-year-old boys, instead of women, a pimp ride is the perfect way to go. The number of times I've had 12-year-old boys yell out "pimp-de-pimp-pimp-pimp!" to me when I drive by is surprisingly high, considering I had previously never heard the "pimp-de-pimp-pimp-pimp" call and have no idea what it means. But for 12-year-olds it's some kind of lingua franca.] At any rate, you can imagine how cool it is to drive by a pretty woman walking in the rain and think, "Hey, I should offer her a ride... wait, then she'd have to have my big bag of stinky shirts in her lap... that'd probably strike her as pretty strange... possibly even frightening." -- So it is that, when packing for WWDC 2005, I only took one good shirt with me. Mind you, this was a really good shirt. This shirt was made in London by a guy named Ted or James or some such, which to me lends instant credibility to it, because as much as I love (the blue states in) my country, when I think of America I think of rebels, I think of individualists, I think of can-do spirit and an indomitable dedication to individual freedoms and happiness. But I don't think, "nice shirts!" London, on the other hand, has class and panache, and Ted/James clearly was the latest in a long line of shirt-makers who had, for generations, been making shirts for discerning gentlemen, not carrying guns, and/or shipping off criminals to unsettled countries. Nor is the cotton in this shirt simply from normal cotton plants, oh no. It's grown someplace exotic, like Morocco, and it seems to carry a slight scent of the spices of distant lands on it. Bury your face in this shirt and you can almost hear Bogey whispering, "Listen, kid, this shirt is bigger than the both of us..." I've received about five or so unsolicited compliments in this shirt, which is five more than I have in any other shirt. Guys don't get complimented on shirts a lot, unless they say, "Hey, look at this shirt," which I admit I've done a couple times, but I'm saying I've been complimented on this shirt without fishing for it, five times. -- And so I wore this shirt on Tuesday at WWDC 2005, because Tuesday was the day of the Apple Design Awards. My previous company had won a number of these when I was running it, and so this award had a personal meaning to me. This was the first time my new company had entered, and I had high hopes. And, should I win, I wanted to be up on that stage smiling at the crowd while looking fine in my shirt that combined the best parts of London and Morocco. And here's where the story take a tragic turn, because, in their unknowable yet infallible wisdom, Apple suddenly decided the Design Awards would be on Wednesday. I found this out late Tuesday, and spent the day grousing to all and sundry about how this messed up my plans vis-a-vis the shirt. And everyone agreed that it was, in fact, a very nice shirt, but I should note that I didn't count these compliments towards my previously-mentioned total of five, because I was really fishing. For a moment I thought this mishap might end up for the best, because that night several of us nerds ended up at a bar, and in my mildly drunken state I started talking with a pretty lady about... well, I don't remember. Something, I'm sure. We'll call her Laurie Anderson, because she looks just like a young Laurie Anderson, and it'll be more evocative this way. I didn't exactly hit on Laurie, per se, but I will say I was glad I was wearing a nice shirt. It wasn't until the next night that one of her friends let me know, in a very friendly manner, that if I had intentions towards Ms. Anderson I might reconsider them, because she was, in fact, as interested in women as I was. Which was a nice thing to do, frankly, because it's good to know the boundaries of your relationship with someone right at the start -- I like it when women I'm talking to let it be known they have a steady boyfriend, for example, not because I can then cut bait and run, but because I can adjust my expectations and demeanor accordingly, and not embarrass myself or her. For example, you don't say, "I want to nibble your neck," to a woman with a boyfriend. Instead, you'd use the more coy, "If you didn't have a boyfriend, I would certainly be interested in your neck, vis-a-vis the nibbling thereof." See, it's all about delivery. But, upon reflection later that night, I felt I hadn't made very effective use of my shirt, and so it was with a heavy heart that I finally took it off, realizing that it had been sullied for naught. Actually, I was pretty drunk when I got back to the hotel, so all I remember is thinking how much effort it was to take clothes off and put them in a pile. -- It was the next afternoon (morning having been lost to C2H5OH), while I was putting on one of my t-shirts and again mentioning how unhappy I was to be thus dressed for the Design Awards, that Mike said, with that clarity of vision associated with the genius, "Hey, you could, like, go buy a new shirt." T2 and I looked at each other, and although it may have been that we were both still under the affects of chemicals, we instantly agreed this was why Mike was The Smart One. My day had a purpose now, and my step had a spring to it. I asked the concierge where I might find a fancy, fashion-forward shirt in downtown San Francisco. I figured this would be a slam-dunk. Here's a city whose culture ranks up there with New York and Paris. Here's a city where the rich scions of industry have nothing to do with their money but impress each other with their fancy baubles and ornaments. She pulled out a map and circled a block. "Here's a Nordstrom's!" Wrong, wrong, wrong. First off, Nordstrom's is NOT fashion-forward, even if they do try to sell orange shirts to golfers in the winter. Second, if I wanted to go to freaking Nordstrom's, I'd GO TO THE ORIGINAL ONE, RIGHT NEXT TO WHERE I LIVE. I'm in San Francisco. The city by the bay! Wow me with your culture! "There's a Saks on 3rd?" NO! No no no no no! You are not getting me. I want a boutique. "Well, Nordstrom's has different departments, they're kind of like boutiques..." No! How'd we get back here? Seriously, no! Then, suddenly, she saw. "Oh, there's a little place called Pink, you might check that out, if you're not freaked out by the name." Lady, I'm a true metrosexual. I'm not worried about my masculinity when I shop. You could tell me the store is called "Sweaty Men in a Bathhouse" and I'd go there if it had Moroccan cotton. T2 and I jumped into a cab and I immediately bought two "slim-fit" shirts from Thomas Pink, of London. The gentlemen who helped us were classy and helpful without the slightest trace of condescension, which was nice considering I came in wearing a WWDC polo shirt and T2 had what appeared to be an original 1970s "Dark Side of the Moon" T-shirt on. -- This year was the 10th anniversary of the Apple Design awards, and as such they decided to celebrate by gussing the whole event up, in an homage/parody of the Academy Awards. This struck me as entirely apropos, as I estimate to the 1,000 of us nerds who were there, this was our Academy Awards. This was our Nobel prize. This was our moment. At the start of the evening one of the high mucky-mucks of Developer Relations, who happens to be a very pretty lady, floated onstage in a drop-dead gorgeous gown. We'll call her Natasha Richardson because she looks like a Natasha's younger sister might. (Yes, I know Natasha already has a younger sister.) There's another fact you should know at this point, which is that nerds are not, inherently, asexual. We don't have much success with women, but that doesn't mean we are immune to their charms. Quite the opposite. We fall under such a spell that we are unable to function, and this renders us so unattractive that it creates a self-perpetuating cycle of desperate singlehood. So, in that first moment, 1,000 nerds fell in love with Natasha. Well, 996 nerd guys fell in love with her, and the four women in the crowd thought, "Wow, I wonder where she got that dress?" (Laurie Anderson was out partying elsewhere, but I think