Short Sleeves - Short Temper: Ralph's Rant

When we're done with dinner… I'm gonna let you fuck my wife."

Ralph knew there was a problem when the prospective client  didn't call back.  Six months of intense work on one of the biggest accounts in town --  Revenue over a million but there was a 10 year relationship with another agency.   Still, Ralph's ego didn't let him say no when he was approached.

The prospect complained of shitty service over a shitty lunch at his favorite restaurant; a place Ralph detested and thought touristy and pretentious. The prospect told Ralph the 'relationship' had been over for a couple years thanks to a change in 'players' -- Both at his company and at the agency.  Ralph looked at the prospect and saw a wounded Gazelle on the Serengeti Plain hobbling along to keep up with the herd.

Ralph's nostrils flared slightly  at the sniff of blood as he shoved a fork of rare dry aged rib eye across his capped teeth.  All the signs were there but then why hadn't the prospect called back?  Ralph called early in the morning and late in the afternoon to avoid the secretary but he only got voice mail.

Late in the afternoon, on the day of the new contract, the prospect called.  Ralph knew in an instant.  The prospect talked and Ralph, in a fog of anger, depression and confusion, heard little but picked up key phrases "…they really came through" "account manager replaced" "lowered fee" "you're proposal was solid" "appreciate everything…" As Ralph held the phone to his ear, he stopped listening and thought only of what he would say.

"I appreciate that, Tim." Ralph said, "A lotta people worked very hard and very long over here but I can tell you've made your decision and I respect that." Ralph heard Tim stumble along a "thanks" and some at-a-boys and still Ralph didn't know what was going to come out of his mouth next but that was sales.  The best never knew what they were going to say. That's why it always sounded so good. So…fresh.  And Ralph knew he was one, if not, the very best.

Ralph saw the light in his mind and followed it, "You know what, Tim. How about you come over for dinner this Friday night?  My wife's a great cook. Graduate of the Kump school.  She's really amazing.  I've got a case of Krug we can crack into…" Ralph heard the prospect's breathing over the phone turn anxious. Like he wanted to hang up but Ralph wasn't going to let him. "And, Tim.  When we're done with dinner… I'm gonna let you fuck my wife."

The prospect's voice is barely a tremble, "I'm not sure…" He pauses a long beat to let Ralph fill it but Ralph isn't biting.  Tim clears his throat, "I, uh. I'm not sure I heard you right." "No, you heard me right, Tim.  After dinner at my house... I'm gonna let you fuck my wife…because Tim, that's exactly what you've done to me."

Ralph grits his teeth, purses his lips and slams the phone down.  A piece of black plastic flies off the phone and across the office.  Ralph watches the bit of phone come to a rest at the feet of a life sized cardboard Batman next to his credenza.  Ralph smiles, clasps his hands behind his head and knows, as sure as Batman is standing in his office, that he has the best job in the world.

Takers & Givers

I served in a peace time Army but this scene from the brilliant documentary, Restrepo never fails to make me laugh and cry at the same time. I have a strange love-hate relationship with the Army that some of you know about. Someone asked if I learned 'Honor' from the army. I told them I learned 'Honor' from the people I served with. If the army doesn't give a shit about an NFL football player they're not gonna care much about Joe Shit the Rag Man -- That is, you and me.

The drive from Ft Bragg to Camp McCall in an open jeep, in the winter, was colder than a witch's tit in a brass bra and was the longest hour I've ever known. When I got cold I liked to sing. Loudly. Mac the Knife was a favorite although I have no idea why. Certainly, this would have not have served me well in the WW III - Soviet invasion of Europe - we all were being trained for. But, on a Ft Bragg range road, at Oh-dark-thirty, singing didn't seem to matter much.

We sang our hearts out to stay warm -- and it worked. A contest to see who could light a cigarette with one C ration match in the back seat of an open jeep doing 60 mph was another way not to think about the cold -- as well as make a few bucks on the side.

