The Frustrating Truth About Luxury: It Just Looks Sexier

I get an email every morning from a popular online men’s magazine. It’s a digest of their newest content, consisting of posts about rare luxury cars, liquor, gear, getaways and whatnot. It’s bro porn.

Here’s the problem: I don’t drink, I neither have nor really want a car, and I don’t have any money. And I’m guessing that at least 99.99999% of the men on this website’s mailing list do not have the money for 99.99999% of the featured gear and getaways either. On rare occasions, the editors feature something fantastic that is actually affordable, which is nice.

So why don’t I unsubscribe? Well…

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The Great White T-Shirt

Is there anything simpler or more iconic, accessible and essential in a man’s wardrobe?

The white t-shirt was originally an undergarment with roots in the military. The white tee started to get traction as a legitimate outer garment with the help of some iconic cultural tentpoles in the middle of the twentieth century, most notably Marlon Brando in A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) and James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause (1955).

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The March 2017 Playlist: ’80s R&B

Between 1980 and 1990, I aged from ten to twenty years old. The ’80s were the years I was most keenly tuned into radio and MTV, which was all we had back then. (I didn’t get into the alternative scene until I got to college.)

Much of what I loved in my teens was the R&B dance/pop music coming out then. I was a closet disco queen, which was unusual for a white boy in a very white suburb. And much of the music I was attracted to came from black artists, with some of the music appearing on Top-40 charts while some of it was slightly more esoteric, only to be heard on Cleveland’s “black” station WZAK, which was my favorite at the time. And I was a freak for the stuff coming out of Minneapolis from Prince’s little purple/paisley universe.

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Dialing Down the Dairy

I grew up drinking milk, eating cheese and living for ice cream. They’re delicious! But as I grow older and learn more about dairy’s role in human nutrition and the way animals are treated so we can get a good chunk of feta, I’m dialing back.

I’m not a vegan, but I do unwittingly have vegan days – whole 24 hour periods where I will unintentionally not consume any animal products. After experimenting with vegetarianism and going full swing a few years ago, it just happens. It would probably be more accurate to describe me as “vegan-adjacent.”

While I haven’t dropped dairy altogether, I have cut back dramatically. After years of going without meat but occasionally enjoying fish, my thinking on the whole subject of animal consumption is evolving. Sticking with the things I was raised on is easy. It’s what I know. But as I keep thinking, learning and seeing more over time, dairy is growing harder for me to justify.

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The February 2017 Playlist

My apologies for the late arrival of this month’s playlist, but it’s here at long last. While it’s the usual genre/decade mess, there are some choice love-themed Valentine’s Day selections, like Dorothy Ashby’s gorgeous 1968 arrangement of “Come Live With Me” from Valley of the Dolls, the beautiful “Simple Song #3” from Paolo Sorrentino’s exquisite film Youth, and “Sometimes I Wish I Had a Gun” by Mink Stole. Enjoy.

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The Luxury Agenda vs. My Agenda: A Clarification

The way I present myself usually lends a bit of understandable confusion. There is often a presumption that a guy like me – a guy who likes tailored clothes and puts some care into his appearance – is on the luxury spectrum and prepared to talk about or even relate to matters of luxury, designer clothes and other expensive things. This couldn’t be further from the truth.

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