it's safe to assume she would have been crushing, too, had she been present.) As she started to speak a strange calm came over the crowd, as if we were cavemen seeing fire for the first time, or rats hearing a certain piper. There was also some guy in a tux on stage with her, I think. I don't know if anyone remembers. Maybe he was tall? Immediately my mind was no longer on whether I won the award, but on what I would say to her if I did. When the first award was given, the guy who won it kept whispering things to her as his product was described to the crowd, and I noticed that her lapel mic was sensitive enough that we could all hear what he was saying. This dashed somewhat my plans to hit on her on-stage, because everyone in the crowd would be able to hear me saying, "So, uh, want to ride in my car sometime, uh, assuming I move the laundry? I've been led to understand that it's, uh, pimp-de-pimp-pimp-pimp." -- When Natasha called out the name of our company for Best User Experience the four of us ran onstage, and I shook her hand as she handed me the cool glowing cube, hand-designed by Jonathan Ives. I think she said, "Congratulations," and if I recall I replied, coyly, "Thanks." Playing it smooth... way to go Wil. Don't tip your hand yet, old boy. Best to slip in under RADAR. Way under RADAR. Afterwards, the winners all had to come up front to sign a ton of forms in exchange for our phat loot. Natasha was there amongst us, and I recognized that, if ever I would had a chance, this was it. Time to shine! I strode up to her confidently. Ok, well, I didn't stride, really, because I pinched a nerve in my neck last month, and ever since I've had to walk kind of hunched over, with my head forward, as if I were a cro-magnan man, or possibly just suffered from osteoporosis. Check it out, ladies! I'm unevolved and/or very old! The problem is, if I stand up straight, the nerve gets pinched and I lose all feeling in my left arm, and the ability to move it. On the other hand, I knew being hunched over was unattractive, so I kept sort of bending my lower torso backwards to compensate for my bent-forward neck, the end effect being that I bobbed along like a pigeon when I walked. So I coo-cooed up to her and gave her my most winning wince (because I had tweaked the nerve in the bobbing motion). While I admit this isn't a word-for-word transcript, this is, I feel, an accurate depiction of what went down: Natasha: "Congratulations on your win!" Me: "Nice dress! So pretty! Where dress come from?" Natasha: "Oh, an assistant and I just ran out to Saks today to get it." [Note to four women in audience: question answered!] "Anyways, we're all very excited about Delicious Library..." Me: "Dress soft! Girl pretty!" Natasha: "Yes... uh, so, it's great to have strategic partners like Delicious Monster on our platform..." Me: "Dress for dancing. Pretty girl go dancing with me?" Natasha: "Um, I have to go over... there... now." A few moments later she had magically changed into an absolutely gorgeous set of matching coordinates to go to dinner. I overheard her say she was going to schmooze some developers. I kind of felt sorry for them, because they really didn't stand much of a chance. "Pretty girl want us port to Macintosh? Us make pretty girl happy!" -- The next night we celebrated our win in style, inviting everyone we met from the conference to get free drinks on us at Captain Eddie Rickenbacker's bar, within stumbling distance of Moscone center. Laurie and her entourage came with us, as well as various other new best friends I'd met at the conference. One guy we'd met while out carousing looked and acted almost exactly like Brad Pitt (circa Ocean's 11), so we actually called him Brad to make our lives easy. In fact, a lot of us got celebrity names; our crazy Australian friend was dubbed "Robert Downey, Jr," and it was a title that fit both his looks and his personality perfectly -- I don't think I ever saw him sober during the conference. (I was later dubbed "George Clooney," but I think at this point they were stretching the conceit.) Robert Downey and I had seen a couple of very pretty, very young German "au pairs" on our way to the bar, and had convinced them to come along because, well, partying with forty guys and one lesbian is only so much fun. I talked to them for a while at the bar, but it soon became clear they were much too young for me, so I grabbed an extra chair and called Brad Pitt over, and they quickly turned their full attention to him. My work done, I wandered outside with a couple drinks, and sat with Laurie while she smoked her "American Spirit"s. Laurie thought I might be down after getting passed over by the 20-year-olds. "You know, you're much cuter than Brad Pitt," she said, lying in that sweet motherly way that makes you feel good not because you believe it, but because you appreciate the sentiment behind the lie. "Look at you: you're smart, successful, handsome, and very intriguing." Her friend nodded agreement. And, seriously, whatever liberties I'm taking with the truth elsewhere in this tale, I'm not making this part up: "Also, you have totally great taste in shirts." Labels: mac community, stories posted by Wil Shipley at 9:22 PM 42 Comments: Anonymous Denis said... Woa the adventures of a man trying to get the woman & a shirt ? hmmm anywhom, try this link for a mens boutique. http://www.kulhmancompany.com But in the end Banana Republic seems best. June 12, 2005 8:58 PM Anonymous Adam Lindsay said... Great post. I had been half-wondering why you had that bag from Pink with you before the awards (but figured you had good taste in shirts). -adam, the 'student' wot landed next to you during lunch sunday, but didn't say much besides thanks for DL1.5 June 12, 2005 11:10 PM Anonymous Anonymous said... I do like tiny stores that have awesome shirts. I also like pink with blue stripes. June 13, 2005 12:13 AM Anonymous David Emery said... And people say that blogging won't change the world... ;-) Hey, if making delicious software falls through, you could always write a book! P.S. Congrats on the award! June 13, 2005 1:40 AM Anonymous Heiko said... :-) try http://www.hackett.com/ June 13, 2005 1:13 PM Anonymous Ben W. said... Funny how the story isn't really about shirts, yet all of the comments are. If you can bear to read it, I've plenty of advice on how to meet women. I really enjoyed the talk on Sunday, so if this is of any worth, you can consider it returning a favor. I'd love to hear from you if it is any use. It's much of the knowledge I have about girls, distilled into a single comment. Do with it what you will... Oh by the way, are you still going to put up the slides from Sunday? The First and Only Rule of Women: Women dislike any man who they can have under their thumb. That is, women don't want a man they can "have" or control. They want a man they can respect. Women get funny warm feelings around men they respect, men with confidence and power. If you "need" them, then you're showing weakness, which doesn't give them those funny feelings. So you just have to show them, subtly, that confidence they so enjoy. This means keeping your cool, even if this girl is the one and only. If you keep a mindset ranging from cool non-chalance to a warm inattention, or even something slightly more jerkish, women see this as confidence, which they like. I used to hate this, I even call it "the jackass effect," but it's the way nearly every girl thinks and feels, so you either play the game or get left out. This isn't as callous as it may at first sound. They just want you to be your own man, with or without them. Everything has a reason: Another important point, though much less important than the first, is that you can't just date girls willy -nilly and expect to find someone you really enjoy being with. Well, you can, at first, but after a while you'll progress beyond just wanting to be able to meet them, and you'll want to find someone you can spend time with and do things together with. There're lots of girls, but only a few that are interesting to