At the time, I wasn't very grateful for these moments. I never thought I would look back on them as fondly as I do today. The "Army" was the mean green machine but we were all in the same shit hole and that brought us together in a way the civilian world -- grab all you can then split -- has never come close to.

There are two kinds of people in the world. Takers and Givers. Takers don't do well as soldiers. They're usually found out for what they are pretty quickly. Givers don't do so well as civilians. They're found out as well.

A wise civilian manager once told me, "As long as you stand on a street corner handing out ten dollar bills -- people are gonna take them from you." In team spirit, I brought two large deals to my company but was shoved aside when commissions and congratulations were paid. Sadly, there was nobody to sing or dance with.

Duffle Stories

At Saks 5th Avenue -- I wonder who 'Chad' is?


And whose idea this was?


I got mine for nothing -- Well, almost...

Ft Jackson, Ft Benning, Ft Bragg, Camp McCall, Canal Zone, Griesbach Barracks...


It's not much to look at. It never was. Filled with everything the Army issued, it started on my back at Ft Jackson on the first day of Basic. An insane formation of shaved heads in the front leaning rest with hundred pound duffels on our backs.

Drills yelling, "Get Up! Get Back Down" Getting up, my bag falls off my back and a strap rips my watch off my wrist and sends it flying...never to be seen again. Through the rest of Basic -- I never know what time it is.


The Drills said you couldn't die and go to Hell without a layover in Atlanta. I'd fly in uniform but not for the reason this guy did. WW II vets were always good for a beer and a story in a bar near the Piedmont gates.

I carried it to my dorm room in college and, after graduating, to an apartment on 18th St in Chelsea. The same day a Puerto Rican girl pulled Wonder Bread out of my first bag of NYC groceries and "tsk - tsk'ed" me.

My name and number are barely visible but the stories this duffle conjures up just won't stop. I hope there's room for more.

Humble-Ties

I have a question. I'm a 26 year old working in financial services in New York City. I have a couple Hermes ties and while I love them, they seem too old for me. I also have a number of Vineyard Vines ties but they seem too young. Any ideas? Connor Fused

Dear Con,
You're in a predicament. However, you've provided enough information to work with. A young man (under 35) in an Hermes tie comes off looking, at worse, pretentious -- over reaching at best. Also, older men (over 40) in your office don't like you simply because you're 26. They'll look for anything to disparage and what you wear is an easy target.

I was 21 and driving for a colonel just before I got out of the army. I had known him for about a year, respected him and was flattered he specifically requested me as his driver. Coming out of a G-3 briefing, he climbed into the jeep and said, "Sergeant, I'm so confused I don't know whether to wind my ass or scratch my watch." I'll never forget that or what he told me next.

He told me I was a smart ass. Not so much because of what I wore. Except for his rank and C.I.B., our uniforms and footwear matched perfectly. He told me it was how I walked and talked. He also told me that people would either like me or hate me with no in between. I remember sighing a plaintiff, "Jesus, sir?"

Which reminds me of the time a chaplain in the field was chewing me out for my helmet graffiti which read, "Kill a Commie for Christ." This same colonel came to my rescue and told the chaplain that, "...it's his fucking job to kill Commies and if he wants to kill 'em for Christ, that's his business."

I'm getting off track here so let me wind scratch this up. I said, "Jesus, sir?" and the colonel said not to get him wrong. He loved smart asses but he wasn't everyone. He told me, "You need to be humble. I'm not saying you can't be you -- I'm telling you to be humble 'cause you don't need to wave your flag. It's big enough for everyone to see." I thanked him although I have managed to ignore his advice pretty much the whole of my life.

I don't know if you're a fellow smart ass, Con. But I do have some advice. 'Humble' is not a word you associate with Hermes while 'insipid' is what a designer I know calls Vineyard Vines. If you want something with Hermes gravitas while following my colonel's advice for humility, try Ferragamo. Not the shoes. They're not humble. The ties. As elegant as Hermes but not nearly as in-your-face assertive, the Ferragamo tie walks a fine line of understated style and restraint. Grown up but not middle aged. They're not cheap ($170) but women love giving them as gifts while old farts like me will hate you just a little less.

