My Freedom from the Corporate Noose
11.08.06By Collin DavidIt’s rare that you’ll find me dressed in anything more fancy than a Legend of Zelda t-shirt and a pair of boots that are in desperate need of repair or replacement. You can see what color my socks are through the various holes in my boots, but that’s okay because I’m a man of very few secrets. I mean, I’m not a hobo, but my feet certainly are. So what if I carry my lunch in a spotted kerchief at the end of a stick? Don’t stereotype.
Because of my casual perpetual-bachelor lifestyle, you’ll rarely see me wearing a necktie. I don’t go to fancy dinners or weddings or Nobel Prize ceremonies. At least not until they give out a Nobel in ‘figural plastic superhero studies’ or ‘bacon eating’, at which point I’d be the obvious recipient. Despite my complete lack of a use for neckties, I still find myself with a growing collection of them. I like to toy with the distant fantasy that, one day, I too will be important and handsome enough to warrant wrapping one of those things round my neck and going out in public.
I don’t usually go out in search of fancy neckties that I’ll never use, unless they have Batman or robots on them, and even then, it’s an oft forgotten whim that I’m entertaining during a 3 AM bout of insomnia and shopping (which usually seem to accompany each other). It was the recent gift of a necktie with a hand-sewn robot on it from In-Hope that got me thinking about my marginal necktie accumulation. Not only is it the coolest necktie I’ve ever seen, but it’s probably the coolest necktie you’ve ever seen also. I can’t say I’ve ever found the attraction of novelty music-playing or light-flashing neckties, but I venture that I would if I had to wear a tie every day and had a deep-seated need to be the center of attention.
So, my collection is simple, and it’s made up of ties that were either given to be or cheaply purchased on a whim. I don’t know what they’re made of, but I do know that my one dollar Darth Maul necktie is probably the nerdiest thing that I could possibly wear. Or maybe my necktie with ‘Q’ from Star Trek is suitably repellant. I mean, nothing says ‘I’m lonely’ like the marginally attractive face of John DeLancie dangling at your bellybutton. I think that I actually sought that one out, too. I can’t even blame that one on heavy drinking, either.
My very first necktie, I believe, was from a Beatles designer line which was based around song titles. ‘If I Fell’ features the lovely broken-heart, discarded-roses theme that seemed to foreshadow my entire romantic future. The Beatles line, created by Manhattan Menswear Group, encompassed a large number of ties that ranged from ‘Birthday’ to ‘Yellow Submarine’ to ‘Paperback Writer’, all visually related (albeit loosely) to the imagery of the song in question. There aren’t too difficult to find cheaply online, if you’re so inclined.
This tie was followed up by a Grateful Dead “Dancin’ Bones” necktie. While I was never a fan of the Grateful Dead’s music, I always have liked skeletons, so I found myself with a lot of Grateful Dead stuff. I could live without the dancing bears with the pointy neck-fringes and the 25-minute guitar solos. Skeletons are immutably awesome, and that’s why I have the Nightmare Before Christmas necktie. The breadth of available neckties is staggering indeed, and I could see myself being THAT GUY. You know, the one who starts wearing decreasingly attractive ties in a completely ironic sense that doesn’t really communicate as well as I think it does, and then I just become known as ‘ugly tie guy’ instead of ‘that sexy ironic tie man’.
My collection has a curious lack of Darth Vaders, Iron Men and ham-centric designs. It’s just as well, though. I think I tried to tie my new robot tie for about 15 minutes before I decided that I probably was born without the part of my brain that allows me to do responsible, adult things like tie neckties and not spend one hundred dollars when I go to a toystore and drive a car without sticking mini superheroes all over the dashboard. Fine. I don’t need that part of my brain. I’ll just use the extra space to store my wicked cool Star Trek marbles.
But I’ll be damned if I’m ever going to use a clipon.