you, a few that are attractive, and fewer that are both. Friends of your friends are likely to be good people as well. In order to find those you are most likely to be interested in, it is helpful to go do things in places where you might meet girls with shared interests. For music lovers, there's a "scene," for instance, frat-types congregate with sorority girls, and so on. It's up to you to find out where those girls are for you. The Road Ahead: Which leads me to my next point, the best way to meet girls is to not try to meet them. Rather, relax and go try out some hobbies on the side. It's much much easier to meet women in places where they don't naturally have their defenses up. At bars, or at a conference where they are working and the ration is like 19 to 1, women aren't likely to be receptive to anybody, short of Mr. Pitt himself. If you were to go out and take some class or activity or something on the side, you'll not only get a break from the things you work on intently most of the time, you'll put yourself in situations where you can casually meet women. Here too, the rule of the day is to regard them with disinterest. You may soon know some girls you'd like to date. I'd suggest you casually invite them to some neutral event for a date. Something you would both enjoy which would take the pressure off both of you. Here, the shared interest thing helps, but it may be better to ask her to something she might enjoy, but not yet know about. Then you can alway go for dinner later or something. The great thing about not being stupid: To get to where you want to be, you should basically just find and meet as many interesting women as possible. With each meeting, try to get to know them. Each time, you will screw up somehow, but with each meeting you'll also most definately learn something. This is the greatest thing about not being stupid. Any mistakes you make are temporary. Either you succeed in getting a date, or you learn about how to do better next time. Along with this comes the fact that things aren't always going to work out with every girl, even if you're confident, interesting, and generally do the right thing. In these cases all you can really do is move on and look forward to the day you meet another interesting girl. Which, if you're putting yourself out there, shouldn't be so long. For more, I highly recommend this site, which I think provides a pretty apt view of what's really going on in most relationships. June 13, 2005 5:56 PM Blogger Bill said... Dude-- I'll totally crack out a nice shirt next year if I can get a cool movie star name. b.bum (nice story. nice product. i'll be watching what comes next carefully.) June 13, 2005 8:00 PM Anonymous Daniel J. Wilson said... You might want to check out Alan Flusser's "Style and the Man: How and Where To Buy The Best Mens' Clothes". June 13, 2005 10:19 PM Anonymous Darrell Moore said... gee Wil, you're an ass... nice software, though. June 13, 2005 10:19 PM Blogger Wil Shipley said... Thanks for the advice on shirts and love, all. I should admit I'm not quite as vain or hopeless with women as I project in that story. It's a humor piece. -- Darrell: I'm sorry you find me an ass. I don't try to be. Possibly something I said has a different meaning to you than I tried to give it. I am glad you like my software, and that you distinguish between it and me. June 14, 2005 1:33 AM Anonymous Anonymous said... Is that really your pimpmobile in the picture Wil? I recognise that badge. So will women -- no wonder you're single. Loads Of Trouble, Usually Serious. Thomas Pink? Yeah. In London, when the mergers and acquisitions people are working an all-nighter, they allegedly send out a motorcycle messenger to fetch a green curry, and a fresh shirt from Thomas Pink. "London, on the other hand, has class and panache"? Hmmm. You could be right, but I never scraped off enough grime or soot to encounter either of those things. June 15, 2005 2:01 AM Anonymous Anonymous said... Wil, The lady on stage at the Apple Design Awards is (I believe), married, with kids. Just though you might want to know, in case you meet her again next year.. Oh, and in case this software thing doesn't work out, you might want to consider doing PJ O'Rourke's job. You have a talent for this. -jcr June 22, 2005 9:17 AM Anonymous Reggin said... Good Story. :thumsup: June 25, 2005 8:06 AM Anonymous reggin said... And by :thumsup: I mean June 25, 2005 8:06 AM Blogger accomplice said... Admittedly I came to your blog only out of a desire to condemn you for your encouragement to other nerds who believe that their plight with women is inherently different than other men. But instead, I find myself wanting to congratulate you on your award and for being among a handfull of americans who know the joys of Thomas Pink. When I worked in London, Pink was my staple for gifting the men in my life. Best of wishes. June 26, 2005 12:58 PM Anonymous Owlgarden said... If you ever visit Massachusetts (like for MacWorld??) (as if) go to Nantucket and check out Pollacks. Bobby, like me, knows his cotton. He always has great stuff from around the world which you (and not me) can afford. London might have nice shirts, but iTaly (sorry, I'm an Apple guy) truly blows away any other country for shirts. Again, bring money. Here are some shirt rules: 1) A nice shirt has tight threads and strong buttons. Don't buy a shirt if the buttons only have a couple a stiches holding them in. Look for extras on the tails. (a good thing!) 2) Generic fits do not mean BULGY. Even if you're steroidal a shirt should be slightly loose not skintight. Only get a shirt fitted if you've known your tailor for a couple years. Off the rack is ok, but don't skimp on neck size. Learn your size. Avoid polyester. 3) White to the face. If you need to make an impression, always wear a white shirt. I don't care what you think or what else you're wearing. if you don't know what's appropriate then White to the face. (This advice came from an old NYorker article... it is correct) 4) Soft cotton-no button down collar, Stiffer cotton- buttons.This is the difference between a "Brooks Brothers" and a "Gap" Oxford. The Gap cotton is too loose for button downs, I have Brooks Brothers shirts I've owned for 20 years. Of course, i don't wear ties except for a formal occasion. Always wear button downs with a tie. 5) If you're a poor student reading this- check out your local Vintage (not thrift) store for vintage shirts in good condition. By good condition I mean not Faded! By Vintage I mean 50 years old- there is no shirt from the 70's that looks right today. Learn to wash clothes correctly- your shirts will last WAY longer. Thanks Wil for writing this article and the the cool software -owlg June 26, 2005 9:26 PM Anonymous Anonymous said... Will, if you ever come over to the UK visit Saville Row and pick up a very 'nice' shirt - Ted Baker's a bit chav in the UK these days. All the best. June 30, 2005 3:36 AM Anonymous Bald guy from Laurie's entourage said... Funny I do remember the shirts. They are nice shirts but Yea I'm more impresses with the car. Laurie says hi. July 04, 2005 10:11 AM Anonymous Anonymous said... In the USA you might be able to get away with button down collars with a tie, it won't fly in Europe (where all the cool kids are). If you're ever in LA, look up RAMS in the valley. He'll custom fit you a shirt and ship it from Hong-Kong. You don't need a fancy name like Thomas Pink to look good in a pink shirt. Andrew UK July 08, 2005 6:12 AM Anonymous manuel said... altho i only understand 50% of yer stuff, it is such a delight to strole thru your writings... am happy i found this blog and weee! i also use a mac. whatever, i dont even know what soft you do, your blog is gift enough August 17, 2005 7:37 AM Blogger MinCat said... thank you for that spectacularly brilliant piece. you dont know HOW close i was to grabbing my blue editor's pencil and stabbing myself through the eye~ September 03, 2005 12:37 AM Anonymous Ramblero said... Hmmmmmmm.......I kinda just fell into site this after