Update: I have just been advised the colonel retired a major general. I'm guessing I should've taken his advice.

Hot! Hot! Hot! Hot! Hot!

Ranger Log - Castillo de San Marcos, St Augustine, FL - 4 August 1984

Night 1964 by John Koch

My Fridge - 22 July 2011

It seems extreme heat has been a companion most of my life. Born in a record breaking August, the early wonder years were spent in the Southwest and Southeast. Basic, Infantry and Jump School were poorly timed and placed over a single cruel Summer at Ft Jackson and Ft Benning.

I saw heat index temps north of 107 as a Summer seasonal park ranger in Florida. Thermal inversions were commonplace with days of 100% humidity and no breeze. Adding to the misery was a paper mill north of town that cranked out a smell so ripe you could walk on it.

Still, truth be told, I'd rather deal with Summer than Winter. It's hard to lose an ear or finger because of the heat. Yesterday, I saw a young couple in their late teens French kissing on the sidewalk at the corner of 56th St and 8th Avenue. I was thinking it's too damned hot until I saw they were wearing jeans and black tee shirts -- Then they were just too damned stupid.

I'm old enough to remember sleeping without A/C and I can feel that John Koch painting like a trickle of sweat sliding down the crack of my ass. Rumors of a black out in NYC this weekend give me serious pause as I wonder if I have enough ice and talc. I'm pretty sure I have enough beer. I hope it ain't warm beer.

"...who screws around on you all the time"

Street fairs are usually street fairs. That is, it falls under my heading of an, 'F.P.E.' or Free Public Event and is to be avoided at all costs - - unless you're in desperate need of a pashmina scarf in July.

I thought the NY Bastille Day fair would be different. It was, in that Pashmina scarves were replaced with I don't how many crepe vendors. That and a fire broke out in a parking garage where a palpable panic broke out among tourists contrasted with native New Yorker's rubber necking.

Fleeing west, I was stopped by the most beautiful car in the world. The Citroen SM. The 2CV is too 2. The Traction Avant is too '30s and the DS is too damned much money, but I've had a thing for the SM since high school.

I was lured into buying one for 'a train car' in the suburbs of Chicago. White with a maroon velour interior, it was $6,000 at North Shore Imports. I was introduced to the mechanic who told me the French threw everything about cars out the window and did it their way.

I was reminded of a retirement party for a United pilot who told me he owned a Ferrari in the mid-60s. I asked what that was like. He told me it was like being married to the most beautiful woman in the world -- who screwed around on you all the time.

But the SM is beautiful.

There's a charm and soul to these cars I really connect to. The mechanic also told me the car I was looking at had been sold five times in the last couple of years.

Hairs raised on the back of my neck along with palpable panic.

I adore this door handle even though I have no clue why

Maybe it's just French.

This car has a cassette player. I'm thinking Francoise Hardy.

I would love to wash this car. Naked.

You can crack this vent open for the Gitanes smoke

I was always attracted to crazy girls when I was young, but I didn't need a mechanic.


Still, like knowing you can get a haircut in NYC at 4AM, it's nice to know this is available.

A Sweatshirt of a Certain Age

I've dragged this hooded sweat shirt around since 1985. I haven't been able to wear it since 1992. It's not that I've gained weight. I have. And like the weight I've packed on -- this sweatshirt is witness to years of change -- In myself and in my closet.

I wore this sweatshirt on a date in Philadelphia one night. Under a leather flight jacket with skin tight 501s and Timberland work boots. I complained to my date, later my wife, later my ex-wife, that I had been hit on by two gay men on my way to pick her up. She looked me up and down, arched an eyebrow and said, "Maybe it's the way you're dressing."