having done a search for Pollacks (of the Nantucket Pollacks). (see earlier post by Owlsomething. The Deb owes me a jacket, I having promised to buy her either a sax (she was an award winning saxophonist in her ute) or a keyboard for Valentine's Day whilst in Jackson Hole last year. (There's an excellent leather-goods place in Jackson Hole (underneath The Snake River Grill) but while they were very close...they weren't quite right.) I've gotten terribly picky about clothes in my advanced years. In fact, I've gotten just terribly picky about everything...food...cars...movies...music...wine...you name it. I've been looking for The Coat for...oh....maybe 15 years now. In any event, I wandered by Pollacks (of the Nantucket Pollacks) a week ago Sat (in the midst of a deluge. We, with straight face, told the local people throughout NE we had come back to see The Rains (screw The Fall Colors), the underlying theme of what turned out to be the Trip from Hell (thank you JetBlu & Hertz) just as they were closing...and they wouldn't be open until Monday...and of course I went into a frenzy; we were leaving Monday on the 1:30 ferry for Hyannisport...but I digress. So, at my urging, The Deb and I wander into Pollacks Monday morning after a late breakfast, and I must say, they do have very nice clothes...including The Coat...which The Deb, after fondling it for 30 seconds said "you must have this coat!" The Deb does not mince words when it comes to clothing, especially since she knows how picky I've become....and in spite of it's upsettingly high 4 figure price. Of course, I reluctantly agreed and now they already have my upsettingly high 4 figure stack of lucre...and I don't have The Coat. It, purportedly, was shipped, insured, but who really knows? I'm convinced it was flown out by the same JetBlu that secreted away my luggage on the in-bound flight and, with great glee, flew it all up and down the East Coast for days while my blood pressure spiked...that or Gabriella has pocketed the money and is on her way back to Eastern Europe to set up shop on my dime. OK....more than a dime. Anyway....Owl was right. Pollacks is a must....but leave with the goods in hand. Oh...and congrats on whatever it was for doing whatever you do on Macs....or whatever. (I worked for Apple for eons...right arm...) Ask me later about The Keyboard. October 25, 2005 3:14 PM Anonymous Nathan Henderson said... A clotheshorse is a drying rack for clothes, but also refers to someone somewhat obsessed with clothing. http://www.bartleby.com/61/90/C0419000.html November 19, 2005 8:43 PM Anonymous Jamie Thingbox said... Have you seen http://www.englishcut.com/ ? The blog of a Saville Row tailor that's getting mentioned a lot of late. January 17, 2006 6:26 AM Anonymous Anonymous said... You really need to check out a store called Sean. They have locations in New York, San Fran, Santa Monica and Boston. No website yet, but well worth looking into. They carry very sharp french shirts from one designer. I buy all my casual clothes there and get a lot of compliments. January 19, 2006 2:54 PM Anonymous bjh said... You mean the fact that she looked like Laurie Anderson didn't give you a clue? Maybe if she reminded you of Ellen DeGeneris? April 25, 2006 11:39 AM Blogger Wil Shipley said... Laurie Anderson is gay? April 25, 2006 1:56 PM Anonymous Sharon said... Wil Shipley: "Thanks for the advice on shirts and love, all. I should admit I'm not quite as vain or hopeless with women as I project in that story. It's a humor piece." I bet you're not... I have had more than one fantasy about you. June 26, 2006 9:01 AM Blogger Wil Shipley said... Sharon: R U F3male? July 19, 2006 3:16 PM Anonymous Sharon said... Yes! I am a female, are you surprised? July 29, 2006 10:07 AM Blogger Wil Shipley said... Sharon: Well, I must admit some of my other would-be paramours are not, in the strictest sense. July 29, 2006 10:24 AM Anonymous Anonymous said... Damn that was funny, Wil. August 29, 2006 1:46 PM Anonymous Anonymous said... Where do you shop in Seattle? December 06, 2006 9:03 PM Anonymous Lakh said... Next time you come over to London - take yourself shirt shopping. City boys love Paul Smith. http://www.paulsmith.com You can also see his fine work in LA, NY and everywhere in Japan. For the finer cut - Dunhill is a sure bet too. July 03, 2007 4:47 PM Anonymous Brian said... Random tidbit: In the 19th century and early 20th, pink was considered a boy’s color, blue a girl’s. The rationale being pink was lighter shade of red, and ‘aggressive,’ and blue was a more ‘passive’ color. July 03, 2007 8:27 PM Anonymous Graham said... I bet you shop at Blackbird! Maybe that's too hipster-ish, but I've gotten some great clothes there on sale. I got an APC overcoat for $170 marked down from $400. Barneys isn't bad either... I don't really like Ian or Zebra Club. Where do you get fancy dress shirts around here though besides Nordstrom? July 03, 2007 10:39 PM Anonymous Anonymous said... Thanks for the lovely story. If you're ever in Rome check out my favourite shirt maker. http://www.danroma.com/ Nathanael July 04, 2007 5:50 AM Blogger kate said... hey buddy, i have spent two hours reading your stories and looking through your site andyou are brilliant, ever thought about writing novels?? i strongly urge you to try. thanks for the giggles: ) July 12, 2007 3:52 PM Blogger Lorenzo said... Hey, look for Barba shirts from Naples. they're the best! Trust me, I'm Italian. Lorenzo http://www.fnv.co.it September 20, 2007 2:47 PM Blogger Brett said... George Clooney (aka Wil Shipley the Fashionista), Although I check your blog from time to time (especially the Cocoa programming posts) I hadn't noticed, or paid much attention to this entry until a few moments ago. There's a good chance that I had glanced at it in the past but moved on after realizing that it was a "Really Long, Pointless Story about a Shirt". I apologize if it was the title that stopped me, but it hadn't occurred to me exactly what famous, voguish shirt this tale was about. Today I scrolled down far enough through the entry to get a glimpse of the topic and recognized it at once. It is the rare attendee who will wear a striped pink designer button up at an event where the oldest, oversized, cola stained, WWDC/Apple/NeXT t-shirt is considered a status symbol. I was with you at Captain Eddie Rickenbacker's and remember you generously offering me a vodka tonic and that chair alongside the young German nannies. And I also remember wondering if you would get breakfast grease all over that shirt as I sat across from you at Denny's, at the early hours of the following morning, with notables such as Dean Cain, Fred Savage, and Robert Downey Jr. Fond memories. A whale is not a fish. Brad Pitt October 31, 2007 11:36 AM Anonymous John said... They should make a film of this. Now, if only someone had some ideas about who to cast in each of the roles... December 21, 2007 8:41 AM Anonymous Anonymous said... You should try an Anna Matuozzo shirt (advice from a Steve Winwood fan!) July 25, 2008 3:07 AM Post a Comment And now in breaking news: something long and pointless! Saturday, June 11 This is a Really Long, Pointless Story about a Shirt Let's start, and end, with the shirts. Dressing is a big deal to me -- ever since I (a) became single, and (b) lost 60 pounds, I've become something of a clotheshorse. I don't know the etymology of that expression, but it's such a neat word I wanted to use it. (Am I like a sawhorse, but for clothing instead of sawing?) At any rate, I've started shopping at the smallest, snottiest, exclusiviest (I know, not a word) little men's boutiques I can find. At first I was content merely having the guys at Nordstrom all know me by name (and call me when they got a new season's worth of fashions), but that was merely a gateway (like marijuana in the eyes of conservatives) to littler shops, where each individual thread in a garment has a value measured in dollars, not pennies. Sadly, these kinds of shirts require dry-cleaning, which requires that I make it to the dry-cleaner. This is something of an issue for me, because I'm wont to keep odd hours, and because when I'm awake I'm usually working (c.f. "being single, the suckiness inherent therein"). So, for the last week, in preparation for WWDC, I've been driving around with a big blue laundry bag full of dirty shirts in the passenger seat of my pimp ride. I should mention that, when I was a wee lad, I had visions of one day getting a pimp ride, so that when I passed pretty women on the side of the street who were forlornly walking somewhere, I could pull up and say, "Hey, mamasita, you want a ride?" I've since been informed that women find this, in fact, really creepy, so I've never actually done it, but I have to mention that every guy has a fantasy of one day doing this, even while admitting this fantasy is in direct opposition to any possible reality. [i should also mention that should I wish to Jackson out and hit on 12-year-old boys, instead of women, a pimp ride is the perfect way to go. The number of times I've had 12-year-old boys yell out "pimp-de-pimp-pimp-pimp!" to me when I drive by is surprisingly high, considering I had previously never heard the "pimp-de-pimp-pimp-pimp" call and have no idea what it means. But for 12-year-olds it's some kind of lingua franca.] At any rate, you can imagine how cool it is to drive by a pretty woman walking in the rain and think, "Hey, I should offer her a ride... wait, then she'd have to have my big bag of stinky shirts in her lap... that'd probably strike her as pretty strange... possibly even frightening." -- So it is that, when packing for WWDC 2005, I only took one good shirt with me. Mind you, this was a really good shirt. This shirt was made in London by a guy named Ted or James or some such, which to me lends instant credibility to it, because as much as I love (the blue states in) my country, when I think of America I think of rebels, I think of individualists, I think of can-do spirit and an indomitable dedication to individual freedoms and happiness. But I don't think, "nice shirts!" London, on the other hand, has class and panache, and Ted/James clearly was the latest in a long line of shirt-makers who had, for generations, been making shirts for discerning gentlemen, not carrying guns, and/or shipping off criminals to unsettled countries. Nor is the cotton in this shirt simply from normal cotton plants, oh no. It's grown someplace exotic, like Morocco, and it seems to carry a slight scent of the spices of distant lands on it. Bury your face in this shirt and you can almost hear Bogey whispering, "Listen, kid, this shirt is bigger than the both of us..." I've received about five or so unsolicited compliments in this shirt, which is five more than I have in any other shirt. Guys don't get complimented on shirts a lot, unless they say, "Hey, look at this shirt," which I admit I've done a couple times, but I'm saying I've been complimented on this shirt without fishing for it, five times. -- And so I wore this shirt on Tuesday at WWDC 2005, because Tuesday was the day of the Apple Design Awards. My previous company had won a number of these when I was running it, and so this award had a personal meaning to me. This was the first time my new company had entered, and I had high hopes. And, should I win, I wanted to be up on that stage smiling at the crowd while looking fine in my shirt that combined the best parts of London and Morocco. And here's where the story take a tragic turn, because, in their unknowable yet infallible wisdom, Apple suddenly decided the Design Awards would be on Wednesday. I found this out late Tuesday, and spent the day grousing to all and sundry about how this messed up my plans vis-a-vis the shirt. And everyone agreed that it was, in fact, a very nice shirt, but I should note that I didn't count these compliments towards my previously-mentioned total of five, because I was really fishing. For a moment I thought this mishap might end up for the best, because that night several of us nerds ended up at a bar, and in my mildly drunken state I started talking with a pretty lady about... well, I don't remember. Something, I'm sure. We'll call her Laurie Anderson, because she looks just like a young Laurie Anderson, and it'll be more evocative this way. I didn't exactly hit on Laurie, per se, but I will say I was glad I was wearing a nice shirt. It wasn't until the next night that one of her friends let me know, in a very friendly manner, that if I had intentions towards Ms. Anderson I might reconsider them, because she was, in fact, as interested in women as I was. Which was a nice thing to do, frankly, because it's good to know the boundaries of your relationship with someone right at the start -- I like it when women I'm talking to let it be known they have a steady boyfriend, for example, not because I can then cut bait and run, but because I can adjust my expectations and demeanor accordingly, and not embarrass myself or her. For example, you don't say, "I want to nibble your neck," to a woman with a boyfriend. Instead, you'd use the more coy, "If you didn't have a boyfriend, I would certainly be interested in your neck, vis-a-vis the nibbling thereof." See, it's all about delivery. But, upon reflection later that night, I felt I hadn't made very effective use of my shirt, and so it was with a heavy heart that I finally took it off, realizing that it had been sullied for naught. Actually, I was pretty drunk when I got back to the hotel, so all I remember is thinking how much effort it was to take clothes off and put them in a pile. -- It was the next afternoon (morning having been lost to C2H5OH), while I was putting on one of my t-shirts and again mentioning how unhappy I was to be thus dressed for the Design Awards, that Mike said, with that clarity of vision associated with the genius, "Hey, you could, like, go buy a new shirt." T2 and I looked at each other, and although it may have been that we were both still under the affects of chemicals, we instantly agreed this was why Mike was The Smart One. My day had a purpose now, and my step had a spring to it. I asked the concierge where I might find a fancy, fashion-forward shirt in downtown San Francisco. I figured this would be a slam-dunk. Here's a city whose culture ranks up there with New York and Paris. Here's a city where the rich scions of industry have nothing to do with their money but impress each other with their fancy baubles and ornaments. She pulled out a map and circled a block. "Here's a Nordstrom's!" Wrong, wrong, wrong. First off, Nordstrom's is NOT fashion-forward, even if they do try to sell orange shirts to golfers in the winter. Second, if I wanted to go to freaking Nordstrom's, I'd GO TO THE ORIGINAL ONE, RIGHT NEXT TO WHERE I LIVE. I'm in San Francisco. The city by the bay! Wow me with your culture! "There's a Saks on 3rd?" NO! No no no no no! You are not getting me. I want a boutique. "Well, Nordstrom's has different departments, they're kind of like boutiques..." No! How'd we get back here? Seriously, no! Then, suddenly, she saw. "Oh, there's a little place called Pink, you might check that out, if you're not freaked out by the name." Lady, I'm a true metrosexual. I'm not worried about my masculinity when I shop. You could tell me the store is called "Sweaty Men in a Bathhouse" and I'd go there if it had Moroccan cotton. T2 and I jumped into a cab and I immediately bought two "slim-fit" shirts from Thomas Pink, of London. The gentlemen who helped us were classy and helpful without the slightest trace of condescension, which was nice considering I came in wearing a WWDC polo shirt and T2 had what appeared to be an original 1970s "Dark Side of the Moon" T-shirt on. -- This year was the 10th anniversary of the Apple Design awards, and as such they decided to celebrate by gussing the whole event up, in an homage/parody of the Academy Awards. This struck me as entirely apropos, as I estimate to the 1,000 of us nerds who were there, this was our Academy Awards. This was our Nobel prize. This was our moment. At