A lotta oxford has flowed through the closet since 1986. What I swore I would never wear: bow ties, double breasted blazers, suede shoes, club collars...not only reside in my closet but fit as well. My sweatshirt looks on. No longer worn. Not because it's too small, but because it isn't who I am anymore. A medium.

The Bachelor Party

(L to R) Wild East, Foosko & Sgt Nick Penis - Deer Path Inn 30 June 1988

23 years ago tonight some old friends, relatives and in-laws gathered at the Lantern in Lake Forest for my low key bachelor party. The image above is of the 'After Party' complete with Pabst Blue Ribbon. Amazing how hip we were and didn't even know it.

One of my friends asked my father that night what his experience in Vietnam was like. Dad shrugged and said there wasn't much to tell. Everyone nodded and the conversation moved
quickly to the Cubs and the merits of Old Style. The night winds down as in-laws leave but old friends wanna go all night.

Wild East and Foosko. decide to reenact Lobby East dorm life with a purchase of the cheapest beer available. Army buddy and Chicago local, SgtNick Penis comes along for the ride. Sadly, Red, White and Blue is not available so two sick packs of PBR go from the Lantern to the Deer Path Inn only four blocks and a low crawl away.

A month or so later the old man is visting D.C. and offers dinner at his favorite French restaurant in Old Town Alexandria. My bride asks Dad, in a break after escargot en croute but before steak au poivre, what it was exactly he did in Vietnam. Dad sips his Beefeater martini and tells my wife it was just like the mafia. "They'd come down to the village. Kill some locals. We'd go up the mountain and kill some of them."

While the rules of time, place and occasion are invaluable for apparel -- there is some wisdom in applying the rule to story telling. You don't wear a white dinner jacket to a bachelor party nor should fatigues be worn in French restaurants.

Back in the Summer of '82...and '83 and '84.

One of the few parks who kept log books


Documenting the best days of my life


Entries by full time staff ran a little dry

But the journals show a more festive attitude once the seasonal staff arrived.


Even the photography was festive

It wasn't a Summer internship at The New Yorker but it beat waiting on tables. Three mind frying Summers are documented in Ranger Logs archived in climate controlled and acid free storage somewhere in Northeastern Florida. An NPS curator was kind enough to scan what turned out to be the best days of my life.

Buried in some of the most god awful handwriting are the frustrations of dealing with thousands of visitors a day in a very small space with temps as high as 107. Mr Carlson from TV's, WKRP is afforded VIP coverage but, as always happens, it is the everyday that stands out with each ranger contributing his or her own point of view and penmanship.

A ranger nicknamed, Whitey is addressed as such by a black ranger to the astonishment of a southern Georgia family. A Japanese father asks a ranger for directions to I-95. A pig tailed man in a Lynyrd Skynyrd t-shirt walks by and offers, "Y'all didn't have no trouble finding Pearl Harbor."

It was like working in a giant fish bowl with visitors from all over the world converging with Northeast Florida and Southeast Georgia day trippers. All of it captured in a beautiful three volume set complete with photographs and illustrations. Contact me for a limited edition copy or screenplay.

Father's Day Advice

I'll never tell you what's coming back. I'll only tell you what never left.

My Sub today

Dad's Understated Choice



I grew up with the lore of my father's Explorer upon his return from war. It was an icon to me. His thick wrist covered in the black face and stainless steel with those beautiful numerals.

Front of photo: Dad in Nha Trang - 1967

Back of Photo: "Finger in ear! A typical pose. Look at that $200.00 Rolex shine in the "sun""

I learned to make fires in the Army and it didn't matter how wet the wood was. It always ignited. Thanks to a 5 gallon can of mogas. Despite her vulgar and wasteful ways the Army was not shy about collecting totems within units.

I was eight or nine when I first heard 'Rolex' from my father. It was the watch for Special Forces. Anybody in the military could buy one but few did.