the start of the evening one of the high mucky-mucks of Developer Relations, who happens to be a very pretty lady, floated onstage in a drop-dead gorgeous gown. We'll call her Natasha Richardson because she looks like a Natasha's younger sister might. (Yes, I know Natasha already has a younger sister.) There's another fact you should know at this point, which is that nerds are not, inherently, asexual. We don't have much success with women, but that doesn't mean we are immune to their charms. Quite the opposite. We fall under such a spell that we are unable to function, and this renders us so unattractive that it creates a self-perpetuating cycle of desperate singlehood. So, in that first moment, 1,000 nerds fell in love with Natasha. Well, 996 nerd guys fell in love with her, and the four women in the crowd thought, "Wow, I wonder where she got that dress?" (Laurie Anderson was out partying elsewhere, but I think it's safe to assume she would have been crushing, too, had she been present.) As she started to speak a strange calm came over the crowd, as if we were cavemen seeing fire for the first time, or rats hearing a certain piper. There was also some guy in a tux on stage with her, I think. I don't know if anyone remembers. Maybe he was tall? Immediately my mind was no longer on whether I won the award, but on what I would say to her if I did. When the first award was given, the guy who won it kept whispering things to her as his product was described to the crowd, and I noticed that her lapel mic was sensitive enough that we could all hear what he was saying. This dashed somewhat my plans to hit on her on-stage, because everyone in the crowd would be able to hear me saying, "So, uh, want to ride in my car sometime, uh, assuming I move the laundry? I've been led to understand that it's, uh, pimp-de-pimp-pimp-pimp." -- When Natasha called out the name of our company for Best User Experience the four of us ran onstage, and I shook her hand as she handed me the cool glowing cube, hand-designed by Jonathan Ives. I think she said, "Congratulations," and if I recall I replied, coyly, "Thanks." Playing it smooth... way to go Wil. Don't tip your hand yet, old boy. Best to slip in under RADAR. Way under RADAR. Afterwards, the winners all had to come up front to sign a ton of forms in exchange for our phat loot. Natasha was there amongst us, and I recognized that, if ever I would had a chance, this was it. Time to shine! I strode up to her confidently. Ok, well, I didn't stride, really, because I pinched a nerve in my neck last month, and ever since I've had to walk kind of hunched over, with my head forward, as if I were a cro-magnan man, or possibly just suffered from osteoporosis. Check it out, ladies! I'm unevolved and/or very old! The problem is, if I stand up straight, the nerve gets pinched and I lose all feeling in my left arm, and the ability to move it. On the other hand, I knew being hunched over was unattractive, so I kept sort of bending my lower torso backwards to compensate for my bent-forward neck, the end effect being that I bobbed along like a pigeon when I walked. So I coo-cooed up to her and gave her my most winning wince (because I had tweaked the nerve in the bobbing motion). While I admit this isn't a word-for-word transcript, this is, I feel, an accurate depiction of what went down: Natasha: "Congratulations on your win!" Me: "Nice dress! So pretty! Where dress come from?" Natasha: "Oh, an assistant and I just ran out to Saks today to get it." [Note to four women in audience: question answered!] "Anyways, we're all very excited about Delicious Library..." Me: "Dress soft! Girl pretty!" Natasha: "Yes... uh, so, it's great to have strategic partners like Delicious Monster on our platform..." Me: "Dress for dancing. Pretty girl go dancing with me?" Natasha: "Um, I have to go over... there... now." A few moments later she had magically changed into an absolutely gorgeous set of matching coordinates to go to dinner. I overheard her say she was going to schmooze some developers. I kind of felt sorry for them, because they really didn't stand much of a chance. "Pretty girl want us port to Macintosh? Us make pretty girl happy!" -- The next night we celebrated our win in style, inviting everyone we met from the conference to get free drinks on us at Captain Eddie Rickenbacker's bar, within stumbling distance of Moscone center. Laurie and her entourage came with us, as well as various other new best friends I'd met at the conference. One guy we'd met while out carousing looked and acted almost exactly like Brad Pitt (circa Ocean's 11), so we actually called him Brad to make our lives easy. In fact, a lot of us got celebrity names; our crazy Australian friend was dubbed "Robert Downey, Jr," and it was a title that fit both his looks and his personality perfectly -- I don't think I ever saw him sober during the conference. (I was later dubbed "George Clooney," but I think at this point they were stretching the conceit.) Robert Downey and I had seen a couple of very pretty, very young German "au pairs" on our way to the bar, and had convinced them to come along because, well, partying with forty guys and one lesbian is only so much fun. I talked to them for a while at the bar, but it soon became clear they were much too young for me, so I grabbed an extra chair and called Brad Pitt over, and they quickly turned their full attention to him. My work done, I wandered outside with a couple drinks, and sat with Laurie while she smoked her "American Spirit"s. Laurie thought I might be down after getting passed over by the 20-year-olds. "You know, you're much cuter than Brad Pitt," she said, lying in that sweet motherly way that makes you feel good not because you believe it, but because you appreciate the sentiment behind the lie. "Look at you: you're smart, successful, handsome, and very intriguing." Her friend nodded agreement. And, seriously, whatever liberties I'm taking with the truth elsewhere in this tale, I'm not making this part up: "Also, you have totally great taste in shirts." Labels: mac community, stories posted by Wil Shipley at 9:22 PM 42 Comments: Anonymous Denis said... Woa the adventures of a man trying to get the woman & a shirt ? hmmm anywhom, try this link for a mens boutique. http://www.kulhmancompany.com But in the end Banana Republic seems best. June 12, 2005 8:58 PM Anonymous Adam Lindsay said... Great post. I had been half-wondering why you had that bag from Pink with you before the awards (but figured you had good taste in shirts). -adam, the 'student' wot landed next to you during lunch sunday, but didn't say much besides thanks for DL1.5 June 12, 2005 11:10 PM Anonymous Anonymous said... I do like tiny stores that have awesome shirts. I also like pink with blue stripes. June 13, 2005 12:13 AM Anonymous David Emery said... And people say that blogging won't change the world... ;-) Hey, if making delicious software falls through, you could always write a book! P.S. Congrats on the award! June 13, 2005 1:40 AM Anonymous Heiko said... :-) try http://www.hackett.com/ June 13, 2005 1:13 PM Anonymous Ben W. said... Funny how the story isn't really about shirts, yet all of the comments are. If you can bear to read it, I've plenty of advice on how to meet women. I really enjoyed the talk on Sunday, so if this is of any worth, you can consider it returning a favor. I'd love to hear from you if it is any use. It's much of the knowledge I have about girls, distilled into a single comment. Do with it what you will... Oh by the way, are you still going to put up the slides from Sunday? The First and Only Rule of Women: Women dislike any man who they can have under their thumb. That is, women don't want a man they can "have" or control. They want a man they can respect. Women get funny warm feelings around men they respect, men with confidence and power. If you "need" them, then you're showing weakness, which doesn't give them those funny feelings. So you just have to show them, subtly, that confidence they so enjoy. This means keeping your cool, even if this girl is the one and only. If you keep a mindset ranging from cool non-chalance to a warm inattention, or even something slightly more jerkish, women see this as confidence, which they like. I used to hate this, I even call it "the jackass effect," but it's the way nearly every girl thinks and feels, so you either play the game or get left out. This isn't as callous as it may at first sound. They just want you to be your own man, with or without them. Everything has a reason: Another important point, though much less important than the first, is that you can't just date girls willy -nilly and expect to find someone you really enjoy being with. Well, you can, at first, but after a while you'll progress beyond just wanting to be able to meet them, and you'll want to find someone you can spend time with and do things together with. There're lots of girls, but only a few that are interesting to you, a few that are attractive, and fewer that are both. Friends of your friends are likely to be good people as well. In order to find those you are most likely to be interested in, it is helpful to go do things in places where you might meet girls with shared interests. For music lovers, there's a "scene," for instance, frat-types congregate with sorority girls, and so on. It's up to you to find out where those girls are for you. The Road Ahead: Which leads me to my next point, the best way to meet girls is to not try to meet them. Rather, relax and go try out some hobbies on the side. It's much much easier to meet women in places where they don't naturally have their defenses up. At bars, or at a conference where they are working and the ration is like 19 to 1, women aren't likely to be receptive to anybody, short of Mr. Pitt himself. If you were to go out and take some class or activity or something on the side, you'll not only get a break from the things you work on intently most of the time, you'll put yourself in situations where you can casually meet women. Here too, the rule of the day is to regard them with disinterest. You may soon know some girls you'd like to date. I'd suggest you casually invite them to some neutral event for a date. Something you would both enjoy which would take the pressure off both of you. Here, the shared interest thing helps, but it may be better to ask her to something she might enjoy, but not yet know about. Then you can alway go for dinner later or something. The great thing about not being stupid: To get to where you want to be, you should basically just find and meet as many interesting women as possible. With each meeting, try to get to know them. Each time, you will screw up somehow, but with each meeting you'll also most definately learn something. This is the greatest thing about not being stupid. Any mistakes you make are temporary. Either you succeed in getting a date, or you learn about how to do better next time. Along with this comes the fact that things aren't always going to work out with every girl, even if you're confident, interesting, and generally do the right thing. In these cases all you can really do is move on and look forward to the day you meet another interesting girl. Which, if you're putting yourself out there, shouldn't be so long. For more, I highly recommend this site, which I think provides a pretty apt view of what's really going on in most relationships. June 13, 2005 5:56 PM Blogger Bill said... Dude-- I'll totally crack out a nice shirt next year if I can get a cool movie star name. b.bum (nice story. nice product. i'll be watching what comes next carefully.) June 13, 2005 8:00 PM Anonymous Daniel J. Wilson said... You might want to check out Alan Flusser's "Style and the Man: How and Where To Buy The Best Mens' Clothes". June 13, 2005 10:19 PM Anonymous Darrell Moore said... gee Wil, you're an ass... nice software, though. June 13, 2005 10:19 PM Blogger Wil Shipley said... Thanks for the advice on shirts and love, all. I should admit I'm not quite as vain or hopeless with women as I project in that story. It's a humor piece. -- Darrell: I'm sorry you find me an ass. I don't try to be. Possibly something I said has a different meaning to you than I tried to give it. I am glad you like my software, and that you distinguish between it and me. June 14, 2005 1:33 AM Anonymous Anonymous said... Is that really your pimpmobile in the picture Wil? I recognise that badge. So will women -- no wonder you're single. Loads Of Trouble, Usually Serious. Thomas Pink? Yeah. In London, when the mergers and acquisitions people are working an all-nighter, they allegedly send out a motorcycle messenger to fetch a green curry, and a fresh shirt from Thomas Pink. "London, on the other hand, has class and panache"? Hmmm. You could be right, but I never scraped off enough grime or soot to encounter either of those things. June 15, 2005 2:01 AM Anonymous Anonymous said... Wil, The lady on stage at the Apple Design Awards is (I believe), married, with kids. Just though you might want to know, in case you meet her again next year.. Oh, and in case this software thing doesn't work out, you might want to consider doing PJ O'Rourke's job. You have a talent for this. -jcr June 22, 2005 9:17 AM Anonymous Reggin said... Good Story. :thumsup: June 25, 2005 8:06 AM Anonymous reggin said... And by :thumsup: I mean June 25, 2005 8:06 AM Blogger accomplice said... Admittedly I came to your blog only out of a desire to condemn you for your encouragement to other nerds who believe that their plight with women is inherently different than other men. But instead, I find myself wanting to congratulate you on your award and for being among a handfull of americans who know the joys of Thomas Pink. When I worked in London, Pink was my staple for gifting the men in my life. Best of wishes. June 26, 2005 12:58 PM Anonymous Owlgarden said... If you ever visit Massachusetts (like for MacWorld??) (as if) go to Nantucket and check out Pollacks. Bobby, like me, knows his cotton. He always has great stuff from around the world which you (and not me) can afford. London might have nice shirts, but iTaly (sorry, I'm an Apple guy) truly blows away any other country for shirts. Again, bring money. Here are some shirt rules: 1) A nice shirt has tight threads and strong buttons. Don't buy a shirt if the buttons only have a couple a stiches holding them in. Look for extras on the tails. (a good thing!) 2) Generic fits do not mean BULGY. Even if you're steroidal a shirt should be slightly loose not skintight. Only get a shirt fitted if you've known your tailor for a couple years. Off the rack is ok, but don't skimp on neck size. Learn your size. Avoid polyester. 3) White to the face. If you need to make an impression, always wear a white shirt. I don't care what you think or what else you're wearing. if you don't know what's appropriate then White to the face. (This advice came from an old NYorker article... it is correct) 4) Soft cotton-no button down collar, Stiffer cotton- buttons.This is the difference between a "Brooks Brothers" and a "Gap" Oxford. The Gap cotton is too loose for button downs, I have Brooks Brothers shirts I've owned for 20 years. Of course, i don't wear ties except for a formal occasion. Always wear button downs with a tie. 5) If you're a poor student reading this- check out your local Vintage (not thrift) store for vintage shirts in good condition. By good condition I mean not Faded! By Vintage I mean 50 years old- there is no shirt from the 70's that looks right today. Learn to wash clothes correctly- your shirts will last WAY longer. Thanks Wil for writing this article and the the cool software -owlg June 26, 2005 9:26 PM Anonymous Anonymous said... Will, if you ever come over to the UK visit Saville Row and pick up a very 'nice' shirt - Ted Baker's a bit chav in the UK these days. All the best. June 30, 2005 3:36 AM Anonymous Bald guy from Laurie's entourage said... Funny I do remember the shirts. They are nice shirts but Yea I'm more impresses with the car. Laurie says hi. July 04, 2005 10:11 AM Anonymous