Panmunjom, Korea - 1971

He's showing the Explorer to an anchor cranker or marine. No doubt the young 'El Tee' bought a Rolex before rotating home thanks to that mystical military allure. No, "Joe Shit the Rag Man" here. We're talking clued in. OD Green hipsters. Guys who sniffed out the best: restaurants, booze, cigars, music, reel to reels and wheels.

Dad - Ft Bragg, NC 1966

It was the totem I grew up with. The mysterious watch elicted 'oohhs and ahhs' from those in the know and not so much as a side ways glance from those not. That was the power.

Tintin - Ft Bragg, NC 1977

I pulled the trigger in 1976. Couldn't swing the Explorer but happily settled for the 5513. I was in the Sub Club few understood. Times have changed and the Sub is everywhere. When Dad and I talk about Rolex it's almost as if it's an old language we've grown tired of (Dad chucked his Explorer into a New Mexico desert and I'm close to chucking mine onto 7th Ave.). Inaccurate. Expensive to repair. Anxiety of loss.

But it was his advice I nearly always bought, "Drink the local beer. Be the last to a party and the first to leave. Check out her mother before you marry her. Never take anybody's last anything. Keep the rear sights in focus and you'll hit it every time." These things never seem to run slow or get lost.

"He's Coming Home" May 1967

I can't remember who delivered the green foot locker but it sat on the living room floor with white stenciled lettering, postage and the news, "He's coming home." And not as a captain but as a major. The good news, much like bad news then, seemed to come in packs of three or four.

The locker was his advance and filled with what he didn't or couldn't travel with. My mother lifted the lid open and Julie London and her black turtleneck stared back at us. I remember she was nestled in a camouflage cargo parachute and the earthy smell of Vietnam filled our living room.

The cargo parachute later hung from the ceiling of my army barracks and college dorm room where it gave everything and everybody beneath it a strange green cast. I lost the parachute but still have the reel to reel tape of Julie and thank my father for introducing me to her. Like so many things -- then and today -- I had no idea how lucky we were.

Operation Crazy Horse - 16 May - 5 June 1966

CIDG Camp - Vinh Thanh, May 1966


Back of photo - Pencil notes (all cap) added later.

Here's what I remember. Shortly after being promoted to sergeant I spent a week home on leave. After dinner my father and I smoked cigars and for the first time he told me about Operation Crazy Horse. He started the conversation with, "Never use men like they were office supplies."

Sam Castan 12 May 1935 - 21 May 1966

45 years ago Look Magazine senior editor and journalist Sam Castan was killed trying to break out of an ambush that, save two men, wiped out an entire platoon on Hereford Mountain in the Central Highlands of Vietnam. Castan's body was looted of cameras and film only to be recovered from Viet Cong killed in a fight later the same day. These photographs were taken moments before Casten and the men in these pictures were killed.

I grew up staring at the images and wondering about Sam Castan. In many ways I felt like I knew him but it was a romantic image I created. Belted safari jacket. Nikons hanging from his neck. A cigarette dangling from his lips. War photography speaks to me in a terrifying but alluring way.

The photographs were published in S.L.A. Marshall's 1967, 'Battles in the Monsoon.' Castan stayed at my father's Special Forces camp the night before the ambush and remembers the journalist winning at a card game with soldiers of the 1st Air Cavalry and his A Team.

Fran Castan, a poet from Brooklyn and Sams's widow remembers Sam in her poem, 'Operation Crazy Horse.'

A grand Kowloon hotel. A hedge

of red hibiscus. A tiled pool.
A masseuse who pressed fragrant
oil of almond into my body
in the full heat of the sun.
Elsewhere, northeast of Saigon,
a man beheld you, and fired.

At the undertaker's you were
all made up and your hair
was parted wrong, so I smoothed it
the way you would have liked.
Someone shouted Stop, as if we were
caught making love on the couch
in my father's house. God knows

what they feared. Unfamiliar
streaks in your hair must have paled
at the moment of terror
and grown longer in the time since,
eerie as strands of ticker tape
still printing. Such dark hair
shocked white. How afraid you were.
All I could do was hold you.