Anonymous said... In the USA you might be able to get away with button down collars with a tie, it won't fly in Europe (where all the cool kids are). If you're ever in LA, look up RAMS in the valley. He'll custom fit you a shirt and ship it from Hong-Kong. You don't need a fancy name like Thomas Pink to look good in a pink shirt. Andrew UK July 08, 2005 6:12 AM Anonymous manuel said... altho i only understand 50% of yer stuff, it is such a delight to strole thru your writings... am happy i found this blog and weee! i also use a mac. whatever, i dont even know what soft you do, your blog is gift enough August 17, 2005 7:37 AM Blogger MinCat said... thank you for that spectacularly brilliant piece. you dont know HOW close i was to grabbing my blue editor's pencil and stabbing myself through the eye~ September 03, 2005 12:37 AM Anonymous Ramblero said... Hmmmmmmm.......I kinda just fell into site this after having done a search for Pollacks (of the Nantucket Pollacks). (see earlier post by Owlsomething. The Deb owes me a jacket, I having promised to buy her either a sax (she was an award winning saxophonist in her ute) or a keyboard for Valentine's Day whilst in Jackson Hole last year. (There's an excellent leather-goods place in Jackson Hole (underneath The Snake River Grill) but while they were very close...they weren't quite right.) I've gotten terribly picky about clothes in my advanced years. In fact, I've gotten just terribly picky about everything...food...cars...movies...music...wine...you name it. I've been looking for The Coat for...oh....maybe 15 years now. In any event, I wandered by Pollacks (of the Nantucket Pollacks) a week ago Sat (in the midst of a deluge. We, with straight face, told the local people throughout NE we had come back to see The Rains (screw The Fall Colors), the underlying theme of what turned out to be the Trip from Hell (thank you JetBlu & Hertz) just as they were closing...and they wouldn't be open until Monday...and of course I went into a frenzy; we were leaving Monday on the 1:30 ferry for Hyannisport...but I digress. So, at my urging, The Deb and I wander into Pollacks Monday morning after a late breakfast, and I must say, they do have very nice clothes...including The Coat...which The Deb, after fondling it for 30 seconds said "you must have this coat!" The Deb does not mince words when it comes to clothing, especially since she knows how picky I've become....and in spite of it's upsettingly high 4 figure price. Of course, I reluctantly agreed and now they already have my upsettingly high 4 figure stack of lucre...and I don't have The Coat. It, purportedly, was shipped, insured, but who really knows? I'm convinced it was flown out by the same JetBlu that secreted away my luggage on the in-bound flight and, with great glee, flew it all up and down the East Coast for days while my blood pressure spiked...that or Gabriella has pocketed the money and is on her way back to Eastern Europe to set up shop on my dime. OK....more than a dime. Anyway....Owl was right. Pollacks is a must....but leave with the goods in hand. Oh...and congrats on whatever it was for doing whatever you do on Macs....or whatever. (I worked for Apple for eons...right arm...) Ask me later about The Keyboard. October 25, 2005 3:14 PM Anonymous Nathan Henderson said... A clotheshorse is a drying rack for clothes, but also refers to someone somewhat obsessed with clothing. http://www.bartleby.com/61/90/C0419000.html November 19, 2005 8:43 PM Anonymous Jamie Thingbox said... Have you seen http://www.englishcut.com/ ? The blog of a Saville Row tailor that's getting mentioned a lot of late. January 17, 2006 6:26 AM Anonymous Anonymous said... You really need to check out a store called Sean. They have locations in New York, San Fran, Santa Monica and Boston. No website yet, but well worth looking into. They carry very sharp french shirts from one designer. I buy all my casual clothes there and get a lot of compliments. January 19, 2006 2:54 PM Anonymous bjh said... You mean the fact that she looked like Laurie Anderson didn't give you a clue? Maybe if she reminded you of Ellen DeGeneris? April 25, 2006 11:39 AM Blogger Wil Shipley said... Laurie Anderson is gay? April 25, 2006 1:56 PM Anonymous Sharon said... Wil Shipley: "Thanks for the advice on shirts and love, all. I should admit I'm not quite as vain or hopeless with women as I project in that story. It's a humor piece." I bet you're not... I have had more than one fantasy about you. June 26, 2006 9:01 AM Blogger Wil Shipley said... Sharon: R U F3male? July 19, 2006 3:16 PM Anonymous Sharon said... Yes! I am a female, are you surprised? July 29, 2006 10:07 AM Blogger Wil Shipley said... Sharon: Well, I must admit some of my other would-be paramours are not, in the strictest sense. July 29, 2006 10:24 AM Anonymous Anonymous said... Damn that was funny, Wil. August 29, 2006 1:46 PM Anonymous Anonymous said... Where do you shop in Seattle? December 06, 2006 9:03 PM Anonymous Lakh said... Next time you come over to London - take yourself shirt shopping. City boys love Paul Smith. http://www.paulsmith.com You can also see his fine work in LA, NY and everywhere in Japan. For the finer cut - Dunhill is a sure bet too. July 03, 2007 4:47 PM Anonymous Brian said... Random tidbit: In the 19th century and early 20th, pink was considered a boy’s color, blue a girl’s. The rationale being pink was lighter shade of red, and ‘aggressive,’ and blue was a more ‘passive’ color. July 03, 2007 8:27 PM Anonymous Graham said... I bet you shop at Blackbird! Maybe that's too hipster-ish, but I've gotten some great clothes there on sale. I got an APC overcoat for $170 marked down from $400. Barneys isn't bad either... I don't really like Ian or Zebra Club. Where do you get fancy dress shirts around here though besides Nordstrom? July 03, 2007 10:39 PM Anonymous Anonymous said... Thanks for the lovely story. If you're ever in Rome check out my favourite shirt maker. http://www.danroma.com/ Nathanael July 04, 2007 5:50 AM Blogger kate said... hey buddy, i have spent two hours reading your stories and looking through your site andyou are brilliant, ever thought about writing novels?? i strongly urge you to try. thanks for the giggles: ) July 12, 2007 3:52 PM Blogger Lorenzo said... Hey, look for Barba shirts from Naples. they're the best! Trust me, I'm Italian. Lorenzo http://www.fnv.co.it September 20, 2007 2:47 PM Blogger Brett said... George Clooney (aka Wil Shipley the Fashionista), Although I check your blog from time to time (especially the Cocoa programming posts) I hadn't noticed, or paid much attention to this entry until a few moments ago. There's a good chance that I had glanced at it in the past but moved on after realizing that it was a "Really Long, Pointless Story about a Shirt". I apologize if it was the title that stopped me, but it hadn't occurred to me exactly what famous, voguish shirt this tale was about. Today I scrolled down far enough through the entry to get a glimpse of the topic and recognized it at once. It is the rare attendee who will wear a striped pink designer button up at an event where the oldest, oversized, cola stained, WWDC/Apple/NeXT t-shirt is considered a status symbol. I was with you at Captain Eddie Rickenbacker's and remember you generously offering me a vodka tonic and that chair alongside the young German nannies. And I also remember wondering if you would get breakfast grease all over that shirt as I sat across from you at Denny's, at the early hours of the following morning, with notables such as Dean Cain, Fred Savage, and Robert Downey Jr. Fond memories. A whale is not a fish. Brad Pitt October 31, 2007 11:36 AM Anonymous John said... They should make a film of this. Now, if only someone had some ideas about who to cast in each of the roles... December 21, 2007 8:41 AM Anonymous Anonymous said... You should try an Anna Matuozzo shirt (advice from a Steve Winwood fan!) July 25, 2008 3:07 AM Post a Comment Link to comment
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